equivalent of superior merit.... As a broad principle it may be
said that, as nature has so constituted us that we must be ruled
in some way, and as at any given time the rule inevitably will
be in the hands of those who are then the strongest, so nature
also has allotted superiority of strength to superiority of
intellect and character; and in deciding that the weaker shall
obey the more powerful, she is in reality saving them from
themselves, and then most confers true liberty when she seems
most to be taking it away” (pp. 4, 5).
We hold that “superiority of strength” belongs to “superiority of
intellect and character,” but not in Mr. Froude’s sense. This sense is
obviously that expounded by the third Napoleon in the preface to his
_Julius Cæsar_—viz., that once Cæsar is established, it is a crime to go
against him under any circumstances; which is equivalent to saying that
whatever is, is right. It is forgotten by, or not known to, these
writers that man is prone to evil from childhood; that the good has
always a hard battle to fight; that it does conquer by force of
“superiority of intellect and character,” but that it is often, and for
a long time, borne down by the physical superiority of brute strength.
The history of Christianity is the strongest instance we can offer of
the truth of our position. Christianity has been struggling upwards for
nineteen centuries; to human eyes it was often at the point of death; on
those whom it subdued it conferred superiority of intellect and of
character—a superiority which they sometimes turned against itself—and
to-day it is struggling as fiercely as ever.
However, let us gauge Mr. Froude by his own standard: that superiority
of strength goes with superiority of intellect and of character. It is a
very convenient theory as so stated; but it is apt to work two ways. So
long as it works for Mr. Froude it is very natural and explicable. As
soon, however, as it turns to the opposite side it is to Mr. Froude a
“phenomenon.” We are as little inclined to underrate as to overrate
success, though very far from accepting it as the standard of right. One
thing, however, will be conceded by all men: what succeeds in face of
the most strenuous, long-sustained, and powerful opposition; in face of
wealth, position, possession, numbers, resources, education,
tradition—in a word, of all that goes to form and mould and fix peoples
and their character, their history, their mode of thought, their
national bent—what, we say, succeeds in face of all this must have
something in it very much resembling Mr. Froude’s “superiority of
intellect and of character.” It must have an immense vital force and
strength and reality within it. It is hard for any man not to
acknowledge that under such circumstances success approves itself; that
it came because it deserved to come.
But this is just Mr. Froude’s “revival” of Catholicity—a fact which for
him has no adequate explanation.
“The tide of knowledge and the tide of outward events,” he says,
“have set with equal force in the direction opposite to
Romanism; yet in spite of it, perhaps by means of it, as a kite
rises against the wind, the Roman Church has once more shot up
into visible and practical consequence. While she loses ground
in Spain and Italy, which had been so long exclusively her own,
she is gaining in the modern energetic races, which had been the
stronghold of Protestantism. Her numbers increase, her
organization gathers vigor. Her clergy are energetic, bold, and
aggressive. Sees long prostrate are re-established; cathedrals
rise, and churches, with schools, and colleges, and convents,
and monasteries. She has taken into her service her old enemy,
the press, and has established a popular literature. Her
hierarchy in England and America have already compelled the
state to consult their opinions and respect their pleasure;
while each step that is gained is used as a vantage-ground from
which to present fresh demands. Hildebrand, in the plenitude of
his power, was not more arrogant in his claim of universal
sovereignty than the present wearer of the tiara.”
This glowing passage suggests a variety of comments. In the first place,
taking it as a statement of facts, it is, coming from Mr. Froude, a most
marvellous testimony to the power and growth of the Catholic Church
within the present century. Let us venture to paraphrase his outburst,
and see how it runs:
Here are you whom we thought dead and buried under your weight of
superstition, idolatry, absurdity, and fraud, an old fossil of mediæval
times, deserted, neglected, despised, and contemned by the intelligence,
wealth, and worth of the age, suddenly leaping into new life, and by a
single miraculous stride coming right abreast of, if not ahead of, your
foes. What have we that you have not? Energy is ours, yet you surpass
us. Numbers are ours; you are stealing them from us. Knowledge and
learning are ours; your teachers put ours to shame. We stole your sees,
your cathedrals, your monasteries, your convents, your schools, your
universities—all that you had of beautiful, and holy, and intellectual.
