Thence our way lies on the eastern skirt of the lava, which runs along

with the stream known as the San José through a deep and winding gorge

named Los Rémanzos. I have seen some wild scenery in my time, but never

before nor since so savage a piece of landscape as Los Rémanzos. The

mountains rise perpendicularly on either hand—their barren sides dotted

with huge boulders which seem ready to fall instantly on the traveller

beneath. You wonder why they do not fall. The winding cañon shuts out all

view beyond twenty yards in advance. A trail barely wide enough for one

vehicle to pass creeps between the San José and the mountains on one side;

and from the stream to the mountains on the other the lava piles up its

grim and threatening forms.

We halted at the picket to wait for the escort, the buggy, and Jim and

Joe, beguiling the time by a comforting draught of hot coffee from a

military quart cup which the commander of the picket hospitably offered

us. The laggards soon arrived. Jim and Joe took advantage of the pause

before starting again to enter a solemn protest against trotting:

“For heaven’s sake, commandant!” said they with one voice and in a tone

that showed acute feeling, “either walk or lope; we cannot endure that

confounded trot. We shall be as raw as uncooked beefsteaks.”

A bright thought struck them both simultaneously, and, without any further

ceremony, they rushed to the buggy, leaving their horses to take care of

themselves or be taken care of by some good‐natured dragoon.

Another mile brought us to the crossing of the San José. Here was a check

to our proceedings: the crossing was not fordable. The stream, usually

about two feet wide and three inches deep at the crossing, had in

consequence of recent heavy rains and the melting of snows filled its

steep bed and overflowed its banks for fifty yards on either side. A

powerful eddy made it impossible for a horse to strike ground on the other

side. A dragoon dashed in and tried it, but it was with great difficulty

we saved him and his horse from being carried down the swollen stream, and

got them safe on our side again.

“That settles it, gentlemen,” said the commandant; “we shall have to cross

the mountains—a rough trail, but we have no choice.”

It was now proposed to leave the buggy behind, but Joe would not hear of

it. The commandant was too polite to insist, as he ought to have done.

Crossing a narrow but steep cut, however, the buggy went over, spilling

Don Juan and Jim over the mountain‐side. The buggy stood on its top—wheels

in the air. The horses—good and gentle animals—came to a full stop and

stood perfectly quiet. Otherwise, there would have been as little left of

the buggy as of Dr. Holmes’ one‐horse shay, the last time the deacon rode

in it. Neither the Don nor Jim was hurt, though the latter was somewhat

frightened. Don Juan took the matter with the coolness of an old hand. The

buggy was uninjured; it had merely met with a reverse. It was soon put

upon its legs—or, rather, its wheels—again. Its progress was so

aggravatingly slow when even our fastest possible gait was a walk, that,

dividing the escort, we went on, leaving it to proceed at its leisure.

It was about nightfall when we reached the edge of a precipitous descent

where all marks of a trail disappeared. The descent was probably two

hundred feet in perpendicular height, and alarmingly steep.

“The buggy can never go down there,” was the general remark.

“Confound the buggy, we shall have to sleep out in the cold all night with

nothing but a saddle‐blanket, on account of it,” also translates a very

general sentiment.

“We cannot desert them, however,” said the commandant; “as the buggy has

come with us we must stand by it. We shall wait here until it comes up.”

We had a long and weary wait for that anathematized buggy. At length, as

the shades of night were falling, the long‐looked‐for buggy was seen, its

top bumping up and down like a buffalo with a broken foreleg. The don

walked on one side of the vehicle holding the reins; Joe walked on the

other side as gloomily as a chief mourner. The remainder of the escort

with dismal visages followed behind.

A glance over the steep brink did not give any radiance to their gloomy

countenances. Don Juan expressed his regrets that we should have been

detained by the slow and difficult progress of the buggy. Joe said

nothing, but evidently felt ashamed of himself.

We were still twenty miles from Acoma. Within about five miles, the

commandant said there was a little Indian hut—a sort of outpost of the

Pueblo—the owner of which, old Salvador, was one of the notables of the

Pueblo. The commandant had notified Salvador by courier some days before

of our intended visit. He had proposed to meet us at the ranchito and

guide us over the remainder of the mountain trail. Here we could pass the

night under cover at least, though we should be pretty closely packed.

Joe had resumed the saddle after the steep descent had been accomplished.

He and Jim now led the party, and, as the rest of us stayed with Don Juan

and the buggy, they got considerably in advance. Thus they had reached the

ranchito some twenty minutes before we did. We found them knocking at the

door and calling loudly and indignantly on the inmates to open.

“We have been knocking and shouting here for half an hour, and the

confounded old Indian has not taken the slightest notice of us. I believe

he would let us freeze.”

“Salvador does not know you,” said the commandant. “He is too wise an

Indian to open his doors to strangers in this country after nightfall.

Salvador is reputed wealthy, and it behooves him to be careful what

nocturnal visitors he receives. I think I can get Salvador to open. Is

Señor Don Salvador within?” asked the commandant, in Spanish.

“Is it the Señor Comandante who is without?” asked Don Salvador, in the

same language, with the usual Pueblo peculiarities of pronunciation—the

use of _l_ for _r_, etc.

Being satisfied on this point, Salvador opened the door to receive us.

Salvador was a stout, middle‐sized, gray‐headed Indian of the Pueblo type.

The presence of the commandant being a voucher for the rest, Salvador now

proceeded to shake hands with the whole party—in the order of rank, as he

understood it—taking first the commandant, next the bugler, then the

sergeant and the men of the escort, and then the civilians, Don Brown and

the writer, and lastly Jim and Joe; conscientiously repeating in each

individual case, “_Como le va!_” and “_Bueno!_” Indians believe in

uniforms and brass buttons. They don’t understand official dignity without

outward and visible signs.

The ranchito was a little structure of _tierrones_, or sods, roofed with

poles laid across from wall to wall, and covered with brush and earth.

There were no windows. The door was the only aperture, I think. I am not

quite sure whether there was a hole in the roof to let out a little of the

smoke; there may have been. The edifice was about large enough for a fair‐

sized poultry‐house. It was perched on the steep mountainside, the earth

being cut away on the upper side to give an approach to a level

foundation. There was a small shed for animals, the fodder for whose use

being piled on top of it. There was the usual corn‐crib. Our best horses

were honored with the hospitality of the shed, Salvador’s pony and burros

being turned out to make room for them. The other animals were tied to

logs in front of the ranchito, and a guard placed over them.

It required some stooping to enter Salvador’s residence. This was very

hard on the stout Don, who had not seen his own knee for a number of

years, but he accomplished it as if he had been in the daily habit of

touching his toes without bending his knees. But a further trial still

awaited him. The hut was divided into two rooms. The passage between the

two rooms was a blighted door, cut short in its youth to the proportions

of a small fireplace. We had to come down to all‐fours to get into the

inner chamber. When the commandant, the staunch Don, and the writer had

entered, the place seemed full. But Salvador, on hospitable thoughts

intent, insisted on Jim and Joe entering. Then Salvador wriggled in. The

room was replete.

After a meagre supper and a quiet smoke, we arranged the details of the

morrow’s trip. With our saddles for pillows, and our saddle‐blankets and

overcoats for beds and bed‐covering, we lay down to sleep. Brown, with Jim

and Joe, in the inner room; the commandant, the old Pueblo, and myself in

the outer. Jim and Joe lay perpendicularly to Brown, and Salvador

described a horizontal to the commandant and myself. I slept well,

considering, though I was waked two or three times by a roaring noise,

which seemed to me to be that of the house falling, as I was endeavoring

to force myself through the passage between the two apartments, in which,

more than once during the night, I dreamt that I was stuck fast. On

waking, I discovered that the sound proceeded from the resounding Aztec

nose of our host, Salvador.

We were roused before day by the old Indian. Dressing took no time, as we

had not undressed the night before—a great saving of time, labor, and

discomfort. Breakfast was to be got ready, however. Salvador made the

fire. The commandant detailed himself and myself as cooks for the morning.

At supper‐time, Don Juan, assisted by Jim and Joe, would officiate

culinarily. Slices from a haunch of bacon we had brought with us, cooked

on the end of a stick, with “hard tack” and coffee, made in a camp kettle,

furnished a delicious breakfast. What is there in the odor of unctuous

bacon that makes it so pleasant to the nostrils when one is camping out or

“roughing it”? There are people who cannot abide the smell of bacon within

the confines of civilization. But put them on the Plains, or in the field,

and a daily dose of the appetizing grease is necessary to “settle their

stomachs.” I have known men who, in long trips in the wilds, forsook

chickens and returned to first principles and bacon.

We made an early start. The buggy was left behind. Don Juan saddled one of

his horses. He borrowed from the old Indian a saddle, so angular and so

full of sharp points that it must have been hard even for an Indian’s

seat. But Brown, though heavy, was a good horseman, and he bore the

infliction like a hero.

Salvador was our guide. When we were all mounted, and ready to start, we

looked around for him. After some hunting we saw him above us, mounted,

and seemingly emerging from the roof of the ranchito. He went straight up

the side of the mountain, beckoning to us to come on, and shouting

“_Caballeros! por aquí!_”(228)

An Indian does not understand flank movements. He does not go around

obstacles. He goes straight over them on the direct line of his objective.

We followed our guide, dismounting, however, leading our horses, and

zigzagging up the steep ascent like Christians and white men.

Our course was over mountain and across ravine on a bee‐line of ascent or

descent for Acoma. There was some growling by Jim and Joe, but as our

general gait was a slow walk, and they made much of their progress on

foot, they did not grumble much.

I noticed moccasin tracks in several places where the ground was soft. The

distance between the foot‐prints was very great. It astonished me. I rode

to the commandant’s side, and called his attention to the wonderful

tracks. He pointed them out to Salvador, who said they were the tracks of

a _muchacho_ he had sent to the Pueblo last night with the news of our

arrival at the ranchito. What a stepper that _muchacho_ must have been!

His average bound must have been at least ten feet.

“How long will it take him to go to the Pueblo, Salvador?” asked the

commandant.

“Oh! not long,” replied Salvador, “long as a good horse.”

_Experientia docet._ Before I saw those tracks I used to set down the

accounts I read in my Grecian history of wonderful time made by messengers

to Athens and other classic centres as antique yarns. I now believe in the

fastest Grecian time reported. Thus, the torch of faith is often lit by

the merest straying spark—a lesson to us not to limit our belief to what

is within the scope of our knowledge. We know so little.

Jim and Joe had begun to growl over the continual ups and downs of the

journey when we saw Salvador, who was some three or four hundred yards

ahead, dismount at the foot of what seemed to be the steepest ascent yet.

“This must be a stiff one,” said the commandant. “I see Salvador has

dismounted. It takes a pretty steep ascent to make an Indian or a Mexican

dismount. They hold to the saddle until the animal begins to bend

backward.”

It was a steep and toilsome ascent, winding in and out through huge

boulders just wide enough apart to let a horse squeeze through. It was not

always easy to convince the horses that there was room enough for them to

pass. They would refuse to be convinced, and obstinately draw back, to the

discomfort and danger of those leading them, and more so of those

following.

At last we reached the top of the ascent. The descent on the other side

was a worthy pendant to it. We halted on the crest to enjoy the landscape

before us. From the base of the height a level plain spread away for

miles, unbroken save by a cluster of lofty perpendicular white rocks, each

rising independently from the level plain. On the top of the highest of

these rocks stood a little town, the smoke from its chimneys mingling with

the clouds. This was Acoma.

We descended slowly and carefully. A brisk trot of about two miles brought

us to two lofty natural columns, through which the trail passed. They

seemed the pillars of a gigantic portal—a resemblance which had struck the

Indians, for they named it El Puerto: The Gate. We had now reached the

base of the inhabited rock. An excavation near the base was pointed out to

us by Salvador as the trace of an attempt to mine the position by the

Spanish invaders! I think the story rather a doubtful one.

