CATHOLIC WORLD. (continued 2)

A walk yesterday in the Jardin des Plantes. Our English parks are naturalized in France, except in the official gardens—flat and monotonous squares. A fine view from the top of the rising ground and the sky of France with René—all this I found superb. The twins were with us, amusing themselves with a violet, and at every step uttering exclamations of joy. Thérèse takes the airs of a duchess, and thus gets called by no other name—a custom which does not seem to displease her. As for Mad, so small and fragile, I have named her Picciola. My nieces are already pious, and delight to take me into the churches; we have seen five—the Visitation, the Sacrè-Cœur, the Presentation, the Bon-Pasteur, and the Sainte-Enfance.

Great sensation at home: my mother expects her elder sister, la tante solennelle—the solemn aunt—as the dauphin, Arthur, has whispered to me. Everybody makes up a countenance and a toilet suitable to the occasion; even the babies put on serious faces. These preparations make me afraid. I whisper to you that the least cloud frightens me; our sky is always so clear. My mother-in-law, kind and maternal as she is to me, nevertheless intimidates me greatly. René is going away to-morrow on business, and this first separation causes me more pain than I am willing to confess. I long so much to say to him: “Take me with you.” I feel it would be unreasonable. He is going to travel eighty leagues in a few days, and does not wish to expose me to this fatigue, though it seems to me that with him nothing could be difficult. What will you say, dear Kate, to your Georgina?—that you no longer recognize her great courage, and that inability to bear the least contrariety is not the mark of a Christian; that I ought rather to thank Providence for sending me the opportunity of gaining a little merit. Dear little preacher! the heart that loves does not reason, and René is my universe. But I promise you to accept this light trial.

Send your good angel to the traveller, darling Kate.

Evening.—I set out to-morrow with the dawn! René read in my eyes that I was fretting, and altered his itinerary; I am radiant, and looking forward to a thousand delights.

Love your Georgina. Let us pray together for our green Erin, so worthy of our love. I have always in my heart the hope of its resurrection.

March 6, 1867.

Shall I tell you about my journey, dearest Kate? We made a halt in Brittany, the land of true poets, where we are to pass the summer. As we walked over the barren heaths we shut our eyes and evoked the old memories of Armorica, while the mild image of Guy de Bretagne and of Isabelle aux Blanches Mains[136] mingled in our imaginations with the shades of the martyrs. Dear Kate, I enjoyed brother of my heart. We have been reading together the life of Saint Elizabeth by M. de Montalembert. The “dear saint” of Protestant Germany was wont to call her husband by the sweet name of brother, and this we thought so suave, so charming, and angelic that we agreed to call each other brother and sister when we are alone. Oh! what a heavenly thing is Christian love. That which I first of all admired in René, even when he was to me merely a stranger, was his recollectedness in church. He has often said to me—and with what earnestness!—“Georgina, let Jesus be all in all to us.” It is to your prayers, my darling Kate, that I owe this happy destiny.

What a surprise! My Aunt de K—— was not expected before the end of the week; but this morning, on returning from my visits among the poor, René left me at the house door, and I hastened as usual into the drawing-room to say good-morning to the dear little ones who daily welcome me with shouts of joy. On entering I beheld an unknown face; it was the solemn aunt. A sudden blush mounted even to my forehead. My mother-in-law introduced me; while I lost myself in reverences, my aunt bestowed on me a half-inclination of the head—so cold! looking at me all the time with so searching an eye that I was almost out of countenance. Fortunately, the door was again thrown open very wide, and a footman in full livery announced Mme. Edouard, M. Gaston (this is the pretty baby), and in succession M. et Mme. Adrien, M. et Mme. Raoul, M. et Mme. Paul. All were richly dressed. I hid myself as well as I could behind Lucy’s fauteuil to keep my shabby toilet out of sight, and then took advantage of the entrance of the children to make my escape before the entry of René. The solemnity of the déjeûner nearly sent me to sleep. At eight o’clock in the evening Mme. de K—— retired to her room, alleging that she was fatigued with her journey; you may judge whether any one tried to detain her. Then we began to dress ourselves up, and exchanged silence for joyous dances and merry laughter. Duchesse was a “golden fairy,” superb with her lofty air; there is a touch of my solemn aunt about her. Picciola was charming in her ribbon-decked costume of a shepherdess. Your Georgina was dressed en Sévigné; the sparkling Lucy as a soubrette of the time of Louis XIV. A few intimate friends joined us about nine o’clock. The brilliant chords of the piano troubled not the repose of Mme. de K——, who was purposely lodged far from the noise. Our songs, our dances, and lively follies went on till one o’clock; and as I am not tired, and, besides, make a point of sending you news of us before mortifying Lent shall have proclaimed a truce to our delights, with René’s permission I relate to you these little events. Dear Kate, my letters will no longer speak of anything but sanctity. I kiss you with all my heart. My brother, who is beginning to read me a chapter of the Imitation, tells you how much he is devoted to you in Him whose love is the bond of our souls.

March 10.

My dearest Kate, do not be anxious if I tell you that I am going to M. l’Abbé Charles Perraud, of the Oratory, is preaching the Lent at Sainte-Croix. What a congregation! It was a compact crowd. The text was, “Man does not live by bread alone.” In order to please your love of sacrifice I will not send you another note during all these forty days; but as I have not yet made any vow to renounce the most legitimate gratifications of the heart, I shall keep a journal with great regularity, to send you after Easter.

I am reading again Rob Roy with René; this is for our secular reading, but for the spiritual we have the Conferences of Fathers Lacordaire and De Ravignan.

12th.—Was at the sermon: “Enter into your heart.” The orator spoke of recollectedness, inviting us to enter into our heart, promising that by so doing we should find light, joy and virtue; these were the three points of his discourse. We take interminable walks with Isabelle (Mme. Raoul) and her children. I am working a magnificent chasuble which I wish to present to our curé in Brittany. René reads to us the Revue du Monde Catholique and the Union. These gentlemen do not go to the club, but occupy themselves, according to their respective tastes, in painting, carving, illuminating, and creating surprises for us. My solemn aunt took her departure this morning, and all that is cold, heavy and pompous went with her.

