The Year Of Our Lord 1874…

The Year Of Our Lord 1874

A general glance at the movements of the past year will scarcely prove encouraging, even to the most devout believer in the glory and the destiny of the golden century drawing so rapidly to its close. Our own nation, which—with steam, electricity, railroads, the newspaper as it stands to‐ day in all its power and pride (vide the current number of the New York Herald), and other great material developments of the age—may consider itself at will as either the mightiest product or the enfant gâté of the century, has not too great matter for self‐congratulation. Our national year, that dawned on disaster, has struggled through a painful life only to close in gloom, with perhaps a faint though uncertain glimmer afar off of better times to come. The “Christian” statesmen who have had the country and its management all to themselves these many years past have left behind them a bitter legacy. The great scandals—for even scandals in these days have a greatness of their own—which at length broke up the ranks of the “Christian” statesmen were sufficiently touched upon last year, and are only called to mind here as tending in great measure to explain the year of national distress we have just passed through.

All through the winter months the poverty and misery of the masses in New York and other of our chief cities were unexampled in our history; nor was the revival of business during the spring, summer, and fall seasons of such a nature as to warrant the hope of being able to stave off a similar calamity in the early months of the coming year. The real cause of the distress is known to all—the general stagnation of business in 1873, resulting chiefly from the panic of the previous year, which in turn resulted from the corruption in high places of the national, State, and municipal guardians of the public trusts. Public confidence was shattered; business was at a standstill, the masses consequently idle, while a general reduction in the rate of wages begot strikes among such as were not idle. In this connection it may be well to call to mind what was generally observed at the time: the significant absence of the Irish and Catholic body from the seditious meetings; yet on that body fell the burden of the distress. What the disciples of the “Christian” school of statesmen, who gave cause for the sedition by their corruption and dishonesty, would be pleased to term their “foreign” faith, “foreign” education, obedience to the trained body‐guard, the priesthood, of a “foreign” potentate, the Pope, alone prevented their falling in with the ranks of sedition. Yet the preaching and practice of the “foreign” faith, we are constantly assured, is the greatest danger to the republic.

The trials of the severe season, however, brought out into startling prominence one great fact: the willingness and resources of the public to encounter an unexpected demand of this kind. New York, for instance, was overrun with public charities and associations for the relief of the poor, the unfortunate, the maimed, the halt, the blind, the fatherless children, helpless women, and so forth. In short, there was scarcely a department of human misery which had not its corresponding asylum, aided in most instances by the State, erected often and paid solely by the State, as well as a variety of others set on foot and kept a‐going by private philanthropy or charity. Money from public and private resources had been pouring into these asylums for long years past, without any startling demand being made upon them in return. Now was the time to prove the utility of those institutions, of which we were so justly proud. What was their actual condition? They were for the greater part found practically with exchequers already exhausted, without anything like adequate results being shown. An inquiry as to where all the money had gone succeeded in tracing considerable sums as far as the pockets of the directors, their wives, families, and friends, generally, after which all traces mysteriously disappeared. The good old maxim that “charity begins at home” would seem to have impressed itself as a necessary truth on the minds of the dispensers of our public charities, and it seems to have been carried out severely to the letter. One consolation was afforded the public, however. For some time past its conscience had been offended by the granting of certain sums—small enough indeed, in comparison with the necessities of the cases—out of the public funds to those social offences known as “sectarian” charities—sectarian charities!—and these sums, such as they were, had within the year been very judiciously and properly withdrawn, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, as expounded by the men from whose ranks sprang the Christians of the Crédit Mobilier school. It was no small satisfaction to see, in the time of trial, that the public was justified in withdrawing from such institutions the State appropriations, on the ground that they were not distributed as in purely State asylums. How the “sectarian” charities contrasted with the others in the administration and distribution of their funds may be left to the records of the year to tell, as unfolded in the columns of the daily press. Whether a general remodelling of our public institutions, in view of the flagrant mismanagement exhibited last year, be not desirable, is left to the consideration of those most concerned in the matter—the public themselves. As they stand they are an eyesore to honest men, a standing breach of public confidence, and a gross violation of the public contract, to say nothing of what they may be in the eye of a heaven that seems to be getting farther and farther remote from the earth, whereon God once was pleased to walk with the father of mankind.

Our class of statesmen found an easy solution of what Mr. Disraeli esteemed the most difficult problem of politics—the feeding of a people by the government—by an increase of money; and an increase of money is the simplest thing in the world, when money is only so much paper stamped by the government with promise to pay at no very precise date. All that the government had to do in order to ease matters was to draw an unlimited number of I O U’s on itself—itself being practically bankrupt for the time being, but relying on the prospect of something eventually “turning up” to its advantage.

The sad conflicts in Arkansas and Louisiana, the hostility between black and white, come in the same order. In this case, in Louisiana at least, the President and his advisers did not show themselves as well as in the quashing of the bill for inflation of the currency. While the party that had recourse to an absolute revolution in the State and in the face of the nation cannot but be condemned, inasmuch as the approaching elections might have peacefully served their purposes to the same end, much more is the government to be condemned which in the first instance gave its sanction and support to a great and standing wrong. Fortunately, but little blood was spilt; yet one drop in such cases is an indication of the neighborhood of a deluge. All hope for the dispersion of this impending deluge rests now chiefly with the party which was returned to power at the November elections.

If the year leaves us with so much to lament, so many vexed problems to solve, so many rocks ahead in our national course, and with only a half‐ confidence in the crew who are in charge of the ship of state to guide it over the unrevealed dangers of unknown seas, what shall be said of Europe, with its divided nationalities, ambitions, and policies, and only danger as a unit?

The general arming of the nations that began almost half a century ago, but was hurried into feverish activity since the Franco‐German war, may now be said to be completed. Russia within half a dozen years will, if peace so far favors her, have three millions of soldiers in the field; France almost as many; Germany, by the enrolment of the Landsturm, has made itself a nation of soldiers; Austria, Italy, and the rest all follow in due order. All Europe is at this moment armed to the teeth, solely to preserve peace. One is irresistibly reminded of an old verse about a strong man armed keeping his house.

A set of fanatics assembled in London to sympathize with the Prussian government in its “struggle” with its Catholic subjects—that is to say, with the wholesale imprisonment of the Catholic bishops and clergy, the suppression of Catholic religious societies, the fining of Catholic ladies for presenting addresses of condolence to the imprisoned ecclesiastics. The meeting of sympathy called forth a very remarkable letter of gratitude from the German emperor, and occasioned a general jubilee on the part of the German official press. So far, so good. In the meanwhile a French bishop, thinking, probably, that it is hard for a man whose sole crime consists in the fact of his being a Catholic bishop to be imprisoned for that offence, ventures to deliver a mild opinion on the matter in a pastoral to his flock. Straightway comes out a Prussian official paper with an editorial that for solemnity and massiveness might have been written by the Emperor himself, warning, not the French bishop, but all France, that if it cannot restrain itself from that shocking habit it has acquired of using intemperate language against a neighboring and unusually friendly power, Germany, painful as the task may be to its feelings of humanity, will positively be compelled to take its own measures for its own defence. France immediately takes the hint, eats the leek with all becoming meekness, and a circular couched in the language of the Academy is despatched to the bishops generally, the plain English of which would be to hold their tongues on all German matters, unless, of course, they have something pleasant to say. That may be a very easy task for the bishops, but there still remain those bêtes‐noirs of offending governments, the gentlemen of the press; and gentlemen of the press, in France as everywhere else, are unhappily distinguished not so much, perhaps, for having opinions of their own, as for giving vent to those opinions, and setting them down in indelible ink. M. Veuillot, the editor of L’Univers, is just one of these unfortunate beings. M. Veuillot has a rather strong way of putting things when it pleases him, and M. Veuillot is hardly the man to take a diplomatic hint. The sad duty becomes incumbent on his government, therefore, to give M. Veuillot and his paper a vacation of a couple of months. The vacation was called suspension. It was duly explained that the German government had had nothing whatever to do with the matter, though, strange to say, the French government had never thought of suspending M. Veuillot for hammering away at itself.

Belgium and Italy were threatened in like manner for allowing their subjects freedom of opinion in so important a matter. Even England was warned, but the warning had small effect.

It was whispered, though the correspondence never came to light, that at one period during the past year some sharply‐worded notes passed between the German government and our own. What the cause of the sharply‐worded notes may have been remains a diplomatic secret. The only thing significant about the matter is that the whisper took shape about a month after the arrest and imprisonment of Archbishop Ledochowski, who had the immortal honor of being the first of the German bishops to surrender the liberty of his person for his faith in this strife. That imprisonment called forth an unanimous condemnation from the American press—not the sectarian press of any creed—that did it honor, and led one to hope that such a thing as principle still existed on the earth, and that genuine homespun American love of liberty was not a meaningless thing.

To the charge of necessary disloyalty to the ecclesiastical laws of Prussia, Catholics will perforce plead guilty—the same Catholics who before the passing of those laws never dreamed of or were accused of disloyalty to the state. Those laws are an insult to the age and to all time. There is not a line of them that does not betray the steel of the executioner, red almost with the blood of his victim. The spirit of Brennus is abroad. The scales of justice show a sadly uneven balance; but the sword of the barbarian tossed in ends all disputes and argument.

Our modern Brennus has struck his blows so rapidly and truly that the world still stares at him in dazed wonder. Success has waited on his footsteps, and men who worship success are not yet sufficiently masters of themselves to measure that success aright. They are afraid to question the actions of a man who seems to strike with the inerrancy of fate. Prince Bismarck had certainly the world on his side; and if the world begins now to fall away from him and recoil, to recover its senses a little, and to question the right and wrong of his actions, he has none but himself to blame.

The signs of the past year tell us that the recoil is beginning to set in. The elections early in the year went against the government. The Catholics gained a large majority on their former number even in Prussia itself. Alsace‐Lorraine returned its members simply to protest against annexation, while the socialists were strengthened also. The government still holds a strong majority, it is true; but the falling away from its standard within four years of its mightiest triumphs was so significant of what was likely to ensue should the government persevere in its policy, that the first thing taken into consideration immediately after the elections was the restricting of the franchise to such voters as it was felt would return a safe and sure majority for the government. Next to this came measures for the restriction of the liberty of the press, which by the efforts of the Catholic party were defeated.

The obvious question will force itself on the mind: Why should a government so strong and mighty, so beloved of the people, as we are always assured, tremble at the popular voice and at the criticism of a newspaper? The answer is easy. The army bill followed. The government required a peace‐effective voted once for all of four hundred and one thousand men. That army was to stand, and, once the bill was passed, parliament was to have no further voice in the matter, whether in regard to payment of the bills or in regulating the number of men. That was to pass completely out of its hands.

For once even the “blustering majority” did not save the government. The terrible danger of the scheme was obvious. The mere presence of so tremendous a standing army was a standing menace not only to the country and its liberties, but to its neighbors. It did not breathe the spirit of peace and rest in the government, and of proper regard for a country already worn and disturbed by three harassing wars occurring in quick succession; while the taking out of the hands of the Houses the control over so large an item of the public funds as was embraced in the bill, was a blow at their privileges to which not even faith in absolutism could blind them. A storm was at once raised. The government staked its existence on the measure. Marshal Moltke rose up in the House, and made a speech in defence of it that will be remembered. He spoke of the alarm caused by Germany to its neighbors. He told them that what they had gained in a few months it would take them fifty years to keep and secure. It was necessary that, though they might not draw the sword, their hand should be for ever on the hilt. He assured them that, after all, wars undertaken and carried through by regular armies were the swiftest and therefore the cheapest. An important consideration that last. As a final argument the veteran told them that “a standing army was a necessity of the times, and he could not but ask the House to devote the figure of four hundred and one thousand rank‐and‐file as a peace‐footing once for all.” A peace‐ footing! But even the marshal’s seductive eloquence could not move them.

Prince Bismarck fell sick and retired to Varzin. The Emperor’s birthday came round, and the generals of his empire came to congratulate him. He assured them that he would dissolve parliament rather than alter the bill. But his imperial majesty forgot that there were more kingdoms than Prussia concerned in his measures now, and that the dissolution that once before served the King of Prussia sufficiently well might, in the disturbed state of affairs, prove a dangerous experiment to the Emperor of Germany. Finally, as is known, somewhat better counsels prevailed, and a compromise was effected, which limited the figure to three hundred and eighty‐five thousand men for seven years. This was a severe check to the government, while it was a lesson to the people to distrust rulers who, in the light of their own schemes, considered the empire as a mere instrument, forgetting wholly that they were for the empire, not the empire for them.

There are many matters in the internal history of Germany during the past year that deserve to be dwelt upon particularly and at length, but a few of which only can be glanced at here. The desire to expand and strengthen itself abroad is natural, and it is strange that the government organs should be so anxious to disavow so praiseworthy an object, provided the motives that urge it are good. It is strange, at the same time, to see how it continues its repressive emigration laws; how anxious so mighty an empire is to keep all its children at home, where they may be serviceable in the Landsturm; and how anxious those children are to get away and come out to us here, leaving behind them and surrendering forever all the glory and the promise of the newly‐founded empire. It is strange, also, to note to what little tricks so great a government can descend in its self‐ imposed conflict with its Catholic subjects; as, for instance, the forged Papal decree respecting the future election of the Sovereign Pontiff that found its way into the columns of the Cologne Gazette at so opportune a moment as the eve of the German elections. Simultaneously with its appearance we were reminded of the significant declaration of Prince Bismarck in the German parliament, June 9, 1873: “If the message is brought to us that a new Pope has been elected, we shall certainly be entitled to investigate whether he has been duly, properly, and legitimately elected”; that is to say, whether the veto of the head of the Holy Roman Empire—who of course is the Emperor William—and of the other powers possessing a veto whom the German government might influence, has been exercised. “Only if we are satisfied on these heads will he be able to claim in Germany the rights belonging to a Roman Pope.”

Out of consideration for Prince Bismarck we pass over those fierce parliamentary storms where his keen opponents, Von Windthorst and Von Mallinkrodt, twitted the Chancellor himself with having been actually guilty of the disloyalty to Prussia and the German soil which he falsely attributed to the Catholics. The prince, amid thunders of applause, charged them with malicious lying; but the charge, though momentarily effective, was not a happy one, as the disclosures of Gen. Della Marmora subsequently showed. Italy was threatened in consequence of Della Marmora’s indiscretion, but the threat proved ineffectual. The general said his say, and the lie was stamped on its author. Prince Bismarck’s popularity was on the wane, if not in Germany itself, certainly in a very large circle outside of Germany where he had hitherto been worshipped as one who with some justice described himself as “the best‐hated man in Europe.” Then, fortunately for himself, as fortunately as a scene in a drama, came the Deus ex machinâ in the pistol of Kullmann to relieve him from his momentary misfortunes. Prince Bismarck was not the man to miss so fine an opportunity of turning to account the insane attempt of the son of a madman on his life, and we were flooded with the time‐honored taunts of means to ends because a man of notoriously bad and violent character, who happened to have been present at some Catholic meetings, committed the wicked and utterly unjustifiable act of firing a pistol at the Chancellor. There are some two hundred million Catholics in the world; there are in Germany fourteen or fifteen, in Prussia alone eight millions, of the same creed. Of all these millions one man, of wicked antecedents and insane descent, is found to commit an act abhorrent to the Catholic conscience all the world over, and at once the universal conscience of that mighty multitude is with a benignant generosity centred in the person of this wretch, who, whether, as many believed, a dupe of the government tools or a dupe of his own disordered intellect, was equally a wretch. Why not turn the argument the other way? Why not wonder at the sublime patience of the people who see the sacred persons of their bishops and priests dragged from the altar‐steps, stripped of their goods, and buried in fortresses, for the crime of violating laws that were made to be violated, without moving a hand to prevent such constant outrages, because the teachings of those disloyal priests and bishops, of that arch‐foe to German nationality, the Pope, never cease to forbid armed resistance to the most oppressive laws that were ever framed? Two or three officials have been sent alone among a vast multitude of Catholics to drag before their very eyes the priest whose Mass they have just attended, from the altar of Christ to a prison—for what possible purpose but to provoke bloodshed and insurrection? Happily, the people were still by the efforts of the clergy restrained from putting themselves at the mercy of a government that knows no mercy; but who shall say how long that patience will endure? And this is the government whose sole aim is the unity and consolidation of Germany and the happiness of every section of its people!

As the Von Arnim case is still pending, it is useless to conjecture what the documents may contain whose possession prompted Prince Bismarck to arrest and confine in a common prison the man who next after himself stood the foremost in the German nation. The arrest to the world at large showed more forcibly than anything that has yet taken place to what lengths the chief of the Prussian government can go; how easily he can trample under foot every tradition of civilization and every feeling of humanity to crush a foe or sweep from his path a possible danger to himself. It is probable that the documents turn chiefly on his foreign policy, and would stamp in indelible characters that policy, which it needs no writing to tell us threatens not only the church, but the peace of Europe, and, through Europe, of the world, perhaps for centuries to come. Such disclosures would in the eyes of outraged Germany and Europe necessitate his deprivation of a power he has so fatally abused.

