ENGLISH TORIES AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

The motives which impel men to their best actions are not always,

perhaps they are not generally, the best possible motives. It is not

improbable that more men are driven to the tribunal of penance by

attrition than are led thither by contrition. If this be true of men in

their individual and private affairs, it is still more strikingly true

of politicians and statesmen in their public acts. He would indeed be

fanciful and credulous who should imagine that Mr. Gladstone, in

framing, advocating, and insisting upon the passage of his bill for the

disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland,

was inspired by a pure love of abstract justice and right, and a

disinterested desire to relieve the Irish people from a flagrantly

unjust burden and a crying wrong. He saw as clearly as any one that this

wrong existed, but he perceived also that by removing it he would win

popular support for himself and his party. It is tolerably safe to say

that had Mr. Gladstone imagined that the passage of the bill for the

disestablishment of the church would have resulted in the expulsion of

himself and his party from power, he would not have urged the measure.

In this case there were two motives: one positively and abstractly good,

the other good in the estimation of those who believed that the

continuance of power in the hands of the Liberal party was desirable.

The latter incentive was the ruling one. Mr. Gladstone, we believe,

would not have advocated a measure which he knew to be bad, although

this advocacy might have secured him an extension of power. Nor would he

have insisted upon the adoption of a measure which he knew to be good

had he known that this insistence would deprive him of power. But he saw

that while the disestablishment and disendowment of the alien church in

Ireland would be an act of justice in itself, it would also be a good

political stroke, tending to strengthen his own position and to give a

longer lease of power to his party.

One need not trouble himself to assign higher motives than these to the

Tory government, which, to the surprise and delight of the Catholics in

Ireland, has brought forward a really fair scheme for intermediate

education in Ireland, and seems honestly disposed to carry it at the

present session of Parliament. Just as we write the bill has passed the

House of Lords, and is about to be brought up for final passage in the

Commons. The queen’s speech at the opening of Parliament contained a

promise that a bill for the promotion of intermediate education in

Ireland should be introduced; but it was not until events made probable

the speedy dissolution of Parliament and a general election that this

promise was redeemed. It is not uncharitable to suppose that the

government felt it necessary to have something to offer to Ireland in

the event of an appeal to the constituencies under circumstances that

would make every vote important. The bill passed its second reading in

the House of Lords on the 28th of June—a moment when it was still

possible that England might soon find herself embroiled in a foreign

war, and when it was given out in governmental circles that Parliament

was to be dissolved and a general election ordered. The third reading

and final passage of the bill in the Lords took place some two weeks

afterwards. Meanwhile the position of affairs had somewhat altered: the

conclusion of the labors of the Congress of Berlin and the disclosure of

the Treaty of Constantinople had greatly strengthened the hands of the

government; the Opposition gave evidence of demoralization and discord

in its own ranks, and toward the close of July the inspired journals

announced that Parliament would not be dissolved this year, inasmuch as

the general approval of the course of the government was too plain to be

misunderstood or denied. The Irish Education Bill came up for its second

reading in the House of Commons under these circumstances, and its

friends fancied that they discovered a little less earnestness on the

part of the government in pushing it forward than was displayed under

the more critical circumstances in the House of Lords. Still, the

probabilities are that the bill will pass and receive the royal assent

before the close of the present session; and if this be so, the Tory

government of Earl Beaconsfield will go down to posterity as the first

administration which has had the courage, the wisdom, and the good-will

to award to Ireland anything like justice in the matter of education.

The bill provides for a system of payments by results, and practically

is identical with the system which Mr. Isaac Butt laid before the writer

during a conversation in London four years ago. We are unaware whether

the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns—who is, like Mr. Butt, a Protestant, an

Irishman, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin—has availed himself

of Mr. Butt’s ideas in the preparation of the measure; but this is not

at all improbable. Mr. Butt has expressed his cordial approval of the

measure. To what extent the Tory government may have been able to

inspire such organs of public opinion as the _Saturday Review_, and such

writers as Matthew Arnold in the _Fortnightly_, we cannot say; but the

fact is that for the first time in its existence the _Saturday Review_

has recognized and defended the right of Irish Catholics to be educated

in the way that they considered proper, and that Mr. Arnold seems

suddenly to have arrived at the conclusion that the denial of a Catholic

university in Ireland is a wicked, absurd, and mischievous freak of

English Puritanism. The development of opinion in the _Saturday Review_

is startlingly rapid. In a remarkable article written before the

introduction of Lord Cairns’ bill the _Review_ said that “the injustice

of refusing either to give the Irish Roman Catholics a university or to

allow them to set up one for themselves is so patent that if the demand

for a charter were once more put forward it could scarcely be very long

resisted.” But in the same pages it warned the Irish Catholics that they

must not expect to receive anything like an endowment from the state for

denominational education:

“The demand for a state endowment of a Roman Catholic university, or

of a Roman Catholic college in a mixed university,” we were told,

“may be perfectly just, but it is at the same time perfectly

impracticable. For this purpose the surplus revenues of the Irish

Disestablished Church will undoubtedly be treated as money belonging

to the nation, and unless a radical and almost miraculous change

should come over the whole mind and temper of the English people,

not a shilling of it will be devoted to a denominational object.

This determination on their part may be quite illogical, but it is

very firmly rooted. The endowment of a Catholic university or a

Catholic college may continue to furnish the text for an annual

motion and for any number of annual speeches, but it will do nothing

more. The late government attempted to meet the difficulty by

establishing a university in which the subjects upon which Romanists

and non-Romanists most differ should be temporarily excluded from

the university course. Denominational colleges might be incorporated

into this university and teach what they liked, but the teaching of

the university was to leave burning questions on one side until the

university should have become strong enough to run alone, and to

decide for itself in what subjects it should give instruction to its

students. The scheme fell through.”

Within a few days after this candid expression of opinion the same

journal was applauding Lord Cairns’ bill for intermediate education in

Ireland, which provides for the application of a certain portion of the

surplus revenues of the Disestablished Church for the support of schools

that certainly will be “denominational.” True, the money is not to be

given directly in payment for religious instruction, but it is to be

given in payment to teachers who will impart religious instruction to

their pupils. “Not a shilling will be devoted to a denominational

object,” said the _Review_ one week; but a fortnight afterwards it was

delighted with a measure that proposed to devote a million sterling for

the support of a system which is nothing if it be not “denominational.”

We rejoice at this sudden and remarkable conversion without inquiring

too closely how it came. Catholics everywhere, and Irish Catholics

especially, should rejoice when organs of opinion like the _Saturday

Review_ speak of a measure that is satisfactory to the hierarchy, the

clergy, and the Catholic laity of Ireland as “an honest endeavor to

supply Ireland with an article which she really wants, and which nothing

but the absurd prejudices of Englishmen has prevented her from attaining

before now.” It is certainly encouraging to hear Englishmen told by

their most un-Catholic and worldly-minded instructor that in their

rejection of Ireland’s claims for Catholic education they have been

“singularly unamiable and singularly foolish”; that they have been bent

upon educating Irish Catholics in a way in which Irish Catholics have

been equally determined not to be educated.

The provisions of Lord Cairns’ bill are briefly these:

“A Board of Intermediate Education of seven commissioners—three to

form a quorum—is to be appointed by the lord lieutenant—the members

to be removable by him—with two assistant commissioners, who will

also act as secretaries and inspectors, at salaries of one thousand

pounds each, to be appointed by the same authority. Other officers

may, from time to time, be appointed by the board, with the consent

of the lord lieutenant and the approval of the treasurer. This board

will be a mere examining body, conducting by its officers annual

examinations in June and July at convenient local centres over

Ireland. The programme of subjects includes six different classes of

attainments: (1) languages, literatures, and history of Greece and

Rome; (2) the same of England; (3) the same of France, Germany, and

Italy; (4) mathematics, including arithmetic and book-keeping; (5)

the natural sciences; and (6) another group of subjects to be named

by the board. Candidates for examination must show that they have

been under instruction in Ireland for the year previous to the date

of the examination; and the maximum ages fixed are sixteen,

seventeen, and eighteen years respectively for the three years’

course. Certificates, or testamurs, will be given, setting forth the

results of successful examinations; graded prizes, and also annual

exhibitions, of from twenty to fifty pounds, will be awarded, the

condition of attendance for at least one hundred days a year in an

intermediate school being required in the latter. Holders of any

other exhibitions are to be ineligible. The school in which the boy

has attended the required number of days receives a bonus of three

pounds should he pass in two subjects, four pounds for three, and

five pounds for four of the six subjects of the first year’s course;

another grant is increased in like ratio for the second and third

years. No subject of religion is to enter into the examination or be

paid for. A conscience clause (7), while not requiring any such

school to be open to all or any classes, is thus framed to protect

religious minorities who may attend: ‘The board shall not make any

payment to the managers of any school unless it be shown to the

satisfaction of the board that no pupil attending such school is

permitted to remain in attendance during the time of any religious

instruction which the parents or guardians of such pupil shall not

have sanctioned, and that the time for giving such religious

instruction is so fixed that no pupil not remaining in attendance is

excluded directly or indirectly from the advantages of the secular

education given in the school.’ One million from the surplus funds

of the Disestablished Church is to form the endowment for this

scheme, being, in round numbers, £35,000 a year. The Church

Temporalities Commissioners are empowered to borrow this sum,

pending the close of the liquidation of the assets. The board may

alter and amend the whole scheme, save so as to change its leading

principles, and may frame codes and rules and lay them before

Parliament, when, if not objected to by either House within three

weeks, they acquire the force of law.”

The debate in the House of Lords on the second reading of the bill was

characterized by a remarkable exhibition of good sense and good feeling

among the Protestant members who spoke, while the remarks of the two

Catholics who expressed their approval of the measure, Lord O’Hagan and

Lord Emly (formerly Mr. Monsell), were discreet and well considered.

Lord O’Hagan gave what he properly described as some “startling

statistics” concerning the aptitude of Irishmen for fitting themselves

for the discharge of public trusts, even under the limited and

discouraging conditions of education which had thus far prevailed in

Ireland. He showed that England has 72-1/2 per cent. of the population

of the United Kingdom, Ireland 17 per cent., and Scotland 10-1/2 per

cent. Since 1871 there had been 1,918 places in the excise and customs

bestowed in public competition. For these places there had been 11,371

candidates, of whom 11 per cent. were Scotch, 46 per cent. English, and

43 per cent. Irish. Of the places Scotland gained 6 per cent., England

38 per cent., and Ireland 56. Of every 100 Scotch candidates 9 passed,

of every 100 English 14, and of every 100 Irish 22.