You ask them not back, but set to work to build them anew. Ours is
stolen property; yours is built on the free offerings of the poor. We
invaded the domain of English literature; it was all ours; we poisoned
its wells to you; we invented the newspaper to perpetuate the falsehoods
that we wove about you. You have found an antidote to the poison; you
win over our brightest intellects; you make a literature of your own
which we are compelled to admire and read. You face us at every turn,
and we may as well confess that you beat us at many.
This is really Mr. Froude’s picture, not ours. His words mean this or
nothing. Will it not occur to anybody that for a church built on
“superstition,” “falsehood,” “fraud,” “error,” “a tissue of legend,”
etc., etc., Mr. Froude’s is indeed a strange showing—so strange that if
the church were the direct opposite of all that he asserts it to be, it
could hardly hope for more signal or deserved success? Does it ever
occur to Mr. Froude that he may by some remote possibility be mistaken
in his estimate of the Catholic Church? that it, if not right
altogether, may at least be righter than he thinks?
To some minds, to many and to greater and broader minds than Mr.
Froude’s, the doubt has suggested itself. Some, like Macaulay, face it,
acknowledge the wonder of it, make no attempt to explain the wonder, and
stand without for ever, still wondering. Others draw nearer and examine
more closely, and finally enter in. Here is how Mr. Froude views it:
“What is the meaning of so strange a phenomenon? Is the progress
of which we hear so much less real than we thought? Does
knowledge grow more shallow as the surface widens? Is it that
science is creeping like the snake upon the ground, eating dust
and bringing forth materialism? that the Catholic Church, in
spite of her errors, keeps alive the consciousness of our
spiritual being and the hope and expectation of immortality? The
Protestant churches are no less witnesses to the immortal nature
of the soul, and the awful future which lies before it, than the
Catholic Church. Why is Protestantism standing still while Rome
is advancing? Why does Rome count her converts from among the
evangelicals by tens, while she loses to them, but here and
there, an exceptional and unimportant unit?” (p. 95).
Mr. Froude has put questions here each of which would take a volume to
answer. We leave them to be pondered over by those for whom they are
chiefly intended, and of whose conscientious consideration they are well
worthy. For ourselves, we can have no doubt as to the answer to be given
to each, but we are more concerned at present with Mr. Froude’s reply.
First among the causes which he assigns as having “united to bring about
such a state of things” is the Tractarian movement in the Anglican
Church, resulting from the “latitudinarianism of the then (1832) popular
Whig philosophy.”
“The Whigs believed that Catholics had changed their nature and
had grown liberal, and had insisted on emancipating them. The
Tractarians looked on emancipation as the fruit of a spirit
which was destroying Christianity, and would terminate at last
in atheism. They imagined that, by reasserting the authority of
the Anglican Church, they could at once stem the encroachments
of popery and arrest the progress of infidelity. Both Whigs and
Tractarians were deceiving themselves. The Catholic Church is
unchanging as the Ethiopian’s skin, and remains, for good and
evil, the same to-day as yesterday.”
Yes; “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever” is the church of God. It
cannot be the church of God and be otherwise. If there was any deception
Mr. Froude lays it at the right door. These men were “deceiving
themselves.” The church gave no intimation of change, made no promises,
held out no concessions, thought of no compromise in matter of teaching.
She cannot do so; it is not in her power to do so.
It was the liberal philosophy that was chiefly instrumental in bringing
the change about. Men had to choose between the fixed doctrines of the
Catholic Church and the shifting doctrines and intolerable pretensions
of the Anglican Church. They rejected both; they rejected revelation;
they looked at man himself, and attached to him certain natural rights
which are as well expressed in our Declaration of Independence as
anywhere. They would, if they could, strike out the Catholics, as was
attempted here. But it was impossible. They could not do it and be true
to themselves and their principles. If liberty of thought, freedom of
conscience, and the right to worship or not to worship God in your own
way be natural rights of man, they necessarily attach to all, whether a
man call himself Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Nihilist. It is a
political and practical impossibility in these days of divided and
clashing beliefs to profess liberty, yet seal the door to any special
form of worship; and Catholicity of all beliefs is dreaded, because,
when free and untrammelled, it has the tendency and the force to
assimilate and receive all into its bosom. The result of this partial
concession of freedom to Catholicity in England is thus pictured by Mr.
