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The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870

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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 10, OCTOBER, 1869 TO MARCH, 1870 ***

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       *       *       *       *       *




    THE
    CATHOLIC WORLD.

    A
    MONTHLY MAGAZINE
    OF
    GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

    VOL. X.
    OCTOBER, 1869, TO MARCH, 1870.


    NEW YORK:
    THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
    126 Nassau Street.

    1870.


    S. W. GREEN,
    PRINTER,
    16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.




CONTENTS.


    Angela, 38, 161, 293, 471, 617.
    An October Reverie, 186.

    British Premiers in Relation to British Catholics, 674, 826.
    Bach, Friedemann, 805.

    Contradiction, An Imaginary, 1.
    Council of Trent, The, 24.
    Christian Women, An Appeal to, 71.
    Church in Paris and France, 95.
    Catholicity and Pantheism, 118.
    Council, The, and the Roman Congregations, 170.
    Church Music, 402, 598, 743.
    Catholic Church in New York, Early History of, 413, 515.
    Council, Matters Relating to, 420.
    Church Door, At the, 651.
    Chess, 683.
    Council of the Vatican, The First Oecumenical, 693, 841.
    Civil and Political Liberty, 721.
    Christ of Ausfeldt, The, 774.

    Devious Ways, Through, 550.

    Eclipse of August Seventh, 106.

    Foreign Literary Notes, 135, 422, 705.
    Father Faber, Life of, 145.
    Free Religion, 195.
    Ffoulkes, The Letter of E. S., 631.

    Gallicanism, The True Origin of, 527.
    Gordian Knots, Untying, 589, 735.
    Greek Schism, The, 758.

    Hero, or a Heroine? 232, 346, 497.
    Hecker, Father, Farewell Sermon of, 289.
    Harwood's, Dr., Price Lecture, 312.
    Haydn's Struggle and Triumph, 326.
    History of the Catholic Church in New York, 413, 515.
    Hurston Hall, 449.
    Hints on Housekeeping, 610.

    Irish Volunteers, A Sketch of, 276.
    Immutability of the Species, 252, 332, 656.
    Irish Land Tenure, History of, 641.
    Iron Mask, The, 754.

    Lost and Found, 84.
    Life of Father Faber, 145.
    Liberty, Civil and Political, 721.
    Labor Movement, Views of the, 784.
    Lucifer's Ear, 856.

    Memento Mori, 206.
    Music and Love, Haydn's First Lessons in, 267.
    Music, Church, 402, 598, 743.
    Matters Relating to the Council, 420.
    Miscellany, 564.

    New York City, Sanitary Topography of, 362.

    Paganina, 13.
    Priory, St. Oren's, 56.
    Prisons, Religion in, 114.
    Presbyterian Reply to the Pope's Letter, 216.
    Protestantism and Catholicity, The Future of, 433, 577.
    Putnam's Defence, 542.
    Polish Patriotic Hymn, A, 548.
    Poland, Present Condition of, 799.

    Rome, Morality of, 50.
    Roman Congregations and the Council, 170.

    Species, Immutability of, 252, 332, 656.
    Sermon, Father Hecker's Farewell, 289.
    St. Peter, Basilica of, 374.
    St. Augustine, The Philosophical Doctrines of, compared with the
        Ideology of the Modern Schools, 481.
    Schism, The Greek, 758.
    Seton, Mrs., 778.

    Trent, The Council of, 24.
    The Seven Bishops, 130.

    Vansleb, The Oriental Scholar and Traveller, 459.
    Vatican Council, The, 841.

    Women, An Appeal to Young Christian, 71.
    Wayside Reminiscence, 84.


POETRY.

    Ambition, Sacred, 12.
    A Christmas Hymn, 526.
    A Convert's Prayer, 614.

    December 8, 1869, 457.

    In Memoriam of Rev. F. A. Baker, 597.
    "It's Wrong," 825.

    Lines on the Pontifical Hat, 134.

    Matthew xxvii, 37.
    My Christmas Gift, 496.

    Nazareth, On a Picture of, 757.

    Prayer, 331.

    Sacred Ambition, 12.
    St. Peter Delivered from Prison, 824.

    The Chapel, 655.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

    Alcott's Hospital Sketches, 143.
    A Little Boy's Story, 426.
    Auerbach's German Tales, 427.
    Almanac, Catholic Family, 574.
    Andersen's Improvisatore and Two Baronesses, 575.
    Acta ex iis Decerpta, etc., etc., 720.
    Alexander, J. A., Life of, 856.
    An American Family in Paris, 858.

    Bayma's Elements of Molecular Mechanics, 288.
    Bonaventure's Parables and Stories, 575.
    Bushnell's Woman's Suffrage, 715.

    Cantarium Romanum, 427.
    Caseine, 431.
    Cooley's Text-Book of Chemistry, 432.
    Columbus, Lorgne's Life of, 574.
    Curtis's Life of Webster, 714.
    Creation a Recent Work of God, 855.

    Diomede, 142.
    Dorie, Henry, Life of, 144.

    Evans's Autobiography of a Shaker, 143.
    Emerald, The, 144.
    Edgeworth's Tales and Parent's Assistant, 430.
    Elm Island Stories, 860.

    Ffoulkes's Letter, A Critique on, 287.
    Ffoulkes's Roman Index and its Late Proceedings, 709.
    Formby's Life of Christ, 719.
    Fair Harvard, 858.
    Frontier Stories, 860.

    Giles's Lectures and Essays on Irish Subjects, 138.
    Gilmour's Bible History, 143.
    Gallitzin's Life and Character, 426.
    Gasparini's Attributes of Christ, 857.

    Henry Crabbe Robinson's Diary, Correspondence, etc., 141.
    Heady's Seen and Heard, 288.
    Horace, The Works of, 288.
    Hadley's Elements of the Greek Language, 288.
    Hagenbach's History of the Church, 718.
    Hefele's Council of Constance, 719.
    Hill's Titania's Banquet, etc., 856.
    Hedge's Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, 858.

    In Heaven We Know Our Own, 139.
    Intelligence of Animals, 288.
    Ireland, Patriot's History of, 432.

    Janus on the Pope and the Council, 712.
    Jarves's Art Thoughts, 717.

    Kerney's First Class Book of History, 431.
    Kickham's Sally Cavanagh, 720.
    Neal's Great Mysteries and Little Plagues, 720.

    Lacordaire's Sketch of the Order of St. Dominic, 429.
    Lange's Commentary on Romans, 430.
    Lorimer's Among the Trees, 718.
    Library of Good Example, 719.
    Lange's Commentary on the Old Testament, 857.
    La Salle, Life of the Venerable J. B. de, 857.
    Lady Fullerton's Mrs. Gerald's Niece, 859.

    Marshall's Order and Chaos, 138.
    Mopsa and the Fairy, 140.
    Madame Swetchine, Writings of, 285.
    Mangin's Mysteries of the Ocean, 428.
    Meunier's Great Hunting-Grounds of the World, 428.
    Mangin's Desert World, 428.
    Minor Chords, 431.
    Manual of Third Order of St. Francis, 431.
    Manning's Pastoral on the Council, 569.
    Missale Romanum, 715.
    Mommsen's History of Rome, 715.
    McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, Poems of, 854.

    Nampon's Catholic Doctrine, as Defined by the Council of Trent, 286.
    Nolan's Byrnes of Glengoulah, 720.

    Patty Gray's Journal from Boston to Baltimore, 142.
    Placidus on Education, 143.
    Potter's Pastor and People, 573.
    Pumpelly's Across America and Asia, 711.
    Prentiss's Nidworth, 716.
    Preston's Christ and the Church, 718.
    Particular Examen, 857.

    Reiter's Ecclesiastical Map of the U. S., 142.
    Ryder's Critique on Ffoulkes's Letter, 287.
    Robertson's Sermons, 432.

    Smith's Pentateuch, 429.
    Sargent's Woman who Dared, 571.
    Spielhagen's Through Night to Light, 576.
    Sadlier's Almanac and Directory, 718.
    Sybaris and other Poems, 859.

    Two Years before the Mast, 140.
    The Two Women, 144.
    Thompson's Man in Genesis and Geology, 287.
    The Two Cottages, 576.
    The Lost Rosary, 576.
    The Life of Blessed Margaret Mary, 576.
    Tennyson's Holy Grail, 855.
    The Cabin on the Prairie, 860.
    The Sunset Land, 860.

    Upton's Letters of Peregrine Pickle, 859.

    White's Elements of Astronomy, 141.
    Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, 283.
    Wood's Bible Animals, 716.
    White's Ecce Femina, 857.
    Wiley's Elocution and Oratory, 859.
    Wonders of Pompeii, 860.

    Young's Office of Vespers, 144.




THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. X., No. 55.--OCTOBER, 1869.




AN IMAGINARY CONTRADICTION.[1]


We notice in this review the article on the _Spirit of Romanism_
for a single point only, which it makes, for as a whole it is not
worth considering. Father Hecker asserts in his _Aspirations of
Nature_, that, "Endowed with reason, man has no right to surrender
his judgment; endowed with free-will, man has no right to yield
up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man a responsible
being, and he has no right to abdicate his independence." To this and
several other extracts from the same work to the same effect, the
_Christian Quarterly_ opposes what is conceded by Father Hecker and
held by every Catholic, that every one is bound to believe whatever
the church believes and teaches. But bound as a Catholic to submit
his reason and will to the authority of the church, how can one
assert that he is free to exercise his own reason, and has no right
to surrender it, or to abdicate his own independence? Father Hecker
says, "Religion is a question between the soul and God; no human
authority has, therefore, any right to enter its sacred sphere." Yet
he maintains that he is bound to obey the authority of the church,
and has no right to believe or think contrary to her teachings and
definitions. How can he maintain both propositions?

What Father Hecker asserts is that man has reason and free-will,
and that he has no right to forego the exercise of these faculties,
or to surrender them to any human authority whatever. Between this
proposition and that of the plenary authority of the church in all
matters of faith or pertaining to faith and sound doctrine, as
asserted by the Council of Trent and Pius IX. in the _Syllabus_,
the _Christian Quarterly_ thinks it sees a glaring contradiction.
Father Hecker, it is to be presumed, sees none, and we certainly
see none. Father Hecker maintains that no _human_ authority has any
right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, that man is accountable
to no man or body of men for his religion or his faith; but he does
not say that he is not responsible to God for the use he makes of
his faculties, whether of reason or free-will, or that God has no
right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, and tell him even
authoritatively what is truth and what he is bound to believe and
do. When I believe and obey a human authority in matters of religion,
I abdicate my own reason; but when I believe and obey God, I preserve
it, follow it, do precisely what reason itself tells me I ought to
do. There is no contradiction, then, between believing and obeying
God, and the free and full exercise of reason and free-will. Our
Cincinnati contemporary seems to have overlooked this very obvious
fact, and has therefore imagined a contradiction where there is none
at all, but perfect logical consistency. Our contemporary is no doubt
very able, a great logician, but he is here grappling with a subject
which he has not studied, and of which he knows less than nothing.

It is a very general impression with rationalists and rationalizing
Protestants, that whoso asserts the free exercise of reason denies
the authority of the church, and that whoso recognizes the authority
of the church necessarily denies reason and abdicates his own
manhood, which is as much as to say that whoso asserts man denies
God, and whoso asserts God denies man. These people forget that the
best of all possible reasons for believing any thing is the word,
that is, the authority of God, and that the highest possible exercise
of one's manhood is in humble and willing obedience to the law or
will of God. All belief, as distinguished from knowledge, is on
authority of some sort, and the only question to be asked in any case
is, Is the authority sufficient? I believe there were such persons
as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV.,
Robespierre, and George Washington, on the authority of history, the
last two, also, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, or persons who
have assured me that they had seen and known them personally; yet in
the case of them all, my belief is belief on authority. On authority,
I believe the great events recorded in sacred and profane history,
the building of the Temple of Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon,
the captivity of the Jews, their return to Judea under the kings of
Persia, the building of the second temple, the conquest of Jerusalem
by Titus and the Roman army, the invasion of the Roman empire by the
northern barbarians, who finally overthrew it, the event called the
reformation, the thirty years' war, etc. Nothing is more unreasonable
or more insane than to believe any thing on no authority; that is,
with no reason for believing it. To believe without authority for
believing is to believe without reason, and practically a denial of
reason itself.

Catholics, in fact, are the only people in the world who do, can,
or dare reason in matters of religion. Indeed, they are the only
people who have a reasonable faith, and who believe only what they
have adequate reasons for believing. They are also the only people
who recognize no human authority, not even one's own, in matters of
Christian faith and conscience. Sectarians and rationalists claim to
be free, and to reason freely, because, as they pretend, they are
bound by no human authority, and recognize no authority in faith but
their own reason. Yet why should my reason be for me or any one else
better authority for believing than yours? My authority is as human
as yours, and if yours is not a sufficient reason for my faith, how
can my own suffice, which is no better, perhaps not so good? As a
fact, no man is less free than he who has for his faith no authority
but his own reason; for he is, if he thinks at all, necessarily
always in doubt as to what he ought or ought not to believe; and
no man who is in doubt, who is unable to determine what he is or is
not required to believe in order to believe the truth, is or can be
mentally free. From this doubt only the Catholic is free; for he only
has the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived,
for his faith.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the Catholic believes what
the church believes and teaches on any human authority. To assume
it begs the whole question. The act of faith the Catholic makes is,
"O my God! I believe all the sacred truths the Holy Catholic Church
believes and teaches, _because_ thou hast revealed them, who canst
neither deceive nor be deceived." The church can declare to be of
faith only what God has revealed, and her authority in faith is the
authority not of the law-maker, but of the witness and interpreter
of the law. In faith we believe the word of God, we believe God on
his word; in the last analysis, that God is true, _Deus est verax_.
Better authority than the word of God there is not and cannot be,
and nothing is or can be more reasonable than to believe that God is
true, or to believe God on his word, without a voucher.

That the church is a competent and credible witness in the case, or
an adequate authority for believing that God has revealed what she
believes and teaches as his word, can be as conclusively proved as
the competency and credibility of a witness in any case in court
whatever. She was an eye and ear-witness of the life, works, death,
and resurrection of our Lord, who is at once perfect God and perfect
man; she received the divine word directly from him, and is the
contemporary and living witness of what he taught and commanded. The
church has never for a moment ceased to exist, but has continued from
Christ to us as one identical living body that suffers no decay and
knows no succession of years; with her nothing has been forgotten,
for nothing has fallen into the past. The whole revelation of God is
continually present to her mind and heart. She is, then, a competent
witness; for she knows all the facts to which she is required to
testify. She is a credible witness; for God himself has appointed,
commissioned, authorized her to bear witness for him to all nations
and ages, even unto the consummation of the world, and has promised
to be with her, and to send to her assistance the Paraclete, the
Spirit of Truth, who should recall to her mind whatsoever he had
taught her, and lead her into all truth. The divine commission or
authorization to teach carries with it the pledge of infallibility
in teaching; for God cannot be the accomplice of a false teacher,
or one who is even liable to err. What surrender is there of one's
reason, judgment, free-will, manhood, in believing the testimony of a
competent and credible witness?

In point of fact, the case is even stronger than we put it. The
church is the body of Christ, and in her dwelleth the Holy Ghost.
She is human in her members, no doubt; but she is divine as well as
human in her head. The human and divine natures, though for ever
distinct, are united in one divine person by the hypostatic union.
This one divine Person, the Word that was made flesh, or assumed
flesh, for our redemption and glorification, is the person of the
church, who through him lives a divine as well as a human life. It
is God who speaks in her voice as it was God who spoke in the voice
of the Son of Mary, that died on the cross, that rose from the dead,
and ascended into heaven, whence he shall come again to judge the
quick and the dead. Hence, we have not only the word of God as the
authority for believing his revelation, but his authority in the
witness to the fact that it is his revelation or his word that we
believe. We may even go further still, and state that the Holy Ghost
beareth witness within us with our spirits in concurrence with the
external witness to the same fact, so that it may be strengthened by
the mouth of two witnesses. More ample means of attesting the truth
and leaving the unbeliever without excuse are not possible in the
nature of things.

It is not, then, the Catholic who contradicts himself; for between
the free exercise of reason and complete submission to the authority
of the church, as both are understood by Catholics, there is no
contradiction, no contrariety even. Faith, by the fact that it is
faith, differs necessarily from science. It is not intuitive or
discursive knowledge, but simply analogical knowledge. But reason
in itself cannot go beyond what is intuitively apprehended, or
discursively obtained, that is, obtained from intuitive data either
by way of deduction or induction. In either case, what is apprehended
or obtained is knowledge, not belief or faith. To believe and to
know are not one and the same thing; and whatever reason by itself
can judge of comes under the head of science, not faith; whence
it follows that reason can never judge of the intrinsic truth or
falsehood of the matter of faith; for if it could, faith would
be sight, and in no sense faith. If we recognize such a thing as
faith at all, we must recognize something which transcends or does
not fall under the direct cognizance of reason; and therefore that
which reason does not know, and can affirm only as accredited by
some authority distinct from reason. The Catholic asserts faith
on authority, certainly, but on an authority which reason herself
holds to be sufficient. True, he does not submit the question of its
truth or falsehood to the judgment of reason; for that would imply a
contradiction--that faith is not faith, but sight or knowledge. This
is the mistake of sectarians and rationalists, who deny authority in
matters of faith. They practically deny reason, by demanding of it
what exceeds its powers; and faith, by insisting on submitting it
to the judgment of reason, and denying that we have or can have any
reason for believing what transcends reason. It ill becomes them,
therefore, to accuse Catholics of contradicting themselves, when they
assert the rights of reason in its own order, and the necessity of
authority in matters of faith, or matters that transcend reason. They
themselves, according to their own principles, have, and can have
no authority for believing; and therefore, if they believe at all,
they do and must believe without reason; and belief without reason is
simple fancy, caprice, whim, prejudice, opinion, not faith.

But the _Christian Quarterly_ is not alone in imagining a
contradiction between reason and authority. The whole modern
mind assumes it, and imagines a contradiction wherever it finds
two extremes, or two opposites. It has lost the middle term that
brings them together and unites them in a logical synthesis. To
it, natural and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith,
science and revelation, liberty and authority, church and state,
heaven and earth, God and man--are irreconciliable extremes; and not
two extremes only, but downright contradictions, which necessarily
exclude each other. It does not, even if it accepts both terms,
accept them as reconciled, or united as two parts of one whole; but
each as exclusive, and warring against the other, and each doing its
best to destroy the other.

Hence the modern mind is, so to speak, bisected by a painful dualism,
which weakens its power, lowers its character, and destroys the
unity and efficiency of intellectual life. We meet every day men
who, on one side, assert supernatural faith, revelation, grace,
authority, and, on the other, pure naturalism, which excludes every
thing supernatural or divine. On the one side of their intelligence,
nothing but God and grace, and on the other, nothing but man and
nature. Indeed, the contradiction runs through nearly the whole
modern intellectual world, and is not encountered among the heterodox
only. We find even men who mean to be orthodox, think they are
orthodox, and are sincerely devoted to the interests of religion,
who yet see no real or logical connection between their faith as
Catholics and their principles as statesmen, or their theories as
scientists.

The two terms, or series of terms, of course, must be accepted,
and neither can be denied without equally denying the other. The
objection is not that both are asserted, but that they are asserted
as contradictories; for no contradiction in the real world, which is
the world of truth, is admissible. The Creator of the world is the
Logos, is logic in itself, and therefore, as the Scripture saith,
makes all things by number, weight, and measure. All his works are
dialectic, and form a self-consistent whole; for, as St. Thomas says,
he is the type of all things--_Deus est similitudo rerum omnium_.
There must then be, somewhere, the mediator, or middle term which
unites the two extremes, and in which their apparent contradiction
is lost, and they are opposed only as two parts of one uniform whole.
The defect of the modern mind is that it has lost this middle term,
and men retain in their life the dualism we have pointed out, because
they do not see that the conflicting elements are not harmonizable
in their intelligence; or, because they have lost the conception of
reality, and are false to the true principle of things.

