Part 11 — CHAPTER XX. (continued 3)

Alexandre Dumas, in one of his novels, narrates the same story much more dramatically. According to him, “General Championnet saw that it was important for his safety and the safety of the army that the miracle should not fail that year; and he made up his mind that, one way or another, it should positively occur.” The first Sunday of May was near at hand. On the vigil (May 4, 1799), the procession marched, but between files of French grenadiers. That loggia or gallery. The people began at length to lose patience and to vociferate angrily. At 7 P.M. they were brandishing knives and threatening the general, who pretended not to understand or heed them. At 8 P.M. the streets around were filled with other crowds equally threatening. “The grenadiers waited on a signal from the general to charge bayonets. The general continued unmoved.” At half-past eight, as the tumult was still increasing, “the general bent over and whispered something to an aid-de-camp.” The aid left the stand, and passed up to the altar and knelt in the front rank, and waited. In five minutes the canon, bearing the reliquary, came round to him in his turn. He kissed the reliquary as others did; but, while doing so, grasped the priest’s hand in his.

“‘Father, a word with you.’

“‘What is it?’ asked the priest.

“‘I must say to you, on the part of the general commanding, that if in ten minutes the miracle is not accomplished, in fifteen minutes your reverence shall be shot.’

“The canon let the reliquary fall from his hands. Fortunately, the young officer caught it before it reached the ground, and gave it back with every mark of profound respect. Then he arose and returned to his place near the general.

“‘Well?’ said the general.

“‘All right, general,’ said the young officer. ‘In ten minutes the miracle will take place.’

“The aid-de-camp spoke the truth; nevertheless he made a mistake of five minutes; for at the end of five minutes only, the canon raised the reliquary aloft, exclaiming, Il miracolo è fatto. The blood was completely liquefied.”

We suppose we may take these as the best versions of the same story. The other French and late English versions we have met of it, however they may vary in minor details, all agree as to the person—General Championnet, and as to the year, 1799. So far as we can judge, the Siècle and the other writers got their facts from the novelist. It is their way. When they attack religion, all manner of weapons are acceptable. Where the novelist got it we need scarcely inquire. Certainly, on a pinch, he was capable of inventing it out of the whole cloth. But we can only credit him with twisting and reversing an older story. In a work entitled Naples and Campagna Felice, printed in London in 1815, there is an earlier account of “the very recent experiment of General Championnet.”

“When this Champion of liberty entered Naples with his unhosed enfans de la patrie, his curiosity, or rather his infidelity, prompted him to direct the priests forthwith to perform the ceremony before him and his companions, the philosophic worshippers of the Goddess of Reason.... ‘The miracle must be exhibited this instant, or I’ll smash your vials and all your nonsense into a thousand pieces.’... Every devout effort of the priests proved vain; even the general’s active assistance and repeated trials to give fluidity to the indurated blood, by means of natural and artificial heat, were equally unsuccessful.”

This want of success, according to, the teller of the story, was due to the fact that the relatives of St. Januarius were not present. The general sent soldiers to arrest them, and had them brought into the church.

“A second experiment was now instituted in due form: which, to the utter amazement of the French part of the congregation, and to the inward delight of all the pious Neapolitans, succeeded almost instantaneously.”

Were it not for the identity of names and place, we could scarcely enfans de la patrie, and its result of the experiment so satisfactory to the Neapolitans, as in reality the original form of the story, which Dumas, and after him many others, have dressed up and presented to the world with such different details, and with a result exactly opposite.

But a regard for truth obliges us to reject this earlier form, no less than those which followed, as, all of them, pure fictions. The evidence is clear and to the point.

I. On May 4,1799, General Championnet was not in Naples. He had entered that city with his army on the 28th of January preceding, and had established “The Parthenopean Republic”; but he had been relieved of his command before May; possibly on account of ill health, for he died at Antibes a few months later. His successor in the command at Naples was General, afterwards Marshal Macdonald.

II. The diary of the Tesoro chapel, and the archiepiscopal diary, in their accounts of the exposition on Saturday, May 4, 1799, both mention the presence of General Macdonald with his officers.

III. According to the same authorities, the liquefaction, so far from being long delayed, that day took place quite soon—after a lapse of only ten minutes.

IV. They indicate the very respectful demeanor of the French general, and his expressions of reverence; expressions which, by the way, he confirmed afterwards by presenting to the Tesoro chapel a beautiful silk mitre, rich in gold work and jewels, which is still shown in the sacristy.

V. Finally, to clinch the whole matter, we quote the following extract from a contemporary letter, published at the time in the official organ at Paris—the Moniteur, No. 259, of date 19 Prairial, Year VII. (June 10, 1799).

“Naples, 21 Floréal (May 13).—The festival of St. Januarius has just been celebrated with the customary solemnity. General Macdonald (successor to Championnet), Commissary Abrial, and all the staff, witnessed the renowned miracle. As it took place somewhat sooner than usual, the people think better of us Frenchmen, and do not look on us any more as atheists.”

The writer little thought what a dramatic story a novelist’s imagination would conjure up, and some credulous people would believe, instead of the simple matter-of-fact statement he gave en passant of the solemnity he had just witnessed. A more complete refutation of the whole story could not be desired than that afforded by the words and tone of this letter.

We have been diffuse on the charge of fraud. But when we consider the persistence with which it is made, and the variety of forms in which it is presented; and that, after all, for most minds, the alternative is between a suspicion of fraud, on one side, and the recognition of the miraculous character of the liquefaction, on the other—it was proper to treat this charge at length and in all its aspects.

We have seen that the publicity of everything about the exposition peremptorily forbids every form of legerdemain during the ceremony. Equally inadmissible is the supposition of some chemical compound prepared beforehand. For no chemical compound which man can prepare will liquefy, as this does, independently of heat, and under such diverse circumstances, or will present the many

Again, all testimony goes to show that the ampulla is not opened from time to time to receive any chemical preparation.

Moreover, if there were any fraud, it would have been known to nearly a thousand clergymen, and no one can say to how many laymen. Yet pious men were never heard to denounce it; repentant men never disclosed it; high-minded and honorable men never repudiated it in scorn, vile and mercenary men were never moved by anger, revenge, desire of pecuniary gain, or other potent motives, to betray it. Even political enmities and fierce party strife, so prone to indulge in charges of fraud, have failed in Naples to stigmatize this as a fraud. Evidently, there was no fraud known or suspected there. In fine, were there a fraud, this universal silence would be a greater miracle than the liquefaction itself.

It has been asked, sometimes jeeringly, perhaps sometimes seriously, if the Neapolitans are in such perfect faith and so sure of the character of the substance which liquefies in the ampulla, why are they unwilling to submit that substance to the test of chemical analysis? Is not their omission, nay, their unwillingness to do this, a confession on their part of the weakness of their cause?

To one who knows them, or who even reflects for a moment on the subject, the answer is obvious. It is their perfect good faith itself, and their consequent veneration for what they look on as sacred and specially blessed of God, and not any fear or doubt, that would make them rise in indignation against what, in their eyes, would be a profane and unwarrantable desecration.

There are limits, they would protest, to the intrusive and irreverent meddling of men under pretexts of science. Are there not many points in pathology and physiology on which further knowledge is very desirable—a knowledge which some think can be reached best and most surely, if not only, by vivisection, especially of human subjects, whether in normal health or presenting peculiar developments? Shall we, therefore, in the interests of science, pick out such cases in a community, and deliver them over to be cut up alive, and their still living bodies to be explored by these science-seeking experimenters? Knowledge is good and profitable, undoubtedly; but human life is sacred, and must be preserved intact, even though these men remain in the dark on various obscure points.

So, too, holding as they do that the ampulla contains a portion of the veritable blood of St. Januarius, preserved by miracle of divine Providence, and miraculously liquefied on his feasts, the Neapolitans would shrink in horror from the sacrilegious profanity of delivering it over to the retorts and crucibles, and mortars and solutions, of a chemical laboratory.

Chemical experiments, they would say, are very respectable and very admirable in their place; but there are things too precious and too sacred to be submitted to them. In refusing to do so, the Neapolitans do not confess a sense of the weakness of their own cause. They rather manifest their sincere veneration for what they believe God has specially honored.

As for the plea that this test would solve the question, the Neapolitans

One other objection remains: does God act uselessly? And of what possible use is this miracle? What is the benefit of wonderfully preserving from utter destruction, through so many centuries, a small portion of blood, and of causing it to soften or liquefy fifteen or twenty times a year, when brought, even if reverently, close to the head of the martyr from whose veins it flowed? What good does this do? Is it not so trifling and insignificant a thing as to be almost ridiculous, and entirely unworthy of the majesty of God?

Who shall presume to say that it is unworthy of God—of that God without whose knowledge and permission not a hair can fall from our heads—of that Saviour who mixed clay with the spittle of his mouth, and therewith touched the eyes of the blind man, that sight might be restored to them? It is not for us to decide what is becoming or unbecoming for God to do.