France struggles on still without a government; that is to say, without a government of which six weeks of existence could be safely predicated. The changes in the ministry have been changes of men rather than of measures. The various parties are still at daggers‐drawn and rather on the increase than otherwise. The Count of Chambord seems for the present to have retired from the contest—a wise and patriotic example, which if all could follow, the country might be allowed breathing time and some fair chance of arriving at a sound judgment as to what was the exact government it wanted—a problem which the French nation has seemed incapable of solving since the first Revolution. The Bonapartists have profited by the withdrawal of the Count, and displayed an earnestness, boldness, and activity which have been crowned with some success, but marked by the disregard of the nation and its submergence in the family name and fame that seem the chief characteristics of “the Napoleonic idea.” The coming of age of the son of the late emperor was marked by a theatrical display and oracular speeches worthy of the Second Empire at its zenith. There have been the usual “scenes” in the French Assembly. The “intervals of ten minutes” and “intervals of a quarter of an hour” have been alarmingly frequent, and after some sittings the air bristled with challenges from warlike deputies, which afforded excellent material for the illustrated journals; but, on the whole, few more dangerous weapons than the peaceful pocket‐handkerchief were drawn, and the pocket‐handkerchief, as all public orators know, is a vast relief in trying moments. M. Thiers has preferred the Apennines to the tribune, and has happily spoken more in Italy than in the Chambers. M. Gambetta, for a man of his calibre, has been singularly well behaved on the whole, and we have not had so many of those journeys to the disaffected districts of which at one time he threatened to be so fond. Sad to say, it is the soldier‐president who has thus far kept the disorderly parties from flying at each other’s throats by the sheer force of the army, on which he silently leans all the while. France is practically in the hands of a military dictator. She is happy in her dictator—that is all. Marshal MacMahon, on succeeding M. Thiers, promised to answer for order, and he has kept his word. More than that, he has, wisely for France, however sad it may be to say so, made the Assembly keep its word and abide by the septennate which it conferred on him. He has used his vast power with a singular discretion, a patriotism unexampled almost in the face of opportunities that would turn the head of many a greater man, and an honest single‐mindedness that has clearly nothing else than the good of the whole country in view. The last symbol of a now ineffectual protection, and indeed for a long time an insincere one, of the Holy Father, has been withdrawn in the Orénoque. It is better so. It is better, perhaps, since matters have been pushed so far, that the Holy Father stand absolutely alone, powerless and defenceless, in the eyes of earth and heaven. The power of God alone can now restore to him what is his by right. To‐day among all the European governments there is none so poor as to do him reverence. England has recently withdrawn even its shadow of a diplomatic representative, which possibly marks the beginning of the “little more energy in foreign policy and little less in domestic legislation” that Mr. Disraeli advised while still in opposition.

In all other respects except politics France has every reason to be congratulated. The earnest turning of the people’s heart to God, the desertion of whom called down such terrible punishments, seems in no degree to diminish. The seasons have been propitious, and the vintage of 1874 has been of unexampled excellence and productiveness. The exports of the year were marvellously increased, and God’s blessings would seem to be raining down again on this sorely‐tried land and people. All that is needed is a good and firm government, of which, however, as yet, there seems no immediate prospect. France is as open as ever to surprises; and it is absolutely impossible to forecast its political future.

England has experienced a peaceful revolution similar to our own, and one almost as astonishing in its suddenness, though, as in our case, there were not wanting indications of the change in parties which has taken place, as will be found duly noted by those who care to look at THE CATHOLIC WORLD’S review for 1873. On January 22 Mr. Gladstone issued his memorable “prolix narrative,” announcing, to the surprise of all men, the immediate dissolution of Parliament. The sudden and, under the circumstances, unexampled action of the premier looked remarkably like a desire to take time by the forelock, and by the suddenness of the attack shatter and utterly discomfit the slowly‐gathering forces of the opposition. If such were the real intention, it was miserably miscalculated and singularly ill‐advised. The country was as much outraged as shocked, and showed its appreciation of Mr. Gladstone’s skill at a coup by returning a very handsome Conservative majority, so that Mr. Disraeli, happy man! found himself, to his own surprise, no less than Mr. Gladstone’s, within three weeks of the dissolution, at the head of a strong government and party, with his old rival deep in the shade. The result of the English elections may prove a lesson to popular leaders for the future not to presume too much on their popularity, not to jeopardize a powerful party, and throw an empire into sudden confusion by what looks too much like a freak that it is hoped may win by “a fluke.”

The most significant lesson of the elections, perhaps, was the instantaneous triumph of the Home Rule party in Ireland, while as yet it was to all appearance in its infancy, and almost beneath the rational notice of the English press. It had only provoked derision and calumny. We were constantly told that it had no hold on the heart of the people, that it claimed no men of note, that the nobility and gentry held aloof from it, and so forth.

The “wild adherents” of the “wild folly” have taught even the London Times to respect them; and much reason had they to be pledged to their wild folly, if the words of a man whose opinion is certainly of some value on the subject have any weight: “Ireland at this moment is governed by laws of coercion and stringent severity that do not exist in any other quarter of the globe.” Those words were spoken on the 4th of February, 1874. The speaker was Mr. Disraeli, the present Prime Minister of England. The laws that provoked the observation of so eminent an English statesman still prevail in Ireland. The appeal for amnesty for the unfortunate remnant of the Irish political prisoners has, since those words were spoken, been refused by Mr. Disraeli. And yet the Irish calendars for this year, as for many a year past, were the cleanest in the world and the freest from crime of all kinds. Such is the nation governed at this moment by laws such as Mr. Disraeli has described. The result of such government can scarcely recommend its dispensers to the nation governed, and yet their appeal for control of their own affairs, which the English Parliament confessedly does not understand, and, if it did understand, has, as it acknowledges, too much business on its hands properly to attend to, is a wild folly!

The chief piece of English legislation during the year has been what was embodied in “the bill to put down ritualism”—that is to say, the regulation of divine worship as understood in the church established by act of Parliament. Ritualism, or the “Romanizing tendency,” as it is strangely termed, in the Anglican Church, has been put down, as far as an act of Parliament can put it down. Our ritualists on this side were put down also, for their bishops followed that authority in their church known as the British Parliament, composed respectively of Anglicans, Dissenters, Jews, Quakers, and other sects, with, worst of all, a strong contingent of Roman Catholics. That hydra‐head of the Anglican Church regulated for it to a nicety, pronounced upon its devotions, practices, sacraments, vestments, ornaments, postures of the body, bendings of the knee, elevations of the hands, prostrations, crossings, and so forth, as calmly and in as business‐like a fashion as though it were sitting on an income tax; and the church that we are so solemnly assured by learned men like Bishop Coxe, if it dates not exactly from the Ist, certainly dates from somewhere in the neighborhood of the IVth, century, with a subsequent lamentable gap up to the XVIth, when the Apostle Henry and others of that ilk came to renovate and restore it to its pristine purity, bowed meekly to the infallible decision of the business‐like assembly of Jews, infidels, Quakers, Dissenters, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics. What would S. Peter and S. Paul think of it all?

Something far more serious than this, and of far deeper import to the nation, was the long and persistent strike of the agricultural laborers, which was carried on on a most extensive scale, and with a union that was not thought to exist in the successor of the Saxon hind. Once the ball of disaffection is set rolling, it is very hard to say where it will stop. It is clear that the unions have at last permeated the entire body of the English laboring‐classes. The trades‐unions are too often cousins‐german to the secret societies. The mass of the English agricultural classes, in common with the vast majority of the English laboring‐classes and artisans, have no religion at all. The disaffection with the present order of things in England, though less pronounced than in most modern European nations, has been long gathering, is rapidly spreading, and is beyond all doubt of a nature to excite considerable alarm. Loss of religion, it is needless to say, leaves the minds and hearts of men open to all evil, and it would be beyond stupidity to shut one’s eyes to the very plain fact that the spirit of evil and of general disaffection is particularly active all the world over just at present. Banish religion, banish the guiding hand of God from your objective laws and from the heart and sight of your people, and the people will look on the powers that be, of whatsoever nature, as oppressors, on the rich as despoilers of the poor, on the employers as their tyrants.

A most important movement, and one that we welcome with all our hearts, is the bold step taken at last by the English hierarchy in founding a Catholic university in England. The want has long been felt in that country of a centre of Catholic intellect, culture, and thought, to vie with those seats of learning which the piety of their Catholic forefathers had left as priceless heirlooms to their Catholic children, but which, with all holy places and all holy things, had by the national apostasy become perverted from the purpose of their pious founders, and fallen by a too easy lapse from centres of false faith to centres of no faith at all. In England and Ireland, as with us, the means of providing higher education for students desirous of attaining it have been hitherto necessarily and lamentably deficient. The Catholic University in Ireland and this later one in England give promise that, with proper encouragement from the wealthy and intelligent laity, this long‐felt want will be at length adequately supplied. These are days when the Catholic laity, to whom now all positions, or at least very important ones, are fairly open, are in duty bound to take their stand as becomes loyal children of a mother universally assailed. The laity can penetrate where the clergy have no voice. They are, as S. Peter called them, and as they have so signally proved themselves in Germany, “a kingly priesthood.” But to take a stand similar to that taken by the noble German phalanx, that “thundering legion” in the service of the pagan empire, they must be equal to their adversaries in culture, refinement, and address, all which come more by education than from nature. Many a great mind has retired within a narrow circle for which it was certainly not born, and its efforts rendered half nugatory by lack of that early association and training which a great university, an intellectual focus of the brightest minds in the galaxy of letters, is intended to and does supply. We look, then, with as much hope as expectancy to this step on the part of the English hierarchy, who have saved their children from the allurements of a Satanic culture by supplying them with men of recognized intellectual standing and acknowledged faith in Christ and in his church. Our only hope is that in our own country we soon may rival them.

Some mention will probably be looked for here of the controversy, as it is called, which has sprung up in consequence of a recent pamphlet written by Mr. Gladstone; but there is little need of such mention, inasmuch as Mr. Gladstone seems to have been sufficiently answered by the very men whom his pamphlet was intended chiefly to affect—the Protestants of England. Whether so intended or not, it was beyond all doubt an attempt altogether unworthy the high character of the distinguished author to rouse the rancor of the English Protestants against their Catholic fellow‐subjects. Could we altogether rid ourselves of the respect with which Mr. Gladstone, take him all in all, has hitherto inspired us, as a man whose heart was as large and loyal as his intellect, and that intellect inspired with reverence for God and holy things, his latest exploit could only be described as a vulgar “No Popery” appeal to the worst classes and most degraded passions of English society, delivered in bad taste and worse faith, and, to crown the list of offences, as a political mistake, which has already failed in its object of establishing him, as Earl Russell once was, and as men of the Newdegate and Whalley type would be, as the English “No Popery” champion and leader, while it effectually alienates from him once for all a large and influential body of supporters on whom he has often counted, and on whom there was no reason to believe that a genuine change of front on his part might not have led him to count again. That his pamphlet is all this is true; that Mr. Gladstone intended it to be all this there is too much reason to believe, but of that he himself alone can tell. If the leader of the English Liberal party is pleased to be patted on the back by the men in Germany who patted on the back the orators of Exeter Hall who met to sympathize with the German persecution of Germans whose only crime was their Catholic faith, and whose only stain was and is their readiness to sacrifice life, lands, and liberty in defence of that faith, he is welcome to his ill‐earned applause and doubtful honor.

The space already given to the important topics touched upon leaves little room for comment on others. And indeed the story, as far as the Catholic Church and general politics are concerned, is much the same all the world over. Austria has followed in the wake of Prussia, though its ecclesiastical laws do not seem to have been carried out with the brutal thoroughness of its neighbor. Italy continues in its downward course. The state of its finances is appalling, and yet it plies whip and spur with reckless speed into chaos. Brigandage, in the south chiefly, grows worse and worse. Civil marriage there, as in Prussia, is the law established. A new phase of the secret societies crops out from time to time. It has tried the scheme of popular election of the curés as did Switzerland and Germany, with a like result in all cases—an absurd fiasco. It has made great strides in the way of popular education, with the result pictured by the special correspondent of the London Times: “The property that is taken from some of the Capuchin convents in Tuscany, and sold at auction, is bought back at the auction by ‘pious benefactors,’ who recall the scattered fraternity to their deserted and desecrated homes, and restore monachism on conditions more favorable than those on which it stood before its suppression. The central government and the municipalities in Italy strain every nerve to supply the people with a free and good education, but their schools have to strive hard to withstand the competition which is raised against them by the Scolopii in Florence, the Barnabites in Milan, and the Ignorantins in Turin.... There are now Waldensian, Methodist, and other evangelical churches and schools in Rome, as in other Italian cities, but their success is not very encouraging, even in the opinion of their candid promoters.” And we may add, for the benefit of the ardent but foolish supporters of the Van Meter and such like schemes, a further extract from the same correspondent: “Attempts to allow the people to elect their parish priests without the permission of, and even in direct opposition to, the bishop of the diocese have been made in some Mantuan rural districts and elsewhere, but hitherto with no extensive or decisive results; and the Gavazzi, Passaglia, Andrea, and others, who would have ventured on a reforming movement within the church itself, have met with no support whatever, either on the part of the government authorities or of public opinion.”

The celebration of the twenty‐eighth anniversary of the elevation of our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., to the chair of Peter, was general throughout Christendom, but desecrated in Rome by the infamous action of the usurping government in clearing the streets of the crowds who were peacefully returning from the Te Deum in S. Peter’s. Violent arrests were made on no pretext whatever, some of the persons arrested being English and American Protestant ladies. On the evening following, and with the connivance of the present Roman authorities, a hideous crowd assembled at midnight to howl cries of hate and blasphemy under the windows of the Sovereign Pontiff. Not religion alone, but common humanity, seems to have been banished from Rome by the entrance of Victor Emanuel. Our constant prayer should be that the great Pontiff, whose conspicuous virtues, and sufferings so patiently borne for Christ’s sake, may be preserved to his children long to witness with his own eyes the end of the blasphemy, violence, and imposture which now beset him on all sides.

Switzerland has almost out Prussiaed Prussia in its assault on the Catholic Church. So much for the freedom of the typical republic! It has changed its constitution into despotism, driving away the Catholic voters from the polls by intimidation and violence. Even Loyson has felt himself compelled to cry out against its excesses, and resigned his curacy at Geneva. The constitution which it has now adopted, it rejected only two years since. It completely subjects religion to the state, and renders it impossible for a Catholic priest to remain in his native country and practise the duties of his office. Civil marriage here again is the order of the day. Marriages, it used to be said, were made in heaven. Their birthplace has been transferred to the office and celestial presence of his eminence the town‐clerk.

In Spain the struggle has assumed a fiercer and more determined character than ever. Castelar, who is already and very deservedly forgotten, was president at the opening of the year. His success in that rôle was what might have been expected, and what has fully justified the opinion held of him throughout in these pages. He was defeated on reading his message to the Cortes in January—a message of despair. General Pavia cleared the Cortes and took possession with his troops. The movement was so well planned that no rising took place. Indeed, it was hard to say for what or for whom a rising should have been made. There was no government; almost all the prominent men had been tried in turn and failed, and the last was the least capable of all. Serrano came to the front again; the whole movement was probably his. Cartagena, which had so long held out against a bombardment by sea and land, was taken soon after, and there remained no foe in the field but Don Carlos, who had profited by the diversion at Cartagena. Bilbao was seriously threatened by the Carlist forces, and would have proved, if taken, an important prize to them. Serrano hastened to its relief with all the available forces of the country, and, aided by Marshal Concha, succeeded in raising the siege without inflicting any material loss on the enemy. Marshal Concha he left to prosecute the campaign, and for the first time since their last rising the Carlists found themselves sore beset. A bullet at Estella, however, ended the checkered career of the most dangerous opponent they had yet encountered, and victory after victory of more or less importance has, with an occasional reverse, continued to crown their arms. More than once have we been assured of their annihilation, only to see them appear with renewed strength, and add another victory to their crown. Through the influence of Germany the European powers with the exception of Russia, have recognized a republic which does not exist, and does not promise to exist, in Spain. At one time Prussia threatened to interfere immediately, and may at any time renew the attempt. The reason for this interference is obvious. A Prussianized Spain would serve as a double‐barrelled gun, covering at once Rome and France. Whereas the success of Don Carlos is the success of a Catholic sovereign and a Bourbon; consequently a friend to France, whatever may be the government in that country. Russia’s refusal to join in its schemes was, however, a little too significant to ignore, and love, which was never at fever‐point between what are now the rival powers in Europe, was not increased by this rebuff. In the meanwhile Spain is suffering terribly in blood, in commerce, in everything that makes the life of a nation, by this prolonged struggle, which it was our hope to see concluded ere this by the victory of the only man who can promise the Spaniards a safe and vigorous government, and who has proved himself possessed of all the qualities of king, general, and, as far as we are able to judge, truly Christian leader—Don Carlos.

In Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and other of the South American states, the struggle between church and state in Europe has been repeated, even to the seizure of property, the expulsion of priests and nuns, the imprisonment of bishops and priests. One little republic alone, that of Equador, has set a noble example to the world of loyalty to the Catholic faith and to the Apostolic See by devoting a large sum out of the public funds to the aid of the Holy Father. The secret societies have seemingly as strong a hold in South America as in Italy, and the boldness with which they act is manifested by the severity of the sentences passed on the Bishops of Olinda and Para, the Archbishops of Caracas and Venezuela, and the aged Bishop of Merida. Those are still Catholic states, and it is to be hoped that all true Catholics there will exert themselves and use the lawful power that is in their hands to put a stop to the scenes of outrage and brutal violence that are constantly on the increase.

It is time that civilized governments, or those that claim the title, should unite to put a stop to the horrible periodical massacres of Christians in China, of which the details reach us from time to time, particularly during the past year. It is a shame upon all nations that peaceful women should be outraged and brutally cut to pieces, as are the Catholic nuns in that country. The European powers and our own could, if they chose, put a stop to this infamous practice—for practice it is. And our own government might well take the initiative in the matter. We welcome the Chinese into this country. They come in swarms; they find home and labor, and reward for their labor. They live among us, and leave us, unmolested to the last. Their very idolatry is allowed; and yet at almost stated intervals their countrymen rise up and horribly mutilate and murder our dearest and best.

Of actual wars during the year there have been happily few. The defeat of the Ashantees, and the burning of their capital city by the British forces, adds, it is to be presumed, a new lustre to the glories of England. The Dutch retaliated for their defeat of the year previous in Acheen by in turn defeating the Achinese. Russia is securing its footsteps as it advances into Asia. An invasion of Formosa by the Japanese, who are becoming more and more amenable to European customs, ended strangely by a payment of indemnity on the part of China and the departure safe home of the Japanese. The usual chronic revolutions might be recorded of one or more of the South American states, but beyond this there is nothing very sanguinary to record.

An event that will long be memorable, and which excited very general interest outside, was the departure for the first time of a body of pilgrims from this country to Lourdes and Rome, under the guidance of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Fort Wayne and the Rev. P. F. Dealy, S. J. They were received with special marks of affection by the Holy Father, who declared that in this country he was more Pope than in any other.

An event that excited extraordinary commotion and a general display of a strange splenetic hate on the part of the English press was the quiet conversion to the Catholic faith of the Marquis of Ripon, who, in addition to his hereditary title and established character as an English statesman, added that of Grand Master of the Freemasons in England. Among other conversions was that of the Queen Dowager of Bavaria.