In the early ages of the church, the fathers had no occasion to
take care that reason and nature should be preserved, for no one
dreamed of denying them. All their efforts were needed to bring out
and vindicate the other series of terms, God, the supernatural,
revelation, grace, faith, which was denied or perverted by the
world they had to war against. The ascetic writers, again, having
for their object the right disciplining of human nature through
grace, which includes revelation and faith, as well as the elevation
and assistance of nature and reason, had just as little occasion
to assert reason and nature, for they assumed them, and their
very labors implied them. Grace, or the supernatural, was rarely
exaggerated or set forth as exclusive. The danger came chiefly from
the opposite quarter, from Pelagianism, or the assertion of the
sufficiency of nature without grace.

When, however, the reformers appeared, the danger shifted sides.
The doctrines of the reformation, the doctrines of grace, as they
are called by evangelicals, were an exaggerated and exclusive
supernaturalism. The reformers did not merely assert the
insufficiency of reason and nature, but went further, and asserted
their total depravity, and utter worthlessness in the Christian
life. They made man not merely passive under grace, but actively and
necessarily opposed to it, resisting it always with all his might,
and to be overcome only by sovereign grace, the _gratia victrix_ of
the Jansenists. The church met this and its kindred errors in the
holy Council of Trent, and while affirming the supernatural element,
and defining the sphere and office of grace, rescued nature and
reaffirmed its part in the work of life. But error has no principle
and is bound to no consistency, and the Catholic has ever since
had to defend nature against the exclusive supernaturalists, and
grace against the exclusive naturalists; reason, for instance,
against the traditionalists, and revelation and authority against
the rationalists. To do this, it has been and still is necessary to
distinguish between the two orders, nature and grace, natural and
supernatural, reason and faith.

But we find a very considerable number of men who are not exclusively
supernaturalists, nor exclusively rationalists, but who are
syncretists, or both at once. They accept both orders in their mutual
exclusiveness, and alternately, rather, simultaneously, assert
exclusive supernaturalism, and exclusive rationalism. This is the
case with the great mass of Protestants, who retain any reminiscences
of grace, and even with some Catholics in countries where Jansenism
once had its stronghold, and where traces of its influence may still
be detected with people who deny its formally heretical propositions,
and accept the papal constitutions condemning them. The two extremes
are seen, and both are accepted; but the mediator between them,
or the truth which conciliates or harmonizes them, seems to be
overlooked or not understood. Of course, Catholic theology asserts
it, and is in reality based on it; but, some how or other, the age
does not seize it, and the prevailing philosophy does not recognize
it.

The problem for our age, it seems to us, is to revive it, and show
the conciliation of the two extremes. The labor of theologians and
philosophers is not, indeed, to find a new and unknown truth or
medium of reconciliation, as so many pretend, but to bring out to the
dull and enfeebled understanding of our times the great truth, always
asserted by Catholic theology, which conciliates all extremes by
presenting the real and living synthesis of things. This Father Hewit
has attempted and in great part achieved in his _Problems of the Age_.

There can be no question that the dominant philosophy, especially
with the heterodox, does not present the conditions of solving
this problem, and the scholastic philosophy, as taught in Catholic
schools, needs to be somewhat differently developed and expressed
before the age can see in it the solution demanded. According to
the philosophy generally received since Des Cartes, the natural and
supernatural are not only distinct, but separate orders, and reason
without any aid from revelation is competent to construct from her
own materials a complete science of the rational order. It supposes
the two orders to be independent each of the other, and each complete
in itself. Reason has nothing to do with faith, and faith has nothing
to do with reason. The church has no jurisdiction in philosophy, the
sciences, politics, or natural society; philosophers, physicists,
statesmen, seculars, so long as they keep in the rational order, are
independent of the spiritual authority, are under no obligation to
consult revelation, or to conform to the teachings of faith. Hence
the dual life men live, and the absurdity of maintaining in one order
what they contradict in another.

This, we need not say, is all wrong. The two orders are distinct,
not separate and mutually independent orders, nor parallel orders
with no real or logical relation between them. They are, in reality,
only two parts of one and the same whole. We do not undertake to
say what God could or could not have done had he chosen. If he
could have created man and left him in a state of pure nature, as
he has the animals, we know he has not done so. He has created man
for a supernatural destiny, and placed him under a supernatural or
gracious providence, so that, as a fact, man is never in a state of
pure nature. He aspires to a supernatural reward, and is liable to
a supernatural punishment. His life is always above pure nature,
or below it. The highest natural virtue is imperfect, and no sin
is simply a sin against the natural law. The natural is not the
supernatural, but was never intended to subsist without it. The
supernatural is not an interpolation in the divine plan of creation,
nor something superinduced upon it, but is a necessary complement of
the natural, which never is or can be completed in the natural alone.
In the divine plan, the two orders are coeval, always coexist, and
operate simultaneously to one and the same end, as integral parts
of one whole. The natural, endowed with reason and free-will, may
resist the supernatural, or refuse to co-operate with it; but if it
does so, it must remain inchoate, incomplete, an existence commenced
yet remaining for ever unfulfilled, which is the condition of the
reprobate. A true and adequate philosophy explains man's origin,
medium, and end; and no such philosophy can be constructed by reason
alone; for these are supernatural, and are fully known only through a
supernatural revelation.

The natural demands the supernatural; so also does the supernatural
demand the natural. If there were no nature, there could be nothing
above nature; there would be nothing for grace to operate on, to
assist, or complete. If man had no reason, he could receive no
revelation; if he had no free-will, he could have no virtue, no
sanctity; if not generated, he could not be regenerated; and if not
regenerated, he could not be glorified, or attain to the end for
which he is intended. To deny nature is to deny the creative act of
God, and to fall into pantheism--a sophism, for pantheism is denied
in its very assertion. Its assertion implies the assertor, and
therefore something capable of acting, and therefore a substantive
existence, distinguishable from God. The denial of God, as creator,
is the denial alike of man, the natural, and the supernatural. To
solve the problem, and remove the dualism which bisects the modern
mind, it is necessary to study the Creator's works in the light of
the Creator's plan, and as a whole, in the whole course or itinerary
of their existence, or in their procession from him as first cause,
to their return to him as final cause, and not piecemeal, as isolated
or unrelated facts. If we know not this plan, which no study of the
works themselves can reveal to us, we can never get at the meaning
of a single the smallest part, far less attain to any thing like
the science of the universe; for the meaning of each part is in its
relation to the whole. What is the meaning of this grain of sand
on the sea-shore, or this mosquito, this gnat, these animalculæ
invisible to the naked eye? Have they no meaning, no purpose in the
Creator's plan? What can you, by reason, know of that purpose or
meaning, if you know not that plan? Your physical sciences, without a
knowledge of that plan, are no sciences at all, and give you no more
conception of the universe than a specimen brick from its walls can
give you of the city of Babylon.

Though that plan is and can be known only as revealed by God himself,
yet when once known we may see analogies and proofs of it in all
the Creator's works, and study with profit the several parts of the
universe, and attain to real science of them; for then we can study
them in their synthesis, or their relation to the whole. We may then
have rational science, not built on revelation, but constructed by
reason in the light of revelation. We do not make revelation the
basis of the natural sciences. They are all constructed by reason,
acting with its own power, but under the supervision, so to speak, of
faith, which reveals to it the plan or purpose of creation, to which
it must conform in its deductions and inductions, if they are to have
any scientific value. If it operates in disregard of revelation,
without the light radiating from the Creator's plan, reason can know
objects only in their isolation, as separate and unrelated facts or
phenomena, and therefore never know them, as they really are, or in
their real significance; because nothing in the universe exists in
a state of isolation, or by and for itself alone; but every thing
that exists, exists and is significant only in its relation to
the whole. It is a mistake, then, to assume that the church, the
witness, guardian, and interpreter of the faith or revelation, has
nothing to say to philosophy, or to the physical sciences, cosmogony,
geology, physiology, history, or even political science. None of
them are or can be true sciences, any further than they present
the several classes of facts and phenomena of which they treat in
their respective relations and subordination to the divine plan of
creation, known only by the revelation committed to the church.

The principle of the solution of the problem, or the middle term
that unites the two extremes, or the natural and the supernatural,
in a real and living synthesis, or reconciles all opposites, is the
creative act of God. The supernatural is God himself, and what he
does immediately without using any natural agencies; the natural is
what God creates with the power to act as second cause, and what he
does only through second causes, or so-called natural laws. Nothing
is natural that is not explicable by natural laws, and nothing so
explicable is properly supernatural, though it may be superhuman. A
miracle is an effect of which God is the immediate cause, and which
can be referred to no natural or second cause; a natural event is one
of which God is not the direct and immediate cause, but only first
cause--_Causa eminens_, or cause of its direct and immediate cause.
The copula or _nexus_ that unites the natural and supernatural in
one dialectic whole, is the creative act of the supernatural, or
God, which produces the natural and holds it joined to its cause.
Creatures are not separable from their Creator; for in him they
live and move and are, or have their being; and were he to separate
himself from them, or suspend his creative act, they would instantly
drop into the nothing they were before he produced them. The relation
between them and him is their relation of entire dependence on him
for all they are, all they have, and all they can do. There is, then,
no ground of antagonism between him and them. If man aspires to
act independently of God, he simply aspires to be himself God, and
becomes--nothing.

But we have not exhausted the creative act. God creates all things
for an end, and this end is himself; not that he may gain something
for himself, or increase his own beatitude, which is eternally
complete, and can be neither augmented nor diminished, but that he
may communicate of his beatitude to creatures which he has called
into existence. Hence God is first cause and final cause. We proceed
from him as first cause, and return to him as final cause, as we have
shown again and again in the magazine with all the necessary proofs.

Between God as final cause, and his creatures, the mediator is the
Incarnate Word, or the man Christ Jesus, the only mediator between
God and men. In Christ Jesus is hypostatically united in one divine
person the divine nature and the human, which, however, remain for
ever distinct, without intermixture or confusion. This union is
effected by the creative act, which in it is carried to its summit.
The hypostatic union completes the first cycle or procession of
existences from God as first cause, and initiates their return to him
as final cause, as we have said in our remarks on _Primeval Man_. It
completes generation and initiates the regeneration, or palingenesiac
order, which has its completion or fulfilment in glorification,
the intuitive vision of God by the light of glory, or, as say the
schoolmen, _ens supernaturale_.

Theologians understand usually, by the supernatural order, the order
founded by the Incarnation or hypostatic union, the regeneration
propagated by the election of grace, instead of natural generation.
But between the natural and the supernatural, in this sense, the
_nexus_ or middle term is the creative act effecting the hypostatic
union, or God himself mediating in his human nature. The Incarnation
unites God and man, without intermixture or confusion, in one and
the same divine Person, and also the order of generation with the
order of regeneration, of which glorification is the crown. But
as the two natures remain for ever distinct but inseparable in
one person, so, in the order of regeneration, the natural and the
supernatural are each preserved in its distinctive though inseparable
activity.

These three terms, generation, regeneration, glorification, one in
the creative act of God, cover the entire life of man, and in each
the natural and supernatural, distinct but inseparable, remain and
co-operate and act. There is no dualism in the world of reality,
and none is apparent--except the distinction between God and
creature--when the Creator's works are seen as a whole, in their real
relation and synthesis. The dualism results in the mind from studying
the Creator's works in their analytic divisions, instead of their
synthetic relations; especially from taking the first cycle or order
of generation as an independent order, complete in itself, demanding
nothing beyond itself, and constituting the whole life of man,
instead of taking it, as it really is, only as the beginning, the
initial, or the inchoate stage of life, subordinated to the second
cycle, the teleological order, or regeneration and glorification, in
which alone is its complement, perfection, ultimate end, for which
it has been created, and exists. Our age falls into its heresies,
unbeliefs, and intellectual anarchy and confusion, because it
undertakes to separate what God has joined together--philosophy from
theology, reason from faith, science from revelation, nature from
grace--and refuses to study the works and providence of God in their
synthetic relations, in which alone is their true meaning.

The Positivists understand very well the anarchy that reigns in the
modern intellectual world, and the need of a doctrine which can unite
in one all the scattered and broken rays of intelligence and command
the adhesion of all minds. The church, they say, once had such a
doctrine, and for a thousand years led the progress of science and
society. Protestants, they assert, have never had, and never, as
Protestants, can have any doctrine of the sort, and the church has it
no longer. It is nowhere set forth except in the writings of Auguste
Comte, who obtains it not from revelation, theology, or metaphysics,
but from the sciences, or the positive facts of nature studied in
their synthetic relations. But unhappily, though right in asserting
the necessity of a grand synthetic doctrine which shall embrace all
the knowable and all the real, they forget that facts cannot be
studied in their synthetic relations unless the mind is previously
in possession of the grand synthetic doctrine which embraces and
explains them, while the doctrine itself cannot be had till they are
so studied. They must take the end as the means of gaining the end!
This is a hard case, for till they get the synthetic formula they can
only have unrelated facts, hypotheses, and conjectures, with no means
of verifying them. They are not likely to succeed. Starting from
anarchy, they can only arrive at anarchy. Only God can move by his
Spirit over chaos, and bring order out of confusion and light out of
darkness.

Moreover, the Positivists do not reconcile the conflicting elements;
for they suppress one of the two series of terms, and relegate God,
the supernatural, principles, causes, and supersensible relations
into the region of the unknowable, and include in their grand
synthesis only positive sensible facts or phenomena and their
physical laws. They thus restrict man's existence to the first
cycle, and exclude the second or palingenesiac order, in which alone
reigns the moral law. The first or initial cycle does not contain the
word of the _ænigma_. It does not exist for itself, and therefore is
not and cannot be intelligible in or by itself. If they could succeed
in removing the anarchy complained of, they would do so by ignorance,
not science, and harmonize all intelligences only by annihilating
them.

Nor is it true that the church has lost or abandoned her grand
synthetic doctrine, or that her synthesis has ceased to be complete,
or sufficiently comprehensive. Her doctrine is Christianity; and
Christianity leaves out no ancient or modern science; has not
been and cannot be outgrown by any actual or possible progress of
intelligence; for it embraces at once all the real and all the
knowable, _reale omne et scibile_. If the church fails to command
the adhesion of all minds, it is not because any minds have advanced
in science beyond her, or have attained to any truth or virtue she
has not; but because they have fallen below her, have become too
contracted and grovelling in their views to grasp the elevation and
universality of her doctrine. She still leads the civilized world,
and commands the faith and love of the really enlightened portion of
mankind. The reason why so many in our age refuse her their adhesion
is not because her doctrine or mode or manner of presenting it are
defective, but because they are engrossed with the development and
application of the physical or natural laws, or with the first or
initial cycle, and exhaust themselves in the production, exchange,
and accumulation of physical goods, which, however attractive to
the inchoate or physical man, are of no moral or religious value.
The cause is not in the church but in them; in the fact that their
minds and hearts are set on those things only after which the heathen
seek; and they have no relish for any truth that pertains to the
teleological or moral order.

The church does not object to the study of the natural or physical
sciences, nor to the accumulation of material wealth; but she does
object to making the initial order the teleological, and to the
cultivation of the sciences or study of the physical laws for their
own sake; for, with her, not knowledge but wisdom is the principal
thing. She requires the physical and psychological sciences to
be cultivated for the sake of the ultimate end of man, and in
subordination to the Christian law which that end prescribes. So of
material wealth; she does not censure its production, its exchange,
or its accumulation, if honestly done, and in subordination to the
end for which man is created. What she demands of us is that we
conform to the Creator's plan, and esteem things according to their
true order and place in that plan. She tolerates no falsehood in
thought, word, or deed.

The natural is not suppressed or injured by being subordinated to the
supernatural, for it can be fulfilled only in the supernatural. We
find the indications of this in nature herself. There are, indeed,
theologians who talk of a natural beatitude; but whether possible
or not, God has not so made us that we can find our beatitude in
nature; that is, in the creature or a created good. He has made us
for himself, and the soul can be satisfied with nothing less. This
is the great fact elaborated by Father Hecker in his _Questions of
the Soul_, and his _Aspirations of Nature_. In the first work, he
shows that the soul asks questions which nature cannot answer, but
which are answered in the supernatural; in the second, he shows
that nature desires, craves, aspires to, and has a capacity for, the
supernatural; that the soul is conscious of wants which only the
supernatural can fill. Man has, as St. Thomas teaches, a natural
desire to see God in the beatific vision; that is, to see him as he
is in himself; to be like him, to partake of his divine nature, to
possess him, and be filled with him. This alone can satisfy the soul,
and hence holy Job says, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy
likeness."

There can be no real antagonism between the natural and the
supernatural; for there can be none between nature and its Creator,
and equally none between it and its fulfilment, or supreme good.
There is none, we have shown, between reason and faith, any more
than there is between the eye and the telescope, which extends its
range of vision, and enables it to see what it could not see without
it. There can be none between science and revelation; when the
science is real science and is cultivated not for itself alone, but
as a means to the true end of man; and there can be none between
earth and heaven, when the earth is regarded solely as a medium and
not confounded with the end. There can be none between liberty and
authority; for man can be man, possess himself, be himself, and
free only by living in conformity to the law of his existence, or
according to the plan of the Creator; and finally there can be none
between church and state, if the state remembers that it is in the
teleological order, and under the moral law, therefore subordinated
to the spiritual order.

We have passed over a great number of important questions, several
of which, on starting, we intended to consider, and some of which we
may take up hereafter; but we have given, we think, the principle
that solves the problem of the age, and shows that the dualism which
runs through and disturbs so many minds has no foundation either
in the teaching of the church or in the real order. The Creator's
works all hang together, are all parts of one uniform plan, and
the realization _ad extra_ of one divine thought, of which the
archetype is in his own infinite, eternal, and ineffable essence. The
trouble with men is, that many of them do not see that the church
is catholic, even when professing to believe it; because their own
minds are not catholic. They often suppose they are broader than the
church, because they are too narrow to see her breadth. They also
fancy that there are fields of science which they may cultivate which
lie beyond her catholicity, and concerning which they are under no
obligation to consult her. This shows that they understand neither
her catholicity nor the nature, conditions, and end of science. They
contract the church to their own narrow dimensions.

We conclude by saying that the men who undertake to criticise the
church, and to unchurch her, are men who want breadth, depth, and
elevation. They are mole-eyed, and have slender claims to be regarded
as really enlightened, large-minded, large-hearted men.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _The Christian Quarterly._ Cincinnati: Carroll & Co. July, 1869.
Art IV. Spirit of Romanism.




SACRED AMBITION.


    Hast thou indeed
      Sacred ambition,
    In word and deed
      Based on contrition?
    Pray low and long,
      Sowing and weeping;
    Promises strong
      Pledge thee thy reaping.

    Thus hast thou prayed?
      Wait then contented;
    Blessings delayed
      Are blessings augmented.
    Every thing proves
      Holy ambition
    Is what God loves
      Next to contrition.




TRANSLATED FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

PAGANINA.


XVIII.

We must not conclude that Master Swibert gave only a musical
education to his child. His instruction was solid, and intended,
beyond every thing, to develop in her a religious sentiment.

For metaphysics he had a love that years had not lessened. His
philosophy was very simple; a few lines could comprise it--only what
he took a liking to; and he never pretended to have invented it.

His soul exercised itself in applying every creature as a connection
with the Infinite. He said summarily that if a thinker could not so
comprehend things, he retarded his progress and lost his end.

Paganina could not always understand her father, but this did not
distress him. Like the good laborer, he sowed thickly the land he had
prepared, knowing well that much would be lost; but knowing, too,
that he would come, some day, and find the luxuriant verdure that
would repay his pains.

The young girl adopted with eagerness all that could elevate
character and ennoble life. Happy to repose in the artistic emotions
that shook her so deeply, she relaxed into the serene contemplation
of the truth toward which her father conducted her.


XIX.