I judged the rock to be about two hundred and fifty feet in height. The

path up the rocky side to the village was steep and narrow. No wheeled

vehicle has ever entered the Pueblo. The primitive _carreta_, with its

clumsy wheels of solid disks cut from the trunk of some gigantic cotton‐

wood, stopped short at the base—going thus far and no further. Provisions

and other necessaries are packed up on the backs of surefooted donkeys.

Water for drinking purposes is carried up on the heads of the Indians in

large earthen vessels named _tinajas_; for other uses rain‐water is

carefully gathered in natural tanks or hollows in the summit of the rock.

There is a bypath or short‐cut up to the Pueblo which the Acomas generally

use when unburdened or in a hurry. A glance showed us that it was only

practicable for Acoma Indians. This short‐cut is in the most nearly

perpendicular of any of the rocky sides. It consists of holes in the

smooth and vertical side of the rock, in which the Indians place their

hands and feet, and climb up after the fashion of sailors clambering up

rigging, and with no less rapidity.

We returned to the common highway, which now seemed by comparison a

flowery path of dalliance. It was slow and tiresome work, however. After a

rest or two, to breathe our animals and ourselves, we finally reached the

comparatively level space, some acres in area, on the summit of the rock.

Here we were met by Francisco, our guide’s son, the governor, matadores,

alguazils, and other functionaries of the Pueblo. This is as good a place

as any other to say that the governor and all other officials are elected

annually. They were dressed in the usual Pueblo fashion. Their heads were

uncovered. They were draped in large blankets, which gave them a very

dignified appearance.

We received a most cordial reception. The commandant had been a good

friend to the Acomas—had protected them in their little trading

operations, and helped them in the long, hard winters when their granaries

were empty. The entire male population was assembled in the Plaza or

central square. The squaws and children were at their front doors, that is

to say, on the roofs, for the entrance to a Pueblo’s dwelling is from

above.

A fire for the dragoons to cook their rations by was made in the centre of

the Plaza. The horses were picketed around. A contribution of corn and

firewood was levied by the governor for the use of the escort. The Indians

came in cheerful, laughing groups, bearing their _costals_ of corn or

their bundles of wood. The escort being provided for, we went to the house

of Francisco, the most comfortable house in the Pueblo; for Francisco was

the wealthiest member of the little community. The governor’s dwelling was

a poor one, and himself a poor man who was unable to entertain us as

comfortably as Francisco could. He accompanied us thither.

Francisco’s dwelling, like most of the others in the Pueblo, was a two‐

storied adobe building, whitewashed inside and out. The mode of access was

a ladder placed against the outer wall of the lower story. Having reached

the top of this, you walk across the roof and enter the house by a door on

the second story, the façade of which is somewhat retired from the front

line of the first.

Here we found some rosy, apple‐faced squaws, engaged in culinary and other

domestic operations. One was kneeling grinding corn with the primitive

_matata_. They smiled with all their countenances on us; and a half‐dozen

of the whitest sets of teeth, that dentist or dentifrice never touched,

gleamed a bright welcome to us. They wore the usual dark woollen robe,

made of two pieces, about five feet long and three broad, sewed together

at one of the narrow ends, but with an aperture for the head to pass

through. The robe is then gathered round the waist and tied with a string.

Their nut‐brown arms were bare, and encircled at the wrist by from one to

a dozen brass rings; their feet were bare. The thick swathing of buckskin,

with which they wrap their lower limbs when journeying, and which gives

them the appearance of being terribly swollen, were laid aside, much to

the furthering of a graceful effect.

We were invited to descend to the sitting‐room, situated beneath, through

a very narrow trap‐door. Don Juan walked fearlessly toward the aperture.

We begged him to pause before he rushed into a place whence he could never

hope to return. The Indians understood the joke, and enjoyed it hugely.

So the Don entered the aperture, and by judicious squeezing actually

succeeded in passing. His coat‐tails got through about the same time as

his head. The others, being of the lean and hungry‐looking kind, had no

difficulty in descending.

From the room into which we had descended ventilation was completely

excluded. Light was only admitted through one or two small panes of glass

in apertures like port‐holes in the walls.

We took seats on sheep‐skins spread in a circle around the floor. The

commandant made known his business in passable Spanish; the governor

replied, through Francisco, as interpreter. The worthy Don intervened,

from time to time, between the high contracting parties, when there was a

lack of language or danger of misunderstanding. The business was completed

satisfactorily and in short order.

While the floor was being set for dinner—tables not being in vogue here—we

endeavored to obtain the Acoma’s idea of the antiquity of the Pueblo.

Francisco, though he had learned to read and write, had not got beyond the

Indian idea of time, space, or number. There is no medium between “many”

and “few”—very far, _muy lejos_; and near, _cerca_.

“How many years old is the Pueblo?”

“_Muchos años._—Many years.”

“About how many?”

“Who knows, señor?” with a shrug. “A great many.”

“Who is the oldest man in the Pueblo?”

“The cacique.”

The cacique, we were informed, is the official historian of the Pueblo.

His records consist only in oral traditions, which he teaches to a youth

selected for the purpose, who is to succeed him in his office when he

dies.

“Is the cacique very old?”

“Si, señor! Very old.”

It is useless to ask an Indian how old he or any other Indian is, as he

never knows. So we did not ask how old the cacique was.

“Was the cacique he succeeded very old?”

“Yes, sir; very old.”

“Was the Pueblo in existence as long as he can remember?”

“Yes, sir; and as long as the cacique before him and the cacique before

him could remember. But we shall have the cacique here shortly, and then

after dinner we’ll have a good big talk about the many years ago.”

Francisco, the governor, and his father now engaged in an earnest

conversation in their Indian tongue, the result of which was that

Francisco unlocked a vast trunk, of antique form and solidity, and took

therefrom a pile of manuscript, which he handed us with great solemnity.

The Indians looked upon this venerable pile with great reverence. It was

probably the first time it had been touched by “outsiders.” We owed the

permission to examine it to the many kind acts the commandant had

performed for the Acomas.

The first portion of the manuscript examined was a Missal. The Office of

the Mass was copied in Latin in a fair plain hand, the work of some

Spanish missionary. The ink had turned yellow, but the text was clear and

legible throughout. Nothing in the MS. Missal indicated the date of its

writing. A further examination of the venerable pages furnished us some

information. Besides the Missal, they comprised a register in Spanish of

births, marriages, and deaths. The earliest written record of the Pueblo

which we found is the record of a baptism, 1725.

Having gleaned what knowledge we could from the precious manuscripts, they

were carefully and reverently put away in the ponderous chest, and secured

by a padlock nearly as large as a travelling satchel.

Dinner was now served. It was very good. It consisted of a chicken stew,

good white bread, and very passable tea. The stew was made so intensely

hot, however, by _chile colorado_,(229) that I did not enjoy it as much as

I might have done had it been less fiery. I never could relish _chile_

either _colorado_ or _verde_. But on this occasion, I determined to eat it

if it burned me to a shell to show my appreciation of Acoma hospitality!

The cacique—an old, white‐haired, blear‐eyed Indian, at least ninety—came

in toward the close of the meal, accompanied by the youth whom he was

instructing in the historical and legendary lore of the Pueblo. He evinced

no inclination to be communicative, but showed a determination to make a

rousing meal—something to which he was evidently not accustomed. After

dinner he devoted himself to smoking our cigars; but not a word could we

get out of him about the history of Acoma. Joe said that as a story‐teller

he considered the cacique a decided failure.

The governor signified that he was now ready to show us the church. So

thither we proceeded.

The church is, of course, of adobe. It was unused at the time we visited

it. No priest had been attached to the Pueblo for some years. But it was

not suffered to fall into decay. On one side of the altar was a painting

of the Virgin and Child; on the other, one of S. Joseph. On the ceiling

above the altar were large paintings of the sun and moon. Here we got

another chronological glimmer—the last we found. It was an inscription

which stated that the church had been renovated in 1802. The Indians told

us it was done by some artist‐priest who came from far away—probably Spain

or Italy. There are a pair of bells in the belfry. The Acoma tradition is

that these bells were a gift to the Pueblo from a Queen of Spain. Of

course they do not know the date of their reception. They say, however,

that it was some time before the renovation of the church.

We next went to the southern edge of the rock to look at the “short cut”

from above. This was not easy or pleasant pedestrianism. The rock here

ceased to be level, throwing up sharp craggy points. The Indians stepped

from point to point, erect and graceful and without difficulty. The pale

faces were compelled by a due discretion to abandon erect attitudes, and

proceed bending down, and using hands as well as feet. A look down the

rocky side was sufficient. The commandant shook his head, and said in

Spanish:

“That is no way for a white man to come up”—a remark which the Indians

seemed to consider remarkably humorous. They laughed and “how‐how”‐ed

vehemently.

As we returned, we remarked that on one side of the rock it was bevelled

down from the summit about forty or fifty feet, and then resumed its

general steep and vertical character. Some houses were situated near the

superior edge of this bend. A thrill ran through me from head to foot as I

saw a child roll from the front of one of the houses down the incline.

“He will be dashed to atoms!” I cried in horror.

The Indians looked in the direction to which I frantically pointed, and

then united in a good‐humored laugh.

Soon another urchin, and another, and another followed the first, who

picked himself up just at the deadly brink, and mounted the incline, to

roll down again and again, as we used to on a hillside in snow with our

sleds, in our younger days. This was play for the infantine Acomas. They

were “keeping the pot a‐bilin’.”

The Indians told us that no fatal accident had ever happened to any Acoma

either while rolling down the dread incline “in pretty, pleasant play,” or

climbing the steep path the mere sight of which had made us dizzy.

Tradition records that only one Indian ever “went over the side.” He was

saved by a projecting stump catching him by the breech‐clout and holding

him suspended until he was rescued—unhurt.

Our next visit was the _Estufa_. Here the sacred fire was burning. The

_Estufa_ was an underground apartment. We descended through a trap‐door,

which also served as a chimney, and down a smoke‐begrimed ladder. The

chamber was some thirty feet in length and perhaps fifteen in width. We

were informed that it was the general place of meeting—the public hall—the

club‐room of the Pueblo. It was pretty hot and not very sweet down there.

We found four Indians seated around the fire, each with a loom in front of

him, weaving a blanket. Their only covering was the breech‐clout. The

Indians told us, through Don Juan, that these men watched the fire, which

was always kept burning—waiting for the coming of Montezuma. They were

relieved by four others at stated times. We shook hands with the naked

watchers, and “how‐how”‐ed with them in the usual way.

“Do you think Montezuma will come?” asked Joe, through Don Juan, of one of

the vigilants.

The worthy, shrugging his naked shoulders, looked up sidewise at Joseph,

and replied:

“_Quizas? Quien sabe?_—May be! Who knows?”

Joe withdrew. We all followed him. We had now seen all the lions of the

Pueblo of Acoma. “Boots and saddles” and “to horse” were sounded, and with

many hand‐shakes, some embraces, and general “how‐hows,” we bade adieu to

the hospitable Acomas and their rocky home, and began our return march.

New Publications.

THE LIFE OF DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN, PRINCE AND PRIEST. By

Sarah M. Brownson. With an Introduction by O. A. Brownson, LL.D.

New York: Pustet. 1872.