These figures showed what the youth of Ireland could do when they were

educated. But what were their opportunities? As children, up to fifteen

they might avail themselves of an excellent primary education, but after

that they have few if any opportunities of advancing further. The fact

was undeniable that for three hundred years legislation has been

directed against education in Ireland, except in a form in which the

people would not receive it. The bill now proposed was the first step in

the contrary direction, and in Lord O’Hagan’s opinion, if it were

administered in the same impartial and fair spirit which had dictated

its framing, its results would be most wholesome.

The bill, on the whole, although not perfect, is so great a contrast to

all the former educational measures which England has devised for

Ireland, and is conceived in so different a spirit, that the Irish

Catholics are right in accepting it gladly. It is only to be hoped that

the House of Commons will prove to be as reasonable and just as the

Lords have been, and allow the bill to pass without mutilating it by

mischievous amendments. For half a century England has been tinkering at

Irish education, always with the idea that she could compel the Irish to

accept Protestant education if Catholic education were made impossible

for them. Thus was devised the national system of 1831, the queen’s

colleges of 1845, the supplementary charter of 1866, Lord Mayo’s charter

scheme of 1867, the unfortunate University Bill introduced by Mr.

Gladstone in 1873, the National Teachers’ Act, and Mr. Butt’s University

Bill. The English government in their present measure do not storm the

Plevna of the religious difficulty; they simply turn it. They do not

propose to establish any new institutions, nor to aid the erection of

any, nor to subject to inspection and control any of the existing

intermediary schools that have been founded by the zeal of the clergy

and the charity of the faithful. They leave these alone; but they offer

to reward them, and all other similar schools that may be founded, by

giving prizes to their pupils, and a bonus to the schools themselves of

from fifteen to twenty-five dollars for each pupil who meets certain

conditions. The Irish Catholic schoolmasters and schoolboys will not be

afraid to enter into this competition; on the contrary, they will “leap

at it,” and the best results may be expected to follow. More important

still, this step, once taken, will lead ere long, by logical

consequence, to the settlement of the Irish university question in the

same way. Lord Beaconsfield’s administration of the government of

England promises to live in history as an epoch of many brilliant and

important events; but if under his rule the Catholic education of

Ireland is adequately and satisfactorily provided for, that will be

really a more lasting and glorious monument to his memory than his

diplomatic victories at Berlin, his second conquest of India, or his

virtual annexation of Asia Minor to the British crown.

LAC DU SAINT SACREMENT.

Fair in their peace, ’twixt shore and shore,

Lake George’s waters rest,

And fair the great hills, rising o’er,

Lie mirrored on its breast.

The leafy forests hide no tread

Of stealthy Indian foe,

The sunshine gilds no dusky head

In shadow stealing slow.

The calm no hostile navies rend,

Pealeth no threat’ning gun,

Silence and stillness softly blend

Beneath the undimmed sun.

Faded the lilies’ bloom long since

On Horicon’s green mere;

The soldiers of the German prince

Lift not the red cross here.

The stars alone are guardians now

Of this bright forest sea

Whose waves, whatever wind may blow,

Sing freedom’s royalty.

Ah! fair Lake George, I would thy name

Were changed for one more meet,

That thy bright waters spoke the fame

Of him whose accents sweet

First named thee in a Christian tongue—

His maimed hands raised to bless—

Who, rapturous, round thy beauty flung

Thy Maker’s loveliness.

Who sighed blind Indian souls to lead

Unto their Father’s feet,

To teach strong hands for peace to plead,

Fierce hearts Christ’s cross to greet.

Who bore with awe his Master’s name,

Was bound for His sweet sake,

God’s glory deed and thought should claim,

Knowing no lesser stake.

Who ready stood, for God’s dear love,

Through toil and torture fire

Still with the cross to point above—

A living Christian spire.

O lake beguiling! on that eve

How still thy waters lay,

All hushed in sunshine each green wave

Calm as the golden day.

How full of grace on that blessed eve—

God’s love athwart the sky;

Pure as his balm for souls that grieve

Thy mirror seemed to lie.

Warm as the Love that gave itself

The softened mountains seemed;

Fusing strong tree and rugged shelf,

The wondrous glory streamed.

A burning worship heaven filled,

And breathless it adored,

While through the air, all-reverent, stilled,

The earth’s sweet incense soared.

Did dreams of France, his own loved France,

The Jesuit’s spirit steep

With thought of hearts that love would trance

As they God’s feast should keep

With myriad lights and thronging flowers,

Strong voices’ mellow peal?

And did he long through those sweet hours

Before his Lord to kneel?

From far cathedral pomp aloof,

And simple, loving hearts,

For columned church the wood’s green roof

Darkened with heathen arts.

Still seemed the glory of the day

The golden hope to give

Of Love Almighty’s deathless sway

O’er nations yet to live.

An echo of St. Thomas’ hymn

Came faintly o’er the wave;

The Jesuit’s eyes with tears grew dim

At thought of souls to save.

And “_Bone Pastor, Panis vere_,”

His firm lips softly spoke,

O “_Jesu, nostri miserere_,”

From heart, love-burdened, broke.

And “_Lauda Sion, Salvatorem_”

Thy glad waves seemed to cry;

While “_Lauda Ducem et Pastorem_”

Flung back the happy sky.

Lake of the Blessed Sacrament,

That hour won thy name’s grace

As holiest thought of love was lent

To sign thy maiden face.

Its look of heaven as of yore

Still wears thy calm, sweet face;

Alas! that thou shouldst keep no more

Thy first baptismal grace.

THE THREE ROSES.

I.

It was at precisely half-past ten, as he satisfied himself by looking at

his watch, on the morning of the 17th of June, in the year 1743, that a

young gentleman got up from a chair in front of the Café Procope (just

then opening with that air of stretching itself, rubbing its eyes, and

yawning which marks a café in the ante-meridian hours). He stood for a

moment twirling his cane and his moustache alternately, and then, as if

suddenly reminded by the look of the café of a great moral duty omitted,

stretched himself slightly and yawned prodigiously. It was, to be sure,

rather early in the day to begin yawning, except for cafés; but then

this young chronologer had his own way of dividing time, and, believing

with the poet that the best of all ways to lengthen our days is to

snatch a few hours from the night, what was early in the morning for

most men was only somewhat late at night for him. It is to be noted,

too, since the most trifling incidents in the life of a hero are worthy

of record, that he yawned with such admirable self-possession, with such

a mingling of good-will and graceful languor; he had so much the air of

giving his whole mind to it, and at the same time of being so used to

yawning that he really didn’t care so much for it after all, that you

saw at once he was a man of distinction, to whom a yawn was not, as to

most of us, a rare luxury, but a daily, nay, an hourly, a half-hourly,

necessary of life.

Much might here be said, if space permitted, of a highly instructive

nature, on the philosophy of yawning and its many varieties: the

go-to-bed yawn; the get-up yawn; the tired yawn, the yawn of simple

lassitude; the good-humored yawn, which takes itself as an excellent

joke; the peevish yawn, which denies itself acridly as if it were a

crime; the writer’s yawn and the reader’s yawn (_quod Jupiter omen

avertat!_); the chronic yawn and the fixed yawn which merges into the

drawl; the imitative yawn, into which unwary grandmothers are seduced by

wicked little boys with slowly-flapping palm; the bored yawn, which is a

protest against the world in general; the well-bred yawn, which is a

protest against the immediate company, and is practised only in

solitude. (It is, of course, the last-named sort in which our hero

indulges.) There is a great deal of character, too, in a yawn, from your

timid little lady’s yawn, shrinking away and hiding behind fan or

handkerchief, or with hypocritical feminine art so moulding itself that,

like Lucy Fountain’s, “it glides into society a smile,” to your open,

hearty, man’s yawn, showing all its grinders shamelessly, as if it were

a fine natural prospect one ought to be grateful for. Napoleon judged

men, as he led them, by their noses;[166] a true philosopher would

classify them by their yawns.

Meantime, however, we are leaving our hero yawning at the risk of

dislocating his jaw and of setting the reader to keep him company. Let

us, therefore, resume. Having indulged himself sufficiently in this

refreshment, and recomposed his features again with some care, the young

gentleman stood for a moment irresolute, tapping his boot with his cane,

and then, as if his mind were made up, set off at a brisk pace in the

direction of Notre Dame. As he stepped out it did not need his showy

uniform, which was that of the famous corps of _Mousquetaires_, his

jingling spurs, or his long rapier, of a heavier make than the

dress-sword then worn by every gentleman, to show him for a soldier. You

saw it in his measured stride, in every movement of a lithe and graceful

yet strong and well-knit figure, in the gay recklessness of his manner,

and especially in the ardent and somewhat imperious glance of his dark

gray eye. A trace of superciliousness and vanity on his bold, handsome

face you would have pardoned to his years and comeliness. Women smiled

kindly on the gay young mousquetaire as he passed them, and were not

ill-pleased at the kisses he flung them in promiscuous homage from the

tips of his gloved fingers. Male glances not so kind, instinct, indeed,

with smouldering scorn and hatred, were shot at him covertly too—glances

such as a half-century later gloated openly with savage ferocity over

the death-struggles of other hapless young mousquetaires dying

hopelessly and gallantly, sword in hand, for a king who knew how to make

locks but not laws, and a queen who could win all hearts but those of

her people.

But right little recked our young mousquetaire of glances, hostile or

kindly, from those he looked upon but as a rabble of the gutter, to be

kicked or beaten like other animals out of his lordly path. The young

summer in his blood all unconscious of that slumbering storm, he strode

along, dispensing musk and kisses, and gaily humming a madrigal of

Benserade, to the Rue des Poulies, and along that street, picking his

way daintily over the wretched pavement till he came in front of a

certain bric-à-brac shop. There he paused, hesitated a moment, and,

pulling off his plumed hat and putting on his most fascinating smile,

bowed low to two persons standing in the doorway.

This simple act of courtesy had a singular effect on the two persons in

question, a young man and a young woman. This effect was apparently the

same on both: they first colored violently, then frowned, then turned

pale. But to an observer in the attic window over the way it seemed that

the internal emotions indicated by these facial changes were very unlike

in each. The young man seemed—to this observer—to be moved by

displeasure rising even to intense rage; the girl’s uppermost feeling

seemed to be embarrassment, and displeasure, if any, only at being

caused embarrassment. But the observer could not quite decide that she

was displeased at all by this act of politeness, and he inclined rather

to think that her blush was caused by pleasure at seeing the young

mousquetaire, while her frown was directed at her companion for his

inopportune presence.

“Yes, that is it,” said this acute analyst to himself: “the blush was

for the mousquetaire, whom she is glad to see, the frown for M. De Trop,

who is in the way, and the pallor for herself, whom she heartily wishes

out of the way in the row she foresees coming.”

