Things were passing thus in that sequestered little spot, while the

great world without was agitated with mightier events--the opening

scenes of the Revolutionary war. It is doubtful whether the faint

rumors of it which penetrated the seclusion there would have excited

the least attention, except for the fact that it was the only earthly

topic on which Jans Van Dorp nowadays manifested the least interest.

Every Dutch villager, whose business led him to the great cities, was

questioned and cross-questioned on his return as to the precise state

of things, with a minuteness which would have done honor to that

renowned lawyer Heer Adrian Van der Donck, the first who landed in the

New Netherlands. The one little gray newspaper that arrived weekly,

and had hitherto circulated among his neighbors until it was quite

illegible, was now packed immediately in his great-coat pocket and

taken to his ghostly partner. All this was a perfect labyrinth of

mystery, and furnished texts for many a sage conjecture and dubious

shake of the head. Some hinted that Jans Van Dorp might mean to put in

execution the threat he had been so often heard to hurl at his

irritating helpmate when her vexatious volubility exceeded all bounds

of endurance--that he’d be off to some war. But time puts an end to

all things, although it does not always explain things to universal

satisfaction. What Jans or the goblin thought or meant can never be 269

fathomed, but some things are matters of history; and it is a

testified fact that the very moment this little dingy newspaper

brought tidings that the first cannons of battle had boomed, Jansen

Van Dorp started as if his doom was somehow connected with it. It was

a night, dark and stormy, but he seized his hat, and rushed from the

cheerful glow of his own home to the pitchy darkness without, and they

whispered he was bound to the haunted hovel! Too probable, for from

that hour neither Jans nor spectre was ever seen there more.

It should rather be said, never seen as mortal _could_ be seen, for by

many he was still considered an inhabitant of the settlement, although

lost for ever to his hapless vrow. He had visited her in dreams, and

warned her of something she could not exactly remember, but very

terrible, and given on these occasions such diverse accounts of

himself, it was hard to tell what to believe. To Effie he had

frequently presented himself. She had seen him in the coffee dregs, in

leaves at the bottom of her tea-cup, in a mirror which she had cut

triangular for that express purpose, and, finally, in a tremendous

thunder-storm, standing close beside her.

As he gave no sign on these occasions, her charitable conclusion was

that he had nothing very good to relate of himself.

Many months after this, one of the most intelligent mynheers of the

settlement, having been called by business to a far eastern city,

declared on his return that, among a troop of soldiers marching to the

frontiers, he had recognized Jans Van Dorp and Dark Rob; but, as he

failed in speaking to them, his assertion passed for nothing, and his

story was dismissed as mere moonshine, too absurd to be believed.

[68] O’Callaghan. _Hist. New Neths._, vol. i. p. 37.

[69] _Ibid._ vol. i. ch. 2.

[70] O’Callaghan, _Hist._ vol. i. bk. iii. ch. 2.

[71] Watson’s _Annals of New York_.

[72] The writer of this possesses two pieces of

embroidery done by one of madame’s pupils.

[73] O’Callaghan, _Hist._, vol. ii. p. 72.

[74] O’Callaghan, _Hist._, vol. ii. ch. iv.

[75] _Trials from the Criminal Records of

Scotland._ By R. Pitcairn, Esq.

----------

THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT IN GERMANY, AND THE _FRACTION DU CENTRE_

IN THE GERMAN PARLIAMENT.

TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.

An apathetic calm generally succeeds to political agitation at the

close of legislative sessions. An exception to this rule prevails in

the German Empire, inasmuch as the attacks against the _Fraction du

Centre_, which began during the session, increased to an

actual storm at the close of the diet. Most of the foreign journals

have spoken of this phenomenon, but in so unsatisfactory a manner that

perhaps a more minute account of the movement will not be displeasing

to the readers of the _Revue Générale_.

I have already indicated in a general way, in an account of the

parties in the German Parliament, the attitude and tendency of the

Catholic party, or the so-called _Fraction du Centre_.

The bases upon which it is founded are as follows:

“_Justitia fundamentum regnorum._ The _Fraction au Centre_ in the 270

German Parliament limits its activity by the following principles:

“I. The fundamental characteristics of the empire as a confederation

(_Bundesstaat_) shall be maintained. Conformably to this principle,

all efforts shall be opposed that tend to modify the federal character

of the constitution of the empire, and the spontaneity and

independence of the several states in their interior affairs shall

only be sacrificed when the general interests evidently require it.

“II. The material and moral welfare of the popular classes shall be

urgently insisted upon. The civil and religious liberty of all the

subjects of the empire shall be secured by means of constitutional

guarantees, and religious associations, in particular, shall be

protected against legislative encroachments.

“III. The _Fraction_ weighs and forms resolutions in accordance with

these principles, upon all questions submitted to the deliberation of

the parliament, but without forbidding isolated members to vote in the

assembly contrary to the decisions of the _Fraction_.”

The _Fraction_ remained faithful to these principles during the

session of the parliament that has just closed. It avoided all extreme

views, and manifested no systematic hostility to the government.

Nevertheless, the very fact that it is composed of Catholics firmly

resolved to defend the rights and liberties of the church against

all attacks, and that these Catholics were elected from the

most prosperous and intelligent sections of Germany, where

pseudo-liberalism thought its rule immovably established, sufficed to

excite against the _Fraction_ a coalition of all who were opposed to

the church. Their invectives began with the debates on the address.

The form of address proposed by the national liberal party contained,

besides some expressions in praise of the historic views of the

adversaries of the Papacy, the following sentence: “The days of

interference with the national affairs of other kingdoms will, we

trust, never return under any pretext or under any form.” This

sentence, destructive of all national rights, was evidently aimed

against Rome, as was partly acknowledged: the Italian revolution was

not to be checked by diplomatic representations in the accomplishment

of its designs against the visible head of the church. Naturally, it

would not have occurred to any one to impose absolute passiveness on

the powerful German Empire in its relations with neighboring states.

The party of the _Centre_ drew up a counter-schedule, which did not

contain the proposition of absolute non-intervention we have just

referred to, but which was nevertheless in conformity with the address

of the liberals. This counter-schedule did not demand, either directly

or indirectly, any intervention in favor of the Pope: it contained

nothing that clashed either with the government or the other parties,

and consequently was not the object of criticism in any quarter. So

true is this, that the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of Augsburg, the chief

organ of anti-religious liberalism, could not disguise its preference

for the schedule of the _Centre_ as to its substance as well as form.

Nevertheless, though the _Centre_ remained wholly on the defensive,

and its orators exhibited the greatest moderation, a real storm of

invectives was raised against them and the church by the journalists

of all the other parties and by the parliament. Even the so-called

conservatives took sides against the _Centre_, whose motion, thanks to

these outcries, only obtained sixty votes. A proposition made shortly 271

after by the _Centre_ in the interests of civil liberty met the same

fate. This proposition had for its object the admission of several

principles into the constitution of the German Empire which had been

sanctioned by the Prussian constitution. As these principles

guaranteed the independence of the church--the Evangelical as well as

the Catholic (Art. 15, Pruss. const.)--the proposition was opposed

with extreme bitterness, even by a large majority of the Catholic

deputies who did not belong to the _Fraction du Centre_. Among these

was Count de Frankenberg, of Silesia. This noble member had given his

electors a written promise to vote in accordance with the proposition

of the _Fraction du Centre_. But in the speech he made against it, he

declared that he did not consider the time chosen by the _Fraction_ as

opportune. In his ignorance of judicial things, he probably is not

familiar with the adage: _Quod sine die debetur, statim debetur_.

The _Fraction du Centre_ made no other independent motions during the

session that could incur any attacks. But the “clerical party” was

attacked the more vehemently at the elections, so the _Centre_ found

itself still exposed to a cross fire. The whole affair has been

related in the journals. We will confine ourselves to an incident that

gives a tolerably correct idea of the majority.

Before the election of Dr. Schüttinger, nominated from the district of

Bamberg, and belonging to the _Fraction du Centre_, the curate of a

small town within that district announced from the pulpit, after

divine service, that those of his parishioners who had confidence in

him could assemble at his house after church to learn which candidate

was preferable, according to his opinion. This invitation appeared to

the majority an intolerable infringement on electoral liberty as well

as an abuse of the pulpit, and the election of Dr. Schüttinger was

annulled. A new ballot gave the same candidate a thousand more votes

than at first. At the next session, the validity of this re-election

will be submitted to the decision of the parliament, and the question

arises if the majority will be fully satisfied respecting the

electoral liberty of the district of Bamberg. But the Belgian

Catholics know by long experience what their adversaries mean by

electoral manœuvres.

In all the occurrences we have referred to, the government showed

itself entirely passive, so there was no real conflict between it and

the party of the _Centre_. When the debate took place respecting

Alsace-Lorraine, our party proposed to ensure to those provinces the

most independent existence possible, and a separate constitution.

Prince Bismarck did not exactly agree with this, but his opinions

coincided far oftener with those of the deputies Windthorst and

Reichensperger than with those of the leaders of the other parties. On

the whole, no instance can be mentioned in which the _Fraction du

Centre_ is in flagrant hostility to that powerful statesman. It even

openly opposed an interpellation respecting the Roman question, in

order not to excite any irritating debates and appear suspicious of

the good intentions of the emperor and chancellor. In spite of this,

it was reported during the session that the _Fraction du Centre_ had

incurred the disapprobation of the chancellor of the empire. The

_Deutsche Reichscorrespondenz_, the organ of the so-called liberal

conservatives, gave some foundation to this report by pretending that

the Count de Tauffkirchen had, according to the instructions of Prince

Bismarck, accused the _Fraction du Centre_ to Cardinal Antonelli of 272

having assumed an attitude hostile to the government of the empire,

and that the cardinal had expressed his disapproval of this attitude

not only before the Count de Tauffkirchen, but in a letter addressed

to the leaders of the _Fraction_. This assertion being repeated in

several quarters, the said leaders denied it in the journals. Driven

to the wall, the _Deutsche Reichscorrespondenz_ then brought up the

case of the Count de Frankenberg already mentioned, and at last Prince

Bismarck himself declared the blame really proceeded from Cardinal

Antonelli. This induced the Bishop of Mayence to ascertain the correct

account of the matter from the cardinal. His eminence replied that it

had been incorrectly reported to him that the _Fraction du Centre_ had

insisted upon the Emperor of Germany’s intervention in favor of the

Pope, and that, under the existing circumstances, he had declared such

a step inopportune. At the same time, the cardinal assured the Bishop

of Mayence and his friends that he had a particular esteem for the

members of the _Fraction du Centre_ and its proclivities. Thus failed

the effort made at the court of Rome to bring discredit on the _Fraction_

among Catholics, for at once a great number of Catholics gave in their

full adhesion to the _Fraction_, and besought it to persevere

courageously. This effort had, moreover, a comic side, for until now

the _Fraction_ had been represented as the servile tool of the Roman

curia, whence it received its orders on all important questions.

No general interest would be felt in all these facts, if they were not

the clear prelude of an act the consequences of which cannot be

foreseen. It is not the acts of the _Fraction du Centre_ that provoke

the violent attacks against it: it is its very existence that is

considered a crime. Those hostile to the church had calculated,

without distinction of party, that the very first diet of the German

Empire would aim a blow at “Romanism” in Germany, on the ruins of

which would afterwards rise a national German church, that might

finally end in a cosmopolitan “Humanitarianism,” without dogmas,

without sacraments, and without altars--the very _beau idéal_ of

freemasonry. Everything, in fact, seemed propitious for the

realization of this hope. The two principal Catholic nations

successively conquered, the Roman race suffering from incessant

convulsions, the head of the Catholic Church a prisoner at the

Vatican, and, finally, a schism that seemed likely to arise on account

of the dogma of infallibility--all seemed to form a breach by which it

was hoped their opponents would be overcome. Only, as an ancient adage

says: “Man proposes, but God disposes!”

The election of the Prussian deputies and the members of the German

Parliament has already paralyzed the action of these regenerators of

humanity, by rousing the Catholics to an energy not easily to be

surmounted. The complete union of the representatives elected, and

their bold stand, showed it would be quite useless for the legislative

assemblies at Berlin to make any serious charge against Catholicism.