Who shall say that it is useless? Has not the faith of a simple-minded people been confirmed and strengthened by it, to such a degree that the truths of divine revelation and the obligations of man before God are to them verities as strong, as clear, and as real in their daily life as is the sunlight that beams down on their fair land? How many sinners have been led, through it, to repentance and amendment of life? How often have the indifferent been stirred up to avoid evil and to do good, and the good animated to greater fervor and earnestness in deeds of piety and virtue? And, after all, are not these the grand purposes of all God’s dealings with men?

Nor is this miracle—for such we call it, although the church has never spoken authoritatively on the point—alien from doctrine. Wrought in honor of a sainted and martyred bishop, it is a perpetual testimony to the truth of the doctrines he preached, and of the church which glories in him as one of her exemplary and venerated ministers; it is a confirmation of the homage and veneration she pays to him because he chose rather to sacrifice his life than to deny the Saviour who had redeemed and illumined him. Wrought within her fold, it is a permanent evidence that she is in fact and in spirit the same now as in the early days of persecution—the ever true and faithful church of Christ.

It is a confirmation, likewise, of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead—that special doctrine which the apostles put forth so prominently in the beginning of their preaching; which was ever present to the minds of the early Christians, cheering and strengthening them when this world was dark around them; which formed the frequent theme of their pastoral instructions and their mutual exhortations, and became the prevailing subject of their household and their sacred ornamentation in their homes and in their oratories, and over their tombs in the catacombs; which gave a special tone to their faith, their hope, and their charity and love of God, and was, as it were, the very lifeblood of their Christianity.

Nowadays, outside the church, how faint, comparatively, has belief in this doctrine become, or, rather,

Finally, this miracle seems to us especially adapted to our own age, when over-much knowledge is making men mad. Men are so lifted up by their progress, especially in natural sciences, that they have come to feel that they can dispense with God and substitute NATURE in his stead, with her multifarious and unchangeable laws. They boast that, under the light of their newly-acquired knowledge, everything is already, or will soon be, susceptible of natural explanation. As for miracles—direct interventions of God in the affairs of the world, reversing or suspending, in special cases, these ordinary laws of nature—they scout the idea. All past accounts of miracles, no matter when or by whom recorded, they hold to be either accounts of natural events warped and distorted by excited and unrestrained imaginations, or else the pure fictions of superstition and credulity. They are sure that, in the first case, had there been present witnesses of sufficient knowledge and caution—such knowledge and caution as they possess—the accounts of those events would have come down to us in a far simpler garb, and unclothed with this miraculous robing. They are equally sure that, in the other case, education, especially in the physical sciences, would have forbidden the creation of those numberless fictions.

Well, here, in the light of this nineteenth century, in one of the most polished, most delightful, and most accessible cities of Italy—centuries ago the largest, and even now the fourth largest, in Europe—there occurs an event to which their attention is invited. It is not an event of which a few only can be witnesses, and which all others must learn on their testimony. It occurs in public. It occurs fifteen or twenty times each year, and year after year. All may scrutinize it again and again, as often and as closely as they please. No mystery is made of anything about it. We admit it has come down to us from the middle ages, dark, ignorant, and superstitious as they are alleged to have been. But then, if it belongs to the past, it occurs still, and belongs equally to this nineteenth century. Moreover, it comes directly in contact with those physical sciences in which they think themselves strongest, and it should, therefore, interest them, and claim their attention.

Will they accept the invitation? We think very few will heed it.

Others pretend to examine, but do it with a resolute and unshakable predetermination that this must not be found out to be a miracle. They foster a prejudice which may blind their eyes to the light; and they, too, make themselves equally responsible for their conclusion and its consequences.

But if any one—Catholic, Protestant, or Rationalist—will examine it seriously and candidly, no matter how closely and patiently—nay, the more closely and patiently, the more surely—he will come to the same inevitable conclusion to which such an examination has heretofore led so many other candid and intelligent inquirers: Digitus Dei est hic: The Finger of God is here.

THE NEW SCHOOL OF HISTORY.

If the ghost of Tacitus could return from the Acherontic shades, learn the English language, and spend a few weeks in reading the most popular modern works in that branch of letters of which he was in his day the conspicuous ornament, he would rend his toga in despair, and mourn over the ruin of one of the noblest of the sciences. The “dignity of history” was not an unmeaning phrase when kings, consuls, and military commanders moved with stately pace through the polished pages, and uttered the most heroic of sentiments in the most formal of addresses. Ancient authors would have deemed it the grossest indecency to quote familiar language from the lips of any historical character, or to let the world imagine that men who concerned themselves with the destinies of states, behaved even in moments of relaxation like the men who buy and sell in the shops, and confine their cares to commonplace domestic matters. And yet what could be more absurd than to suppose that generals addressed their armies amid the heat of battle in a speech regularly compounded of exordium, argument, exhortation, and peroration; or that great men wore the grand manner to bed with them, and put on civic crowns before they washed their faces in the morning? It is not so very many years since Cato used to be represented on the English stage in a powdered wig and a dress-sword, which was not more incongruous than the spectacle presented by all the old statesmen and fighting characters of antiquity, mouthing orations, and posing themselves in the best of the classical histories. Perhaps it was something to be thankful for that, in the eclipse of learning during the disturbed middle ages, the art of writing history after the heroic manner was lost. The chroniclers of feudal times devoted infinite pains to the reeord of facts—as well as the record of many things that were not facts—but knew little of the graces of literary composition, and cared nothing for the dignity of history. They stripped off the heavy robes, and showed us the deformed and clumsy figures underneath. Lacking literary culture and the fine art of discrimination, they left us only the bare materials of history instead of the historical structure itself. Industrious but injudicious collectors, they were sometimes amusingly garrulous, sometimes provokingly uninteresting; but their labors were invaluable, and modern scholars owe them a debt which can never be repaid. It is only within a

It was not until Macaulay arose in England, and Prescott in the United States, that the modern school of historical writing was fairly developed. Macaulay explained his own theory when he said that “a perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque, yet must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own.” William H. Prescott, though he sometimes trusted authorities who did not deserve his confidence, and was swayed by religious prejudice and an inability to comprehend the spirit of Catholic faith, came nearer to the perfection of Macaulay’s ideal than any previous writer. His imagination adorned the romantic tales of conquest and adventure in the New World with a splendor till then unknown; yet no one could charge that he had been led away by the temptations of a too luxuriant fancy, or had heightened the effect of his narrative by a single touch unauthorized in the musty chronicles from which he drew his material. Prescott’s earlier histories are stories in which the actors stand forth with as much distinctness, and incidents follow one another with as much rapidity and as close connection, as in a well-constructed novel. In his unfinished Philip II., he entered upon a wider field, which required a different treatment. It was no longer sufficient to tell a story well; he had to paint the manners of an age, the life and character of a nation, and to unravel the network of intrigue which constitutes the political history of Europe during a long and stirring period of time. That he did this, so far as his labors extended, with consummate art, no American reader needs to be told. But the system which he pursued was carried to a greater length by Macaulay—the best type, upon the whole, of the new school of historians of whom we purposed speaking in this article. Macaulay assumed that history ought to show us not merely the revolutions of dynasties, the clash of armies, and the intrigues of cabinets, but the daily life and conversation of all ranks of the people, from the prince to the peasant. It ought to teach us their habits of thought The Fortunes of Nigel.[116] Macaulay made many mistakes in the execution of this noble plan. He picked up too many things which were not so much undignified as untrustworthy. The sketches of society which he drew with such a masterly hand may have been true in their general effect; but he blundered in details. Besides, he was as hot a partisan as Hume, as inveterate a theorist as even the author of The Decline and Fall.

Whatever his mistakes and shortcomings, Macaulay rendered an invaluable service to literature by the impetus which his brilliant example gave to the new principles of historical composition. He may be said to have dealt the finishing blow to the old style, and shown us how a minute, faithful, and vivacious story ought to be set before the world—how the historian must draw his materials, not only from state-paper offices and formal chronicles, but from gossiping diaries, ballads, pamphlets, and all other sources in which are preserved traces of the condition of society and the domestic annals of the people. The period which he undertook to illustrate offered peculiar advantages for the development of his plan. It was a period when a great change was taking place in English customs and ways of thought. The revolution, which not only exchanged one dynasty for another, but metamorphosed the very system of English government, merely followed in the path of a remarkable intellectual and social transformation, without which the political reversal would have been impossible. The events of the reign of James II. could not be explained under the old plan of writing history on stilts. They were incomprehensible except by one who could mingle familiarly with the English people, and learn by what steps they had reached their new departure. Only one period in the history of England showed changes of equal importance. That was the period which witnessed England’s apostasy from the Catholic faith; and it is the period which one of the latest and most brilliant of English historians has chosen for the subject of a work planned (if not executed) after Macaulay’s model.