While this thoughtful philosopher of the attic was thus moralizing a

curious incident took place. The girl, who held some roses in her hand,

dropped one of them, no doubt from agitation. The mousquetaire sprang

forward to seize it. As he stooped over the flower the young man of the

doorway, with an angry exclamation, thrust him back with such good-will

that he reeled into the roadway and came near falling. Recovering

himself in an instant, he whipped out his sword and rushed upon the

other, crying:

“Baseborn scullion! darest thou raise thy hand to a gentleman? Thy life

shall pay it.”

This was not, perhaps, his exact language, but it is so much nicer than

what he really did say that we will let it stand in despite of history.

At all events the young man understood him very clearly to express an

intention of skewering him upon the spot; so, with a natural reluctance

to being skewered, he armed himself with an iron bar used for fastening

the door of the bric-à-brac shop, and resolutely awaited the onset.

At sight of these warlike overtures the girl screamed and the neighbors

came flocking to doors and windows in pleasurable anticipation. The

philosopher in the attic appeared to await the issue with composure.

Suddenly she who was the lovely cause of strife between the heroes

stepped forward.

“Forbear, gentlemen,” she cried. “For shame! Would you shed blood for a

paltry flower? If ’tis but a rose you want, here is one for each of

you.”

And with a charming mixture of shyness and coquetry-the coquetry of a

pretty woman who feels herself to be the object of contention between

brave men—she proffered to each of the champions a rose.

The mousquetaire sheathed his sword at once, seized his flower with

rapture, pressed it to his lips and to his heart, and looked altogether

so languishing and sheepish that the young girl had to bite her lips to

control a smile. She could not so easily hide the laugh that sparkled in

her dancing eyes and made them still more dazzling.

The young man of the doorway received his rose with reluctance, seemed

half disposed to reject it, and more than half disposed to throw it away

after taking it, and fell back with so sullen and sulky an air that the

Helen of this _Iliad_ could forbear no longer, but laughed outright and

merrily.

At that electric stroke of happy ridicule the clouds passed and the air

cleared; the storm was over. The neighbors withdrew discontentedly to

their shops, while the mousquetaire, with another bow and smile,

departed. But he did not kiss his finger-tips to this young girl, as he

had to the others.

The philosopher of the attic surveyed these events with conflicting

emotions.

“Humph!” said he, rather ruefully, “the roses I spent my last sou for,

the price of my breakfast, in fact, to lay upon her window-sill this

morning. The one in the gutter, I suppose, is for me; was it by accident

or design she dropped it? I wonder which of them she likes best?”

Gentle reader—for in these days it is only a gentle reader will deign to

cast an eye over a simple love-tale like this—go with us but a little

way, and we will try to unravel the philosopher’s problem.

II.

Had you chanced, then, miss or madam, to be your

great-great-grandmother—as, Heaven be praised! you did not—and had you

happened to be in the neighborhood of the Rue des Poulies in the year of

grace 1743, and had it occurred to you to ask for the richest man in the

quarter, public opinion would have answered unhesitatingly, “Papa

Lamouracq, who keeps the bric-à-brac shop.” And had you further inquired

who was the finest fellow and the best match in the neighborhood, the

vote would still have been nearly unanimous for Raoul Berthier, the

well-to-do ironmonger of the Quai de la Ferraille. And had you once more

sought to know who was the prettiest girl—well, here there might have

been some dissent, for the other prettiest girls and their mammas would

no doubt have cast a scattering vote or so; but, counting the blind

beggars for whom her hand was ever open, and the babies she was always

ready to romp with, not to speak of the shrewd old fathers of families,

who saw her beauty, as shrewd old fathers will, in the light of her

imagined expectations, a decided majority would still have been given

for Pauline Lamouracq, the old _brocanteur’s_ young and only daughter.

Now, however public opinion may have erred with regard to two of the

persons named—and, indeed, Papa Lamouracq, whenever the matter was

broached, would protest, with many oaths and shrugs and groans, that, so

far from being the richest man in the parish, he was in reality the very

poorest (but what bric-à-brac dealer was ever otherwise, especially if

he be an Auvergnat, as in Paris he generally is when he is not a

Jew?)—certainly it made no mistake with regard to Pauline. Pretty beyond

a doubt she was, with her trim young figure and her dark brown hair and

eyes, lit both with a flash of golden light, and her—but, no; let us not

attempt the impossible task of describing the charm and freshness of

girlish beauty at eighteen. Do you, miss, look in the glass, or do you,

sir—if so be it that stray masculine eyes shall linger over these

artless pages—think of her you love best, and let that be our Pauline.

Only herself seemed to be unconscious of her great beauty; for, though

her mirror must have whispered to her now and again the charming secret,

as it will to other young maidens, she fled from that perfidious

counsellor, lest she should have a grievous addition to the load of

peccadilloes she was wont to carry weekly to the confessional of her

good friend and adviser, the old _curé_ of the Church of St. Germain

l’Auxerrois.

Indeed, she had fewer incentives to vanity than many girls not half so

pretty, inasmuch as she had fewer admirers. Not that there were not many

who sighed for her in secret; but Raoul’s temper was known to be as

quick as his hand was heavy, and they discreetly held aloof. Raoul and

Pauline had been betrothed from a very early age, and the former was not

one to brook any rivalry. From the cradle almost he had been wayward and

headstrong. Years before, when little more than a child, he had run away

to sea, and strange tales were whispered of his doings with Jean Bart,

that famous privateer and scourge of perfidious Albion. Now that he had

come back a fine, bronzed, athletic fellow of six or seven and thirty to

take his place in his dead father’s business, and handle, the gossips

said, a very pretty pot of money, he was more violent and self-willed

and exacting than ever; and there were not wanting those who, seeing the

look that came too often into his dark, handsome face, shook their heads

and prophesied that all would not be sunshine in the married life of the

pretty Pauline.

If she herself shared any of these misgivings she never showed it, but

was as affectionate, and even obedient, to her intended husband as the

most jealous swain could ask. On one point only did she go counter to

his wishes, and that was in seeing a distant cousin, André Thiriot, who

alone of all the young fellows in the neighborhood made her the object

of an absorbing devotion that every one but herself laughed at. In

truth, poor André was not fitted out by nature for the ideal lover. Lame

from a fall in his childhood, small and insignificant in appearance (but

for a high white forehead and a pair of large and brilliant eyes), and a

beggarly _huissier’s_ clerk to boot, he was a pretty fellow, forsooth,

to aspire to the hand of the richest heiress in the quarter. So Papa

Lamouracq thought, and, when his poor kinsman first hinted timidly at

the idea nearest his heart, bade him begone with bitter rebuke and

reviling. “He marry Pauline, indeed! Puny weakling! No man should have

his girl who could not protect her with an arm as stout as his own. In

these days,” said Papa Lamouracq, very truly, “who knows at what moment

his women-kind may need protection from these vile marquises and

mousquetaires that go about troubling the peace of honest folks?” And

Papa Lamouracq, who had served in the wars, drew himself up to his full

five feet nine—which in France, you know, is a colossal stature—squared

his broad shoulders, and looked very fierce and resolute. It was,

indeed, a time when beauty and innocence of the _bourgeois_ class,

where, indeed, very much that there was at Paris of beauty allied to

innocence resided, needed stout hearts and strong arms to fence it. The

gay courtiers of Louis XV. respected few laws, human or divine, and no

woman not of the privileged classes was safe from their insults.

So poor André was sent to the right-about with a very large sized flea

in his ear, and could only see his fair cousin thereafter by stealth.

Raoul swore that if he ever caught him prowling about her he would break

every bone in his body. For that threat, indeed, André cared little, for

he had a brave spirit in his little body; but he loved his cousin too

well to cause her needless annoyance, and he had perforce to content

himself with the stolen interviews she could give him at such odd times

as her father was away with Raoul at the cabaret, which, indeed, was

only too often. Nor was Pauline loath to profit by these chances to see

her cousin. That everybody repulsed and derided him was to her woman’s

nature of course only an additional reason for liking him. Then, too, he

had been her mother’s favorite, almost as a child to her on the death of

his own parents, and, lastly, he talked very differently from the others

about her. Pauline, thanks to the watchful care of her good friend and

godfather, the _curé_ of St. Germain, had had a better education than

most girls of her class, and André was a genius and a poet—at least,

they both thought so; which, for them, came to much the same thing. He

rhymed about as well as the rest of the rhyming crew, in an age when in

France and England there were many rhymers and few poets, and those few

not always greatly cared for; when Voltaire passed sentence on Homer

Shakspere; when Dorat’s perfumed nothings fluttered in every boudoir,

while Gilbert starved in a garret. To the taste of one simple maiden

André’s madrigals and sonnets and what-not were as good as the best, and

she never tired of hearing them. Even when she could not see him she

could still hear them; for our poet had a very pretty turn for music as

well, and from his window opposite hers would sing her his chansons, set

to his own music, with such ardor and perseverance as quite enchanted

his pretty cousin, and won for the performer a singular degree of

unpopularity among his neighbors.

So the lame bard remained Pauline’s only open admirer until one eventful

day when there came spurring through the dull and sombre street,

lighting it up like a flash of sunshine, a splendid vision of a

mousquetaire. Pauline chanced to be standing in the doorway of her

father’s shop, and, as he caught sight of that lovely picture set in the

dark frame of the portal, the bold cavalier, riding to her side,

straightway proceeded to woo her in the off-hand fashion of the court.

But in the soft, half-wondering reproach of the brown eyes lifted for

but a moment to his own there was a depth of purity and innocence that

baffled this intrepid courtier more than any words; he stammered over

his first sentence, hesitated, broke down, and—blushed. Yes, incredible

as it may seem, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the very

focus of civilization, a mousquetaire blushed. To be sure he was young.

Perhaps it was a reflection from his glowing cheek that brought to

Pauline’s pale one a rosier tint; perhaps it was simply wonder at this

unprecedented phenomenon; Pauline, too, was young, and the culprit, it

must be owned, was very handsome. At all events he could only gasp out a

hasty apology before she withdrew and left him to ride away, over head

and tingling ears in love.

Raoul heard of this encounter and roared—burst out into a furious

passion of rage and jealousy that left Pauline in tears.

André saw the meeting from his eyrie in the attic and—sighed. With one

handsome rival he might hope, he might even, with some aid from the

muses, hold his own; but with two—? The poor bard took to reading

Tibullus; he had no heart for madrigals when life itself was an elegy,

and for a night or two the neighbors slept in peace.

III.

One morning a young man presented himself to Papa Lamouracq and asked to

be taken as an apprentice to learn the bric-à-brac trade. Papa Lamouracq

was a little shy of apprentices; but as he really needed help and the

premium offered was large, he could not resist the temptation to his

bargaining instinct, and the postulant was accepted.