We are not in the position to compare the statistics of the past year’s capital crimes or suicides with those of former years; but whether they be greater or less, they are alarmingly great. Suicide and murder were startlingly frequent during the year; and as far as passing glances at the reports in the newspapers would justify an opinion, they seem in most cases to have resulted from wicked and immoral lives. For a time masked burglary threatened to become the fashionable crime of the year. A speedier sentence and a more honest dispensing of the law than often prevails would more materially, perhaps, than any other means tend to diminish the long annual list of offences against life and property. Education, to be sure, is a great thing, and there will be an opportunity in the coming year of seeing how the new law of compulsory education for all children will work in the State of New York. The question is too large a one to enter into here. As has been shown over and over again, compulsory education with us means practically a compulsory Protestant education; for Protestantism, if not actually taught, is done so at least negatively, for many of the class‐books teem with Protestantism from cover to cover. That, however, is a matter within the power of remedy to a great extent. The compulsory education of Prussia that is so much extolled allowed the Catholic priest and the Protestant minister to teach their respective religions at stated hours, in opposite corners of the schools, even though they had Sunday‐schools as well. But our only safeguard is our own schools for our own children, and it is gratifying to note the zeal with which both clergy and laity have combined during the past year to establish Catholic schools all over the country. That is the first thing to be done. Let us first have our own schools, and then we may fairly see about the management of our own moneys.

Only a few of the distinguished dead who have gone out with the year can be mentioned. The church in the United States has lost five venerable servants and pioneers of faith, in Bishops Melcher of Green Bay, O’Gorman, of Omaha, Whelan of Wheeling, McFarland of Hartford, and Bacon of Portland. The College of Cardinals has lost three of its members: Cardinal Barnabo, the great Prefect of the Propaganda, to whom the church in this country is greatly indebted; Cardinals Falcinelli and Tarquini. The Christian Brothers lost their venerable superior, Brother Philippe, whose funeral was attended by the chief notabilities of Paris, together with a vast crowd of people of all ranks and conditions in life, so much so that as the white flag was the suspicious color just then, and as that flag has the misfortune under its present holder of being connected with religion, the keen‐scented gentry of the press discovered in this last tribute to a man who had spent his life in doing good a Chambordist demonstration. The death of Mgr. de Merode was a great loss to the Holy Father, as well as to a multitude of friends. An interesting comparison might be made between the purposes to which he devoted his vast wealth and those of a man still more wealthy who died within the year—the Baron Mayer de Rothschild. His admiring chronicler in the leading English journal informs us that the baron, who, in addition to his other admirable qualities, was a silent member in the English Parliament, spared no expense to erect in his own palace a museum “adorned with all that is beautiful.” “He applied himself systematically to breeding race‐horses,” in compensation for which exceptional virtue the same glowing chronicler assures us that “when he won, a year ago, the Dudley, the Oaks, and the St. Leger, all the world felt that a piece of good and useful work had been performed.” Well, well! Did not our own Sumner leave life this very year amid general regret, sighing only that his book was not completed? Had that been finished, he would not have cared. And, thinking thus, went out one who is a part of our history, and whose name, though it did not fulfil all its earlier promise, was great among us. Ex‐President Fillmore died almost unnoticed. Certain news of the death of Dr. Livingstone in 1873 arrived during the year. Art has lost Kaulbach, who devoted his undoubted genius to attacking the church, and Foley. One of the men of a century died in Guizot. Merivale and Michelet are lost to history, Shirley Brooks to light literature. Strauss, the infidel, perhaps, has learnt at last the truth of an awkward verse in S. James. Not only Germany, but the Catholic cause all the world over, has sustained a sad and in a sense irreparable loss in the great and chivalrous leader of the Catholic centre in the German parliament, Herr von Mallinkrodt, whom divine Providence was pleased to call away in the height of a career of great usefulness to the church and to society. He was a foe whom Prince Bismarck dreaded and had reason to dread—one of those men whom no weak point escapes, no side issue can divert, no opponent cow. Adam Black and the monstrosity known as the Siamese Twins died during the year.

And now the glance at the outline of the general year and some of its chief incidents is completed. With every succeeding year we look forward with more anxiety than confidence into the future. There are terrible forces, long concealed, nearer the social surface than they ever were before, and they come up now, as a consequence probably, just when the general bond that ought to hold the human family together is at the loosest; when men are ready to burst all bounds and call everything in question; and when the lights of the age can only tell man that he is nothing more than a fortuitous cohesion of irresponsible atoms, begotten of void only to fall back into it. The only bond that can bind the human family together is “the one law, one faith, one baptism,” preached nineteen centuries ago in Judæa by the lips of the Son of God. And it is just that faith that is now being as fiercely assailed as it ever has been within the Christian era. There is not merely an arming of material forces going on silently. There is a clash of faith, of intellect, of moral principles, of all that guides and constitutes the inner and the greater life of man; and of the double collision, the material and the spiritual, that seems to hang over us and make heavy with foreboding the air of all the world. Though supernatural faith may not doubt as to the issue, human weakness cannot but tremble and grow faint at the prospect.

New Publications.

ORIENTAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES. Second Series. By W. D. Whitney, Professor of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology in Yale College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

Yale College well deserves the name of university in common with its great rival, Harvard. The advance it has made within the last twenty‐five years is something really remarkable, and, to the great honor of its governing body, this advance has kept pace in linguistic studies with the improvement in the departments of mathematics and physics. One of the functions of a university is the production of really learned and solid books for the instruction of readers generally, as well as students in particular branches. The volume before us is a specimen of this class. Whatever we may think of some of Prof. Whitney’s theories and opinions, we must acknowledge the evidence of study, labor, and great care to present the results of learning and thought on important and interesting subjects, which his works exhibit.

The contents of the present volume are somewhat varied and miscellaneous. One of the topics treated of, which deserves special attention, is the spelling and pronunciation of the English language. The variations of spelling are not so numerous and important as are those of pronunciation, but in this latter respect our language is certainly in a state which is most unsatisfactory and vexatious, and becoming every day worse. We are not an advocate of any revolutionary project in regard to phonetic spelling, but we do most earnestly desire a fixed and uniform standard, and still more a rule of uniformity in pronunciation. Mr. Whitney’s researches into this subject are extremely curious, valuable, and often amusing, and he shows a very peculiar and ingenious facility of describing and expressing the various oddities and extravagances of individual or provincial usage. The question at once suggests itself whether there are any practicable means of fixing a standard of spelling and pronunciation. If it were question of a language spoken by one nation only, we can see very easily that an academy might be established which should settle all these matters by authority. An Englishman might assert the right of England to determine all usages in respect to the English language, and the corresponding obligation of all English‐speaking peoples to conform to an authoritative standard furnished by an academy in England. Americans might not be satisfied with this. The further question arises, therefore, whether it be possible that English and American scholars should do something concurrently in this direction.

Mr. Whitney has given in some other papers, with a condensed but clear exposition, historical and philosophical views of India and China which will probably have more interest to the great body of readers than any other portions of his volume. In respect to one very important aspect of these topics, the missionary aspect, he shows impartiality and manifest effort to conform his statements and judgments to historical facts and a real rather than a fanciful standard. There is no attempt to claim for Protestant missions greater success than they have had, and a very fair tribute of praise is given to the celebrated Catholic missionaries who have labored in that arduous field. Yet, like other Protestants, Mr. Whitney shows himself not well informed about the practical results at which Catholic missionaries aim, and which, in so far as that is possible, they accomplish, in making their converts solidly pious and virtuous Christians.

Among the other topics treated of in this volume, the most important are Müller’s Chips from a German Workshop, Cox’s Aryan Mythology, and the “Lunar Zodiac of India, Arabia, and China.” We have not examined these and previous essays of the learned author, in which the formation of languages and mythologies is treated of, with sufficient attention to be enabled to understand clearly his fundamental theory of the origin and history of religion. We therefore abstain from any attempt at a critical judgment; and, in regard to Mr. Whitney’s own special department of Sanscrit, very few critics can safely venture on that ground. Thorough and solid studies in these recondite branches of knowledge must lead to results advantageous to religion as well as to merely human science. We rejoice, therefore, in the noble and in many respects successful efforts of Mr. Whitney and his associates to promote the cause of high education in this country. We trust that their example may be emulated by those who have the principal charge of the higher education of our Catholic youth. The English bishops have already inaugurated the University College of Kensington with a faculty worthy of Oxford or Cambridge. When will the first steps be taken for a similar institution among ourselves?

THE KING’S HIGHWAY; OR, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THE WAY OF SALVATION, AS REVEALED IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. By the Rev. Augustine F. Hewit, of the Congregation of S. Paul. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

This work of Rev. Father Hewit supplies a want we have often felt in instructing converts to the church. There are many sincere persons looking for light, and dissatisfied with the religious sect in which they were born, who have no idea of the church, nor the office it holds in the plan of redemption. The denomination to which they belong has never been of any use to them, and has, in fact, disclaimed all power to guide or help them. It requires often some time to overcome their prejudice against any kind of instrumentality between their souls and God. They believe in the Sacred Scriptures, which they have never deeply studied, but which they hold to be the oracles of divine truth. In their opposition to the Catholic faith they have been fighting against the only thing which can fill up the desire of their hearts, and bring into blessed harmony all they know of God and all they seek from his hands. To such this book will be as a messenger from heaven. It will remove their doubts, and from the inspired writings will prove to them the error of Protestant theories, and show how Christ our Redeemer is only to be found in his church, “which is his body,” which “he filleth all in all.” Written in the clear, graceful, and forcible style which distinguishes all the works of the author, it brings forth an argument which no honest mind can resist. It points out “the King’s highway,” so plainly that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot fail to find it.” The first chapters are devoted to a refutation of the false theories of Calvinism and Lutheranism. By the plain language of the Bible they are shown to be opposed to the divine Word, contradictory of each other, and hostile to the very nature and attributes of God. The true doctrine of redemption is then set forth from the Scriptures, with the office of faith and the prerequisites of justification. The whole system of salvation, as the mercy of Jesus Christ has revealed it, arises in its beauty and fulness before the eyes of the sincere, and the Catholic Church opens its door to the weary and heavy‐laden, that they may enter in to praise God and find rest to their souls. We have nowhere seen a more clear and effective demonstration of our divine religion from the Scriptures. We have only to pray that it may have a large circulation among the honest inquirers after truth in this day of darkness and infidelity. Protestants of the old class profess a great reverence for the Bible, which is to them a kind of rule of faith. The diligent reading of this work will convince them that they cannot follow the Scriptures and remain where they are; that Catholics alone can understand and obey the written Word of God. Neither can they abide in the creed of their fathers amid the errors and disorganizing influences of this day. They must go forward and keep the truth they have already received by embracing all to which it leads, or lose what they have in the misery of doubt and unbelief. The day of grace for dogmatic Protestants is well‐nigh gone.

We have only to add the earnest wish that Catholics generally would read this book and profit by the instruction it contains. There are very many among us who might lead others to the truth, if they were better informed as to the grounds of their faith, and the points of controversy which separate the conflicting Christian sects from the church. Idleness and ignorance will be a fearful burden to bear before the Judge of all. The talent hidden in the ground will be demanded with interest, and the unprofitable servant will have to answer for light unimproved and grace unfruitful. The souls we could have saved will rise up against us in the day of our greatest need. “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required.”

T. S. P.

THREE ESSAYS ON RELIGION. By John Stuart Mill. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1874.

What John Stuart Mill was, and what his life was, our readers have been already informed in a review of his Autobiography. The prince of modern English sophists and sceptics, he was as miserable and hopeless in life and death as the victim of an atheistical education might be expected to be; as miserable as a man outwardly prosperous, enjoying the resources of a cultivated mind, and exempted by the moral force of his character from the consequences of gross crimes, could well become. These three Essays are essays of the unhappy sceptic to reduce his readers to the same miserable condition. Their scope is to overturn, not revealed religion alone, but all theism; to destroy the belief in God; and to substitute the most dreary atheism, fatalism, and nihilism for the glorious, elevating, consoling faith of the Christian, and the imperfect but yet, in itself, ennobling philosophy of the higher class of rationalists. It is a very bad sign for our age, and a worse omen for the future, that men can profess atheism without incurring public odium and disgrace, and that respectable publishers find it for their interest to flood the market with the deadly literature which is worse than that of France during the age of Bayle and Voltaire. A large class of book‐sellers may always be found, not scrupulous or over‐sensitive in their consciences about right and wrong in morals, when money is to be made. We suppose, however, that those of them who expect to make fortunes and transmit them to their children would like to have the good order of society continue. What can such gentlemen be thinking of when they help to lay the train under the foundations of order and social morality? We know of a man who helped to run his own bank, in which he had many thousands of dollars invested, by demanding specie for a hundred‐dollar bill during a panic. Old John Bunyan tells of a certain person living in the town of Mansoul whose name was Mr. Penny wise‐pound‐ foolish. Every one who helps on the spread of atheism, materialism, impiety in any shape, even if he makes money or fame by it, is helping to run his own bank. Moreover, he is helping to train the generation of those who will cut the throats of the whole class he belongs to. We are just now very wisely, though somewhat tardily, bringing the odious Mormon criminals to justice, by a kind of blind Christian instinct which still survives in our public opinion. What is the consistency or use of this, if we are going to look on apathetically and see the next generation all over our country turned into atheists? Practical atheism is worse than the most hideous and revolting form of Mormonism. Why mend a broken spar when mutineers are scuttling the ship from stem to stern? Would it not be well for those conductors of the press who have some principles and some belief in them, for the clergy, and for all who have access in some form to the ear of a portion of the public, to be a little more alive to the danger from the spread of atheism, and a little more active in counteracting it?

Pardon, gentlemen, for disturbing your nap. You are very drowsy, but is it not time for you to wake up?

EAGLE AND DOVE. From the French of Mademoiselle Fleuriot, by Emily Bowles. New York: P. O. Shea. 1874.

This is a story of Breton life and of the events of the siege and the Commune of Paris. It is superior to the common run of stories in artistic merit, its characters and scenes have a peculiar and romantic interest, and its religious and moral tone is up to the highest mark.

THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE, Etc. Vol. XI. Tractates on the Gospel of S. John, Vol. II.; Vol. XII. Anti‐Pelagian works, Vol. II. Edinburgh: J. & J. Clark. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Two more volumes of the splendid edition of S. Augustine’s works are here presented, and deserve a warm welcome. It is difficult to see how they will serve the cause of the Church of England, but that is the affair of the editors, not ours. Of course they are mighty weapons for High‐ Churchmen against their Low and Broad Church antagonists. But they tell equally against these same High‐Churchmen in favor of the Catholic Church. The treatise against Vincentius Victor, in Vol. XII., is crowded with denunciations of the Donatists, who are the prototypes of Anglicans, except in one respect, viz., that the former had valid orders.

RHYMES AND JINGLES. (Illustrated.) By Mary Mapes Dodge, author of Hans Brinker, etc. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.

This is a very pretty book for a Christmas present. The rhymes are nice, and such as will please, amuse, sometimes instruct folk of the nursery. The illustrations are numerous and well executed, some are funny, some remarkably beautiful. Any little boy or girl who has not already been surfeited with toys and books may be made happy by such a gift. Merry little people, a merry Christmas to you!

LIBRARY OF THE SACRED HEART. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1874.

This is something towards supplying a great need among Catholic publications. There are numerous and beautiful series of books issued by the sectarian press, but comparatively few by Catholic publishers. Any one who has had to procure Catholic libraries knows this want. Such series are great aids in supplying Sunday‐school or household libraries. We welcome the above, and trust it will be followed by others of the same kind. Much credit is due to the publishers for their selection and the neat appearance of the volumes. The selection comprises six small and choice spiritual works. God our Father and the Happiness of Heaven, by the same author, have been noticed with high praise in our columns. The others also are standard works. We recommend this “Library of the Sacred Heart,” and hope it will be appreciated. It is contained in a neat and tasteful box, appropriately ornamented with pious emblems of the Sacred Heart.

BRIC‐A‐BRAC SERIES—NO. IV.: PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY BARHAM, HARNESS, AND HODDER. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

This is quite up to the mark of the foregoing volumes, and full of very agreeable anecdotes, criticisms, and literary chit‐chat.

ANNOUNCEMENT.—We shall begin, next month the publication of a new serial story, entitled Are you my Wife? by the author of Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, A Daughter of S. Dominic, Pius VI., etc., etc.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XX., NO. 119.—FEBRUARY, 1875

Church Authority And Personal Responsibility:

A Letter Prom Aubrey De Vere To Sara Coleridge On The Catholic Philosophy Of The “Rule Of Faith,” Considered Especially With Reference To The Transcendental System Of S. T. Coleridge.(149)

A letter to me, printed in the Memoir of Sara Coleridge, and dated October 19, 1851, contains the following passage: “Viewing the Romish system as you do, my dear friend, I cannot regret that you think, as you do, of the compatibility of my father’s scheme of philosophy therewith, assured, as I feel, that he had done that Papal system too much justice to believe in it as a divine institution” (vol. ii. p. 401). From my youth I had been an ardent student of Coleridge’s philosophy, to the illustration of which his daughter, indifferent to her own literary fame, so faithfully devoted her great powers. That philosophy had largely inspired F. D. Maurice’s remarkable work, The Kingdom of Christ; and I believed firmly that it was, at least as compared with the empirical philosophy of the last century, in harmony with Catholic teaching, rightly understood; and that the objections made against that teaching were such as a transcendentalist must regard as proceeding, not from any intuitions or ideas of the “reason,” but from the cavils of that notional understanding called by Coleridge “the faculty judging according to sense.” I have lately found a letter written by me to my lamented friend less than a fortnight after her letter quoted above, and about a fortnight before I made my submission to the Catholic Church. It may interest some of those who have read Sara Coleridge’s letters, and who are enquirers as to the method proper for reaching solid conclusions in the domain of truth not scientific and discovered by man, but religious, and revealed to him.

It was my object to show that the Catholic “rule of faith” does not oppose, but alone adequately vindicates, some great principles with which it has been contrasted, e.g., personal action, the dependence of individual souls on divine grace, religious freedom, zeal for truth, the interior character of genuine piety, and the value of “internal evidences.” That “rule” has been stigmatized as a bondage. This is the illusion of those who, regarding the church from without, and under the influence of modern and national traditions, see but a part of her system, and have not compared it with other parts. The Catholic law of belief I endeavored to set forth as the only one consistent with a sound philosophy when treating of things supernatural, and as such beyond the method of induction and experiment, while it is also both primitive and Scriptural. I wished to show that it is the only means by which we can possess the revealed truth with certainty and at once in its fulness and its purity; and to illustrate it as not alone our gate of access to truth “spiritually discerned,” but the nurse and the protectress of our whole spiritual life, with all its redeemed affections; as opposed, not to personal action and responsibility, or to a will free and strong, because loyal, but to an unintelligent pride and to a feeble self‐will, the slave of individual caprice; as the antagonist, not of what is transcendent and supernatural in religion, but of a religious philosophy in which the philosophy exalts itself against the religion, “running after” revelation to “take somewhat of it,” but not inheriting its blessing.