Mr. James Anthony Froude attempted to trace the development of the English nation, from the day of Henry’s formal separation from the communion of the Holy See to the final establishment of Protestant ascendency at the death of Elizabeth. This is by no means the task he has accomplished, but it is the task he set himself at the beginning of his work. He purposed to show the processes by which a people, devotedly and even heroically faithful to the Roman See, became first schismatic and then heretical; how their character under the change of faith took on a new color; how the foundations of the English supremacy over Ireland and Scotland were laid in blood and crime; and how the maritime ascendency which has lasted three hundred years was established by the daring and enterprise of English sailors during the latter half of Elizabeth’s reign. Never had historian a more tempting

In his first volume, Mr. Froude seemed to appreciate the nature of his task, and to go about it with something of the proper spirit. He set before us a lifelike picture of England in the early part of Henry’s reign, and displayed admirable art in reproducing the manners, the conversation, and the tendencies of the common people, as well as the superficial characteristics of the chief actors in the historical drama. But even in the first volume he showed the glaring faults which vitiated all his later labors, and, increasing as the work went on, made his history at last one of the worst that the present generation has produced. Fired with the zeal of a blind partisan, he forgot all his earlier purposes and all his earlier pictorial art in the enthusiasm of a fierce religious bigotry. It became his object to describe a conflict for the possession of England between the powers of darkness and the powers of light. On the one hand stood the Pope of Rome and his agents, Catharine of Aragon, Wolsey, Mary Tudor, Philip of Spain, and the Queen of Scots. On the other, arrayed beneath the banner of civil and religious liberty, fought those bright beings, Henry VIII., Anne Boleyn, and Queen Elizabeth. Naturally, when Elizabeth at last triumphed in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Mr. Froude declared the battle over, and dropped his unfinished, ill-proportioned story. One qualification he certainly had. He shrank from no paradox. He carried his theory boldly over the most serious obstacles, and took even the nastiest fences in the life of Henry without an instant’s hesitation. The most fervent Anglicans were amazed at Mr. Froude’s admiration for the bluff, carnal-minded king, and wondered how he was to justify the new views of history which he set forth with such alluring boldness. It was not long before he taught them his method. “It often seems to me,” says Mr. Froude, in one of his collected essays, “as if history was like a child’s box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please.” Of course, when the historian takes the liberty of leaving out facts which do not please him, disarranging sequences which conflict with his preconceived theories, and giving his own peculiar coloring to incidents without caring what coloring actually belongs to them, it is indeed easy enough to make history spell whatever he pleases. At the very outset, Mr. Froude had an opportunity to try his skill in accommodating facts to theories. He began his story with Henry’s project for a divorce; and his starting-point was the assumption that the king sent for Lord Northumberland, and ordered him to interrupt the affair. Mr. Froude could not help seeing this statement if he read Cavendish at all, and we do not understand how he is to be acquitted of gross and intentional misrepresentation in making his authority convey a meaning diametrically opposed to the one intended. After this, Mr. Froude goes on with the story of the divorce as if Anne had no existence, and she does not appear again upon the scene until the stage has been nearly cleared for her.

This is a fair specimen of literary dishonesty or recklessness from the first volume. Later instalments of the work, especially those devoted to the Queen of Scots, have been dissected by an able hand in the pages of this magazine. The series of papers in which Mr. James F. Meline examined in our columns Froude’s account of Mary Stuart, have now been incorporated with much additional matter in a volume entitled Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest English Historian.[117] No more thorough scarification of a literary offender has been published within our recollection. Mr. Meline has traced the historian’s authorities with admirable patience, disclosed his falsifications, his misconceptions, his suppressions, and his interpolations, and utterly demolished the case which Elizabeth’s advocate made against the unfortunate Mary. It is common to meet with uneducated people who cannot tell a story correctly, or repeat the words of a conversation without grossly distorting their meaning. Partly from defects of memory, partly from an intellectual deficiency which prevents them from apprehending things exactly as they are, such persons invariably misreport what they have seen and heard. What such people are to society, Mr. Froude seems to be to history. The Saturday Review says that he has not “fully grasped the nature of inverted commas.”

These are serious charges to bring against a writer of history; but they are all proved by Mr. Meline’s book. We do not purpose reviewing the whole story of the Queen of Scots, or reviving the endless controversy upon her innocence, so soon after the task has been performed in the pages of The Catholic World by the author of the savage little volume now before us. But we shall select and arrange from this record a few specimens of Mr. Froude’s sins, that our readers may judge for themselves how little claim this latest English history has to an honorable place on their library shelves.

1. Mr. Froude begins early to prepare our minds for Mary’s imputed profligacy. “She was brought up,” he says, “amidst the political iniquities of the court of Catharine de Medicis.” The fact is that Mary never was at the court of Catharine de Medicis at all. Catharine had no court, no influence, no position in history, until after Mary had left France. And, besides, Mary and Catharine cordially detested each other.

2. On the authority of Knox’s History of the Reformation, he relates that Knox had labored to save the Earl of Murray from the dangerous fascinations of his sister Mary, “but Murray had only been angry at his interference, and ‘they spake not familiarlie for more than a year and a half.’” But Knox gives an entirely different version of the quarrel. He writes that he had urged Murray to legalize by act of the parliament the confession of faith as the doctrine of the Church of Scotland, but Murray was more intent upon his private interests—“the erledom of Murray needed confirmation, and many things were to be ratified that concerned the help of friends and servants—and the matter fell so hote betwixt the Erie of Murray and John Knox, that familiarlie after that time they spack nott together more than a year and a half.” There is nothing about Mary’s influence over her brother; the influence was all on the other side.

3. Mr. Froude assumes to quote from a dispatch of Randolph’s to Cecil a description of Mary’s luxurious habits. “Without illness or imagination of it, she would lounge for days in bed, rising only at night for dancing or music; and there she reclined with some light delicate French robe carelessly draped about her, surrounded by her ladies, her council, and her courtiers, receiving ambassadors and transacting business of state. It was in this condition that Randolph found her.” (Randolph to Cecil, Sept. 4, 1563.) There is no such description in the dispatch. On the contrary, Mary is represented at this period, both by Randolph and by other authorities, as industrious, active, energetic, and capable, but at the same time in bad health.

4. Mr. Froude thus travesties Randolph’s account of the return of Bothwell (1565): “Suddenly, unlooked for and uninvited, the evil spirit of the storm, the Earl of Bothwell, reappeared at Mary’s court. She disclaimed all share in his return; he was still attainted; yet there he stood—none daring to lift a hand against him—proud, insolent, and dangerous.” And he adds that “the Earl of Murray, at the expense of forfeiting the last remains of his influence over his sister, summoned Bothwell to answer at Edinburgh a charge of high treason.” What Randolph really

5. Mr. Froude speaks of Lennox having “gathered about him a knot of wild and desperate youths—Cassilis, Eglinton, Montgomery, and Bothwell.” If he had read his authority (Randolph) with decent care, he would have seen that these were not the friends of Lennox, but, on the contrary, the strongest dependence of Murray and Argyle against Lennox. Moreover, Eglinton and Montgomery are one and the same person.

6. A blunder which has already excited some discussion is Mr Froude’s statement, on the authority of a letter from Randolph to Cecil, October 5, 1565, that Mary, “deaf to advice as she had been to menace,” said she would have no peace till she had Murray’s or Chatelherault’s head.” There is no such letter. It appears, however, from a letter of Randolph’s, dated October 4, that Mary was “not only uncertain as to what she should do, but inclined to clement measures, and so undecided as to hope that matters could be arranged.” The document to which Mr. Froude refers is a letter from the Earl of Bedford, who was not at Mary’s court, but at Alnwick, on the English side of the border, and who consequently had no such opportunities as Randolph for knowing the temper of the Scottish Queen. But even Bedford does not say what Mr. Froude reports. The earl merely relates the substance of information brought back from the rebel camp by one of his officers. According to this man, Murray and the other rebel lords are dissatisfied with the little that England is doing to help them, and they say, “There is no talk of peace with that Queen, but that she will first have a head of the duke or of the Earl of Murray.”

7. One instance of Mr. Froude’s incorrigible propensity to blunder in that peculiar manner which is vulgarly called “going off at half-cock,” deserves to be mentioned, not for its importance, but because it is amusing. He describes Mary on a furious night-ride of “twenty miles in two hours,” at the end of which she wrote “with her own hand” a letter to Elizabeth, “fierce, dauntless, and haughty,” “the strokes thick, and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of trembling.” It is a pity to spoil such a picturesque passage; but the very letter which Mr. Froude seems to have examined with such care contains the Queen’s apology for not writing it with her own hand, because she was “so tired and ill at ease,” and mentions, moreover, that the twenty-miles ride occupied five hours, not two.

8. In his account of the murder of Darnley, Mr. Froude pursues a singularly devious course, through which his reviewer follows him with inimitable pertinacity. The historian accepts without reserve the most notoriously untrustworthy authorities, distorts evidence, throws in a multitude of artful suggestions, and suppresses in a manner that is downright dishonest every circumstance that tells in Mary’s favor. We have no space to recapitulate here the numberless blunders and perversions of which he is convicted by Mr. Meline; but some of them are too ludicrous to be passed over. For instance, Mr. Froude finds it suspicious that Mary should have “preferred to believe” that she herself was the object of the lords’ conspiracy, though a her husband’s life was in danger.” The message was not from Catharine de Medicis, but from the Spanish ambassador in France, and wanted her to “take heed to herself,” for there was “some notable enterprise in hand against her.” Not a word is said of her husband.