Women of talent and cultivation make admirable biographers. In religious

biography we know of nothing more charming than the lives written by Mère

Chauguy. In recent English literature, the Lives of Mother Margaret Mary

O’Halloran, by a lady whose name is unknown to us, and of S. Jane Frances

de Chantal, by Miss Emily Bowles, are among the most perfect specimens of

this very agreeable species of writing which we have met with in any

language. This new and carefully prepared biography of a priest who was

illustrious both by birth and Christian virtue, by a lady already known as

the author of several works of fiction, well deserves to be classed with

the best of its kind in English Catholic literature. It is a work of

thorough, patient, and conscientious labor, and for the first time

adequately presents the history and character of Prince Gallitzin in their

true light. Certainly, we never knew before how truly heroic and admirable

a man was this Russian prince who came to pass his life as a missionary in

the forests which crowned in his day the summit of the Alleghanies in

Pennsylvania. The charm of a biography is found in a certain fulness and

sprightliness of style and manner, a picturesqueness and ideality of

ornament and coloring, a warmth and glow of sentiment, which give life and

reality to the narrative. Miss Brownson still possesses the juvenile

_élan_ which naturally finds its expression in the style we have

indicated, and has also attained that sobriety and maturity of judgment

which give it the rightly subdued tone and finish. In several matters of

considerable delicacy which she has been obliged to handle, we think she

has shown tact and discretion, while at the same time using enough of the

freedom of a historian to bring out the truth of facts and events which

needed to be told in order to make a veritable record and picture of the

life of her subject. The prince is fortunate in his biographer. Would it

were the lot of every great man in the church to find a similar one! Miss

Brownson’s book seems to us the best religious biography which has been

written by anyone of our American Catholic authors. We would like to see

more works of this sort from feminine writers, to whom we are already so

much indebted for works both of the graver and the lighter kind, and

particularly from Miss Brownson, who has fully proved her ability in the

volume before us.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA CATHOLICA AMERICANA. A list of works written by

Catholic authors and published in the United States. By Rev.

Joseph M. Finotti. Part I., 1784 to 1820 inclusive. New York: The

Catholic Publication Society. 1872. 8vo. pp. 319.

It was said of Bartlett’s _Dictionary of Americanisms_ that it was the

first dictionary that a man could read through with pleasure. The same in

the way of bibliography may be said of this; for, if any of our readers

supposes that the title tells the truth, he is mistaken. It is not a mere

_list_, as the author modestly calls it. Some twelve years ago, Mr. Shea

published in one of our Catholic papers a list of titles of “The First

Catholic Books printed in this County,” coming down to the same date and

including the same period as our author, and giving sixty‐eight titles.

This meagre beginning of American Catholic bibliography has in F.

Finotti’s hands grown to nearly five hundred titles, including some few

imprints later than 1820.

It is not merely a collection of titles of Catholic works, but of all

works by Catholic authors printed in the country, with notes of the

highest interest to Catholics who care at all for what was done by our

fathers in the faith in this republic. Biographical notices, notices of

celebrated books, accounts of controversies of the time, anecdotes

illustrative of Catholic life in the earlier days, notes of Catholic

printers and journalists, all find their place in these notes, in which

the abundant knowledge of our earlier men and times, and things acquired

by the patient and loving research of years, fairly bubble out

spontaneously. It is not a history indeed, but to the historian will be

invaluable as an authority and a guide.

On some points this work is absolutely exhaustive. The collection of

pamphlets and works growing out of the Hogan affair in Philadelphia,

considering their perishable nature, is perfectly wonderful, and his

library alone can enable any one to go thoroughly into the history of that

unhappy matter which was destructive to so many souls.

Of the writings and publications of the celebrated Mathew Carey, we have

also here by far the most accurate and comprehensive account ever drawn

up, comprising nearly twenty‐five pages.

Many will be amazed to see how many sterling Catholic books were issued

early in the century, and thus be able to judge of the zeal and true

religious feeling of the little body of Catholics who so generously

sustained the publishers, as well as of the public spirit of a man like

Bernard Dornin—in our mind, as in F. Finotti’s, the type of what a

Catholic publisher should be. Of him as of many other Catholics our author

gives biographical notices that we should look for in vain in all the

cyclopædias and biographical dictionaries. Book notices often end with the

assertion that the book should be in every family; we hardly suppose the

publishers ready to supply every Catholic family in the country with a

copy, for the edition is small, and must be taken up at once. It is by no

means merely a book for the Dryasdust collector or antiquarian. It must

find its place in the libraries of many of our gentlemen who love their

religion and love books, as well as in our college libraries. We trust

that it will impel all to endeavor to have some of the early printed

Catholic books, as matters of laudable pride. If they can even find some

that have escaped the Argus eyes of the reverend collector and his

associate book‐hunters, they will, we trust, be good enough Christians to

bear with equanimity even that severe trial to a bibliographer.

This _Bibliography_ commends itself to those interested in the

bibliography of the country or the history of printing in the United

States.

In the _Historical Magazine_ some months since there was a Bibliography of

works on Unitarianism, but it was silent as to Father Kohlmann’s work, and

to a sermon by a Catholic clergyman of Pittsburg. So, too, Sabin’s

_Bibliopolist_ recently gave a list of books printed in Brooklyn, but was

silent as to a _Catholic Doctrine_ printed there in 1817, as well as of

Coate’s very curious _Reply_ to Rev. F. Richards’ supposed reasons for

becoming a Catholic.

There is one strange point about American bibliography, and that is that

the laborers in it have been almost exclusively from Europe. Ludewig gave

the _Bibliography of Indian Languages_ and that of Local History;

O’Callaghan, that of American Bibles; Harisse, that of the earliest

American; Rich was a pioneer in the same field; and now Finotti gives us

the Catholic element. Where are our native bibliographers?

LE LIBERALISME. LECONS DONNEES A L’UNIVERSITE LAVAL. Par l’Abbé

Benjamin Paquet, Docteur en Theologie, et Professeur à la Faculté

de Theologie. Quebec: De l’Imprimerie du _Canadien_. Brochure, pp.

100. 1872.

Lower Canada, considered both in respect to the condition of the Catholic

Church therein, and to the political well‐being of its people, is an

eminently fortunate region, despite the rigor of its climate. It is

especially pre‐eminent in respect to the Catholic education given to young

men of the leisured classes, and others who go through the intermediate

and higher courses. Laval University is truly a splendid institution among

many others which make Quebec an _unique_ city in Northern America. These

remarks are suggested by the pamphlet before us, which is a specimen of

the sound and opportune instruction given at the Laval University. The

Lectures contained in it give an exposition which is both learned and

clear of that most important portion of the Syllabus which relates to the

errors of modern liberalism condemned in the Pontifical Acts of Pius IX.

When will the Catholics of the United States enjoy privileges similar to

those which are the portion of the Catholics of Lower Canada? The Abbé

Paquet’s Lectures were delivered as a part of his course on the law of

nature and of nations, and were attended not only by his pupils, but by a

numerous and select audience, several of whom requested their publication.

We have already sufficiently expressed our approbation of their doctrine

and style, and they have been favorably noticed in Europe. We are

confident that a considerable number of our readers will hasten to procure

them, and receive great profit from their perusal.

CARDINAL WISEMAN’S WORKS. New Edition, first 3 vols. New York: P.

O’Shea.

This is a reissue of a new London edition which we most cordially commend.

The first two volumes, containing the _Lectures on the Connection between

Science and Revealed Religion_, have already been noticed in these pages.

The third volume contains the splendid treatise on the Holy Eucharist.

Cardinal Wiseman was a great writer, a great prelate, and a remarkably

devout and holy man. His works are among our choicest treasures, and as

such ought to be everywhere circulated and continually perused by those

who wish to imbue their minds with the purest doctrine and the most

valuable knowledge.

THE LIFE OF S. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, CONFESSOR, AND DOCTOR OF THE

CHURCH. By P. E. Moriarty, D.D. Ex‐Assistant General O.S.A.

Philadelphia: Cunningham. 1873.

This is a popular biography, though proceeding from the pen of a learned

man, and showing marks of erudition. The sketch is a complete one, and

shows great power of generalization and condensation in the writer, with

vigor and impetus of style. It is not, however, minute in respect to the

saint’s public life, or his great work as a philosopher and doctor of the

church. This could not be expected in a work of moderate size adapted for

popular reading. There is, however, a brief summary of the saint’s

writings, with a synopsis, and an account of the Augustinian Order, all of

which are of interest and value to the general reader.

PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS; OR, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TRUTHS REFLECTED IN

THE UNIVERSE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. New York: P. O’Shea.

1873.

A handsomely printed volume, with a very ornamental title‐page quite

appropriate to the nature of the book. The views of truth presented in

this book are expressed in aphorisms. Good taste, poetic sensibility,

spiritual wisdom, and the purest Christian feeling are their chief

characteristics. We are disposed to think this the best of F. Weninger’s

works. There are many persons who take great delight in aphorisms of this

kind, and we think all such readers will like this book. It is good also

as a help to meditation, and a treasury of short spiritual readings for

those who have not time for long ones; and will be useful to those who

like to stop occasionally in more laborious occupations of the mind, and

gather a little spiritual nosegay.

MEMOIRS OF MADAME DESBORDES‐VALMORE. By the late C. A. Sainte‐

Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W.

Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1873.

Madame Valmore was one of those poets of the affections who

“Learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

No one can look for a moment at her portrait as depicted in this touching

book without feeling that the thorn is continually pressing against her

gentle breast. Her poetry and her letters are the very outcry of

impassioned love and grief. “I am like the Indian that sings at the

stake,” she says. One of her volumes is entitled _Tears_, every line of

which is a pensive sigh. Her poems are full of “the charm of that

melancholy which M. de Segur calls _the luxury of grief_.” M. Michelet

says: “She alone among us had the _gift of tears_—that gift which smites

the rock and assuages the thirst of the soul!” M. Sainte‐Beuve calls her

“the _Mater Dolorosa_ of poetry,” but that title, consecrated to a higher,

diviner type of sorrow, is one that most of us would shrink from applying

to ordinary mortals.

It would almost seem as if the highest, purest notes—“half ecstasy, half

pain”—only spring from the soul overshadowed by sorrow, as the eyes of

some birds are darkened when they are taught to sing. Mme. Valmore

herself, in allusion to a brother poet, wonders “if actual misery were

requisite for the production of notes that so haunt one’s memory.”

The tombs among which she used to play as a child in the old churchyard at

Douai seem to have cast their funereal shadows over her whole life—shadows

that lend to her sad muse so attractive a charm. One of her poems thus

begins:

“Do not write. I am sad and would my life were o’er.

A summer without thee?—Oh! night of starless gloom!—

I fold the idle arms that cannot clasp thee more—

To knock at my heart’s door, were like knocking at a tomb.

Do not write.”

Mme. Valmore’s nature was eminently feminine. Her heart was her guide. She

was a being of impulse and sympathy. But her instincts were so delicate

and true that they were to her what reason and philosophy are to colder

natures. Her imagination was thoroughly Catholic. It is only Catholicity

that develops souls of such tender grace and beauty, and she was brought

up under its influences. A cheerful piety, Catholic in tone, seems to have

pervaded her life, and consoled and sustained her in its many dark hours.

She loved to pray in the deserted aisle of some shadowy church full of

mystery and peace. “She had her Christ—the Christ of the poor and

forsaken, the prisoner and the slave, the Christ of the Magdalen and the

good Samaritan, a Christ of the future of whom she herself has sung in one

of her sweetest strains:

‘He whose pierced hands have broken so many chains,’ ”

—a line that appeals to all who have sinned and been forgiven!

In her last years she thus writes: “I see at an immense distance the

Christ who shall come again. His breath is moving over the crowd. He opens

his arms wide, but there are no more nails—no more for ever!”

Her devotion to Mary is constantly peeping out in her letters. After

visiting a church at Brussels, she writes thus to her daughter: “To‐day we

saw the black Virgin with the Child Jesus also black like his mother.