I have not told you that Hélène and I are the best of friends. We are of the same age; she has always had an especial liking for René, and she also entrusts me with her confidences. Dear Kate, this good young heart has likewise been wounded by the divine Hand, and she who is the idol of her family desires to leave us, that she may give herself wholly to God. The poor mother knows nothing, but she has a presentiment of this secret (at the same time sweet and distressing), and strives to dissuade her daughter from her purpose. Hélène wishes to be a Carmelite. She has her grandmother’s energy and greatness of soul, and nothing can shake her resolution. Thus there will be a separation under this happy roof; the singing-bird is about to spread her wings and fly away to other skies. Since my pretty niece opened her heart to me I have become quite thoughtful. If it should so happen that God required of me a similar sacrifice; and if, after giving up my sister to him, I must also give him a child of my own!… But I put aside this apprehension. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

14th.—“Bear God in your heart and glorify him in your bodies.” This sermon has deeply impressed me; how I love the Catholic doctrine respecting the body of man!

I love to communicate by the side of René. Hélène followed us this morning; in returning from the altar I involuntarily looked at her, and was struck by the air of ecstatic joy and profound happiness which shone on her countenance. Kate, she is truly called! Adrien dotes upon his daughter. Each one of the family feels the charm of her bright and cheerful piety, which makes her admirable even in the smallest things; she is grandmother’s right hand, who feels herself living over again in this fair child.… How we are going to suffer!

Non e questa la patria!

How she misjudges my feelings if she thinks that my happiness could make me forgetful of Ireland!

21st.—Sermon on the love of our neighbor. I have no trouble in loving this dear neighbor of mine. Duchesse allows herself to rally her aunt on what she calls her love of everybody! Happily for this lofty little person, Berthe (Mme. Raoul) wages unflinching war against the slightest tendency to pride, and the uncles surpass one another in teasing her out of it. My room is all perfumed with the sweet fragrance of violets. René has brought me home splendid ones from his morning’s ramble. I delight in my bouquets like a child with a plaything; it is long since I have had any flowers, and I love these balmy things, which the poetic Margaret calls the “beauties of nature, queens of solitude, and daughters of the sun.”

25th.—The weather was fine; René had the horses put in, and we set out together, delighted to be alone. As we were coming down the Rue Royale I caught sight of Hélène and her father, lost in admiration before some fine engravings. “Shall we take them with us?” I said to René; and a minute afterwards the future Carmelite was giving us her impressions of the day. How charming she is! And all this beauty is going to conceal itself under the austere bandeau and thick veil.… We went to the Chapelle Saint-Mesmin, where Monseigneur has his college and his summer residence. The pure air, the perfumes of the spring, the evening calm, gave me an inexpressible feeling of enjoyment. For a moment I forgot this earth, and in the isolation of thought went back to my childhood; saw our beloved home, and our so lamented mother watching us at play. Why is she not with us still? She would have been so proud of René. “What are you thinking of,” asked Hélène, “looking in this way up to heaven like the picture of the Mignon of Ary Scheffer?” “She is dreaming of Ireland,” replied my brother, who had understood me.

31st.—Sermon on the intellectual life: “Lord, give me understanding and I shall live.” My mother-in-law was rather unwell; I passed the day in her room. The whole flight of doves, profiting by this fine Sunday, went out to flutter in the bright sunshine. Hélène presented her grandmother with a bunch of double violets; she took them with a smile, and then delicately placed them in my hair, saying as she did so: “Darling Violet, receive your sisters.” I kissed her hand—that soft, white hand which reminds me of my mother’s.

April 2.—“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The days succeed each other, but are not much alike, it is said, immutability not belonging to this earth. That which always resembles itself is my union with René. He is no

7th.—Played some splendid duets with Hélène, who has remarkable power. Sermon on the supernatural life: “If you eat not the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The Père Perraud was the intimate friend of the gentle Abbé Perreyve—“this delightful apparition,” said M. de Montalembert, “which, after an interval of thirty years, has made me seem to see again Lacordaire as he appeared before the court of the peers of France, young, eloquent, intrepid, gentle and frank, austere and charming, but above all ardent and tender, endowed with that spring of fascination, that key of hearts, which is found so rarely here below. In him one saw again that noble and sympathetic look which no one who had once received it could ever forget—that eye, questioning and candid as that of a child.”

I am reading again, with René, Quentin Durward and Charles the Bold. I am translating into English Les Enfants d’Édouard for Lucy, who says she likes English better than anything, and wishes to teach it to her son. Edward (ours) pretends that I possess all the qualifications for a good professor. They will spoil me, these kind brothers.

12th.—Way of the Cross, of the Friday. I love this devotion. Even the dauphin, Arthur, begs to go to it; he has a taste for music, and the pretty voices of the children of the choir fascinate him.

I have to-day been absorbed in a delightful book for which I am indebted to the obliging kindness of Adrien. It is the letters of Silvio Pellico, translated by M. Latour. What an admirable man Silvio is! Do you recollect the Mémoires d’Andryane? Silvio speaks of this book, and deeply regrets that his friend, the Frenchman, did not use more reserve in his confidences to the public, as there were still prisoners in the Spielberg.

14th.—Copied a beautiful letter of Mgr. le Comte de Chambord, our king, as duchesse proudly says. Mgr. Dupanloup is at Orleans; this evening he appeared in the pulpit. I was there; for, although the sermon was for men only, I like so much to witness this fine spectacle of the nave quite filled with men. I know of nothing more solemn and imposing than the Miserere chanted by this multitude of deep and powerful male voices, accompanied by the rich tones of the great organ. My heart beat; for I was about to listen to the great orator. Alas! after the invocation Monseigneur left the pulpit, and was replaced by the Père Perraud. He took for his text the words of the prophet Isaias: “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? And the watchman answered: The morning cometh, and also the night: if you seek, seek: return, come.”[137] M. Bougaud preaches the retreat for ladies; we are entering upon the week that is indeed holy.