9. It is again mentioned, as confirmation of her guilt, that “she sent for none of the absent noblemen to protect her,” and that “Murray was within reach, but she did not seem to desire his presence.” Now, Mr. Froude’s own authorities show that Mary did send for many of the absent noblemen, and in particular that she twice sent for Murray, who would not come.

10. When Elizabeth sent Killigrew to Scotland to inquire into the circumstances of the murder, Murray (as Killigrew himself relates) entertained the English ambassador at dinner, and invited to meet him Huntly, Argyle, Bothwell, and Maitland—all of them among the murderers of Darnley. This was strong circumstantial evidence of Murray’s guilt. Mr. Froude accordingly (referring to Killigrew as his authority) suppresses all mention of Murray, who gave the dinner and presided at it, and states that Killigrew “was entertained at dinner by the clique who had attended her [Mary] to Seton”—thus implying that Mary, instead of Murray, was in league with Bothwell and the others to prevent his getting at the truth. The whole substance of Killigrew’s letter is most outrageously misrepresented. Mr. Meline gives the original and the false version side by side.

But we must pause. We cannot follow Mr. Meline in his admirable discussion of the authenticity of the famous casket letters, or his exposure of the extraordinary misstatements with which Mr. Froude has loaded this portion of his book. With the question of the innocence of the Queen of Scots, we are not now concerned. Our business is rather with the innocence of the Queen of Scots’ most notorious modern accuser. And whatever may be thought of the honesty of Mr. Froude’s motives, whether we decide that he blunders through sheer incapacity, or lies with malice aforethought, we believe candid students will admit that his reputation as a historical writer has been utterly ruined, and that his work will be remembered hereafter as a disastrous literary failure.

VENITE ADOREMUS.

refrain of ever-silent sorrows; with the sacred thoughts of that most touching feast, Christmas, of that most tender mystery, the Infant-God; with the human thoughts of friends gone from us and loved ones far away—Venite adoremus!

It conjures up pictures before us of a happy, ignorant childhood, peaceful as a meadow-brook—a young life passed amid smiling hills, and fruitful vales, and woods where the honeysuckle twines round the old gnarled hawthorns, and the oak spreads its green, trembling tent over carpets of wild hyacinths. There, before the mind’s eye, rises the vision of a house, gray and picturesque, a broad, lovely terrace, and oriel windows looking down and beyond it into a sloping orchard. At the back, leaning on the grassy bank, dotted by firs and elms, lilacs and guelder-rose, and fragrant syringa and gold-blooming laburnum, stands a gaunt old tower, clad in dark purple-berried ivy—a ghost tower, the haunt of mystery, overshadowing the little cloister and the tall, gray roof of the chapel. But it is winter, and I have been forgetting that the Venite adoremus is a snow-flower of devotion, a “Christmas rose,” not a red June rose, regal in its dusky, velvety mantle of richest, warmest color; for now we hear the chant of the holy Christmas song, and the tapers are lighted on the stone-carved altar, where, on each side of the niched reredos, white angels kneel with their eternal torches, ever still, ever adoring, like some heavenly exile bound to earth’s temples by a divine spell, of which art holds the key. Above, the Annunciation is blazoned forth on the pictured window; but you cannot see it now, the night blots out its fairness. Angels, again, on the frescoed wall, bear scrolls, whose silent voices chant a ceaseless Gloria to the Babe in the tabernacle—Laudamus te, Benedicimus te, Adoramus te, Glorificamus te—and the rest of the narrow chapel is dark and voiceless, save where a taper glimmers on the desk of the little, humble harmonium, round which stand reverentially the few singers, whose only guerdon is the smile of the unseen but not unfelt God. Dark and dusky red are the hangings that tapestry the wall, bearing over their surface thick growths of the white fleur-de-lis; while above the simple benches of stained wood, at the back, rises a long, dark gallery. It was there I heard the first Midnight Mass I ever heard in my life.

Venite adoremus! It brings back visions of a mother’s patient, doting love; of a gathering of friends; of pleasant, hushed talk of ghosts and spectres; of long, dark corridors, where the wind moaned like a soul in pain; of oriel windows, many-paned, through which came the distant sound of young owls hooting mournfully in the snow-covered plantations.

How kind a mother the church is! Are not all her feasts as many days of remembrances given to the past joys of home? Are they not a faultless calendar of our hopes and fears for years past? When the children, with earnest, unsuspicious gravity, debated upon the arrangements of the “crib,” what excitement! what interest! When the parents and the old retainers closed one room in mysterious silence, and decorated the glittering Christmas-tree, what wonderment! what whisperings!—and on the revelation, what delight! When piles of blankets and warm clothing were distributed among the poor, what curiosity to see which child got the petticoat Eleanor hemmed, or the jacket Frances put together!

All this is in the voice of the Venite adoremus as it sounds faintly now through a half-opened door, a Sunday surprise in a house hardly given to much solemnity—a house far away from the old gabled homestead and the snow-veiled chapel-roof.

But it has other scenes to show, other memories to waken. It tells of a Southern church, gaudy and bedizened, full of frivolous worshippers, whose Christmas vigil has been kept Venite adoremus! It swells up in sweet woman-tones from some recess of faithful memory, but the halls through which the hymn was borne that Christmas night echo only to the heavy tramp of the sentinel now, if not to worse, the blasphemies of the ungodly trooper.

It brings the mediæval glories of St. Mark’s to the mind of a lover of that unique basilica—that petrified dream of the heavenly Jerusalem, with its curious barbaric wealth, its golden mosaics, its Byzantine spoils of victories that were not merely the victories of civilization over decay, but the triumphs of faith over superstition. The glorious church is full, dark masses of human beings sway about its broad-reaching nave, and here and there, like fire-flies, like heart-stars, shine the little cerini—the rope-like coils of wax, the picturesque forerunners of garish gas-jets and dream-dispelling coronas. The Mass in Venice is not a real Midnight Mass, however, since, by special permission, it is celebrated at five o’clock in the afternoon of the vigil. It is sad to hear profane music even in this consecrated spot, whose dim, suggestive beauty seems to inherit the vague and solemn halo of the veiled lamps of the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem; but corrupted taste certainly does reign in the Venetian basilica, and a Mass full of modern Italian fioritura is annually performed in it at the festival of Christmas. Still, the mind sees beyond the unhappy aberrations of the modern Euterpe out into the long vista of past centuries, when graver and nobler strains rang through the low-vaulted temple, and the stern and silent heads of the state came in procession to grace the triumph of the new-born Saviour. From Venice to Geneva there is a wide gulf, but the Venite adoremus bridges over that.

Once again Christmas comes round, and the same world-wide chant rises in the now half-converted stronghold of Calvinism. It leads us towards the older town, far from the noisy port hotels, into a winding labyrinth of steep, ill-paved streets, through rows of old houses, every one of which seems to have a history of its own, and whose old-fashioned windows, and wide portals opening into silent court-yards, remind one of time-worn parchment bindings round poems for ever new. But is this analogy not a little true? for is not the poem of the human heart as old and as changeless as the ancient romances of long-dead bards, and yet do we ever tire of its repetition, any more than we are weary of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Homer and Virgil?

Venite adoremus! It lures us on to a dark church, dedicated to St. Germain, where there is nothing beautiful to strike the eye, nothing artistic to make the heart beat. Plain and even unsightly, tawdry and faded, as all churches are whose history lies between the dreaded persecution St. Germain yet possesses that untold charm which the Italians so broadly but accurately describe by the word simpatico. Sympathy! yes, that is it. It breathes on us from every corner; it is the atmosphere of the little church; it softens every incongruity, and sweetly blinds us to every defect. After all, such churches, inartistic as they may be, are no unfit representatives of the church militant, while our glorious blossoms of stone, born of the Moses-like rod of Pugin, are types of the unfathomable beauty and jubilant repose of the church triumphant.