These Madonnas wring my heart with a thousand reminiscences. They are

nothing in the way of art, but they are so associated with my earliest and

sweetest faiths that I positively adore those stiff pink‐lined veils and

wreaths of perennial flowers made of cambric so stout that all the winds

of heaven could never cause a leaf to flutter.”

She writes her brother: “Lift up your hat when you pass the Church of

Notre Dame, and lay upon its threshold the first spring flowers you find.”

One of the most touching features of her life is her devotedness to this

brother, an old soldier and pensioner in the hospital at Douai, whom she

aided out of her own scanty purse, and still more by the moral support she

was continually giving him in the most delicate manner; trying to ennoble

his unfortunate past so as to give him dignity in his own eyes—a thing so

often forgotten in our intercourse with those who are in danger of losing

their self‐respect.

Mme. Valmore’s charity and sympathies were not confined to her own

kindred. They responded to every appeal. The condemned criminal and

prisoners of every degree excited the compassion of her heart. At a time

of great distress at Lyons, she says she is “ashamed to have food and fire

and two garments when so many poor creatures have none.” And yet she seems

not to have had too many of the comforts of life herself. One Christmas

eve she speaks of kneeling on her humble hearth—“a hearth where there is

not much fire save that of her own loving, anxious heart—” to pray.

It is sad to see a woman with such a refined, poetical nature, and a heart

sensitive to the last degree, condemned to a fate so chilling and unkind.

But she never lost courage. Living in narrow lodgings, and on limited

means, she contrived to give a certain artistic air to everything around

her, and received her visitors with polished ease and self‐possession,

hiding her griefs under the grace of her manner and the vivacity of her

conversation. Her courage and fortitude were admirable under adverse

circumstances and such afflictions as the loss of her daughters. No book

not strictly religious could teach a more forcible lesson of patient,

cheerful endurance—how “to suffer and be strong.” The work is elegantly

translated, and is a welcome addition to the lives of celebrated French

ladies already issued by the same publishers.

THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By James Anthony

Froude, M.A. In 2 vols. Vol. I. New York: Scribner, Armstrong &

Co. 1873.

We have here the first volume of a new and very elaborate work by the

adventurous historian of England, and chivalrous champion of Henry VIII.

and his daughter Elizabeth. It might perhaps have been hoped that enough

had been said of Mr. Froude in these columns, and that our readers had

done with him. His reputation as a faithful historian had been sorely

damaged, and indeed irretrievably ruined, by several indignant critics in

England, in Scotland, and in Ireland, as well as in the United States (by

the short, sharp and decisive onslaught of Mr. Meline); so that it has

been an actual surprise to the literary world to find him once more

tempting Providence in a new book, heralded and advertised by a course of

lectures in New York. But this is the nature of the man: he must surprise

and startle, or he dies; he must provoke the most wondering and angry

contradiction and comment, and gratify the small feminine spite that

possesses him, provided he can sting and wound like a hornet. For him, to

scold is to live.

The present volume, although entitled _The English in Ireland in the

Eighteenth Century_, is in fact occupied, for more than two hundred pages,

with an account of the dealings of his country with Ireland during the

XVIIth century, and presents his views of Irish history at the notable

periods of the insurrection—or alleged “massacre”—in 1641, as well as the

short reign of James II. The narrative ends at the time of the small

French invasion under Thurot, shortly after the middle of the XVIIIth

century; leaving Still to be treated the whole era of the Volunteering,

the Insurrection of ’98, and the Union, so‐called. Indeed, if the author

carry forward his subject into the present century, as he has carried it

backward into the one before the last, he will have the great famines to

deal with, and the multitudinous emigration; so that we may expect a vast

picture, covering the whole canvas, portraying from the strictly English

point of view that ghastly history in its full perspective. The Froude

theory is, on the whole, quite simple; nothing can be more easily

understood. It is, in few words, that the English nation having been

“forced by situation and circumstances” to take charge of Ireland and its

people, when it suited the English to change their religion, or to come

back to it, or to change it again, they were bound in duty to compel the

Irish to change along with them each time, by means of pains and

penalties, from heavy fines to transportation and death on the gallows;

also that the English having a strong wish to possess themselves of all

the lands of Ireland, everything was lawful and right to effect that

object. The reader will remark, with surprise (and the more surprise, the

better for Froude), that in his lectures lately delivered in New York,

which were a kind of abstract of the work then in press, he did not

venture _to say_ before an intelligent audience of freemen some of the

things which he has dared to print in the book then just ready to burst

upon the world. For example, he did not say, even before the “Christian

young men,” such words as these which are found in the book (p. 609):

“The consent of man was not asked when he was born into the world: his

consent will not be asked when his time comes to die. _As little_ has his

consent to do with the laws which, while he lives, he is bound to obey.”

This sentiment he perhaps thought it unnecessary to enunciate here;

because, in fact, he intended it solely for the Irish, not by any means

for the Americans, although it reads like a universal maxim for the human

race. Again, he did not think it necessary to say in so plain words what

he has laid down clearly enough in this passage (p. 213):

“No government need _keep terms_ with such a creed [meaning the Catholic

Church] when there is power to abolish it. To call the repression of

opinions which had issued so many times in blood and revolt _by the name

of religions persecution_ is mere abuse of words.”

ELEVATIONS POÉTIQUES ET RELIGIEUSES. Par Marie Jenna. Deuxième

Edit. 2 vols. Paris: Adrien le Clerc et Cie. 1872.

As the eye lingers upon a beautiful landscape, spring clad and fair in the

clear light of the new‐risen sun; as the ear loiters unwilling to lose the

last echoed link of some simple melting melody; as the hand tarries loth

to quit the gentle grasp that speaks unspoken sympathy, so have

we—reluctant to lose such fair pictures, such moving lays, such deep and

tender feeling—lingered and loitered and tarried with Marie Jenna, “the

Poet of the Vosges.” Gifted with the nice perception of a true poet, Marie

Jenna clothes the simplest ideas in language of such rare delicacy, so

fresh, tender, vivid, and withal so musical, that mind, heart, eye, and

ear, all are at once engaged. A bird, a butterfly, a flower, gains new

interest in her hands; she flings a grace around it, she vests it with a

dignity it never had before; she makes it live again. Take, for instance,

the opening stanzas of “Le Papillon”:

“Pourquoi t’approcher en silence

Et menacer mon vol joyeux?

Par quelle involontaire offense

Ai‐je pu déplaire à tes yeux?

“Je suis la vivante étincelle

Qui monte et descend tour à tour;

La fleur à qui Dieu donne une aile,

Un souffle, un regard, un amour.

“Je suis le frère de la rose;

Elle me cache aux importuns,

Puis sur son cœur je me repose

Et je m’enivre de parfums.

“Ma vie est tout heureuse et pure,

Pourquoi désires‐tu ma mort?

Oh! dis‐moi, roi de la nature,

Serais‐tu jaloux de mon sort?

“Va, je sais bien que tu t’inclines

Souvent pour essuyer des pleurs,

Que tes yeux comptent les épines

Où je ne vois rien que des fleurs.

“Je sais que parfois ton visage

Se trouble et s’assombrit soudain,

Lorsqu’en vain je cherche un nuage

Au fond de l’horizon serein.

“Mais Celui dont la main divine

A daigné nous former tous deux,

Pour moi parfuma la colline,

Et de loin te montra les cieux.

“Il me fit deux ailes de flamme,

A moi, feu follet du printemps;

Pour toi, son fils, il fit une âme

Plus grande que le firmament.

“Ecoute ma voix qui t’implore,

Loin de moi détourne tes pas...

Laisse moi vivre un jour encore,

O toi qui ne finiras pas!

“Mon bonheur à moi, c’est la vie,

La liberté sous le ciel bleu,

Le ruisseau, l’amour sans envie:

Le tien ... c’est le secret de Dieu.”

What can be fresher or more charming than this naïve, earnest appeal for

life and liberty? And again, in “Pour un Oiseau,” beginning with:

“Il est à toi, c’est vrai ... Frère, veux tu qu’il meure?

Sa beauté, sa chanson, tout est là ... dans ta main;

Et l’arbuste où sa voix gazouillait tout à l’heure

Au bosquet, si tu veux, sera muet demain.

“Tu le tiens: sa faiblesse à ta force le livre;

Mais aussi ta pitié peut le laisser aller;

Ne le fais pas mourir! il est si bon de vivre

Lorsque l’été commence et qu’on peut s’envoler,”

we find the same delicacy of thought, the same rippling, flowing language;

and what joyousness and how cheery it sounds: _il est si bon de vivre_.

But Marie Jenna strikes deeper chords, awakes more solemn strains, than

these; and through them all, the graver as the lighter, binding them in

one harmonious whole, there sings out the same clear note of firm,

enlightened faith that never wavers; it penetrates each thing she handles,

giving that breadth and largeness to her field of view that it alone can

give. In some beautiful stanzas, “Beati qui lugeant,” she draws near to

one bowed down with sorrow, and fearlessly, yet oh! how tenderly touching

the wound because she knows its cure, she speaks:

“Va, ton sein cache en vain le glaive qui le blesse:

J’ai compris ton silence et j’ai prié pour toi.

Laisse aller ta fierté comme un poids qui t’oppresse,

Et pleure devant moi.

“Il est, je le sais bien, des jours où la souffrance

Trouve en sa solitude une âpre volupté;

Et le monde léger voit passer en silence

Sa pâle majesté.

“Et la main d’un ami s’arrètant incertaine,

N’ose écarter les plis de son voile de deuil.

Il est des maux si grands, que la parole humaine

Expire sur le seuil.

“Mais deux jours sont passés; il est temps que je vienne;

Oh! laisse un front d’ami penché sur ta douleur!

Ne te détourne pas: Mets ta main dans la mienne,

Ton âme sur mon cœur.

“Si je ne t’apportais qu’une amitié fidèle,

Mes pas avec respect s’éloigneraient d’ici.

J’attendrais que la tienne enfin se souvint d’elle,

Mais j’ai souffert aussi...

“Je ne te dirai point cette vaine parole

Que la douleur accueille en son muet dédain.

Non, ce que j’ai pour toi, c’est un mot qui console,

C’est un secret divin.”

Already we seem to see awaked attention, a gleam of hope flit across the

stern, wan face that marks such helpless, hopeless misery; now softening

the hard, cold look that bid defiance to all sorrow, repelled all

sympathy; now changing it to one of anxious longing and of mute entreaty

for the proffered gift, _le mot qui console_. And see, or is it fancy

only, or are there really tears now falling, “gemlike, the last drops of

the exhausted storm”? Space forbids us to give it in its fulness, this

_secret divin_, to curtail it would spoil it: so we send the reader to the

original, and would ask him only if in the last stanza he does not hear

two voices singing:

“Heureux les affligés! dit la Vérité même.

Heureux, c’est vrai, mon Dieu! quand vous avez parlé.

Nous voulons bien souffrir si le bonheur suprême,

Est d’être consolé.”

Then look at this exquisite little picture, “L’Enfant Ressuscité.” Rarely

have we met with one more pathetic. It is very delicately painted, with

shades so subtile that, in the simplicity of the whole, we are apt to

overlook them. And here also we have a glimpse of that reverential love

for childhood that is by no means the least characteristic trait of Marie

Jenna:

“Elle avait tant gémi, sa mère, et tant pleuré!

Tant pressé sur son sein le front décoloré,

Que dans le corps glacé l’âme était revenue,

Et qu’en bénissant Dieu, palpitante, éperdue,

Comme un trésor qu’on cache elle avait emporté

Dans ses deux bras tremblants l’enfant ressuscité!

Trois mois s’étaient passés depuis.....mais, chose étrange!

On eut dit que le ciel avait fait un échange.

L’enfant penchait son front comme un bouton flétri,

Et depuis ces trois mois, jamais il n’avait ri.