Such, in its principal characteristics, is the life Paganina led
until she was twenty-two years of age. Her beauty had developed
radiantly. She held her head aloft, as one who looks on high; and
her eyes so sought the distance that she won the name of proud from
the good women who met her in their daily walks.

She never was without her father, and the contrast between the two
was painful. He was an old man--more from the effect of sickness than
old age; and although he appeared active, it was easy to see that,
undermined by an inward malady, he would soon be completely wrecked.

He felt it himself, and employed all his strength to instruct and
enlighten his daughter.

Without saddening her in advance, by announcing his approaching
malady, he endeavored to accustom her to a future separation, but she
could not comprehend it. The last thing in which youth can believe is
the rupture of holy affections. It never learns that such love can be
interrupted.

One day, Master Swibert and his daughter were seated at the turn
of the road, where they generally rested in their daily walk. The
organist returned to the subject with which his mind was always
preoccupied--that future in which he had no part--and finished by
saying, "My daughter, your cousin loves you. What he felt for you
here he has not lost by separation; his heart is devotedly yours. You
are all in all to him, and I have long understood his affection for
you. I should feel happy to know you returned his love."

Paganina, surprised, replied, "I love but you, my father; must
you leave me?" The organist replied by this verse of St. Paul,
"_Insipiens: tu quod seminas, non vivificatur, nisi prius moriatur_",
and Paganina, who did not know Latin, began to weep.

From this day, Master Swibert declined rapidly. He made what he
called his will; his last instructions, only to arm his daughter
for the struggles of life. He urged her to see, through him,
the immortality of the soul; so especially visible in the early
Christians, in the mournful hour when, their bodies, falling to ruin,
betrayed the interior flame that disengaged them from earth, to shine
for ever among the stars in unfading lustre.

After several days of agony, the good musician found his peroration.
He died.

It was morning. He had talked a long time with his daughter, and
the peace he enjoyed announced the end of the struggle. His large,
troubled eyes looked once more toward the mountain, on her, and on
his crucifix, then closed for ever.


XX.

The world--even the best of it--don't like to be entertained with the
sufferings of others; so I will not stop to relate those of Paganina.
I will pause longer on the chapter of her consolations. She drew
these from two sources, her memories and her labors.

Her memories were realities. She felt that her father had never
left her; and lived in his presence, meditating on and practising
his lessons. Her ardor for the study of her art redoubled. Often in
the silence of the night, at a late hour, her voice was heard by an
admiring crowd beneath her window. The young artist, without knowing
or desiring it, became popular.

She had other joys, too, which helped her to live her isolated
life. It is not of those of love I speak. Paganina did not know the
passion. She lived apart from the world, and her character became
half legendary. Fancy held play where love was excluded; and in the
regions of the ideal grew her immortal works, and their imperishable
beauty, to be shed on humanity.

Perhaps the memory of such things should only be intruded on the very
few; for it is said that often a ray from on high illuminated the
chamber where the young girl sat, and in that moment she felt a new
world tremble in her heart.


XXI.

Happiness is not the guest of earth. The miserable and deceptive
pleasure that pretends to this glorious name is a bait rather than
a food, and never nourishes any body. Therefore such moments as we
have spoken of are fugitive, and are mostly followed by exhaustion
and bitter disgust, which would be a good price for them, could such
moments be paid for. Paganina experienced the common law. She could
not live on ecstasy. Her days, therefore, were mingled and diverse.

I must relate the crisis of her life; but I turn with regret to
the chamber that sheltered her genius and her innocence. I see in
spirit--shut in this place--a treasure that no one was permitted to
contemplate; for Paganina bloomed in the shade, and reserved for her
solitude her beauty and the perfume of her loveliness.

Sometimes, only when debauch slept and idleness prolonged its useless
repose, the beautiful young girl appeared before her opened window.
Robed with the reflection of the aurora, she saluted the growing
day; and, as the antique statue, she exhaled divine harmony by
contact with its earliest rays.


XXII.

Having, not without success, terminated his musical studies, André
quitted Naples. His affection for his cousin had greatly increased.
Love sang in his heart; for, if we may borrow such an expression from
the poetical vocabulary, it assuredly belongs to a musician.

From the day he was free, he had but one desire--to see Paganina. He
set out with this intention, and restless regarding his reception.
Indeed, his future depended upon it.

During the journey, his thoughts went ahead, and heaped up every
imaginable supposition on the manner in which his cousin would
receive him; but she did not receive him at all. He entered a
deserted mansion.

He wandered among the deserted places, where every thing recalled the
days of his childhood. Death had passed by, and left, perhaps, some
unknown scourge. In his poignant distress, he imagined the worst.

Perhaps he did not deceive himself. Paganina was to appear the next
day at the theatre of Milan.

I must add that she was always worthy of her father, in the strictest
sense of the word; though for three months, it is true, in order
to prepare herself for the stage, she had mixed in the world of
the theatres, and, what is far worse, in the world of parasites,
insinuating themselves by every means and with every end. She
breathed a poisoned air in the incense of impure flatteries. Her
bitter contempt prevented its injuring her; but as soon as she was
free, she ran to conceal her wounds in a retreat where no one could
discover her.


XXIII.

     Extract from the _Gazette of Lombardy_, the 20th of September,
     18--.

     "Her father was German, her mother an Italian; her father belonged
     to the church, her mother to the theatre. Both were superior
     musicians. Such a birth could promise her a more than common
     destiny, and this birth had a singular predestination. She was
     born in the side-scenes of the theatre during a _soirée_, the
     memory of which is still fresh among us. Her first cries were
     drowned in the passionate strains of the violin of Paganini, and
     the bursts of admiration from his auditory. The little creature,
     as if in reply to the powerful invocation of the master, appeared
     before the hour fixed by nature.

     "This is all her history. From that hour she disappeared. Without
     doubt, the new-born vestal sought the retreat of the sacred fire.

     "To-day she returns to the place of her birth. The words are
     literally true; we will hear her this evening in La Scala.

     "I have desired to announce this _fête_. Let no one fail to be
     there, for I predict it will be an event.

     "My task is finished. I would like to describe this cantatrice,
     but she belongs to no formula. It would require two to express the
     dualism of which her person and character bear the imprint.

     "She seems to have received from her parents two natures which by
     turns inspire her. Even now we hear her pure and original voice
     mount to heaven; no breath of human passion seems to agitate it.
     We listen enchanted, lifted far above ourselves, and share the
     serenity, the peace she inspires; suddenly the air changes, the
     color mounts to her cheeks, passion absorbs her, and she bursts
     out in its most marvellous tones. I could see the spectre of the
     old Paganini grimacing by the side of his beautiful god-child, and
     goading on her enchained genius."


XXIV.

The result was as predicted. The young cantatrice excited immense
enthusiasm.

The Italians are quickly roused, and never sell the evidences of
their admiration. To show more than ordinary emotion, they invent
unheard-of and extravagant expressions.

When Paganina could withdraw from these ovations, the night was far
advanced; she took refuge in solitude.

Let us follow her. It will be curious to observe in her the
intoxication of applause, and see how she bore her first triumph--she
who had elicited such flattering testimony of love and admiration.

She wept, but not with happy emotions.

"My father," she cried, "my father, you are already revenged. To
punish me, you have fulfilled my desires. I wished for the clatter
of applause, for the tumult of bravos. I am satisfied already. Is it
for this, great God, that I have deserted thy ways? Is it for such
fugitive pleasure, whose bitterness I have known before even I have
tasted it? O happiness of solitude! ineffable family joys! where have
you fled?

"Those who have just applauded me little know the inexpressible
sadness that overcame me. For a moment despair drew tears to my
eyes. They thought it the triumph of my art--but I wept for thee,
my father; for thee, my childhood--and the peace of the old, happy
hours."

André at this moment appeared.


XXV.

He watched her in silence--he on the threshold, and she half turning
toward him proudly in her surprise.

André was the first to break the silence.

"Paganina," said he, "I come from the home that you have left. I
found the house deserted, and I went to seek you at the tomb of your
father."

"Yes," she replied with bitterness, "and you find me here in the garb
of a comedian. What do you wish with me?"

"I wish to snatch you from this cursed place; to fly with you so far
that you may forget this fatal evening, and again become obedient
to the voice of your father. Come, I will be your protector, your
guardian, your slave--until the day," he added in a lower voice,
"when I dare breathe to you my secret, and tell you that I love you."

"André, listen to me. I will speak to you sincerely. I wish to love
you. I swear to you I wish it. To quit this country, fly with you, go
into Germany and inhabit the house of my father, and there raise a
family, would be my happiness; but it can never be."

"The love I bear you, Paganina, has taken deep root. Near you alone
am I happy; but if it must be so, speak! If you have given your heart
to a man worthy of you, tell me, and destroy in me all hope for ever.
For you I can bear any thing. But if it is not so, do not answer me
yet. Wait; my humility may disarm you, and some day my patience may
end in moving your heart."

"No! my heart is but ashes; no affection blooms nor will bloom within
it. It is too late."

"Do not speak so, I beg of you. You do not know what the future has
in store for you, nor see the Providence that watches over you. It
has sent me to you, and with me the remembrance of happy years and
the presence of your father."

"The angel itself is not yet arrested in its fall. Go! let me hang
suspended between the heaven that is shut against me, and the abyss
whose depths I seek."

She burst into tears. André, after a silence, approached her.

"Paganina," said he, "do not weep. Come; see! the dawn already
whitens the fields. Let the God of the morning comfort you. The wind
rises forerunner of a new day. Bathe your forehead in its breath,
and respire with its penetrating odors the forgetfulness of your
sufferings. To-day, perhaps, will bring us back peace and happiness."

"No, to-day will be fatal. The beauty of the morning moves me no
longer; for me the evening fires, the flames of the foot-lights, the
_éclat_ of triumph. I will go from _fête_ to _fête_, from ovation
to ovation. I want the whirlpool of the world to seize and carry me
until I lose my health--and forget every thing. Immediately I set out
for the Château Sarrasin."

"Ah! this, then," cried André with a sudden explosion of passion,
"this, then, is the secret of your resistance and the avowal of your
shame. The public cry that brought me here had already warned me. I
refused to listen to it. Well, go; but fear every thing. You have
roused in me a monster that I knew not of."

And raising his hands to heaven, the unhappy one fled.


XXVI.

Paganina was calumniated by her cousin; she was pure, though it is
true she slid on a fatal declivity. Already appearances were against
her reputation. André was deceived; but he was not the only one;
and from thence the reports to which he had made allusion, and the
pretext of which will be explained.

The Count Ludovic, proprietor of the Château Sarrasin and actual
head of the house of the Ligonieri, inscribed in the golden book of
European aristocracy, was a man of proud appearances, endowed with
masculine beauty quite in accordance with his character; for he was
superior to his race, and possessed many noble qualities.

His life was not without stain; but even his faults bore that
chivalrous character that renders them honorable in the eyes of the
world. We well know that the code of the world is not that of the
saints.

And the Count Ludovic, who willingly mingled with the people of the
theatre, had known Paganina while she was preparing for her _début_.
At the first glance he had rightly judged the soul of the young
artist, and saw her superior to her companions.

His heart was touched. Penetrated with sincere sentiments, he
preserved in her presence an attitude of reserve and respect, and
his influence was secretly employed to isolate and protect her.
His manner toward her was observed; for it was not his usual way
of adding to the conquests for which he was famous. It might have
been believed a mutual admiration; but it is not well to credit the
judgments of one's neighbors.

The Count Ludovic wished to celebrate the _début_ of Paganina by one
of those _fêtes_ that an ostentatious tradition had preserved in his
family. He made important preparations at the Château Sarrasin and
sent out his invitations.

The delicate point was to gain for his project her who was the soul
of it; so he proposed it to her at the moment when she received
her first applause, trusting, no doubt, to her excitement and wish
for future conquests. He knew his auditory would be of the first
distinction; he knew his motive--but no matter.

The young girl, warned as if by instinct, feeling herself at the
fatal point of her destiny, made him no reply. The next day, under
the influence of her bad angel, she consented.


XXVII.

They set out alone in an open chariot. The Count Ludovic had proposed
for himself a gallant _tête-à-tête_, without, however, the desired
success; for all day long Paganina spoke not a word. Her wandering
looks were on the horizon, perhaps there to discover the mysterious
and avenging power with which she believed herself menaced.

Toward evening they arrived at Arèse. The young cantatrice was
recognized and applauded; but she appeared totally unconscious of
sight or sound, and maintained her obstinate silence. The count had
long since renounced all effort at conversation. He rather liked the
oddity of the adventure, and dreamed of the legend where the paladin
carried away his bride and wondered she was pale--so pale that she
was dead.

Meanwhile, the carriage labored on the declivity of the road to
Germany. The heat was excessive, not a breath stirred the air; but a
dull and heavy murmuring announced that the midday wind was pent up
in the higher mountain regions. The setting sun was red as blood. At
a turn of the road, Paganina shuddered, for she saw André on a rock
above them; she could never explain by what energy of passion he had
reached this point.

When the carriage neared him he seized the branch of a tree, and,
throwing it before the horses' feet, cried out, "Paganina, stop! or,
by the soul of thy father, be cursed for ever!" The Count Ludovic had
some difficulty in managing his frightened horses; he did not observe
that his companion was as pale as the bride of the paladin.

A little further on, in returning, he saw the same man in the same
place, illuminated by the burning sky, and pointing with the laugh of
a madman to the black mass of the Château Sarrasin.

The adventure was becoming more and more singular. The count
wondered what part this man took in this unheard-of drama.

He was too much the gentleman to betray any surprise; but he profited
by the incident to renew his efforts at conversation. "Do you know,"
he said to Paganina, "that these slight accidents might have had a
tragical ending? The horses we drive have already caused the death
of a man, and, like those of the fable, may be said to feed their
ferocity on human blood. The whip has never touched them. If it
had not been my pride to place at your disposal the most beautiful
equipage in the world, I should have hesitated to trust you to them."

Still she did not reply. But the moment was approaching when she
would speak, and in terrible words reveal her anguish.

The carriage entered the road that ended at the Château Sarrasin.
As we said before, this road descends by a steep and dangerous
declivity, and on the very edge of the precipice. The horses walked
quietly. Seizing the whip, Paganina struck them violently, crying out,

"Go on, then! Is it not said that you can lead to death?"

"To death, indeed!" cried the count, surprised and alarmed. "In this
road, and at this hour, a miracle only can save us."

The horses, breathing fire, made frightful bounds, leaving starry
tracks behind them. The stones rolled heavily into the abyss. The few
inhabitants of these solitudes, stopping on the borders of the road,
looked on pale and as in a dream, to see this fantastic chariot drawn
by such furious horses, while a young girl, standing, and her hair
flying in the wind, lashed them on to desperation.

If it needed a miracle to save them, this miracle took place. The
team stopped; upset the carriage on the steps of the château. One
of the horses was killed, the carriage broken to pieces. The count
sprang up safe and sound, his first inquiry for Paganina.

"I am here," she replied; "the hand of God has led us hither."

With her intention, such words were blasphemy; but she spoke in
delirium.


XXVIII.

Paganina, leaning on the arm of the count, promenades with him the
highest terrace. The guests, in groups at a distance, regard them
with hungry eyes.

A hot and violent wind agitates the half-stripped trees. The clouds
traverse the sky hurriedly and quickly, and their moving shadows rest
on the mountains. The moon, disengaging itself here and there, throws
its pure light on the white form of the young girl. She seems to grow
in the estimation of the admirers who seek her.

The Count Ludovic is strangely moved. His sincere sentiments are
rekindled by the newness of the situation, and the strangeness of
the adventure. He thanks his companion for having, at one stroke,
played with their two lives. Exalted and nervous, enervated with the
perfume of the life that she had so nearly lost only a few moments
before, Paganina replies to him. The observers of the scene listen
attentively. Detached from the murmur of the distant storm, their
words are heard for a moment, but the tempest again arises and
carries them away in its roar. Yes, ardent and mysterious breath,
bear away these words of irony, of revolt, and of despair--bear afar
the bitter laugh that accompanies them.

For a long time, O powerful voice! have men listened to your painful
harmony. Long have you roamed the earth, picking up the notes of
grief, the cries of the new-born, the sobs of mothers, the sighs of
the dying, and the groaning of the crowds who groan and groan on. But
never, never have you borne away any thing more sad or desolate than
the laugh of this unhappy child.


XXIX.

The night advances. Already the moon has commenced to decline. Some
of the invited ones have retired; others, grouped here and there,
seated or half-extended, are sleeping in the hot breath of the storm.
There are two powers that watch--Paganina and the tempest, and the
thunder rolls and shakes the mountains.

Silent and isolated, Paganina looks at the shadow of the Château
Sarrasin. She sees it advance and recede. She thinks of the legend of
this cursed place--so fatal to the honor of women. And yet fate has
led her there--the gulf is yawning for her. She advances; she will
enter never there.

A cry is heard; the sleepers, wakened suddenly, run to and fro, pale
and frightened. They find Paganina fainting and covered with blood.
A deep wound is found in her throat. The count sustains her, and in
a voice thundering above the tempest orders his people to seize the
assassin.

The assassin was André!

When they wished to carry the wounded one into the Château Sarrasin,
she could not speak, but betrayed, in signs of such mortal terror,
her repugnance to enter, that they were obliged to relinquish the
idea.

She said since, at the moment that the doors opened to make way
for her, she again saw the scene which, several years before, had
so forcibly struck her. Nothing was wanting; the brightness of the
light, or the luxury of the dress. All the actors were there,
all--but they were hideous skeletons; they still made gestures of
applause, while above them, the woman with the green diamond showed a
livid face, the eyes extinct, and an open mouth, from which no sound
proceeded.

Paganina was laid on a litter and carried to Arèse.

André followed her, chained, and guarded from sight. They arrived
next morning.

It is said the infuriated crowd rushed upon the assassin and his
guard, and obliged them to fly for their lives. Paganina had him
brought to her, took him by the hand, and so passed through the moved
and disarmed assemblage.


XXX.

For a long time her life was despaired of. A burning fever consumed
her. Her sufferings were such as belonged to her thirsty nature. She
experienced the most terrible of earthly tortures; and prayed in her
delirium for a stream of water to flow into her parched lips.

Her moral sufferings were still greater. Every evening she became the
prey to a terrible hallucination, that she regarded as the punishment
of her wish for popularity; she saw herself raised far above an
immense crowd, and this crowd becoming by turns insulting and
mocking. Its waves of fury flowed and reflowed at the feet of their
victim, and covered her with their froth. Paganina, in despair, would
have thrown herself into this shoreless tide; but in vain; she felt
herself enchained to her height, and obliged to wait for the rays of
morning to dissipate her phantoms.

These two features suffice to characterize her malady, which was
moral as well as physical. Its intensity lasted during the winter
months. In the spring only she appeared to be restored to health, but
the blow had been a severe one, and the rest of her life was merely a
prolonged convalescence.


XXXI.

But suffering in silence accomplished its work. Her long confinement
had curbed if not wholly subdued her ardent nature, and those who
thought to find the revived Paganina on the declivity where they had
left her, were greatly mistaken.

Their surprise was greater, too, as no indication had prepared them
for the change. The work in her soul was well and firmly done, and
she remained calmly impenetrable to her friends, until there escaped
from her, in spite of herself, a jet of revealing flame.

The Count Ludovic had never ceased his attentions during her illness.
His passion, far from weakening, had grown stronger during his
separation. When he could be admitted to her presence, he expressed
his sentiments, perhaps, too tenderly; he who knew her, knew of what
sudden movements and prompt returns she was capable, strove with
all his energy, but remained confounded. Not without reason, for so
Paganina answered him:

"Since the day when I first heard all you have just repeated to me,
I have stood on the borders of eternity. New lights have been shed
on all things since then; do not be surprised that my language is no
longer the same.

"It must be true that you place yourself in very high and me in very
low esteem! Do you consider my honor a worthy prey for your vanity?
Do you not think that a few days of pleasure might be too well paid
for by my past and my future? What, then, do you wish? You ask that
I abjure the past, that I sacrifice to you my whole future, and even
more! My immortal soul is what you would wish to debase. And in a few
days you would give me, in exchange, your contempt, to run, freer and
more honored than ever, into new pleasures. This is what you wish,
and yet you say you love me.