Twenty‐three years have passed since my letter was written; and year after year has deepened in me the convictions which it expresses, or rather which it indicates in a fragmentary way, and possibly not with a technical accuracy. In the church I have found an ever‐deepening peace, a freedom ever widening, a genuine and a fruitful method for theological thought, and a truth which brightens more and more into the perfect day. External to her fold, it is but too probable that I should long since have drifted into unbelief, though a reluctant and perhaps unconscious unbelief.

After some preliminary matter, referring to our earlier discussions, the letter continues as follows:

Divine faith is a theological virtue, the gift of God, which raises the spirit to believe and confess, with a knowledge absolutely certain, though obscure in kind, the whole truth which God has revealed to man. Such is the description which Roman Catholic writers give of a grace which cannot be defined. The knowledge of faith is as certain as that of mathematics, but wholly different in kind, including a moral and spiritual power, affecting (if it be living faith) the mind and will at once, as light and heat are united in the sunbeam, and containing, like the sunbeam, many other secret properties also. It far transcends the certainty of any one of our senses, each of which may deceive us. It is also essentially different from that intellectual vision which belongs to the kingdom of glory, not of grace or of nature. Its nearest analogon is human faith, through which we believe that we are the children of our reputed parents, and on which, and not on demonstration, the basis of human life is laid. But it differs essentially also from human faith. It is supernatural, not natural. It is certain, not uncertain. In its application to supernatural objects it is wholly independent of imagination or enthusiasm; and it brings us into real intercourse with objective truth. False religions rest on that which simulates divine faith, and may, even among Christians, so fill its place that the difference is not discernible to human eyes—a mixture of human faith with aspiration, imagination, and the other natural faculties. True religion carries with it the special faculty by which it is capable of being realized, and thus makes a revelation which they but seemed to make. But this faculty is not a natural one awakened, but a supernatural one bestowed, its ordinary antecedents being the corresponding moral virtues of humility and purity; and the exercise of human faith and other devout affections, themselves stimulated by a different and inferior kind of grace, bestowed on the whole family even of unregenerate man. Besides the antecedent conditions for receiving, other conditions are necessary for the realization and right application of the divine and illuminating grace. These conditions are not arbitrary, but spring from the necessities of our whole nature, both individual and corporate. They are ordinarily the individual co‐operation of will, mind, and heart, and an attitude of willing submission to God, or the prophet through whom the objects of faith are propounded to us by him. This prophet was the Messiah himself while he walked on earth, and was the Apostolic College from the day of Pentecost. He continues to address us, in a manner equally distinct, through that church in whom, as catholic and yet one, the unity of the Apostolic College (one in union with Peter) still abides. That church is the body of Christ; and we are introduced at once into it and him through baptism. The visible rite corresponds with the invisible grace bestowed through it, just as the church itself is at once the spiritual kingdom of peace, and the visible “mountain of the Lord’s house” elevated to the summit of the mountains, and as man himself, consists of soul and body.

That church, inheriting a belief which it never invented or discovered, confesses Christ, and confesses also that she is Christ’s representative on earth. She challenges individual faith, and proposes to it the one object of dogmatic belief. That one object is the whole Christian faith, as it has hitherto been, or ever may be, authentically defined. Whether it be believed implicitly, as by the peasant, or explicitly, as by the doctor, makes no difference whatever, relatively to faith, though it may affect edification, which needs a due proportion between our intellectual and moral gifts. In each case alike (1) the whole faith is held; (2) is held bonâ fide, as revealed by God; (3) is held wholly by supernatural faith; (4) affords thus a basis for the supernatural life of hope and charity. “Fundamentals,” as distinguished from “non‐essentials,” there are none, i.e., objectively. All Christian truths are in each other by implication, as Adam’s race was in the first parent. They are yet more transcendently in each other, for each contains all. To receive one by divine faith is to receive all. To deny one, when competently proposed to us by the authority which speaks in God’s name, is to deny all, unless circumstances beyond our will have deceived our mind respecting that authority or its message. The whole objective faith will probably never be recognized, till in the kingdom of glory it flashes upon us in its unity. In the kingdom of grace (in via, not in patria) it is defined in proportion to the moral and intellectual needs of the church. It is defined, not as a science, but from necessity, and to meet the gainsaying of heresy. The endeavor of the church is to preserve the treasure confided to her. It cannot increase, but the knowledge of it must. Subjectively, the knowledge is progressive as man is progressive; but objectively it is unchanging as God is eternal. The whole, defined and undefined, is essential and one. The whole is needed for the race, that the race may retain Christ, its head. The knowledge of the whole is needed by each according to his circumstances. The entire belief of the entire truth, implicitly, is necessary for each individual. Ordinarily, and except in the case of involuntary error, that entire belief of the whole is realized through a submission (absolute but free, filial, and necessitated by all our Christian sympathies and spiritual affections, as well as by obedience) to her who is God’s representative, visible, on earth.

The existence of that visible church is wholly irrespective of our needing an expositor of dogmatic faith. Its character is determined (1) by the character of God, whom it images alike in his unity and his plurality; (2) by the character of Christianity, which is communicated to the race, and to the individual in and with the body, so that nothing that he holds can be held singly, except what is perishable; and (3) by the character of man, who graduates in a certain order, and who, as a mixed being, is taught after a fashion that ever exalts the meek and raises the moral faculties above the intellectual in endless elevation, however high the latter may ascend. But among its other functions, the visible church has that of presenting to the infused habit of faith what otherwise it would seek for in vain, i.e., a dogmatic authority which, in act, it can rise to, cleave to, and live by. If Christ reigned visibly on earth, he would need no such representative. If Christ, as the Eternal Reason, inspired each man, as well as enlightening him, he need never have assumed flesh. If the Holy Ghost inspired each man as he did the prophets and apostles (instead of communicating to him the grace of faith, planting him in the church, feeding him with the Lord’s body, quickening his devout affections, etc.), then there would be no need for the church, as a dogmatic authority, nor for the Holy Scriptures. If the Bible were a plain book; if the nature of truth were such that it could be divided into fundamental and non‐essential; if one doctrine could be believed, while another, involved in it, is denied, then, perhaps, private judgment might extract from the Bible as much as an individual requires. Again, if supernatural faith were not requisite, but human faith, founded on evidence, and generating opinion, sufficed, then private judgment, availing itself of all human helps suggested by prudence, could build up on the Bible, on philosophy, on ecclesiastical traditions, and on the public opinion of the day, a certain scheme of thought on sacred subjects, round which the affections would cluster, to which devout associations would cling, which the understanding might formalize, imagination brighten, enthusiasm exult in, prudence recommend. But these are all suppositions, not realities. Private “inspiration” is known to be a fallacy. “Reason” cannot make reasonable men agree; and every one who has any portion in reason knows that what is disputed for ages is disputable, and that what is not truth to all cannot be truth absolute and certain, on the ground of reason, to any one. Uncertain opinion cannot be supernatural faith. Spiritual discernment cannot lead us to the finer appreciation of doctrine while we remain ignorant as to whether it be a particular doctrine or the opposite doctrine that challenges our faith.

But, on the other hand, if an authority speaks in God’s name, it may be really commissioned by him. If so commissioned, it may be believed by us. If believed, all parts of its message are equally certain. This hypothesis obviously admits of an objective faith certain throughout, and only for that reason certain at all. If a revelation were to be founded on faith, this would afford faith a sphere. I speak of it now as but an hypothesis. I claim for it that it is reasonable.

It is objected that such belief could be but an amiable and useful credulity at best, since it would not be founded on insight and spiritual discernment. It is thus that Hindoos and Mahometans believe; and their belief would be worthless, but that by God’s mercy some fragments of truth and some gleams of reason are mixed up with their systems. The objection wholly overlooks the fact that ex hypothesi the prophet and her message are believed, not with a human faith, but with a divine faith. Faith is inclusively the gift of spiritual discernment, though it is also much more. What faith receives must be spiritually discerned. It can discern in no other way.

But, it is objected, the plain fact is that multitudes do not spiritually discern or appreciate what they thus receive. No doubt. Nothing is more possible than that they should receive with only a human faith what yet is divinely addressed to a divine faith. They have, then, opportunities which they have not yet used. Multitudes of Roman Catholics have doubtless, like multitudes of Protestants, opinion only, not certainty, while the sensation of certainty is in both cases illusory, and proceeds from positiveness of temper or sluggishness of mind.(150) To possess the means of realizing and maintaining faith compels no man to have faith; otherwise, like intuitions irrespective of the will, it would merit nothing and include no probation. Faith and the guide of faith are both offered to the Catholic; but he must co‐operate with grace, as with Providence, to profit by either.

But how, it is asked, can we by such a process have a spiritual discernment of the doctrine by which we are challenged? Are we not in the position, after all, of Hindoos? I answer, Christianity resembles many false religions in this respect: that it comes to us on what claims to be authority, and challenges our submission; but it differs from them in this all‐important respect: that others are false, and it is true. It being true, the human mind, which, so far as it retains the divine image, is in sympathy with truth, has a moral appreciation of its truth, and, when illuminated by faith, has a spiritual discernment of it. No one who, after years of wandering in erroneous paths, comes at last to contemplate the doctrine of the Trinity from a new point of view, and accepts it on what he trusts is a spiritual discernment of it, can doubt that he could equally have discerned its truth years before had he been led by the church to the same point of view, and gifted from above with that light which removes the sensuous film. He could not indeed, on the authority of the church, spiritually receive or hold, with genuine faith, something in itself false and absurd. But then part of the hypothesis is that the church can propound no doctrinal error. Neither could the definition give faith. But then it does not profess to do so; it but shapes and directs faith. As little could the authority of the church give faith. It makes no such profession; it but challenges faith. It is the inseparable condition of faith: God is its source. The human mind, co‐ operating with grace, receives faith, and at the same time is confronted with a distinct, palpable object of faith. So touched, it becomes the mirror of truth; and its belief is exclusively a personal and internal act, though performed with the instrumentality, not only of an outward agency, but of a specific external agency, i.e., the church. The same Divine Spirit acts at once externally and internally—externally in the church, which it commissions, instructs, and keeps one; internally in the individual mind, which it kindles, illuminates, attracts, and (dissolving the tyranny of self‐love) lifts up into freedom and power. The Holy Spirit, then, is at once the root of faith in the individual, and of unity in the church. This doctrine may be objected to as ideal; but surely not as carnal. Assuredly it is Scriptural.

But, it is rejoined, “supposing that the divine message may be spiritually discerned when it is devoutly accepted, and thus accepted as a whole, when it would otherwise be accepted but in part (and then, perhaps, with but a partial faith), still how are we to know that the authority is divine? If no belief, however sound, is faith, unless it (1st) believes, and (2d) truly believes, that it rests on divine testimony and listens to God himself, how is this prophet to be recognized? The world abounds in claimants to infallibility, though the Christian world has but one. The apostles indeed claimed it; but then they wrought miracles, and the miracles proved the authority.” I answer that miracles proved nothing by way of scientific demonstration; but that they witnessed to the supernatural character of the teacher and the doctrine. If the divine message could be proved to the reason, it would rest on science, not on faith, and the whole Christian scheme would be reversed, belief becoming a necessary and natural act. Miracles challenged faith, but could only be received by faith, since they might always be referred to imposture or evil spirits, both classes of agency abounding in the time of Simon Magus as now. It is begging the question to assume that miracles do not take place now; but, even conceding thus much, the church has still at least as high credentials as the apostles had. Their miracles constituted but evidence; and evidence which creates opinion can but challenge faith, not extort it. In place of that evidence we have now the “notes of the church”: its apostolicity, its catholicity, its unity, its sanctity, its heroic history, its wonderful promulgation, its martyrs, its doctors, its schoolmen; communities moulded by it; races united by it; sciences and arts first nourished by it; civilization and freedom produced by it, and, amid all the changes of the world, the same great doctrines and sacraments retained by it. We can hardly doubt that the one stupendous fact of the church is as strong an appeal to the faith of a man (and our Lord himself did but appeal to faith) as that made by an apostle at Athens, when, rising up in a mixed multitude of disputatious Greeks, Eastern sorcerers, Roman conjurers, and Jewish refugees, he assured them that he had been sent by the unknown God to preach what to the Greeks was foolishness: that One who was crucified had also worked miracles and risen from the dead, . . . that his kingdom, and not the Roman, was to crown the world; and that all this was the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, though the Jewish nation disowned that kingdom, and had slain its Head. He spoke of glories to come: the church speaks of triumphs that have been. He suggested an experiment: the church has tried and proved it. He was accused of blasphemy, superstition, atheism, insubordination; so is she. He must have confessed that inspiration was not given to him alone, but to the Apostolic College; and he could have brought no immediate and scientific proof that he and his scattered brethren agreed in the same doctrine, even as to “essentials.” The church’s practical unity of doctrine is a matter of notoriety, and is accounted for by the imputation of tyranny, formalism, etc. It is an understatement to affirm that, on the Roman Catholic hypothesis, that church challenges faith with the aid of as strong evidential witness as an apostle possessed. But the quantum of evidence is not the question. The greatest amount of it cannot give faith, the least may elicit it; and at what periods the world requires most evidence we know not. The important fact is that the church which claims for its centre the apostolic see, does challenge faith just as an apostle did, or as the whole apostolic college did; that she is apostolic, not merely by having the succession, but by using the authority, and by acting just as she must act if, as she affirms, the whole college, in union with Peter, lived on in her. She too claims all and gives all. She too says, “Through me you may exercise divine faith when you receive, ‘by hearing,’ the message of God; for I am his apostle. What I saw and heard, what I handled and tasted, that, as a sure witness, I report. It was I who cast my nets on the Galilean shore when I was called. I heard that question, ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ I knelt on the Mount of Transfiguration when the suppressed glory broke forth and the law and the prophets were irradiated. I joined in that Last Supper. I stood beside his cross, and received his mother as my mother. I reached forth my hand, and put my fingers into the print of the nails. I received the charge, saw the ascension, felt the Pentecostal tongues, delivered my message, sealed it with my blood, and still stand up, delivering it for ever, and sealing it with my blood and with his.” This is the claim the church makes, and the same was made by the apostle. Both alike are subject to the rejoinder, “High claims do not prove themselves; and the competitors for infallibility are many.” Both alike answer: “If my message be false, you could not really and vitally believe in me, even though you would. If my message be true, you may believe in me, but I cannot compel you to do so.” It is not more wonderful that there should be rival priesthoods than rival creeds. There are many false because there is one true. Authority has commonly been claimed even by spurious religions, because the instinct of the human race, which is reason, perceived that if God vouchsafed a revelation to man, it would be both given and sustained through man, and not merely through a book.

From the above statements thus much at least is clear: (1) that the Protestant controversy with Rome does not respect the ultimate source of belief, which, by the admission of both sides, is to be referred to the Holy Spirit alone; but does respect this question, viz., whether, since an external agency is admitted to be in every case instrumentally but absolutely necessary for faith, that aid be not given to us by God, and given in the form of one, specific instrument, not any one that comes to hand—something easily known by outward marks which plainly solicit attention, not a proteus that changes almost as the individual mind changes. The question is whether the something external confessedly essential be the church of God and temple of the Spirit, speaking intelligibly and with authority, in the majesty of its visible unity; or be whatever sect or teacher may represent to plastic minds the public opinion of the place and time.

And (2) it is equally plain that Rome, in denouncing the principle of private judgment (except so far as, in abnormal circumstances, we are reduced to it, or something like it, while testing the claims of authority), is in no degree disparaging individual intuition, but simply stating the conditions, external as well as internal, under which it can be effectually and permanently realized. To see with another’s eyes, not one’s own, is an absurd aspiration which could not have made itself good for the greater part of the Christian era, over the greater part of the Christian world. But a man may use his own eyes, though together with them he uses a telescope, and his own ears, though he listens to the voice of a prophet instead of his own voice, or his domineering neighbor’s.

The Roman Catholic doctrine of authority does not assume that we cannot, even without that authority, have some insight into divine things. We can see the moon without a telescope, though not the stars of a nebula. But in theology partial gleams of intelligence are not sufficient for even their own permanence. Implicitly or explicitly, we must hold the whole to hold a part. Truth is a vast globe which we may touch with a finger, but cannot clasp in both hands. It eludes us, and we possess it but by being possessed by it. We must be drawn into the gravitation of its sphere and made one with it. We are thus united with it if in union with the church, to which it is given. We then see it all around us, as we see the world we live in—not by glimpses and through mists, as we see a remote star. This is the Catholic’s faith. Everything confirms everything in his world. “One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.” “Sea calleth unto sea.” The firmament above his head “declares” the glory of God, and the chambers of the deep his statutes. A Catholic indeed has his varying moods, and his “dry moods,” and his eager questionings on points not revealed; but his faith does not rise and fall with his temperament. The foundation, at least, of his spiritual being, is a rock.

Neither does the Roman Catholic doctrine deny that a man might conceivably, though not practically, without the aid of authority, grasp the whole of theology as far as it has been yet defined. But it declares that such knowledge, if thus acquired, would not be the knowledge possessed by faith, but by opinion; that it would rest partly on science, partly on mere human faith, partly on enthusiasm (so far as the sensitive appreciation of it went); and that, not being divine faith, it could not perform the genuine functions of faith. The intellectual region might feast with Dives, while the spiritual starved with Lazarus. This is, in a greater or lesser degree, the case with many, both among those who profess the principle of private judgment and those who profess to obey authority. In the very region of faith opinion may simulate faith, just as presumption may simulate hope and benevolence simulate charity. The most mysterious part of our probation is this: that under all circumstances and in all things nature may mimic grace, and pretence ape virtue. We may seem to ourselves angels, and be nothing; even as Christ himself, and his church no less, seem, to the eye of sense, the opposite of what they are, when insight is lacking or the point of view is determined by prejudice or a false tradition.