On the contrary, it was hoped at Berlin that the initiative would be

taken by Munich, where “the Luther of the nineteenth century” had

raised a standard of revolt against the Roman Pontificate. But Munich

was likewise under the influence of illusions. It was supposed that

Mgr. Hefele, the Bishop of Rothenberg, would add the sanction of 273

episcopal authority to the influence of the learned Professor

Döllinger, and thus sustain his course. It was still more certain that

a great number of the pupils of the theological seminaries would

respond to the appeal of Döllinger and his able adherents. Döllinger,

it may be remembered, had publicly declared that thousands of priests

thought exactly as he did.

But Bishop Hefele remained faithful to the Pope, and the German clergy

unanimously declared that Döllinger’s assertion was a calumny. The

King of Bavaria himself, who had given Döllinger so many proofs of his

esteem, hesitated a long time about giving him his support, because he

could not help seeing that the anti-ecclesiastical movement was

chiefly led by a political party whose efforts openly tended to

mediatize the reigning houses of the second and third ranks in order

to form a united and centralized Germany, in imitation of the empire

of Napoleon III. These efforts naturally met with the most favorable

concurrence on the part of the democrats; for an empire of this kind,

established on a broad and “liberal” basis, would lead, by a sort of

fatality, to a republic, especially if they first succeeded in doing

away with the religious and historic traditions.

Immediately after the close of the parliament, a fire was opened at

Berlin upon the “clericals,” and especially upon the _Fraction du

Centre_. The official journals did their best to open the way to

“modern progress” by removing all the obstacles that might impede it,

and to increase the diplomatic pressure that had so long been exerting

its influence on the Bavarian cabinet. The whole German press, with

the exception of a dozen journals, naturally joined in the chorus, and

then began an attack on the Catholics, the like of which had not been

witnessed since the Archbishop of Cologne was sent under guard to the

fortress of Minden, under the pretext that he had conspired with the

two revolutionary parties against the Prussian government.

The German Catholics are accustomed to these kinds of accusations,

which have passed through all possible variations. Thus, the Catholics

of the Rhenish provinces have been successively accused, according to

the circumstances of the moment, of plotting with France, Belgium,

Bavaria, and Austria, against Prussia, and of considering the Pope as

their legitimate sovereign. Foreigners can hardly credit what I am

obliged to relate here, and, if they should, it would excite their

risibility. Unfortunately, these absurdities have a serious side for

the Prussian Catholics. Independently of the circumstance that these

perfidious calumnies, systematically repeated, might pervert public

opinion in those sections of Germany where Protestantism prevails,

they serve as a pretext for practically refusing Catholics the open

equality which they should share with the adherents of other

religions. For example, all the higher offices of influence are, with

very rare exceptions, filled by Protestants, who, as a matter of

course, specially favor the interests of their co-religionists in

every way, and, so to speak, are obliged to do so, because genuine

Catholics are officially designated as unpatriotic. An exact list of

the functionaries of the German communes and government, drawn up with

reference to the religion of each one, would be a valuable statistic,

because it would incontestably establish how far the principle of

_suum cuique_, which constitutionally recognizes the equality of

Christian sects, is really applied. It is evident that such a report 274

will never be published or drawn up by the authorities, consequently

the formation of a private agency to effect such an object is an

urgent necessity. Perhaps this report might at last put an end to the

constantly repeated accusations of the base ingratitude of Catholics

against the Prussian government. The clear judgment of Frederick

William IV., and the constitutions that sprang from the events of

1848, guaranteed a liberty of action to the Catholic Church and its

organs which had not existed in any German state since the peace of

Westphalia. The Prussian Catholics displayed a lively gratitude for

this, and flattered themselves with the hope that several crying

injustices which weighed on them would be removed, especially in the

conferring of public offices and the nomination of professors at the

universities. This hope was then the more reasonable, because, in the

war against France, Catholics, as well as Protestants, shed their

blood on the battle-fields, and submitted to the heaviest

requisitions. The religious orders particularly signalized themselves

by their services, as the recently published report of the Knights of

Malta (Catholics) prove. Unfortunately, this hope has already given

place to serious preoccupation.

Prince Bismarck appears no longer able to endure repose. Having

vanquished our foreign enemies, he seems to aim, unless all

appearances deceive us, at making adversaries of the Catholics of

Germany and causing them to feel the weight of his hand. Perhaps he is

influenced by the consideration that military unity, to be on a solid

basis, should be founded on, or crowned by, political and religious

unity. At all events, this is the opinion of the liberal party, whose

course involuntarily recalls the expression of Tacitus, “_Ruere in

servitium_;” whereas, while M. de Bismarck was rising to power, they

abused him beyond all bounds. These worshippers of success have for

allies the Catholics who are not willing to submit to the decrees of

the Council of the Vatican. In the jargon of the liberals, these

Neo-Protestants are designated as old Catholics, while the immense

majority of Catholics who now, as formerly, consider the authority of

the Pope and bishops in religious things as higher than that of

certain professors, are styled Neo-Catholics, absolutely as if they

had abandoned the faith of the church. A foreigner would find it

difficult to understand how it is possible to give a completely

opposite meaning to the real signification of a word, and this in a

country like Germany, which prides itself on its intelligence.

But it is not the anti-religious journals alone that take this

liberty. M. de Mühler himself, the Prussian minister of the public

worship, treats the Catholics, who remain faithful to the decrees of

the Pope and bishops as rebels to the government. Immediately after

the suspension of the council, he took under his protection the

professors, even those who were priests, who refused to submit to the

decisions of the council and the bishops, and encouraged them in their

revolt against ecclesiastical authority. Recently, _à propos_ of the

affair of the Bishop of Ermland, he went so far as to submit to the

ministry of Prussia, composed exclusively of Protestants, a resolution

to ascertain what Catholics should be considered as orthodox, and he

ordered a priest named Wollmann, who had been excluded from the fold

of the church by major excommunication, to retain his professorship as

religious instructor in the Catholic college of Braunsberg. The

students, unwilling to receive religious instruction from a fallen

priest, left the college. They were thus obliged to give up most of 275

their studies, as there is no other establishment of the kind at

Braunsberg. It should also be remarked that the College of Braunsberg

was founded by a bishop and sustained by Catholic foundations. In

Silesia, another priest named Kaminski, likewise excommunicated, was

appointed to a church that he might celebrate the divine service for

those who protested against the Council of the Vatican. In a word,

every where there is any reason, or even a pretext, the episcopal

authority is sacrificed to those who refuse them the obedience

solemnly sworn to them, or become unfaithful to the church by calling

the episcopal crosier the _bâton_ of a police officer. On all

sides were declarations, more and more threatening, that an end must

be made of “Romanism,” that German science should take the place of

idolatrous papistry, and the echo of this cry is to be found in the

papers that seek their inspiration from the ministerial bureaux.

But in spite of the great power of the Prussian government, the

centralists, to their severe mortification, were doubtful about

succeeding in fully organizing a persecution against the Catholics

unless the other German governments, or at least the most important of

them, declare war against the church. The Würtemberg government was so

wise as to declare from the first that it would ignore the decisions

of the Council of the Vatican as long as no one was influenced by it

against the laws and constitution of the kingdom. As this evidently

would never be the case, the Würtemberg ministry, if the national

liberals who have just begun an outcry in the assembly of

representations at Stuttgart do not impose a different policy on them,

will consequently remain strictly passive with respect to the church,

as is the case in Belgium, Holland, England, the United States, and

every country where genuine liberty prevails. The statesmen who govern

those countries do not allow their slumbers to be disturbed by the

decrees of the Council of the Vatican, and deem it beneath their

dignity to regard them as a pretext to form a kind of Cæsaro-papism.

As we have remarked, the course of the Bavarian government in the

ulterior development of this agitation, will be of great importance.

The pressure brought to bear on that government by Prussia and all the

parties inimical to the church has led to the retirement of Count

Bray, whose devotedness to the church is well-known. Nevertheless, the

king has not fully decided to create, by an open rupture with the

religious authorities, unforeseen complications in his kingdom,

already so shaken, and to recompense by moral violence the fidelity of

those of his subjects who have shown themselves the most devoted

partisans of the dynasty of Wittelsbach. This question, so painful for

the majority of Bavarians, will be doubtless decided before this

article is published.

Having given a general outline of the present state of affairs, I am

led to ask myself what, before the end of the year, will be the stand

of the Catholic representatives who are still faithful to the church

in the legislative assemblies of Prussia and the German empire. The

reports of those deputies to their electors appear to me adapted to

strengthen them in their resolution to continue to struggle

courageously against the supremacy of the state as well as against

revolutionary absolution, and to remain defenders of the church and of

all constitutional rights against the false apostles of liberty and an

arbitrary ministry. At all events, I imagine these deputies will smile 276

with pity when they hear themselves styled unpatriotic by some parties

in imitation of a part of the journals hostile to the church, or even

accused of conspiring with foreigners or the _Internationale_. Some

papers, in fact, have not shrunk from the ridicule attached to such

foolish accusations. Does not this having to resort to such

imputations prove the want of any serious charge against the members

of the _Centre_? They are evidently not credited by those who make use

of them, nor is any attempt made to convince others of their truth.

The members of the _Fraction du Centre_ figure, for the most part,

among the notabilities of their districts. Many of them have occupied

or occupy some public office with honor: and several have, for many

years, showed their constant zeal in the old Prussian house of

legislation, where they had a seat, and gave their devoted support to

the government in the crisis of the year 1848 and the following year,

often at the expense of their popularity. They were often known to

defend the authorities against the attacks of those who are now

endeavoring to excite the government against them.

In support of what I have just stated, it is sufficient to recall the

names of those whom the confidence of their colleagues chose as a

committee of the _Fraction du Centre_ in the German parliament

and the Prussian house of representatives. I will mention M. de

Savigny, the son of the illustrious jurisconsult so well-known

throughout the whole world, who was formerly Prussian minister at

Brussels, and latterly the representative of the King of Prussia at

the Diet of Frankfort; M. Windthorst, who was president of the house

of representatives in Hanover, and twice minister of justice in that

kingdom; the Baron d’Arétin, the vice-president of the upper house in

the kingdom of Bavaria; M. de Mallinkrodt, the counsellor of the

Prussian regency; the Prince de Loewenstein; the Count de

Landsberg-Velen, a hereditary member of the Prussian house of lords,

etc. Perhaps I may be permitted to mention also my brother, a

counsellor of the Prussian Court of Cassation, who was one of the most

active leaders of the conservative party when the government was the

object of the most violent attacks.[76]

He who consecrates his time and strength to the cause of justice and

religious liberty, or uses them in the arena of political combat,

should not expect to reap any gratitude, but the leaders of the

_Centre_ and their friends could not foresee that they would be

exposed to the calumnies I have alluded to. The only appreciable

grievance uttered against the Hanoverian and Bavarian members of their

_Fraction_ is, that the former disapproved of the annexation of their

country to Prussia, and the latter used its influence to prevent

Bavaria from joining the new German Empire. But these deputies have

stated publicly that, these measures having been decided by vote, they

were ready not only to fall in with the new order of things, but to

endeavor to strengthen it, which cannot be the case if the national

liberal party is not opposed, the evident tendency of which is not of a

nature to fortify the constitution of the empire, being directed 277

against the federative principle, which is the fundamental

characteristic of this constitution. No one has a right to suspect the

statements and character of these men who merit the esteem of all

honorable people for having defended in a purely conservative sense,

and by all legal means, the traditions of their ancestors, to which

they remain faithful, and which they wish to maintain as long as their

duty evidently requires it.

To the _Fraction du Centre_ in the German Parliament belongs also M.

Kraetzig, the leader of the Catholic department of the ministry of

public worship, which has just been dissolved. This division, composed

of three counsellors belonging to the Catholic faith, was organized by

Frederick William IV. with the benevolent intention of giving the

Catholics of Prussia a sort of guarantee for the suitable

administration of the funds for public worship: it was not wished that

such matters should be decided by a Protestant government without at

least listening to the advice of the Catholic functionaries. (The

leader of the Catholic department of public worship had only a

consultative voice.) The existence of this division was a pledge to

the Catholics, being an assurance that their religious interests would

never fall into hostile or indifferent hands. If we except the Prince

de Hohenzollern, no Catholic ever had a seat in the ministerial

council, and especially no Catholic was ever appointed minister of

public instruction. The suppression of this division, decreed on the

eighth of last July, is the more serious a symptom that it has been

applauded by the journals opposed to the church, and with a joy equal

to that manifested at the measures taken in Alsace against the brothers

devoted to instruction and against the Catholic press. The party of

the _Centre_ will naturally oppose with all its might the current of

opinion which these acts prove to exist in the region of power. Its

voice, it is true, will be stifled by the majority, but it will not be

raised the less energetically for liberty and justice, with the hope

of seeing a better day dawn, and, whatever the event, with the

conviction of having fulfilled an obligation of conscience not only

toward the church, but to the state.