"Good God! what might I have been to-day, if heaven had not arrested
me--and what am I now?

"Ah! forgive me; I have lost the right to be severe. Words of blame
or bitterness should not come from my lips. No, it is myself I
despise; and this contempt, to which I am consecrated, plunges into
my heart a poisoned iron. It oppresses, it stifles me, and leaves for
my punishment the life I hate.

"Count Ludovic, you are the son of chevaliers. I know at the bottom
of your heart is the nobility of your ancestors. Adieu; we have met
for the last time."

And the count, retiring on this command, lost his reputation for a
man of gallantry.


XXXII.

It was Easter-Sunday, the feast of eternal life. The sun shed through
the clouds its humid rays, the trees--clothed in new verdure and
brightly agitated--sent forth their sweet and subtle perfumes.

Paganina, still weak, was placed by the open window; she turned
toward the church her eyes, grown larger in suffering, and listened
to the notes of the feast, weakened by the distance. When Faust heard
such songs the poisoned cup fell from his hands. In his desperation
he believed no longer in God. The earth had reclaimed him. Heaven was
going to reconquer Paganina.

The angels, approaching her, brought back a world of innocent and
gentle memories; she wept.

At this moment the bells, pealing their joyous notes, announced the
end of the ceremony.

The virgins, clothed in white, quitted the church in silent swarms.
Paganina saw them pass before her in a vision, for they appeared
in groups of such supernatural beauty that she was thrown into an
ecstasy.

She saw them leave the second banquet--some retiring sweetly within
themselves, as slender stalks bending under the weight of the
heavenly dew; others, pale, with foreheads high and open, and eyes
pure and ardent. They crossed their arms on their breasts, the better
to guard their treasure. All wore the trace of that fire which for
eighteen hundred years has marked the victory of the virgins and the
martyrs. The ray of divine beauty which fell on these figures was
reflected back on Paganina; her soul was transfixed and vanquished
for ever.

She rose, and standing, pale as her long white vestments, she prayed:

"Thou seekest me again, my God; behold! I come. To thee I return,
and with the frightful experience of the darkness of oblivion, and
penetrated with the horror of those places where thou art not.

"Thou art witness that, before I abandoned the heights where thou
residest, I sustained an infernal struggle. That day my vision was
lowered, the dragon of the abyss mounted toward me, to drag me to its
depths.... Thy angels have fallen, my God! But while they are lost
for ever, why, why am I reclaimed?

"I come trembling in thy light. Do not reject thy victim; acknowledge
the blood-stain with which thou hast marked me to save me, I hope;
let me again contemplate thy eternal beauty. Thy beauty, my Lord, I
must see. I thirst for it; one of its bright rays has shone before
me, and the world has nothing more to offer.

"My last hour will be the hour of my deliverance; I wait for it.
Accept the offering of a broken life, whose failing forces will be
employed to repair the evil I have done. And thou, my father, I bless
thee, because I may yet sleep again in thy bosom."


XXXIII.

The day fixed for the trial of André having arrived, a great mass of
people pressed around the court of justice. In the memory of man, no
celebrated cause had ever attracted so great a multitude. At every
hour, the waves of the crowd mounted higher and higher against the
walls of the palace. When it was known that Paganina would appear
to give her testimony, such tumult and agitation arose that the
judges were obliged to suspend proceedings. Calm being somewhat
reëstablished, the president called Paganina to testify against the
assassin. Then, without raising her eyes, in a low and trembling
voice, which ran shuddering through the crowd, she answered, "He
saved my honor!" Twice she said it, and when the president, renewing
his interrogation, menaced her with the penalties of the law if she
refused her testimony, she fixed upon him a steady gaze and repeated
in a strong voice,

"He saved my honor!"

At these words there was a shout of enthusiasm. Men threw their caps
into the air, and cried, "Hurrah!" Women wept and were agitated; and
André, sobbing aloud, held out to her his trembling hands.

It is easily known he was acquitted.


XXXIV.

Soon after, a strange, unheard-of rumor was afloat. They said the
Count Ludovic asked Paganina in marriage. The Count Ludovic! This
flower of nobility, this last of an antique chivalry, condescend to
propose to an actress, and tarnish his escutcheon! It was not to be
believed. But the evidence was excellent. He said so himself, and
even rudely, to the unlucky flatterers who thought to make capital
out of the enormity of the story.

We can conceive the emotion was great, and spread rapidly.

Things stood so, when two other pieces of news, following closely on
this, caused it to be forgotten.

And these were, first, that the demand of the Count Ludovic was
not acceded to; the second, that his preferred rival was André, an
obscure musician with a weak brain; and, even worse than that, that
all his merit rested in his attempt at the assassination of the
object of his passion.

I give the facts in their entire simplicity. Truth is worth more
than its resemblance; so any extenuation, any covering of phrases,
would be useless, and neither make them accepted nor understood
by practical people--those who judge every thing from their own
stand-point, and name it so well "common sense."

Paganina wished to repair the evil of which she was the cause. She
found "at her hand" the sacrifice she desired.

From the terrible night passed at the Château Sarrasin, André had
never resumed the complete use of his reason. To have the right
to devote herself to him, his cousin married him; surrounded him
with every care, and watched over the flame of his vacillating
intelligence with a love more maternal than conjugal. In our
existence, many things are strange. She never seemed the wife of
André. She lived with him as a sister. And can you imagine what
was her life, _tête-à-tête_ with an idiot? Calculate the energy to
sustain, and the patience to calm him.

When the spectres of madness approached the poor invalid, warned by
his cries of terror, Paganina ran to him. Her presence, and the sound
of her voice, dispelled the phantoms. Delivered from his terrors, he
threw himself at her feet, covered her hands with kisses and tears,
and invoked her as his angel, swearing to her inviolable obedience.

Since King David's time, we all know the power of music to dispel the
spirits of darkness. Paganina made use of it, and found consolation
in the mingled studies that brought her cousin such relief. So even
they had hours of happiness.

The genius, too, of Paganina was not entirely lost to her
contemporaries. She was heard once in Milan, in a religious ceremony;
and once again in Germany, where she had gone, nearly two years after
her marriage, to make, with André, a pilgrimage to the house of her
father. For her it was the song of the swan, for her exhausted and
uncertain life went out soon afterward.

This song of songs will reveal her last thoughts and conclude her
history.


XXXV.

In one of those festivals which are the noble pleasure and the glory
of Germany, an oratorio was to be given for the first time, the
expectation of which excited a passionate impatience.

This composition, called _The Angels' Fall_, is due to a musician
whose name will descend to the latest posterity, carried onward by
the tempests his genius has evoked.

The part of the archangel Lucifer was awarded to Paganina. These
phlegmatic Germans, when they give themselves to enthusiasm, lose all
bounds; and Paganina might have been satisfied could she have known
her success; but her soul was elsewhere.

This oratorio was divided into three parts. The first expressed
heaven. If there is any thing in this world that can make man see
what his eyes cannot, and understand what his ears have never heard,
it is music; for the true musician knows that such harmony, quitting
earth, mounts to the vaults of paradise, where it wakens the echoes
that have nothing of earth, and falls again on us--the messenger of
hope and consolation.

Paganina's _rôle_, in this part, was less important than in that
which followed. Her voice was rarely detached from the whole; but now
and then two or three dazzling notes rose through the harmony, and
the transported auditors believed they saw the fluttering wings of
the archangel already hovering on the eternal heights.

I will say nothing of the second part, although several found it
superior to the two others, on account of the sombre energy, the
terrible power with which is rendered the insurrection of the rebel
angels.

Paganina should have been perfectly at her ease, to display here the
richness of her voice--this voice which, in other parts, rang as a
trumpet of gold and brass. But these accents of revolt choked her,
and here she was unequal. She would soon surpass herself in the last
air.

The composer, by one of those happy mistakes from which the best
works grow, forgot the tradition. His angels were not thunder-struck
in their pride, and shrieking in blasphemy; but vanquished. They
were condemned, and wept. They weep for the heaven they have lost.
Admiration believed there was nothing more to expect; but here
the master recalls his power, reanimates his genius, and finds an
inspiration supreme to chant the farewell to infinite happiness of
the guilty phalanx.

The sobs of the orchestra and chorus are heard alternately, and the
voice of the archangel rises once again. At this moment, Paganina
sang her last air on earth with an intensity of love and grief that
cannot be described.

No, Paganina! one who can so weep has not lost heaven.

Those who saw her then will never forget her. In this high-vaulted
room, lofty as a church, she stood above the others, in a long black
robe covered with stars. Her beauty was that of an archangel.

As she finished, a ray of sunlight, streaming through the red glass,
and sparkling as the flaming sword that forbade the entrance into
Eden, rested a moment at her feet and expired.




THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.


Now that the attention of the Catholic world is directed to the
coming Ecumenical Council, and various questions are asked about
the nature and the probable effects of such a meeting, one's eyes
naturally turn to the latest general synod of the church. The history
of the Council of Trent is, indeed, of great interest. "Than it,"
says its accomplished historian, Pallavicini, "no preceding council
was more distinguished for length of duration, for the definition of
important dogmas, for the efficient reformation of manners and laws;
none hindered by greater obstacles, none more patient and accurate
in discussion, none more highly praised by friends, or more bitterly
censured by opponents."[2] A review of the history of this great
council, its work, and its results, will not be out of place, at this
time and in these pages.

The so-called Reformation was different from any other heresy that
had attacked the church of God in this, that it impugned the vital
principle of church authority. Other heresiarchs had denied one or
another dogma; Luther and his followers denied the existence of any
authority to define dogmas. Other schismatists had rebelled against
the governing power, but, even in their rebellion, had admitted
its existence, though they might wish to curtail its powers, or to
dispute its legitimate possession; the reformers declared that there
was no external authority appointed of God to govern the spiritual
affairs of men. "The combat," says D'Aubigné, "was to be to the
death. It was not the abuses of the pontiff's authority Luther had
attacked. At his bidding, the pope was required to descend meekly
from his throne, and become again a simple pastor or bishop on the
banks of the Tiber." And his pastoral or episcopal charge was not
to be recognized as delegated from God, but given to him by the
consent of the faithful. Real church authority was utterly denied;
it was not its exercise, but its very existence that was brought
into question. As Dr. Ewer puts it, "This was the meanest mode of
attack" to Christianity. "Protestantism made an ally of the Bible,
and with it flew at the church to destroy her. Satan ... picked his
men.... Protestantism, making an ally of the Bible, succeeded not
in reforming the church, but in attacking and destroying her in
many lands."[3] Against such a rebellion the church had to put on
her strongest armor. No mere outworks were attacked; the strongest
citadel, the key to the whole position, was the object of deadly
assault. The lines of attack were twofold. It was said that the
church, under the guidance of the pontiffs of Rome, had fallen away
from the true faith, and proposed superstitious errors and mere human
inventions to the belief of her children. It was furthermore charged
that she had become horribly deformed in morals, a very sink of
iniquity, instead of that spotless and stainless bride whom Christ
had laved in his blood. The intricate and difficult questions of
original sin, its nature, its effects, its remedy--the justification
of the sinner--were again opened and discussed with force and
acrimony, if not with discretion and candor. The whole sacramental
system was practically denied; the altar and the priesthood removed;
and the church, as it is seen by the eyes of men, reduced to a mere
voluntary association of believers, for which indefectibility,
infallibility, or authority could not by any means be claimed. The
Bible was appealed to in support of these novel statements, and to
each one's private judgment was generously granted the privilege of
securely interpreting the sacred page. The new doctrine flattered
the vanity of the human intellect; and there were found many not
unwilling to sit as judges where they had before stood as hearers;
to leave the humble bench of the scholar for the magisterial chair
of the religious teacher. The constant attacks on real or pretended
abuses added greatly to the temporary success of the reformers.
Against these (to borrow an expression from Hallam) "Luther bellowed
in bad Latin." That there was much to be reformed, the numerous
decrees of the Council of Trent leave us no room to doubt. It is
also clear that it would have been well for the church had prompter
remedies taken away in advance the specious pretext of the turbulent
Augustinian. But it pleased her Divine Head to permit that the wrong
should continue to thrive, and, when the time of trial came, many
gave as an excuse for their falling off, the scandals which they
alleged could no longer be endured. A glance at the history of the
times will, however, show how flimsy was such a pretext. The scandals
of the lives of the seceders and their immediate followers contrast
darkly with the honest reforms of Trent, and the dissoluteness which
was the immediate result of the revolution, taken in connection
with the acknowledged improvement inside of the church, would lead
one to suppose that the authors and abettors of the real abuses had
abandoned the ancient fold, and betaken themselves to freer and more
congenial pastures. Of his own party, Luther, as quoted by Döllinger,
said:

     "Our evangelicals are now sevenfold more wicked than they were
     before. In proportion as we hear the Gospel, we steal, lie, cheat,
     gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven
     out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from
     the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants,
     their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of
     his menaces."

Of the old church, Henry Hallam says:

     "The decrees of the Council of Trent were received by the
     spiritual princes of the empire in 1566, 'and from this moment,'
     says the excellent historian who has thrown most light on this
     subject, 'began a new life for the Catholic Church in Germany.'...
     Every method was adopted to revive an attachment to the ancient
     religion, insuperable by the love of novelty or the force of
     argument. A stricter discipline and subordination was introduced
     among the clergy; they were early trained in seminaries, apart
     from the sentiments and habits, the vices and the virtues of the
     world. The monastic orders resumed their rigid observances."[4]

Luther, anticipating his condemnation by Pope Leo X., appealed in
1518 to a general council, a course, we may remark, frequently
taken by heretics, if for nothing else, at least to gain time to
enroll followers, and thus increase in importance, before the
final condemnation. The diet of Nuremberg, in 1522, in answer to
the conciliatory and truly apostolic communication of Pope Adrian
VI., through his nuncio, Cheregat, requested his holiness to call a
council in some city of Germany, with the double object of a thorough
reformation, and of devising means of resistance to the menacing
advances of the Turkish power. Adrian died before he could take any
action on the subject, and the new pontiff, Clement VII., did not
receive the proposal with favor. According to Pallavicini, he feared
that under the actual circumstances the council would only aggravate
the evil, especially if the fathers should revive the pretensions
of their predecessors of Constance and Basle, an apprehension very
prevalent at that time at Rome, and, it must be admitted, not
altogether groundless; besides, the war then raging between Charles
V. and Francis I., from whose dominions most of the bishops were to
come, rendered the possibility of a successful convocation almost
hopeless; and, lastly, the demand was for a council which would
satisfy Luther and his party; namely, one in which any one that
might choose, even laymen, should be allowed to take part, and the
pontiff should lay aside his high prerogatives, and sit as a simple
bishop. He consequently instructed his legate, Campeggi, that it was
impossible to call a council until the conclusion of peace between
the two great princes of Europe, offering, at the same time, to carry
out the measures of reform decreed by the council of Lateran, held
not long before by Leo X., and to provide by his own authority proper
remedies on other points. The unfortunate war in which Clement became
afterward involved with Charles V. delayed for some time all question
of holding a council; but, with the return of peace, the negotiations
were resumed, and at a consultation held in Bologna, in 1533, between
the pontiff and the emperor, the former agreed to convoke the council
within six months from the acceptation of certain very equitable
conditions by all interested. But the Protestant princes of Germany,
in a meeting at Smalcald, (1533,) refused to accept the two first
conditions, "that the council should be free, and be held after the
manner of the ancient general councils; and that those who wished to
take part in it should promise beforehand to obey its decrees;" a
refusal which justified, in part at least, the fears of the pontiff.
He did not, however, desist, and was engaged in negotiations on the
subject until his death, (September 25th, 1534.) His successor, Paul
III., had never shared his fears, and, soon after his elevation,
sent nuncios to the various princes to promote the speedy convocation
of the council. In point of fact, he did convoke it, appointing
Mantua, which had been agreed on by the emperor and the Catholic
princes of Germany, as the place, and the 23d day of May, 1537,
as the time, of the meeting. It is useless minutely to detail the
obstacles placed in the way of the great event by the Duke of Mantua
and others, the selection of Vicenza, the suspension of the council,
and the bootless legation of Contarini to the diet of Ratisbon. At
last, as the pontiff himself says, in his bull of convocation:

     "While we awaited the hidden time, the time of thy good pleasure,
     O God! we were compelled to say that when we take counsel
     concerning things sacred, and pertaining to Christian piety, every
     time is pleasing to God. Wherefore, seeing, to our great sorrow,
     that the condition of Christendom was every day becoming worse,
     Hungary oppressed by the Turks, the Germans themselves in danger,
     and all the rest of Europe seized with fear and sadness--we
     determined no longer to wait on the consent of any prince, but
     to regard solely the will of Almighty God and the good of the
     Christian commonwealth."

To satisfy the Germans, he selected Trent as the place of meeting,
though he himself would have preferred some city of Italy nearer
Rome. But new obstacles arose, and the council, though convoked
for the feast of All Saints, (November 1st, 1542,) was not opened
until December 13th, 1545. Even then, it was necessary to commence
with a very small attendance of prelates. At the first session
there were present, besides the legates of the apostolic see
and the Cardinal Bishop of Trent, only four archbishops, twenty
bishops, and five general superiors of religious orders.[5] But it
was thought better to make a beginning, even though the number
of fathers was lamentably small, especially since, according to
ancient ecclesiastical usage, a council, legitimately convoked by
the apostolic see, legitimately celebrated under its presidency, and
approved by its authority, is ecumenical, even though many of the
bishops called to it were either unable or unwilling to take part in
its deliberations.