The new-comer was active, intelligent, and above all good-looking; and

these virtues soon won for him a fair place in Pauline’s esteem until

she caught him making sheep’s eyes at her with extreme persistency and

uncompromising sheepishness. Thereat she reproved him sharply, and, to

punish him, set him to washing the dishes—a task he undertook with

entire good-humor, but so much more zeal than skill that he broke more

than he cleaned and speedily had to be relieved. Then he took to sighing

like a bellows, and when his mistress laughed at him this audacious

intruder made love to her outright, and of course got properly snubbed

for his pains. But fancy Miss Pauline’s amazement when this astonishing

apprentice, so far from being abashed by her chilling rebuke, went down

upon his marrow-bones, and, revealing himself as the Chevalier

d’Aubuisson, plumped her an offer of his heart and hand and a fine old

château in Normandy.

The sight of this dashing mousquetaire in a shop-boy’s apron seemed so

absurd that the young lady thus tenderly adjured felt more inclined to

laugh than ever—indeed, she was a merry little maiden, more given to

smiles than tears—but the evident sincerity of the young man’s emotion

touched her.

“He has cut off that lovely moustache to be near me,” was her pensive

reflection, as she gazed upon his eloquent, upturned face, from which

that military embellishment was indeed missing. No doubt, too, she was

secretly flattered and pleased; for it was not every day, I promise you,

in the Paris of a century ago, that a shopman’s daughter had the chance

of refusing to be the wife of a handsome young noble. And then what

young girl’s heart could help going out a little to the romantic side of

this madcap adventure?

But there was another aspect to the affair which made her grave at once.

“Pray rise, sir,” she said coldly; “this position is unbecoming to you

and uncomfortable to me. ’Twas not well done, M. le Chevalier, to steal

into my father’s household under false colors; and though I feel the

honor you do me, I cannot listen to you further. I am already affianced.

If you have any of the regard you profess for me, you will instantly

quit this travesty and this house.”

This was reasonable advice, so our impetuous young mousquetaire rejected

it at once. He would never leave her, he vowed with vehemence, till she

had promised to be his.

This wild proposal plunged poor Pauline into great perplexity. To tell

her father or her intended would, she foresaw, precipitate a terrible

row and scandal with probable bloodshed; and perhaps it was not wholly

tenderness for her relatives which checked her as she glanced furtively

at her embarrassingly handsome wooer, revolving the problem of how most

easily to get rid of him in an anxious mind. Nor could she go to her

cousin; she blushed, she scarce knew why, as she thought of it. So, as

usual in all the little difficulties of her life, she betook herself to

her friend the _curé_, who soon found a key to the riddle.

The next day there rode up to the door of Papa Lamouracq’s bric-à-brac

shop an orderly with a letter for M. le Chevalier d’Aubuisson, and by

noon his majesty’s corps of mousquetaires had received a reluctant and

rather mutinous reinforcement of one. And—O bitter and humiliating

thought!—the moustache had been sacrificed in vain.

IV.

So matters stood in the Rue des Poulies at the time of that remarkable

meeting which opens this eventful history, and apropos of which an

observer in the attic asked himself, as you may remember, “Which does

she like best?” Raoul’s rage upon this knew no bounds; and Papa

Lamouracq, when he came to hear of it, was little better. They both

insisted that the wedding-day should be fixed at once, and for no

distant date, and poor Pauline was fain to consent. Yet, as the fatal

day drew near, she shrank from it more and more. School herself as she

would into obedience to her father’s will and love for her future

husband, the coming marriage filled her with an invincible repugnance.

Was it because she had given her heart to another, or only because

Raoul’s brutality had alienated her esteem? I do not know; she did not

know herself: it was a question she never dared ask her heart.

In the midst of this moral conflict by which she was so cruelly torn her

mind went back often and longingly to the serenity and calm of the

convent where she had passed so many of her early years, and to the

peaceful, happy faces of the nuns. She yearned with an inexpressible

yearning to be among them once more; she had even wild, half-formed

thoughts of flying from her wretchedness and trouble and taking refuge

in that quiet haven.

Naturally, therefore, when André, to whom she had dropped an intimation

of her thought, urged her strongly to act upon it, she turned and rent

him.

“How dare you say such things to me!” she cried with more passion than

he had ever seen her show. “How dare you advise me to disobey my father!

You know very well my first duty is to him. He wishes me to marry Raoul,

and—and I wish it. I am _not_ miserable. I love Raoul dearly, and we

shall be very hap—hap—happy.”

And to prove the joyful nature of her anticipations she burst forthwith

into tears.

The poor poet stood aghast; he was not prepared for this display of

feminine consistency. Genius as he was, he had yet to learn that to set

a woman against a doubtful project she is coquetting with in her mind,

the surest way is to urge her to it. Dearly as he loved his cousin and

wished to make her his wife, he loved her happiness more, and would

joyfully have seen her take the veil, marry the mousquetaire even, whom

he suspected her of favoring, anything to escape this marriage, in what

he foresaw for her only wretchedness, if not death. Raoul in his drunken

furies, he knew, would stop at nothing, and even as a lover he had

threatened her life.

“But,” he stammered, conscience-stricken, “I thought you said you wished

to be in the convent.”

“You know I never said anything of the kind,” sobbed the indignant fair.

“I forbid you ever to say such things to me again. You are very unkind

to tease me so, and it is only your mis—miserable jealousy.”

The poet winced under this poisoned shaft, but was too generous to

retaliate. His cousin had the right of suffering to be unjust.

Nevertheless, he could not forego another effort to rescue her, as he

called it. It wanted but a day or two of the wedding when he next got a

chance to see her, for she was now watched and guarded almost like a

prisoner. Drawing a little packet from his pocket, he said with a sad

smile:

“Pauline, here is my wedding gift. It is the most precious, indeed, the

only precious, thing I have.”

Pauline opened the packet. It held only a withered rose. She looked in

perplexity from the gift to the giver.

“Do you know what rose it is, Pauline? ’Tis the one that was trampled in

the mire the day the mousquetaire and Raoul fought.”

“Dear André!” said Pauline, pressing his hand. She was greatly touched

by his unobtrusive devotion.

“I have often wondered,” she went on musingly, “where those roses came

from.” (You see, miss, a posy was more of an event in this simple life

than in yours, bouqueted and basketed as it is.) “I have sometimes

thought, do you know, it was—” Pauline stopped suddenly and blushed.

“Raoul, of course,” said André quietly.

“No,” said Pauline briefly, and blushed again.

“Not the mousquetaire?” said André in affected amazement.

“Yes, yes,” said Pauline, still very rosy—“that horrid mousquetaire. I’m

sure,” she added with a toss of her pretty head, “he had impudence

enough for anything.”

This is the way, messieurs, that the ungrateful fair for whom we run all

risks characterize our devotion.

“No,” said André gently, “it was not the mousquetaire.”

The girl looked up quickly, a sudden light in her eyes.

“Dear André!” she said again, “you are very good to me.”

They were silent awhile, and then the poet, taking the girl’s hand, said

earnestly:

“Listen to me, Pauline. There is a condition to my gift. It is that if

at the last moment you should change your mind in regard to—to—” he

hesitated—“to what we once spoke of, you will send me back this

rose,[167] and I will find a way to save you.”

Pauline made no answer; but she no longer scolded, and André was

satisfied that she had agreed. We shall see if he was right.

V.

On the night before Pauline’s wedding-day a merry and noisy company of

mousquetaires were gathered in the Café _Aux Fers Croisés_. Some were

playing billiards, others baccarat; all were drinking, and nearly all

were singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Only our old

friend, the Chevalier d’Aubuisson, sat apart by himself, very woebegone

and silent.

A comrade, drawing near, slapped him on the shoulder and said

boisterously:

“Come, come, my friend, cheer up. Don’t mope your life away because your

light o’ love is false.”

This delicate counsel the mousquetaires greeted with vociferous

applause.

D’Aubuisson sprang to his feet with flashing eyes.

“Vicomte de Brissac,” he cried, “hold! The first who breathes a word

against that angel dies. I swear it, by this sword!”

The mousquetaires were silent; not that they respected his evident

emotion—they respected little enough, not even themselves—but they did

respect his sword.

“Why, man!” said De Brissac at length, “you don’t mean to say you are in

earnest—that you would marry the girl?”

“To-morrow, if she would have me. God knows how willingly; and to-morrow

I lose her for ever.”

With a groan the chevalier sank back into his seat and buried his face

in his hands.

“Tut, tut, man!” said De Brissac, who was naturally kind-hearted. “If

you love her so, why give her up tamely? She must like you better than

this shop-keeper.” Our mousquetaires had a brave contempt for all men

who earned their living honestly. “Why not make a bold push for it and

carry her off from under his nose? We’ll all stand by you”—“That will

we,” in chorus from the rest—“and, take my word for it, the bird will

thank you for her rescue from the fowler.”

D’Aubuisson looked up quickly, a gleam of hope in his face. But his brow

soon grew dark; he knew Pauline too well to believe that she would

sanction or forgive such an act of violence, however much she loved him.

And he was more than half persuaded she did love him, in spite of her

rejection, conceited young mousquetaire that he was; he was fully

persuaded she did not love Raoul, both from his own observation and the

statements of Papa Lamouracq’s old housekeeper, Angélique, whom he had

won to his interests. If he could but bring her to consent! It was a

forlorn hope, but he would make a last appeal.

He wrote a fervent letter to Pauline, proposing, if she agreed, to place

her in charge of his aunt, the abbess of the Convent of Pont-aux-Dames,

where she would be in safety until he could marry her. Both these

lovers, you see, had the same thought, but with very different motives.

This letter he despatched to his friend the housekeeper, promising her a

royal reward if she got him an answer.

In an hour’s time the answer came: it was only a withered rose.

D’Aubuisson eyed it in blank amazement. Was it a cruel sneer, a mistake,

or what?

“Bah!” cried De Brissac after a few moments’ study of the problem. “Love

has made you dull, comrade, as it does most men. Don’t you see? Where is

that weed I have seen you kissing a hundred times so insanely? This is

the mate to it, and the message can have but one meaning: she is yours.”

Angélique confirmed this view, which our mousquetaire was only too

willing to accept; so with much clinking of glasses and vowing of vows

the rescuing party was made up.

* * * * *

All night long the poet kept lonely vigil in his attic, waiting and

longing, and hoping against hope, for the rose which never came. Had it

come he would have been puzzled to know what steps to take for Pauline’s

deliverance; but somehow he felt he would compass it, if he had to ask

the aid of his rival the mousquetaire, and though the price were his

cousin’s hand. But the long hours dragged wearily on and no word came.