The hope of soon seeing the clouds disperse that have been

accumulating of late around Germany in so unexpected a manner is

founded on the political prudence, the experience, and the opinions of

the Emperor William. It is not possible for this monarch crowned with

laurels, after having established peace with foreign powers through

the bravery and fidelity of the _whole_ German nation, to authorize

the persecution of millions of Germans on account of their faith, and

consent to sacrifice the national peace--the peace which is especially

due to his royal brother, whose memory is still blessed by Catholics.

There is no doubt but the appeals of the Catholic population will be

heard and listened to, as soon as they reach the foot of the throne.

The statesman who, in such an unparalleled manner, has been so highly

exalted to the very steps of that throne, and whose celebrated name is

displayed, without his consent I am persuaded, on the standard of the

enemies of the church, cannot be ignorant that, when these troubles

shall have assumed more formidable proportions, it will be more

difficult to overcome moral resistance than to triumph over physical

obstacles, and that measures of policy will be powerless against the

former. He will hardly consider it chivalric; with all the enormous 278

material resources of the state at his disposal, to enter into a

combat against people who can and will only oppose him passively, as

is suitable in the defence of a cause which represents the most

powerful interests of humanity.

But perhaps all these hopes are illusory; perhaps we are about to see

in our Fatherland the beginning of a sad and fruitless struggle, such

as has so exhausted the strength of other countries by giving a free

course to the most dangerous passions. In this case the Catholics of

Germany should prepare themselves to endure a long succession of

contradictions, for their moral courage will be severely tried. They

will have to make sacrifices of all kinds for their faith, recalling

the precept of the Gospel that commands us not only to render to Cæsar

the things that are Cæsar’s, but also to God the things that are

God’s, whatever may happen, whatever may be the consequence of such a

struggle, the church of God, which has always been victorious through

patience, will never yield either under assaults of unbelief or the

attacks of a false science, that in its pride seems to declare anew:

_Eritis sicut Deus_. Truth is great, and it will prevail: _Magna est

veritas et prævalebit_.

A. REICHENSPERGER.

COLOGNE, Aug., 1871.

[76] The modesty of the eminent author of this

article did not permit him to mention his own name among the

most illustrious members of the _Fraction du Centre_. It

would be ungrateful not to supply this omission by adding to

the valiant champions enumerated above the man whose

multiplied labors, marked by his superior intelligence and

ardor of feeling, are at once an honor to Germany and the

church.--(_Note of the Editor._)

----------

THE MOUNTAIN.

The mountain’s sides are green anear,

In clouds is lost its snow;

And he who climbs that Alpine height

Shall earth and heaven know.

Lo! like a temple to the skies,

For toil, for prayer, for sacrifice,

Its green and snowy heights arise.

A thousand pilgrims wander up

To yonder blue abode,

And some are lost, and some are slain,

Or robbed upon the road.

Far up the holy hermits dwell,

And sounds the monastery bell

The safe and ancient way to tell.

And they who mount that highest steep

Are tired and sad and poor,

But lo! a starry house is there,

And angels at the door.

Rich joy for poverty and pain

They give, that summit to attain:

All earth they leave all heaven to gain.

----------

COLOR--ITS POETRY AND PROSE. 279

The three primary colors, according to the latest conclusions of

science, are _red_, _green_, and _blue_.

Oersted, in one of the chapters of his _Soul in Nature_, gives us a

little diagram to show how the _complementary_ and _characteristic_

combinations of colors are produced.

[Illustration]

The colors opposite in the figure complete each other in white, hence

are called complementary colors--red and green, orange and blue,

yellow and violet. These are the harmonious colors.

Two colors, between which there is only one intermediate color,

constitute characteristic combinations of color, as Goethe calls

them--for instance, red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red--and

are the combinations most common in uniforms.

In regard to the symbolism of colors, Oersted gives the following

enumeration:

White fitly typifies _innocence_; the purity of snow and summer

clouds, and all the analogies of nature, suggesting and completing its

significance. Black, which, as the withdrawal of light, denotes loss

of life-giving power, as in night, and to which is added in the

storm-cloud unwonted gloom and desolation, stands appropriately for

the color of mourning. Red is the color of love, from the hue of the

blood, to which is united the idea of the heart, heat, and intensity

of life. Yellow denotes falsehood, as indicating the deceitfulness of

that which shines, also as the color which, when it departs from

purity, soonest becomes disagreeable. Green symbolizes hope, the green

of spring in nature giving token of the fruition of summer. “If we

consider also,” says Oersted, “the satisfaction with which the eye can

rest on it, we should call it the color of trust. Blue,” he adds, “is

called the color of fidelity, but since faith, hope, and love are so

frequently named together, and the two last each has its symbolical

color, we might assume that one of the colors belonged to this noble

quality. It is evident that blue, since it indicates distance, vacuity

from matter, therefore the immaterial is suitable as a symbol of

faith. It is the color of the sky also, and this leads us away from

the earthly. Then the repose in blue, and the feeling that of all

colors it is the least splendid, with the exception of violet, which,

when unmingled with red, really the violet of light, is so feeble, and

has in it so little power, that it is not much considered. Goethe says

that blue is a ‘_stimulating negation_.’ We learn from natural science

that blue united with violet is reflected back every time that light

passes through a less occupied space, namely, a vacuum, hence Goethe’s

expression. Violet and blue also indicate darkness, since they are the

colors which have the least light in them, and the pigments which they

represent are easiest converted into black.

Faith, which looks up out of the blackness and shadow of death into 280

the full-orbed splendor of the sun of righteousness, may not

inappropriately take for its symbol the “stimulating negation” of the

poet.

Thus do the three primary colors, blue, green, and red, represent the

triad of Christian graces, the primary virtues of the Christian

life--faith, hope, and charity, or love.

But leaving the poetry of color, we come to the subject of its place

and function as it imprints itself on the myriad forms of the organic

world. The question has been asked, Are all these tints of nature in

the flower and shrub, the gorgeous plumage of the bird, only meant to

please the eye of man and to gratify the artistic sense? Is there a

deeper, subtler purpose running through all this apparently wanton

pageantry, aside from the delight which it affords the mind of man,

and looking only to the perfecting and preservation of the organism

itself?

A utilitarian age has answered in the affirmative, and the researches

of Darwin, Wallace, and others are daily opening new vistas into this

interesting field of inquiry.

Darwin was the first to establish the fact that the bright coloring of

flowers is for the purpose of attracting insects in order to

accomplish their fertilization, and deduces the general rule that all

flowers fertilized by the wind are of dull and inconspicuous colors.

In the animal kingdom the principle of assimilation guides and

modifies coloring in conformity with surrounding nature, and it is,

therefore, to a great extent, protective.

The lion inhabiting the desert is of the color of the sands, so as

hardly to be distinguished at a short distance. The leopard lives in

jungles, and the vertical stripes on its body harmonize admirably with

the vertical reeds of its tangled lair, and completely conceal it from

view.

In arctic regions, white is the prevailing color, as here reign

perpetual snows; therefore, it is that the bear is only found

_white_ in this part of the globe.

The curious fact that among birds the female is usually of a dull

neutral tint, while the male monopolizes the bright colors, is

accounted for on the principle of protective coloring, the female

needing the obscurity afforded her by her sober plumage. When there is

an exception to this rule, the protection is afforded in some other

way. And this leads us to the subject of _birds’ nests_.

Wallace, in a chapter on the theory of birds’ nests, divides them into

two classes, those in which the eggs are protected by the shape or

position of the nest, and those in which they are left exposed to

view. He then gives the following law: “That, when both sexes are of

strikingly gay and conspicuous colors, the nest is of the first class,

or so as to conceal the sitting bird; while, whenever there is a

striking contrast of colors, the male being gay and conspicuous, the

female dull and obscure, the nest is open and the sitting bird exposed

to view.”

In connection with the subject of protective coloring, the phenomenon

of _mimicry_ is not the least curious. Wallace gives several instances

of butterflies, moths, snakes, etc., where the coloring of protected

families is imitated by weak and unprotected ones not in any way

allied to them. A large and bright-colored butterfly, the heliconidæ

of South America, which is protected by a disagreeable quality

affecting its taste, thus rendering it secure from insect-eating

birds, is imitated by a smaller and eatable family, resembling it so

completely as to be quite indistinguishable by its enemies from the 281

former. Thus it is protected and enabled to perpetuate itself by

borrowing the colors of its secure and powerful neighbor.

The elaps among venomous snakes is another instance where protection

is afforded through mimicry to a harmless snake that would otherwise

be defenceless. The elaps and the species that copy its coloring are

found only in tropical America, and are peculiar as being the only

snakes marked in the same manner by red, black, and yellow rings.

----------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE, BISHOP OF HIPPO. A New Translation.

Edited by the Rev. Marcus Dods, M.A. Vols. I. and II. The City of

God. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. For sale by the Catholic Publication

Society, New York. 1871.

The Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, are well known and honorably

distinguished among publishers for the works of a high class of

scientific and literary worth in sacred literature which they are

regularly bringing out in the best style of the typographic art.

Besides their series of works by the most eminent German Protestant

theologians of the orthodox school, some of which are really valuable

to the Catholic student, they are issuing a set of translations of the

Ante-Nicene Fathers, and have now commenced a series of translations

from St. Augustine which they design to extend to sixteen or eighteen

volumes. We cannot sufficiently rejoice in the publication of these

patristic works. Nothing can produce an equally powerful impression in

favor of the Catholic Church on serious and educated minds with the

perusal of numerous and extensive works translated from the early

Christian writers. The two volumes before us are, in every sense of

the word, superb. The editor has prefaced them by an introduction,

whose style reminds us of Macaulay--while its matter is excellent,

interesting, and in all respects unexceptionable--in which he gives an

account of the nature and the circumstances of the great work of St.

Augustine, and of the various judgments of eminent scholars upon it.

So far as a merely cursory glance can warrant us in judging of the

merit of the translation, it appears to us that the extremely

difficult task of rendering the Latin accurately into good English has

been successfully accomplished. The work itself has been considered by

some eminent scholars as one of the great masterpieces of human

genius. It is the first great work on the philosophy of history which

was ever written. It was the fruit of the latest and most mature

period of the great doctor’s life. Its plan embraces a comprehensive

defence of Christianity against the objections of the Roman statesmen

and philosophers of the fifth century. A vast number of interesting

topics are treated in it, so that, apart from the philosophical value

which it possesses, it is most interesting and curious as a museum of

antiquities from the epoch when paganism was passing away to give

place to Christianity. It is to be hoped that Catholics as well as

Protestants will patronize the truly noble and useful undertaking of

the Messrs. Clark and their literary _collaborateurs_, to enrich our 282

English libraries with these splendid patristic translations.

A Life of St. Augustine is also promised to accompany the selections

from his writings. From this we can scarcely expect as much

satisfaction as from the other parts of the undertaking. The theology

and opinions of the writer must unavoidably prevent him from

understanding and correctly representing a Catholic bishop and doctor,

and giving a perfectly complete and correct account of the state of

the church during the period in which he lived. No one but a Catholic

can achieve this task with success, although a Protestant who is

sufficiently learned, accurate, and skilled in the art of composition,

may make a perfectly satisfactory translation of Catholic works. It

were much to be desired that some competent Catholic scholar would

give us a biography of St. Augustine so complete and perfect that it

would supplant all others, and take rank as the standard history of

his life and times.

LIGHT IN DARKNESS. A Treatise on the Obscure Night of the Soul. By

the Rev. A. F. Hewit, of the Congregation of St. Paul. New York:

Catholic Publication Society. 1871. Pp. 160.