Bishops in greater number gradually found their way to the assembly,
and seven sessions were held in succession, the last on March 3d,
1547, so that the deliberations of this period of the council lasted
over fourteen months. The work of reformation was commenced, together
with the dogmatical definitions, and the same plan was followed
throughout. On March 11th, the eighth session was held; but the
only business transacted was the passing of a decree transferring
the council to Bologna, the reason assigned being an epidemic, the
existence of which in Trent was declared to be a matter of notoriety,
and which had already caused some prelates to leave that city, others
to protest against a further sojourn. Many fathers obeyed the decree,
and the congregations were held regularly in Bologna. The Emperor
Charles V. did not, however, relish this transfer from a city of his
dominions to one under the temporal jurisdiction of the pope, and
he detained at Trent the prelates from his states. The result was
that, after two formal sessions, the synod was prorogued, "at the
pleasure of the Sacred Council," on September 14th, 1547, and the
remainder of the pontificate of Paul III. was spent in fruitless
negotiations for its resumption. Paul died on November 10th, 1549, of
whom Pallavicini says: "By his inordinate affection for his family,
he showed himself to be only a man; for the rest, he has deserved in
the church the name of hero."[6] His successor was Julius III., who
as Cardinal del Monte had presided over the council in the quality
of first legate apostolic. His first care was to reopen the sacred
synod, and he immediately sent nuncios to the emperor and the French
king, to bring about this desired result. The stand taken by Charles
for Trent made it advisable again to select that city, and Julius
was enabled, on December 1st, 1550, to publish a bull appointing
the first day of May of the ensuing year for the reassembling of
the council. The first session (eleventh of the whole series) was
accordingly held on that day, but, to give time to the Germans to
arrive, no business was transacted, September 1st being appointed for
the next session. Meanwhile, the preparatory work went on, and on
the appointed day, the archbishop, electors of Mayence and Treves,
and many other prelates being present, another session was held, in
which it was determined to wait until October 11th, for other bishops
of Germany and other nations, who were known to be on their way. The
thirteenth session was celebrated on this day, and it was followed
by three others, in all of which important canons and decrees were
passed. But civil war had broken out in Germany, and Maurice of
Saxony, at the head of a Protestant army, in league with the French
king, had occupied Augsburg and menaced Innspruch, where Charles
held his court, and whence he soon afterward retired. It was not to
be wondered at that the fathers in the neighboring city of Trent
should wish to shun a danger before which even the great emperor was
obliged to retreat, and, in the sixteenth session, held on April
28th, 1552, a decree was passed suspending the celebration of the
council for two years, providing, however, that in case of a speedy
return of peace it might be resumed sooner. Pressed by his enemies,
Charles agreed to the pacification of Passau, which promulgated a
kind of toleration of both the old and the new religion. It also
provided for a diet of the empire, in which the question was to be
discussed whether an ecumenical council, or a national synod, or
a conference, or an imperial diet, afforded the surest method of
settling the existing religious differences. This, of course, put
off the council again. Meanwhile, Julius III. died on March 23d,
1555. His former colleague in the apostolic legation to the council
under Paul III., Cardinal Cervini, succeeded him in the pontificate;
but death summoned him on the twenty-second day of his reign. The
austere, zealous, but by no means prudent Cardinal Caraffa was the
next choice of the Sacred College. The career of Paul IV. affords a
singular example of the fallacy of human expectations. Before his
election, he was a subject of the emperor, (he was a Neapolitan
by birth;) in the pontificate, he waged war against Charles, son
and successor; himself pure and above all suspicion, his reign
was disgraced by the worst form of nepotism, so that, under his
successor, his nephews, one of them a cardinal, died the death of
malefactors; a great and really zealous promoter of reform, he took
no steps to reassemble the council. Nor indeed could he. He was for
the greater part of his reign at war with Philip II., successor of
Charles V., in the latter's hereditary dominions, and he would never
recognize Ferdinand as Charles's legitimate successor in the empire,
on account of the part taken by that prince in the pacification of
Passau. Yet so opposed was he to heresy, that he had recalled from
England the gentle and prudent Cardinal Pole, and was about to
summon him to Rome to purge himself of the suspicion of heresy, and
he actually imprisoned, on a similar suspicion, Cardinal Morone, who
was destined to be the moving spirit, as he was the actual president
of the last sessions of the great council. Paul died on August 18th,
1559. He was an excellent ecclesiastic, conspicuous for learning and
virtue, and in less troubled times would have been a successful, as
he was a holy pontiff. But, to quote Pallavicini, "he was braver
in punishing crime, no matter how high the criminal, than prudent
in preventing it. He took the amplitude of his sacred power as the
proper measure of its exercise."[7] He waged war, however, on abuses,
and was a severe ecclesiastical disciplinarian. His whole pontificate
is a proof of the uselessness, not to say positive evil, in persons
in high position, of determination, zeal, vigor, unless tempered by
discretion, prudence, and meekness. His successor, Cardinal Medici,
who took the name of Pius IV., a learned and virtuous prelate,
though not so remarkable for natural parts or austere asceticism,
accomplished much more for the glory of God and the good of Holy
Church.

The new pontiff immediately turned his attention to the council. He
had three princes of first class to deal with--the Emperor Ferdinand,
and the kings of France and Spain. This last and the emperor desired
the council to be reassembled at Trent; but the French sovereign
objected to this place on account of its want of accommodations and
unhealthy air, but especially because the Protestants had already
commenced to hate the name, and proposed Constance. But at last
the pontiff obtained the unanimous consent of all the Catholic
princes of Europe for Trent, and on November 29th, 1560, issued a
bull appointing Easter Sunday of the coming year for the reopening
of the council. He sent his legates to Trent, and many prelates
soon arrived; the congregations and other preparatory meetings were
held; but the troubles in France, on the succession of Charles IX.,
prevented the arrival of the French bishops. At last, on January
18th, 1562, was held, with unusual solemnity, the first session
under Pius IV., (seventeenth of the whole series,) at which there
were present, besides the apostolic legates and the Cardinal of
Trent, one hundred and six bishops, four mitred abbots, and four
generals of religious orders. From this happy day, the council went
on with its appointed work without any interference. There were
grave discussions, sometimes warm and prolonged, but always ending
in peace and harmony. The French bishops arrived, before the end of
the year, under the leadership of the illustrious Charles of Guise,
Cardinal of Lorraine. At last, to use the words of Jerome Ragazzoni,
Bishop of Nazianzen, and coadjutor of Famagosta, orator at the last
session, "the day arrived which Paul III. and Julius III. had yearned
for, but which it was not given to them to see--a gladness reserved
to Pius IV.--on which the Council of Trent, commenced long before,
often interrupted, and sometimes transferred, was at last, thanks to
God's great mercy, happily ended, to the great and unspeakable joy
of all classes of men." The twenty-fifth and last session was held
on December 3d and 4th, 1563. There were present at it four cardinal
legates of the apostolic see, two other cardinals, those of Trent and
Lorraine, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, one hundred and
sixty-eight bishops, thirty-nine procurators of prelates legitimately
absent, seven abbots, and seven generals of religious orders--making,
in all, two hundred and fifty-five prelates, whose signatures are
attached to the decrees. Amid the festive acclamations, composed
and intoned by the Cardinal of Lorraine, tears of joy testified the
gladness of all hearts; opponents embraced one another, no longer
rivals, but brethren; the _Te Deum_ was sung with feelings of the
deepest gratitude; and as the first legate, Morone, having given his
solemn blessing to the fathers, bade them, in the name of the supreme
pontiff, go in peace, the last solemn act of the great council was
performed. The whole time, from the first session under Paul III. to
the last under Pius IV., was within a few days of eighteen years;
but that actually occupied by the council was four years and about
eight months. The canons and decrees, both in faith and discipline,
were solemnly approved, at the request of the fathers, by "the most
blessed Roman pontiff," Pius IV., as the council styled him, on
January 25th, 1564; and, by a subsequent bull, they were declared
obligatory on the whole church, from the first day of May of the same
year.

This historical sketch will serve to give some idea of the
difficulties the work of the council had to encounter. Whatever may
be said in the abstract of the union of church and state, their
relations in the sixteenth century were very unsatisfactory. Popes
Paul III., Julius, and Pius wanted a general council; but it was
very difficult so to arrange matters as to obtain the necessary
consent of all the Catholic powers, and this difficulty always
afforded an excuse for delay when delay was really desired. Then
there were courtiers at Rome "to whose ears the word reform sounded
harsh," as Pallavicini says; and who were suddenly animated by the
most ardent zeal in defence of the prerogatives of the holy see,
which, they alleged, would be unduly curtailed by the council. But
the firmness of the pontiffs, under the grace of God, which never
abandons his church, brought these machinations to nought. They
refused to interfere to save their dependents from a thorough reform;
and Pius IV., especially, declared that he left full liberty to
the fathers in the matter. And in a discourse in the Consistory of
Cardinals, on December 30th, 1563, he expressly thanked the fathers
"for the religious zeal and resolute freedom with which they had
spared no labor, no care, to remove all heresies and corruptions."
"We are also," he continued, "not a little indebted to them for
having been so moderate and indulgent in the work of reformation, in
regard to our own affairs, (that is, the papal court,) that, had we
preferred to take this duty on ourselves, and not commit it to their
discretion, we should certainly have been more severe. Wherefore, as
salutary measures have been adopted, it is our firm determination
forthwith to carry the reform into effect by the observance of the
decrees of the sacred synod. We shall rather, when necessary, make up
by our own diligence for the moderation and leniency of the fathers;
so far are we from wishing to neglect or diminish one iota."[8] And
he appointed Cardinals Morone and Simonetta, both legates to the
council, to see that nothing was done by any of the papal officials
in contravention of the so lately approved decrees. The courtiers
had to submit, and the court of Rome since that day has given little
or no occasion for serious complaint, and certainly no pretext for
a schism under the name of reform. Another difficulty arose from
the multitude of counsellors, and the liberty left in discussion.
Now that the council has passed into history, it is pleasant to see
that such ample freedom was allowed; but it must have been sometimes
a sore task for the legates to keep order. They well deserved
the encomium of Ragazzoni, "You have been our excellent leaders
and directors in action. You have used incredible patience and
diligence in guarding against any violation of our liberty, either
in speaking or in legislating. You have spared no bodily labor, no
mental exertion, to bring the undertaking to its desired end." But
the principal difficulty arose from the Protestants themselves. They
had asked for the council, but when it was assembled they would have
nothing to do with it. Three different safe conducts were issued for
them--one under Paul III., another under Julius III., and the last
under Pius IV.--all of them as ample as could be desired; but to no
purpose. They did not really want a council, but an ecclesiastical
mob without a head; in other words, they wanted the main question
of church authority to be decided in advance in their favor. Their
course was substantially that of all former heretics; first, to
appeal to the council, to gain time and cause trouble; then, after
their condemnation, to abuse the council as much as they had formerly
abused the pope. It would be difficult to determine which is to-day
the greater bugbear of the average Protestant, the Council of Trent
or the holy see.

Few, if any, assemblages have received such praise for learning,
moderation, and zeal--not only from friends, but from candid
opponents--as that of Trent. We will give as a sample the judgment
of Hallam, himself not at all well disposed toward Catholic dogma.
His testimony is the more valuable that he acknowledges to have
taken his facts from the disingenuous account of the more than half
Protestant, Fra Paolo Sarpi,[9] and never to have read the able and
exhaustive history of Pallavicini:

     "It is usual for Protestant writers to inveigh against the
     Tridentine fathers. I do not assent to their decisions, which
     is not to the purpose, nor vindicate the intrigues of the papal
     party. But I must presume to say that, reading their proceedings
     in the pages of that very able and not very lenient historian to
     whom we have generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any
     that could have come from the reformed churches, I find proofs of
     much ability, considering the embarrassments with which they had
     to struggle, and of an honest desire of reformation, among a large
     body, as to those matters which, in their judgment, ought to be
     reformed."[10]

Again:

     "It will appear, by reading the accounts of the sessions of
     the council, either in Father Paul, or in any more favorable
     historian, that, even in certain points, such as justification,
     which had not been clearly laid down before, the Tridentine
     decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the majority
     of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation; and
     that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive
     characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation,
     purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they
     assert nothing but what had been so engrafted into the faith of
     this part of Europe as to have been rejected by no one without
     suspicion or imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have
     acquiesced with good-will in _all_ the decrees of the council; but
     was Erasmus deemed orthodox?... No general council ever contained
     so many persons of eminent learning and ability as that of Trent;
     nor is there ground for believing that any other ever investigated
     the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness, temper,
     and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they are greatly
     belied, would not bear comparison in these characteristics.
     Impartiality and freedom from prejudice, no Protestant will
     attribute to the fathers of Trent; but where will he produce these
     qualities in an ecclesiastical synod? But it may be said that they
     had only one leading prejudice, that of determining theological
     faith according to the tradition of the Catholic Church, as handed
     down to their age. This one point of authority conceded, I am
     not aware that they can be proved to have decided wrong, or at
     least against all reasonable evidence. Let those who have imbibed
     a different opinion ask themselves whether they have read Sarpi
     through with any attention, especially as to those sessions of the
     Tridentine Council which preceded its suspension in 1549."[11]

To the praise of ability, industry, and fairness, all of the highest
order from a natural point of view, Hallam unconsciously adds a
still greater, in the eyes of any true Catholic, namely, that the
council, on controverted dogmatic points, adhered to the tradition
of the Catholic Church. And this on the authority of the carping
Sarpi! What more could the greatest admirer say? Right in its view of
dogma from the traditional--the true Catholic--stand-point, honest
and unswerving in reforming abuses, patient in discussion, diligent
in research, calm in decision--such is the substantial verdict of a
Protestant writer, in the nineteenth century, on the great council of
the sixteenth.

If we consider the variety of matters treated of in the council,
its work will appear immense. The following accurate synopsis is
taken from the oration of Ragazzoni, at the last session, which
we have quoted before. In matters of faith, after the adoption of
the venerable creed sanctioned by antiquity, the council drew up a
catalogue of the inspired books of the Old and New Testament, and
approved the old received Latin version of the Hebrew and Greek
originals. It then passed to decide the questions that had been
raised concerning the fall of man. Next, with admirable wisdom and
order, it laid down the true Catholic doctrine on justification.
The sacraments then claimed attention, and their number, their
life-giving power through grace, and the nature of each one were
accurately defined. The great dogma of the blessed eucharist was
fully laid down; the real dignity of the Christian altar and
sacrifice was vindicated; and the moot question of communion under
one or two kinds settled both in theory and practice. Lastly,
the false accusations of opponents were dispelled, and Catholic
consciences gladdened by the enunciations on indulgences, purgatory,
the invocation and veneration of saints, and the respect to be paid
to their relics and images. The decision on so many important and
difficult questions was no light task, and of the utmost importance.
A "hard and fast line" was drawn between heresy and truth; and if
the wayward were not all converted, the little ones of Christ were
saved from the danger of being led astray. In her greatest trial,
the church gave no uncertain sound. Nations might rage, and the
rulers of the earth meditate rash things; but the truth of God did
not abandon her, and she fearlessly proclaimed it in her council.
In regard to some abuses in practical matters, dependent on dogma,
from which the innovators had seized a pretext to impugn the true
faith, a thorough reform was decreed. Measures were taken to prevent
any impropriety or irreverence in the celebration of the divine
sacrifice, whether from superstitious observances, greed of filthy
lucre, unworthy celebrants, profane places, or worldly concomitants.
The different orders of ecclesiastics were accurately distinguished,
and the exclusive rights and duties of each one clearly defined; some
impediments of matrimony, which had been productive of evil rather
than good, were removed, and most stringent regulations adopted to
prevent the crying wrongs to which confiding innocence and virtue
had been subjected under the pretext of clandestine marriages.
All the abuses connected with indulgences, the veneration of the
saints, and intercession for the souls of purgatory, were fully and
finally extirpated. Nor was less care taken in regard to purely
disciplinary matters. Measures were taken to insure, as far at least
as human frailty would permit, the elevation of only worthy persons
to ecclesiastical dignities; and stated times were appointed for
the frequent and efficient preaching of the word of God, too much
hitherto neglected, the necessity of which was insisted on with
earnestness and practical force. The sacred duty of residence among
their flocks was impressed on bishops and all inferiors having the
care of souls; proper provision was made for the support of needy
clergymen, and all privileges which might protect heresy or crime
were swept away. To prevent all suspicion of avarice in the house
of God, the gratuitous administration of the sacraments was made
compulsory; and measures were taken to put an effectual stop to the
career of the questor, by abolishing the office. Young men destined
for the priesthood were to be trained in ecclesiastical seminaries;
provincial synods were restored, and regular diocesan visitations
ordered; many new and extended faculties were granted to the local
authorities, for the sake of better order and prompter decision;
the sacred duty of hospitality was inculcated in all clerics; wise
regulations were passed to secure proper promotions to ecclesiastical
benefices; all hereditary possession of God's sanctuary prohibited;
moderation prescribed in the use of the power of excommunication;
luxury, cupidity, and license, as far as possible, exiled from the
sanctuary; most holy and wise provisions adopted for the better
regulation of the religious of both sexes, who were judiciously shorn
of many of their privileges, to the proper development of episcopal
authority; the great ones of the world were warned of their duties
and responsibilities. These, and many other similar measures, were
the salutary, efficient, and lasting reforms with which God, at
last taking mercy on his people, inspired the fathers of Trent,
legitimately congregated under the presidency and guidance of the
apostolic see. Such was the great work done by the council--so great
that even this summary review makes our wonder at the length of its
duration cease. One remark seems worthy of special notice. The usual
complaint of Protestants against the council was, and is, that it was
too much under papal influence. Now, one of the most notable features
of its legislation is the great increase of the power of bishops.
Not only was their _ordinary_ authority confirmed and extended, but
they were made in many cases, some of them of no little importance,
perpetual delegates of the apostolic see, so that Philip II. of Spain
is reported to have said of his bishops, that "they went to Trent as
parish priests, and returned like so many popes."[12] So groundless
is the statement that the papal jealousy of episcopal power prevented
any really salutary reforms.

Such was the great work of the Council of Trent. But a tree is best
judged by its fruits, and this test will give us even a better idea
of its importance and magnitude. Perhaps the best encomium of the
council is that the Catholic of to-day reads with astonishment of
abuses and measures of reform in the sixteenth century. The prophecy
of Ragazzoni, in his often-quoted oration, has been literally
fulfilled--the names of many of the evils of that period have been
forgotten. Thank God! to understand the work of Trent, we have to
study the internal troubles of the church of those days in the pages
of history, for we do not find them in our own time. They have
utterly disappeared. We have already quoted Hallam on the revival
of faith and piety in the church that was the immediate effect of
the council. All historians agree that the triumphs of Protestantism
closed with the first fifty years of its existence. After that it
gradually declined. "We see," says Macaulay in his famous _Edinburgh
Review_ article on the papacy, "that during two hundred and fifty
years Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we
believe that as far as there has been a change, that change has been
in favor of the Church of Rome." Hallam has noticed the same fact,
and assigned its real causes; we shall give his words, as, with a
few obvious exceptions, they might have been written by a Catholic:
"The prodigious increase of the Protestant party in Europe, after
the middle of the (sixteenth) century, did not continue more than
a few years. It was checked and fell back, not quite so rapidly or
completely as it came on, but so as to leave the antagonist church in
perfect security." He goes on to give the causes of the reaction. The
influence of the Council of Trent in its reform of the clergy, both
secular and regular, (we have already given his words,) is mentioned
as the principal cause; and, "far above all the rest," he says, "the
Jesuits were the instruments of regaining France and Germany to the
church they served." "They conquered us," says Ranke, "on our own
ground, in our own homes, and stripped us of a part of our country."
The following passages will give some idea of the extent and causes
of the change:

     "Protestantism, as late as 1578, might be deemed preponderant
     in all the Austrian dominions, except the Tyrol. In the Polish
     diets, the dissidents, as they were called, met their opponents
     with vigor and success. The ecclesiastical principalities were
     full of Protestants; and even in the chapters some of them might
     be found. But the contention was unequal, from the different
     characters of the parties; religious zeal and devotion, which,
     fifty years before, had overthrown the ancient rites in northern
     Germany, were now more invigorating sentiments in those who
     rescued them from further innovation. In religious struggles,
     where there is any thing like an equality of forces, the question
     soon comes to be, which party will make the greatest sacrifice for
     its own faith? And, while the Catholic self-devotion had grown
     far stronger, there was much more secular cupidity, lukewarmness,
     and formality in the Lutheran Church. In a very few years the
     effects of this were distinctly seen. The Protestants of the
     Catholic principalities went back into the bosom of Rome. In the
     bishopric of Wurtzburg alone, sixty-two thousand converts are
     said to have been received in the year 1586. The Emperor Rodolph
     and his brother archdukes, by a long series of persecution and
     banishment, finally, though not within this century, almost
     outrooted Protestantism from the hereditary provinces of Austria.
     It is true that these violent measures were the proximate cause
     of so many conversions; but if the reformed had been ardent
     and united, they were much too strong to be thus subdued. In
     Bohemia, accordingly, and in Hungary, where there was a more
     steady spirit, they kept their ground. The reaction was not less
     conspicuous in other countries. It is asserted that the Huguenots
     had already lost more than two thirds of their number in 1580;[13]
     comparatively, I presume, with twenty years before; and the change
     in their relative position is manifest from all the histories
     of this period. In the Netherlands, though the seven united
     provinces were slowly winning their civil and religious liberties
     at the sword's point, yet West Flanders, once in great measure
     Protestant, became Catholic before the end of the century; while
     the Walloon provinces were kept from swerving by some bishops of
     great eloquence and excellent lives, as well as by the influence
     of the Jesuits planted at St. Omer and Douay. At the close of this
     period of fifty years, the mischief done to the old church in its
     first decennium was very nearly repaired; the proportion of the
     two religions in Germany coincided with those which had existed
     at the pacification of Passau. The Jesuits, however, had begun to
     encroach a little on the proper domain of the Lutheran church.