Il préférait aux jeux l’ombre silencieuse;

Sa mère en l’embrassant n’osait pas être heureuse....

“Des volets entr’ouverts s’élancent des chansons;

Dans les clochers frémit la voix des carillons.

Ecoute, mon Louis, ces chants, ces joyeux rires....

Vois; c’est le jour de l’an; dis ce que tu désires.

Chaque enfant pour étrenne a des jouets nouveaux.

En veux‐tu de pareils? en veux‐tu de plus beaux?

Veux‐tu ce bélier gris qu’on traîne et qui va paître

Au printemps dans les prés l’herbe qui vient naître?

Mais regarde plutôt; des pinceaux, des couleurs,

Qui d’un papier tout blanc font un bouquet de fleurs.

Oh! vois donc ce ballon de laine tricolore

Qui s’élève et retombe et se relève encore!

Tu n’aimes pas courir..... Que puis‐je te donner?

Dis.....ta mère à présent ne sait plus deviner.

Veux‐tu ce sabre d’or qui déjà ferait croire

Que mon petit Louis médite une victoire?

Aimes‐tu ce chalet d’un long toit recouvert?

Mais non....qu’en ferais‐tu? Veux‐tu ce livre ouvert,

Où près de chaque histoire on regarde une image,

Ou l’on rit, où l’on pleure, où l’on devient plus sage?

Ah! voici des oiseaux! tu les aimerais mieux!

Les oiseaux sont vivants; tu les ferais heureux!

Si tu voulais des lisandes roses fleuries,

J’en saurais bien trouver, Louis, pour que tu ries.

Réponds; je t’aime tant! n’oses‐tu me parler?

Tu pleurais ce matin; je veux te consoler.

Dis‐moi ce doux secret pendant que je l’embrasse.

Que veux‐tu, mon Louis? Et l’enfant, à voix basse:

Des ailes pour m’envoler!”

No one can fail to be struck with the sudden stillness that follows the

mother’s anxious striving to drive away the cloud that would hang over her

little one; with the awe and fear, too, that fill her heart; with the

mystery in the whispered answer of the strange mysterious child given back

from death in answer to her passionate prayer. It sets us thinking of that

other mother whose grief so touched the Master’s heart that he spoke the

word, “and he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And he delivered

him to his mother.” Did that young man go home so grave, with never a

smile to light his face, so strangely altered, that, after the first burst

of gladness, his mother, clasping him to her bosom, dared not rejoice?

Of the more serious pieces, perhaps not one equals in force “La plus

grande Douleur.” It is the old tale, always new though so oft repeated:

the old tale that startles, shocks, and brings sharp pain as for the first

time it comes home to each one, telling that that strong bond which binds

friends closer, draws classes nearer, makes nations firmer, has snapped

and riven two hearts asunder; that the newly‐awakened intellect first

meeting early faith has turned aside, has chosen a road far other than

that on which till now both friends had travelled hand in hand; that that

“little superficial knowledge of philosophy that inclines man’s mind to

atheism” has come between them like an icy barrier, chilling the old

friendship and making everything so dark and strange which before was

warmth and light between them; and with effect so drear, so piercing, too,

and sharp, that the unchanged heart feels any pain than that would be

light to bear:

“Oui mon Dieu! nous pouvons, sans que l’âme succombe,

Laisser notre bonheur à ce passé qui tombe;

Nous pouvons au matin former un rêve pur,

Tout d’amour et de paix, tout de flamme et d’azur,

Puis livrer les débris de sa beauté ravie

A ce vent du désert, qui laisse notre vie

Sans fleur et sans épi comme un champ moissonné;

Meliner notre front pâle et découronné,

Et devenir semblable à cette pauvre plante

Qui n’est pas morte encore, et qui n’est plus vivante,

Nous pouvons voir gisant sur un lit de douleur,

Celui qui nous restait, l’ami consolateur,

Compter chaque moment de son heure dernière,

Poser nos doigts tremblants sur sa froide paupière,

Et baiser son visage, et nous dire; Il est mort!

Nous le pouvons, mon Dieu! Parfois le cœur est fort.

“Mais aimer une autre âme, et la trouver si belle

Qu’on frémit de bonheur en se penchant vers elle,

Puis un jour contempler d’un regard impuissant

Sur sa beauté céleste une ombre qui descend;

De cette âme où passaient les souffles de la grâce,

Sentir parfois monter quelque chose qui glace,

Douter, prier tous bas, pleurer d’anxiété,

Craindre, espérer..... Longtemps marcher à son côté

Sans oser voir au fond.... Puis un jour où l’on ose,

Reculer de partout où le regard se pose,

Où fut le feu sacré toucher de froids débris,

Murmurer en tremblant un langage incompris

Où Dieu passa, chercher sa lumineuse trace,

Et n’y trouver plus rien ... rien! pas même un soupir,

Pas un cri douloureux vers l’aube qui s’efface,

C’est trop souffrir!”

The two volumes before us contain many poems, both short and long, of such

great freshness and beauty, so full of original turns and delicate

touches, that it is difficult to choose from amongst them. However, we

have said enough to give a fair notion of Marie Jenna’s style, and quite

enough to show that it is her own, with its own peculiar charm. And so our

task is done. If it be said that, having uttered only praise and found no

fault, we have but half fulfilled the critic’s task, we answer that we

never meant the tone of criticism. All know that man’s most perfect work

is not without its blemish; but in our first walk through so fair a

garden, meeting new beauties on every side, it would have been ungracious

in us to have sought defects: that task we leave to others. Ours has been

to welcome, and to tell of fresh flowers of much loveliness offered to us

from across the sea, with the certainty that no one can read her

“Elévations Poétiques” without feeling that he is indebted for some real

enjoyment to the charming “Poet of the Vosges.”

THE TWO YSONDES, AND OTHER VERSES. By Edward Ellis. London:

Pickering. 1872.

It takes but a short while to read this thin volume; nor will any one with

a taste for true poetry find the perusal a task. The author undoubtedly

possesses “the vision and the faculty divine,” and belongs to the

subjective school of which Tennyson is king—a school peculiarly capable of

teaching a subjective age. The more the pity, then, say we, that Mr. Ellis

should have made his chief poem, “The Two Ysondes,” hang on the idea that

love is fate. His “Two Ysondes” are the two “Isolts” of Tennyson; but

Tennyson does not attempt to excuse the passion of Mark’s wife for

Tristrem. Our author makes it originate in Tristrem and Ysonde having

“drunk,” “by an evil chance,” a philtre which had been placed “in

Tristrem’s charge” as “a wedding‐gift for Ysonde and King Mark” (p. 7).

Now, it may be said that this does away with the guilty aspect of the

romance, and throws over the whole a veil of faëry. Yes; but we insist

that it is, therefore, the more mischievous, as teaching the doctrine of

fatality.

Neither is this the only, or even the most, objectionable feature of the

poem; for, together with descriptions of emotions and caresses which would

be chaste if the theme were lawful love, all idea of sin is kept away, and

especially as regards its eternal consequences. There is not a word about

remorse during life, or of repentance at death. But Tristrem dies in

despair of beholding the object of his passion; and Ysonde, in turn,

expires on the breast of her dead lover, declaring that she will “go with

him _beyond the bars of fate_.”

Now, we should not have troubled ourselves to make these strictures but

that Mr. Ellis shows powers for the misuse of which he will be very

responsible. Moreover, as is clear from some of his shorter lyrics,

particularly “At a Shrine,” his mind has a religious bent, with (of

course) Catholic sympathies.

With regard to his verse, it is less Tennysonic than his thought. Better

if, while originating metres (with which we have no quarrel whatever), he

modelled both his lines and his diction on the peerless accuracy of

England’s laureate.

Books And Pamphlets Received.

From KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: The Money God. By M. A.

Quinton.

From LYNCH, COLE & MEEHAN, New York: English Misrule in Ireland: A

Course of Lectures. By V. Rev. T. N. Burke, O.P. 12mo. pp. 299.

From J. A. MCGEE, New York: “Thumping English Lies”: Froude’s

Slanders on Ireland and Irishmen. With Preface and Notes by Col.

J. E. McGee, and Wendell Phillips’ Views of the Situation. 12mo.

pp. 224.—Half Hours with Irish Authors: Selections from Griffin,

Lover, Carleton, and Lever. 12mo. pp. 330.

From A. D. F. RANDOLPH, New York: Christ at the Door. By Susan H.

Ward. 12mo, pp. 232.

From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia: Expiation. By Mrs.

Julia C. R. Dorr.

From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: The Romance of the Harem. By Mrs.

A. H. Leonowens. 12mo. pp. viii.‐277.

From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: What Katy Did. By Susan

Coolidge.—Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. 12mo.

pp. xvi.‐320.—The World Priest. By Leopold Schefer. 12mo. pp.

xv.‐371.

From THE AUTHOR: Sermon at the Month’s Mind of the Most Rev. M. J.

Spalding, D.D., Preached at the Church of the American College

(Rome). By the V. Rev. Dr. Chatard, Rector. Paper, 8vo. pp. 30.

From E. H. BUTLER & CO., Philadelphia: The Etymological Reader. By

Epes Sargent and Amasa May.

From S. D. KIERNAN, Clerk, Department of Public Instruction:

Report of the Board of Public Instruction of the City and County

of New York, for the year ending Dec. 31, 1871; with Addenda to

May, 1872.—Manual of the Department of Public Instruction, 1871‐2.

18mo, pp. 262.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Sermons by the Rev. H. R. Hawes,

M.A. 12mo, pp. xiv. 347.

From AMERICAN BAPTIST SOCIETY, Philadelphia: The Baptist Short

Method, with Inquirers and Opponents. By Rev. C. T. Hiscox, D.D.

18mo, pp. 216.

From HURD & HOUGHTON, New York: The City of God and the Church

Makers. By R. Abbey. 12mo, pp. xx. 315.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London (New York: Sold by The Catholic

Publication Society): The Life of Monseigneur Berneux, Bishop of

Capse. Vicar‐Apostolic of Corea. By M. l’Abbé Pichon. Translated

from the French, with a Preface by Lady Herbert.

From JOHN HODGES, London: (New York: Sold by The Catholic

Publication Society): The Lives of the Saints. By Rev. S. Baring‐

Gould, M.A. March.

From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: His Level Best, and Other

Stories. By Edward E. Hale.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 96.—MARCH, 1873.

The Relation Of The Rights Of Conscience To The Authority Of The State

Under The Laws Of Our Republic.

(A LECTURE BEFORE A CATHOLIC SOCIETY OF S. PATRICK’S CHURCH, NEW HAVEN,

CONN., OCT. 20, 1872.)

REVEREND GENTLEMEN AND MY FRIENDS: Before I speak particularly of the

relation of the rights of conscience to the laws existing in our republic,

I consider it necessary to make a few preliminary remarks and to lay down

a few principles regarding the nature of law and government in general,

and the relation which they hold to religion. I shall best illustrate the

difficulties which envelop this subject, and also give a clue to the way

by which it may be extricated, by making a supposition.

Let us suppose that a large number of men come together for the purpose of

founding a new state with all its institutions of civil society and

government. Some of these are Christians, among whom are Quakers; others

are Mohammedans, Hindoos, Thugs, idolaters practising human sacrifices,

and communists. It is necessary that they should agree and concur with

each other in regard to the rights which respect life, liberty, property,

the pursuit of happiness in general and particular, and the means of

protecting all these rights, otherwise no society or government is

possible. But this cannot be done by any general consent among these

different parties. The Christian holds the sacredness of life and

property, and the force of the law of monogamy. The Mohammedan rejects

this last, and maintains the right to a plurality of wives. The Hindoo

regards it as a sacred right and duty of a widow to offer herself on the

funeral pile of her husband, that her spirit may rejoin his spirit in

another world. The Thug considers it a most holy and meritorious act to

murder as many persons as possible in honor of the cruel goddess whom he

worships; while the idolater looks on the sacrifice of children or

captives as the means of placating his offended deities and procuring

success in war. The Quaker will not allow of any bloodshed whatever,

either for avenging crime or repelling aggression. And the communist would

abolish all rights of property, reconstruct society on a wholly different

plan from that which has heretofore existed, and banish all religion as

noxious to the well‐being of man.