The dawn found him still keeping his weary watch, no longer hoping, but

haggard indeed and the picture of despair—a most dismal philosopher, who

in all his philosophy could find no comfort.

V.

It was a very gay wedding party that gathered next day at the Mill of

Javelle, then a famous resort for the Parisian merrymakers, to do honor

to the nuptials of Raoul Berthier and the lovely Pauline, less lovely

now, alas! for care and sorrow had worn her almost to a shadow of her

former self. With the wedding guests mingled freely an unusual number of

masks; but their presence excited little remark and no objection, for it

was one of the familiar privileges of the time. And the strangers,

whoever they were, made themselves so agreeable to the feminine part of

the company that by these, at least, they were voted a welcome addition

to the pleasures of the day.[168]

It had been arranged that the wedding ceremony should be performed by

the curé of St. Germain l’Auxerrois in a little chapel hard by at ten

o’clock, and that the wedding breakfast should follow. But ten o’clock

passed, and eleven, and still there was no sign of the good priest. Noon

was drawing near when Papa Lamouracq swore roundly that they would wait

no longer, but sit down to the feast at once, let the marriage take

place when it might—a decision hailed with acclamation by his guests.

Perhaps, too, a glance at Raoul’s condition—he had been drinking deeply

all the morning and through the previous night—may have suggested the

wisdom of postponing the ceremony.

At this moment one of the masks drew near Pauline, who stood a little

apart, pale and sorrowful, and whispered hurriedly in her ear:

“Dearest, come; it is the time. A post-chaise waits for us in yonder

clump. In an hour’s time we shall have you safe behind the convent

walls.”

Pauline shrank from him in mingled astonishment and terror. Then he

showed her a withered rose; she knew it at once for the same she had

sent the night before to André upon receiving D’Aubuisson’s letter. This

she had torn to pieces in a transport of indignation and bade Angélique

carry the pieces back to the writer. But the very suggestion so

terrified her in her nervous state with the idea of an attempted

abduction such as was only too common in that lawless time, that her

scruples yielded at last, and she resolved to take André’s advice and

seek refuge in a convent. With this view she commissioned the

housekeeper to carry to her cousin the signal rose. That crafty old

person, however, shrewdly surmising that the return of his own torn

letter would win her scant esteem or guerdon from her employer, took it

upon herself to give him the rose instead—a message on which at need she

could put her own construction.

At sight of the flower Pauline hesitated. Surely this could not be her

cousin; the figure seemed much too tall, yet, if not, how came he by the

signal? In her confusion and incertitude she suffered herself to be

half-passively drawn by the unknown in the direction of the thicket he

spoke of. As she did so the other masks drew together about them—a

movement unnoticed by the rest of the company, whose thoughts and eyes

were all intent upon the loaded and steaming tables, to which they were

on the point of sitting down under the trees.

Suddenly a wild scream startled them. It was from Pauline, who had just

caught sight of André’s pale, reproachful face gazing at her fixedly

from the outskirts of the crowd. At her scream the wedding guests,

headed by Papa Lamouracq, came hurrying towards the bride with various

cries of anger, astonishment, and menace. The situation bade fair to be

embarrassing.

But the chevalier was a man of promptness and decision, by no means one

to draw back from an undertaking once begun. Besides, to him Pauline was

only hysterical; she must be saved in spite of herself. Further disguise

was useless; force only would now prevail. So catching the fainting girl

in his arms as if she were an infant, and shouting, _A moi,

mousquetaires!_ he pressed on to the carriage.

But he was not to reach it unopposed, however. The word _mousquetaires_

made plain the whole design to the dullest-witted in the assembly: the

fame of those audacious scamps for similar exploits was wide-spread.

Among the wedding company was more than one old privateering comrade of

Raoul’s who had swung cutlass and boarding-hatchet by his side; and it

so chanced that two other wedding parties had brought to the mill that

same day some scores of sturdy blacksmiths and fishermen and stout

butchers from the Halles. Armed with stools and benches, with sticks and

stones, they flung themselves furiously upon the mousquetaires, some

fifty or sixty in number. The latter, casting off mask and domino, and

forming a circle about D’Aubuisson and the unconscious Pauline, defended

themselves with vigor.

The fight was long and uncertain, and many were hurt on both sides. But

disciplined valor won the day as usual over brute strength, and in spite

of every effort of their antagonists the mousquetaires slowly but surely

made their way towards the fatal thicket. Papa Lamouracq, himself

wounded more than once, and disabled, could only gnash his teeth and

howl impotent curses at the foe; the bridegroom, at his first step

towards the scene of conflict, had staggered and fallen, and was lying

on the grass in a drunken stupor; the little poet, bleeding already from

a ghastly wound in the forehead, had to be forcibly held back from

flinging himself like another Winkelried upon the bristling blades of

the mousquetaires. All seemed lost.

But despair, too, has its inspirations. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy

rolling, seeking everywhere for a weapon to annihilate his enemies, fell

upon one of the steaming tureens of soup just served for the wedding

feast. Instantly he caught it up and hurled it, contents and all, full

at the heads of the victorious mousquetaires. Two went down at once

before the shock; half a score were scalded by the boiling liquor;

double that number—O much more direful and appalling tragedy!—had their

splendid uniforms stained by good Mère Leroux’s most savory _potage_.

Shrewdly did Cæsar bid his veterans strike only at the faces of Pompey’s

dandy cavaliers. Thus does history repeat itself. Death and torture our

mousquetaires would have faced unflinchingly, and charged a battery as

gaily as they would have danced a minuet; but their clothes were dear to

them. For most of them they were their only clothes, and what wonder if

at the onslaught of this novel and terrific weapon they wavered? So

might the bravest knight who first faced the terrors of gunpowder have

hesitated without shame to his courage. André’s example was infectious.

From all sides was rained upon the hapless mousquetaires a shower of

soups, ragouts and entremets, sauces, sausages and salads, omelettes

_aux fines herbes_ and omelettes _sucrées_, until they fairly broke and

fled, dripping, not blood, but gravy at every pore, and dragging with

them by main force their frantic leader, who wished not to survive the

loss of his Pauline.

VI.

Need the sequel be told? Of course the valiant poet was rewarded with

the hand of her he had loved so faithfully and rescued so oddly. Papa

Lamouracq was loyal to his vow that only to the man who could protect

his daughter should she be given, and it was Raoul’s turn to be sent off

in disgrace. He sold out his business, disappeared from the Quai de la

Ferraille, and betook himself to his old trade of privateering, or, many

folks said, something worse. As for André, he became a famous poet, was

presented at court, and duly enrolled among the glorious fellowship of

wits—the great M. Voltaire deigned to call him _confrère_, much to

Pauline’s indignation, for that great man’s notions were by no means to

her taste—and his poems may no doubt still be found by those who look

for them in the Bibliothèque Impériale.

What were they, do you ask? Truly I have never heard, but he was a most

famous poet.

What was better, he was a most happy husband, and Pauline never

regretted the chance which made her his wife instead of Raoul’s. She

owned she had always liked him the best, which I dare say was true,

though I suspect that in her secret heart she would have liked a more

romantic fashion of being won, and was not over and above pleased when

André’s friends, in allusion to his valor, called him Marshal Terrine or

M. De Bouillon. But she was very happy, especially when, after her

father’s death, they found themselves rich enough to fulfil that dream

of every good Parisian, a neat little country house with a lovely garden

in the suburbs.

And the poor mousquetaire? Ah! miss, you are right. Could we but have

had him for our hero, which was indeed the author’s intention at the

start, as you may see by looking back to the earlier pages of this

veracious history! But fate, alas! is not to be gainsaid, and on the

whole, perhaps, Pauline was better off with her poet. The chevalier

could not face the ridicule poured upon him for his share in the Battle

of the Soup-Kettle, as the wits called it. He got himself exchanged into

a regiment at the front, and fell fighting gallantly in the decisive

charge which broke the English column at Fontenoy.

I forgot to mention that Pauline’s favorite pastime in her country life

was cultivating roses, with which her garden in the season fairly

glowed; and on each anniversary of her wedding-day it was her custom to

put by her husband’s plate at breakfast a little posy containing exactly

three of the flowers in question, which he never failed to receive with

an air of the utmost surprise as to where they could possibly come from.

Footnote 166:

Napoleon thought a big nose to be a sign of intellect, says history,

mother of lies. Fiddlesticks! He chose men with big noses because they

were easier to lead. An army of snub-noses would never have gone to

Moscow.

Footnote 167:

It will occur to the ingenious reader, as indeed it has to the

ingenious writer, that it would have been much simpler and more

natural to ask Pauline to write her wishes. So it would. But then

André was a poet and a genius, and—this is a romance. Besides, who

knows but Pauline might have been locked up at the critical moment and

denied writing materials?

Footnote 168:

It was the very incident here related, and which in its main outlines

is historically true, that led to a police regulation forbidding the

intrusion of masked outsiders into wedding parties and other

festivals.

THE ENGLISH PRESS AND THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD.

On the 2d of July a certain, or rather uncertain, number of English,

Irish, Scotch, Canadian, and American gentlemen met together in the

long-desecrated chapel of Lambeth Palace; and on the 27th of the same

month the same gentlemen, after listening to a discourse in St. Paul’s

Cathedral from one of their number, the “Bishop of Pennsylvania,” bade

each other farewell. During the twenty-five days that had intervened

between these two dates the gentlemen in question had talked a great

deal to and at each other, sometimes in public and sometimes with closed

doors. A general sense of confusion concerning this assemblage seemed to

pervade that portion of the public mind of London which paid any

attention to it. The London newspapers, which must notice everything,

from the arrest of a pickpocket to the reconstruction of an empire,

could not agree upon the title to be given it. In the _Morning Post_ it

was spoken of as “The Lambeth Conference”; the _Spectator_ called it

“The Gathering of the Bishops”; the _Times_ on one day entitled it “The

Pan-Anglican Synod,” on another it spoke of it as “Episcopal Visitors”;

the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Saturday Review_ agreed upon “The

Bishops at Lambeth” as a sufficiently safe and non-committal title; but

the former, on one day, went so far as to venture to speak of the

assemblage as “The Pan-Anglican Conference.” Nor did the reporters of

the journals arrive at a _consensus_ of opinion concerning the number of

these gentlemen; one authority reporting them as numbering “something

like eighty-five prelates,” while another placed the assemblage at

“about one hundred,” and a third, with greater precision, spoke of

“about one hundred bishops and four archbishops.” A still more notable

diversity of opinion prevailed as to the purpose for which these

gentlemen had come together—some of the writers in the journals

insisting that the affair was a mere social gathering; others that it

was a species of debating society composed exclusively of Anglican

bishops; others that it was a conclave to devise combined action “to put

down the Ritualists”; others that its purpose was to “sell out” to the

pope, if peradventure he would buy; others that it covered a scheme for

the “corporate unity” of the Protestant Episcopal Churches in Great

Britain, Ireland, the colonies, and America, with the Archbishop of

Canterbury as patriarch. The journals which care most for the

respectability and perpetuation of the Anglican body besought the

gentlemen to content themselves with talking, taking tea, and smoking in

Mrs. Tait’s back garden, and not to attempt to do anything else. “We

recommend the bishops,” said the _Spectator_, “not to attempt a

pastoral, as they did last time; not to try their hands on points of

creed; not to suppose that for any purpose of defining religious belief

they will be strengthened by this concourse, if not rather weakened.”