15th.—Dear Kate, I am in a M. Bougaud is quite what his Sainte Chantal had led me to anticipate: an ardent soul, a heart of fire, his style unique, rich, picturesque, poetic, incisive, penetrating; the priestly heart which knows all the feelings, the aspirations, and the needs of souls.

“Who are you, and what say you of yourselves?” It was admirably fine. He described to us the three wounds, the three martyrdoms, or the three honors of man in this world:, in the mind, the thirst for infinite illumination; in the heart, a keen and incessant hunger after affections; and in the whole being, the craving for eternity. It is from eternity that we are descended, and thither we must ascend again.

I warmly expressed my admiration to René and Edouard, who were waiting for me. My sisters were detained at home by their maternal cares, but it is settled that to-morrow we are to go in choir.

16th.—Sermon on the duties of mothers: “Three things constitute a great soul, a soul strong and invincible: a horror of sin, a contempt for all that passes away, and the love of God.” Oh! if it were granted me to have a child, what happiness it would be to me to develop in him these three things.

17th.—I have not been to the sermon, dear Kate … A letter from Fanny W—— has informed me of the sudden death of our dear Mary. I have been weeping all day, thinking of the despair of her poor mother. There had been nothing to prepare her for this thunderclap. Mary appeared to have entirely recovered from the fall she had last year, of which the only remaining effect was an excessive paleness—“a paleness which rendered her so attractive that no one saw in it any alarming symptom. The eve of her death she was speaking of you, of Kate, the chosen one of her heart. Our vigil was prolonged to a later hour than usual; I make use of the word vigil, because Mary loved it. We spoke of the great subjects of interest about which she was so enthusiastic—of the church, of Ireland, and of Poland, that other martyr; and Mary said to us: ‘How the saints must implore the Lord for their brethren upon earth!’ Dear soul! she also implores him now. Comfort us, darling Georgina.” I have written. I have tried to comfort these two hearts, so stricken by death—that wound which is incurable here below. May God be their help! Dear Kate, you will not hear of this loss for eight days to come, in the midst of the Catholic alleluia; but it is indeed alleluia that one ought to sing over this early tomb. Happy are they whom God calls to himself! René has been reading to me this evening some chapters on the sufferings of Jesus Christ, by Father Thomas of Jesus. Truly, the Calvary of Lady W—— is the sudden departure of her angelic child; and who can console a mother?

Fanny is saddened on account of their isolation, although, with the marvellous intuition of pure souls, she feels that death separates bodies only. “She is always present to me,” she writes. A world of memories revived within me upon reading these pages, bedewed with many tears. How warmly this family is attached to us!

18th.—I could write a volume upon this Holy Thursday, the Thursday par excellence. At seven o’clock I was in the Black Chapel with René; and we did not leave Ste. Croix until past eleven. What a service, dear Kate! The Catholic worship is nowhere more magnificently celebrated. Duchesse had laid a wager with Arthur that she would see fifteen; and as she was bent upon gaining it, she so prettily pressed me to show her “some more” that we still went on and on. We had afterwards a time of repose; a sermon from that true orator, M. Bougaud: “Whensoever you shall do these things, do them in remembrance of me.” Our Lord has left us a remembrance. What is this remembrance, and with what feelings ought we to regard it? What eloquence! How well he depicted this remembrance, and also how thorough an insight he possesses of the heart! What happy similitudes and figures! How he feels and how he loves! It is plain that the love of God predominates all else in this soul. “When I was young I took offence at Bossuet for saying that friendships pass away with years; but now I am offended with him no more: he saw clearly; he saw only too well.” “When I glance over the globe I am greatly moved. I see Ireland dying of famine; Poland groaning forth her last sigh of agony; Germany, who has not yet stanched the bleeding wounds inflicted by her fratricidal wars; Italy, binding up her wounds in the sun like a poor stricken Samaritan; France, who perhaps in a few months’ time will be covered with blood—all the nations shattered and expiring.… “Dear Kate, I wept as I listened to this enumeration; for I thought of Mary, who died almost while speaking of the martyr-nations. With regard to what M. Bougaud said about the love of God, my pen is powerless to express it.

We are come back this evening from Ste. Croix. Never did I see anything more imposing. The cathedral was full. The singing of the Stabat was something admirable. We were in the transept, and before us this mass of men like a moving sea, a profusion of lights, numerous clergy, the grand voice of the organ, and in the tribune the children of the choir, with the voices of angels. I was transported. A good day, upon the whole, although I should have preferred to all this agitation a few hours of solitude at the feet of Jesus. It is late; René is waiting for me for the holy hour. Good-night, dear Kate; let us love Jesus more and more.

19th.—This morning I hastened with Hélène to make the Way of the Cross before there was a crowd. The service was very fine. Monseigneur was present; he seemed to me to be in great suffering. I was at the sermon preached by M. Bougaud on the Passion. What attractive eloquence! What love for the divine Crucified One! The preacher showed us the Passion as the true Sacrifice in which are united the three parts of the sacrifices of antiquity: oblation, immolation, and communion. He portrayed the august Victim, his beauty, his courage, and his love; and in accents of the most touching pathos he retraced for us the great tragedy of the cross. How he has understood and experienced the Saviour’s love! Speech is inadequate to express his lofty enthusiasm, accompanied as it is by a

On a day like this one does not know how to quit the church. We were there again this evening for the sermon of the Père Perraud: “He was bruised for our sins.” This young preacher was truly eloquent; he too believes and loves, and the love of God is a flame which is marvellous in its inspiration. He pointed out to us in the Passion of Jesus Christ a great teaching: hatred of sin; a sure hope; the mercy of the Lord. Kate dearest, this is the first Good Friday that I have ever spent away from you!