This is a very small volume in bulk, and of very modest pretensions,

but of great merit, and treats with much truth and justice a very

important subject. It belongs to what is called _Mystic Theology_, and

gives us in a small compass the simpler elements of the science of the

saints, and cannot fail to interest all those who are entering upon a

life of Christian perfection, whether in religion or in the world. The

“obscure night of the soul,” as St. John of the Cross calls it, is

experienced in some degree by all whom the Holy Spirit is conducting

through purification, not to be effected without pain and sorrow, to

the highest and closest union with God possible while we are still in

the flesh. It is a deprivation of all sensible sweetness in devotion,

a desolation, a deadness of all but the very highest faculties of the

soul, in which all is dry and hard, and the soul discerns not a ray of

light to relieve the darkness that seems to pervade and envelop her

every act, and everything seems listless, prayer demands an effort,

and brings no consolation, and meditation is painful and fruitless.

This obscure night of the soul, sometimes called passive purgation, is

supernatural, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and is intended to try the

soul, to test its faith and confidence, to purify it, and enhance its

merit by bringing it in the end into joyful union with God.

If carefully distinguished from sadness and melancholy, which may

spring from the physical constitution and a variety of natural causes,

this inward desolation, in which the soul longs for light, for

spiritual life, and to behold the countenance of the Lord, is a great

good, and a proof that the Holy Spirit has not left us, but is present

within, and is preparing us for the joyful day that will dawn in the

soul, and permit us to ascend to the Mount of Vision with the saints.

Sensible sweetness, even visions, which are not seldom experienced by

one just entering a religious life, are baits to lure us on, or to

save us from discouragement, but they cannot create in us a robust and

solid piety. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every

son that he receiveth. Far more profitable to the soul is this obscure

night in which the Lord hides his face from us, and leaves us

desolate, and yet does not leave us, nor cease to love and care for

us.

Father Hewit explains the sources and solidity, the certainty, the

infallibility, of the science of the saints; shows the principles on

which it rests; describes the desolation of the soul due to the

discipline to which the Holy Spirit subjects the aspirant to Christian

perfection; gives plain and simple directions to distinguish it from

natural sadness or melancholy, and for the behavior of the soul while 283

suffering, and for deriving the greatest possible spiritual benefit

from it. He also gives us a criterion by which the operations of the

Holy Ghost may be distinguished from visionary illusions sent by Satan

to deceive and ruin the soul, which the spiritists make so much of.

His remarks on spiritism are just and opportune, are exceedingly

valuable, and should be pondered by every Catholic. The ravages of

spiritism are fearful.

The work is addressed solely to Catholics, and we think young and

inexperienced confessors and directors will find much in it to aid

them in their noble but arduous duties of directing souls in the way

of perfection. To the class of Christians for whom it is specially

intended, it will serve as a valuable and trustworthy guide, and will

assist them to profit by the many larger and fuller treatises on the

spiritual life whose excellence is unquestionable, and without

superseding them. We thank the author for the rich present he has made

us.

THE MONKS OF THE WEST, FROM ST. BENEDICT TO ST. BERNARD. By the Count

de Montalembert. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872. 2 vols.

This is an American reprint of the English translation of Count

Montalembert’s great work. The English edition is not only very

splendid, but very costly. Mr. Donahoe’s edition is compressed into

two volumes, at the reduced price of eight dollars, and is

nevertheless very handsomely printed, with type sufficiently large and

clear, and in all other respects well brought out. We welcome its

appearance as a most fortunate event, and recommend the work most

heartily as one which every intelligent Catholic ought to read as a

glorious monument of his religion, and every literary man as one of

the finest historical and literary productions of the age.

It is without a question that the Count de Montalembert was one of the

greatest and noblest men of this century, whether in or out of the

Catholic Church. The present work is the most complete and splendid

monument of his genius and piety which he has left to perpetuate his

fame. It is no mere compilation of biographies of the common sort, but

a history of the great monastic institution in the West, of its

stupendous works, and of the civilization of which it was one of the

chief organizing powers. It includes some most important and little

known chapters in the history of the chief nations of Christendom. Its

copious and exact erudition is only equalled by the majestic eloquence

of the style in which it is written, and which the translator has well

rendered into English. There are a few passages in the introduction in

which the author has allowed a certain bitterness of feeling to

disturb the ordinarily pure current of his sentiments, and has

betrayed some signs of his sympathy with the errors of the party of

so-called Liberal Catholics. We do not consider this blemish, however,

sufficient to detract seriously from the value and merit of this great

work, or to make its perusal in any way dangerous. It is a work

thoroughly Catholic, and pervaded with the same spirit of loyalty to

the Holy See which the illustrious author has expressed in his

dedication of the work to Pius IX. Whatever he said or did in a

contrary spirit was a lamentable inconsistency, which we trust God has

pardoned, as the Holy Father has done in so tender and magnanimous a

manner.

PETERS’S CATHOLIC CHOIR. A Monthly Magazine devoted to Catholic

Church Music. New York: J. L. Peters.

The purpose of this publication is to offer in a cheap form selected

musical Masses, hymns, and motets for the use of our church choirs. 284

The selections, from a purely musical point of view, are as good as

publications of this nature generally contain.

THE PICTORIAL BIBLE AND CHURCH HISTORY STORIES. Abridged. A

Compendious Narrative of Sacred History, brought down to the

present Time of the Church, and complete in one Volume. By the

Rev. Henry Formby. New York: The Catholic Publication Society,

9 Warren St. 1871.

This is a book which deserves to find a place as a text-book in all

Catholic schools, and to be put by all Catholic parents into the hands

of their children. Even the very little ones will be found capable of

comprehending the easy and familiar English of the narrative; nor can

too much stress be laid on the importance of thus familiarizing them

from the start with the history of God’s dealings with men. For this

purpose, the plan of acquainting them with the Bible history simply is

far from sufficient. It leaves too great a gap between the past and

the present--as if sacred history had virtually come to an end

eighteen centuries ago, and since then everything had been merely

secular and profane. A well-instructed child needs to have the whole

of sacred history, from the creation of the world to the usurpation of

Rome by Victor Emanuel, laid before his eyes in a series the

connections of which are plain and unbroken. Such a simple historical

knowledge will be apt to prove the best safeguard of his faith in a

time when there is no longer any great temptation for him to abandon

it in favor of misbelief, but when open unbelief in the providence of

God is fast becoming his only real enemy. The task which Father Formby

has undertaken, of presenting this history in an easy and compendious

form, is one which he has very satisfactorily accomplished, and for

which there seemed to be a crying need.

We can only hope that American Catholics will make haste to avail

themselves of the results of his labors. The book is an attractive

one, very fully illustrated by pictures which, if they are not to be

called artistic, have at all events the merit of being often

suggestive, and the letterpress will be found good reading by older

readers as well as by the young ones.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR THE UNITED STATES FOR

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1872. Calculated for different Parallels of

Latitude, and adapted for use throughout the Country. Illuminated

cover, 12mo, pp. 144. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

1872.

There are many good works to be done for our Catholic community, and

here is one of them. A little annual at a trifling price, yet, in

paper, typographical execution, and illustrations, wonderfully

attractive, now finds its way to over seventy thousand Catholic homes,

and gives to perhaps a quarter of a million of Catholic readers

information, instruction, and entertainment.

The material is new and healthy. It is a commentary on the communion

of saints. Catholics are not of one state or country, of one age or

century. We are a brotherhood embracing all. The young growing up wish

to know of the past glories of the church as the old love to speak of

them; and all desire information of the actual life of the church.

God’s hand is not shortened in the nineteenth century. He overlooks

the great and wise, and reveals himself to little ones, now as of old.

Bernadette Soubirous, whose likeness is given, kneels there, and all

cluster round her to hear the wonderful history of Lourdes. The lately

martyred Archbishop of Paris will be viewed with interest, and the

sketch of him will be imprinted on all minds. The beautiful portraits

of Adelaide Procter and Eugénie de Guérin bring to mind the

representative women of the church in our day, whom to know is to 285

love; and many thousands will here begin to appreciate those two

beautiful souls. In the history of the church in America, all will

feel that Catholicity is no stranger in the land when we see before us

the remains of a cathedral in Greenland, built in the twelfth century;

a bishop in Florida in the sixteenth, predecessor of the illustrious

Carroll in the last, and the saintly Flaget in our own.

Ireland, the fatherland of so many sons of our Holy Mother, is not

forgotten. The ruins of religious houses, caused by hate, and the

excellent portrait of the Liberator, O’Connell, show the close union

between Catholics of all lands and times.

This little attractive bouquet of Catholic flowers, rich with the

aroma of faith, will, by its suggestions, its information, and its

creditable appearance alone, keep alive and stimulate the true

Catholic feeling; and there can be no better work than to disseminate

it widely and more widely in every parish, until it finds its way to

every Catholic family in the land.

LIFE OF THE REVEREND MOTHER JULIA, Foundress and First Superior

of the Sisters of Notre Dame, of Namur. Translated from the

French. With the History of the Order in the United States. New

York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

Marie Rose Julia Billiart, the foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame,

was born at Cuvilly, in Picardy, in 1751, and died in 1816. The life

from which this is translated was first published in 1862, for the use

of the Sisters, but will be found also of great interest to the

general reader. It is certainly so, or at least should be, in this

country, where they are so widely diffused, are doing so much for the

cause of Catholic education, and are so well known. Mother Julia was

also a saint, and the lives of the servants of God are always

interesting, especially when told in a natural and unaffected way. Her

whole life was an extraordinary one, though her congregation was not

established till 1803, when she had reached the age of fifty-two; its

foundation being, as it were, necessarily delayed by the disturbances

in France during the Revolution; but of course the greater part of

this memoir is occupied with her last years, which were more abundant

than those that preceded in visible service to others, though not

perhaps in merit to herself. At her death, the order was firmly

established, though not without passing through many trials and

difficulties, and had a number of houses in France and Belgium. It was

brought to this country in 1840, and to England three years later; it

now has seventeen houses there, and twenty in the United States,

having the care, in these two countries alone, of more than thirty

thousand children. The latter part of the book, as stated in the

title, is occupied with its foundation and establishment here; also an

interesting account is given of its introduction into England and

Guatemala, to which latter place they were sent in 1859.

We have before us a list of the houses of the Sisters in

Massachusetts, nine in number, at which nearly seven thousand children

are instructed, as well as over a thousand night-scholars; they have

also more than five thousand attending Sunday-school. It is very much

to be desired and hoped that so useful a body of religious may be

everywhere as abundant as in this favored state; and yet there are not

enough even there, and probably never will be. The words of our Lord

are always verified: “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers

are few.” Still, there will, no doubt, be vocations when they are

really asked for.

The _Life of Mother Julia_ is well and clearly printed, and beautifully

bound; and the translation was made by an American lady fully qualified 286

for the task.

An excellent portrait of Mother Julia embellishes the book.

THE FOUR GREAT EVILS OF THE DAY. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of

Westminster. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1871. Pp. 142. For sale by

The Catholic Publication Society, New York.

The Four Great Evils exposed in these four lectures are the Revolt of

the Intellect against God, the Revolt of the Will against God, the

Revolt of Society against God, the Spirit of Antichrist. The author

shows how the revolt against the Roman Church and the Vicar of Christ

results in atheism, immorality, social anarchy, and the disruption of

the whole fabric of Christianity, involving the destruction of the

human race, and of the world, the Catholic Church excepted, which is

preserved by miracle to the end of time. These lectures are very

timely, and ought to be read by every reflecting person. The

Archbishop of Westminster is equal to the greatest of our modern

prelates in his clear insight into Catholic principles, and thorough

knowledge of the atheistic and communistic tendencies of

Protestantism. Hence the respect, fear, and hatred with which he is

regarded by the enemies of the church. One thing especially noticeable

in these lectures, and which we have observed with peculiar pleasure,

is the exhibition of the intellectual as well as moral degradation of

modern infidelity. The superstition and absurdity into which the proud

rebellion of the mind against the authority of the church has plunged

it is shown by Archbishop Manning, in a different way from that

employed by Dr. Newman, but with a force equally irresistible. We

recommend all our intelligent readers, and we presume that all our

readers are intelligent, who desire to master the true and pure

principles of the Catholic religion in their relation to the errors

and disorders of the day, to obtain and study carefully all the works

of the Archbishop of Westminster.