In this Midnight Mass at Geneva it was touching to see the crowds that flocked to the church through drifting snow and biting wind—real Christmas weather—and, without any attraction in the shape of noted preacher or imposing ceremonial, filled the church as full as the generous heart-blood does the bosom of the Christian martyr. Hundreds of silent worshippers were assembled there, and, when the last Gospel of the Mass had been said, the priests returned, in alb and stole, to give communion to the eager congregation. Hardly one present seemed to have left the church, and gradually the vast body of the faithful broke, like successive waves, at the foot of the altar. For one whole hour was this scene enacting, and no music was heard meanwhile, and, though few rules were enforced and little order reigned, yet the sight was as widely suggestive as any more carefully arranged demonstrations. Somehow these artless, unpremeditated outpourings of the heart of Christendom have a far higher power to interest, a far subtler charm to entrance, and leave a higher impression and a more healthful influence behind, than those wonderful pageants which from year to year draw thousands of curious spectators to Rome. Here is everyday Christianity; here is the inner working of that silent, God-wielded mechanism whose outward robes and draperies only come to us in the shape of those glittering festas; here is the real work, the real core of things, the heart whose pulsation alone gives meaning to all that external magnificence, the sun of which those ceremonies are the radiance, the consuming fire of which that glorious ritual is but the outgoing heat and the coruscant light. And when we think of the darker and varied aspects, the inner complications of the lives of those who were crowding round the altar-rails of St. Germain, what a wonderful, manifold history, what a spiritual landscape of infinite shades of the most delicate pencillings, do we not see! Side by side kneel souls whose life-paths run in opposite channels: here is Martha, the busy household angel, whose faith is inwoven in her every daily movement, her every thought, though it be of toil and anxiety; there is the pensive Magdalen, whose sadness is her soul’s beauty, whose memory brings before her even more tokens of merciful forgiveness and unwearied love than of her own little past, her sins and her hard-heartedness; there kneels the widow whose child has just been given back to her from the very portals of death, and whose only altar for many dreary months has been the darkened chamber and the curtained sick-bed. Close to her is a maiden whose life is one long act of pure preparation for the bridal feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and who, when next Christmas-chimes sound, will hear in them the glad knell that proclaims her death to the outside world, and her life-long vow of obedience to her angel’s robe has swept past our own garments a moment ago.

And as this scene fades away, while the silence is again broken by the sweet song of home, Venite adoremus! we see another and a last picture dawning from the gray mist of memory.

Not far from the old home where the first Midnight Mass of our childhood entranced our imagination is another house—a home, too, in some sense, yet not the home that the mother hallowed in the dear, olden days, for now she is only present in the spirit, and she never even saw the first Christmas snows in this new and stately hall.

But a church, fair and carven, stands above her grave, and her loving heart is the first stone, the foundation-stone of the new shrine. Close above her resting-place is the altar, and close below, the organ. There Christmas is enthroned again, the Venite adoremus echoes once more through wreathed arches and festooned pillars; there again a small household and a few newly-converted children of the faith of old England kneel in silent prayer, and mingle thoughts of the foundress of the church with those of the new-born King whose praises, whose Gloria, she is now singing in heaven. Thus the soul-stirring Christmas hymn links the past with the present, the memories of foreign lands with the dear thoughts of home, and binds them together as a sheaf of golden straw to lay in the crib of the Babe of Bethlehem.

Venite adoremus! It has been sung to our infancy when the nurse

Those who are dear to us on earth, those who grew up round the same hearth, and knelt peacefully at the same father’s knee, and held his hand the day the mother-angel winged her way to her God, can never forget the Venite adoremus, the Christmas pledge of undying love and indissoluble union, which they learned and sang together for long, long years of joy, nor can they dream that, however far apart, that hymn does not make the heart beat and the eye grow dim with tears even as in the days of old; while—O happier thought even than that!—they never can forget that as on earth, so will it be hereafter, that the crown of song will lack no jewel, will miss no note, of all that once were in it, and that for ever and for ever one will be the undiminished chorus of father and mother, brethren and sisters, in the halls of the “Everlasting Christmas.” Venite Adoremus! venite adoremus Dominum!

MR. CLARKE’s LIVES OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS.[118]

“Like stars to their appointed heights they climb.”—Shelley.

But it seems to have been equally thought, among the historians of the church, that her career in America Rev. Charles I. White, D.D., giving a Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Catholic Church in the United States of America, and intended to supply, in some measure, the omission.

In our article on Bishop Timon, in The Catholic World of April, 1871, we remarked: “Sketches of local church history, more or less complete, have occasionally appeared—sketches, for instance, like The Catholic Church in the United States, by De Courcy and Shea; and Shea’s History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian tribes of America, and Bishop Bayley’s little volume on the history of the church in New York. But a work of a different kind, broader in its design than some of these excellent and useful publications, more limited in scope than the dry and costly general histories, still awaits the hand of a polished and enthusiastic man of letters.”

When we penned these lines, though we knew of Mr. Clarke’s long-continued and unwearied labors in that department of American Catholic literature, had cheered at times his earnest and faithful studies, and had, by his kindness, been able to spread before our readers some of his interesting and admirably prepared biographical papers, such as the Life of Governor Dongan of New York, in The Catholic World of September, 1869, and the Memoir of Father Brébeuf, S.J., in the July and August numbers, 1871, still we scarcely hoped that we should see our desires so soon realized, or that we should so soon have occasion to hail the appearance of the splendid work now before us, the fruits of his accomplished pen and energetic industry, in the two handsomely printed and elegantly bound volumes, The Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States. The production of such a work, prepared during the broken and fleeting moments of leisure snatched from a life devoted to professional duties, and to an active participation in the Catholic and public-spirited enterprises of our busy metropolis, is something for which we, as a Catholic journalist devoted to literature, may be permitted to express our own thanks, and those of the Catholic community, and at the same time to commend it as an instance of successful literary toil in a rich but uncultivated field, and as, what we hope and believe it will be, a reward for long and painstaking researches, careful collation, and fine literary study. There were but few published works, as we have remarked, from which to draw the facts and information necessary for such a book. Hence the author had to seek, in a great measure, his materials from the archives of the various dioceses, the unpublished correspondence and journals of the deceased prelates, their pastoral letters and addresses, from the Catholic serial authorities, unpublished documents and original sources of information, which were in many cases the individual narratives of living witnesses, committed to writing at his request, and for this work, is a proof of the industry and labor with which this work has been prepared, and give us the means of appreciating the services thus rendered to our American Catholic literature, in securing and preserving from decay, oblivion, or total loss many valuable but perishable traditions and documentary materials. We will refer to two only, among many instances throughout these richly stored pages, of valuable documents thus given to the public; these are the royal charter of King James II., guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics of Virginia in 1686, and the beautiful and touching letter addressed by Archbishop Carroll, in 1791, to the Catholic Indians of Maine, the remnants of the pious and faithful flock of the illustrious and martyred Rale—for the publication of both of which we are indebted to Mr. Clarke.

Mr. Clarke has devoted many years to these valuable and excellent studies and compositions, and those who have read our Catholic periodical literature during the last fifteen years, will remember his Memoirs of Archbishops Carroll and Neale, of Bishops Cheverus and Flaget, of the Rev. Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, of Fathers Andrew White and Nerinckx, of Governor Leonard Calvert, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Commodore John Barry, the father of the American navy, and Judge Gaston; which were published in 1856 and 1857 in The Metropolitan of Baltimore. The favor with which these papers were received at the time, and the earnest recommendations of prelates, priests, and laymen, have, as we have learned, induced the author to enlarge his plans and undertake a series of works, which will give the American Church a complete biography of ecclesiastics and laymen, and, at the same time, literary monuments of classic taste and scholarship. The present book of the prelates will, as we rejoice to learn, be followed by the second work of the course, containing the lives of the missionaries of our country, such as White of Maryland, Marquette, Jogues, and Brébeuf of New York, Rale of Maine, the missionaries of the Mississippi Valley, of distinguished priests in later times, and of the founders of our religious houses, male and female. The remaining work of the series, more interesting probably than even the preceding ones, because not the least attempt has so far been made in that direction, will contain the lives of distinguished Catholic laymen, who have rendered signal services to our country, such as Calvert, Carroll, and Taney of Maryland, Iberville of Louisiana, Dongan of New York, La Salle and Tonty, explorers of the Mississippi River, Barry of Pennsylvania, Vincennes of Indiana, Gaston of North Carolina, and many others. The whole will form a complete series of Catholic biographical works, issued in the appropriate order of bishops first, priests and religious second, and finally of statesmen, captains, explorers, and The Catholic World to encourage, promote, and cherish.

That valuable materials exist in the country for all of these important works, we feel quite sure. We hope care will be taken of them and that they will be freely placed at the service of our Catholic historians and authors. Their publication would be the best means of preserving them, while rendering them useful to the present generation. We will give an incident in the experience of Mr. Clarke, in preparing his Lives of the Bishops, related by him to us, as an evidence of the danger to which valuable historical matter is constantly exposed of being lost and destroyed. He applied, in one instance, to the custodians of the papers relating to the Catholic history of an important diocese and state, and was informed that the diocesan papers and documents had been for many years locked up in a strong chest or safe, before and for some time after the death of the first bishop, and, on being opened and examined, they were found to be in a state of complete decay from the damp, fell to pieces when handled, and that scarcely a line of the writing was legible. Other cases are related of valuable materials for American Catholic history lost or sent out of the country. We observe, in the first volume before us, a new and appropriate feature—a distinct and separate return of thanks by the author to a long list of prelates, priests, and laymen who have supplied him with materials or aided him in his labors. The appeal he makes, in his preface, for the assistance of such as possess materials, has our cordial sympathy; and we hope the appeal will not be made in vain.