20th.—Heard three Masses with René; his ardent piety is a help to my tepidity. This is the vigil par excellence, the last of the holy forty days.

M. Bougaud’s concluding sermon has been worthy of the preceding ones; it was taken from the words of St. Augustine, spoken on the same day, in the year 387, when St. Ambrose gave holy baptism to this son of so many tears: “I believe in God; I believe in Jesus Christ; I believe in the church.” To listen to M. Bougaud is a royal treat; I hung, as it were, on his lips, drinking in that eloquence which is indeed the two-edged sword spoken of in Scripture. “God is the place of souls. A place is that which bears, which supports.” How ably he developed this great proposition! “Jesus Christ is the only veritable source of love, devotedness, immolation, and sacrifice. All in the present age that is vile, or despicable, or impious will never be able to effect anything against the church; while all it has that is beautiful, noble, refined, great, and excellent will never be able to effect anything but by the church; these I call the two axioms of the intelligence and love of the church. The distinctive and immortal sign which characterizes the church, and which belongs to her alone, is not science, eloquence, or genius; it is devotedness, immolation, sacrifice.” And speaking of the love of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the church, the characteristic of living souls, he said: “It is needful to awaken in souls this threefold love.” It was beautiful, sublime; but a discourse like this cannot be reproduced by lips profane. This evening we had no regular sermon, owing to the fatigue of the preacher. He contented himself with thanking his male auditors for their assiduous and willing attention (the Abbé Bougaud thanked us also, with a charm peculiarly his own), gave a résumé of the principal features of the plan he has been following in this course of instruction, and, after saying a few words on the subject of the Paschal Communion, ended by inviting to it those who have not yet responded to the call of their Saviour, entreating them to be

Dear Kate, I am told so much of the beauties of the Procession of the Resurrection that I have decided to go to it. Marianne promises to wake me. Do you remember the good Duchess Elizabeth giving orders for her foot to be pulled in the night by one of her attendants, and of the pleasing trait of the Landgrave? To-morrow I shall have this volume put into the post; read in every line the unalterable affection of your Georgina. I do not mention René, our hearts having been melted into one alone. Alleluia, dear sister of my soul! When will the Catholic alleluia be sung in all the universe? Who can ever have made the title of papist a term of reproach? May England herself one day become papist and receive the pardon of Ireland! O my country! how devotedly I love her.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE TYPICAL MEN OF AMERICA.

The commemoration of the birth of American independence one hundred years ago, which is now engaging the attention of our entire community, and exciting a lively interest in every quarter of the civilized world, while it affords us an excellent opportunity for the display of the most tangible evidences of great national prosperity and progress in arts, sciences, and industrial pursuits, will not be without its salutary influence on the thousands of intelligent foreigners who this year, for the first time, may visit our shores. Whether these strangers come to us merely to gratify their curiosity, or, actuated by a laudable spirit of investigation, to study our laws, institutions, and peculiar systems of labor, a personal inspection of our social and political condition will doubtless have the effect of removing many latent prejudices and false conceptions from their minds which have been planted and fostered there by ignorant journalists and hostile critics.

And if, instead of confining their observations to the things to be seen in the grand Exhibition at Philadelphia, or even to the seaboard cities, with their fleets of shipping, gigantic warehouses, and immense factories, they should penetrate into the interior, they will behold a condition of society unequalled in any country or age. There, in the near and far West, the observant traveller will find millions of happy homesteads, wherein the laborious husbandman can repose in the twilight of his useful existence,

But while these advances in material as well as political greatness are naturally subjects of honest pride with the people of this country, they likewise give rise to grave reflections, and instinctively suggest the question: Has our progress in the higher aims of life, in civilization, morality, and religion, kept pace with our extraordinary increase in wealth, population, political power, and material development? We have no desire to throw a passing shadow over the festive spirit of this centennial year by dwelling too emphatically on individual and national faults—faults which, though more apparent in our popular system of government than in the more secretive polity of other nations, are nevertheless common to all—but we are obliged in candor to admit that the grosser pursuits of life, the desire to possess the perishable things of the world, have occupied much more the attention of the busy brains and restless physical energy of our population, than the cultivation of solid mental gifts and the practice of public and private virtues.

Much, of course, may be urged in palliation of this undue tendency to materialism. Possessing a fertile, unsettled country of vast dimensions and inexhaustible agricultural and mineral wealth, it was not unnatural that the new-born energies of our young republic should be directed to the attainment of personal independence, by the cultivation and exploration of the almost illimitable public domain of which we became the owners by right of conquest or purchase. But is it not now time to pause on the threshold of our second century of existence, and enquire whether, in this headlong pursuit of material success, we have not almost lost sight of the great and sole end for which man was created, and the means by which his destiny in this world and the next is to be accomplished? Has not our test of human usefulness been an incomplete one, and our standard of mental and moral excellence far too low?

In nature, it is said, everything is great or little by comparison. If the same rule be applied to the conduct and achievements of the men of the present day, as contrasted with those of a past age, we fear it would be found that, while we are willing to honor the virtues of our ancestors and eager to claim a share of their glory, we have lamentably failed in following their brilliant example, and much more so in improving on their plans and methods of benefiting mankind. And yet examples worthy of imitation are not wanting in the short but eventful pages of our history. We need not go back to remote antiquity for them, or even search through tomes of mediæval chronicles for what is so plentifully supplied us in modern records—models of moral purity, unsullied reputation, unselfish ambition, and perfect manhood. Take, for instance, those two illustrious men whose names are most inseparably connected with American history—Christopher

From the day he left his father’s house in Genoa, at the early age of fifteen, till, spent by toil and worn down by disease, he expired in Valladolid, the great discoverer pursued one unvarying course with a tenacity of purpose and a strength of will that were truly heroic. But Columbus was more than a hero: he was a Christian in the highest sense, a Catholic thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of the church, and as jealous of her honor and authority as the most loving son could be of the reputation of his earthly mother. During nearly half a century of constant study, adventure, grand successes, and disheartening changes of fortune, the experienced seaman, erudite astronomer, and close observer of natural phenomena exemplified in his whole career, with singular consistency, all the supernatural virtues with which God is sometimes pleased to endow his creatures. To a mind well disciplined and stored with all the human knowledge of his age were added a profound faith; deep-seated reverence for authority; a sincere love, not only for friends and relatives, but for all mankind; and an implicit reliance on the beneficence and justice of divine Providence that no terror could shake and no reverse lessen in the slightest degree.