A CRITICAL GREEK AND ENGLISH CONCORDANCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Prepared by Charles F. Hudson, under the direction of Horace L.

Hastings, editor of _The Christian_; revised and completed by Ezra

Abbot, LL.D., Assistant Librarian of Harvard University. Second

edition, revised. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

This handy little volume is evidently the result of a good deal of

painstaking and conscientious labor. As the production of several

hands, it is a monument of somewhat heterogeneous scholarship. It

professes to be “critical”; and critical and scholarly we are sure it

is, so far as it is indebted to the contributions of Dr. Ezra Abbot, a

gentleman whose minute bibliographical knowledge is only equalled by

his rare modesty, and by his readiness to place his learning at the

disposal of others. To his careful hand, we take it, is due the

collection of various readings as given by Griesbach, Lachmann, and

the latest editions of Tischendorf and Tregelles. The student will

find in this compilation a mass of information which we do not

remember to have seen in so compact a form elsewhere. For the rest,

the work will doubtless fulfil the purpose announced by the

editor-in-chief, as a “book available to the mere English reader,” and

will be welcomed by evangelical ministers of all denominations who may

have felt more or less keenly the need of supplementing the defects in

their early classical education by some easy artificial helps. How

convenient, for example, when we run against the word γυνή, to find,

on the authority of Messrs. Hastings and Hudson, that, in a given

number of passages, the majority in fact, it signifies _woman_,

undoubtedly _woman_, whereas in several other given passages, including 287

1 Cor. ix. 5, it means _wife_--even though there may be some

misgivings about the “margin.” Whether or not it be “critical,” under

cover of scholarship, to turn a supposed Greek concordance into

nothing more nor less than a quiet vindication of the accuracy of the

King James Version, we leave it to ordinary unbelievers to determine.

LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN, with Notices of some of his

Contemporaries, and Specimens of his Style. By D. A. Harsha, M.A.,

author of “Life of Philip Doddrige, D.D.,” etc. Philadelphia: J.

B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

Nothing, we suppose, is more likely to strike the ordinary Catholic

reader, supposing him even to waste his time over books of the kind,

than the great meagreness and poverty of what are known by

Protestants as religious lives. Even a non-Catholic, like Mr.

Matthew Arnold, has somewhere commented on the superiority of

Catholic biographies to Protestant ones, with that air of easy

insolence which has made him anything but a pleasing subject for

contemplation to the majority of his countrymen and co-religionists.

Mr. Harsha’s life of the allegorizing tinker of Bedford can boast of

no advantage in this respect over other efforts of the same general

description. It is not, we should say, the fault of the biographer,

who seems to have genuine religious instincts, and to be principally

hampered by his ignorance of what true spirituality means, and the

poverty of the material he works in. These, however, are in his

position necessary evils.

This book has other faults for which he is more actively

responsible. A man who wonders that Bunyan should have been molested

for his religious views under what he, perhaps facetiously, calls

the “mild rule of Cromwell” (a characterization that John Evelyn would

have been as slow to endorse as any Catholic Irishman of Zedah) and is

puzzled to account for his freedom during the reign of the Second

James, needs something besides an acquaintance with the _Pilgrim’s

Progress_ and Bunyan’s sermons to qualify him for the task of a

biographer. Perhaps, however, a thorough knowledge of history would be

as successful an agent in the work of un-Protestantizing a sincere man

as any other merely human one that could be named.

GRADUALE DE TEMPORE ET DE SANCTIS, juxta Ritum Sacrosanctæ Romanæ

Ecclesiæ cum cantu Pauli V. Pont. Max. jussu reformato cui addita

sunt officia postea approbata sub auspiciis Sanctissimi Domini

Nostri Pii PP. IX. Curante Sacr. Rituum Congregatione, cum

privilegio. Ratisbonæ, Neo-Eboraci et Cincinnatii: Sumptibus,

chartis et typis Frederici Pustet.

About the time of the opening of the Œcumenical Council, the firm of

F. Pustet were permitted by special indult to publish a revised

edition of the Gradual known as the Medicean. A commission was

appointed by the Sacred Congregation of Rites to undertake this

revision, but the suspension of the Council and the political troubles

ensuing prevented the completion of their labors. A dispensation,

however, was granted to Mr. Pustet to publish and sell the work,

adding the portion yet unrevised as it stands in the original edition.

We reserve a fuller notice for some future date, when we hope to lay

before our readers a critical essay on the various editions of the

Gradual and other books of chant published in Europe and Canada.

THE GRAND DEMONSTRATION in Baltimore and Washington, D. C., in honor

of the XXVth Anniversary of the Election of Pius IX. to the Chair

of St. Peter, June 17, 18, 19. A.D. 1871. Baltimore: John Murphy &

Co.

It would be scarcely possible to add anything on the general subject

of this handsome brochure--the theme of so many thousand eloquent pens 288

and voices. The celebration in the Province of Baltimore, however, was

an exceptional one, as became the oldest See in the United States.

Besides the addresses, letters, and resolutions, etc., which we

naturally look for in such a publication, it includes encyclical and

other letters from His Holiness, and some historical and chronological

matter which the reader will find highly useful.

THE MARTYRS OF THE COLISEUM; or, Historical Records of the Great

Amphitheatre of Ancient Rome. By the Rev. A. J. O’Reilly,

Missionary Apostolic at St. Mary’s, Capetown. London: Burns,

Oates, & Co. 1871. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,

New York.

The basis of the narratives of this volume is furnished by the ancient

_Acts of the Martyrs_. The story of several of the most illustrious

martyrs of the early ages is told by the author, according to history

and legend, with some embellishments of imagination, poetry, and

fancy. There is also an account of the history of the Coliseum itself,

as far as knowledge or probable conjecture can furnish it. The

author’s style is warm, exuberant, and brilliant. The volume is

instructive and entertaining, and ought to be a favorite, with young

people especially.

MANUAL OF PIETY, for the use of Seminarians. Second American Edition.

Baltimore: Published by John Murphy & Co., 182 Baltimore Street.

1872.

This is a new edition of an excellent and well-known manual for

seminarians. It can hardly be too highly commended either as regards

matter or form. It contains an immense amount of matter in a very

small space, and the type is clear and beautiful.

MR. ROBERT CODDINGTON has in press, and will publish about Christmas,

_The Vicar of Christ; or, Lectures upon the Office and Prerogatives of

our Holy Father the Pope_, by Rev. Thomas S. Preston, pastor of St.

Ann’s Church, New York, and Chancellor of the Diocese. It will be

published uniform in style with the other volumes of Father Preston’s

lectures.

The Catholic Publication Society will publish, November 1, _Mary,

Queen of Scots, and Her Latest English Historian_, a narrative of the

principal events in the life of Mary Stuart, with some remarks on Mr.

Froude’s _History of England_, by James F. Meline. This work will

contain not only the thorough criticism of Mr. Froude’s _History of

England_ as far as made in the five articles on the subject in THE

CATHOLIC WORLD--articles which have attracted general attention, and

put Mr. Froude upon his defence--but also a complete narrative of the

life of Mary Stuart, with a review of those volumes of Mr. Froude’s

history not noticed in the articles.

MR. P. DONAHOE, Boston, will soon publish _To and from the Passion

Play at Oberammergau, Bavaria_, from the pen of the Rev. George H.

Doane, Chancellor of the Diocese of Newark. It will be dedicated to the

Rt. Rev. J. R. Bayley, D.D., Bishop of Newark.

KELLY, PIET & CO. announce as in press _The Martyrs of the

Coliseum_, by Rev. A. J. O’Reilly.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., New York: The Holy Bible according to

the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611), with an Explanatory and Critical

Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and

other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A.,

Canon of Exeter. Vol. I. Part 1. Genesis-Exodus.

From KAY & BROTHER, Philadelphia: A Collection of Leading Cases in

the Law of Elections in the United States, with Notes and References

to the latest Authorities. By Frederick C. Brightly.

THE 289

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIV., No. 81.--DECEMBER, 1871.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by

REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at

Washington, D. C.

THE RECENT EVENTS IN FRANCE.

We have no occasion to dwell on the disastrous events of the war of

the second French Empire with Prussia, nor on the still more

disastrous results of the feeble efforts of the improvised republic to

drive back the German armies from French soil. They are too painful to

be dwelt on, and are, probably, as well known to our readers as to

ourselves. We may, however, remark that we regard it as a mistake to

represent the war as unprovoked by Prussia. The party that declares

the war is not always responsible for it. Prussia, by her duplicity,

her aggressive spirit, and her menacing attitude to France, gave to

the French government ample reason, according to what has long been

the usage with European nations, for declaring the war.

We have never been the partisans of Louis Napoleon; but it is only

simple justice to say that by his concessions of January, 1870, he had

ceased to be the absolute sovereign of France, and had become a

constitutional monarch, like the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland,

and the declaration of war against Prussia in July of the same year

was not his personal act, but the act of the Liberal ministry and the

French people, influenced, not unlikely, by the secret societies that

had sworn the Emperor’s destruction. Perhaps, when the facts are

better known, it will be clearly seen that the Emperor had really no

alternative but war with Prussia, or the loss of the French throne for

himself and dynasty. Though unprepared, he chose the war, as offering

at least a chance of success, and it is not improbable that the result

would have been less disastrous both for him and the nation if he had

been loyally sustained by the French people, and had not had a more

formidable enemy in his rear than in his front. The influences that

compelled him to consent to the declaration of war were unfriendly to

him, and both before and after the declaration were, not unlikely,

indirectly controlled by that astute but unprincipled diplomatist,

Bismarck, at present Chancellor of the new German Empire, and through 290

whose adroitness Germany has been Prussianized.

It now also appears that the disaster of Sedan was far less the fault

of the Emperor than of his marshals, who acted without his orders, and

without concert with one another. If Marshal MacMahon had fallen back

on the capital, as Trochu says he advised, instead of attempting to

relieve Metz, and given the nation time to rally and concentrate its

forces, it is probable the empire would have been saved, and the

Prussians been ultimately defeated and driven beyond the Rhine. Even

after the disaster of Sedan, the integrity of French territory might

have been saved, and peace obtained on far less onerous terms than

those which were finally imposed by the conqueror after the surrender

of Paris, but for the Parisian mob of the 4th of September, which

compelled the Corps Législatif to pronounce, illegally of course, the

escheat of the Emperor and the empire, to proclaim the republic, and

to suffer a so-called government of defence to be improvised. The

disaster of Sedan was great, but it was a mere bagatelle in comparison

with that of the revolution effected by the Parisian mob acting under

the direction of the secret societies, whose destructive power and

influence were so well and so truthfully set forth by Disraeli in his

_Lothair_, one of the most remarkable books recently published, and

which shows that its author fully understands the great questions,

movements, and tendencies of modern society. That revolution was the

real disaster, and Paris, not Prussia or Germany, has subjugated

France. The French, excepting a few lawyers, journalists, literary

dreamers, and the workingmen of the cities and towns, who demanded

“_la république démocratique et sociale_,” had no wish for a republic,

and were, and are, decidedly anti-republican at heart. The men

composing the so-called government of defence were, for the most part,

men who had not, and could not inspire it, the confidence of the

nation, were men without faith or solid principle, theorists and

declaimers, utterly destitute both of civil and military capacity,

distrusted, if not detested, by all Frenchmen who retained any sense

of religion or any love of country surpassing their love for their own

theories. France, perhaps, could have been saved by a loyal support of

the empire, and a hearty co-operation with the Imperial government

under the Empress-Regent, even after the disaster of Sedan, but not by

overthrowing it, and plunging the nation into the revolutionary abyss.

The government of defence only hastened the catastrophe by defaming

the Imperial government, calumniating it, and publishing every sort of

falsehood against it that malice could invent or render plausible, as

the event has proved, and all the world is beginning to see and admit.

But for the socialistic revolution, it is now known that, even after

the surrender of the Emperor, the Imperial government could have

obtained peace without any mutilation of French territory, and on

terms, if hard, at least such as could be borne. France would have

suffered the mortification of defeat, and would have been compelled to

indemnify, as a matter of course, Prussia for the expenses of the war;

but she would have suffered no loss of territory, and would have

remained, defeated indeed, but not conquered. Europe would have

mediated effectually in her favor, for the balance of power requires

her preservation; but the European nations could not intervene in favor 291

of a revolution which was a menace to each one of themselves, and

Prussia would not and could not treat with a revolutionary committee

that had no legal existence and no power to bind the nation.