The Roman Catholic theory does not deny the force of internal evidence. It but says that such evidence, being a matter of moral feeling, is to be inwardly appreciated rather than logically set forth, and that it is often most felt when most unconsciously. A parent’s authority is not the less attested by the moral sense of the child and by his affections, though he does not consciously reflect on that part of its evidence; while yet he cannot be ignorant that all the neighbors believe that those who claim to be his parents are such in reality. Catholic teaching does not concede that, as argument, any evidence is necessary for those brought up in the true fold and gifted from childhood with faith, which is itself the evidence of things not seen. It does not believe that any gifts confined to a few can give a higher faith than is open to all “men of good‐will.” But it does believe that for simple and learned alike one external condition is necessary, viz., that the doctrine to be believed should be distinctly proposed by an authority believed (on supernatural faith) to speak in God’s name; so that from first to last faith should be, not a credulity founded on fancy, on fear, or on self‐love, but a “theological virtue” _believing in God, in all that he reveals, __ as revealed by him_, and in nothing else. Evidences are not anything that can compel faith or be a substitute for it; but they have commonly a very important place, notwithstanding, in the divine economy. Their place is among the motives of faith. These intellectual motives are the character of Christ and of the faith; the character of the church and its propagation—in other words, internal and external evidence. The moral motives are such as the spiritual safety of Christian obedience, the peace and joy of believing, the dignity Christianity confers on human nature, etc.

One circumstance which the Protestant theory forgets is that all knowledge of divine things is not necessarily faith. Angelic knowledge and that of the triumphant church is vision, not faith, and differs from faith either in essence or in inseparable accidents. The knowledge we have of God through natural theology, however true, is not, therefore, identical with divine faith. Irrespectively of Christianity, a belief in God precedes speculations, and comes to children chiefly by faith in what they hear from their parents. They could not, indeed, believe their parents equally if their own minds were not in harmony with such a belief; but in their case, too, authority is commonly a condition of believing. By faith, says S. Paul, “we know that the worlds were made.” That knowledge comes to us both through testimony and by intuitions. The “heavens declare the glory of God”; but they declare it, not prove it scientifically; and the Psalmist had the patriarchal tradition and Mosaic revelation, as well as his intuitions, and as their interpreter. Natural theology we accept by human faith concurring with natural lights and that lower degree of grace which compasses the whole world. Divine faith, S. Paul tells us, requires an outward organ, too, not for its promulgation only, but for its certainty. “He gave some apostles, some pastors, etc.,” “that we be not driven about with every wind of doctrine.” Could this effect have been realized if apostle had preached against apostle, and each prophet had said to his neighbor “I, too, am a prophet,” and bear an opposite message? S. Paul says that the hierarchy is ordained not only for edification, but to make faith certain. It can only do that in its unity. Had certainty been unnecessary, or had reason been its organ, no hierarchy would have been elevated to constitute the church representative.

The Protestant theory (it may be so spoken of with reference to the great main points included in most forms of Protestantism) assumes that the one great characteristic of faith is its being a power of “spiritual discernment” or an intuition of spiritual truth. This is to put a part of the truth in place of the whole. This attribute of faith is asserted by the church also; but her conception of faith is founded on a larger appreciation of the Holy Scriptures and of man’s compound nature.

Faith indeed becomes a spiritual seeing; but it comes “by hearing.” Considered even exclusively as intuition, the “spiritual discernment” is wholly different in kind from moral or mathematical intuitions, as those two classes of intuition differ from each other. A spiritual intuition, analogous to that of reason (though more exalted), would be utterly unsuited to our needs while still laboring in our probation and toiling in the “body of this death.” The intuition really vouchsafed to us by supernatural grace ever retains peculiar characteristics originally produced by the mode in which we receive it. Humility, submission, self‐ abnegation, constitute that mode; and these qualities are and remain as essential characteristics of true faith as spiritual discernment is. No otherwise than “as little children” is it possible for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We must enter the sheep‐fold by the door; we cannot otherwise profit by it; for could we climb its walls, it would cease to be the sheep‐fold to us, since we should not bear in our breasts the heart of the Lamb. Opinion asserts; faith confesses. Assertion includes self‐assertion; confession confesses another. God only can rightly assert himself. Created beings are relative beings, and the condition of their true greatness is that they forget themselves in God. The very essence of pride, the sin of the fallen angels, whom but a single voluntary evil thought subverted, is self‐assertion on the part of a relative being. In taking self as a practical ground of knowledge, it, in a certain sense, creates its Creator, and involves the principle that God himself may be but an idea. Pride is not only our strongest spiritual temptation, but is almost the natural instinct of reason, working by itself, on supernatural themes, and it remains undetected by reason, just as water cannot be weighed in water. The higher we soar, the more we need to be reminded of our infirmity; therefore the glorious intuitions of faith are, for our safety, given to us by the way of humility, and continued to us on condition of obedience. Not only faith, as a habit, is humble, but the peculiar species of knowledge which it conveys is such as to preserve that character; for that knowledge is obscure, although certain. We see, “as through a glass, darkly”; but we see steadily. Imaginative reason gets bright flashes by rubbing its own eyes, but they are transient. Faith, requiring docility as a habit in us, and involving obscurity as a condition of its knowledge, is a perpetual discipline of self‐sacrifice. Christianity is the doctrine of a sacrifice; and through a spiritual act and habit of self‐sacrifice alone can that doctrine be “spiritually discerned.” Christian knowledge is thus the opposite of the rationalistic and of the Gnostic.

This estimate of faith is surely as Scriptural as it is philosophic. Thus only can we reconcile the statements of our Lord and of S. Paul. The most humble and child‐like docility is constantly referred to by our Lord as an essential part of that faith which, on condition of so beginning and of continuing such, imparts to us as much spiritual discernment as is an earnest of the Blessed Vision. Such docility must look like credulity. Almost all the instances of it which met his highest praise did look like credulity, and would have been credulity had not grace inspired them, Providence directed them, and Truth itself rewarded them. What then? Which part of Christianity is not thus double‐visaged? What part of it is not a scandal to them that “judge by appearances” and do not “judge righteous judgment”? If to all without faith the Master must seem an impostor, why should not the disciples seem enthusiasts? Were they who wished that the shadow of the apostles should fall on them, was she who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, fanatics, because erring nature too can prompt her children to similar acts under an erring religion? Before such a philosophy (if philosophy can rest on such an assumption) the Gospel, as well as the church of the orbis terrarum, and the whole ancient church, must give way, and pure religion must be a discovery, not of the XVIth, but of the XIXth century. Credulity itself is but a subordinate and ill‐ grounded form of human faith, and is far from suppressing, though it misdirects, the nobler faculties of the natural man. Plato and Bacon had more of it than Epicurus and Hobbes. Docility (its analogon in the spiritual world) is the humbler element in faith. It is absolutely necessary, and is sometimes undistinguishable, in mere outward seeming, from its natural counterpart. Milk is as necessary for babes as meat for the mature. The mature never cease, in the kingdom of heaven, to be, inclusively, children; it is their very excellence that they unite the best characteristics of different ages, sexes, and conditions. Yet the children of the kingdom are not fed on mortal, but on immortal, milk; and that milk is meat in a less compact preparation. As an incredulous habit is not a mark of true wisdom, so an indocile habit is incompatible with an authentic faith, which cannot act except in obedience to an authentic authority. To the rationalist the indocile habit, far from being a fault, is a necessity; for his knowledge comes from within only, not from above and from within.

Now let us turn to history and fact. Had they no spiritual discernment of Christ who died for him? Yet did not the martyrs and the age of martyrs abound in what to Protestantism seem credulities? The church of the apostles, of the fathers, of the doctors, of the schoolmen, the church that built up Christendom, invariably recognized the principle of ecclesiastical obedience, docility, submission, as a part of faith, not as inconsistent with the intuition of faith—its moral element, as the other is its intellectual. It was the cement that kept the whole fabric together, though not the amphionic power that raised the living stones. Those who branded obedience as superstition were Arius, and Aërius, and Vigilantius, and the Albigensian heretics, not the fathers, the doctors, or the martyrs of the faith. The latter knew that the faith of him who lays hold of Christ, and of her who but touches “the hem of his garment,” are in kind the same. They knew also, that, when truth confronts us and grace is offered, the spirit which is “offended” at little things is not edified by great. And how has it been ever since; how is it now with the mass of the world? How does faith come to children and to the poor, and to the busy and to the dull? What makes the Bible divine to them? What suggests the truths which they are to look for in the Bible? Authority, everywhere acting through such representatives of authority as remain in lands which decry it! If docility, obedience, a desire to believe, submission previous to insight, be not, under Christian conditions, characteristics of faith, merely because, under pagan conditions, they might be opposed to spiritual knowledge, then have most believers believed in vain; for error cannot be the foundation of truth. Discernment belongs, by universal confession, to faith, and baptism is the “sacrament of illumination”; but no proposition can be more unreasonable than that faith should begin with, or be identical with, an insight which, in a high degree of conscious development, obviously belongs to the few, and to them under very special circumstances.

Let us return to the philosophy of the “rule of faith.”

No one would deny that the will, even more than the mind, is the seat of faith; but the Protestant theory does not efficiently and practically recognize this truth. Submission is in the will; discernment in the mind. The latter belongs to the man chiefly; the former to the child equally, and the child living on in the Christian man. The whole Catholic system is based on this fact. From it, for instance, follows, by inevitable consequence, the true theory of charity in reference to dogmatic error—that, namely, of “invincible ignorance.” Protestants, and Protestants who repeat the Athanasian Creed, think this expression but an evasion. But “invincible ignorance” means involuntary ignorance of the truth, and is based on the known principle that heresy must be a sin of the will, because faith is a virtue, primarily belonging to the will, when it submits to grace. Now, granting that the internal agency of the Divine Spirit is that which clears the faculty of spiritual discernment and develops faith in the mind, still, assuredly, obedience is trained and faith is rooted in the will by the same Spirit addressing us through its outward organ, the church. “Obedience to the faith” is not a principle only, but a habit. Habits are impressed on us, not by precept only, but by providential circumstance and divine institutions, such as the civil power, parental rule, the weakness of infancy, the hindrances of knowledge, those necessities for social co‐operation which train the sympathies.

Implicit faith in the Bible only might, for such as entertained it with absolute and childlike confidence, give rise to no small degree of moral deference, and does so with many Protestants, though not without a considerable alloy of error and of superstition. But a book, though divine, is a book still. It cannot speak, except with the inquirer for an interpreter. It cannot correct misinterpretations. It will often reveal what is sought, and hide what is not desired, but is needed. It will “find” those who find in it what they brought to it. It is plastic in hot and heedless hands. It may train the mental faculties, but it will not practically exercise a habit of submission. If a country, in place of possessing laws, with magistrates to enforce and judges to expound them, possessed nothing but statutes on parchment, and a vast legal literature for their exposition, statutes and comments being alike commended to the private judgment of individuals, would it be possible that subjects could be trained up with the habit or spirit of political obedience? Every man might be educated till he resembled a village attorney; but loyalty would be extinct. The statute‐book would still assert the principle of obedience, as does the Bible in spiritual things; but the habit could not thus be formed. To bow exclusively to that which addresses us in abstract terms, and to bow when and how our judgment dictates—this alone is not in reality, though it may be in words, a discipline of humility. To obey God, as represented by man, is that at which pride revolts. The authority of the church in the household and kingdom of Christ is like that of the father in the family and the monarch in his realm. An authority thus objectively embodied has also a special power of working through the affections; and to train them to be the handmaids of faith is one of the special functions of the church. “My little children of whom I travail again,” says S. Paul to his flock. What living church can be imagined as thus addressing her children? Surely none save that one which claims apostolic authority, and does not shrink from proclaiming that faith includes obedience as well as insight. This is not an idle theory. What men in the Roman Catholic Church have entertained the most filial and affectionate reverence for their mother? Her saints—those who had the most ardent love for their Lord, the deepest insight into his Gospel, and the keenest appreciation of its spiritual freedom—the S. Bernards, Thomas à Kempises, Francis de Saleses. To retain obedience as a principle, and yet cheat it of its object, an authentic and real authority, was the “Arch Mock” of the “Reformation.”

A faith thus confirmed and steadied by authentic authority can alone permanently sustain the ardent and enthusiastic devotion of strong minds. Faith, or what seems faith, if resting exclusively on internal feeling and individual opinion, will vehemently, if but transiently, excite the light and the impulsive; but the graver mind will distrust it, even when visited by the more sanguine mood, from a painful sense that it has no power of discriminating between faith and illusion. It will be sure of its own perceptions and sensations; but it cannot contrive wholly to ignore those of its neighbor when they are opposite. It will remember that there are two causes of uncertainty, the first arising when our own premises admit of alternative conclusions, the second when, the conclusions being obvious, the premises are disputed and cannot be proved. It will remember that mathematical and moral intuitions, “though independent of evidence, are yet backed by a practically universal consent (the result of their being, in a large measure, intuitions independent of the will); and it may be disposed to say that if it happened that most people denied that the three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles, I could not indeed believe that they made three, but I might come to believe that I had wandered into a region in which impressions must always seem certain, but yet in which nothing could be authentically known.” Men cannot exchange their tastes; but then they know that tastes are subjective; whereas revealed truth must be objective. Some such misgiving will chill faith commonly in large and steady minds, and thus the whole religious life is struck dead. Enthusiasm will commonly, under such circumstances, belong only to those minds which boil over before they have taken in much heat. A church which makes its censers of paper, not metal, cannot burn incense. A religion which, in any form, includes a “peradventure,” has admitted the formula of nature and lost the “amen” of supernatural truth. It is reduced and transposed. Its raptures are but poetry, its dogma but science, its antiquity but pedantry, its forms but formality, its freedom but license, its authority but convention, its zeal but faction, its sobriety but sloth. It cannot admit of enthusiasm, as it cannot generate it in its nobler and more permanent forms, because it can neither balance nor direct it. Such a faith must install reason in the higher place. A church founded on nothing higher must serve, not rule. It will end by worshipping its bondage.

As in theology there is no possibility of separating dogma from dogma, so there is no possibility of separating the religious affections from a reverence for dogmas, if the mind be an inquiring one. What has been called “loyalty to our Lord,” and contrasted with the “dogmatic spirit,” is a sentiment which depends wholly on what we believe concerning him. But to believe him to be God and man involves an immense mass of profound doctrine which may be held implicitly by the many, but which the student must hold explicitly, or be in a condition of doubt. These subtle questions involve metaphysical speculations; and had we to settle them for ourselves, we must all of us have mastered philosophy before we had learned the lore of Christian love. But how many points are there of a different sort which yet must be certain, if our faith is to be certain—points which no man could settle for himself, and as to which no authority save one secure from error could give us rest! Such are the questions as to the mode of administering sacraments; what form of baptism is valid, and what is invalid; the canonicity of the Scriptures, which, if it depend on our individual estimate of historic evidence only, can rise no higher than the level of opinion, and therefore can never afford a basis for divine faith. No reasonable man can suppose that either directly or indirectly he can reach to intuitions on these points. He may say that they are not essential to him personally; but he cannot but suspect that they are essential to the integrity of that whole scheme of theology which, as a whole, is essential to him. A leak in the ship is not less dangerous because low down and out of sight; and the strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link. When the principle of authority ceased to be held, as a revealed doctrine (the complement of that of personal spiritual discernment), the complete circle of faith was broken, and an element of doubt entered in. The process was unperceived because gradual, the inherited faith concealing long the ravages of innovating opinion. Human faith succeeded also to divine, and simulated it. Science, imagination, enthusiasm in its ever‐varying forms, contributed their aid. Protestant churches can hardly now even conceive of an authority acting simply and humbly under divine faith. They can only imagine anathemas as proceeding from passion. But S. Paul and the early church, as well as the Roman Catholic, thought differently.

Another principle lost sight of practically on the Protestant theory of religious knowledge is that it is necessary to hold the Christian faith, not only (1st) in its fulness, and (2d) with certainty, but also (3d) in its purity. Now, whatever truths individual intuitions and studies may bring home to us (legitimately or accidentally), it is certain from experience that they will not exclude many errors, which apparently have the same sanction, and are entertained with the same confidence—nay, are so cherished that if but one be spoken against, the whole system of thought is felt to be endangered. But this confusion of truth and error introduces Babel into the heart of Jerusalem, and erects altars to false gods in the temple of the True. The soul espoused to Christ must exclude his rivals, and preserve ever the unrelaxed girdle of purity in spiritual things. Faith is not only the mother, but the virgin mother, of all perfect belief, devotion, and practice. Error, in the region of faith, is not only hostile but fatal to truth in its spiritual unity. We are assured that “the letter kills,” not merely that it is void; and we know that a little poison may corrupt much food, while a little needful medicine may taste as bitter as poison. Now, that the Bible, by reason of its very excellency, abounds in passages obvious to individual misinterpretation, no candid reader of it or of history will deny. We need, therefore, something which will preserve us from such dangers, as well as from evils of deficiency. Animals are protected from many dangers by the constant presence of overpowering instincts. The soul requires equally the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit. Experience disproves the novel and enthusiastic notion that the Spirit is thus given—viz., as inspiration—to the individual in his isolation. He requires, therefore, the aid of the Spirit, both acting in his soul as vital heat, and also shedding light on him from the church, round whose head the Pentecostal flame ever plays. Within that church which teaches “with authority, and not as the scribes,” a firmament is drawn between matters to be believed de fide and matters of opinion. Errors in theological opinion, recognized as opinion only, are not necessarily more hurtful than errors in science or politics. Let us now glance at the most ordinary form of objection.