The book of prelates, whose appearance we now hail with so much pleasure, is the most important and valuable contribution yet made to our American Catholic biographical literature. It covers the ground of our entire church history to the most recent times, possesses the peculiar interest which attaches to personal and individual narrative, and is free, as we have said, from the dryness of the general history. Its pages teem with an ardent love of country and of our American institutions, and with a devotion to true liberty, which well accord with the traditions and education of one of the descendants of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland, who constitute the theme of an honored chapter in our history, illustrating the magnanimity of a dominant Catholic majority in times when toleration was not the fashion, the harmony between Catholicity and liberty, and an unflinching faith through generations of Protestant persecution. Praise is freely bestowed, where praise was due, to our country and to our countrymen; and reproof is administered in the spirit of true affection, whenever there are errors or abuses to be corrected, or where there is conflict, in the civil or political order, with the sacred rights of religion and of conscience.

The antiquity of the Catholic Church in America, her struggles and triumphs, are well worthy of the study of all. Her struggles have ever been against vice and error, and in favor of liberty and virtue. Her triumphs have been the conquest of souls for heaven. No impartial mind can study the career of the Catholic Church in the United States without being convinced of the purity of her motives, and the sacredness of her aims. Her conservatism, her

After giving these statistics, the preface proceeds thus:

“To Rome, the capital of the Christian world, Eternal City, destined in our hopes and prayers and faith to be restored to us again as the free and undesecrated Mistress and Ruler of Churches, and to the Sovereign Pontiffs therein, Vicars of Christ on earth, we turn with love and gratitude for the care, solicitude, and support bestowed upon our churches, and for the exemplary prelates bestowed upon them by the Chief Bishop of the church. To our venerable hierarchy, bishops and priests, and to the religious orders, both male and female, we render thanks for their labors, their sacrifices, their sufferings, and their suffrages.

“To our prelates, especially, is due under God the splendid result we have but faintly mentioned. They were the founders of our churches, the pioneers of the faith, and the chief pastors of our flocks. In poverty and suffering they commenced the work, and spent themselves for others. A diocese just erected upon the frontiers, in the midst of a new and swarming population, to anticipate and save the coming faithful, the hope of a future flock, an outpost upon the borders of Christianity and civilization—such was the frequent work and vigilant foresight of the Propaganda and of the Councils of Baltimore—such the charge confided to a newly consecrated bishop. To the religious enterprise and untiring providence of the Catholic Church, in her prompt and vigorous measures for the extension of the faith in this country, may well be applied the striking lines of Milton:

“To assume the task of creating, as it were, building up, and governing the infant churches thus confided to their care, was the work that was faithfully and zealously performed by our bishops. It was no uncommon thing for a bishop to be sent to a diocese where there was scarcely a shrine or a priest; where he not only had no friends or organized flock to receive him, but where he had not even an acquaintance; where he would not meet a face that he had ever seen before. In some instances, he had to enter a diocese rent with disunion or schism among the people; in others, he was compelled to reside out of the episcopal city by reason of disaffection prevailing within. In other cases, such was their poverty that they had not the necessary means to procure an episcopal outfit, to provide a pectoral cross and crosier, or to pay their travelling expenses to their dioceses. In many cases the humble log-cabins of the West were their episcopal palaces and cathedrals; and frequently church, episcopal residence, parish school, and theological seminary were all under the same contracted roof. In the midst of such difficulties, we behold examples of humility,

The two volumes contain the lives of fifty-six American bishops, and to the second volume is affixed an appendix containing the lives of three prelates of other countries, who have a special connection with the American Church. The first volume, to which we will confine our present writing, contains the lives of twenty-nine prelates, a list of whom, with the dates of their consecration or appointment, and the religious orders to which they belonged, where such was the case, will in itself prove interesting.

The antiquity of our church in America is strikingly illustrated in this volume—an antiquity equal to that of the church in some of the old countries of Europe, extending back to the ages of faith, when the church was fighting her battles with paganism, and before the time when altar was raised up against altar by the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, and before the more modern phases of infidelity and communism had declared war against all altars and all religion. In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the Northmen of Iceland, hardy adventurers on the seas, pushed their exploits beyond the continent of Europe, and landed colonies on the shores of this continent. Coming from their ice-clad homes, our extreme north-eastern regions were to them a country of enchanting verdure, and received the name of Greenland; and, pushing their cruises farther south, they entered our own Narragansett Bay, where, seeing the country festooned with vines teeming with grapes, they called it Vinland. Our poet Longfellow, aptly quoted by Mr. Clarke, has celebrated some of the exploits of Vikings and Northmen on sea and shore. They were the freebooters and highwaymen of the ocean;

At the time of which the poet sings, both Iceland and Greenland were pagan. The mother-country owed her conversion to missionaries from Ireland, and she, in turn, sent out devoted priests, who converted her colonists in Greenland and Vinland to the faith. Convents and churches arose and resounded with the praises of God, chanted in Latin hymns three centuries and a half before Columbus discovered America. Pre-eminent among the Catholic missionaries was Eric, who, in the beginning of the twelfth century, commenced his exalted labors at Greenland, and afterwards particularly along the banks of Narragansett Bay. The site of the present city of Newport and its vicinity were the virgin fields of his apostolic labors. So important did these Christian colonies become, that a bishopric was erected at Garda, the episcopal city of Greenland, and Eric was consecrated its first bishop by Lund, a bishop of Scandinavia. He visited again his cherished flock at Vinland, to whom he was devoted, and, rather than leave them, he resigned his mitre and crosier, went into the ranks of the clergy, and gave his life for

The colonies of the Northmen were swept away, and the record of them, even, faded from the histories and traditions of mankind.

A glowing tribute is paid by the author to the Catholic faith and genius of Columbus, the unrivalled discoverer of America. In the very generation in which Columbus lived, the church established a bishopric within the present limits of our republic. Among the ambitious and hardy captains of that day was Pamphilo de Narvaez, who, in attempting the conquest of Florida, aspired to add to the Spanish crown a realm equal in extent and wealth to Mexico, and to rival the fame of Cortéz by his own exploits. The Franciscans were at his side, seeking a holier conquest, fired by no earthly ambition, but by a heavenly zeal. A bishopric was erected for Florida as the expedition was about to sail from the ports of Spain, and Juan Juarez, who had already won the title of one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, was appointed, in 1526, Bishop of Rio de las Palmes. He spent his brief sojourn in Spain in securing ample provision for his future flock, and in obtaining royal guarantees for the liberty and kind treatment of the natives. No time was left for his consecration; he hastened on board the fleet, and rushed to the spiritual relief of his children, whom he knew and “loved only in Christ.” After the disastrous termination of the expedition, he and his companions suffered shipwreck, and are believed to have perished of hunger—the second martyr of our church. Well has our author said of him, that he gave up his own life that he might bestow upon others life eternal; and that he who died of hunger for God’s sake was greatly rewarded by that same God with celestial feasts, and replenished with seraphic delights; and has aptly applied to him those beautiful words of the Canticle:

“Esurientes implevit Bonis.”

We have dwelt briefly, but with particular pleasure, upon these the first two lives of the volume, because of their peculiar interest and beauty, but they must be read at length in the work itself to be duly appreciated. We rejoice that they have now been rendered a classic story in our language—an enduring monument in our literature.

We had marked out several extracts from the interesting and important life of Archbishop Carroll, and from the lives of other eminent prelates, for insertion, but the want of time and space deprives us and our readers of this pleasure. We reserve the remaining space allotted to this article for three extracts, the first of which is the historical sketch given by Mr. Clarke of an event which reflects untold honor and glory upon the American Catholic episcopate. The honor and merit of originating the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which has ever since been and is now spreading the Gospel throughout the world, is due to an American prelate. Bishop Dubourg, of New Orleans, is the recognized founder of that illustrious society. And now we will let the author speak for himself:

“The most brilliant and fruitful service rendered by Bishop Dubourg to the church, not only in America, but throughout the most remote and unenlightened portions of the world, was the leading part he took in founding the illustrious ‘Association for the Propagation of the

The following extract, from the Life of Archbishop Eccleston of Baltimore, relates to interesting and stirring events in the life of our Holy Father, Pius IX., and the history of our country and church, which are made to reflect upon events transpiring in our own times:

“The adjournment of the Sixth Council was soon followed by the death of Pope Gregory XVI. and the election of Pope Pius IX. The remarkable events that ensued are a part of the history of our age. Loud, long, and enthusiastic were the plaudits that greeted the first acts of the noble and saintly Pius IX. from every portion of the world, and especially from the United States. Popular meetings in the principal cities sent the most respectful and laudatory addresses to the Holy Father, and Congress sent a minister to congratulate him on his course and to reside at his court. It seemed as though the Protestant world were prepared to hail the return of the glorious ages of faith, when the Sovereign Pontiff was the universally recognized Father and arbiter of the Christian world. The loyalty of Catholics was manifested by the obedience of their souls and submission of their hearts to him whom they recognized as the Vicar of Christ on earth. To their Protestant fellow-citizens was left the work of giving utterance to the public voice of congratulation and praise. The address of a public meeting held in New York by six thousand persons, and presided over by the mayor, contained the following remarkable passage:

“‘And more formidable than all these, you must have girded yourself to encounter, and by God’s help to overcome, that fickleness and ingratitude of multitudes just released from benumbing bondage, which could clamor in the wilderness to be led back to the flesh-pots of Egypt; which, among the contemporaries and even the followers of our Saviour, could leave him to bear in solitude the agony of the cross; and which in your case, we apprehend, will yet manifest itself in unreasonable expectations, extravagant hopes, impetuous requirements, and in murmurings that nothing has been earnestly intended, because everything has not been already accomplished.