They might, perhaps, discuss “what concession could be made to pagan and

heathen converts brought up under a very different morality from the

Christian”—as, for instance, we suppose, whether a Turkish convert might

not be permitted to indulge in his peculiar ideas regarding marriage,

and whether a converted Thug should not be allowed to strangle a victim

occasionally. Or they might even venture to discuss “the practicability

or impracticability of church discipline”—that is, whether it be

“practicable” or “impracticable” for a clergyman to refuse to marry a

divorced person or to exclude an unrepentant murderer from the

communion-table; or for a bishop to prevent one of his clergy from

turning the communion service into a Methodist love-feast, or another

from making it a close imitation of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. They

might “discuss” these things, but they must not act upon them, and they

must above all refrain from “discussing creeds.” “We strongly recommend

the Pan-Anglican Synod,” exclaimed the _Spectator_, “to renounce

entirely the superstition which attaches to _such_ assemblages of

bishops a sort of divine skill in discriminating truth from falsehood.

Indeed, we believe them to be under very special incapacities for any

such discrimination.” Honest and true advice, but hard for the so-called

bishops to bear, as coming from a journal warmly attached to Anglicanism

and edited by two prominent and zealous members of that church. No

discussion of creeds! no discrimination of truth from falsehood! Why,

here is the Anglican body throughout the English-speaking peoples, with

a clergy no two of whom can agree upon the most vital dogmas of the

Christian faith; who are disputing with each other and befogging the

minds of their people with their discordant “views” upon the subject of

baptismal regeneration; upon the sanctity and indissolubility of the

marriage relation; upon the real presence of Jesus Christ in the

Eucharist. If these were true bishops, if their church were really a

church and anything but a state-born and worldly association, these

bishops would not have separated without not only “discussing” but

defining the faith and providing for its preservation and enforcement.

They took the _Spectator’s_ advice. They took it all the more readily,

perhaps, because the _Times_ pointed out to them that “these highly

respectable gentlemen from the antipodes and the tropics, from the

Transvaal and the Falls of Niagara,” must make up their minds that to

eat “a dinner at the Mansion House” was the most important work they

would have to perform, and that in “the social assemblages” that would

follow they would “find more benefit than from their public

conferences.” The _Times_ frowned upon the suggestion that the Primate

of All England countenances, even tacitly, the suggestion that he should

be recognized as the metropolitan of the Anglican Church; the _Saturday

Review_ ridiculed the opinion that “the reliance of the independent

communities upon England might be regulated and strengthened by

declaring that the Archbishop of Canterbury was a patriarch, and Lord

Penzance, we suppose, family lawyer all round,” and went to the extent

of comparing the church to an “Odd-fellows’ society.” In the face of

chaff like this the gentlemen from the antipodes and Niagara Falls, as

well as those from Lincolnshire and Edinburgh, turned a deaf ear to the

appeals alike of Ritualistic working-men and Low-Church green-grocers,

and wisely contented themselves with eating the lord mayor’s dinner,

going to sober evening parties, preaching sermons in London churches,

and devoting a few hours each week to the discussion, in church-congress

fashion, of such thrilling and vitally important themes as “Voluntary

Boards of Arbitration,” or “the position of Anglican chaplains on the

Continent of Europe and elsewhere.” To cap the climax, during the

session of the conference the first anniversary of “the Reformed

Episcopal Church of England” was held in Newman Hall’s church in London.

The Reformed Episcopal Church of England, it may not be generally known,

was imported into England from the United States, and had its birth by

the secession of Bishop Cummings, Mr. Cheney of Chicago, and some others

from the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Reformed Episcopal Church of

England has a bishop—one Mr. Gregg—and at this anniversary meeting

Bishop Gregg said:

“The Church of England might be likened to a ship. When he joined it

he thought he was going straight to a Protestant port, but he

afterwards found that the ship had turned its head, had altered its

course, and was now bound straight for Rome. For this reason, as he

did not want to go to Rome, he thought it best to come out of it.

Some people had asked, ‘Why not remain in it and endeavor to alter

its course? Why not try to reform it?’ His answer was that others

had tried to do it and had failed, and therefore he had come to his

present conclusion. After denouncing the evils of sacerdotalism Dr.

Gregg said that he considered the present Prayer-book was the cause

of many of the existing evils. The Reformed Episcopal Church had

therefore entirely revised it, freed it from all sacerdotalism, had

thoroughly uprooted all its dangerous dogmas, and the revised

edition now in press would shortly be issued.”

The bishops at Lambeth were so fearful of disobeying the injunctions of

the _Spectator_ not to “discuss creeds,” or to attempt to “discriminate

between truth and error,” that they did not even venture to rebuke

Bishop Gregg or to take any steps against this schism. Indeed, how can

they be sure that he is not right and that they are not wrong?

The first Pan-Anglican Synod, convoked eleven years ago, the London

_Times_ says, “excited some curiosity, mingled with more ridicule and

remonstrances.” But it discharged its “apparent functions” to the

satisfaction of all concerned. That is—

“It afforded to a great many hard-working gentlemen the opportunity

of taking a holiday under the guise of an episcopal progress. A

certain number among them it enabled to render an account in person

to their constituents in England of the value they had received for

the funds entrusted to their hands, and to beg for more. Over and

above these material objects, the synod professed its aim to

preserve Anglican churchmen throughout the world in theological

harmony. This, too, it accomplished, at least negatively. English

churchmen were able to testify that Protestant bishops from the east

and from the west resembled each other very closely in demeanor and

in their forms of thought. They even had, surmounting the obstacles

of their local accent, the very tone of voice which no other body of

clergy throughout the civilized world can boast, and which gives

Church-of-England ministers a virtual monopoly of the clerical sore

throat. Our visitors, whose episcopal residences and cathedrals are

scattered over the globe, carried home, we believe, an equally good

report of church conservatism in the mother-country.”

But the subtle mind of the late Bishop of Winchester, who was the

reputed author of this episcopal picnic, had deeper views at bottom. He

intended the first Pan-Anglican Synod as an answer to the sneer that the

Church of England is a local accident, without any principle of

spiritual authority, growth, or development. The synod was held, but the

Bishop of Winchester was disappointed: the bishops would do nothing;

they would not even order Bishop Colenso to the stake; and, “as

clergymen, what they manifested above all else was that the Anglican

Church in England and the Anglican Church out of England resemble each

other almost to identity. The special peculiarities of the Church of

England come into even more prominence abroad than at home. We are more

impressed with the spirit of the state church carved out by King Henry

VIII. when we meet with its foreign professors than we are in the

country of its birth.” How biting is this sarcasm, and how deeply it

must cut into the heart of the Anglican or the American Episcopalian who

stills fancies that the mind of England is true to Anglicanism!

The Lambeth Conference which has lately ended was as barren of results

as was its predecessor. On the day before its first meeting a number of

the American and colonial bishops went down to Canterbury, where Dr.

Tait, perhaps as an undress rehearsal of his anticipated elevation to

the post of Protestant Pope, had “the chair of St. Augustine” brought

forth, enthroned himself in it, and delivered a discourse. The audacity

of this performance was extreme; perhaps the thoughts which it must have

suggested to the spectators will yield their proper fruit. In face of

the _disjecta membra_ of a creed before him Dr. Tait had the extreme

rashness, not to use a harsher term, to say in this discourse that he

and his hearers “had advantages which the great St. Augustine had not,”

for “they stood nearer to the pure, primitive Christianity of the

apostles than St. Augustine stood, ...” and that St. Augustine’s faith,

which is that of the whole Catholic Church to-day, was “a sort of

semi-pagan Christianity.” St. Augustine preached in England in the sixth

century, Dr. Tait talks in the nineteenth; which is “nearer,”

chronologically, “pure, primitive Christianity,” and which is nearer,

doctrinally, the faith that St. Augustine received from Rome or that

which Dr. Tait has received from Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth?

On the next day, July 2, the conference opened at Lambeth Palace. There

were “something like eighty-five prelates present,” of whom forty-three

were from the colonies and the United States. It seems that there are

ten bishops unattached, living in and around London, who had expected to

be invited and who were disgusted at being left out; but it is explained

that “the primate felt that the line must be drawn somewhere, and these

prelates had no jurisdiction, even of a delegated character,” so he drew

it at them. Before entering the chapel to receive holy communion the

bishops adopted the following declaration:

“We, bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, in visible communion

with the churches of England and Ireland, professing the faith

delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained by the primitive

church and by the fathers of the blessed Reformation, now assembled

by the good providence of God at the archiepiscopal palace of

Lambeth, under the presidency of the Primate of All England, desire,

first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty God for having thus brought

us together for common counsel and united worship; secondly, we

desire to express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided

condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently

longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord, ‘That all may

be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may also

be one in us, that the world might believe that thou hast sent me’;

and, lastly, we do here solemnly record our conviction that unity

will be more effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its

purity and integrity—as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the

primitive church, summed up in the creeds, and affirmed by the

undisputed general councils—and by drawing each of us closer to our

common Lord by giving ourselves to much prayer and intercession, by

the cultivation of a spirit of charity and a love of the Lord’s

appearing.”

Is it not extraordinary that men of intelligence will persist in

befogging themselves with phrases about “the deep sorrow” with which

they view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the

world, and their longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord

for the unity of his people? The flock of Christ is not divided; it has

never been divided, and can never be divided for the reason that he not

only prayed for its unity but willed its unity, and provided infallible

means for the preservation of its unity.

The communion service over, Dr. Thomson, the Archbishop of York,

pronounced a somewhat remarkable discourse, in which Catholic truth,

Protestant error, and fanciful theory were strangely mixed, from the

words of St. Paul, “But when Peter was come to Antioch I withstood him

to the face, because he was to be blamed.” He exposed the fallacy of the

theory that the great apostle of the gentiles and the first Supreme

Pontiff were in antagonism to each other, and he did this ably; but he

ended his sermon with the following absurd passage:

“More than one writer has been pleased to point out that in the

first century there were three periods, in which three

apostles—Peter, Paul, and John—predominated in succession; and they

think they can trace the same succession in the larger field of

church history, so that the Petrine period ends at the Reformation,

and the Pauline succeeds it, whilst the time of St. John is supposed

to be the beginning. There is something fanciful in this

arrangement. Yet pardon the fancy for the truth that underlies it.