It is evident, therefore, that society cannot be constituted without

religion, and that society constituted with religion, and on the basis of

religious ideas, requires some agreement in these religious ideas, and the

incorporation of some fixed and definite religious principles into its

very structure and conformation.

If we consult history, we shall find that no state or perfect society has

ever been established on the atheistic principle. Every one that has ever

existed has had a religious basis, and all political and social

constitutions have proceeded from religious ideas and been founded upon

them. The civilization of Christendom in general has received its specific

form from the influence of the Christian religion moulding and modifying

in the Eastern world its previous and ancient laws, and in the West to a

great extent creating a new order out of a pre‐existing state of imperfect

civilization or semi‐barbarism. To this Christendom we belong, and the

laws of our republic are a product of this Christian civilization. This

cannot be denied, considered as a mere historical fact respecting our

origin; for we are the offspring of Christian Europe, and in the beginning

distinctly professed to be a Christian people. But it may be said that we

have changed, have undergone a political regeneration as a nation, and in

the process of transformation have thrown out all religion from our

organic constitution as a republic. By our organic constitution and the

laws of our republic I intend not merely the federal constitution and laws

which bind together the United States, but also the laws and constitutions

of the states, the _tout ensemble_ of our common and statute laws of every

kind, which form the regulating code of our whole society as one political

people. And in regard to this organic law, I affirm that we do not form an

exception among human societies to the universal rule I have above laid

down, that the state in political society is based on religious ideas.

In support of this proposition, I cite the opinion of a most competent and

impartial judge, Prof. Leo, of Halle, and borrow from him a definition of

that which constitutes our state religion. This great historian, in the

introductory portion of his _Universal History_, where he is discussing

the universal principles which underlie all political constitutions,

analyzes in a masterly way the elements of our own system of government;

and he points out that which is the religious element, namely, the rule or

law of morals, derived from the common law of Christendom, or a certain

standard of moral obligation, conformity to which is enforced by the state

with all its coercive power. All churches or voluntary associations which

include this moral code or religion of the state within their own specific

religious law possess complete equality and liberty before the civil law.

With their doctrines, rites, regulations, and practices the state does not

interfere, and gives them protection from any infringement upon their

rights on the part of any private members of the community. But let them,

on pretext of doctrine, of ecclesiastical law, of liberty of conscience,

or even of any divine revelation, violate by any overt acts the rule of

moral obligation recognized by the state, they come into direct collision

with her authority, and must suffer the consequences. So far, therefore,

as concerns that portion of Christian law, namely, the moral precepts of

the Christian religion, which are incorporated into our civil law, all

churches are in vital union with the state. Even Jews, because they hold,

with Christians, the decalogue; and societies based on purely natural

religion, because they hold the law of nature, are in the same vital

union, so far, with the state. And beyond this, within the limits which

this law sanctions or permits, all these churches or societies are in

union with the state, as lawful, voluntary associations over which her

protection is extended. But let a Mohammedan community be formed among

citizens or resident foreigners, and attempt the introduction of polygamy,

our laws require the civil magistrate to interfere and suppress by force

this exercise of the privileges granted by their prophet. Let a community

of Hindoos, Thugs, or idolaters establish itself within our bounds, and

commence any of the murderous practices of those false religions, and the

gibbet or the sword would be called on to execute vengeance upon them. We

have in our borders the sect of Mormons, whose doctrines and practices are

contrary to our fundamental laws and subversive of them. Obviously, we

cannot, consistently with our safety, our well‐being, or our essential

principles of political and social order, tolerate the enormities of

Mormonism, much less permit the formation of a Mormon state. The right to

life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, must be exercised

in conformity to certain laws, which are to the state as her axioms or

first principles, and are held as inviolable. And the exercise of this

right, in this due and legitimate manner, must not be hindered by force

and violence under any pretext. Therefore no pretence of conscience or

religion can avail to cover any violation of law by an individual or a

society, or any such infringement on the rights of others as has been just

alluded to. All this presupposes that the state recognizes and bases its

laws upon certain fixed ideas concerning the rights which God has really

granted to men, and the obligations which he has imposed upon them. But

this has also been distinctly and expressly declared by a body of men,

representing the whole political people of the nascent republic which was

afterwards developed into the United States of North America. The

declaration was made in the very act which constituted the United Colonies

free and independent states, and which was published to the world on the

fourth day of July, 1776. In the first sentence of this Declaration of

Independence, the Congress affirms that the people of the United States

have judged it necessary “to assume among the powers of the earth the

separate and equal station to which THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD

entitle them.” This august body then proceeds to lay down the foundation

and basis of the entire argument of the document, as follows: “We hold

these truths to be self‐evident, that all men are _created equal_; that

they are _endowed by their Creator_ with certain inalienable _rights_;

that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to

secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” It then

proceeds to argue that those governments which fail to fulfil this end,

and pursue a contrary end by invading and destroying these rights, forfeit

their powers; and makes an application of this principle to the _casus

belli_ between the colonies and the British crown.

In this most momentous crisis, amid the very birth‐pangs of our infant

republic, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the

origin of all right, all law, all political organization, all government,

and specifically of those which constitute the United States a separate

political people, is to be found in the _lex æterna_, the law of God; that

is to say, it is in religion. For what is religion? According to Cicero’s

definition, it is a bond which binds men to God and to each other. This is

the very meaning of the word, which comes from _ligare_, to bind, whence

we have the terms ligament, ligature, and obligation. Human right is,

therefore, something conferred by God. The right to govern must come from

God, for we are created equal, and therefore without any natural right of

one over another to give him law. The rights of the governed come from

God, and are therefore inviolable; but liberty is the unhindered

possession and exercise of the rights conferred by God, under the

protection of lawful government; and liberty of conscience is freedom to

obey the law of the Creator, and to enjoy the blessings which he has

imparted to the creature by that law. These rights and liberties belong to

each individual man as a grant from the Creator, which he can maintain in

the face of any government, be it that of a monarch, of an aristocracy, or

of a majority of the people. If a monarch, or one who executes by

delegated power the sovereignty of a majority, invades the right of an

individual, he violates a law. This law can be no other than that of the

Sovereign Lord of the universe. There is, therefore, a higher law than

human law, a higher sovereignty than human sovereignty, to which both

governments and the governed are subject and amenable, and which are

acknowledged as supreme by this American Republic of which we are

citizens. And as another proof of this recognition, I may cite the law of

oaths, or the solemn appeal to Almighty God as the Supreme Judge, by which

a religious sanction is given to judicial testimony and the engagements of

public officers.

There is, therefore, in our republic a religion of the state, but one

embodied in civil and political society only, which leaves to citizens

perfect freedom to organize churches and act out what they profess to be

the dictates of their individual consciences, provided they do not violate

the laws which constitute the religion of the state.

Under this law, the Catholic Church possesses in essential matters

theoretical liberty and equality of rights with the various religious

bodies existing in the country, with some trivial exceptions to be found

in the laws of some of the states. To a great extent, this theoretical

liberty is also a practical liberty, really possessed and enjoyed, and

only occasionally invaded. This is a remark which is quite specially

verified in the instance of your own state of Connecticut.

This has not always been the case either here or in other portions of our

country. Catholics have not always enjoyed freedom of conscience and

liberty of religion. If we go back to the early history of the colonies

which became afterwards the United States, we shall find that their

founders did not intend to grant that liberty which now exists. In some of

these colonies, the Church of England, in others the Church of the

Puritans, and in those of Spain and France, which were admitted at a later

period, the Catholic Church was the established religion of the state. In

all the English colonies the Catholic religion was proscribed and

persecuted. The Puritan fathers of New England intended to establish a

theocracy. There was a strict union of church and state under their old

colonial governments. Only professed members and communicants of the

church could vote, and the legislatures regulated the affairs of parishes,

and decided doctrinal questions. Our ancestors therefore had a Christian

ideal of the state before their minds which they attempted to make an

actual reality, and which they dreamed should become the kingdom of Christ

our Lord upon the earth which the prophets and apostles foretold. The

attempt failed from causes which lay within the bosom of the community

itself, and not because of any external force; and the same community

which had by tacit agreement or positive statutes enacted the original law

combining a specific form of religion with the state, repealed the same by

its own free will. In the Puritan state, the first change came about by

the multiplication of baptized persons who never became communicants. The

number of citizens who were thus deprived of the highest rights of

citizenship was felt to be a grave anomaly and inconvenience in a

democratic state, and caused the adoption of the half‐way covenant. By

this arrangement, those baptized persons who publicly acknowledged their

baptism were considered as quasi‐members of the church, entitled to all

political rights. When, in the course of time, the number of unbaptized

persons increased, and other sects of Protestantism began to flourish, new

changes were brought about by which in the end the connection between the

state and the Puritan Church was dissolved. Similar causes produced

similar effects in other parts of the country, and, so far as the federal

union was concerned, there was obviously from the first an utter

impossibility of making any specific form of Christianity the religion of

the entire republic. Thus, by the very law which the necessity of the case

imposed upon the separate states and the entire federal republic, that

liberty of religion became established under which the Catholic Church

could come in upon a footing of perfect equality with the other religious

denominations. Catholics have not come into New England and Connecticut

either to demand religious liberty as a right or to beg toleration as a

favor. We have not obtained our rights or privileges by any agitation or

revolution stirred up by ourselves in our own interest. The work was done

before there was a number of Catholics worth estimating either in

Connecticut or New England. It was done by the old manor‐born citizens for

their own advantage and the welfare of the state.

So also, in regard to the political privileges conceded to foreign‐born

immigrants. These are, in their nature, distinct and separate from the

rights of conscience conceded to Catholics. Yet they have an actual

connection, arising from the fact that so very large a proportion of our

Catholic citizens are of foreign birth, and so large a proportion of our

adopted citizens are of the Catholic religion; and therefore, in the

public mind, these two matters are very much blended together, and even

confused with each other. It is, therefore, quite fitting that I should

speak of the two things in relation with each other. And I remark on this

point that the privileges possessed by the Catholics of this state who are

of foreign birth, by which they are made equal to the native‐born citizens

in regard to both religious and political rights, have not been extorted

by themselves, but freely conceded for the good of the state and of all

citizens generally. The original inhabitants had the power to exclude the

Catholic religion from all toleration. They had the power and the right to

exclude all foreigners from the privileges of native‐born citizens, or to

make the conditions of being naturalized more stringent than they now are.

They took another course, having in view their own good and the well‐being

of the state, and Catholics as well as foreigners have profited by it.

Catholics have profited by the religious liberty conceded to citizens,

which is something essentially distinct from the privileges conceded to

residents of foreign origin. And in point of fact, although the extent and

prosperity of the church in Connecticut have proceeded principally and in

very great measure from the immigration of Irish Catholics into the state,

yet its rights, and liberty, and equality do not depend on anything

necessarily and essentially but the religious liberty granted to citizens,

and which is the birthright of Catholics as well as Protestants who are

born on the soil of the republic.

It would be easy to show, in respect to our country at large, that the

first beginnings of the Catholic Church have an intertwined radical grasp

with the first fibres of national life in our own soil; and that there is

a truly glorious Catholic chapter in the history of the United States. We

can find something of this even in the history of this state. The first

Mass celebrated in Connecticut was said in an open field within the bounds

of Wethersfield, by the chaplain of the French troops who came here to aid

our fathers in fighting the battle for independence. The first Catholic

sermon in English was preached by the Rev. Dr. Matignon, of Boston, in the

Centre Congregational Church of Hartford, at the invitation of the Rev.