Froude:
“The Tractarians’ principles led the ablest of them into that
very fold against which they had imagined themselves the most
efficient of barriers. From the day in which they established
their party in the Anglican communion a steady stream of
converts has passed through it into the Catholic ranks; while
the Whigs, in carrying emancipation, gave the Catholics
political power, and with power the respect and weight in the
outer world which in free countries always attends it.”
It is the attainment of this power by Catholics that Mr. Froude so
bitterly resents. It would be more satisfactory if he told us plainly
what he would have done to Catholics. Would he deny them votes? To deny
them votes is to deny them political life. And would he deny votes to
Catholics only? Or would he grant votes, but compel them to use them in
one way, and, if in one way, in which way? In a word, would he allow
Catholics to exist at all as Catholics, would he force them into the old
state of political slavery, or would he openly force them into
Protestantism under the persuasion that Protestantism, no matter of what
stripe, was better for them? Though he shrinks from saying so himself,
the latter seems to be the only fair practical conclusion to be drawn
from his words, and in passages already quoted he has given us the
grounds on which he would act, and feel justified in acting: “The
superior part has a natural right to govern the inferior part.” It is
plain as between Protestantism and Catholicity which Mr. Froude
considers “the superior part.” “The inferior part has a natural right to
be governed.” “There neither is nor can be an inherent privilege in any
person or set of persons to live unworthily at their own wills, _when
they can be led or driven into more honorable courses_.”
We must interpret Mr. Froude by himself, and, judging him by his own
words, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion that had he the power
he would do all that has been done in the past, and even go beyond
it—for all measures have thus far proved ineffectual—to destroy
Catholicity from the face of the earth.
And here we come to our final consideration in the present article. Mr.
Froude’s observations amount practically to this: Set Catholicity and
Protestantism side by side; give them each perfect freedom; Catholicity
will infallibly gain, Protestantism will as infallibly lose. “The
phenomenon,” he says plaintively, “is not confined to England.... In
America, in Holland, in Switzerland, in France, _wherever there is most
political freedom_, the power of Catholics is increasing.”
Well, what of it? The fault, still following Mr. Froude, if fault there
be, must rest either with Catholicity, or with Protestantism, or with
political freedom. If with Catholicity, it is its fault that “wherever
there is most political freedom” its “power is increasing.”
If with Protestantism, it is _its_ fault that, where Catholicity is
placed on an equal political footing with it, its power decreases, while
the power of Catholicity proportionately increases; and it is to be
borne in mind that the power of numbers in the distinctively Protestant
countries is altogether against the Catholics.
If the fault lie with political freedom itself, that with it the power
of Catholics increases, what are we to say or do? That political freedom
and Catholicity go hand in hand is the obvious comment, and that it is
impossible to check the advance of Catholicity without at the same time
contracting political freedom. We submit that this is the plain and
logical deduction to be drawn from Mr. Froude’s words. It is no trick of
verbiage. The fact is to himself a “phenomenon.” We are giving now no
opinion of our own, but simply translating Mr. Froude, when we say that
by his concession—Protestantism cannot stand by the side of Catholicity
in a free air. It must go to the wall. This we have to reconcile with
his other statement that “liberty, spiritual and political, has thriven
in spite of her [the Catholic Church’s] most desperate opposition, till
it has invaded every government in the world.” Where it has really
invaded governments, by his own confession, “the power of Catholics is
increasing.” Where it is cut off, there is Catholicity strangled, so far
as human power can strangle it. But we shall show that even there it is
the only religion with any vitality in it, and that all forms of
religion which claim the name of Christian suffer with the Catholic
Church and lose by her losses. We have thus far only treated the
“revival” in a general way. In a future article we shall, in company
with Mr. Froude, examine the specific causes which he assigns for the
“revival.” sp 2
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO F. W. FABER.