A careful examination of the career of Columbus leads to the conviction that his chief object and ultimate aim from the beginning, what in after-life became more apparent, was to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the polluting grasp of the infidel, and to bring the light of Christianity to races of men who were in darkness; all other efforts, though consistent with this grand scheme, were subordinate and auxiliary to it. Actuated by an ambition less exalted or an enthusiasm less aborbing, he could never have attained that glorious success which, though partial, has linked his name to immortality. Neither was this crusader a theorist or a religious fanatic, but, on the contrary, one of the most practical and calculating of men. Though thoroughly satisfied with the feasibility of his plans and confident in the rectitude of his motives, he neglected no opportunity of qualifying himself for the noble task upon which he had set his heart. While others attempted to reach Asia by slow and uncertain coasting along the western shores of Africa, he proposed to launch boldly out on the unknown and trackless deep, and, by taking a direct course westward, to reach the remotest parts of the East, where was situated, it was reported, the great Christian empire of Kublai Khan, the land of gold and precious stones, a tithe of which would be sufficient to initiate and sustain a new and more successful crusade against the Mohammedans.

With this end constantly in view, Columbus carefully studied every work on cosmogony and the physical sciences within his reach, accurately noted down each new discovery in navigation, and was never tired of consulting old mariners on their experience and observations. Even the writings of learned churchmen were placed under contribution. “He fortified himself,” says one of his biographers, “by references to St. Isidore, Beda, St. Ambrose, and Duns Scotus.” He also became a

Having at length, by study and personal observation, accumulated a large and varied stock of scientific knowledge, the future discoverer retired with his family to the remote island of Porto Santo, the advanced outpost of African discovery. There for several years he devoted his leisure to the patient collation and arrangement of his authorities, till he was able to reduce a mass of crude philosophical speculations and ill-digested cosmical theories to an elaborate system, which, if not altogether borne out by subsequent investigation, was in the main correct, and far in advance of the intelligence of the fifteenth century.

His plans thus thoroughly matured, Columbus considered that the time had arrived to put them into execution. He had already submitted certain proposals to Portugal, but they were rejected by a body called the Geographical Council, who, while they treated with seeming contempt the scheme of the astute Italian, had the unparalleled meanness to appropriate and attempt to use secretly the results of his long years of toil and study. Armed with letters of recommendation, he now appeared before the court of Spain, and, with the earnestness and lucidity of a mind thoroughly convinced by long and patient analysis, he explained to Ferdinand and Isabella his great project of crossing the Atlantic and adding to their dual crown, not only a new continent, but the everlasting glory of having been the means of bringing into the bosom of the church millions of human beings. Though engaged in the desperate war which ended in the final overthrow of Moslem power in Spain, the Catholic sovereigns gave the daring adventurer a kind reception, and referred his proposition to a junta of cosmographers for consideration. The members of that body, however, seem to have been as incapable of understanding the merits of the questions submitted for their deliberation as they were of appreciating the high resolve and mental comprehensiveness of their originator. After five tedious years, during which Columbus, with anxious steps but unfaltering courage, followed the court from place to place as the exigencies of the war required, the junta reported that his plans were “vain and impossible.”

Disgusted, but not disheartened, Columbus retired to the small port of Palos, where, in the society of a few learned men, clerical and lay, he forgot for a while his disappointment, but not his darling project. Through the interference of friends negotiations with the Spanish court were renewed, and again broken off on account of the conditions demanded by Columbus being considered exorbitant. He did not think so, however, and the result proved that he did not overrate the value of his services. Abandoning all hope of co-operation from Spain, the gifted Italian was about to pass the Pyrenees, and was actually on his way to the French frontier, when a courier was despatched to recall him to court. The remonstrance of influential friends, and the fear of yielding to a rival the profits as well as the

These conditions, which had previously been looked upon as inadmissible, but which were now willingly allowed, furnish the key to the character of Columbus. Few men of that age cared less for titles, power, or wealth than he; but these means were necessary, he considered, for the accomplishment of his grand ulterior design—the Christian possession of Palestine. He had studied human nature thoroughly, and knew that no great movement, social or political, could ever command the confidence and sympathy of the world unless directed by leaders of approved position and sustained by liberal expenditures of money.

So far, then, his wish was gratified. Ferdinand, the cautious, had yielded a reluctant consent to the fitting out of the expedition on satisfactory terms, and Isabella, his consort, the noblest woman that ever graced a throne, pawned her jewels to procure funds for its proper equipment. Amid the congratulations of his sanguine friends and the prayers of the populace, Columbus, with his fleet of three frail boats and scanty crews, “after they had all confessed and received the sacraments,” set sail from Palos on the memorable 3d of August, 1492.

Once out of sight of land, on the boundless ocean where keel of ship had never ploughed before, naught around him but a gloomy waste of waters, naught above him save the sun and stars, no friend to consult, no familiar voice to whisper hope or combat despair, with a crew both ignorant and superstitious, he held on his prearranged course, self-reliant, watchful, and dauntless. Night succeeded day, and light followed darkness, in dreary succession, yet still no land appeared. Appalled by imaginary dangers and sick from hope deferred, his men, whose hearts were never wholly in their work, first began to murmur, then broke out into open reproaches, and finally threatened to throw their captain into the sea. It was amid such trying circumstances that the true character of the man became manifest in all its magnificent proportions. Calm alike in sunshine and storm, his hand constantly on the tiller and his eye directed to the west, he heeded little the rumbling of mutinous discontent beneath his feet, nor for a moment did he allow himself to doubt that God in his own good time would conduct him safely to the haven of his hopes.