     "This great revival of the papal religion, after the shock it had
     sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for
     ever to restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our
     ears.... In the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless
     anticipated the overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have
     found little else to warrant hope than their trust in heaven. The
     late rush of many nations toward democratical opinions has not
     been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that
     period. It is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed
     this current. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness,
     and unity of purpose that for the most part distinguished the
     court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of
     intolerant laws, and the searching rigor of the Inquisition, the
     resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith, the
     influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either existed
     before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand
     an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that
     there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent
     of its external strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its
     relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame
     of zeal and devotion. Superstition, it might be, in the many,
     fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which,
     while they subsist, render a religion indestructible. That revival
     of an ardent zeal, through which the Franciscans had, in the
     thirteenth century, with some good and much more evil effect,
     spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more displayed
     in counteraction of those new doctrines that themselves had drawn
     their life from a similar development of moral emotion."[14]

In the Council of Trent were again fulfilled the words of the prophet
concerning the Messiah: "Behold, he cometh ... like a refining fire,
and like the fuller's herb; and he shall sit refining and cleansing
the silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine
them as gold, and as silver; and they shall offer sacrifices to the
Lord in justice; and the sacrifice shall please the Lord, as in the
days of old, and in the ancient years."[15]

The zeal of the fathers did not, it is true, succeed in bringing back
all the Protestants; but neither did the Council of Nice succeed
with the Arians, or that of Ephesus with the Nestorians, or that of
Chalcedon with the followers of Eutyches. But they kept the Catholic
faith pure; they sternly applied the pruning-hook to the numerous
excrescences which had been allowed to accumulate. God blessed their
work; and the tree of life, planted by running waters, again produced
new flowers and fruits of holiness.

Though from the moment the decrees were solemnly approved by the holy
see, with the exception of that on clandestine marriages, for which
special provision had been made, they commenced to be obligatory
on the whole church; yet it was thought well to obtain a special
promulgation in the different Catholic countries of Europe. The
republic of Venice and the king of Portugal first gave the example;
Philip II. of Spain followed, and was imitated, after some little
delay in the hope of reconciling the Protestants, by the German
emperor. France, then governed by Catharine of Medici, alone, of
Catholic countries, refused. The excuse given was, principally, the
turbulence of the Huguenots; the real reason, the desire to preserve
certain royal prerogatives in church matters,[16] with which the
reforms of the council interfered. So, in the name of Gallican
liberties and royal privileges, the disciplinary portion was not
published in France. Most of the measures were actually adopted by
the bishops in provincial councils; but the seed of great evils
was sown. These same liberties, so called, rendered possible the
chicanery by which the Jansenists subsequently sought to elude the
solemn condemnations of the holy see; and at the revolution gave the
idea of the civil constitution of the clergy, rather than accept
which so many noble bishops and priests gladly met death. But the
French Church has tired of them; a terrible experience has taught
her that the only true safeguard of her liberty is, in a close union
with the see of him to whom Christ confided the duty of strengthening
his brethren. In regard to the decrees on faith, there was never any
hesitancy in France; and we owe some of our very best apologetic
or controversial works against Protestantism to zealous and learned
writers of that nation.

One remarkable consequence of the council was a great outpouring
of the spirit of sanctity. St. Charles Borromeo, as prime minister
of his uncle, Pius IV., contributed greatly to its successful
termination. Afterward, as archbishop of Milan, he set an example
of enforcing its decrees which has ever since served as a rule for
zealous bishops. He changed the face of affairs in Lombardy, and may
be said to have led the way in practically carrying the reforms into
effect. Numbers of holy bishops aided him, or imitated his example;
and before he died the new discipline was well established. At Rome,
St. Philip Neri excited in a wonderful way the spirit of zeal in the
clergy, and of piety in the laity; and his work and example remain to
this day. It is impossible not to be struck with the new spirit that
had seized the papal court. The popes themselves were men not only
of blameless lives, but zealous and active for the good of religion.
A glance at Ranke's history--especially the notes at the end--will
satisfy the reader of this; while Catholic works abound in edifying
accounts. Such men as Baronius and Bellarmine were ornaments of the
Sacred College, not only for their learning, but for their solid,
extraordinary piety, which has barely failed of obtaining the honors
of the altar. The Society of Jesus, and other religious orders,
were seminaries of virtues, of zeal, of missionary spirit; and the
heralds of the cross went to the very ends of the earth to bring
the glad tidings of salvation to those sitting in darkness. Every
state and condition of life has its saints of this period. St. Mary
Magdalen di Pazzi, the nun; St. Francis Borgia, the rich man who
gave up all for Christ; St. Felix of Cantalice, the unlettered lay
brother; St. Aloysius, the pattern of youth; St. Francis Xavier, the
apostle; St. Charles, the model bishop; St. Philip Neri, the perfect
secular priest; St. Pius V., the pope who added to his triple crown
the fourth, and greatest, of sanctity; and many others, whose names
are not so well known to the world. It was emphatically the age of
saints: war always produces heroes.

There have been shortcomings since Trent, because the church has
her human as well as her divine element, and heresies and scandals,
it was foretold by her divine Founder, must come; but, by far, not
so many as before it. The contrast between the ease with which Pius
IX. convokes a general council and the difficulties with which his
predecessors had to contend in the sixteenth century, is so plain
as to require no comment, and, at the same time, affords striking
evidence of the efficacy of the work done at Trent. It was a great
work, in every sense of the word. It met from the beginning with
great difficulties, which were overcome by equal constancy; it was
devised and executed by men great in learning, prudence, and zeal; it
effected a reaction in favor of Catholicity than which there never
occurred "one on a larger scale in the annals of mankind;"[17] it
thoroughly purified the church from wretched and inveterate abuses;
it revived a spirit of sanctity that emulated the palmiest days of
the church; and it has handed down to us the boon of pure faith and
strict observance which our unfortunate opponents cannot but admire,
even though they attempt to decry it. While Protestantism was pulling
down, the council built up on a sure foundation; and its work has
been lasting.

Through the lapse of three centuries the grateful church has ever
re-echoed, as she re-echoes at this day, the acclamation of the
Cardinal of Lorraine, "The sacred ecumenical Council of Trent--let
us profess its faith; let us always observe its decrees. _Semper
confiteamur, semper servemus._"

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Pallavicini. _Historia Conc. Trid. Apparatus._ Chap. 1, § 4. We
quote from the Latin translation of F. Giattini, S.J.

[3] _Sermons on the Failure of Protestantism._ Sermon v.

[4] Introd. to _The Literature of Europe_. Part ii. ch. 2, §§ 7, 8.

[5] Pallav. Lib. v. c. 17, § 8.

[6] Lib. xi. c. 6, § 4.

[7] Lib. xiv. c. 9, § 5.

[8] Pallav. Lib. xxiv. c. 9, § 5.

[9] We append the estimate which Hallam himself forms of the
Catholicity of this unfortunate friar: "Dupin observes that the
long list of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in
dates and such trifling matters, make little or no difference as
to the substance of Sarpi's history; but that its author is more
blamable for a malicious disposition to impute political motives to
the members of the council, and idle reasonings which they did not
employ. Ranke, who has given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin
could have done, comes nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a
fair, but he is, for those times, a tolerably exact historian....
Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of Father Paul: it
appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of his history,
and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his letters
that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual sense,
as well as to the court of Rome; sympathizing in affection, and
concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination."
(_Lit. of Europe_, Part iii. ch. 2, § 3.) "This confirms the
principal points in Pallavicini's main charge, that Sarpi was hostile
to the church, and substituted his own malicious conjectures for the
truth of history." (See _Apparatus_, ch. 1.)

[10] _Literature of Eur._ Part i. ch. 6, § 25.

[11] _Literature of Europe_, Part ii. ch. 2, § 18, note.

[12] Pallav. _Hist. Appar._ ch. 9, § 4.

[13] In a note, quoting Ranke as authority, he adds, "The number is
rather startling."

[14] _Lit. of Europe_, Part ii. c. 2, §§ 14, 15.

[15] Mal. iii. 2-4.

[16] One of these was the power of giving regular benefices _in
commendam_, that is, conferring the style, title, rank, and revenues
of abbot, or other religious superior, on some one not a member
of the religious community, who enjoyed the advantages but never
performed the duties of his office. Two evils followed: 1. An
ecclesiastical benefice was a mere matter of political patronage, and
liable to be conferred on unworthy persons. 2. Owing to the absence
of the chief superior, discipline became very relaxed in religious
communities so afflicted. At least one regular congregation, in
France, entirely died out on this account.

[17] Hallam. _Lit. of Eur._ Part ii. ch. 2, § 6.




MATTHEW XXVII.

     "And He answered them nothing."


    O mighty Nothing! unto thee,
    Nothing, we owe all things that be.
    God spake once when He all things made,
    He saved all when He nothing said.
    The world was made of nothing then;
    'Tis made by nothing now again.

                                          CRASHAW.




TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

ANGELA.


CHAPTER IV.

THE BUREAUCRAT AND THE SWALLOWS.

Herr Frank returned to the city. Before he went he took advantage
of the absence of Richard, who had gone out about nine o'clock, to
converse with Klingenberg about matters of importance. They sat in
the doctor's studio, the window of which was open. Frank closed it
before he began the conversation.

"Dear friend, I must speak to you about a very distressing
peculiarity of my son. I do so because I know your influence over
him, and I hope much from it."

Klingenberg listened with surprise, for Herr Frank had begun in great
earnestness and seemed greatly depressed.

"On our journey from the city, I discovered in Richard, to my great
surprise, a deep-seated antipathy, almost an abhorrence of women. He
is determined never to marry. He considers marriage a misfortune,
inasmuch as it binds a man to the whims and caprices of a wife. If I
had many sons, Richard's idiosyncrasy would be of little consequence;
but as he is my only son and very stubborn in his preconceived
opinions, you will see how very distressing it must be to me."

"What is the cause of this antipathy of your son to women?"

Herr Frank related Richard's account of his meeting with Isabella and
his knowledge of the unhappy marriage of his friend Emil.

"Do you not think that experiences of this kind must repel a
noble-minded young man?" said the doctor.

"Admitted! But Isabella and Laura are exceptions, and exceptions by
no means justify my son's perverted judgment of women. I told him
this. But he still declared that Isabella and Laura were the rule
and not the exception; that the women of the present day follow a
perverted taste; and that the wearing of crinoline, a costume he
detests, proves this."

"I know," said the doctor, "that Richard abominates crinoline. Last
year he expressed his opinion about it, and I had to agree with him."

"My God!" said the father, astonished, "you certainly would not
encourage my son in his perverted opinion?"

"No," returned the doctor quietly; "but you must not expect me to
condemn sound opinions. His judgment of woman is prejudiced--granted.
But observe well, my dear Frank. This judgment is at the same time
a protest of a noble nature against the age of crinoline. Your son
expects much of women. Superficiality, vanity, passion for dress,
fickleness, and so forth, do not satisfy his sense of propriety.
Marriage, to him, is an earnest, holy union. He would unite himself
to a well-disposed woman, to a noble soul who would love her husband
and her duties, but not to a degenerate specimen of womankind. Such
I conceive to have been the reasons which have produced in your son
this antipathy."

"I believe you judge rightly," answered Frank. "But it must appear
clear to Richard that his views are unjust, and that there are
always women who would realize his expectations."

The doctor thought for a moment, and a significant smile played over
his features.

"This must become clear to him--yes, and it will become clear to him
sooner, perhaps, than you expect," said the doctor.

"I do not understand you, doctor."

"Yesterday we met Angela," said Klingenberg. "This Angela is an
extraordinary being of dazzling beauty; almost the incarnation of
Richard's ideal. I told him of her fine qualities, which he was
inclined to question. But happily I was able to establish these
qualities by facts. Now, as Angela lives but a mile from here and as
the simple customs of the country render access to the family easy,
I have not understood the character of your son if he does not take
advantage of this opportunity to become more intimately acquainted
with Angela, even if his object were only to confirm his former
opinions of women. If he knew Angela more intimately, it is my firm
conviction that his aversion would soon change into the most ardent
affection."

"Who is this Angela?"

"The daughter of your neighbor, Siegwart."

Frank looked at the doctor with open mouth and staring eyes.

"Siegwart's daughter!" he gasped. "No, I will never consent to such a
connection."

"Why not?"

"Well--because the Siegwart family are not agreeable to me."

"That is no reason. Siegwart is an excellent man, rich, upright, and
respected by the whole neighborhood. Why does he happen to appear so
unfavorably in your eyes?"

Frank was perplexed. He might have reasons and yet be ashamed to give
them.

"Ah!" said the doctor, smiling, "it is now for you to lay aside
prejudice."

"An explanation is not possible," said Frank. "But my son will rather
die a bachelor than marry Siegwart's daughter."

Klingenberg shrugged his shoulders. There was a long pause.

"I renew my request, my friend," urged Frank. "Convince my son of his
errors."

"I will try to meet your wishes," returned Klingenberg. "Perhaps this
daughter of Siegwart will afford efficient aid."

"My son's liberty will not be restricted. He may visit the Siegwart
family when he wishes. But in matters where the mature mind of the
father has to decide, I shall always act according to my better
judgment."

The doctor again shrugged his shoulders. They shook hands, and in
ten minutes after Herr Frank was off for the train. Richard had
left Frankenhöhe two hours before. He passed quickly through the
vineyard. A secret power seemed to impel the young man. He glanced
often at Siegwart's handsome dwelling, and hopeful suspense agitated
his countenance. When he reached the lawn, he slackened his pace.
He would reflect, and understand clearly the object of his visit.
He came to observe Angela, whose character had made such a strong
impression on him and who threatened to compel him to throw his
present opinions of women to the winds. He would at the same time
reflect on the consequences of this possible change to his peace and
liberty.

"Angela is beautiful, very beautiful, far more so than a hundred
others who are beautiful but wear crinoline." He had written in his
diary:

     "Of what value is corporal beauty that fades when it is disfigured
     by bad customs and caprices? I admit that I have never yet met
     any woman so graceful and charming as Angela; but this very
     circumstance warns me to be careful that my judgment may not
     be dazzled. If it turns out that Angela sets herself up as a
     religious coquette or a Pharisee, her fine figure is only a
     deceitful mask of falsehood, and my opinion would again be
     verified. I must make observations with great care."

Frank reviewed these resolutions as he passed slowly over the lawn,
where some servants were employed, who greeted him respectfully as he
passed. In the hall he heard a man's voice that came from the same
room he had entered on his first visit. The door was open, and the
voice spoke briskly and warmly.

Frank stopped for a moment and heard the voice say,

"Miss Angela is as lovely as ever."

These words vibrated disagreeably in Richard's soul, and urged him to
know the man from whom they came.

Herr Siegwart went to meet the visitor and offered him his hand. The
other gentleman remained sitting, and looked at Frank with stately
indifference.

"Herr Frank, my esteemed neighbor of Frankenhöhe," said Siegwart,
introducing Frank.

The gentleman rose and made a stiff bow.

"The Assessor von Hamm," continued the proprietor.

Frank made an equally stiff and somewhat colder bow.

The three sat down.

While Siegwart rang the bell, Richard cast a searching glance at the
assessor who had said, "Angela is as lovely as ever."

The assessor had a pale, studious color, regular features in which
there was an expression of official importance. Frank, who was a
fine observer, thought he had never seen such a perfect and sharply
defined specimen of the bureaucratic type. Every wrinkle in the
assessor's forehead told of arrogance and absolutism. The red ribbon
in the button-hole of Herr von Hamm excited Frank's astonishment. He
thought it remarkable that a young man of four or five and twenty
could have merited the ribbon of an order. He might infer from this
that decorations and merit do not necessarily go together.

"How glad I am that you have kept your word!" said Siegwart to Frank
complacently. "How is your father?"

"Very well; he goes this morning to the city, where business calls
him."

"I have often admired your father's attentions to Dr. Klingenberg,"
said Siegwart after a short pause. "He has for years had Frankenhöhe
prepared for the accommodation of the doctor. You are Klingenberg's
constant companion, and I do not doubt but such is the wish of your
father. And your father tears himself from his business and comes
frequently from the city to see that the doctor's least wish is
realized. I have observed this these last eight years, and I have
often thought that the doctor is to be envied, on account of this
noble friendship."

"You know, I suppose, that the doctor saved my father when his life
was despaired of?"

"I know; but there are many physicians who have saved lives and who
do not find such a noble return."

These words of acknowledgment had something in them very offensive
to the assessor. He opened and shut his eyes and mouth, and cast a
grudging, envious look at Richard.

The servant brought a glass.

"Try this wine," said Siegwart; "my own growth," he added with some
pride.

They touched glasses. Hamm put his glass to his lips, without
drinking; Frank tasted the noble liquor with the air of a
connoisseur; while Siegwart's smiling gaze rested on him.

"Excellent! I do not remember to have drank better Burgundy."

"Real Burgundy, neighbor--real Burgundy. I brought the vines from
France."

"Do you not think the vines degenerate with us?" said Frank.

"They have not degenerated yet. Besides, proper care and attention
make up for the unsuitableness of our soil and climate."

"You would oblige me, Herr Siegwart, if you would preserve me some
shoots when you next trim them."

"With pleasure. I had them set last year; they shot forth fine roots,
and I can let you have any number of shoots."

"Is it not too late to plant them?"

"Just the right time. Our vine-growers generally set them too early.
It should be done in May, and not in April. Shall I send them over?"

"You are too kind, Herr Siegwart. My request must certainly destroy
your plan in regard to those shoots."

"Not at all; I have all I can use. It gives me great pleasure to be
able to accommodate a neighbor. It's settled; I'll send over the
Burgundies this evening."

It was clear to Hamm that Siegwart desired to be agreeable to the
wealthy Frank. The assessor opened and shut his eyes and mouth, and
fidgeted about in his chair. While he inwardly boiled and fretted, he
very properly concluded that he must consider himself offended. From
the moment of Frank's arrival, the proprietor had entirely forgotten
him. He was about to leave, in order not to expose his nerves to
further excitement, when chance afforded him an opportunity to give
vent to his ill-humor.

Two boys came running into the room. They directed their bright eyes
to Siegwart, and their childish, joyful faces, seemed to say,

"Here we are again; you know very well what we want."

One of them carried a tin box in his hand; there was a lock on the
box, and a small opening in the top--evidently a money-box.

"Gelobt sei Jesus Christus," said the children, and remained standing
near the door.

"In Ewigkeit," returned Siegwart. "Are you there again, my little
ones? That's right; come here, Edward." And Siegwart took out his
purse and dropped a few pennies into the box.

"A savings-box? Who gave the permission?" said the assessor in a tone
that frightened the children, astonished Richard, and caused Siegwart
to look with embarrassment at the questioner.

"For the pope, Herr von Hamm," said Siegwart.

The official air of the assessor became more severe.

"The ordinances make no exceptions," retorted Hamm. "The ordinances
forbid all collections that are not officially permitted." And he
eyed the box as if he had a notion to confiscate it.

Perhaps the lads noticed this, for they moved backward to the door
and suddenly disappeared from the room.

"I beg pardon, Herr Assessor," said Siegwart. "The Peter-pence is
collected in the whole Catholic world, and the Catholics of Salingen
thought they ought to assist the head of their church, who is so
sorely pressed, and who has been robbed of his possessions."

"I answer--the ordinances make no exceptions; the Peter-pence comes
under the ordinances. I find myself compelled to interpose against
this trespass."

"But the Peter-pence is collected in the whole country, Herr von
Hamm! Why, even in the public journals we read the results of this
collection, and I have never heard that the government forbade the
Peter-pence."

"Leave the government out of the question. I stand on my
instructions. The government forbids all collections unless
permission is granted. You must not expect an official to connive at
an open breach of the ordinances. I will do my duty and remind the
burgomaster of Salingen that he has not done his."

The occurrence was very annoying to Siegwart; this could be seen in
his troubled countenance. He thought of the reproof of the timid
burgomaster, and feared that the collection might in future be
stopped.

"You have the authority, Herr Assessor, to permit it; I beg you will
do so."