“The address of the Philadelphia meeting, held January 10, 1848, contained the following earnest words: ‘May the Almighty grant you length of life, strength of heart, and wisdom from on high, in order to bring to a happy conclusion the beneficent reforms which you have begun! May he inspire the princes and people of Italy with the courage and moderation necessary to second your efforts! May he raise up to you successors, who will continue to extend the influence of peace and justice on earth; and the time will come when the meanest of God’s poor will, if oppressed, be able to summon the most powerful of his oppressors to appear at the bar of united Christendom; and the nations will sit in judgment upon him, and the oppressor, blushing with shame, shall be forced by their unanimous and indignant voice to render justice to the oppressed.’

“Similar addresses were sent from nearly every city of any importance in the Union to the Holy Father. But soon the prophetic language of the New York meeting was realized; the clamor of the disappointed populace was raised against their father and best friend; Count Rossi, his secretary, is assassinated, and the Holy Father himself is a fugitive from Rome. It was then that the devotion of Catholics manifested itself towards the Supreme Pontiff, and many and heartfelt were the testimonials of loyalty and affection received by the exile of Gaeta from his children throughout the world. The Catholics of the United States were not behind their brethren in these demonstrations, and the hope was entertained that the Holy Father would accept an asylum in our midst.... How vividly do the present wrongs of that same Holy Father, and of that same holy church, recall the events

As we were about to close our article, our eye fell upon the following fine passages in the Life of Dr. England, First Bishop of Charleston, and we yield to the temptation of transferring them to our columns, both as a tribute to that illustrious prelate and as specimens of Mr. Clarke’s style:

“The great struggle of Bishop England’s life in this country seems to have been to present the Catholic Church, her doctrines and practices, in their true light before the American people. In his effort to do this his labors were indefatigable. His means of accomplishing this end were various and well studied. He endeavored, from his arrival in the country, to identify himself thoroughly with its people, its institutions, its hopes, and its future. He was vigilant and spirited in maintaining and defending the honor and integrity of the country, as he was in upholding the doctrines and practices of the church. In his oration on the character of Washington, he so thoroughly enters into the sentiments of our people, and participates so unreservedly in the pride felt by the country in the Pater Patriæ, that his language would seem to be that of a native of the country. There was no movement for the public good in which he did not feel an interest, and which he did not, to the extent of his opportunities, endeavor to promote. His admiration for the institutions of the country was sincere and unaffected. Though no one encountered more prejudice and greater difficulties than he did, he, on all occasions, as he did in his address before Congress, endeavored to regard the prejudices and impressions entertained by Protestants against Catholics as errors, which had been impressed upon their minds by education and associations, for which they themselves were not responsible. In his writings and public sermons and addresses, he travelled over the wide range of history, theology, and the arts, in order to vindicate the spotless spouse of Christ against the calumnies of her enemies. If Catholic citizens and voters were attacked on the score of their fidelity to their country and its institutions, Bishop England’s ready pen defended them from the calumny and silenced their accusers. If a Catholic judge or public officer was accused of false swearing or mental reservation in taking the official oath, he found an irresistible and unanswerable champion in the Bishop of Charleston. He found the church in the United States comparatively defenceless on his accession to the See of Charleston, but he soon rendered it a dangerous task in her enemies to attack or vilify her; and many who ventured on this mode of warfare were glad to retreat from the field, before the crushing weapons of logic, erudition, and eloquence with which he battled for his church, his creed, and his people....

“Bishop England visited Europe four times during his episcopacy, for the interests and institutions of his diocese, visiting Rome, most of the European countries, and his native Ireland, which he never ceased to love. He was sent twice as apostolic delegate from the Holy See to Hayti. He obtained from Europe vast assistance for his diocese, both in priests, female religious, and funds. It was proposed to translate him to the bishopric of Ossory in Ireland, but he declined. The highest ecclesiastical dignity, with comfort, luxury, friends, and ease, in his native country, could not tempt him to desert his beloved church in America. He had become an American citizen and an American prelate, and he resolved to continue to be both as long as he lived. At Rome he was consulted on all matters relating to the ecclesiastical affairs of this country. The officials of the Eternal City were astounded at the great travels and labors of Bishop England. They heard him appoint from the Chambers of the Propaganda the very day on which he would administer confirmation in the interior of Georgia. The cardinals, in their wonder at all he accomplished, and the rapidity of his movements, used to call him ‘il vescovo a vapore,’ or the ‘steam bishop.’ We have seen with what an insignificant force he commenced his episcopal labors. He increased the churches of his diocese to over sixteen, and lef behind him a well-organized and appointed clergy, and numerous ecclesiastical, religious, educational, and charitable institutions. The Catholic families of his diocese might

His dying words to his clergy, and through them to his flock, were as follows:

“Tell my people that I love them; tell them how much I regret that circumstances have kept us at a distance from each other. My duties and my difficulties have prevented me from cultivating and strengthening those private ties which ought to bind us together; your functions require a closer, a more constant intercourse with them. Be with them—be of them—win them to God. Guide, govern, and instruct them. Watch as having to render an account of their souls, that you may do it with joy, and not with grief. There are among you several infant institutions which you are called on, in an especial manner, to sustain. It hast cost me a great deal of thought and of labor to introduce them. They are calculated to be eminently serviceable to the cause of order, of education, of charity; they constitute the germ of what, I trust, shall hereafter grow and flourish in extensive usefulness. As yet they are feeble, support them—embarrassed, encourage them—they will be afflicted, console them.

“I commend my poor church to its patrons—especially to her to whom our Saviour confided his in the person of the beloved disciple: ‘Woman, behold thy Son; Son, behold thy mother.’”

The second volume contains the lives of thirty American bishops, and, in the Appendix, the lives of Right Rev. Charles Augustus de Forbin-Jansen, Bishop of Nancy, France, who visited this country in 1840, and rendered signal services to religion while here; of Right Rev. Edward Barron, who volunteered from this country for the African mission, was made Bishop of Africa in 1845, and died at Savannah, Georgia, in 1854, “a martyr of charity”; and of Cardinal Bedini, whose visit to this country is in the recollection of our readers.

We cannot close our notice without again commending, in the most emphatic manner, this record of the labors of the self-denying prelates who were the means, under God, of planting the church in our beloved country—not only for its historical interest, and as an addition to our permanent Catholic literature, but for the incentive it furnishes to others, both cleric and lay, in their several spheres, to be unremitting in their efforts to extend the faith, thus happily transferred to our soil, to every nook and corner of this favored land.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Vicar of Christ; or, Lectures upon the Office and Prerogatives of our Holy Father the Pope. By Rev. Thomas S. Preston, Pastor of St. Ann’s Church, New York, and Chancellor of the Diocese. New York: Robert Coddington, No. 366 Bowery. 1871.

We have here another series of the excellent Advent Lectures of F. Preston, which have done so much good in the instruction of the faithful and the conversion of numbers of persons to the true faith. Carefully prepared and solid discourses on the great Catholic principles, dogmas, doctrines, laws, and rites—in fact, on all the topics of religion universally—are especially necessary and useful in our time and country. Besides the additional good accruing to that which has been done by the preaching of these discourses through their more general dissemination among the laity, their publication is a great benefit to the clergy, as giving examples of the best kind of preaching, and furnishing a stimulus and a help to efforts of the same kind.

The present series of lectures on the Pope is fully equal to the former publications of the author in ability and excellence, if not superior to them. The subject, at any rate, makes it far the most interesting and important of any. F. Preston has merited well of the church by his zealous and efficient devotion to the cause of the Pope and the Holy See, and his continual efforts to instruct the Catholic laity in sound doctrine in this most essential matter. In this volume he has given us a lecture on the supremacy, another on the Papal infallibility, a third on the temporal sovereignty, and a fourth on the Pontificate of Pius IX. At the end, the decrees or constitutions of the Vatican Council and several recent allocutions of the Holy Father are given in Latin and English; and the whole is concluded by a carefully and critically prepared chronological list of the Sovereign Pontiffs, in which we are glad to see the Avignonian and Pisan claimants of the tiara relegated to their proper place on one side, while the succession is continued through the Roman line, which is unquestionably the true one. The lecture on infallibility is especially marked by solid learning and ample citations from the fathers, proving conclusively that this article of the faith was explicitly held and taught from the beginning. The style is grave and serious, copious and flowing, and warmed with a spirit of fervent love to the souls of men. It is the style, not of a mere essayist, but of a preacher. It is, therefore, far more pleasing and popular in its character than that of most books on the same topic. Every Catholic in the United States ought to read it, and we doubt if any book has been published on the Pope equally fitted for general circulation in England and Ireland. Neither is there any so well fitted to do good among non-Catholics. We hope no pains will be spared to give it a wide and universal circulation.

It is most important and necessary that all Catholics should be fully instructed in the sovereign supremacy and doctrinal infallibility of the Pope, and the strict obligation in conscience of supporting his temporal sovereignty.