In the dark watches of the night, when the waves ran highest and the heavens were obscured as with a pall, he felt that he had that within his soul beckoning him on, more brilliant in its coruscations than the starry cross that illumines the southern hemisphere, as unerring in its guidance as the beacon which Santa Maria become embedded in the sands of San Salvador, than her brave commander and his now repentant followers hastened ashore to plant the sacred emblem of our salvation, and, weeping and prostrate on that heathen soil, to pour forth their thanksgiving to the Almighty.

The honors which were showered upon Columbus on his return to Spain after this great event were in strange contrast to the neglect, treachery, and injustice of which he was afterwards the victim. Three times again did he cross and recross the Atlantic, making on each occasion new and important discoveries. But ignorance, venality, and envy of his fair fame and spotless honor conspired to raise up against him a host of powerful enemies, who at last stripped him of his hard-earned rewards, and would, had it been possible, have robbed him even of the glory of having been the discoverer of America. However, he bore his trials with fortitude as he had worn his great honors with meekness, seldom retorting on his enemies, and but once, as far as we are aware, condescending to complain of the rank ingratitude of a country to which he had given a whole continent. This occurred during his fourth voyage, in a despatch to the king, in which he says: “Wearied and sighing, I fell into a slumber, when I heard a piteous voice saying to me: ‘O fool! and slow to believe and serve thy God, who is the God of all. What did he more for Moses, or for his servant David, than he has done for thee? From the time of thy birth he has ever had thee under his peculiar care. When he saw thee of a fitting age, he made thy name to resound marvellously throughout the earth, and thou wert obeyed in many lands, and didst acquire honorable fame among Christians. Of the gates of the ocean sea, shut up with mighty chains, he delivered to thee the keys; the Indies, those wealthy regions of the world, he gave thee for thine own, and empowered thee to dispose of them to others according to thy pleasure. What did he more for the great people of Israel when he led them forth from Egypt? or for David, whom from being a shepherd he made a king in Judea? Turn to him, then, and acknowledge thine error; his mercy is infinite. He has many and vast inheritances yet in reserve. Fear not to seek them. Thine age shall be no impediment to any great undertaking. Abraham was above a hundred years when he begat Isaac; and was Sara youthful? Thou urgest despondingly for succor. Answer! Who hath afflicted thee so much and so many times—God or the world? The privileges and promises which God hath made to thee he hath never broken; neither hath he said, after having received thy services, that his meaning was different, and to be understood in a different sense. He fulfils all that he promises, and with increase. Such is his custom. I have shown thee what thy Creator hath done

Whether Columbus had a vision, which is not improbable, or that he adopted this metaphorical style of complaint to avoid giving offence to Ferdinand, it is equally characteristic of the depth of his religious feelings and the depth of his gratitude to the Almighty. But remonstrance, no matter how just or how delicately urged, had little effect on the court of Spain. He was soon after recalled, to end his days in comparative want and obscurity. It was not apparently in the designs of Providence that Columbus should have succeeded in his primary object—the delivery of Jerusalem—but his half-success, the demonstration of the rotundity of the earth and the discovery of our hemisphere, were productive of more benefit to humanity than the complete victories of most other great benefactors of mankind. While he has handed down to all ages an imperishable name, he has also left an example to posterity—and particularly to us Americans, who owe him so much gratitude and reverence—that far outweighs in importance his contributions to science and his efforts to aggrandize his adopted country. He has proved in his own person that a soul filled with deep and intense devotion to the Creator, and a will conformable in all things to his laws, are alone capable of leading human beings to the achievement of true and lasting greatness.

Equally salutary, though different in degree and purpose, is the lesson taught us by the life and labors of George Washington, who may be considered as having been in the natural what Columbus was in the supernatural order—a noble specimen of humanity; a lover and benefactor of his kind.

As Americans, we cannot study too diligently the character of him who was properly called the Father of his Country. No other among our Revolutionary ancestors embodied in himself so many of those civic virtues which constitute the perfect citizen. Like most men who have played prominent parts on the world’s stage, Washington was born with strong passions and an imperious disposition; but careful self-culture early changed his powerful impulses into tenacity of purpose and strength of will, while his natural exclusiveness gave him afterwards that dignity of word and action which is absolutely necessary for those who are called upon to command. As general of the army and president of the infant republic, he had men around him of more brilliancy, larger experience, and greater mental attainments; but he alone possessed in a superior degree that well-balanced organization and intuitive wisdom to which all could pay the homage of obedience.

Washington’s mind, however, was neither synthetical nor originating. He was more a man of ability than of genius. He never could have initiated a revolution, though once begun, as experience has proved, he was admirably adapted to carry it out successfully. In a monarchy, he might have been a loyal, chivalrous subject; under a wise, conservative government, he would have been the first to oppose innovation; under all circumstances, he could not have failed to be a high-toned, accomplished, and honorable gentleman.

We are not surprised that our Protestant fellow-citizens love to point with commendable pride to

Though a sincere Christian, Washington cannot be said to have been a religious man. The cold formalities of Episcopalianism to which he was accustomed could not touch his heart nor inspire his soul with great and glowing emotions; but this was more the fault of the system in which he was reared than of himself. The motives of his actions seem to have been principally based on a refined sense of honor, on his comprehension of the requirements of the natural law, which in his regard was usually in conformity with the teachings of the church. He was just, honest, truthful, and manly; faithful in his social relations and moderate in his ambition. Had he possessed some of the glorious enthusiasm of Columbus, great as he was, he might have been still greater; and had the discoverer united to his other wonderful qualities the worldly wisdom of Washington, his star might not have descended amid the darkness and disappointment which clouded the last years of his eventful life.