"The request must be made in written official form," said Hamm. "You
know, Herr Siegwart, that I am disposed to comply with your wishes,
but I regret I cannot do so in the present case; and I must openly
confess I oppose the Peter-pence on principle. The temporal power of
the pope has become unnecessary. Why support an untenable dominion?"

"I consider the temporal power of the pope to be a necessity," said
Siegwart emphatically. "If the pope were not an independent prince,
but the subject of another ruler, he would in many things have to
govern the church according to the mind and at the command of his
superior. Sound common sense tells us that the pope must be free."

"Certainly, as far as I am concerned," returned Hamm. "But why
drain the money out of the country for an object that cannot be
accomplished? I tell you that the political standing of the bankrupt
papal government will not be saved by the Peter-pence."

"Permit me to observe, Herr Assessor, that I differ with you
entirely. The papal government is by no means bankrupt--quite the
contrary. Until the breaking out of the Franco-Sardinian revolution,
its finances were as well managed and flourishing as those of any
state in Europe. I will convince you of this in a moment." He went to
the bookcase and handed the assessor a newspaper. "These statistics
will convince you of the correctness of my assertion."

"As the documents to prove these statements are wanting, I have
great reason to doubt their correctness," said Hamm. "Paper will not
refuse ink, and in the present case the pen was evidently driven by a
friendly hand."

"Why do you draw this conclusion?"

"From the contradictions between this account of the papal finances
and that given by all independent editors."

"Permit me to call that editor not 'an independent,' but a 'friend of
the church.' The enemies of the church will not praise a church which
they hate. The papal government is the most calumniated government on
earth; and calumny and falsehood perform wonders in our times. The
Italian situation furnishes at present a most striking illustration.
The king of Piedmont has been raised to the rulership of Italy by the
unanimous voice of the people--so say the papers. But the revolution
in the greater part of Italy at the present time proves that the
unanimous voice of the people was a sham, and that the Piedmontese
government is hated and despised by the majority of the Italians. It
is the same in many other things. If falsehood and calumny were not
the order of the day, falsehood and calumny would not sit crowned on
the throne."

"Right!" said Richard. "It is indisputable. It is nothing but the
depravity of the times that enables the emperor to domineer over the
world."

Siegwart heard Frank's observation with pleasure. Hamm read this in
the open countenance of the proprietor, and he made a movement as
though he would like to tramp on Frank's toes.

"I admit the flourishing condition of the former Papal States," said
Hamm, with a mock smile. "I will also admit that the former subjects
of the pope, who have been impoverished by the hungry Piedmontese,
desire the milder papal government. 'There is good living under the
crozier,' says an old proverb. But what does all this amount to?
Does the beautiful past overthrow the accomplished facts of the
present? The powers have determined to put an end to papal dominion.
The powers have partly accomplished this. Can the Peter-pence change
the programme of the powers? Certainly not. The papal government
must go the way of all flesh, and if the Catholics are taxed for an
unattainable object, it is, in my opinion, unjust, to say the least."

The proprietor shook his head thoughtfully. "We consider the question
from very different stand-points," said he. "Pius IX. is the head of
the church--the spiritual father of all Catholics. The revolution
has robbed him of his revenues. Why should not Catholics give their
father assistance?"

"And I ask," said Hamm, "why give the pope alms when the powers are
ready to give him millions?"

"On what conditions, Herr Assessor?"

"Well--on the very natural condition that he will acknowledge
accomplished facts."

"You find this condition so natural!" said Siegwart, somewhat
excited. "Do you forget the position of the pope? Remember
that on those very principles of which the pope is the highest
representative, was built the civilization of the present. The pope
condemns robbery, injustice, violence, and all the principles of
modern revolution. How can the pope acknowledge as accomplished
facts, results which have sprung from injustice, robbery, and
violence? The moment the pope does that, he ceases to be the first
teacher of the people and the vicar of Christ on earth."

"You take a strong religious position, my dear friend," said Hamm,
smiling compassionately.

"I do, most assuredly," said the proprietor with emphasis. "And I am
convinced that my position is the right one."

Hamm smiled more complacently still. Frank observed this smile; and
the contemptuous manner of the official toward the open, kind-hearted
proprietor annoyed him.

"Pius IX. is at any rate a noble man," said he, looking sharply at
the assessor. "There exists a critical state of uncertainty in all
governments. All the courts and principalities look to Paris, and
the greatest want of principle seems to be in the state taxation.
The pope alone does not shrink; he fears neither the anger nor the
threats of the powers. While thrones are tumbling, and Pius IX.
is not master in his own house, that remarkable man does not make
the least concession to the man in power. The powers have broken
treaties, trampled on justice, and there is no longer any right
but the right of revolution--of force. There is nothing any longer
certain; all is confusion. The pope alone holds aloft the banner
of right and justice. In his manifestoes to the world, he condemns
error, falsehood, and injustice. The pope alone is the shield of
those moral forces which have for centuries given stability and
safety to governments. This firmness, this confidence in the genius
of Christianity, this unsurpassed struggle of Pius, deserves the
highest admiration even of those who look upon the contest with
indifference."

Siegwart listened and nodded assent. Hamm ate sardines, without
paying the least attention to the speaker.

"The Roman love of power is well known, and Rome has at all times
made the greatest sacrifices for it," said he.

The proprietor drummed with his fingers on the table. Frank thought
he observed him suppressing his anger, before he answered,

"Rome does not contend for love of dominion. She contends for
the authority of religion, for the maintenance of those eternal
principles without which there is no civilization. This even Herder,
who is far from being a friend of Rome, admits when he says, 'Without
the church, Europe would, perhaps, be a prey to despots, a scene
of eternal discord, and a Mogul wilderness.' Rome's battle is,
therefore, very important, and honorable. Had it not been for her,
you would not have escaped the bloody terrorisms of the power-seeking
revolution. Think of French liberty at present, think of the large
population of Cayenne, of the Neapolitan prisons, where thousands of
innocent men hopelessly languish."

"You have not understood me, my dear Siegwart. Take an example for
illustration. The press informs us almost daily of difficulties
between the government and the clergy. The cause of this trouble is
that the latter are separated from and wish to oppose the former. To
speak plainly, the Catholic clergy are non-conforming. They will not
give up that abnormal position which the moral force of past times
conceded to them. But in organized states, the clergy, the bishops,
and the pastors should be nothing more than state officials, whose
rule of conduct is the command of the sovereign."

"That is to make the church the servant of the state," said Siegwart.
"Religion, stripped of her divine title, would be nothing more than
the tool of the minister to restrain the people."

"Well, yes," said the official very coolly. "Religion is always
a strong curb on the rough, uneducated masses; and if religion
restrains the ignorant, supports the moral order and the government,
she has fulfilled her mission."

The proprietor opened wide his eyes.

"Religion, according to my belief, educates men not for the state but
for their eternal destiny."

"Perfectly right, Herr Siegwart, according to your view of the
question. I admire the elevation of your religious convictions, which
all men cannot rise up to."

A mock smile played on the assessor's pale countenance as he said
this. Siegwart did not observe it; but Frank did.

"If I understand you rightly, Herr Assessor, the clergy are only
state officials in clerical dress."

The assessor nodded his head condescendingly, and continued to soak a
sardine in olive-oil and take it between his knife and fork as Frank
began to speak. The fine-feeling Frank felt nettled at this contempt,
and immediately chastised Hamm for his want of politeness.

"I take your nod for an affirmative answer to my question," said he.
"You will allow me to observe that your view of the position and
purpose of the clergy must lead to the most absurd consequences."

The assessor turned an ashy color. He threw himself back on the sofa
and looked at the speaker with scornful severity.

"My view is that of every enlightened statesman of the nineteenth
century," said he proudly. "How can you, a mere novice in state
matters, come to such a conclusion."

"I come to it by sound thinking," said Frank haughtily. "If the
clergy are only the servants of the state, they are bound in the
exercise of their functions to follow the instructions of the state."

"Very natural," said the official.

"If the government think a change in the church necessary, say the
separation of the school from the church, the abolition of festivals,
the appointing of infidel professors to theological chairs, the
compiling of an enlightened catechism--and all these relate to the
spirit of the times or the supposed welfare of the state--then the
clergy must obey."

"That is self-evident," said the assessor.

"You see I comprehend your idea of the supreme power of the state,"
continued Frank. "The state is supreme. The church must be deprived
of all independence. She must not constitute a state within a state.
If it seems good to a minister to abolish marriage as a sacrament,
or the confessional, or to subject the teaching of the clergy to
a revision by the civil authority, because a majority of the
chambers wish it, or because the spirit of the age demands it, then
the opposition of the clergy would be illegal and their resistance
disobedience."

"Naturally--naturally," said the official impatiently. "Come, now,
let us have the proof of your assertion."

"Draw the conclusions from what I have said, Herr Assessor, and you
have the most striking proof of the absurdity and ridiculousness of
your gagged state church," said Frank haughtily.

"How so, how so?" cried Hamm inquiringly.

"Simply thus: If the priest must preach according to the august
instructions of the state and not according to the principles of
religious dogma, he would then preach Badish in Baden, Hessish in
Hesse, Bavarian in Bavaria, Mecklenburgish in Mecklenburg; in short,
there would be as many sects as there are states and principalities.
And these sects would be constantly changing, as the chambers or
ministerial instructions would command or allow. All religion would
cease; for it would be no longer the expression of the divine will
and revelation, but the work of the chambers and the princes. Such a
religion would be contemptible in the eyes of every thinking man. I
would not give a brass button for such a religion."

"You go too far, Herr Frank," said Hamm. "Religion has a divine
title, and this glory must be retained."

"Then the clergy must be free."

"Certainly, that is clear," said the assessor as he arose, and, with
a smiling face, bowed lowly. Angela had entered the hall, and in
consequence of Hamm's greeting was obliged to come into the room. She
might have returned from a walk, for she wore a straw hat and a light
shawl was thrown over her shoulders. She led by the hand her little
sister Eliza, a charming child of four years.

The sisters remained standing near the door. Eliza looked with
wondering eyes at the stranger, whose movements were very wonderful
to the mind of the little one, and whose pale face excited her
interest.

Angela's glance seemed to have blown away all the official dust that
remained in the soul of Hamm. The assessor was unusually agreeable.
His face lost its obstinate expression, and became light and
animated. Even its color changed to one of life and nature.

To Richard, who liked to take notes, and whose visit to Siegwart's
had no other object, the change that could be produced in a
bureaucrat by such rare womanly beauty was very amusing. He had
arisen and stepped back a little. He observed the assessor carefully
till a smile between astonishment and pity lit up his countenance.
He then looked at Angela, who stood motionless on the same spot.
It seemed to require great resignation on her part to notice the
flattering speech and obsequious attentions of the assessor. Richard
observed that her countenance was tranquil, but her manner more
grave than usual. She still held the little one by the hand, who
pressed yet closer to her the nearer the wonderful man came. Hamm's
voice rose to a tone of enthusiasm, and he took a step or two toward
the object of his reverence, when a strange enemy confronted him.
Some swallows had come in with Angela. Till now they were quiet and
seemed to be observing the assessor; but when he approached Angela,
briskly gesticulating, the swallows raised their well-known shrill
cry of anxiety, left their perches and fluttered around the official.
Interrupted in the full flow of his eloquence, he struck about with
his hands to frighten them. The swallows only became the noisier, and
their fluttering about Hamm assumed a decidedly warlike character.
They seemed to consider him as a dangerous enemy of Angela whom they
wished to keep off. Richard looked on in wonder, Siegwart shook his
head and stroked his beard, and Angela smiled at the swallows.

"These are abominable creatures," cried Hamm warding them off.
"Why, such a thing never happened to me before. Off with you! you
troublesome wretches."

The birds flew out of the room, still screaming; and their shrill
cries could be heard high up in the air.

"The swallows have a grudge against you," said Siegwart. "They
generally treat only the cats and hawks in this way."

"Perhaps they have been frightened at this red ribbon," returned
Hamm. "I regret, my dear young lady, to have frightened your little
pets. When I come again, I will leave the object of their terror at
home."

"You should not deprive yourself of an ornament which has an
honorable significance on account of the swallows, particularly as
we do not know whether it was really the red color that displeased
them," said she.

"You think, then, Miss Angela, that there is something else about me
they dislike?"

"I do not know, Herr Assessor."

"Oh! if I only knew the cause of their displeasure," said Hamm
enthusiastically. "You have an affection for the swallows, and I
would not displease any thing that you love."

She answered by an inclination, and was about to leave the room.

"Angela," said her father, "here is Herr Frank, to whom you are under
obligations."

She moved a step or two toward Richard.

"Sir," said she gently, "you returned some things that were valuable
to me; were it not for your kindness, they would probably have been
lost. I thank you."

A formal bow was Frank's answer. Hamm stood smiling, his searching
glance alternating between the stately young man and Angela. But in
the manner of both he observed nothing more than reserve and cold
formality.

Angela left the room. The assessor sat down on the sofa and poured
out a glass of wine.

Eliza sat on her father's knee. Richard observed the beautiful child
with her fine features and golden silken locks that hung about her
tender face. The winning expression of innocence and gentleness in
her mild, childish eyes particularly struck him.

"A beautiful, lovely child," said he involuntarily, and as he looked
in Siegwart's face he read there a deep love and a quiet, fatherly
fondness for the child.

"Eliza is not always as lovely and good as she is now," he returned.
"She has still some little faults which she must get rid of."

"Yes, that's what Angela said," chattered the little one. "Angela
said I must be very good; I must love to pray; I must obey my father
and mother; then the angels who are in heaven will love me."

"Can you pray yet, my child," said Richard.

"Yes, I can say the 'Our Father' and the 'Hail Mary.' Angela is
teaching me many nice prayers."

She looked at the stranger a moment and said with childish simplicity,

"Can you pray too?"

"Certainly, my child," answered Frank, smiling; "but I doubt whether
my prayers are as pleasing to God as yours."

"Angela also said we should not lie," continued Eliza. "The good God
does not love children who lie."

"That is true," said Frank. "Obey your sister Angela."

Here the young man was affected by a peculiar emotion. He thought of
Angela as the first instructor of the child; placed near this little
innocent, she appeared like its guardian angel. He saw clearly at
this moment the great importance of first impressions on the young,
and thought that in after life they would not be obliterated. He
expressed his thoughts, and Siegwart confirmed them.

"I am of your opinion, Herr Frank. The most enduring impressions
are made in early childhood. The germ of good must be implanted in
the tender and susceptible heart of the child and there developed.
Many, indeed most parents overlook this important principle of
education. This is a great and pernicious error. Man is born with
bad propensities; they grow with his growth and increase with his
strength. In early childhood, they manifest themselves in obstinacy,
wilfulness, excessive love of play, disobedience, and a disposition
to lie. If these outgrowths are plucked up and removed in childhood
by careful, religious training, it will be much easier to form the
heart to habits of virtue than in after years. Many parents begin to
instruct their children after they have spoiled them. Is this not
your opinion, Herr Assessor?"

Hamm was aroused by this sudden question. He had not paid any
attention to the conversation, but had been uninterruptedly stroking
his moustache and gazing abstractedly into vacancy.

"What did you ask, my dear Siegwart? Whether I am of your opinion?
Certainly, certainly, entirely of your opinion. Your views are always
sound, practical, and matured by great experience, as in this case."

"Well, I can't say you were always of my opinion," said Siegwart
smiling; "have we not just been sharply disputing about the
Peter-pence?"

"O my dear friend! as a private individual I agree with you entirely
on these questions; but an official must frequently defend in a
system of government that which he privately condemns."

Frank perceived Hamm's object. He wished to do away with the
unfavorable impressions his former expressions might have made on
the proprietor. The reason of this was clear to him since he had
discovered the assessor's passion for Angela.

"I am rejoiced," said Siegwart, "that we agree at least in that most
important matter, religion."

Frank remembered his father's remark, "The Siegwart family is
intensely clerical and ultramontane." It was new and striking to
him to see the question of religion considered the most important.
He concluded from this, and was confirmed in his conclusions by the
leading spirit of the Siegwart family, that, in direct contradiction
to modern ideas, religion is the highest good.

"Nevertheless," said Siegwart, "I object to a system of government
that is inimical to the church."

"And so do I," sighed the assessor.

Richard took his departure. At home, he wrote a few hasty lines in
his diary and then went into the most retired part of the garden.
Here he sat in deep thought till the servant called him to dinner.

"Has Klingenberg not gone out yet to-day?"

"No, but he has been walking up and down his room for the last two
hours."

Frank smiled. He guessed the meaning of this walk, and as they both
entered the dining-room together his conjecture was confirmed.

The doctor entered somewhat abruptly and did not seem to observe
Richard's presence. His eyes had a penetrating, almost fierce
expression and his brows were knit. He sat down to the table
mechanically, and ate what was placed before him. It is questionable
whether he knew what he was eating, or even that he was eating. He
did not speak a word, and Frank, who knew his peculiarities, did not
disturb him by a single syllable. This was not difficult, as he was
busily occupied with his own thoughts.

After the meal was over, Klingenberg came to himself. "My dear
Richard, I beg your pardon," said he in a tone of voice which was
almost tender. "Excuse my weakness. I have read this morning a
scientific article that upsets all my previous theories on the
subject treated of. In the whole field of human investigation there
is nothing whatever certain, nothing firmly established. What one
to-day proves by strict logic to be true, to-morrow another by still
stronger logic proves to be false. From the time of Aristotle to the
present, philosophers have disagreed, and the infallible philosopher
will certainly never be born. It is the same in all branches. I would
not be the least astonished if Galileo's system would be proved to
be false. If the instruments, the means of acquiring astronomical
knowledge, continue to improve, we may live to learn that the earth
stands still and that the sun goes waltzing around our little planet.
This uncertainty is very discouraging to the human mind. We might
say with Faust,

    'It will my heart consume
    That we can nothing know.'"

"In my humble opinion," said Frank, "every investigator moves in a
limited circle. The most profound thinker does not go beyond these
set limits; and if he would boldly over-step them, he would be thrown
back by evident contradiction into that circle which Omnipotence has
drawn around the human intellect."

"Very reasonable, Richard; very reasonable. But the desire of
knowledge must sometimes be satiated," continued the doctor after
a short pause. "If the human mind were free from the narrow limits
of the deceptive world of sense, and could see and know with pure
spiritual eyes, the barriers of which you speak would fall. Even the
Bible assures us of this. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says,
'We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, but then face to
face; now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known.' I
would admire St. Paul on account of this passage alone if he never
had written another. How awful is the moral quality of the human soul
taken in connection with its future capacity for knowledge. And how
natural, how evident, is the connection. The human mind will receive
knowledge from the source of all knowledge--God, in proportion as it
has been just and good. For this reason our Redeemer calls the world
of the damned 'outer darkness,' and the world of the blessed, the
'kingdom of light.'"

"We sometimes see in that way even now," said Frank after a pause.
"The wicked have ideas very different from those of the good. A
frivolous spirit mocks at and derides that which fills the good with
happiness and contentment. We might, then, say that even in this life
man knows as he is known."

The doctor cast an admiring glance at the young man. "We entirely
agree, my young friend; wickedness is to the sciences what a
poisonous miasma and the burning rays of the sun are to the young
plants. Yes, vice begets atheism, materialism, and every other
abortion of thought."

Klingenberg arose.

"We will meet again at three," said he with a friendly nod.

Richard took from his room _Vogt's Physiological Letters_, went into
the garden, and buried himself in its contents.

    TO BE CONTINUED.




MORALITY OF THE CITY OF ROME.[18]


We promised in our last number to pay our respects to an infamous
calumny about Rome, the capital of the Christian Church, and seat of
the Sovereign Pontiffs, Vicars of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth.