Mr. Coddington has published this volume in a superior manner, with clear, open type, on very thick and white paper, and adorned it with an engraved portrait of the beloved and venerable Pius IX. Once more we wish success to this timely and valuable series of lectures, and thank the reverend author in the name of the whole Catholic public for his noble championship of the dearest and most sacred of all causes—that of the Vicar of Christ.

Antidote to “The Gates Ajar.” By J. S. W. Tenth thousand. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. 1872.

Mr. Carleton appears to be convinced that “de gustibus non est disputandum” by a bookseller, but rather that provision is to be made for all tastes. On the back of this little pious pamphlet we find advertised The Debatable Land, by Robert Dale Owen; The Seventh Vial, containing, we conjecture, a strong dose, by Rev. John Cumming; Mother Goose with Music, by an ancient, anonymous author; At Last, a new novel, by Marian Harland, etc. The Antidote is a rather weak and quite p. 23: “Who would not like to fly away in the tail of a comet?”—a question which any little boy would answer in the affirmative, but cruelly dashes our hopes to the ground by telling us that “all this is mere conjecture.” Again, on p. 26, he gravely reasons thus: “As to families in heaven living in houses together, as if they were on earth, that is simply impossible. When children marry here, they leave their parents, and have homes of their own; their children do likewise, and so on ad infinitum. Those who would live together in heaven would be only husbands and wives and the unmarried children. And as to the married who are not all happily united here, are they to be tied together for ever whether they like each other or not?” The little pamphlet is concluded by two pieces of poetry, one of which is pretty good, the other one of those cantering hymns which are such favorites at the week-evening prayer-meeting:

The doctrine of Miss Phelps’s antagonist is more orthodox than hers, without doubt, so far as it goes, but it is presented in such a way as rather to provoke a smile than to convince or attract the mind of any one who is not already a pious Presbyterian. Our Presbyterian and other Evangelical friends contrive to make religion as sad and gloomy as a wet afternoon in the country. Even heaven itself has but small attractions for those who are not depressed in spirits, when described in the doleful strain which is supposed to be suitable to piety. Miss Phelps, as well as other members of the gifted and cultivated Stuart family, and many of similar character and education, revolted from the dismal system of Puritanism. She yearned after a brighter and more beautiful religion, which has in it something else than the valley of the shadow of death. Her striving to realize this ideal produced Gates Ajar and other similar works, whose immense popularity proves both her own power as a writer and also a widely-felt sympathy with the sentiments of her own mind. It is the Catholic theology alone which presents the true and complete doctrine respecting the beatific vision, the glorified humanity of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints, the angelic hierarchy, and the relation between the visible and invisible worlds; together with that element of the poetic and the marvellous after which the mind, the imagination, and the heart crave with an insatiable longing. We are tempted to close the present exercise, after the manner of the little book before us, with a few verses from an old hymn, written by one of the persecuted Catholics of Lancashire, at the close of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century. The whole hymn may be found in the Month for September and October:

The Prisoners of St. Lazare. Edited by Mrs. Pauline de Grandprè. Translated from the French by Mrs. E. M. McCarthy. New York: Appleton & Co.

In this volume we have a rambling, desultory description of the prison of St. Lazare in Paris, and its inmates. It is a prison for women guilty of every variety of crime, and they are even incarcerated here on suspicion. But the majority of its occupants are women who have fallen from virtue more or less criminally. Two great unsolved questions of the age force themselves upon the attentive reader of this volume, filled with the pitiful tale of woman’s sin and shame: What can be done to succor unfortunates who have been ensnared and drawn away from the paths of virtue, and have a desire to return to an honest life; and what are the legitimate and proper employments of women outside of the family?

We are not competent to answer thoroughly either of these questions, which for many years have exercised the politician as well as the philanthropist; we can only express our opinion. We have no such place in this country as St. Lazare, but we have the abandoned women and their needs. Ah! that word abandoned expresses the state of the public mind toward those who have thus fallen; but the Catholic Christian cannot suffer any soul for whom Christ died to be abandoned, and the Catholic Church answers the first of these questions by opening her arms to the penitent, and offering her the refuge of “Houses of the Good Shepherd,” established in most of our large cities. By the support and multiplication of this order, whose lifework is to receive and help these poor children of sin, is the most effectual way in which Catholic women can reach the class in whose interest this book was written. We do not believe that women discharged from a prison like St. Lazare could be preserved from future danger in an institution like the one proposed in the appendix to this volume. No place but a strictly religious house, in our opinion, could be a house of moral convalescence to these poor creatures. There is one way in which American Catholic women can lessen the number of these miserable outcasts. Watch over your servants, know where they spend their evenings, take them by the hand and give them loving, maternal advice as to their company, and endeavor to bring them often to confession and communion. The providence of God has committed these young girls to your care, and who knows but their souls may be required of you, negligent mistresses, in that day when we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ? With regard to the employments of women, should not women be allowed to do any honest business that they can do well? Many new openings have been made for her of late years in telegraphic and photographic offices and stores. But, after all, to touch the root of this matter, why should not woman be so trained that she could, in any emergency, have a resource and support herself? A great deal would be gained if children were brought up to feel that “it is working, and not having money, that makes people happy.” “It is a noteworthy fact,” says the author of The Prisoners of St. Lazare, “that three-quarters of the inmates are without knowledge of a trade or of any means of making a livelihood for themselves. The support of husband or father failing, then destitution followed, and then vice.”

Prophetic Imperialism; or, The Prophetic Entail of Imperial Power. By Joseph L. Lord, of the Boston Bar. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1871.

Mr. Lord writes like a thorough gentleman, a point which we notice in this distinct and emphatic manner

Mr. Lord differs from most American Protestants in the very disrespectful esteem in which he holds democracy. It is curious to observe the very enthusiastic and adulatory language in which a number of divines express their conviction of the truth of his theory, imperialistic as it is from top to bottom. They withhold their names, however, from a motive of prudence. Mr. Lord’s arguments have not convinced us that his theory is correct, but they prove their author to be worthy of esteem.

East and West Poems. By Bret Harte. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company (late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood & Co.). 1871.

Many of those who have enjoyed Bret Harte’s fugitive pieces have felt a vague suspicion that the word poetry was scarcely adequate to express their character. The sketches from nature have been unquestionably graphic, and, in some cases, not devoid of real humor or pathos—all which has led to their being considered by many as evidences of genius capable by its touch of ennobling humble and insignificant subjects. The volumes, however, which have succeeded one another since Mr. Harte has left California, persuade us that he not only calls his rhymes poetry, but sincerely believes them to be such, and takes for granted that everybody who knows anything at all agrees perfectly with him. We fear that there has been a mistake somewhere. Either the public have been betrayed into an incautious endorsement of the author’s opinion of his own work, or the author has mistaken the character of the sensation which he has created.

He seems to be just as eager as ever in his efforts to astonish the world; and we know not how many more volumes of “poems” we may expect before the public and he come to an understanding. For our own part, the present is just one more than we are prepared to welcome. In spite of kindly dispositions, we are painfully impressed with the fact that the mistake we have alluded to lies with the author. We are also unpleasantly relieved from a doubt as to whether the pp. 7-10), or the “Lines on a Pen of Thomas Starr King” (pp. 65,66), or “A Second Review of the Grand Army” (pp. 95-99); nor would we be disposed to carp at a certain slovenliness which mars the beauty of other serious poems, but which did not detract from their merit on the occasions for which they were written—as was the case with the “Address” (pp. 78-81), and the poem of the “Lost Galleon” (pp. 82-93)—the latter, if we mistake not, having been composed for a social reunion of the Alumni of the Pacific Coast. But nothing could induce us to excuse the reckless vulgarity displayed in such pieces as “A White Pine Ballad” (p. 155); “In the Mission Garden” (p. 21). There is also enough nonsense in such lines as the “California Madrigal” (p. 127), “A Moral Vindicator” (p. 165), et alibi passim, to make the deliberate addition of “Songs without Sense” (p. 168), unwarrantably superfluous.

The author is not sufficiently aware of the distinction between coarseness and originality, or else prefers notoriety to fame. We cannot consent to the admission of his book into respectable libraries or drawing-room bookstands, still less to a place in American literature. If he should ever recognize and prune his defects, and cultivate a little more respect for those for whom he writes, as well as love for the purity of the idiom in which he deals, we shall be happy to give him that praise which would be at present most unmerited and inopportune.

Sermons by the Fathers of the Congregation of St. Paul. Vol. VI. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1871.

For obvious reasons, we have taken occasion to speak of this volume without the knowledge of the responsible editor. The great pressure on our columns this month, which has compelled the omission of several valuable articles already in type, will not permit, however, more than a passing notice. We have always considered these annual volumes as models of wise, simple, and earnest instruction, and see no reason to change our opinion in the present instance. Indeed, there is, perhaps, increased reason, during these troublous times, to admire the bravery with which our Paulist Fathers meet the various questions demanding solution, and we therefore take pleasure in commending the work to the attention of all interested in homiletic literature. C.