The insurrection of Paris on the 18th of March, 1871, against the

Versailles government, was only the logical continuation of that of

the 4th of September against the empire. The same party that made the

one made the other. An omnibus would hold nearly all the republicans

in France that differ essentially or in principle from the Paris

Commune, and its suppression after a fearful struggle is the

condemnation of the revolution that overthrew the empire, and also of

the government that suppressed it. Its suppression, so absolutely

necessary if France or French society is to subsist, was simply the

revolution condemning and killing itself. No government can be founded

on the revolutionary principle, for that principle is destructive and

can found nothing; and hence it is that every revolution is compelled

to devour itself; and to be able to reconstruct and maintain political

or social order, it must deny its own principle, and as far as

possible undo its own work. Yet the Commune is only “scotched, not

killed,” and will rear its head again in the first moment a new

political crisis comes. A republic of law and order, respecting and

maintaining the rights of person and property, such as we regard our

own, is at present impracticable in every nation in Europe, with the

single exception of Switzerland, for it has no basis in the interior

life, the antecedents, the manners, customs, and usages of the people.

It was by the aid of non-republican France that the Parisian

insurgents were put down. There is in Europe no political _via media_

practicable as yet between the absolutism of Cæsar and the absolutism

of the people. Either Cæsar is in the place of God, or the people; and

the only religion this nineteenth century tolerates is either

monarchical absolutism or popular absolutism; and European society, as

we see, only swings like a pendulum from the one to the other, and

finds no liberty or chance for free development under either. Its real

progress is suspended.

At this moment, France lies prostrate with the iron heel of the

conqueror on her neck, and that conqueror, Prussia, a power that never

was known to have a noble or generous sentiment, and that has 1806 to

avenge. Prussia has not yet relaxed her hold on her prostrate foe, and

will not of her own accord, so long as a single sign of life remains.

France has now no legal government, no political organization, and,

what is the worst, recognizes no power competent to reorganize her

society, and reconstitute the state, and has recognized none since the

revolution of 1789. Since that worldwide event, she has had no

government which she felt herself bound in conscience to obey, or

towards which she had any genuine sentiment of loyalty. No government

has been able to count on the national support if it became

unfortunate, and ceased to gratify the national pride or vanity. The

principles of 1789, avowedly accepted as the basis of his government

by the Emperor, are destructive of the very sentiment of loyalty, and

deny the obligation in conscience of the people to obey authority any

longer than it suits their convenience. If a plebiscitum or the

popular vote could create a legal government, Louis Napoleon was and

is still the legal sovereign of the French people, and, through them,

of France. But the nation never had any sentiment of loyalty towards 292

him, and abandons him as it did his greater uncle the moment he

becomes unsuccessful. It never felt that it owed him allegiance, and

how could it since he professed to hold from it? His government was

based on a plebiscitum, and could it bind the nation? It was created

by the people, was their creature, and can the creator be loyal to or

bound by his own creation? The nation can be bound only by a power

above itself and be loyal only to an authority that comes from a

source independent of the people.

Louis Napoleon held from 1789, and had the weakness to believe in

plebiscitums. He seems never to have understood that universal

suffrage can only create an agency, not a government. He was a

disciple of the political philosophers of the eighteenth century, who

erected revolution into a principle. These philosophers of the

eighteenth century made no account of the continuity of the national

life, of national habits, customs, and usages, and assumed that the

convention might draw up an entirely new constitution according to an

abstract and preconceived theory, without regard to the antecedents or

past life of the nation, and without any support in the spiritual or

supernatural order above the nation, get it adopted by a plurality of

votes, and safely rely on _l’intérêt bien entendu_, or enlightened

self-interest, to preserve it and secure its successful practical

workings as the fundamental law of the nation. The whole history of

France for nearly a century, without any reference to our own

experience, refutes the absurd theory of the philosophers, or

sophists, rather. A French gentleman, still living, told us, before

the recent collapse of the second French Empire, that he had witnessed

seventeen revolutions or changes of government in his native country,

and he is in a fair way of living to see the number increased at least

to a score. No government created by and held from the people can

govern the people; and, if reason alone or the calculations of

interest were sufficient to sustain a government, no government or

political constitution would be necessary. Paper constitutions are

worthless, save so far as they express the living constitution of the

nation. “Constitutions,” Count de Maistre has well said, “are

generated, not made”; and the merit of the American constitution is in

the fact that it was born with the American people, not made by them.

France was originally constituted by the king, the nobility, the

church, with some feeble remains of the old Roman municipalities,

subsequently revived and expanded into the _tiers-état_. The balance

of her original constitution had been disturbed, it is true; the

church and the nobility had been greatly enfeebled by the inordinate

growth of monarchy on the one hand, and the expansion of the communal

power on the other; but these four fundamental elements of her

national constitution still subsisted in more or less force down to

the Revolution of 1789. That revolution swept away king, church, and

nobility, and proclaimed the _tiers-état_ the nation, without any

political organization or power to reconstitute legal or legitimate

government. No nation is competent to constitute itself, for till

constituted it is only a mass of individuals, incapable of any legal

national act. Since then France has been trying in vain to make

something out of nothing, and been continually alternating between the

mob and despotism--despotism suppressing the mob, and the mob deposing

despotism. She at this moment has no legal government, and the French 293

people recognize no power able to reconstitute the state. Her old

monarchical constitution, tempered by the church and her old nobility,

and restrained by provincial customs, usages, privileges, and

franchises, is swept away, and nothing remains of her political life

that can serve as the germ or basis of reorganization, or the

re-establishment of authority, competent, legally or morally, to bind

the nation, restore order, and protect liberty.

Worse than all else is the fact that 1789 swept away the church as a

power in the state, and left the state it wished to constitute without

any moral support, or power not dependent on the nation to sustain it.

It threw the management of public affairs into the hands of men and

parties that had no faith in God, who hated or despised religion, and

believed only in themselves and the perfectibility of the species.

This was the greatest evil of all. A nation may be politically

disorganized, and yet be able to recover and re-establish a legal

government, if it retains religion as an organized power, independent

of the nation; for it then retains a power that has its source in the

supernatural, above the people, and able to bind the national will in

conscience, and give consistency and a divine sanction to the national

ordinations. The first Napoleon had sense enough to see something of

this, and to understand that he could not reorganize disorganized

France without calling in religion to his aid; he therefore solicited

a concordat from the Holy See, and re-established the church. But he

had not sense enough to see and understand that even the church could

not aid him if holding from himself, or if subjected in her

administration to his own or the national will. He committed

the usual mistake of secular sovereigns, that of insisting on keeping

the control of the ecclesiastical administration in their respective

dominions each in his own hands, of using the church to control his

subjects, but allowing her no authority over himself.

Nothing can exceed the short-sightedness of secular sovereigns in

seeking to keep religion in their respective dominions subject to

their will as an adjunct of the police, rather than an independent

power holding from God, and alike supreme over sovereigns and

subjects. The present hostility to the church, even in old Catholic

nations, is in no small measure owing to the fact that the sovereigns

have sought to use her to preach submission, resignation, and patience

to their subjects, and to uphold the authority of the government,

however forgetful of its duties, tyrannical, or oppressive. They have

sought to make her their instrument in governing or, rather,

misgoverning their subjects, without the liberty to exercise the power

which, as the representative of the divine authority on earth, she

holds from God, to remind them of their duty to govern their subjects

wisely and justly, to rebuke and place them under interdict, and even

to declare their power forfeited when they persistently violate the

law of God and oppress the people. They thus render her odious to the

lovers of freedom. Hence we see the revolution far more bitter against

the church than against the sovereigns, who, having rendered her

odious by denying her the freedom and independence which are her

right, and without which she can render no service either to power or

to liberty, have everywhere abandoned her to the tender mercies of her

enemies, in the vain hope of conciliating the revolution and saving

their own heads. They throw her now as a sop to Cerberus. 294

The power of religion to sustain authority against the insurrection

and rebellion of subjects, and liberty against the tyranny of the

prince, is in her being an organic power in the nation, but

independent of the national will, holding from God, not from the

nation or its sovereign, and free to declare and apply the divine law

alike to prince and people. Nationalized, she has no support outside

of the nation, no power not derived from it, and can give the nation

only what it already has in itself. It must follow, not lead the

nation, and share its fate, which it has no power to avert. What can

the Russian Church do to restrain the tyranny of the Czar? Or the

Church of England to check the progress of the revolution now going on

and threatening to sweep away king, nobility, and the church first of

all? What can it do before the democracy become omnipotent? Why is it

that no Gentile nation has ever shown any recuperative energy, but

because Gentilism, as the name implies, is nationalism, and the nation

has in it only a national religion, and nothing outside, above, or

independent of the national authority? The Gentile religion, deprived

of catholicity, had to follow the nation, and to share its corruption

and its fate. When the nation fell, it fell with it; and the nation,

when it fell, fell for ever, and disappeared from the list of nations.

Protestantism in its essential principle is a revolt against

catholicity, and the subjection of religion to the national will. It

is essentially a revival of nationalism, or Gentilism, and hence a

Protestant nation has no recuperative energy, and, were it to fall,

its fall would be like that of a Gentile nation, a fall without the

power to rise again. So it must be with every nation that has only a

national or a nationalized religion.

Napoleon, who wished the church only as an adjunct of his own power,

never understood anything of all this. He saw that the church was more

conservative than Protestantism, and in fact so by virtue of her

Catholicity, that she had a stronger hold on the French people, and

could serve him better than any Protestant sect; but he did not see

that the church, sought for a political end, is necessarily powerless

even to that end, and that she serves a political end only when she is

sought for her own sake, recognized and supported for a religious end,

or as the free and independent kingdom of God on earth. Not

understanding this, he refused her unrestrained liberty, and sought by

his own legislation to subject her in his own dominions to his own

will, and to compel her either to support his policy or to feel the

full weight of his vengeance. She must support him, wear his livery,

do his bidding, hold his enemies to be her enemies, or he would not

tolerate her at all. She, as the church of God, could not accept this

position and sink into a mere national church, however powerful the

nation. She asserted her independence, and her independence alike of

him and those he professed to govern. He commanded her to obey him:

she refused. He quarrelled with her, dragged her supreme pontiff from

his throne, despoiled him of his estates, imprisoned him, was

excommunicated, became powerless before his enemies, was defeated,

lost his throne, and was sent by his conquerors to fret his life away

as a prisoner of England on the barren isle of St. Helena, leaving

French society hardly less disorganized than he found it.

The Restoration which followed was a return toward legitimacy, and

under it France actually recuperated with a rapidity which seems 295

marvellous to unbelievers. But it humiliated the nation, because it

was imposed on it by foreign bayonets, and its work of reparation and

expiation necessarily made it unpopular with all who had profited by

the plunder and confiscations of the Revolution, or by the wars of the

Empire. The spirit of 1789 still possessed a large portion of the

population. The Bourbons returned, also, with the old Gallican

traditions of the relation of church and state, which had lost the

monarchy, and prepared the people for the old revolution. They would

have the church, indeed, but they would never recognize her rightful

supremacy; and, though giving France really the best government she

had had for a long time, they at length fell before the intrigues of a

younger branch of the family, supported by the combined factions of

the Bonapartists, republicans, and socialists.

The monarchy of July or the Barricades was, notwithstanding the

pretences of the _juste milieu_, or doctrinaires, a purely

revolutionary government, improvised in the interests of disorder,

without a shadow of legality, and without anything, in the nation or

in religion, on which it could rest; and from the first it was spurned

by the legitimists, the old national nobility, by the peasantry, the

larger part of the republicans, and supported only by the

_bourgeoisie_, or business classes, and the Bonapartists, the latter

of whom hoped to make it a stepping-stone to the restoration of the

Napoleonic empire. It had no hold on the nation, no power to

reconstitute it on a solid and permanent basis; and so, as a new

generation appeared on the stage, it fell without a struggle before

the Parisian mob. It was indifferent rather than avowedly hostile to

the church, but it gave free scope to the infidel press, warred

against the Jesuits, and maintained the infidel university in the

monopoly of education. It, however, indirectly served the cause of

religion by the little court favor the bishops could obtain, and who,

in consequence, retired, and looked after the interests of religion in

their respective dioceses, so that when a Parisian mob overthrew the

citizen-king in February, 1848, and proclaimed the republic, the

church was really more influential in France than she had been since

1682. She had influence enough to displace the party that made the

revolution from the control of public affairs, to defeat and crush the

reds and communists in the terrible days of June, 1848, to save French

society from utter dissolution, and maintain order under a republic

proclaimed by the friends of disorder. We are far from being convinced

that, if the bishops and clergy had continued to show the energy in

supporting the republic that they did in wresting it from the control

of the infidels and destructives, they would not have been able to

reconstitute French society on a Catholic and a republican basis, to

the advantage alike of religion and society.