This calumny has been extensively circulated. We have found it in
each one of the works at the head of this article, and we suppose
it has been repeated in many others which have not fallen under
our observation; for our "evangelical" journals, as they style
themselves, and a large portion of the secular press, seem to
have very loose notions of morality where the Catholic Church is
concerned. Every story to her disadvantage will be sure to please
their public, or to supply the want of argument, and therefore it
is seized upon with eagerness and repeated over the length and
breadth of the land. It matters little to them whether it be true or
not, so long as it answers the purpose. It is enough for them that
somebody or other has started it, without inquiring who it was, or
whether he had any right to make such a statement. It is also quite
immaterial how improbable the story may be, or what contradictions
it may involve, or out of what ingenious inferences, by putting this
and that together, it may be constructed; it suffices that it be
something injurious to the Catholic religion, and at once the end
sanctifies the means; and God, they seem to think, will easily wink
at any breach of the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor," when that neighbor is only a papist. Besides,
the appetite of the public for this sort of thing seems to be so
insatiable that they are deemed ready to swallow any thing, however
it may outrage common sense or probability; and therefore they do not
fear any loss of reputation if they are detected in the circulation
of the falsehood. Corporations are said to have no souls, and the
reverend editor of a religious periodical easily seems to absolve
himself from any obligation which Christian charity or even decency
would seem to impose upon him, in regard to the papist, whom he
readily classes with the infidel or the pagan.

The calumny we are about to refute furnishes us with an apt
illustration of these remarks. It wears on its face an air of extreme
improbability. It is to this effect: that in Rome nearly three
fourths of all the children born are illegitimate.

This is simply incredible. When we read of half the children in
Stockholm, in Protestant Sweden, or in Vienna, in Catholic Austria,
being illegitimate, we can scarcely believe the naked statement.
Without disputing the official figures, we look to see if there is
no way of explaining this anomalous state of things--if the reality
corresponds with the appearance. The large excess in the number of
births in proportion to the population, and the existence of a large
foundling hospital, as in Vienna, used by the poorer inhabitants of
the country around even to a considerable distance, would lead us
to a sounder conclusion in regard to its social state than the bare
inspection of the figures. But the supposition that three fourths
of all the children born in Rome or any other city, Protestant or
Catholic, are illegitimate, is too exaggerated to be entertained for
a moment. It seems to find ready credence, however; probably through
some such mental process as this: "Catholics are corrupt and vicious.
Rome is the chief of all Catholic cities, and therefore the most
corrupt and vicious of all, and no story of its corruption is too big
for belief. The more incredible for any other place, the more worthy
of belief for Rome."

But let us come more to details about this statement in regard to
Rome. We quote from Mr. Seymour's book:

     "In the Italian statistics of Mittermaier we have the number of
     exposed infants received in Il S. Spirito, Il Conservatorio, and
     other establishments of this class. The number received during
     a series of ten years amounts to 31,689. This total distributed
     among the ten years gives as the mean, the number of 3160 infants
     exposed annually in the city of Rome."

He goes on to say that according to Bowring, an agent of the British
government, the population of Rome was 153,678, and the total number
of births was 4373. Hence we have,

    Total number of births,             4373
    Total number of foundlings,         3160

And we are left to infer that there were only 1213 lawful children
born in Rome in that year.

To make a still closer deduction from his premises, we should take
his remark that the population of Rome should be taken at the mean of
130,000, instead of 153,678. The mean number of births corresponding
to this would be 3700; hence, in strictness, we should have,

    Total number of births,              3700
    Total number of foundlings,          3160
                                         ----
    Total number of lawful children,      540

This is indeed a state of things described by Mr. Seymour as
indicating "a frightful number of illegitimate births, and a number
without parallel of cruel and unnatural mothers." And we may add, it
indicates an unparalleled amount of gullibility in any one who will
entertain for a moment such an absurd statement. It would be more
creditable to Rev. Mr. Seymour and his friend Rev. L. W. Bacon and
_The New Englander_, before circulating the story, to inquire who
Mittermaier is; whether he has said exactly what he is quoted to say;
whether he was misled about his statements; whether some one else has
not altered what he said; whether some word has not been used in a
double sense, to carry a wrong impression, or some word slipped into
the general statement to put the reader on the wrong track; in short,
to pay great attention and be extremely cautious in a matter which
wears so great an improbability on its face.

The story is an absurd fabrication, and very clumsily put together
at that. "The number of exposed infants in Il S. Spirito, Il
Conservatorio, and other establishments of this class, according
to Mittermaier, amounts to 31,689 in ten years." Mittermaier, or
whoever else wrote this, proves conclusively that he knew very
little of what he was writing about. There is no such establishment
as Il Conservatorio in Rome. This is not the name of a particular
place, but a general term signifying about what we mean by the term
"asylum." There are more than a dozen asylums for children in Rome,
but only one is a foundling hospital, that of Il S. Spirito. The
conservatorios or asylums are not "of this class," but of a different
class altogether. There may have been 3160 children provided for,
annually, in Il S. Spirito and all the different establishments for
children, for what we know, and we see no reason to dispute the
statement; but this is the aggregate of children of all ages and
all sorts, of the sick and destitute, and by no means the number of
foundlings received, or even the number of orphans received within a
single year.

There are over 400 children in one orphan asylum in Fiftieth street
in this city, and the aggregate for ten years would be over 4000, but
to say that over 4000 children were _received_ there in ten years
would be an outrageous statement. To obtain the real number, we
should also ascertain the average number of years each child remains
in the institution.

The hospital of Il S. Spirito is the only "foundling hospital" in
Rome. It receives all the infants brought there, and if the person
who brings them is unwilling to answer, he can refuse to do so. It is
amply sufficient to accommodate all left there; has revenue enough,
and, in short, renders the existence of "any other establishment
of the sort" entirely superfluous. There are branches of this
institution to which "foundlings" are transferred as they grow older.
The institution looks out for them until they can look out for
themselves; but there is only one place where they are received.

The total number of foundlings received in Rome is about 900
annually.[19] Maguire says:

     "The number of 900 may seem very great as representing the annual
     average received; but it should be stated that the hospital
     of Santo Spirito affords an asylum not only to the foundlings
     of Rome, but to those of the provinces of Sabina, Frosinone,
     Velletri, and the Comarca, and also districts on the borders of
     Naples."

This number of foundlings does not represent the amount of
illegitimacy, for very many of the foundlings are lawful children.
Maguire says:

     "If it happen, as it often does with people in the humblest
     condition of life, that their family exceed their means of
     support, one of the children is committed to the wheel of the
     foundling hospital of Santo Spirito--it might be, with some mark
     on its dress by which its identity would be afterward proved and
     it be reclaimed by its parents, a thing of no uncommon occurrence.
     Another frequent cause of having recourse to this institution is
     the delicacy of the mother, or of the child. The mother has no
     nourishment to give the infant, and she bears it to the hospital
     to be provided for. Or it is a rickety, miserable thing from
     its birth, stunted, malformed, or so delicate that in the rude
     hut of its parents it has no chance of ever doing well; then
     too, in its case, the wheel of the hospital is a safe recourse,
     and with parents of hard hearts takes the place of many an evil
     suggestion, such as is often present in the homes and the breasts
     of the destitute. Frequently the parent is known to argue that
     the infirm or malformed child, who is thus got rid of, has the
     best chance of recovery, and certainty of being provided for,
     where eminent medical attendance is always to be had, and where
     the greatest care is taken of the training and future interests
     of the foundling. It may be said that this facility of getting
     rid of legitimate offspring leads to a disregard of the manifest
     obligations of a parent's duty; but to this fair objection I can
     only offer a preponderating advantage, that it does away with
     that awful proneness to infanticide which distinguishes other
     countries, but pre-eminently England."

This estimate of Maguire's is confirmed by a statement taken from
the records of the hospital for May, June, and July, 1868, and
transmitted to us by an American clergyman residing in Rome. Of the
total number, some were of legitimate births, as shown by authentic
parish certificates; others of doubtful or uncertain birth; as
follows:

    Foundlings   Of legitimate  Uncertain.
    received.    birth.

    In May,           38            46
    In June,          25            51
    In July,          29            49
                      --           ---
                      92           146

This would give us an aggregate of 952 for the year, of which 584
would be of uncertain birth. A large proportion came from the
provinces around Rome, and there is no reason to suppose all the
uncertain births to be illegitimate; therefore we shall make a
liberal allowance if we take the total number of foundlings of
illegitimate birth, belonging to Rome itself, at 400. The real number
is quite as likely to be below as above it.

When Mittermaier, whoever he was, stated the annual number of
foundlings in Rome to be 3160, the mean population of that city was
stated to be 130,000. It is now 215,573. By Mittermaier's proportion
the annual number of foundlings should now be 5226. Are we called
on to believe this, and to hang our heads in shame at this enormous
number of 5226 illegitimates each year in the capital of the Catholic
world? And this, when we know that the actual number of foundlings
from Rome is not over 900, and the actual number of illegitimate
children is about 400.

A small discrepancy, no doubt; a little peccadillo in the figures!
We hope we have not shown any undue warmth in exposing it; for who
knows, our "evangelic" friends may feel themselves insulted, and
entirely absolved from any obligation of refuting us; our unchristian
warmth of temper and vituperative manner being enough--to use the
expression of Rev. L. W. Bacon, in _The New Englander_--"to discredit
without any particular refutation" whatever we assert in this
article.

But whence come the three thousand one hundred and sixty foundlings
of "Mittermaier" annually received in Rome? Without doubt, from
adding up all the inmates of the different asylums for children in
Rome, and the foundlings of S. Spirito, and representing the total as
an aggregate of _foundlings received_.

"Il Conservatorio and other establishments of this class" in Rome are
as follows:

Asylums for children of all ages, with schools attached:

    S. Maria, in Aguiro,       50
    S. Michael,               200     boys.
    S. Michael,               240     girls.
    Divine Providence,        100     girls.
    S. Mary of Refuge,         50     girls.
    S. Euphemia,               40     girls.
    Tata Giovanni,       over 100     boys.
    Quatro SS. Giovanni,       12     girls.
    Zoccoletti,                60     girls.
                            {number   boys
    S. Maria del Angeli,    {  not     and
                            {stated.  girls.
    S. Caterina,                "     girls.
    Trinitarians,               "     girls.
    St. Pietro,                 "     girls.
    Il Borromeo,                "     girls.
    Mother of Sorrows,          "     girls.

These are institutions of which Dr. Neligan, who visited them,
gives an account in his _Rome_, published by Messrs. Sadlier; and
to these must be added the department of S. Spirito, where female
foundlings, after being nursed, are received back--if not otherwise
provided for--and taken care of for life, or until they marry or
get a situation; this numbers about six hundred, according to
Maguire. If we add all the numbers together, and also the children
under the care of the foundling hospital out at nurse, or being
brought up in private families; in short, all the recipients of
charity of the different institutions of Rome, we might approach a
number corresponding to the three thousand one hundred and sixty of
Mittermaier.

We can see by this "how the noble and Christian charity of Rome,
excelling that of any other city of its size on the earth, is," by a
base and groundless falsehood, sought to be turned into a means of
holding her up to the scorn and indignation of the whole world.

We can show, also, in an entirely different way, by the official
census of Rome, the absurdity of the statement of Seymour, and that
in the most conclusive manner. In the _Civilta Cattolica_ of 21st of
December, 1867, we have the census of the population and the number
of births for the year 1866; also a tabular statement of those for a
period of ten years, ending 21st of April, 1867.

From these we find the present population to be 215,573; the number
of the legitimate births for the year from Easter, 1866, to Easter,
1867, was 5739, and adding thereto the still-born, 6120. The average
annual number of births in an average population of 197,737,
excluding the still-born, was 5657 legitimate, for the decennial
period. Adding the still-born, we have an annual average of over 6000
legitimate births.

Now, if we consider that in Rome there is a large class of the
population who belong to the clergy, who do not marry; a large body
of military; the Jews, whose children of course do not appear in any
baptismal register, from which the number of annual births is made
out; we may set down the average productive part of the population,
corresponding to the population of any other city, at an average of
not more than 175,000. From this number, according to the general
vital statistics of the civilized world, we must look for from 6300
to 6400 annual births. Take from this the number of annual legitimate
births stated above, and there remains no margin for any large
number of illegitimate births. Any one can see that it is a moral
impossibility that they should exceed three or four hundred.

The same thing can be made out by means of the number of the married,
which is accurately taken every year. In April, 1867, there were
30,471 married women in Rome. Now, how many children could be
expected to be born annually from that number? We can approximate
very nearly to this by considering the census of the kingdom of
Italy, as given in the _Civilta Cattolica_ of 20th of June, 1868.
From this we find that for about 4,297,346 married women there were
about 900,000 births, which gives us one yearly for every five
married women, very nearly. Applying this proportion to Rome, we
should have of 30,471 married women, 6094 births. The actual number,
including still-born, was, as we have seen, 6120.

The _Civilta Cattolica_ says, "This proportion of 28.3 of legitimate
births for every one thousand of the population speaks very well
for a capital city." And so it does; it shows, what we have always
understood them to be, that the Romans are as virtuous and moral as
any people of the world.

In passing, we commend to the Rev. Mr. Bacon the figures of the
official census of the kingdom of Italy, from which we find the
percentage of illegitimacy for 1863 to have been 4.8; for 1864, 5. It
is to be observed that there is somewhat of a deterioration in this
last year, perhaps owing to the success of the efforts of the Bible
and tract societies to throw the pure light of "gospel truth" on this
hitherto benighted land. The rate of illegitimacy in Scotland, which
Mr. Laing, in his _Notes of a Traveller_, calls the most religious
Protestant country in Europe, is double that of Italy, the country
most thoroughly Catholic.

And we ask, moreover, of Mr. Bacon, the direct question, What is the
honesty of representing the relative chastity of England and Italy as
5 to 21, when the real proportions are 6.4 to 5? It may do very well
to charge Brother Hatfield and Brother Prime, when you have your own
good name to vindicate against their charges, with gross unfairness
in controversy; but we consider your adroit shirking of all the
statements of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, on the plea of an error found in
a quotation from _The Church and World_, as quite as dishonorable
as any thing you have charged against them. Your persistence in
repeating calumnious statements, and spreading them out as you do
among readers who will not see the refutation, will give you and your
friend, Mr. M. Hobart Seymour, an unenviable notoriety among the
worst calumniators of the Catholic religion who have as yet appeared.
You have repeated, some time ago, that most infamous calumny of the
_Tax-book of the Roman Chancery_, so amply refuted by Bishop England;
but although it has been called to your notice, you have never had
the grace to apologize. The old maxim seems to have been, "Lie as
hard as you can, and lay it on thick, for it will all be believed,"
and hence we had our Maria Monks and our Brownlees. Now the tactics
are to be changed, and the maxim seems to be, "Let there be some
semblance of truth mixed with the lie, so that it may sink deeper;
let the calumny be sugared over with professions of 'fair play,' and
it will work with better effect;" and hence come such things as the
_Moral Results of Romanism_, by Messrs. Seymour and Bacon, the "model
controversialists."

To come back to Rome. The _Civilta Cattolica_ tells us that the
census has been taken in the same way since the sixteenth century.
The total number of births, 4373, of Bowring, were then the total
of legitimate births, not the absolute total. The number of 3160
_foundlings received_ turns out to be the number of orphans--some of
them 80 years old, for all we know; for some are cared for as long as
they live--and other destitute or abandoned children. And thus this
beautiful piece of "mosaic work," intended to exhibit the horrible
vice of Rome to the gaze of an admiring and astonished public, falls
to pieces. Instead of the anomalous state of things in which each
married couple in Rome would have on an average one child in the
space of 25 years, they are found to be quite as prolific as other
people, and quite as virtuous. Rome, in respect to offences against
chastity, is probably the most orderly and decent city of its size in
the world. Maguire says:[20]

     "The returns (criminal) embrace all kinds of crime.... And among
     the rest they comprehend a class of offenders who, in some
     countries--for instance, in France--are under the control as
     well as sanctioned by the police authorities, and in others defy
     almost all authority or restraint whatsoever. I allude to women
     of depraved character, not one of whom is to be met with in the
     streets of Rome, which may accordingly be traversed with impunity
     at any hour of the evening or night by a modest female without the
     risk of having her eyes and ears offended, as they are in too many
     cities of our highly civilized empire. Offenders of this class
     are at once made amenable to the law, and committed either to the
     Termini, or to the institution of the Good Shepherd, where the
     most effectual means of reformation are adopted, and in very many
     instances with success--both institutions being specially under
     the care and control of religious communities."

It is the fashion to decry Rome--to represent her population as cowed
down and discontented with their government; to this the reception
which Garibaldi with his war-cry of "Rome or death"--though he lived
to see another day, after all--met with from the Roman people, is a
sufficient reply: or to say that they are miserably poor or degraded;
to this, Count de Reyneval, in his report to the French minister for
foreign affairs, says:

     "The condition of the population is one of comparative ease.... An
     appearance of prosperity strikes the eyes of the least observant.
     Gaiety of the most expansive kind is to be traced in the faces of
     all. It may be asked whether this can be the people whose miseries
     excite to such a degree the commiseration of Europe?"[21]

Rome, then, with a garrison of over 7000 soldiers, and with an
immense influx of visitors from all parts of the world, and
particularly of wealthy pleasure-seekers from England and America;
with a stern suppression of prostitution and public vice, still shows
a rate of illegitimacy less than six per cent; a rate lower than that
of England, or any Protestant country which has published statistics
on the subject.

We have thus given this matter as thorough and complete an
investigation as has been possible under the circumstances. We have
given the reasons for all we have stated, and the reader can see for
himself the force of our arguments. We neither desire to misrepresent
nor to be misrepresented; and we would not make one misstatement to
the disadvantage of any one, be he Protestant or any thing else; or
conceal any thing which has a bearing on the question, even if it
should put our side of it in an unfavorable light. If we have done
any of these things, it is unconsciously to ourselves; and therefore
we feel, perhaps too warmly and indignantly, this trickery, when it
is attempted to make us the victims of it.

From our previous experience, we look for a more active circulation
of this calumny, from our refutation of it; but we console ourselves
with the reflection that there is a God in heaven who watches over
all, and who will make the truth apparent in due time. At any rate,
no such consideration shall hinder us a moment from exposing error
and deception, so far as our occupations and duties shall afford us
the leisure to do so.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] _Evenings with the Romanists._ Rev. M. Hobart Seymour. Carter &
Brothers. New York.

_New Englander._ July, 1869. New Haven.

_American Churchman._ Chicago.

_Is Romanism the best Religion for the Republic?_ Pamphlet. Pott &
Amery. New York.

_Good News._ October, 1868. P. S. Wynkoop & Son. New York.

_Fair Play on Both Sides._ Pamphlet. New Haven. Rev. L. W. Bacon.

_Watchman and Reflector._ Boston, August 12.

_London Examiner._

[19] _Rome._ By John Francis Maguire, M.P.; p. 169.

[20] _Rome_, p. 458.

[21] Maguire's _Rome_, p. 444.




ST. OREN'S PRIORY;

OR, EXTRACTS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN AMERICAN IN A FRENCH MONASTERY.

"Pour chercher mieux."--_Device of Queen Christina of Sweden._


PART II.

I entered the novitiate on the 22d. The _Veni sponsa Christi, accipe
coronam quam tibi Dominus præparavit in æternum_ has been sounding
in my heart ever since like a war-cry, animating me to the interior
combat. For the cloister is that oasis in the great desert of the
world where is carried on a vital combat between nature and grace,
more furious than that between Christian and Paynim in the Diamond
of the desert. I have been much happier since I entered upon my new
life, and am glad I can go out no more. I love the solitude

and calmness of the cloister, which at last extends to the heart; I
love the shrines "where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep;" I love
the companionship of those who seem unsullied by earthly passions;
and I love this release from all earthly care, with no thought for
what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be
clothed. Is it not better than the bustle and vanity of the world,
which almost efface the thought of God?

And then, you know, I have always believed that there are some
who are called to perpetuate the glorious fellowship of Christ's
sufferings; to share, as members of his body, the pains and sorrows
of the great Head of the church; and to make reparation to heaven
for the constant outrages against the Divine Majesty. As Faber says,
"Nuns are the turtle-doves of the church, who have to mourn in a
spirit of 

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