So inveterate are traditional habits of thought that we recur to them after their fallaciousness has been ever so clearly pointed out. A wheel of thought moves round in our head, and the old notions recur. What convert, for instance, has not been plagued, while approaching to Catholic convictions, by the reiteration of that thought constantly recurring to his mind, “Is it likely that all England should have been in error for three hundred years?” Though he cannot but feel the weight of the answer, “It is at least more likely than that all Christendom should have been far more deeply steeped in worse errors and corruptions, by their nature affecting individuals as well as the body corporate, for at least twelve hundred years.” It is thus that in the question of the “rule of faith” we recur to the question, “Is it not obvious that the individual mind must lose all freedom and spontaneity, if obliged to measure its movements by an outward authority? Is not such obedience servile, not filial; carnal, not spiritual? Who could move freely, if obliged to walk always with another, though that other were his dearest friend?” Now, far from all this being obvious, it is obviously founded on a misconception of the hypothesis objected to. Why does the soul partake of a higher freedom as it advances in submission to God? How is it that, in the glorified state, perfect freedom exists without the possibility of falling? Because the Spirit that works in the redeemed and regenerate is the Spirit of God himself. Why is it no bondage that our two eyes must, if in a healthy condition, move together? Because the same law acts freely in both. Why is it that a hand that has ceased to obey the brain is called a powerless hand? Because its power proceeds from sympathy with the brain. Now, on the hypothesis of the “visible church,” just such a sympathy, such a law, and such a Spirit work equally and simultaneously in the individual and in the body. To the church the Spirit is given indefectibly, to lead her into “all truth,” even to the “end of the world.” The individual may or may not co‐operate with the Spirit; but if he does, he must needs, ex hypothesi, co‐operate with the church, and he cannot feel as a bondage what is the law of his life, though the less spiritual part of him may often feel it as a salutary restraint. Rightly to serve is, in things divine, the only possible spiritual, as distinguished from merely natural, freedom. The real question, then, respects, not either the stringency of the law or its character as external law, but its being or not being divine—a rightful authority, not a usurpation.

The place of faith is not determined by controversial or even intellectual needs only. Its functions are innumerable. It is the bond between the race and God. It must affect the whole soul and be the health of every part. It is God’s adamant diffused through every region of our being, as the rock on which the church is built extends, in its solidity, throughout and under the whole fabric. Our individual faith may be weak; but it is the nature of faith itself to be infinitely strong; and our faith must so come to us, and so stand towards us, as to admit of its own infinite increase, as well as of its permanence. It must enlighten the mind, erect the will, warm and chasten the heart, live in every affection, kneel in our humility, endure in our patience. It is an armor that covers us wholly, leaving no spot exposed to the flying shafts of an enemy, to whom one spot is as the whole body. Its shield is a mirror in which humanity beholds the whole of its being, individual and social, imaged after the stature of the renewed man. That image is no idol with brazen breast and feet of earth, but the likeness, everywhere glorious, of Him who took our whole nature, and in it was obedient to “his parents” and his country’s law, as well as to his Father’s will. Faith, in the Protestant acceptation of the word, is unable to discharge for us all these high offices. No Protestant community (and many have been tried) can point to its heroic triumphs, and say, “Behold its fruits.” They have neither converted heathen nations nor retained as much of the faith as they started with on their new career.

The theory of the “Bible interpreted by private judgment” seems, then, to me to have been novel, rash, crude, not sincerely thought out when promulgated—the only position that could affect to justify the revolt from unity, but one not itself justified by the event. My reason, to which rationalism ever appeals, would not have antecedently assured me that a book would have formed even part of a revelation. My reason tells me that if the facts of Christianity be divine, its dogmatic truths divine, and the book which records the facts and announces the truths be divine, it is not unreasonable that the interpreter of that book should be divine. Such is the theory which Rome maintains, but which no one will say that Rome did more than retain, walking thus in the footsteps of the primitive church, and of the general councils. The patriarchal church had no Bible; the Hebrew church but an incomplete canon, added to from time to time. The Christian canon was not compiled for two centuries after Christ; Providence did not allow of its diffusion by printing for fourteen. The Christian world is still, for the most past, unable to read. Most Protestants have therefore ever been compelled to be guided by an authority which, without pretending to confer the spiritual gifts which Rome confers, is exposed to many of the same objections. All religious communities say practically, “Hear me.” One only says, with the apostle, “Hear the church.” One only delivers a distinct and consistent message. One only unites parental authority with maternal solicitude, fear with love, enthusiasm with steadfastness, permanence of faith with progress of defined knowledge, the doctrines with the ethical habits of the early church, the lore of the Fathers with the propagandism of the early missionaries and the courage of the martyrs. It is the church of Him who was singled from his brethren as were Judah, Shem, Seth, and made to be unity, that in his unity all might be one, in one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

A. DE VERE.

NOVEMBER 2, 1851.

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Our readers will certainly be thankful to us for giving them the pleasure of perusing the foregoing letter, which is a document of great interest and value for several reasons. It is the work of an author whose prose is only inferior to his poetry. It is a record of the process of reasoning by which one of the many illustrious English converts was aided to make the transition from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church, given in his own language at a time when his thoughts and sentiments about the momentous change were fresh in his memory, and remarkably different from any similar production. The value of such a document, considered in the respect just mentioned, depends on its being given precisely as it was written at the time; and we have been, therefore, scrupulously careful not to change or modify a single sentence, or even a word, in the author’s manuscript.

This letter is not, however, merely a psychological and literary curiosity. Though it is the argument, not of a Catholic theologian, but of a man of letters just recently converted to the faith, it is a remarkable presentation of some parts of Catholic doctrine, more particularly of the supernatural certainty of divine faith, and the essential difference of faith from human science or opinion, even when the object of the latter is natural or revealed theology. We think it important, however, to add a short explanation of our own as a safeguard of purely natural certitude. Sound Catholic philosophy establishes the certitude of knowledge received through the senses, the understanding, and the discursive or reasoning operation of the mind upon the concepts apprehended by both those faculties. Physical, metaphysical, and moral demonstration produce, therefore, true science, not mere opinion. The rational proof of the Catholic religion rests on these three, and is sufficient to produce a certain conviction. This is not, however, identical with divine faith. The act of faith is distinct from the merely rational assent of the mind. Yet these two acts may terminate on the same object. One may be convinced, for instance, of the spirituality of the soul, by a metaphysical demonstration, without believing in the divine revelation. If he afterward believes in the revelation, he will have also a divine faith in the spirituality of the soul. One may believe by divine faith that Christ made S. Peter the head of the church, and afterwards acquire an historical certainty of the same truth. We cannot be too careful to maintain the supernatural quality of faith and the superiority of its divine light to the natural light of reason; at the same time, we must be also careful not to weaken or diminish the certainty and the scope of natural knowledge.—ED. C. W.

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The Church In F——

Build up the church! Let its turrets rise, With cross‐crowned summits, to kiss the skies; Hollow its centre, in nave and aisle, From its walls let heaven‐rapt faces smile.

Make its fair altars to glow with light, Where priest and ministering acolyte May kneel, with incense and book and bell, The praises of God and his saints to swell.

Let the deep tones of the organ roll With thunderous music, to stir the soul, While spirits soar, as on wings of fire, ’Mid the holy chants of the surpliced choir.

But when the crowd has passed away, And the lights burn low and the church is gray, And in their solitude aisle and nave Are still and stern as a martyr’s grave,

All is not over of praise and prayer: The mourner, shrinking from crowd and glare, May kneel in the shadow, and veil her eyes Before the Lord of the sacrifice.

The sacred Presence that throws its spell— An ever‐abiding miracle— O’er the empty fane and the silent shrine, Is there at all seasons—the Host divine.

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Are You My Wife? Chapter I

By The Author Of “A Salon In Paris Before The War,” “Number Thirteen,” “Pius VI.,” Etc.

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I. A Few Pages From Clide De Winton’s Note‐Book

It was not the reception I ought to have had; but that was my own fault. The old house was not in the habit of giving such a cold welcome to the eldest son who brought home his young bride. On the contrary, fireworks and bonfires, and bells ringing, and flags flying, and universal rejoicing both inside and outside the house, had been the traditionary mode of proceeding, on such occasions, since the Conquest, when it first owned a master of the name of De Winton. My earliest recollections of a distinct kind are of my father bringing home my step‐mother to the old place, and of my peeping out from my nursery‐window, and vaguely connecting the strange lady, who came in the midst of us heralded by such noise and splendor, with the story of the Queen of Sheba that my nurse read to me very often on Sundays out of a pictured story‐book. This infantine delusion had long vanished before I quite lost the sense of childish bewilderment that accompanied the occasion. I was an odd child, I suppose; old‐fashioned, but not at all precocious; and the dreamy impressions of childhood held their grasp on me longer than usual, probably from my having no children to play with and keep me from dwelling so long and so exclusively on the fancies of my own hazy little mind. I can recall vividly even now how I hated all the noise and fuss that followed the wedding; how I shrank from being dressed in my scarlet cashmere frock, and being sent for to the drawing‐room, and introduced to strangers, by my stiff, stately step‐mother, as “my son, Master Clide de Winton.” There seemed no end to the strangers that came trooping in to shake hands with my father and to be introduced to his wife. And then the dinners that were given, and the noise of music afterwards, that used to wake me up in the nursery, and make me dream such noisy, confused dreams when I fell asleep again! How I detested it all! And when I expressed something of this to my nurse, and wondered why the house, that used to be so quiet when we had it to ourselves, had become so full of noise and strange people from the moment my new mamma came home, she found no better comfort than to tell me that that was always the way after a wedding, and that when I was grown up and married myself I should make just as much fuss, and a great deal more, because I should be younger, and my wife too. It may sound absurd, like so many other reminiscences of childhood that were once bitterly real to all of us; but this horoscopic view of life poisoned many an hour of those nursery‐days to me. The fact that the dreaded ordeal was yet distant gave me no consolation. I leaped over the gulf that separated six years old from five‐and‐twenty, and saw myself miserable in the midst of a pandemonium of noise, and strange people, and dinners, and pianoforte‐ playing. I was no doubt a morbid little boy, and no doubt my nurse discovered this, and with the unconscious cruelty of her race took pleasure in playing upon my idle terrors. I know she used to terrify me by graphic descriptions of the wedding ceremonial from first to last; and the more I showed that I was terrified, the more eloquent and inventive—as I afterwards discovered—she grew. She had been three times through the performance herself, and thus was peculiarly qualified to speak of it. I remember once when she told me I would have to stand up before all the company at a long table and make a speech. I could bear it no longer, and I began to cry. This did not soften her; she only laughed at me for a silly little goose, and assured me that, when the time came, I would enjoy it all as much as I now enjoyed flying my kite and other juvenile amusements. I ran out of the nursery and away up to a garret where I sometimes hid myself when I expected to be sent for to the drawing‐room. and flung myself on the floor, and literally bellowed with misery. I suppose I cried myself to sleep, for when 1 awoke I was still in the same place, tired and cold. I considered quietly what I might possibly do to avert the catastrophe that so appalled me in the distance. I could think only of one thing: that was to run away before the wedding‐day arrived. I had heard stories about boys running away from school when they were very naughty or very unhappy; why should they not run away from home, if driven to extremities? This resolution soothed me. I crept down from my solitude a happier child than I had entered it.

If this account of myself sounds unnatural, I can only answer that it is true. If my step‐mother had been a loving, motherly woman, she would probably have found out something of these sufferings, and have sought to modify them by moulding my character; but she was not a woman to win a child’s confidence, even if she had tried; and she did not try to win mine. She found me shy, reserved, ungracious, and she left me so. She did her duty by me as far as she knew how. I was conveyed every day regularly from the nursery to the dining‐room after dinner. I grew resigned to the daily punishment after a time, and in reply to the usual questions, “Had I been a good boy?” and “Would I like an apple?” I learned to answer boldly that I had and that I would, and to stand straight on both legs and without wriggling. My step‐mother patted me on the cheek, and observed to my father that I was improving in my manners. She seldom went further than this in motherly caresses for the first two years after her marriage. Then my father died, and I can remember that she kissed me often, and was altogether more gentle in her manner towards me, and that I felt it, and liked the change, though I could in no way account for it. I was still miserably shy, and I retained the same intense dread of notoriety and fuss of every description. Perhaps it was this that partly decided her on sending me to Eton when I was barely old enough to be in the school‐room. Other motives may have added weight to this one, but I shall say nothing of that now. If her object was to cure me of the painful timidity which still beset me, it was perhaps a justification for sending the fatherless and motherless boy away from the solitude and isolation of a gloomy home into the stir and life of a public school, where shyness, like so many other foolish weaknesses, is quickly rubbed off by contact with those intolerant pedagogues—companions of one’s own age and rank. I was happy enough at Eton, in spite of the dreaded future that still loomed in the distance. I had forgotten the spectre of a possible wedding‐breakfast and its accompanying horrors. I knew now that it was in my own hands to suffer or to avoid them. Meantime, my natural timidity still asserted itself in a way that was much deplored by my step‐mother. I was an intelligent boy, and might have distinguished myself over my fellows, had I chosen; but the same morbid folly that had embittered my childhood now paralyzed my ambition, and prevented me trying for prizes in any department of study. Public speaking comes into play very much with candidates for honors at school, and the finest gold medal that was ever awarded for a Greek and Latin essay would not have tempted me, if I foresaw the necessity of reading the essay aloud before that redoubtable array of critics, my assembled masters and companions. I passed for an oddity, and so I was. My step‐mother sighed over it in her calm, correct way; regretted I had not the honorable ambition to make a name for myself and conquer a position amongst my fellow‐men, and so on. To this I modestly replied that I was satisfied with the name my fathers had transmitted to me, and which I hoped to carry honorably at least through life, if not proudly. Pride of birth was one of the earliest lessons she had endeavored to instil into my mind, and in this respect I did not prove as stubborn as in others. I remember saying, in reply to some remarks of hers as to the advisability of my distinguishing myself in some public career, “When a man has the good luck to be born a De Winton he is distinguished enough”; and I remember the smile of approval that accompanied her demure shake of the head.

I left Eton in course of time, and went to the university. The change from the now familiar world of school was accomplished with immense reluctance, and perhaps would never have been accomplished at all without the combined influence of my step‐mother, my uncle, Admiral de Winton, and Sir Simon Harness, who was one of my guardians and my father’s oldest friend. I soon grew to like my new life, and to make friends with a few of my new companions. I was still too shy to form friendships easily, or to be what is called popular. Everything however, went smoothly with me till I was a little over twenty, and then a circumstance occurred which woke up the old terrors, and showed too plainly that much of the puerile folly of childhood clung to me still. I am almost ashamed to write it at this lapse of time; but I shall have more grievous follies to confess by‐and‐by, so there is no use passing over this one. It arose out of a proposal to give a farewell dinner to a fellow who was one of our set and extremely popular. I chimed in heartily with the scheme the moment it was broached, but when one of my chums, out of pure mischief as I afterwards found out, suggested that we should one of us make a farewell speech, expressing the regret and so forth of the rest, and that I should be the speaker, I got savage, and was for not appearing at all at the dinner, unless they gave me a solemn promise that I should not be asked to open my lips, even to propose a toast. We were near quarrelling over it; the others were so amused at my anger and fright that they kept up the joke, and bullied me until I was in a downright passion. When it was over, and I had joined in the laugh against myself, my tormentor said, quite hap‐hazard, and not with the least idea of rousing me again:

“I say, old boy, how will it be when you come of age? You’ll be giving a grand blow‐out at the Moat, of course, and we’ll all drink to your health with three times three; but you will have to return thanks, you know, and address the tenantry, and that sort of thing. It will be awful fun to see you stammering and haw‐hawing, and assuring us that the affecting occasion is really—aw—too much for you—aw—and so forth. When is it to be? About this time twelve‐month, eh?”

I don’t know what I said to him. I think I felt he was too great a brute to be spoken to, except in a language which it would not do for a De Winton to use. But could this be true? Was I making a fool’s paradise to myself, while every day hurried me on to this dismal catastrophe?

I feigned a sudden call home on family business that required my presence, and started by the six A.M. train next morning for the Moat.

My step‐mother was surprised to meet me on coming down to breakfast—surprised, not startled. She was not a woman to be startled.

“Madam,” I said, after greeting her ceremoniously, according to my step‐ filial habit, “have you any plan in view respecting the event of my majority?”

“You speak in enigmas, my dear Clide. Pray explain yourself,” replied Mrs. de Winton; and went on washing her hands in that deliberate way of hers that always exasperated me. Perhaps it was this trick of perpetually washing her hands that made me think her so uncommonly like the picture of Lady Macbeth hanging over the library mantel‐piece.

“To be explicit, then,” I replied, “do you intend making a Coming of Age of it? Do you purpose setting the tenantry into fits making a fuss over me? In a word do you purpose calling up the seven devils commonly catted rejoicings and loyal demonstrations? Do you mean to do these things, madam?”

Whether she thought I had gone suddenly mad, or that, notwithstanding the early hour, I had been indulging too freely in convivial libations, I could not tell; but she decidedly thought I was laboring under some sort of cerebral inflammation. Suspending abruptly the ablutionary movement, she joined her hands coldly, and looking at me with a severe countenance, not devoid altogether of pity, “Clide, you surprise me,” she said. “I hoped that you had sufficient respect for yourself and for your ancestors to understand....”

“Madam,” I broke in, trembling with excitement, “I respect you and I respect my ancestors; but as to making a fool of myself for the gratification of their ante‐diluvian crotchets, I won’t do it. No; if every De Winton from the Flood down were to stalk out of his coffin and bully me, I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” demanded my step‐mother, looking now rather alarmed.

“I won’t have those seven devils let loose over the place,” I said defiantly; “and unless you pledge me your word of honor that there will not be anything of the sort, as sure as I’m a living De Winton I’ll bolt from the country, and never set foot in it again!”

“You misapprehend our relative positions altogether, Clide,” resumed Mrs. de Winton. “When the time of your majority has arrived, you will, by the very fact of its advent, be master to deal with it as you choose, quite independent of my wishes. I should hope, however, that by that time you will have conceived a better notion of your duty to society in your own person, and to the traditions of the illustrious race from whom it is your privilege to descend, than you seem to possess at present. It has been from time immemorial the custom in the family to celebrate with pomp and festive gatherings the majority of the heir. I am at a loss to understand why this venerable custom should inspire you with such irrational fury; why you should anticipate the welcome that awaits every De Winton on his coming of age otherwise than with a sense of grateful and honorable pride.”

I had calmed down when I discovered that I was my own master in the matter. Otherwise I should not have listened so patiently to the end of her tirade. When it was over, I began to feel rather ashamed of myself. I had been making a storm in a butter‐boat.

“If I have forgotten in the least degree the deference I owe you, madam,” I observed, twisting my wide‐awake to give myself what the French call a countenance, “I apologize for it.”

“I trust you will learn to control yourself, in future, for your own sake,” observed Mrs. de Winton, washing her hands again. “Be assured of one thing: I shall take no steps towards the celebration of the event, which is looked forward to by the tenantry with very different feelings from yours, without having your consent. I would not expose them or you to such an exhibition as that I have just witnessed. But you have twelve months to wait, and to improve, I hope, before your coming of age makes it necessary to remind you what that circumstance involves.”