Amico, io vivendo cercava conforto
Nel monte Parnasso;
Tu, meglio consigliato, cercalo
Nel Calvario.
—Chiabrera’s epitaph at Savona. From the title-page of Father Faber’s
_Poems_.
I.
True poet of all mountain sight and sound,
Of barren glen where mighty echoes wake,
Of eagle-haunted, crag-o’ershadowed lake
Where loneliness in silent state sits crowned
And shares her kingdom with no shallow heart:
True lover of all nature’s solemn ways,
The columned forest’s wind-waked song of praise—
Sad chords wherein all deepest joy hath part—
True reader of the primrose’ golden tale,
Finding its glow but shadow of a light
Wherein who seeks may find the Infinite,
That doth its mystery so in least things veil—
A seer thou seem’st in thy high mountain place,
E’er with all holiest visions face to face.
II.
Yet wandering content in lowlier ways,
By brambly lane and lawn-embroidered mere,
By quiet river in whose waters clear
The clustering willows and tall towers gaze
Of minster-town whose ancient bells ring out
And trail their music through thy thoughtful rhyme
Like far-off echoes of an older time
When trembled in their peal no note of doubt.
Landless, yet holder of a royal fief
In all the beauty by rich nature wrought—
Each blossoming hedge-row with an earldom fraught,
Wide duchies bound in every golden sheaf—
Thine the unchallenged tenure of the whole,
By right divine of unstained poet-soul!
III.
Still hearkening ever to that low heart-beat
Of sorrowing earth, whose flowers fade in death,
Whose silver-threaded rills grow faint for breath,
Whose wounded birds cry out beneath thy feet.
Not deaf thy human ear to any plaint
Of our sad mother whom her sons make weep—
Breaking with cries of hate her quiet sleep,
Crowding in sunless ways their brothers faint.
Nor dumb thy poet-voice to speak her woe—
She that hath shivered when mankind stood mute
Or flung harsh words of evilest repute,
Veiling her face her Maker’s cross below.
With filial love thy heart ’gainst hers is laid
Who rears the hills, in keeping holds the dead.
IV.
Like cleansing waters touched with heavenly grace
Thy mountain-consecrated words are shed,
Lifting our souls to light unshadowèd,
Guiding our footsteps in the holy trace
Of Him who yet shall make the hills a way—
Exalted paths trod by the clean of heart,
Shrines for the holy-minded set apart
Wherein profaner feet unheeding stray.
All nature wins true loving from thy song—
Fair not alone with her e’er-changing grace,
But, lighting each dear feature of her face
The thought of love enduring, pure and strong—
True poet, in Parnassus’ shadow still
Feeling the loadstone of blessed Calvary’s hill.
V.
To that sad mount how eloquent a guide!
Not Hybla’s blossoms could so fair beguile
The wandering bees as thy entreating wile
Faint souls to climb that seeming arid side.
With strength thou lead’st from seraph-haunted cave
Where Infinite Might with infinite loving smiled
From frail, sweet lips of Holy Mary’s Child;
Anon where pitying palm-trees shadow gave
To ease the weary exile of their Lord;
On through the humble toil of patient years—
Till, mingling with the Magdalen our tears,
Our heart’s poor vase of precious ointment poured—
We stand, God’s Mother near, with woe beside
The love-pierced feet of Jesus Crucified.
VI.
The sweetest refuge any soul can know!
Where all complaining stills its idle voice,
And trembling joy bids sorrow soft rejoice
Finding the living wand, whose staff below
The living waters lie like mountain spring
Defiled not in its source, whose shining face
Gives to e’en homely herbs a resting-place,
With heaven’s blue for their bright shadowing.
Pure, living source! wherein who drinks shall thirst
Not any more. Blest cup of Love Divine!
About whose stem the thorny wreath doth twine,
Grown soft for us since He hath borne it first.
Cool draught! wherein no hidden drop of gall
Makes heaven bitter, and earth’s promise all.
VII.