Certain it is, the church, though not officially supported by the

republic, and had many and bitter enemies in France, was freer under

it than she had been since the great Western Schism, and had a fair

opportunity to prove to the world that she is wedded to no particular

form of government or political organization, and can subsist as well,

to say the least, in a republic as in a monarchy. We thought at the

time, and we still think, though no enemy to monarchy and no blind

defender of republicanism, that the French bishops and clergy

committed a grave blunder in abandoning the republic and surrendering 296

French society to the nephew of his uncle--a member of the Carbonari,

a known conspirator against the Pope in 1832, and a favorite with the

red republicans and socialists. It would be difficult to estimate the

damage they did to France and to the cause of religion throughout the

world. It will cost, perhaps, centuries of bitter struggle and

suffering on the part of Catholics, to repair the sad effects of that

blunder. But French Catholics had for ages been accustomed to rely on

royal support, and they lacked the robust and vigorous habits under

God of self-reliance. The bishops and clergy could easily have marched

to a martyrs’ death, but they had with all their experience never

learned the folly of putting their trust for the church in princes.

They remembered the Reign of Terror; they remembered, also, the

flesh-pots of Egypt, and shrank from the hunger, thirst, and fatigue

of the desert.

The new emperor found the French people divided into three principal

parties--the church or Catholic party, which included the Bourbonists

and the better part of the Orleanists; the republican party, properly

so-called; and the socialistic or extreme radical party, represented

in the recent civil war by the communists of Paris and of all Europe.

His policy on commencing his reign was avowedly to keep the control of

all these parties in his own hands, by leaving each party something to

hope from his government, and allowing no one to gain the ascendency,

and, as far as possible, engrossing the whole nation in the pursuit of

material goods. He acknowledged the sovereignty of the nation,

professed to hold from 1789, and favored universal suffrage, which was

in accordance with the views of the republican party; he adopted

measures to secure employment to the working-men of the cities and

towns, among whom was the great body of the socialists, or communists,

by his encouragement of expensive national and municipal works; and,

to retain his hold on them and to protect himself from the assassins

of the secret societies, he made his Italian campaign, drove the

Austrians out of Italy, and prepared the way for Italian unification,

and for despoiling the Holy Father of his temporal possessions and

sovereignty; raised the salaries paid to clergy as servants of the

state, and repaired churches and abbeys as national monuments at the

national expense, to please and secure the church party. But he

suppressed the freedom the church had enjoyed under the republic,

maintained the “organic articles” of his uncle, and all the old

Gallican edicts and legislation against the freedom and independence

of the church in full force, trusting that she would see a

compensation for her loss of liberty in the increased pomp and

splendor of her worship or the gilded slavery to which he reduced her.

The recrudescence of infidelity, atheism, or materialism was a marked

feature under the Second Empire, and the influence of religion daily

and hourly declined; and all the wisdom and energy of the government

seemed exerted to _despiritualize_, if we may be allowed the word, the

French nation, to extinguish whatever remained of its old chivalric

sentiments and its old love of glory, once so powerful in every French

heart, and to render the nation intent only on things of the earth,

earthy. His policy, being always that of half-measures, disguised as

moderation, was not suited to make him true friends. His Italian

campaign against Austria was pushed far enough to make Austrians his 297

enemies, but not far enough to make friends of the Italians. His

consent to the annexation to Sardinia of the Italian duchies, the

Neapolitan kingdom, and the Æmilian provinces of the Holy See, was

enough to alienate the friends of international law, and to offend all

conservatives and Catholics who had any sense of right or religion;

but not enough, so long as he protected the Holy Father in the

sovereignty of the city of Rome, to gain him the good-will of the

infidels, communists, secret societies, or of the partisans of Italian

unity. His policy of never pushing matters to extremes, and of winning

and controlling all parties, by leaving each something to hope from

him, but never what any one specially desired, necessarily resulted,

as might have been foreseen, in offending all parties, and in gaining

the confidence of no one. He had by his half-and-half measures

succeeded in alienating all parties in France, and, by his Crimean

war, his Italian policy, and his half-league with Bismarck to drive

Austria out of Germany and increase the territory and power of

Prussia, had succeeded equally well in losing the confidence of all

the European nations with which he had any relations, and in finding

himself without an ally or a friend.

The elections of 1869 disclosed the very unsatisfactory fact that he

really had no party in France, and no support but his own creatures,

and if he still retained a feeble majority in the popular vote, say of

five hundred thousand votes out of an aggregate of six millions and a

half, it was from a dread of another revolution, rather than from any

attachment to him personally or to his government. This led him to a

new line of policy, to abandon _personal_ government, to make large

concessions to what is called self-government, and to throw himself

into the arms of the apparently moderate liberals, as distinguished on

the one hand from the church party, and on the other from the

socialists, communists, or destructives, that is, of the feeblest and

least popular party in France, and consented to the war against

Prussia as his only chance of recovering, by military success, if he

gained it, his popularity with the nation. His military expedition

having failed, because he had, so to speak, _unmartialized_ his

empire, and because he was not really backed by the French people, he

was obliged to surrender himself a prisoner of war with his army at

Sedan, and his dynasty was expelled by a mob. He had abandoned the

Holy Father in order to serve the liberals at home and abroad,

deserted the cause of God, and God, and even the liberals, deserted

him.

France is to-day not only prostrate under the iron heel of the

Prussian, but is without any government in which any party in the

nation has any confidence, and, if she recovers at all, her recovery

must be slow and painful, and subject to numerous relapses. Prussia,

as we have said, will not readily let go her hold, and never, so long

as she can help it, suffer her to rise from her present condition. The

remote cause is 1789, or rather the causes that led to that

uncalled-for and most disastrous revolution; but the proximate cause

we must look for in the lack of wise and practical statesmanship in

Louis Napoleon, who sought to govern France according to a

preconceived theory, worked out in his closet or his solitary studies.

When he took the reins of government, the Catholic party were really

in the ascendant; and, had he been a wise and practical statesman, he

would have seen that the only chance of reorganizing and governing 298

France was not in laboring to maintain an equilibrium of parties, but

in throwing himself resolutely on the side of the party, in studying

and sustaining, without any compromise with the enemies of God and

society, real Catholic interests, and in surrounding himself by

thorough-going Catholic statesmen. Catholicity alone offered any solid

basis for the state or for authority, order, or liberty. The other

parties in the nation were all, in varying degrees, the enemies alike

of authority and liberty, and none of them offered any solid basis of

government. He should, therefore, have placed his whole confidence in

Catholic France, and set them aside, and, if they rebelled, have

suppressed them, if necessary, by armed force. Had he done so, and

acted in concert with the Holy Father and the religious portion of the

nation, he would have reorganized France, given solidity to his power,

and permanence to his throne. But from policy or from conviction he

chose to hold from 1789, and was incapable of understanding that no

government that tolerates the revolutionary principle, or is based on

infidelity or the rejection of all spiritual or supernatural authority

above the nation, can stand. So-called self-government, without the

church of God, teaching and governing all men and nations in all

things spiritual, is only a delusion, for the nation needs governing

no less than the individual.

But as we have already hinted, there are remoter causes of the present

condition of France, and, we may add, of all old Catholic nations; and

Catholics must not throw all the blame of that condition on the

governments or the revolutionary spirit of 1789, still so rife. They

have been and still are the great majority in all these nations, and

why should they not be held responsible for the prevalence of the

revolutionary spirit, and for the bad secular governments they have

suffered to oppress the church? Why have they suffered an

anti-Catholic public opinion to grow up and become predominant? Why

have they suffered the rights and interests of religion to be

sacrificed to the falsely supposed rights and interests of the secular

order? Can they pretend that no blame attaches to them for all this?

France has, at least since the death of Philip the Second of Spain,

been the foremost Catholic nation of the world, and for a much longer

time the leader of modern civilization; and in her we may see the

causes that have produced her own fall and that of the other old

Catholic nations. France, in this her supreme moment, has not, we

believe, a single Catholic in the administration. The president is a

believer in no religion; the minister of foreign affairs is no

Christian, and besides is a man of very small abilities; the minister

of worship and instruction says he is moral, but he is certainly no

Catholic. The transition government, opposed as it is by all the other

parties in the nation, of course must at present seek to gain the

support of the bishops and clergy, or what we call the church party.

In Spain, though the majority are Catholics and have votes, the

government is in the hands of the enemies of the church. In Italy, a

handful of infidels and miscreants are able, though the great body of

the people are Catholics and have votes, to control the nation, to

violate with impunity every principle of private right and of

international law, to confiscate the property of the church and of

religious orders, and to despoil the Holy Father, take possession of

his capital, and hold him a prisoner in his palace. Why is this 299

suffered? Why is France and every other old Catholic nation ruled by

men who have no regard for the church and are opposed to her freedom

and independence? Whence in modern times comes this undeniable

political inanity of Catholics? Why is it that popular literature,

science, and public opinion are throughout the world decidedly

anti-Catholic?

Certainly this is not owing to the inaptitude of Catholics as such;

for, through all the ages from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to

the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth

century, Catholics were the governing class, and in no period of human

history have civilization and the progress of society so rapidly

advanced as during this period, which Digby calls the Ages of Faith.

It is not, again, owing to any loss of life or vigor in the church

herself, as is evinced by the success of her missions in Protestant

nations and among savage and barbarous tribes. It is only in old

Catholic nations that the church loses ground, and this proves that

the cause is not in her. It can be traced to no Catholic cause, but

must be traced to some defect in the Catholic administration in these

old Catholic nations themselves. Catholics protect Catholic interests

better, and have more influence in public affairs in Prussia, in Great

Britain and Ireland, in Holland, and the United States, than in

Austria, France, Spain, or Italy. Why is this?

One reason we may perhaps find in the failure of pious and devout

Catholics to consider the difference between their duties in a

Catholic state and what were their duties in the early ages under the

pagan emperors. Under the pagan emperors, power was in the hands of

their enemies, as it is in infidel, heretical, and schismatical

nations now, and they had no political responsibility. All that was

incumbent on them was to cultivate the private virtues, to do their

best to sanctify their souls, to obey the constituted authorities in

all things not contrary to the law of God, and, when the laws of the

empire or the edicts of the emperors commanded them to do what the

Christian law forbids, to refuse obedience and submit cheerfully to

the penalty of disobedience, which in most cases we know was

martyrdom. But when the empire became Christian, and especially when

Christendom was reconstituted by the conversion of the barbarian

nations that succeeded to the empire, the position and duties of

Catholics or Christians in some respects changed. Power passed to

their hands, and they became responsible for its exercise, and it was

their duty to keep it in their own hands, and conform the national

legislation and administration to the law of Christ. Catholics then

incurred as Catholics a political responsibility which they had not

under the pagan emperor, and which they were not free to throw off.

The popes always understood this, and acted accordingly; but the

ascetic discipline which enjoined detachment from the world was by

many devout and earnest souls construed to mean detachment from all

part or interest in the political order or the government of

Christendom. In consequence, the affairs of state fell, as under the

pagan empire, into the hands of Cæsar, or of those who were more

ambitious to acquire honors and power than to protect and promote the

interests of religion.