Taking the character of the two greatest personages, we find in their collective lives the development of the highest qualities which human nature is capable of exhibiting. As such, we desire to hold them up for imitation to the youth of this country, who in a short time will take the place of the present generation in the conduct of our civil and domestic affairs. That those men were of different races and peculiar national tendencies does not prevent the blending of their characters into one harmonious whole. The greatest nations of ancient and modern times, those which have developed the most equitable and stable systems of government, with the greatest liberty and the highest civilization,

Who knows but that the nation now in process of forming in the bosom of our republic, from the various races of Europe, with ampler natural capacities quickened into greater activity by the political character of its institutions, is destined, in the order of events, to give to Christianity an expression more adequate and more in accordance with its universal spirit and divine origin? The church of Christ has no reverses in the movement of her divine mission, and she has turned to account each race according to its gifts in the Old World from her beginning. May not all these, in their best energies combined in the New, be called to realize the highest type of the Christian character? Do not the leading traits of Columbus and Washington point out to us the ideal Christian, the union of the most exalted faith with the thoroughest manhood? For as Christ was perfect God and perfect man in one personality, so is he who unites the most exalted faith with the most thorough manhood in one personality the complete Christian. Is not this ideal Christian the glorious promise of the future of this New World?

Protestantism, which has been the religion of the vast majority of our countrymen, is gradually losing its hold upon their convictions. The religion alone which can claim the attention of all mankind is the Catholic. It alone has all the notes of truth, both inward and outward, in its favor.

Unsupported by religious convictions,

CATHOLICS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The moment of England’s triumph in the last century was the dawn of American independence. When England, aided by her colonies, had at last wrested Canada from France, and, forcing that weakened power to relinquish Louisiana to Spain, had restored Havana to the Catholic sovereign only at the price of Florida, her sway seemed secure over all North America from the icy ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Mississippi. But her very success had aroused questions and created wants which were not to be answered or solved until her mighty American power was shattered.

While Spain and France kept colonies in leading-strings, England allowed her American provinces to thrive by her utter neglect of them. Monarchs granted charters liberally, and with that their interest seemed to vanish, until it was discovered that offices could be found there for court favorites. But the people had virtually constituted governments of their own; had their own treasury, made their own laws, waged their wars with the Indian, carried on trade, unaided and almost unrecognized by the mother country.

The final struggle with France had at last awakened England to the importance, wealth, and strength of the American colonies. It appeared to embarrassed English statesmen that the depleted coffers of the national treasury might be greatly aided by taxing these prosperous communities. The Americans, paying readily taxes where they could

A small body of Catholics existed in the country. What their position was on the great questions at issue can be briefly told.

They were of many races and nationalities. No other church then or now could show such varieties, blended together by a common faith. Maryland, settled by a Catholic proprietor, with colonists largely Catholic, and for a time predominantly so, contained some thousands of native-born Catholics of English, and to some extent of Irish, origin, proud of their early Maryland record, of the noble character of the charter, and of the nobly tolerant character of the early laws and practice of the land of Mary. In Pennsylvania a smaller Catholic body existed, more scattered, by no means so compact or so influential as their Maryland brethren—settlers coming singly during the eighteenth century mainly, or descendants of such emigrants, some of whom had been sent across the Atlantic as bondmen by England, others coming as redemptioners, others again as colonists of means and position. They were not only of English, Irish, and Scotch origin, but also of the German race, with a few from France and other Catholic states. New Jersey and New York had still fewer Catholics than Pennsylvania. In the other colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, they existed only as individuals lost in the general body of the people. But all along the coast were scattered by the cruel hand of English domination the unfortunate Acadians, who had been ruthlessly torn from their Nova Scotian villages and farms, deprived of all they had on earth—home and property and kindred. With naught left them but their faith, these Acadians formed little groups of dejected Catholics in many a part, not even their noble courage amid unmerited suffering exciting sympathy or kindly encouragement from the colonists. Florida had a remnant of its old Spanish population, with no hopes for the future from the Protestant power to which the fortunes of war and the vicissitudes of affairs had made them subjects. There were besides in that old Catholic colony some Italians and Minorcans, brought over with Greeks under Turnbull’s project of colonization. Maine had her Indians, of old steady foes of New England, now at peace, submitting to the new order of things, thoroughly Catholic from the teaching of their early missionaries. New York had Catholic Indians on her northern frontier. The Catholic Wyandots clustered around the pure

Such was the Catholic body—colonists who could date back their origin to the foundation of Maryland or Acadia, Florida or Canada, Indians of various tribes, new-comers from England, Germany, or Ireland. There were, too, though few, converts, or descendants of converts, who, belonging to the Protestant emigration, had been led by God’s grace to see the truth, and who resolutely shared the odium and bondage of an oppressed and unpopular church.

The questions at issue between the colonies and the mother country were readily answered by the Catholics of every class. Catholic theologians nowhere but in the Gallican circles of France had learned to talk of the divine right of kings. The truest, plainest doctrines of the rights of the people found their exposition in the works of Catholic divines. By a natural instinct they sided with those who claimed for these new communities in the western world the right of self-government. Catholics, of whatever race or origin, were on this point unanimous. Evidence meets us on every side. Duché, an Episcopal clergyman, will mention Father Harding, the pastor of the Catholics in Philadelphia, for “his known attachment to British liberty”—they had not yet begun to talk of American liberty. Indian, French, and Acadian, bound by no tie to England, could brook no subjection to a distant and oppressive power. The Irish and Scotch Catholics, with old wrongs and a lingering Jacobite dislike to the house of Hanover, required no labored arguments to draw them to the side of the popular movement. All these elements excited distrust in England. Even a hundred years before in the councils of Britain fears had been expressed that the Maryland Catholics, if they gained strength, would one day attempt to set up their independence; and the event justified the fear. If they did not originate the movement, they went heartily into it.