“If it involves a fuss, madam,” I said emphatically, and waxing wroth again, “once more, I won’t have it. I’d rather never come of age!” And having delivered myself of this decided opinion, I wished her good‐ morning.

I came of age in due time, and fearing that, in spite of my commands to the contrary, the tenantry might get up some insane rejoicings and caterwaulings, I feigned illness and waited in London till the anniversary was a week old.

That Rubicon was no sooner safely passed than the other, the fearful one that had been the nightmare of my childhood, threatened to overtake me. I had so constantly announced at school my determination never to marry that my views on that subject were known to all who knew me, and the reputation of a woman‐hater preceded me amongst my own people. Still, the Moat being a fine old place, with a clear rent‐roll of fifteen thousand pounds a year, and I being an only son and in all other respects what dowagers call an “eligible young man,” the female mind of ——shire resented such a resolve on my part as premature and absurd, and set to work diligently to bring me to a better way of thinking. I pass over the history of that merciless campaign of match‐making mothers and enterprising daughters. The very thought of it now is painful to me. Enough that I came out of it unscathed. After two years of comparative quiet—for I persistently refused to be lured to the sirens’ caves in the neighborhood, and forced them to beard the lion in his den, which gave me no inconsiderable vantage‐ground over the enemy—the fire slackened, and I was left in peace.

My step‐mother did not attempt to coerce me; on the contrary, she commiserated my position, and more than once expressed her disapproval of the way in which, as she said, I was hunted down by all the marriageable womanhood of the county. She insisted on giving one ball when I came home, to introduce me to her own and my father’s friends and such members of the family as I only knew by name or very slightly; but after that she subsided, and my life was as free from fuss as any life in this fussy world could be.

“Clide,” observed Mrs. de Winton one morning, as we sipped our tea over the breakfast‐table, “do you think it quite impossible you should ever marry?”

“Well,” I said reflectively, “as far as a man can answer for himself, I should say quite impossible.”

“But how far is that?” observed my step‐mother with a sceptical smile. “You have not yet been put to the test. You have not yet come across the woman who could persuade you that marriage is the Elysium of man here below. Supposing—I merely put it in the light of a remote supposition—that you should come across her some day...?”

“I should probably accept my fate as many a wiser man has done before me, and capitulate on reasonable terms—namely, that we should be executed at six o’clock in the morning, no wedding‐dress, no bridemaids, no speechifying—no fuss, in fact, and nobody present but a beggar‐woman and a policeman. Then, when we come home, no entertaining, giving and taking dinners, and that sort of fuss that comes like the farce after the tragedy. If I ever meet with a pretty girl willing to take me and the Moat on these conditions, then I will not answer for the consequences.”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

One year after this conversation with my step‐mother I met that pretty girl; the result was what I tacitly foretold it would be. I married her. It happened in this way: I was seized with a desire to travel, and, instead of beginning with the stereotyped grand tour, I determined to go first to America. I had a hunger for grand, wild scenery. The vast primeval forests of the far West, the awful grandeur of Niagara, drew me powerfully; so off I set, accompanied by a confidential servant named Stanton. Shyness went for something in the choice. I felt attracted towards the new young continent as by a sense of homelikeness and kindred. I was not disappointed. Everything I saw there was at once novel and familiar. I could converse with the people in my own language, and was thus spared the mortification of stuttering out my inquiries in dubious French or German, or trumpeting them through an interpreter, as must have been the case on the grand tour.

Niagara appalled and fascinated me. Day after day I stood contemplating the torrents of foam that surged up to meet the great sheet of water that flung itself in a majestic arch of hard green crystal down into the boiling, creamy gulf. I gazed and gazed till sight was dim and sense was lost in a torpor of exquisite delight—neither trance nor vision, but a state that hovered between both. The thunder of the rushing waters, the sparkling of the prism that danced and flashed and faded with the changing lights, reflecting every tint in the sunset, until the cataract blazed before my dazzled eyes like a thousand rainbows melted into one, then fainted and died, leaving a uniform sheen of emerald in its place—all this was like some magnificent apotheosis that kept me spell‐bound, fascinated, entranced. I had come intending to remain three days; but a week slipped away and found me still at Niagara. At last I determined to break the spell. I must tear myself from the spectacle before it overmastered my reason; for there were moments when, after standing for hours looking down into the seething abyss of foam, I felt as if an invisible chord were drawing me on and on, nearer and nearer, luring me in a dreamy way towards the water. Then I would rouse myself and rush away; but it would not do to go on playing with a danger that was sweet and potent as a magician’s spell. I came out one morning to take my last look. It was just after sunrise. The falls had never looked so beautiful, the booming of the water had never sounded so solemn, the light had never evolved such a fairy tracery of jewelled glory on the silvery vapor and the green crystal. The effect was overpowering. For one moment it seemed to me that I heard the voice of Jehovah speaking in the roar of many waters; that I stood within the sanctuary, separated by an impenetrable and mysterious wall of thunder from the outer, visible world. A spontaneous and almost unconscious impulse made me uncover myself and stand bareheaded, as in the presence of the Unseen and Omnipresent. How long I stood thus I cannot say; I know that I was roused from my revery by a sound that struck in upon my dreamy deafness with strange and thrilling effect. It was the singing of a human voice; the words were inarticulate, but I knew the music well. It was a wild, weird Highland melody; the rhythm was barely distinguishable, as the notes rose and fell through the roar and boom of the waterfall, sounding nevertheless preternaturally clear and sweet, like the wail of a spirit or some sweet sea‐bird’s cry. What was it? Some Undine risen from the spray, and pouring out her lament to the wave? I dared not look round, so fearful was I to banish the songster. When the voice ceased, I turned my head and looked. Was I dreaming, or was it indeed a spirit that I beheld? I doubted at first. But as I kept my eyes steadily fixed on the figure, it moved towards me, and I knew that it was neither sprite nor shadow, but a woman, a young girl rather—for she seemed barely emerged from childhood to maidenhood—more beautiful than any picture I had ever seen or that my imagination had ever painted. She was small, below the middle height. Her hair fell in profuse ringlets or coils—it seemed an accidental arrangement—down her back; it was black and glossy as jet. Her eyes were lustrous and dark as a gazelle’s; her complexion almost colorless. She was dressed in dark green, a loose, unconventional sort of garment that draped her something after the fashion of a Roman stola; her straw hat had either fallen off or she had taken it off, and held it dangling from her arm; her hands were clasped, and her eyes fixed on the fall, as it plunged from the rocky ledge down, down into the eternity of waters.

She had come within a few yards of me before she seemed conscious of my presence—of anything but the majestic spectacle that was riveting her whole soul through her eyes. She walked on like a somnambulist. A sudden dread seized me. Was she asleep, or was she experiencing in its uttermost degree the terrible attraction that I had felt more than once, and walking on unconsciously to death? I advanced a few steps, so as to stand in her path as she drew near. The effect was instantaneous. She started as if some one had struck her. I thought she would have fallen, and rushed to prevent it by stretching out my arm. The movement apparently recalled her to the sense of where she was. With a slight acknowledgment of my courtesy, she turned quickly away, and hurried on out of sight. I followed her, and it was with an unreasonable thrill of delight that I saw her enter the hotel where I was staying. Who was this siren, or how did one so young and so beautiful come to be alone in this lonely place? Before the day was over I met her again. Chance brought us together once more in the same spot. This time she was not alone. An elderly man, whom she addressed as uncle, accompanied her. He was not prepossessing in his appearance, and I doubt whether I should have overcome my natural shyness so far as to address him, if he had not himself broken the ice by asking me if I had ventured to walk under the fall, and whether the experience was worth the risk. I assured him that it amply compensated for any imaginary danger that might exist, and volunteered to accompany him if he decided on trying it. This brought us into communication, if not into sympathy. I did not like him, consequently he did not like me. We both felt this instinctively, no doubt; there was an opposing element of some sort between us that made friendship impossible, though it did not prevent that kind of superficial intimacy which is almost inevitable amongst people of the same country who find themselves thrown close together under the same roof in a foreign land. He was Scotch, as I knew at once by his name, Prendergast, and by his accent. He was a thin, medium‐sized man, and could not have been more than forty, though his silver hair gave him a prematurely old look, which was perhaps increased by a settled expression of ill‐temper about the mouth, arising, so his niece affectionately alleged, from chronic tooth‐ache. He seemed indeed a martyr to that trying complaint, and wore his head tied up in a woollen comforter, which must have been miserably uncomfortable; for the days were hot and the nights as balmy as June. I fancied that his beautiful niece disliked him, or at least feared him considerably more than she loved him. I noticed how the merry, bright little creature started at the sound of his voice when he called to her sharply, and how she quailed when his cold, hard eye lighted on her in the midst of one of her childish peals of laughter, checking it as by a cold bath. It struck me even more than once that she cast a glance towards me, as if claiming my protection—against whom or what I could not imagine; but I was resolved to ascertain, and, if my assistance or sympathy could avail her, to let her have them at any cost. We happened to be alone on the third day after our first meeting. Isabel—so I heard Mr. Prendergast call her—was apparently as pleased at the opportunity as I was. She talked to me with the frank, artless abandon of a child; and, without in the least intending it, she told me enough of her antecedents and position to satisfy me that I was right in supposing her not very happy with her uncle. She told me he was her guardian, and had brought her up since she was quite a child, her parents having died when she was five years old. Her mother was his sister; her father’s name was Cameron. He held a large tract of land in Canada, and had a great deal of money—“heaps of money,” was her childish estimate of it—in banks and things in England; and she, being the only child, was heiress to all this wealth. Mr. Prendergast had had the management of it up to the present, and continued to treat her as an infant, though she was now of age, she said. He had by nature a tyrannical temper, and it was increased and rendered irritable and fierce by years of tooth‐ache. He had been away in hot climates to seek relief for his exasperated nerves, and it was only on her account that he had returned to England of late. He had come out to America to look after her property, and also for the benefit of her health, which had required change and a long sea‐voyage. I felt grateful to him for this at least, as the sacrifice had evidently been crowned with success. Miss Cameron looked the very picture of health, and she said the voyage had made her stronger than she had ever been in her life. It had, however, proved very disastrous to Mr. Prendergast, whose teeth had not given him a day’s rest since they left England; “and of course this makes him very cross,” his niece observed deprecatingly, with a little sigh.

After this conversation we became perfectly at ease with each other, and tacitly watched for opportunities of renewing it. I need not say that I relinquished my plan of leaving the falls, which day after day grew more beautiful, more irresistibly attractive, to me. A week passed in a dreamy state of blissfulness, and then a crisis came. Mr. Prendergast, who had been howling all night in the room next to me with the tooth‐ache, set off after breakfast, in spite of his swelled face, with a party that were being taken to walk under the arch of the fall. He wound a quarter of a mile of Shetland shawls round his head, and, thus fortified, donned the leathern costume of the occasion, and down he went. Everything went well enough until he was emerging from the tremendous roar that had covered him in like a curtain, and was setting his foot on dry land above, when he was seized with a rush of blood to the head, and fell insensible to the ground. He was carried to his room, and lay there dangerously ill for several days. Isabel was not allowed to see him. The doctor enjoined absolute quiet as of the first necessity; no one entered the sick‐room but the medical man and a nurse whom he sent for to the nearest town. This catastrophe naturally threw Miss Cameron and me a good deal together. We wandered out to admire the falls by sunrise; we were to be seen there again at sunset, when the clouds rolled in golden cascades over the western sky, and made a spectacle of rival glory above and beyond the everlasting glory of Niagara. What could come of all this but what came of it? We loved each other, and we confessed it. It was a wild act on my part. I knew nothing of Isabel’s family and antecedents but what she had accidentally told me; but to a man in love, first love, what more was wanted? She bore a name that was ancient as my own. As to her fortune, I cared nothing for that. She told me it was already legally in her own power; that she was twenty‐one. I believed this, since she said it, but it required a strong effort of faith to credit that beaming young face with more than seventeen years in this cold world. Those were blissful days while we walked arm‐in‐arm through the yellowing forest, and alongside the river beyond the falls, cooing our young loves to one another, as foolish and as tender as any two Babes in the Wood. But Mr. Prendergast was getting well now, and called Isabel constantly to his side, and sternly catechised her as to what she did when she left him. He was to be down‐ stairs to‐morrow, and they were to leave Niagara in a few days, and sail for England by the next boat that left Quebec. She whispered this to me with white lips one morning, and then rushed up‐stairs to answer the call of the dragon, who was shouting to her from his open window. I waited till she came down again, and then drew her out into a favorite spot of ours at a little distance from the house.

“Isabel,” I said, “does your uncle know that we love each other?”

“Oh! no, no; he would kill me if he knew it,” she replied, speaking in a whisper, and looking up at me with an expression of terror and trust that nerved me to anything.

“What, then, are we to do? Shall I speak to him at once?” I asked.

“There is no use speaking to him; he will never let me marry you, Clide. Forgive me for making you unhappy,” she said, clasping her hands on my arm, while the big tears ran down her face. “I never ought to have let you care for me. I never ought to have let myself love you, but I could not help it; I could not help it.”

Her head fell on my shoulder, and the sobs shook the frail little figure that leaned against me with the artless confidence of a child.

“You shall marry me, darling,” I cried; “no uncle that ever lived shall separate us. I swear it! We shall be married before we leave this. Trust to me to do everything; we will arrange it all before that old Turk knows or suspects anything. Promise only to trust to me entirely and to do as I ask you. Promise me, Isabel.”

She promised, placing her hand confidingly in mine.

Next morning, soon after sunrise, while Mr. Prendergast was still asleep, we two stole out to the little church where a few stray worshippers sang their hymns to the music of the waterfall, and were married by the old clergyman of the place. My man, Stanton, and the sexton were the only witnesses. It was indeed a wedding after my own heart, all done as quietly as if marrying a wife were as much an every‐day accident in life as taking a walk before breakfast. Isabel was, if possible, more delighted with the mode of proceeding than I was. I forget how she came to make the avowal, but I know it was quite spontaneous, that she hated the fuss and paraphernalia of a wedding in England as she hated a thunder‐storm; and that if she had been given her choice, she would infinitely have preferred this quiet little marriage of ours to the most magnificent display that could have been got up for her in Scotland. We were as happy as two children as we walked home together. But then came the business of telling Mr. Prendergast. Isabel declared she would rather die than enter his presence now alone; he would read her rebellious act on her face, and he would kill her. He was capable of anything when he was roused. I was not going to risk my treasure within his reach. I sat down and wrote a respectful letter, informing him that I had become the husband of his niece, and requesting his forgiveness for what might seem a violation of good faith, but which his own conscience would, I felt sure, find an excuse for in my behalf. I stated my fortune and position more accurately than I had been able to do to Isabel, who put her hand to my mouth when I attempted to speak of settlements and so forth, saying she wanted to hear nothing about my money. I now begged of Mr. Prendergast to let me know what his wishes were concerning his niece’s fortune, and pledged myself beforehand to conform to them, and prove by my conduct in this respect that money was the last consideration that had actuated me in marrying an heiress. In answer to this I received a curt line informing me that I had behaved like a scoundrel, and that, as a gentleman, Mr. Prendergast declined to meet me, and that I had better take myself off with my wife before chance threw me in his way again. Isabel was overjoyed at this unexpected issue. I was stung by the man’s insolence and his unjust accusations, but, on the whole, it was the easiest way of getting rid of him and securing myself and Isabel from his brutal temper and ungovernable violence.

We left Niagara that day. I wrote to my step‐mother, acquainting her that I was a married man, and announcing the day she might expect to see us at the Moat. I wrote for places in the next steamer, and we were fortunate enough to find two vacant ones at nearly the last moment in a splendid vessel that sailed from New York. It had occurred to me that before leaving America it would have been prudent and rational to make some inquiries concerning the landed property which my wife held in Canada; but as she did not propose this, I feared it might strike her unfavorably if I did, and suggest that her uncle’s insulting insinuations were not as unfounded as I wished her to believe. I therefore abandoned the idea, and we left the United States without my asking a single question on the subject.

The voyage homeward was delightful. Isabel formed plans for the future that sounded like songs from Arcadia, and drew a picture of our life at the Moat that looked like a vision of the Elysian fields. We stopped a week in London to extemporize a trousseau and purchase some trinkets, and then I took my wife to her Welsh home. My step‐mother gave her a gracious, if not a hearty, welcome. It was a very quiet home‐coming; nothing, indeed, could have been tamer. There were no tenantry to meet us, no rejoicings either in the village or at the house. I thought this strange, though it was strictly in accordance with the desires I had always expressed on the subject to my step‐mother. Isabel, however, was entirely satisfied, and confessed to me that she had been in a nervous flutter all the way home, fearing to find some horror in the shape of a deputation from the tenants or something awaiting us at our journey’s end.

A few days after our arrival, when I came down to breakfast alone, my step‐mother said to me, “Clide, it is time that you thought a little of business now. I think you told me that your wife’s fortune is in her own right; this is very desirable to begin with, but of course it cannot remain so. Your rights as a husband must be properly protected.”

“My wife’s affection and my confidence in her are the only security I require on that, madam,” I replied stiffly.

“The sentiment does honor to you both,” observed Mrs. de Winton, with an undertone of sarcasm that did not escape me; “but you do not expect Admiral de Winton or Sir Simon Harness to be satisfied with such a sentimental guarantee.”

“I understand you, and I respect your motives,” was my cold rejoinder; “but as I am not responsible to any one but myself for the good or bad management of myself and my property, I do not recognize any one’s right, trustee or relation, to interfere with me, and still less to interfere with my wife.”

“Who talks of interfering with your wife? You tell me she is an heiress with forty thousand pounds in the Funds and an estate in Canada. Your father’s widow and your late guardian and trustee have certainly a right to ask the whereabouts of the money and the land. Admitting that your wife be as devoted and as disinterested as you believe, is she entirely her own mistress? This tyrannical old uncle who has kept her in such bondage—how far did he or does he hold control over her fortune? For her sake as much as for your own you should put yourself in possession of these facts.”

This view of the case had not occurred to me. I saw the justice of it, and frankly said so.

“Isabel will put no obstacle in the way of a just and prudent arrangement; I am quite sure of that,” I said emphatically. “My only fear is that she should see in this horrid investigation a desire on my part to count my prize, and perhaps suspect me of having had a base, ulterior motive in marrying her; and rather than wrong myself or wound her by such a suspicion, I would sooner never see a penny of her money or an acre of her land.”