And when Peter falters, impulsive, and is inconsistent with himself,

and Paul withstands him to the face, let the third apostle enter on

the scene and remind us that we can afford to use the largest

charity whilst we hold still the firmest trust. His contribution to

the eternal diapason of the church’s faith and love shall be this:

‘Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth

in him and he in God.... And this commandment have we from him, that

he who loveth God love his brother also’ (1 John iv. 15, 21).”

It will not do to set up St. Paul as the John the Baptist of Luther and

Henry VIII.’s Reformation; nor will it do to assume that Peter, whose

province it is to confirm the faith of his brethren, “falters and is

inconsistent with himself,” or that the church has waited until now to

understand the words of St. John.

But here the curtain falls upon the public proceedings of the

conference. They retired from the profane sight of men, and, shut up in

company with “four reporters pledged to secrecy,” and who duly gave to

the journals every day accounts of all that happened, they spent a few

hours of each day in discussing “not creeds,” but “modern forms of

infidelity”; “the best mode of maintaining unity among the various

churches of the Anglican communion”; “Voluntary Boards of Arbitration

for churches to which such an arrangement may be applicable”; “the

relation to each other of missionary bishops and of missionaries in

various branches of the Anglican community acting in the same country”;

and “the position of Anglican chaplains and chaplaincies on the

Continent of Europe and elsewhere.” Nothing could be less interesting

than much of this; and the prelates were no doubt glad when all was

over, and when they closed their meetings by a sermon from the Bishop of

Pennsylvania in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

As is plain from the comments already given by the leading organs of

English opinion, the second Pan-Anglican Synod attracted even less

attention and more general contempt than the first. When men come to ask

themselves what has been accomplished by the twenty-five days’ session

besides tea and talk, what is the only answer? It is this: the synod

ended, as it began, in nothing.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSOPHY. By Walter H. Hill, S.J., Professor of

Philosophy in the St. Louis University, author of _Logic and

Ontology, or General Metaphysics_. Baltimore: Murphy & Co.; London:

Washbourne. 1878.

We rejoice to learn that Father Hill’s first volume of the course of

philosophy has met with great success. We have been long desiring to see

the second part in regular order, namely, the Special Metaphysics. This

is, undoubtedly, the most difficult part to treat in a satisfactory

manner, as well as the one most controverted among Catholic writers,

particularly as regards cosmology. Precisely on this account we were

especially curious to hear Father Hill’s exposition of the debated

questions, and perhaps this is also the reason why he has postponed this

part of his work, and published first his Ethics. Ethics is equally

important, and even more generally necessary and useful. We are,

therefore, glad to welcome the Ethics of Father Hill, hoping that he may

hasten, as much as his heavy labors in the work of teaching and in that

of the sacred ministry will permit, the completion of his Metaphysics.

This volume is, like the first one, an English text-book of the same

grade and quality with our standard Latin text-books in philosophy. It

is suited for the educated reader and for the higher classes in

college. Both volumes are above the capacity of pupils of a lesser

degree of intellectual development and instruction. If it is possible

to bring the study of philosophy down to the level of this class of

pupils without reducing the science to a merely nominal and

superficial condition, the text-book fitted for this purpose still

remains a _desideratum_. For the general reader and the pupil who is

able to understand it this manual of ethics will prove of great

service. It has always been the rule and practice of the illustrious

Society of Jesus to follow in instruction the doctrine of St. Thomas,

as understood by the great body of Catholic theologians and

philosophers, in all those particulars in which such a common

understanding exists. In ethics, happily, there does exist such a

common and generally accepted doctrine in regard to all chief and

important topics, and there is consequently a great degree of unity

and harmony in the teaching imparted by Catholic professors to their

pupils. Without doubt it is the safest and most practical method to

make the text-books of theology and philosophy, and the lectures of

the class-room, conform to this common doctrine. Deeper and more

original and free discussions of difficult and undecided or

imperfectly-elucidated questions belong to another class of works.

Father Hill’s text-book may be taken as a safe and sound exponent of the

system of ethics contained in our approved Latin manuals and taught in

our seminaries and colleges. In substance its doctrine is scholastic,

the doctrine of Aristotle, St. Thomas, Suarez, Bellarmine, Liberatore,

and the generality of similar authors of approved reputation. The great

number of original texts, with translations, which are interwoven with

the author’s own exposition, gives the ordinary reader a notable

advantage, by making him acquainted with the great writers on ethics,

and furnishing a guarantee of the fidelity with which their ideas are

presented by the author.

A minute criticism of the work before us in its minor details would

occupy too much space for a mere notice. We are obliged, therefore, to

content ourselves with a general expression of our favorable opinion of

the manual as a whole, and of the treatment given to the principal

topics in its several parts, and the briefest possible notation of

particular points of remark. The first chapter, on the Ultimate End of

Man, presents sufficiently for a treatise of such limited compass the

twofold relation of humanity by nature and by grace to God as the Final

Cause. One statement (p. 21), that “it is not simply impossible for God

to make a creature so perfect that intuitive vision of the divine

essence would be connatural to it,” we cannot concur in, and it is

contrary to the common opinion that grace elevates its subject “super

omnem naturam creatam _atque creabilem_,” so admirably defended by

Father Mazzella in his _De Deo Creante_. We think, also, that the author

confuses the abstractive with the discursive process in the same

context, and refer to Liberatore’s exposition of the nature of angelic

knowledge and the similar knowledge proper to the state of separated

spirits, in his work _Deli Uomo_, for our reasons of dissent from the

exposition of Father Hill. The qualification of “unnatural,” used in

respect to a desire of the soul to see God intuitively, on page 23,

seems to us objectionable, on account of the use of a term at least

ambiguous, and liable to be taken as signifying a positive opposition

between nature and a final term which transcends its specific active

force. The remainder of the whole division of General Ethics, comprising

the following chapters: ii., Action of Man as a Rational Being; iii.,

Principles of Moral Goodness; iv., The Passions; v., The Virtues; vi.,

Law; vii., Civil Law; viii., Conscience, is in our opinion admirable,

and we find nothing to criticise. We are particularly pleased to see

that the author refutes a common fallacy that sin is an infinite evil,

meriting an infinite punishment. It is most important at this time, when

the doctrine of endless punishment is so generally and violently

assailed, that the exaggerations and fallacious arguments which cling

around it should be cleared away, and only that which is the real

doctrine of revelation be presented, sustained by rational arguments

which are solid, which has been done by Liberatore, and also by Father

Hill in his section of this subject.

In the second part, on Special Ethics, four chapters are included: i.,

Rights and Duties; ii., Special Duties; iii., Man as a Social Being;

iv., Civil Society. We are glad to see that Father Hill distinctly

asserts the rights of rational creatures before God, a most important

point against Calvinistic, Jansenistic, and rigoristic exaggerations of

the doctrine of God—absolute dominion and divine sovereignty, which make

theology odious and drive many minds toward atheism in their

intellectual despair. The question of veracity, lying, and mental

reservation, which Grotius said made him sweat, is too briefly treated

for a satisfactory enucleation of its difficulties, especially as the

author departs from the common opinion of Catholic moralists. We are

rather disposed to favor his view, which has strong reasons in its

support, though not prepared to express an opinion that it is altogether

complete and sufficient.

In treating the great question of civil society, with the subordinate

question of the origin and legitimacy of government, etc., the author

has shown great judgment and discrimination. He adheres to the theory of

Suarez, Bellarmine, and the great body of the ablest Catholic authors,

respecting political society. Ultra-monarchical and ultra-democratic

theories are equally indefensible, and both are mischievous. We trust

that loyal citizens of our republic who are reasonably conservative will

find evidence, in Father Hill’s calm and moderate statements, that the

Catholic religion is admirably suited to give stability to our own

national institutions, notwithstanding its total opposition to the

European liberalism and radicalism that would fain overthrow the

constitutions and governments of the Old World.

In respect to style, the main point in a work of this kind is to make

its ideas clearly and distinctly intelligible. The author, in general,

has succeeded in his effort to accomplish this result as well as the

necessity of adhering to the phraseology of Latin authors would permit.

Sometimes, however, succinctness and condensation produce ambiguity and

obscurity—a defect which we suspect in some instances is partly or

entirely owing to errors in printing. Again, there are some words used

in a way which is not conformed to the English idiom—as, for instance,

the word “avert,” used intransitively, and the phrase to “put an

action.” There are many minor faults of this sort which can be easily

corrected in a second edition. Let us, by all means, have the other

volume as soon as possible. The whole, when complete, will serve a most

important end, by extending among intelligent readers of English books a

knowledge and taste for scholastic philosophy. This taste, when

awakened, will demand much larger and more thorough works on the same

subjects. We think, moreover, that those who write these works must

break away from the trammels of an artificial Latinized style and write

in idiomatic English, like Dr. Newman and the best writers in the

_Dublin Review_ and _Month_. We desire to see works on Catholic

philosophy which are as fine specimens of pure English idiom as those

written by Liberatore in his native language are of a charming and

literary Italian style.

I. A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES,

AND COLLEGES. By John R. G. Hassard, author of _Life of Archbishop

Hughes_, _Life of Pius IX._, etc. 1 vol. 12mo, illustrated.

II. AN INTRODUCTORY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE USE OF

SCHOOLS. Arranged on the Catechetical Plan. 1 vol. 16mo,

illustrated. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.

In this history Mr. Hassard has performed a very rare feat. He has made

a school-book which, while being in every respect a thorough

school-book, is full of interest from cover to cover. There is not a

dull page in it.

Of course the first thing that commends this book to Catholic teachers

and students is that it is written by a Catholic, and Mr. Hassard’s

eminent qualifications for the preparation of such a work are too well

known to need any mention here. The part that Catholics played, not only

in the discovery of this continent but in its exploration and

colonization; the part borne by them in the War of Independence and in

the later history of these United States, has been carefully forgotten,

or slurred over, or misrepresented, or omitted altogether in the average

history set in a boy’s hand at school. This is not history; and to

remedy this capital defect, we take it, has been the chief object of Mr.

Hassard’s book.