Dr. Strong, the pastor of the church. The first Catholic church was formed

at Hartford in 1827, by Mr. Taylor, a respectable citizen of that town,

who was a convert, and who organized the few Irish, French, and German

Catholic residents in the place into a congregation, which assembled on

Sunday for worship. In 1830, Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, a native of

Maryland, purchased and blessed a small frame church, over which he placed

F. Fitton, a native of Boston, who was the pastor of the entire state, and

who is still actively engaged in the duties of the priesthood at Boston.

During the first five years of his ministry at Hartford, F. Fitton

received eighty adult converts, who, with their families, made a

considerable portion of his little flock, since, in 1835, there were only

730 Catholics in the whole state. The first bishop of the diocese of

Hartford was a native of New England. The present distinguished prelate

who rules the church in Connecticut is a native of Pennsylvania; and of

the 150,000 Catholics under his jurisdiction nearly one‐half must be

natives of the state or of the United States. We have, then, some 67,000

native‐born Catholics in this state, most of whom are native‐born

Yankees.(230) If you wish to see a fair sample of these, you have only to

visit St. Patrick’s Church at nine o’clock of a Sunday morning, where you

will see the church filled with them, and to go into the school‐house

behind the church any day in the week, where you will find 1,100 of these

young Catholic Yankees busily conning their lessons, and learning to love

God and their native Columbia. All these have their liberty of conscience

and their other rights as citizens secured to them by their birthright,

and therefore, on this ground alone, the Catholic Church is equal to the

Protestant churches before the law.

And as regards foreign‐born citizens, the state having conceded to them

equal rights to those of native‐born citizens, their conscience or

religion is included among these rights. The original concession was a

privilege, but, having been once conceded, it has become a right. And it

was conceded, as I have said, for the good of the state which conceded it,

and in view of a compensation or equivalent which the party of the grantor

expected to receive. You did not intrude yourselves upon the soil of the

state, or come uninvited to beg food and shelter. You were invited, and

that not from motives of pure philanthropy. Doubtless many had a kind and

philanthropic feeling in the matter, but the prime and urgent motive was

that you were needed and wanted for your labor. You were told that your

services were wanted for the upbuilding of the material prosperity of the

state, and, as an inducement to come, you were offered citizenship, and

with that, freedom to bring your religion with you and enjoy it. This was

a favor to you without question; but not a purely gratuitous one. It was

something advanced to you, but for which you were expected to make a

future compensation. And you have well purchased your rights, not only by

what you have done in the peaceful arts of industry, but by fighting for

your adopted country and shedding your blood for its integrity and the

consolidation of its power. You have fought for the state, and for the

United States, and, therefore, the compact has been sealed and made

inviolable by your blood.

Now, what is the point I have been coming to and have at length reached?

It is this: that you possess the full freedom and equality of your

Catholic religion, not by toleration, but as an absolute right, inhering

in your character as citizens whether by birth or adoption. Catholics are

legally domiciled here by virtue of our laws, which recognize, maintain,

and protect their religious rights as standing on an equal footing with

those of Congregationalists or Episcopalians. No doubt, we should cherish

a kind feeling toward those who have granted these most precious and

valuable rights, and respect their similar rights. But we must not permit

ourselves to be placed in any position of inferiority to other classes of

citizens. We must insist upon the full recognition of our equality in the

state, and maintain with a manly bearing all our rights of conscience to

their fullest extent, claiming and demanding from our fellow‐citizens a

complete respect and observance of these rights, and from the state that

protection in their exercise which it is bound to give.

The Declaration of Independence avows as an article of the national creed

that the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been

conferred by the Creator, and is inalienable, and that government is

instituted for the purpose of securing to us the possession and exercise

of this right. The right to liberty includes freedom to keep the

commandments of God, to observe his law, to make use of all the means

which he has granted to us for obtaining grace, acquiring virtue, and

fulfilling the end of our creation. The right to happiness includes the

undisturbed enjoyment of all the privileges of our religion, which alone

can make us truly happy in this world, and enable us to obtain eternal

happiness. The right to liberty and happiness gives freedom, to those who

choose to do so, to devote themselves to the sacred duties of the altar

and the cloister. It gives freedom to practise all the rites and

ceremonies of religious worship, to dedicate our wealth to the service of

God and our fellow‐men, to constitute and regulate our churches according

to our own canonical law, to establish and hold possession of colleges,

seminaries, convents, and charitable institutions, to educate our

children, to profess and practise the Catholic religion wholly and

entirely. It is the end of government to secure these rights, so that, if

it fails to do so by extending an efficacious protection to their free and

peaceable exercise, it is negligent of its duty; and if it impairs or

violates them by unjust and tyrannical legislation, it commits a positive

act of wrong and usurpation. The government, the sovereign power in the

state from which the government holds its authority, are amenable to the

eternal law, as well as the individual citizen; and they may violate it by

neglecting to secure and protect, or by infringing upon, the rights of

conscience conferred by the Creator. Wherefore it is necessary to keep a

watchful guard over these rights, to proclaim and defend them loudly when

they are assailed or in danger of being impaired, and by all lawful means

to hinder any attempt to interfere with their exercise by unjust

legislation or a tyrannical exercise of authority by the governing power

and its official agents. It is a universal and constant tendency of the

sovereign power in the state to usurp unjust authority and to invade the

rights of its subjects. The liberty of the individual man and of the class

which is governed is always in danger, and, therefore, eternal vigilance

is the price of liberty. This is true where the people retains its

sovereignty, as well as where the sovereignty has been entrusted to a

monarch or an aristocracy. It is a great mistake to suppose that a popular

form of government and republican institutions are a perfect and adequate

guarantee of liberty in general or of liberty of conscience in particular.

The political majority or ascendant party can tyrannize over the minority

or weaker party and over private citizens. Magistrates elected by a

popular vote can misuse their power to oppress those whom they ought to

protect. Legislatures chosen by the people can pass the most unjust and

despotic laws. The Athenian democracy banished Aristides the Just, and

poisoned Socrates, the wisest man of pagan antiquity, the father and

founder of philosophy. In our own day we have seen the most perfidious

violation of guaranteed rights, and the most tyrannical oppression of the

religious freedom of Catholics, perpetrated by the Swiss Republic.

Catholics are always liable to oppression where they are the weaker party,

and have never any sufficient guarantee for the acquisition and

preservation of their full religious liberty, except in their own numbers

and strength, made available by their own energetic activity in their own

cause. According to the principles and spirit of our laws and political

institutions, the Catholic Church possesses in the United States a greater

degree of the liberty which belongs to her by divine right than in most

other countries. And in practice this liberty has been to a great extent

secured to her by the justice of the people at large, and the fidelity of

those to whom the administration of law has been entrusted. We may say of

Connecticut especially that, considering the old and deeply rooted

prejudice of her native inhabitants against the Catholic religion, it is

remarkable with what comity they have received and made place for the new

and mercurial race who have come in to replenish their staid old towns and

quiet villages with fresh life, and with what composure they have beheld

the multiplication of the crosses which gleam in the sunlight, on their

hilltops and in their valleys, over the churches and convents of that

which to them was a new and strange religion. Nevertheless, we cannot and

ought not to be content with anything short of that full and complete

liberty and equality which of right belong to us, and which do not in the

least degree prejudice the same rights in those who profess a different

religion. There are some things in regard to which it is our duty as well

as our right to demand a greater measure of justice than that which has

hitherto been yielded, and to exert ourselves to prevent a still further

diminution of our rights as Catholic citizens.

One of these is the right of those unfortunate persons who are inmates of

prisons, houses of reformation, and similar institutions to enjoy all the

privileges and fulfil all the duties of their religion, if they are

members of the Catholic Church. Closely connected with this is the right

of the Catholic clergy to have access to all the members of their flock,

and to exercise the functions of their sacred ministry wherever their duty

calls them, unhindered, and, if necessary, fully protected by the law and

all official persons.

Another is the complete and untrammelled freedom of Catholic education in

all its departments. The state has no right either to prescribe and

enforce religious instruction beyond those first principles of morality

and civic obligation which are the foundations of our political order, or

to interfere with the religious instruction which the Catholic conscience

demands for those who are in a state of pupilage. Far less has it the

right to prescribe an irreligious and atheistical system of instruction. I

cannot enlarge upon this most important topic in this place. I will here

simply recall what I have said of the possibility and danger of usurpation

over the rights of conscience even in popular governments, and point out a

direction from which we ourselves are threatened by this very danger. I

refer to a project entertained by some persons in high positions of

establishing under the authority of the federal government a national and

compulsory system of education, thus depriving not only Catholics, but

Protestants and Jews also, of their essential right as citizens to give

their children a religious education. I do not attribute this policy to

the party of the administration as a party, but it is most undoubtedly the

policy of a considerable and very active section of what is called the

Republican party, and is part and parcel of a scheme for modifying most

essentially the relations between the federal and the state governments,

for extending the authority of the governing power and restricting the

private liberty of citizens. The men who are possessed by these ideas are

in sympathy with that party in Europe self‐styled the progressive party.

The idea which they have of liberty is their own freedom to drive the

people on the path which they themselves have surveyed and marked out as

the straight road to happiness and well‐being, and this compulsory march

they dignify by the name of Progress. In this country, they are avowedly

not content with existing institutions and laws, but are restless to try

their improving hand upon them. They desire to secure uniformity according

to their own ideal standard, by consolidation, concentration, unification

of the legislative and executive powers in the federal government, and the

reduction of the states into the condition of subordinate, dependent

provinces in a republican empire. Education by the state and for the

state, and in accordance with so‐called progressive ideas, is an essential

part of this Prussianizing plan—an education wholly secular, from which

instruction in positive, revealed dogmas and a positive religious

discipline are wholly excluded, on the plea that all these are sectarian;

and one, of course, which is really anti‐Christian and godless—an

education like that of the University of Paris, which made a whole army of

infidels among the lettered class in France. It is on this ground of

education that the tyrannical and infidel power of the state is waging a

battle with the point of the lance against the church and the Catholic

religion in Europe. In England, also, as I know from those who have heard

it from the lips of the leaders of this party, it is the fixed purpose of

these leaders to work for the establishment of this infidel system by the

coercive power of the state. The necessary sequel of all this is the

_commune_; and, if such a system should prevail here, we have in prospect

the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the destruction of those

institutions of learning which will not conform to the ideal of the state,

the overthrow of the most essential rights of conscience, and finally the

proscription of religion, followed by the war of the masses upon the

rights of property and upon the order of civil society itself.

We want none of these improvements of Boston _doctrinaires_, and no

meddling of political charlatans with our constitution. Our private rights

we hold from the Creator, and not from any social compact or grant of

government. State rights, the strongest safeguard we have against

usurpations upon our liberty, we hold from the fundamental law which first

constituted us a political people—the law of unity in multiplicity, which

is our strength, and the geometrical principle, of our harmonious and

symmetrical structure. There was a time when our centralizing principle

was in danger; when, so to speak, the centrifugal force threatened to

become too strong, and to make a rupture of our system. Now it is the

opposite danger we have to fear—the increase of the centripetal force. As

we were in danger of flying away from our sun and becoming separated,

wandering political orbs, so we are now in danger of running into our sun,

and thus losing our proper orbits, becoming absorbed into the central

mass, and thereby suffering the extinction of the life of liberty in the

individuals who form our population. Therefore, as the exorbitant demands

of state rights have been repressed, it should now be our study to prevent

the encroachment of federal power upon the just domain of these state

rights, of state power over municipal freedom, and of all these powers

upon the personal and private liberty of the citizen. It is for the

interest of all to do this, but my special purpose has been to show why

Catholics in particular are bound to do it, in order to preserve that

liberty which God has given to them, and their rights of conscience, among

which this right of education is one of the most precious and the most

imperilled.