“And does your wife share these sentiments? Is she quite as indifferent about the matter as you are?” inquired my step‐mother.

“Every bit!” I answered vehemently.

“Did she tell you so?”

“Do you suppose I would ask her?”

“Ridiculous boy!” sneered my step‐mother. “But taking for granted that just at present she does share your juvenile folly and poetical want of common sense, how long will it last, do you think? A bride in her honeymoon is a very different being from a wife of a few years’ standing. She knows nothing of the value of money now; but when she finds herself the mother of a family, with daughters growing up to be married and portioned, she will awake to the value of it in a way that will astonish you. And when a few years hence she asks you for an account of her own splendid fortune, what answer will you make to her? You were too delicate to hurt her feelings by any inquiries about so insignificant a matter, so you left it to her uncle to see to it!”

“I said I was prepared to do what was necessary to protect her interests,” I replied. “I will speak to her on the subject this afternoon. What am I to do next?”

“Write to Sir Simon Harness, and beg him to fix a day to come down here; and when he has done so, you will write to the family lawyer, and request him to be here to meet him. Of course you will write to Admiral de Winton, as your father’s executor and your nearest relative now.”

“What a confounded fuss it will be!” I exclaimed impatiently, and, kicking over a footstool, I started up and began to walk up and down the room. “I wish I had married a milkmaid!”

“Don’t talk like a fool, Clide!” said my step‐mother. “I do believe your pretended delicacy and fear of hurting Isabel’s feelings are nothing but a cloak to cover your dread of a fuss!”

I was going to protest, but the door opened, and Isabel walked in.

She looked so beautiful in her pink cashmere drapery, breaking into the brown old wainscoted room like a sunbeam, that even my step‐mother was surprised into an involuntary tribute of admiration; and when my wife, coming up to her in that pretty, kitten‐like way that was so bewitching, stooped down to be kissed, my step‐mother responded quite warmly, and actually put up her hand to caress the sunny face after she had kissed it.

I felt so proud of my lovely Isabel, and so grateful to my step‐mother for this unfeigned recognition of her loveliness, that I was seized with a strong impulse to embrace them both on the spot. I restrained it, however, and we sat down to breakfast; my wife, as mistress of the house, presiding over the cups and saucers.

“Clide,” began my step‐mother (she prefaced every remark by my Christian name), as soon as Isabel had provided us respectively with tea and coffee, “what are we going to do to make Mrs. de Winton welcome amongst us? Now, don’t answer me with your usual lazy outcry about fuss. My dear,” she said, turning to Isabel, “you will have a great deal to do in the way of reforming him; and if you succeed, it will be little short of a miracle.”

“Isabel will find out my vices soon enough, without your enlightening her beforehand,” I protested. “It’s not fair to take away a man’s character without giving him a chance of redeeming it.”

“Then begin and redeem it in time,” said my step‐mother. “Here is a good opportunity. Have some people down from London to put the house in order, and then give a series of proper entertainments to introduce your wife to her new family and friends.”

“Oh! please ...” cried Isabel, pursing up her rosebud of a mouth, and joining her hands with a delicious little pantomime of fright.

“What! are you as silly as himself? Or has he spoilt you already?”

“I was ready spoilt for him, dear Mrs. de Winton. I hate being introduced; and as to refurnishing anything, I wouldn’t have it for the world. I adore old furniture!” declared Isabel.

“Old furniture is one thing, and shabby furniture is another,” observed my step‐mother, resuming the chronic rigidity of manner which Isabel’s beauty and sweetness had thawed for a moment. “If Clide had done me the honor of confiding his intentions to me in time, I certainly would have taken upon myself to make the house decently clean to receive you. I had for some time past urged on him the necessity of getting new carpets and curtains; it was not surprising he shrank from the annoyance of a few days’ hammering merely to make it habitable for me, but I fancied for his wife he might have undergone as much.”

“I shall be delighted to hear the hammers going for a month, if Isabel likes it,” I replied evasively.

“But I don’t like it; I hate it, Clide!” exclaimed my wife passionately.

“Well, then, you sha’n’t have it, my darling,” I said. My step‐mother sat back in her chair and washed her hands. She said nothing, but this was sufficiently suggestive.

“Have you announced your marriage to Sir Simon Harness?” she resumed after a pause.

“Not yet. I mean to write to him to‐day.”

“Who is Sir Simon Harness?” inquired Isabel.

“He was my father’s particular friend and the trustee during my minority,” I explained.

“You had better ask him to come down here for a few days to make your wife’s acquaintance,” suggested Mrs. de Winton.

“No, he sha’n’t!” broke in the angel in pink. “I don’t want to make his acquaintance. He’s a mean, disagreeable old man. Trustees always are. I hate them!”

I thought this charmingly innocent and childlike, though, it must be confessed, she put more vehemence into her manner than the case warranted; but remembering the type of trustee on which she had built her opinion of the class, I could not resent her prejudice against my old friends. My step‐mother took a less indulgent view of the sortie. Seeing me cast a smile of tender indulgence on the culprit, she looked at me very sternly.

“Do you mean to requite years of faithful kindness and interest in your concerns by such a gross breach of respect and common courtesy as not to invite Sir Simon Harness to your house on such an occasion as this?” she demanded.

“Isabel is mistress of her own house. I cannot insist upon her receiving any one against her will,” I replied; “but when I have explained to her what kind of man Sir Simon is, I think she will consent to make his acquaintance.”

Isabel peeped at me from behind the urn, and made a face indicative of anything but consent.

Luckily, my step‐mother did not see the little by‐play, and, taking her silence for acquiescence, she said, addressing me:

“And Admiral de Winton—of course you mean to ask him down?”

“Is that another trustee?” asked Isabel.

“Not exactly, though he often acted with Sir Simon in my affairs, being next of kin,” I said. “He was my father’s executor.”

“Executor! Why, that’s worse than a trustee! I won’t have him come here, Clide! You’re going to fill the house with horrid old men who will worry me to death. I know they will. But I won’t submit to it!”

She pushed away her cup with a sudden gesture that made the china rattle, and, flushing up scarlet, walked away from the table, and flung herself into a chair near the fire. If she had flung the tea‐pot at my head, I could not have been more taken aback. It was impossible to deny that the burst of temper was very becoming to her complexion, but ... I was conscious of a very distinct sense of disappointment. Yes, disappointment; there was no other word for it. As to my step‐mother, she looked from me to my wife, and from my wife to me. Isabel, meantime, sat trembling and excited, her eyes sparkling, her face glowing like an angry rose.

“Dearest....” I began, “really....”

“Oh! don’t,” she shrieked, and burst into a torrent of tears.

Mrs. de Winton, prompted either by delicacy or by disgust, got up and left the room, leaving me to conjure as best I could the storm that had suddenly broken out in my conjugal paradise. I was utterly at a loss to understand Isabel. She said she was inconsolable at having vexed me, but to all my entreaties and arguments would answer nothing except that she was frightened at strangers, and above all at horrid old men; and that if I loved her, I was not to introduce her to anybody, but to let us live all our lives alone in the dear old Moat. She wanted no society but mine, and surely, if I loved her, I ought not to want any but hers! This was irresistible logic to my heart; but my reason, being less infatuated, perversely refused to abide by it. There was no use at this crisis in broaching prudential arrangements as an excuse for inviting down my two friends. Such an insinuation would only have added fuel to the fire. Yet the new aspect in which my heiress‐wife was revealing herself made it clear that some such measures as my step‐mother had suggested were absolutely necessary to protect Isabel against her own folly and deplorable ignorance of life.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The storm of sobs and tears subsided by degrees. Isabel declared she was ready to make any sacrifice of her own feelings to mine; that if I liked to invite all the trustees in Lincoln’s Inn and Chancery Lane down to the Moat, she would do her best to receive them properly, so that I should not be ashamed of my wife; but of course there was an end to her happiness. Arcadia was gone. All her dreams of romantic bliss had vanished into thin air. She was after all to be nothing more than a humdrum wife with a house to look after and guests to entertain.

“O Clide, Clide! is this what you promised me?” she cried, her voice still broken with sobs. “Is this my dream? or was it only a dream, nothing but the baseless fabric of a vision?”

She clasped her hands, and, throwing back her head, fixed her eyes on the ceiling, as if the vision were disappearing in that direction, and she were straining for a last glimpse of it.

I was so spell‐bound by the extraordinary beauty that borrowed a new charm from her emotions and from the despairing tenderness of her voice and manner that I entirely lost sight of every other point in the picture. In fact, I lost my head. I was after all no more than a man, and the wisest of us is but a fool in the hands of a woman. What could I do but what I did do? Fall upon my knees and swear that she should have Arcadia back again, adjure her to build up a new vision, and, if she loved me, never to talk about baseless fabrics and such like again; and as to her sinking down into a humdrum wife, it was preposterous nonsense. She could never be anything but an archangel to me, and that.... But why do I bear witness in this wanton way to my own folly? We made up our quarrel, as all such quarrels are intended to be made up. Isabel went to her room, and I went round to the stables. I had no fancy for meeting my step‐mother just now, and I had a vague sense of something having gone wrong with me which a gallop over the downs would set right.

It was a cold February morning—bitterly cold, but bright and bracing, just the sort of day to enjoy a ride across country; so as soon as I was out of the park I set spurs to my horse and galloped away, taking flying leaps over everything, hurdle, and ditch, and brook, as if the hounds were ahead, and my life staked on being in at the death. After five miles of this going‐in‐for‐the‐Derby pace I drew rein at the foot of a hill, and walked my horse to the top. The hard riding had made him so hot that his flanks smoked like a steam‐engine, and sent up clouds of vapor that enveloped me in a tepid bath; but I did not feel that the violent exercise had produced any effect on myself. I was not clear as to the nature of the effect I had expected, and still less could I analyze the cause that demanded it. Something was wrong somewhere. I looked about me vacantly, persistently, as men do when they feel they ought to look within themselves for the object of their search, and dare not.

I cast my eyes to the sky. It was as blue as liquid sapphire, and as cloudless. But it said nothing to me. The river winding round the foot of the wooded hill was ice‐bound and silent as death. The trees stood up naked and grim against the blue, like skeleton giants, and whispered nothing. There was no rustle of leafy tongues. They were dead and gone down into the dumb sod. There was no ripple of tiny cascades; no buzzing of insects holding council in the grass that grew high and free on the hill‐side; no song amongst the birds. Nothing spoke to me. Everything was dumb. Everything was cold. Everything was a disappointment. I began to whistle. The sound of my own voice echoed merrily through the wood, but it woke no responsive note from linnet or blackbird or robin. Silence everywhere.

“What can it mean?” I said aloud, the apostrophe not being addressed to the birds that could sing, and would not sing, but to my own perplexity concerning the scene at the breakfast‐table. There was something out of all reason in the passionate energy Isabel had displayed. Excuse it as my heart and my vanity would on the ground of a jealous love that shrank from any intrusion on our solitude capable of distracting my thoughts from her, which she chiefly urged as her motive of dislike to my two friends’ visit, I could not see it in a satisfactory light. Again, it was simply preposterous that a girl of one‐and‐twenty, who had seen even as little of the world as Isabel had, could be so morbidly shy as to cry herself into hysterics at the mere idea of being introduced to two old gentlemen in her own house. There was some motive in the background which it behooved me for my own peace of mind to discover.

Removed from the magnetic influence of her beauty, and her distress, and her pretty, endearing ways, I was able to look back dispassionately at the morning’s entertainment; and the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. The undisciplined outburst of temper which revealed to me the painful fact that Socrates was henceforth to be my model, and patience under an inevitable evil the sustained effort of my life, was in itself no small matter for regret. But this, though the most tangible of my cares, was not the one that chiefly possessed me. No; I could have signed away every penny of my wife’s fortune on the spot to feel sure that it had been a genuine outbreak of mere temper; but it was borne in on me, not by circumstantial, but by strong internal evidence that she was actuated by fear. Fear of whom? Of what? What could her young life have done, or suffered, or known, that she should be afraid? Her uncle had been very tyrannical, and was now very much incensed with her on account of her marriage. But she had nothing to fear from him now. He might storm and fume, but she was out of his reach; he could not hurt her. Besides, she had not hinted at any fear of malice or vengeance on his part as a reason for shunning the society or acquaintance of other men. Who or what was she afraid of? “She hated fuss, and I promised her this and that and the other.”

Nonsense! Two old friends of my father’s sleeping a night or two in the house did not constitute a fuss. “She hated trustees; they were always....” Stop! No; I’m a fool and a brute to wrong the child by such a thought. Besides, I never hinted, even indirectly, at anything like inquiries and settlements. I avoided the subject scrupulously. No; there could be nothing in that.

The fact is, the dear child is in love with me, and wants to play at Romeo and Juliet for the rest of her life; and here am I, like a born idiot, making a mountain out of a mole‐hill, instead of blessing my stars for my luck. This, by a natural train of thought, led me to picture her standing on the balcony by moonlight, and myself in the garden below looking up and worshipping.

“What a distracting Juliet she would have made!” I exclaimed aloud, carried away by my imagination. Then—I can’t for the life of me tell why—but I remembered how she had looked a while ago with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, and how she had suddenly checked her passionate complaint to assume the rapt attitude, the pose of picturesque despair, and how very melodramatic the effect had been. If it had not been the purest nature, it would have been the most finished piece of acting that ever drew down the house to a Siddons or a Kemble. But it was pure nature. Then why do I start, and why does my heart begin to thump against my coat in this inexplicable way? Pshaw! Because I am a fool. I set spurs to my horse, and galloped home, whistling defiantly all the way.

My wife was watching for me, Juliet fashion, from the window of her turret chamber, and, as soon as she caught sight of my horse entering the park, flew down to meet me in the hall.

“Why did you stay away so long, Clide? Mrs. de Winton ‘sent me her compliments to know if I wouldn’t like to go and see the dairy’; but I didn’t like. I was afraid it was just an excuse to get me all to herself and scold me. I knew I was naughty this morning, and you may scold me as much as you like; but I won’t be scolded by anybody else.” And nestling up to me in her childlike way, Isabel laid her cheek on my shoulder, and looked up at me with two eyes that would have melted a judge and won from any twelve men in England an unhesitating verdict of—innocent as a babe unborn. Linking her arm in mine, and whispering all the way as if we were a pair of lovers stealing a clandestine interview, she carried me off to her boudoir. Then, when we were safe in the room, she turned the key in the door, and began to skip and dance about like an emancipated kitten, giving me chase round the room, clapping hands and laughing and singing in frantic merriment. We kept up this impromptu game of puss‐in‐the‐corner till she was fairly tired out and allowed herself to be taken prisoner and held in durance vile on my knee, while she panted for breath, and shook back her hair, that had slipped from its imprisoning pins, and fell in long, black ripples down her shoulders. Thinking the moment opportune, “Now, my darling,” I said, “let us have a quiet little talk together. How are we to make it straight with the dowager? It won’t do to have her suspect my dear little dove of not being as good and as sweet‐tempered as I know her to be, and I’m afraid that silly pout at breakfast has put you in a false light with her.”

Isabel said nothing for a moment, but went on shaking her curls.

“Do you wish me to go and beg her pardon?” she said at last. “I will, if you like, Clide.”

“My angel! no. I doubt the wisdom of that,” I replied, laughing at the naïveté of the proposal. “It would be better if we took some more practical means of pacifying her. Suppose we give in about asking down these two old friends of mine?”

“Very well. I will do anything you like, Clide,” she answered indifferently, rolling a curl on her two fingers, and not looking up at me.

“The admiral is the jolliest old tar in the world,” I continued, “and will never talk a word of politics or business, or anything you don’t care about; and as to Sir Simon, my only fear is that you will fall in love with him, and some fine morning elope after him, or with him if he stays long enough. He’s the most unmerciful lady‐killer in the three kingdoms.”

“Is he?”

This was said in a sort of absent way, as if she had been only listening with one ear to what I was saying; all her thoughts were intent on the curling operation, that was again recommenced and completed for the tenth time.

“Then shall I tell Mrs. de Winton that we will ask them both for Wednesday—till Saturday, say? If you like them, it s very easy to renew the invitation.”

“Of course,” assented Isabel, and began a fresh curl.

“How proud I shall be introducing my wife!” I said, pushing back the heavy veil of hair that partly hid her face from me.

She shook it down again, not roughly, but there was a touch of impatience in the movement that surprised me. I thought it best, however, not to seem to notice it. Suddenly she started from my knee, flew to the piano—I had ordered a Cottage Pleyel for her private use—and broke out into a gush of song that made the air literally thrill with melody. Passionate, tender, angry, and entreating by turns, her voice poured out the florid Italian music with the full‐throated carol of a thrush. Singing was as natural to her as speaking. In fact, she appeared to find it an easier medium of emotion, whether of pain or pleasure, than speech; and when she was excited, her first impulse was to break out in thrills and cadences just as a bird might do. Once started, she could go on for ever. I sat a full hour this morning listening to her running through a repertoire of varied power and beauty. Schubert, Rossini, Beethoven, Verdi—she was at home in every school, and her rich soprano voice adapted itself to each as if that one had been her sole and special study. But while I sat there drinking in the intense delight, my mind divided between it and the beauty of her face, some sudden expression of the latter every now and then startled me. The wonderful mobility of her features reflected every changing emotion of the music with a responsive fidelity which it is impossible to describe. I suppose it was the absence of the artistic instinct in me, combined with a total ignorance of the emotional law of music, that made this appear to me unnatural, and filled me with a sudden and painful misgiving as to the genuine truthfulness of Isabel’s nature. Was it possible to feign so perfectly, and to be at the same time thoroughly truthful?

But I was cut short in my perplexing reflections by the luncheon‐bell, that sounded a vigorous carillon at the foot of the stairs leading up to my wife’s boudoir. She shut the piano quickly, and, passing her arm through mine, marshalled me down to the dining‐room, humming the “Valse de Venzano” all the way.

I observed casually during lunch that we had fixed on Wednesday to have Sir Simon and the admiral down to the Moat. Mrs. de Winton slowly elevated her eyebrows, but gave no articulate indication of surprise.

I did not look at Isabel while I made this announcement, but when, a moment after, I stole a glance at her, she was as pale as the table‐cloth. Instantaneously I grew a shade paler. I felt I did. My heart stood still. What in the name of wonder was behind this dislike of hers to see these two men? There was a mystery somewhere. She was afraid of somebody or something. At any and every cost I must find it out.

To Be Continued.

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