This has been more especially the case since the opening of modern

history or the rise of Protestantism; and we find among devout

Catholics intent on saving their own souls a feeling that there is an

incompatibility between politics and religion, and that he who would 300

serve God must leave the affairs of state to men of the world; which

is, in effect, to deliver them over to the control of men who are

servants of Satan rather than servants of God. The state has,

therefore, been given over to the Enemy of souls, because Catholics

were led, through a one-sided asceticism, to neglect to keep it in

their own hands, and the church has been suffered to be despoiled, her

pontiffs, priests, and religious have been suffered to be massacred,

for the lack of a little resolution and energy on the part of

Catholics to defend their religion and the sacred rights of their

church and of society entrusted to their courage and fidelity. Thus a

handful of Jansenists, Protestants, Jews, and infidels in France were

permitted to establish a reign of terror over twenty-five millions of

Catholics, exile their bishops, massacre or banish their priests and

religious, suppress religious houses, close the churches, prohibit

Catholic worship, abolish religion itself, decree that death is an

eternal sleep, and substitute for the worship of the living God the

idolatry of an infamous woman, placed upon the altar and adored as the

goddess of Reason. All this time, while all these horrors were enacted

in the name of the nation, the twenty-five millions of Catholics,

except in Brittany and La Vendée, made hardly a show of resistance,

and suffered themselves to be led as sheep to the slaughter, forgetful

that they owed it to France and to Christendom to sustain and govern

their country as a Christian or Catholic nation. It is a duty to pray,

and to pray always, but sometimes it is a duty for Christians to

fight, and to have not only the courage to die in the battle for a

holy cause, but to generous souls the far more difficult courage, the

courage to kill. We have observed among French Catholics no lack of

courage against a foreign foe, even in a war of more than doubtful

necessity or justice, but a fearful lack of courage against the

domestic foe, as in the late communist insurrection of Paris. They

seem restrained by scruples of conscience.

Another reason may probably be found in the fact already hinted, that

the mass of Catholics have been trained and accustomed to rely on

external authority; to look for protection and support not to God and

themselves, but to the secular government. They have not been

accustomed to rely on spiritual authority alone, but on the secular

sovereign as a sort of _episcopus externus_. This had no evil

consequences so long as the secular sovereign was faithful, and acted

only under the direction and authority of, and in concert with, the

Supreme Pontiff; but it had a most disastrous effect when the

sovereign acted in ecclesiastical matters in his own name, and when he

turned against the Pope, and sought to subject the church in his

dominions to his own control or supervision, which was not seldom the

case. But the clergy and people, accustomed to look to the secular

authority to guard the fold against the entrance of the wolves, became

slack in their vigilance and remiss in acquiring habits of

self-reliance, and, with the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, of

self-defence. Consequently, when kings and princes ceased to keep

guard, or when they turned wolves themselves, as in the Protestant

revolt, the flock was powerless, knew not to whom to look for support,

and had no resource but to yield themselves to be devoured by schism,

heresy, or apostasy. This is now the case with the great body of the

Catholic people in all old Catholic countries. With the vain hope

of conciliating the revolution and preserving their thrones, the 301

sovereigns of Europe, without a single exception, have abandoned or

turned against the church, and there is not one on whom the Holy

Father can count. He is alone, with the kings and princes of the earth

either hostile or indifferent to him, while the old habit of relying

on the secular authority for support, for the moment at least,

paralyzes nearly the whole body of Catholics in all old Catholic

nations.

Another reason, growing out of the last, may be found in the habit

that has grown up since the rise of Protestantism, of relying on the

external almost to the exclusion of the internal authority of the Holy

Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in the church, and teaches and governs

through her as his external organ; he dwells also in the souls of the

faithful, and inspires and directs them, and gives vigor, robustness,

and self-reliance to their piety. Protestantism assailed the external

authority of the church, and made it necessary for Catholics to turn

their attention to its defence, and to show that no spirit that

disregards it, or that does not assert it and conform to it, can be

the spirit of truth, but is the spirit of error, in reality

anti-Christ, who, the blessed Apostle John tells, was already in his

time in the world; yet it may be that the defence of what we call the

external authority of the Holy Ghost, or authority of the church as a

teaching and governing body, has caused some neglect in the great body

of the faithful of the interior inspirations and guidance of the Holy

Ghost in the individual soul. No Catholic will misunderstand us. We

appreciate as much as any one can the external authority of the

church, her supremacy, her infallibility; we accept _ex animo_ the

supremacy and infallibility of the successor of St. Peter in the See

of Rome, as defined in the recent Council of the Vatican, and should

be no better than a Protestant if we did not; but that external

authority is not alone, or alone sufficient, as every Catholic knows,

for the soul, and its acceptance is not sufficient for salvation. The

Holy Ghost must dwell in the individual soul, forming “Christ within,

the hope of glory.” We do not mean to imply that any of our ascetic

writers or spiritual directors overlook the need of the interior

inspirations and guidance of the Holy Spirit, or fail to give it due

prominence, but that its authority has not had due prominence given it

in our controversial literature and in our expositions of Catholic

faith intended for the public at large.

All these reasons have combined to reduce France, so long the foremost

Catholic nation in the world, to her present pitiable condition,

hardly more pitiable than that of Italy, Spain, Austria, and the

Spanish and Portuguese states of this continent. What is the remedy,

or is there none? We do not believe there is no remedy. We do not

believe it, because the church proved her power in France under the

Republic of 1848, which originated in hostility to her still more than

to monarchy; we do not believe it, for we see Catholicity still able

to convert the heathen; we do not believe it, because we see

Catholicity vigorous and flourishing, and every day gaining ground in

Protestant nations, where the church has no external support, and

receives no aid from the state, and is thrown back on her own

resources as the kingdom of God on earth, as she was under the pagan

emperors. These facts prove that she is by no means effete, or

incapable of making further conquests. Her decline in old Catholic

nations is no sign of weakness or decay in her, but is due to the 302

imperfect training, to the timidity and helplessness of her children,

deprived as they are of their accustomed external supports.

The remedy is not, as De Lamennais contended, in breaking with the

sovereigns and forming an alliance with the revolution; but in

training her children to those interior habits and robust virtues that

will enable them to dispense with the external props and supports of

civil society, and in asserting for herself in old Catholic nations

the freedom and independence she has here, or had in pagan Rome,

though it be done at the expense of her temporal goods and of

martyrdom. The people of God, under the Old Law, sought support in an

arm of flesh; the arm of flesh failed, and they were carried away into

captivity. The arm of flesh fails the people of God again. There are

Christians, but there is no longer a Christendom. Modern society is

hardly less pagan than the ancient society the church found when she

went forth from Jerusalem to convert the world. There is no reliance

to be placed in the horsemen and chariots of Egypt. The whole world is

to-day, as in the time of the apostles, a _missionary_ world; and,

perhaps, the greatest embarrassment of the Holy Father is encountered

in the fact that Catholics in old Catholic nations cannot see it, but

persist in being trained and governed as they were when there was a

Christendom. Everywhere the church is by the defections of the

governments become again in all nations a missionary church, and her

bishops and priests need everywhere to be trained and formed to be

wise, persevering, and effective missionaries. Catholics must

everywhere be made to understand that it is not the church that needs

the state, but the state that needs the church.

France without the church has no power to reorganize the state. She

has not yet subdued the revolutionary elements which have so confused

her, nor loosed the hold of the conqueror upon her throat, and her

present improvised government deserves the confidence of no party in

the nation. In itself, the Thiers government is utterly powerless. It

needs the church, and cannot stand without her. French Catholics

should understand this, and boldly assume the lead of public affairs,

if they are men and love their country, and make, as they now can, the

republic, under an emperor, king, or president, it matters not much

which, a truly Catholic republic, and France, now so low and weak, may

become again the nucleus, as under Clovis and St. Clotilde, of a

reconstructed Christendom, constituted differently as to politics, it

may be, but unchanged as to religion from that which has now passed

away. The church never dies, never changes, and cannot be other than

she is; but the political organization of Christendom may change with

time and events. It changed when the barbarian nations displaced the

Roman Empire; it changed when Charlemagne closed the barbarous ages,

and opened the way for the feudalism of the middle ages; it changed

again when, through the revolution inaugurated by Luther, absolute

monarchy succeeded to feudalism in Catholic hardly less than in

Protestant Europe; and it may change again when order succeeds to the

present revolutionary chaos. It is not likely that Christendom will be

reconstructed on its old political basis, whether it is desirable that

it should be or not, and, for ourselves, we think that all who hope to

see it so reconstructed are sure to be disappointed. We think it not 303

improbable that, when Christendom is reconstituted, it will be

politically, on a republican and anti-monarchical basis. Pure

absolutism, whether that of Cæsar or that of the people, is

incompatible with the recognition of the divine sovereignty, and

consequently with religion. Neither form of absolutism can form the

political basis of a reconstructed Christendom; but the probabilities

are that, when things settle into their places, and the new order

begins to emerge, it will be based on some form of republicanism, in

which the organic people will take the place of the monarch.

The present condition of things is certainly sad; but we see nothing

in it that should lead us to despair of the future. Catholics in old

Catholic nations have needed, and perhaps still need, to learn that

this church can subsist and conquer the world without any external

support of the secular government, but that secular government cannot

subsist and discharge properly its duties to society without the

church. We who live in Protestant countries, and see society daily

dissolving before our eyes, have no need to be taught that lesson; we

have already learned it by heart. But the mass of Catholics in old

Catholic nations, even of the educated as well as the uneducated, as

yet only imperfectly understand it, and consequently render it

difficult, if not impossible, for the church to adopt fully and

promptly the measures she might judge the most proper to meet the

wants of the times. They do not see that the old Christendom has gone,

beyond the hope of recovery. Providence, it seems to us, has permitted

the present state of things as necessary to disembarrass the church of

their inopportune conservatism, and to force them to learn and profit

by the lesson which every day becomes more and more necessary for them

to heed, if the prosperity of religion is to be promoted, the

salvation of souls to be cared for, and the preservation of society

assured. The measures taken are severe--very severe, but there are

scholars that can be made to learn only by the free use of the ferula.

Especially do the Catholics of France need to learn this lesson, for

in no other country have Catholics made their religion so dependent on

the secular order.

The fall of France, notwithstanding the faith, piety, and charity of

so large a portion of her people, will probably prove only a temporary

injury to Catholic interests. France has fallen because she has been

false to her mission as the leader of modern civilization, because she

has led it in an anti-Catholic direction, and made it weak and

frivolous, corrupt and corrupting. Providence is severely punishing

her; but he has not, we trust, cast her off for ever. She has in her

bosom still millions of Catholics, and these have only to come forward

in the strength of their religion, displace the enemies of God, take

themselves the management of the affairs of the nation, and show the

wisdom and energy they did in 1848, when they put down the red

republicans and socialists. They will then enable France, in spite of

the grasp of the conqueror and the fierce opposition of the

destructives, to recover, slowly and painfully, it may be, but

nevertheless to recover, and to prove herself greater and more

powerful than ever. When France becomes once more a really Catholic

nation, the revolution will be extinguished, infidelity will lose its

popularity, atheism will no longer dare show its head, and a reaction

in favor of the church will take place, so strong and so irresistible 304

that the whole world will be affected by it, and the nations that have

so long been alienated from unity will be brought back within the

fold.

The only obstacle to this grand result which we see is in the

timidity, in the lack of energy on the part of Catholics in the

assertion and defence of their religion, or in their want of courage

to confide alone in God for success. Adversity, we think, can hardly

fail to reform and reinvigorate them, and to direct their attention to

their true source of strength as Catholics or the children of God.

They will learn from it to adhere more closely to the Chair of Peter,

and to rely more on the internal direction of the Holy Ghost, and less

on the aid of the secular order. No doubt, the present state of things

imposes additional labors as well as sufferings on the bishops and

clergy in old Catholic nations, and requires some modifications of the

education of the priesthood now given in our seminaries. Our Levites

must be trained for a missionary world, not for an old Catholic world;

but this need alarm no one; for the greater the labors and sacrifices

in the service of God, the greater the merit and the reward.

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A MEMORY.[77]

’Twas only a prayer I heard

In that vast cathedral grim,

Where incense filled the air

And vesper lights burnt dim.

’Twas only a woman’s form,

Kneeling with upturned face,

That looked through the pictured altar

Up to the throne of grace.

Clasped in her small white hands

An amber rosary telling;

While from her glorious eyes

Teardrops fast were weelling.

No thought for the world without,

No thought for the stranger near,

As pausing and sobbing she murmured,

“O Mother of sorrows, hear!”

And I, in a land of strangers,

Joined in the pleader’s prayer:

Praying for her that I knew not,

To Her who I felt was there.

[77] By one who is not a Catholic.

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THE HOUSE OF YORKE. 305