He has done his work thoroughly and in an excellent manner. He is

nowhere aggressive; he is simply historical from first to last. Where

Catholicity comes in he gives it its place; where it does not enter he

never drags it in. He is concerned with facts, and he attends chiefly to

them. How he has succeeded in grouping them together, in collecting the

tangled threads of events that are scattered over a vast continent,

where so many nations and tribes of men and forms of religion and

government contended for the mastery; the patient skill with which he

has woven these into a bright, clear, and picturesque whole, can only be

judged by those who read the book, which, for our own part, we could not

set down until we had read it through. The history begins with the

discovery of the continent, and brings us down by easy yet rapid stages

to our own times. The story of the Spanish colonies, the French, the

English, the Dutch, are all given due prominence. The work of Catholic

missionaries in exploring the continent and attempting to convert the

native tribes is briefly yet fully set forth.

The long struggle for national independence is given with great skill,

force, and clearness, and indeed these qualities characterize the whole

work. It is very plain that the author had everything clear in his own

mind before he sat down to inform others. The result is a clean-cut and

complete whole, with no important omissions, no waste, and no

redundancy. The narrative is invariably spirited and flowing, and to

students is in itself a model of clear, strong, simple English. It is

wonderful, too, to see how, with the brief space at his command, the

author has contrived to throw in at the right time those little personal

allusions, pictures, or reminiscences of famous men and events that lend

its charm to history and so aptly illustrate the times. Indeed, the

gifts here displayed by Mr. Hassard are obviously those that would lend

grace, strength, and dignity to a much more ambitious, though not more

useful, work than that before us. The sense of historical truth and

accuracy plainly predominates in the author’s mind.

His efforts to produce a history that was much needed, yet had hitherto

remained unwritten, have been ably seconded by the publishers. The text

is a delight to the eye; the illustrations, though many, are

unexceptionally excellent; the little maps thrown in here and there are

of great use in illustrating the text; and the questions at the foot of

the page are all that either student or teacher could desire. It is

impossible to commend such a work too heartily. It simply stands alone.

We have often heard the just complaint that Catholics had no history of

the United States which they could safely use in their schools—none, at

least, which was satisfactory. That complaint can exist no longer.

The _Catechism of United States History_ is made from the larger work,

and is in every way suitable for parish schools and junior classes in

academies. The narrative is continuous, so that it can be read without

the questions as a regular history.

LE PROGRES DU CATHOLICISME PARMI LES PEUPLES D’ORIGINE ANGLO-SAXONNE

DEPUIS L’ANNEE 1857. Par Mgr. De Haerne, Membre de la Chambre des

Representants (de la Belgique). Extrait de la _Revue Catholique de

Louvain_. Louvain: Peeters. 1878.

This pamphlet is an evidence of the awakening of a great interest in

Catholic Europe in the Catholic Church existing and increasing within

the dominion of the British Empire and the republic of the United

States. Ample justice is done by the author to the great Celtic element

which pervades the church in English countries, although the term

Anglo-Saxon appears so distinctively in his designation of the territory

which he has made the object of his investigations. It is almost

impossible to give an account of a pamphlet so full of statistics

without translating the whole bodily. The author has made it as full and

correct as he could, considering the means within his reach. The defects

are those of his sources of information, and his few mistakes are those

which a foreigner would easily make—as, for instance, in making Seton

Hall College an institute of the Jesuits, and attempting to enumerate

the generals of the army of the United States who have become converts.

A translation of this interesting pamphlet made by a competent hand,

with the corrections and additions in respect particularly to our own

country and British America which a fully-informed writer living among

ourselves could make, would furnish some very valuable information both

to the friends and the enemies of the Catholic religion. We owe grateful

acknowledgments to the eminent Belgian prelate and statesman for his

excellent and elaborate essay, and for his kindness in favoring us with

a copy.

I. ANCIENT HISTORY. II. HISTORY OF ROME. III. HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE

AGES. Adapted from the French of Rev. P. F. Gazeau, S. J. New York:

The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.

Whoever knows the above works in their original French will be glad to

see them in their present convenient, cheap, and attractive English

form. The series makes delightful reading, even in a desultory sort of

way. They are full of sound learning and philosophical inference;

indeed, it would be hard to find books containing more wealth of

research in so small a space. As might be expected, the style is concise

and yet smooth, flowing, and agreeable.

Such books as these are needed. Without denying the zeal and learning of

most of our teachers, it is still safe to say that few of our higher

students ever finish a course of history. The difficulty lies with the

text-books generally in use. They are for the most part so large and

full of detail that the pupil leaves school without a fair knowledge of

the events connected with the Roman Empire, the formation of the modern

states of Europe, the conversion of the barbarians, the Crusades, the

events that led up to the Protestant Reformation, and the important

changes and revolutions that have occurred since that period, because

all or most of the time available for history has been consumed in the

epochs preceding the time of our Saviour.

The _Ancient History_ is a complete compendium of the history of Egypt,

Assyria and Babylonia, Media and Persia, Phœnicia and Carthage, Greece,

Macedonia, Alexander’s Empire and the states founded on its ruins. The

_History of Rome_ treats of the Eternal City and its dominion from the

time of Romulus to that of Romulus Augustulus.

The _History of the Middle Ages_, of which we have before us advance

sheets, is now in press. Scholars will be surprised by its wonderful

combination of learning, sagacious reflections, and convenient grouping

of events. Its narrative stops with the taking of Constantinople (1453).

A _Modern History_ of the same series is in preparation, and will follow

as soon as possible. It will bring the series down to our own times.

The orthography of the proper names is made to conform to the practice

of the best modern English and American writers. The judgment and

learning of the American editor are apparent in the many wise

alterations and additions which he has made. Review questions are given

at the end of each chapter, except in the _Middle Ages_, where the

questions will be printed at the end of the book, so as not to break the

continuous appearance of its pages for the general reader. The three

books may be gone through in one term of ten months without any resort

to “cramming,” and we can recommend them to our high-schools, academies,

and colleges as the most compact, complete, and continuous set of

histories yet given to the Catholic public.

DOSIA. From the French of Henry Greville. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

1878.

It has been hinted that Henry Greville is the _nom de plume_ of a French

lady who lived for some time in Russia. The sex of the writer may be

readily judged from the book itself, which is decidedly feminine both in

plot and in dialogue. Its sketches of Russian society are in a measure

very neutral in color; and as to the two facts that peculation is very

active in Russian official circles, and that extravagance is very common

among the “crack” regiments at St. Petersburg, these are so very well

known that the story, if written to exhibit such phases of society, is

superfluous, as that information could better be obtained by reading

some standard work of travels in Russia. As a novel it is trifling and

flimsy, and the authoress cannot compare with Daudet either in dramatic

force or beauty of diction. The plot is feeble, but the dialogue is

often amusing and the situations on certain occasions not wanting in

interest.

A SAINT IN ALGERIA. By Lady Herbert. (Reprinted from the _Month_.)

London: Burns & Oates. 1878.

_A Saint in Algeria_ is the record of one of those lives ever living in

the bosom of the church of God—a link in the vast unbroken chain of

saints binding through all the centuries the church suffering on earth

with the church triumphant in heaven.

We recommend this little memoir of Margaret Bergésio (better known as

Agarithe Berger) to those who look on the past ages only as the days of

faith and of a charity that faileth not. In the life of this pure

mountain blossom of Piedmont, transplanted to the thick atmosphere of

Lyons and finally finding its perfection among the hills of Algeria,

these mournful souls may, in the midst of the seeming decay they weep,

find consolation in a new name added to a saintly list that in future

years may make some Kenelm Digby sigh for the earnest and active faith

of the church in the nineteenth century.

And the devoted Agarithe has found in Lady Herbert a loving biographer,

who writes with a fervor and simplicity worthy of the high humility of

the holy heroine.

LEGENDS OF HOLY MARY. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1878.

As we read the preface to this little book we feel our weapons of

criticism trembling in their sheath, since, should we use them, we find

ourselves well-nigh denied any seat in that kingdom whereof Holy Mary is

queen; while our critic’s spoils lie out of our reach safe in her hands

amid whose lilies, as once wrote St. Bernard, our earthly offerings lose

their stain and wear only the whiteness of the heavenly bloom.

The writer of the present volume has gathered from ancient gardens, in

the devotional spirit of old-time minnesinger, a nosegay of legends

breathing the pervading presence of her who is the “mother of fair love,

and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope,” the ever-merciful

mother of the poor children of Eve.

Few can fail to gather some sweetness from such a nosegay—one that among

its blossoms counts that fair one of Provence whose perfect perfume

fills one of Adelaide Procter’s most perfect poems teaching the

completeness of the mercy of God:

“Only Heaven

Means _crowned_, not _vanquished_, when it says,

‘Forgiven!’”

THE YOUNG CATHOLIC.

The _Young Catholic_, published by the Catholic Publication Society Co.,

enters this month on its ninth year. It may be that some persons who are

interested in this kind of literature have not yet seen the _Young

Catholic_. For their benefit we would say that it is a monthly paper of

eight pages for children and young people. It is finely illustrated and

filled with original matter that is at the same time entertaining,

instructive, and edifying.

As a literary work, our young people may well be proud of the _Young

Catholic_. It can take its place beside the best literature of that kind

in our country.

It is most suitable for Sunday-schools, convent schools, etc., and the

low price at which it is published brings it within the reach of all.

The following is the table of contents for September:

Thinking over the Actions of the Day; illustrated. Hero Priests. The

Sparrow and her Children. Twilight Talks. Beautiful Things. The

Mocking-Bird; illustrated. Heroism of a Little Girl. The Holy Rupert of

Bingen. What is He? illustrated. Talk by the Fireside; illustrated.

Insects of August. A Lake Asleep. The Little Cricket. Perils of

Missionary Life; illustrated. Stockings. The Farmboys, Chap. III. Hymn

to St. Aloysius, with music, composed by a pupil of Loretto Convent,

Enniscorthy, Ireland. A Letter from “Martha from the Country.” Letters

from “Uncle Ned’s Sunbeams.” Enigmas, Riddles, etc.

TERMS, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.

5 copies, per annum, $2; 15 copies, $5; 50 copies, $16; 100 copies, $30;

250 copies, $70; 500 copies, $125. No subscription for less than five

copies received, and not less than five copies sent to one address.

In sending money, a post-office order ought to be procured, and where

this cannot be had the letter should be registered. Every postmaster is

obliged to register a letter if required; the cost is fifteen cents

extra. Large clubs can be divided into fives, tens, etc., and sent to

different post offices and addresses.

Address THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 9 Barclay Street, New

York.

* * * * *

We need scarcely call the attention of our readers to the new serial

from the pen of Miss Kathleen O’Meara, which has just begun, and which

will run through our next volume. We have no doubt that _Pearl_ will

prove to our readers, as it has proved to us, to be by far the finest

story that this accomplished writer has yet given us.