Shall poets change for bay the crown divine
Wreathing the head of Him about whom throng
Life’s tenderest flowers, who holds art’s perfect song
In his pierced hands?—pure gift in holiest shrine!—
From whose rent side the consecrating flood
Doth cleanse the poet’s thought from earthly stain,
Him king anointed o’er a grand domain
By true inheritance of royal blood;
In whose wide heart, broken for very love,
Lies master-key to all true harmonies,
So tuned, no base, discordant melodies
Shall jar earth’s music saints shall sing above;
So tuned, may wake in sweetness weakest string,
Immortal anthems loyal echoing.
VIII.
So keyed thy sacred song, O poet true!
With holy joy its very sorrow light,
So glorified with that love infinite
That shines as stars in heaven’s darkest blue:
Washed clean thy earth-born lays in that pure flood—
Thy cloudy mountains hide no fear save one
Of loving awe; though in dark gorge the sun
Falls not, e’en there the Eternal Dove doth brood.
Thy mountain springs are pure, wherein we dare
Drink as we will, not fearing, so bent down,
We shall lose sight of heaven’s fairer crown
And find but our own likeness resting there.
Fresh with a dew bearing no stain of earth,
Thy hill-paths lead unto our Father’s hearth.
IX.
With thee, my poet, lie our souls at rest
In the soft glory of our Mother’s smile—
The Maid Immaculate, who could beguile
Her God to be a child on her pure breast.
With thee we labor that our little life
Shall learn to lose itself, that it be found
In that far, other life eternal crowned
‘Mid hero-saints whose prayers were ours in strife;
Humbly with thee, our dearest Lord before,
Veiled in the little, pale, and helpless round
Wherewith on earth he chooseth to be crowned,
We bend with love that yearneth to love more.
Fond children, at the Father’s feet we kneel,
Finding the love his Spirit doth reveal.
X.
O poet! more than Crashaw, saint! forgive,
If break my singing in unworthy praise;
Pardon, if uncouth love in stammering lays,
Seeking to thank, but give thee cause to grieve.
Unspoken gratitude is burden sore
When debt so passing strong of love is owed;
Unworthy speaking but augments the load,
Forgiveness making so love’s burden more.
So much to thee I owe! Along my life
Thy words like patient, wingèd seeds are sown,
So long amid the dark and brambles grown,
Yet winning bloom at last despite the strife.
As once for him of Ars thy heart was shrine,
So mine holds thee, O blessed of Love Divine!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.
VIRGIL AND HORACE—II.
“Traduire Horace, et surtout le traduire en vers, est même devenu,
depuis soixante ou quatre-vingts ans, et chez nous et en d’autres pays,
une sorte de légère infirmité morale, et de douce maladie qui prend
régulièrement un certain nombre d’hommes instruits au retour d’âge;
c’est une envie de redevenir enfant, adolescent, de se reporter au temps
des études qui nous étaient chères.” To translate Horace, says
Sainte-Beuve, above all to translate him in verse, has become within the
last sixty or eighty years, both in France and abroad, a kind of venial
moral infirmity, a sort of mild fever, which periodically seizes a
certain number of educated men as they find themselves growing old; and
it has its source in the longing to renew our youth, to live over again
the time of studies we were fond of.
Like all the sayings of that most delicate and _spirituel_ of critics,
this is so far true that most translations of Horace will be found, we
think, to be the work of men advancing in life, and, in the majority of
cases, to have grown up insensibly through a number of years. One does
not sit down to a version of the _Odes_ as to a version of the _Æneid_,
beginning at the first line and going religiously through in order to
the end. No; but we pick out an ode here and there, as the mood takes us
and that fits the mood—some gay _Ad Amphoram_ or _Ad Asterien_ when we
are young and sprightly, _calidus juventâ_; a nobler _Ad Augustum_ or
_Ad Calliopen_ when we are older and graver, in the time of whitening
locks—riding in the cars, it may be, walking in the street, smoking the
after-dinner cigar; everywhere, in fact, that solitude gives us a chance
to entertain the best of all good company. We turn it into such English
as we can muster, and print it perhaps, or, better still, put it away in
our portfolio; Horace must have had a prophetic eye on his coming
translator when he gave that soundest of poetic counsels—unless
_Punch’s_ “Don’t” be sounder still:
“Nonumque prematur in annum
Membranis intus positis”—[73]