This leads us to another point. All religious societies being equal before

the law, and entitled to an equal protection, so long as they do not

violate those fundamental principles of morality which constitute the

religion of the state, Catholic institutions have an equal claim to a

share in the distribution of the public money with those which are not

Catholic. In this state, large sums have been granted to institutions

which are under the control of particular denominations; for instance, to

Yale College. The state is bound to be impartial, and whatever it

determines to do in support of education or for the nurture and relief of

the helpless and destitute, and the reformation of the depraved, it is

bound to carry out on this impartial principle. Therefore grants to useful

institutions ought never to be opposed or withheld on the ground that the

Catholic clergy have the control over them, and that within their walls

the Catholic religion is taught and practised. Nor has the state any right

to prefer, much less to enforce, what is falsely called a non‐sectarian

system of religious and moral instruction. This is one of the most patent

fallacies by which the common mind in our time and country is duped and

deluded. If there is one only true church, all other so‐called churches

are sectarian, or sections cut off from the church. The true church cannot

be a sect or have anything sectarian about it. But the state is

incompetent to judge or decide that the Catholic Church is a sect in this

sense; and, therefore, incapable of determining that the public money

which is granted to a Catholic institution is devoted to sectarian

purposes. The state is equally incompetent to decide that there is no one

true church, and that, therefore, all denominations are sections of the

true church, or sects considered in the sense of parts included in a

whole. But if it were competent to decide this point in the sense

indicated, the only just conclusion would be that all should be

impartially treated and protected. The state is also incompetent to decide

that a particular party of men, having a system differing from that of any

one sect, and professing to retain the common elements of all, is not

itself a sect, and that its system is non‐sectarian. It is, in fact, only

another sect. Regular association, government, and special rites are not

essential to the nature of a sect. There were the sects of Pharisees,

Sadducees, and Herodians among the Jews. There are philosophical sects. A

sect is a party of men holding certain particular opinions. Those men who

profess to hold what they call the essential parts of religion and

morality, and to teach the same without any sectarian doctrines, simply

mean that they do not hold the tenets of any of the Protestant sects

around them, by which they differ from each other. But they belong to the

genus Protestant nevertheless, and have their own specific _differentia_.

They cannot discriminate the essential from the non‐essential parts of

Christianity without a criterion, and the criterion which they adopt and

apply makes their specific doctrine, which constitutes them a distinct, if

not a separate, sect. They assume that the specific doctrines and laws of

the Catholic Church are not essential. But in this they deny a fundamental

Catholic doctrine: they place themselves in opposition to Catholics in

respect to the essentials of faith and practice, and thus they are,

relatively to us, a sect. The state cannot decide this question, and

cannot, without injustice, prefer one party to the other. It is,

therefore, a violation of Catholic rights to compel Catholics to listen to

the teaching which calls itself non‐sectarian, or in any way to adopt and

sanction it as a system exclusively entitled to the support and protection

of the state.

The truth is that the state has nothing to do directly with religious

instruction. Formerly, in this state of Connecticut, it had to do with it,

because the Puritan form of Protestantism was the established religion of

the state, and made part of the law. But now the state has only to protect

the religious corporations and societies which have legal existence in the

enjoyment of their vested rights. Grants of money and other legal

provisions must be made in view of the utility to society and the state

which lies in the nature of the object which any institution aims at

accomplishing. Education, the care of the orphaned, the poor, the sick,

and other destitute persons, and the instruction of all classes in moral

and civic virtues and the fear of that Creator who is acknowledged in our

Declaration of Independence as the Author of our natural rights, are

useful to the state and society, and even necessary to their continuance

and well‐being. Therefore the state may exercise a supervision within

certain limits over these things, and grant subsidies for the purpose of

sustaining them. But this must be done in such a way that no violence is

committed upon the rights or the liberty of conscience guaranteed by law.

Religion must be left free, and not interfered with by the state. But non‐

interference is something quite incompatible with exclusion. The state

cannot confiscate the property which it has once granted to Yale College

because the clergy of one particular denomination control the religious

instruction of the college. Nor can it justly refuse to treat Catholic

institutions of education with a favor equal to that which it shows to

others, because the Bishop of Hartford will have control of their

religious teaching.

It is for the interest and well‐being of the state and of all classes of

its citizens that the Catholic Church should fully exercise all its

rights, and enjoy the most perfect freedom of growth and development. The

Catholic Church is fully and unchangeably committed to those essential

principles of morality on which our laws are founded. By the very

principle of the Catholic religion, those who profess it can never abandon

or change these principles, and they thus receive the strongest guarantee

of their perpetuity in the number and the moral power of those citizens

who profess this religion. By our religion we must hold and profess that

human rights are conferred by the Creator, that they are inviolable, and

that civil society has been established by Almighty God, with its

institutions of government, in order that these rights may be secured. We

must profess that peoples and governments are accountable to God for the

just administration of the trust committed to them, and responsible to a

higher law than mere human laws, the eternal law itself, which is written

on the conscience and clearly promulgated by a divine revelation. We must

profess the sanctity of life, of marriage, of the rights of property, of

oaths, contracts, treaties, and civic obligations, and the duty of

allegiance and obedience to the laws and the lawful authorities in the

state. All that I have shown to be the religion of the state, which is

indeed nothing more than a portion of the universal common law of

Christendom, is involved in the religion of Catholics and taught by it

with an authority which they acknowledge as unerring and supreme. Here is,

therefore, a principle of stability to the state, and to the rights of all

classes of citizens, which is involved in the education and popular

instruction which is given by the Catholic clergy. Moreover, as the

pastors of 150,000 of the inhabitants of the state, and wielding a moral

influence over them far superior to that of any other body of clergy, it

is for the interest and advantage of their fellow‐citizens that their

education, training in their special functions, and other qualifications

and advantages for exercising their civilizing power upon such a large and

increasing mass of the population, should be elevated to the highest

possible grade. Therefore the schools, academies, seminaries, and

religious houses in which the clergy are trained are deserving of

encouragement as sources of intellectual, moral, and social benefit and

improvement to society at large, which accrue to the benefit of the state.

The same is true of institutions of religious women, who are a kind of

female clergy in a wider sense of the word, of schools of all kinds, of

orphanages and charitable asylums. In the care of the poor and the sick

especially, the Catholic Church can do a work which cannot be done so well

by any other society, and thus relieve the state of a burden as well as

heal a sore on the body politic which is frequently dangerous as well as

distressing. Besides these more necessary services to humanity, the

Catholic Church contributes to the decoration and embellishment of life,

to the refinement of taste, and to the increase of innocent and elevating

enjoyment. It ornaments towns and villages with specimens of fine

architecture, multiplies statues and paintings, cultivates sacred music,

and by its multifarious ceremonies acts most powerfully not only on the

souls of men to raise their minds to an unseen world, but, in their human

sentiments and manners, to give grace and refinement as well as enjoyment

to a life rendered too dull and prosaic by the everlasting drudgery of an

industrious and material existence.

All this would not weigh a feather with the severe Puritan ancients who

founded this commonwealth. The Catholic religion is a religion of error,

they would have said; error is fatal to the soul, and cannot be tolerated

in a state where laws are framed according to the laws of God. But times

are changed, and both laws and the minds of the descendants of the

Puritans are changed with them. Even a great light among the descendants

of the Scottish Presbyterians, the Rev. Dr. Hodge, has declared that the

Catholic religion teaches the essentials of Christianity, exercises a

wholesome moral influence, and cannot be refused the same countenance and

aid by the state which is given to the Protestant religion, without the

usurpation of an authority to determine what is religious error. Although

the _New York Observer_ has raised an outcry against this candid statement

of a learned and honest man, and has vehemently denounced the Catholic

religion as worse than infidelity, I am persuaded that Yale College will

not be satisfied to take a more illiberal position than Princeton, and

that the general sense of the Protestant people of Connecticut will accord

with that of Dr. Hodge, and reject the contrary extreme of the _Observer_.

The religious people of Connecticut cannot fail to see that they have a

common cause with us against atheism and progressive radicalism, and that

we are a bulwark against a devastating flood which would sweep away their

rights with ours if it once broke over the surface of our society. Our

rights stand upon a common basis. They depend from a common chain, which

is fastened by the same ring. They have nothing to fear from any violation

of their liberty or usurpation of their rights on our part, even should we

obtain power enough to be able to attempt such an enterprise. We always

respect vested rights and established laws, when these are not contrary to

the law of God. The order which is now established is the only one that is

good for a state in which the inhabitants are divided in religion, and it

enables these divided religious communities to live together in political

harmony and social peace. We will not disturb this harmony, and we

denounce those who attempt to stir up the passions of the people to

destroy it as the enemies of the state as well as impious transgressors of

the law of God. The rights of conscience and the liberty of religion which

we possess under our laws are invaluable and precious to all of us. And

there is indeed a common bond between the descendants of the Puritan

founders of this commonwealth and the descendants of the persecuted

Catholics of Ireland who have settled on this soil, of which perhaps you

have not thought sufficiently. It is the bond which has been made by a

conflict which the fathers of both these lines of descendants have

maintained against a common enemy. That enemy was the despotic tyranny of

the successors of Henry VIII. and their ministers. Our ancestors drew the

sword against an invasion of rights which, they avowed, had been conferred

upon them by their Creator, and the issue of the war was the establishment

of this republic, in which the rights of conscience are declared to be

sacred. The ancestors of the “exiles of Erin” who have found a new home in

this republic fought, both with the sword and with the patient resistance

of martyrdom, against the same despotic violence which invaded all their

rights both civic and religious. It is fitting, therefore, that their

descendants should dwell together in the land rescued by the blood of

heroes from tyranny, and that here should flourish the religion rescued

from the same tyranny by the blood of martyrs.

I conclude with the eloquent apostrophe of the Bishop of Orleans to the

Belgians, which came from his mouth like the electric flash, amid thunders

of applause, at the Congress of Malines in 1867, where I had the privilege

of being present. “_Vous avez une patrie, sachez la garder!_”—“You have a

country, _know how to keep it_!”

When we look abroad and see the dark, threatening clouds overhanging older

nations, threatening new tempests to follow those which have lately burst

upon them, and then look at home on the peace and liberty we enjoy; our

church and religion free, priests, bishops, and the Holy Father from his

prison in the Vatican, exercising their lawful jurisdiction without

hindrance, we can esteem at their proper worth the blessings we enjoy. We

learn how to value order, good government, and civilization founded on

religious ideas, as the most precious of all earthly possessions after the

faith and the means of eternal salvation. These advantages we possess in

the laws and institutions which are summed up in the one word _our

country_—our native land, or the land of our refuge and our children’s

nativity. Let us all, therefore, prize, cherish, guard, and loyally serve

it during life; prepared and resolved, if necessary, to give our blood and

our lives in its defence, in emulation of the patriotic bravery of our

noble brothers and ancestors from whom we have received this fair

inheritance.

The Widow Of Nain.

“The only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”

I.

The dust on their sandals lay heavy and white,

Their garments were damp with the tears of the night,

Their hot feet aweary, and throbbing with pain,

As they entered the gates of the city of Nain.

II.

But lo! on the pathway a sorrowing throng

Pressed, mournfully chanting the funeral song,

And like a sad monotone, ceaseless and slow,

The voice of a woman came laden with woe.

III.

What need, stricken mothers, to tell how she wept?

Ye read by the vigils that sorrow hath kept,

Ye know, by the travail of anguish and pain,

The desolate grief of the widow of Nain.

IV.