The English government had begun in Canada its usual course of harassing and grinding down its Catholic subjects, putting the thousands of Canadians completely at the mercy of the few English adventurers or office-holders who entered the province, giving three hundred and sixty Protestant sutlers and camp-followers the rights of citizenship and all the offices in Canada, while disfranchising the real people of the province, the one hundred and fifty thousand Canadian Catholics. How such a system works we have seen, unhappily, in our own day and country. But with the growing discontent in her old colonies, caused by the attempts of Parliament to tax the settlers indirectly, where they dared not openly, England saw that she must take some decisive step to make the Canadians contented subjects, or be prepared to lose her dear-bought conquest as soon as any war should break out in which she herself might be involved. Instead of keeping the treaty of Paris as she had kept that of Limerick, England for once

It was a moment when the thinking men among the American leaders should have won the Canadians as allies to their hopes and cause; but they took counsel of bigotry, allowed England to retrace her false steps, and by tardy justice secure the support of the Canadians.

The Quebec act of 1774 organized Canada, including in its extent the French communities in the West. Learning a lesson from Lord Baltimore and Catholic Maryland, “the nation which would not so much as legally recognize the existence of a Catholic in Ireland, now from political considerations recognized on the St. Lawrence the free exercise of the religion of the Church of Rome, and confirmed to the clergy of that church their rights and dues.”

Just and reasonable as the act was, solid in policy, and, by introducing the English criminal law and forms of government, gradually preparing the people for an assimilation in form to the other British colonies, this Quebec act, from the simple fact that it tolerated Catholics, excited strong denunciation on both sides of the Atlantic. The city of London addressed the king before he signed the bill, petitioning that he should refrain from doing so. “The Roman Catholic religion, which is known to be idolatrous and bloody, is established by this bill,” say these wiseacres, imploring George III., as the guardian of the laws, liberty, and religion of his people, and as the great bulwark of the Protestant faith, not to give his royal assent.

In America, when the news came of its passage, the debates as to their wrongs, as to the right of Parliament to pass stamp acts or levy duties on imports, to maintain an army or quarter soldiers on the colonists, seemed to be forgotten in their horror of this act of toleration. In New York the flag with the union and stripes was run up, bearing bold and clear on a white stripe the words, “No Popery.” The Congress of 1774, though it numbered some of the clearest heads in the colonies, completely lost sight of the vital importance of Canada territorially, and of the advantage of securing as friends a community of 150,000 whose military ability had been shown on a hundred battle-fields. Addressing the people of Great Britain, this Congress says: “By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be so extended, modelled, and governed as that, by being disunited from us, detached from our interests by civil as well as religious prejudices; that by their numbers swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments in the hands of power to reduce the ancient free Protestant colonies to the same slavery with themselves.” “Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world.”

This address, the work of the intense bigot John Jay, and of the furious storm of bigotry evoked in New England and New York, was most disastrous in its results to the American cause. Canada was not so delighted with her past experience of English rule or so confident of the future as to accept unhesitatingly

Pamphlets, attacking or defending the Quebec act, appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. In the English interest it was shown that the treaty of Paris already guaranteed their religion to the Canadians, and that the rights of their clergy were included in this. It was shown that to insist on England’s establishing the state church in Canada would justify her in doing the same in New England. “An Englishman’s Answer” to the address of Congress rather maliciously turned Jay’s bombast on men like himself by saying: “If the actions of the different sects in religion are inquired into, we shall find, by turning over the sad historic page, that it was the —— sect (I forget what they call them; I mean the sect which is still most numerous in New England, and not the sect which they so much despise) that in the last century deluged our island in blood; that even shed the blood of the sovereign, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, superstition, hypocrisy, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the empire.”

One who later in life became a Catholic, speaking of the effect of this bill in New England, says: “We were all ready to swear that this same George, by granting the Quebec bill, had thereby become a traitor, had broke his coronation oath, was secretly a papist,” etc. “The real fears of popery in New England had its influence.” “The common word then was: ‘No king, no popery.’”

But though Canada was thus alienated, and some Catholics at the North frightened away, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the French West the fanaticism was justly regarded as a mere temporary affair, the last outburst of a bigotry that could not live and thrive on the soil. Providence was shaping all things wisely; but we cannot be surprised at the wonder some soon felt. “Now, what must appear very singular,” says the writer above quoted, “is that the two parties naturally so opposite to each other should become, even at the outset, united in opposing the efforts of the mother country. And now we find the New England people and the Catholics of the Southern States fighting side by side, though stimulated by extremely different motives: the one acting through fear lest the king of England should succeed in establishing among us

Such was the position of the Catholics as the rapid tide of events was bearing all on to a crisis. The Catholics in Maryland and Pennsylvania were outspoken in their devotion to the cause of the colonies. In Maryland Charles Carroll of Carrollton, trained abroad in the schools of France and the law-courts of England, with all the learning of the English barrister widened and deepened by a knowledge of the civil law of the Continent, grappled in controversy the veteran Dulany of Maryland. In vain the Tory advocate attempted, by sneers and jibes at the proscribed position of the foreign-trained Catholic, to evade the logic of his arguments. The eloquence and learning of Carroll triumphed, and he stood before his countrymen disenthralled. There, at least, it was decided by the public mind that Catholics were to enjoy all the rights of their fellow-citizens, and that citizens like Carroll were worthy of their highest honors. “The benign aurora of the coming republic,” says Bancroft, “lighted the Catholic to the recovery of his rightful political equality in the land which a Catholic proprietary had set apart for religious freedom.” In 1775 Charles Carroll was a member of the first Committee of Observation and a delegate to the Provincial Convention of Maryland, the first Catholic in any public office since the days of James II. “Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the great representative of his fellow-believers, and already an acknowledged leader of the patriots, sat in the Maryland Convention as the delegate of a Protestant constituency, and bore an honorable share in its proceedings.”

When the news of Lexington rang through the land, borne from town to town by couriers on panting steeds, regiments were organized in all the colonies. Catholics stepped forward to shoulder their rifles and firelocks. Few aspired to commissions, from which they had hitherto been excluded in the militia and troops raised for actual service, but the rank and file showed Catholics, many of them men of intelligence and fair education, eager to meet all perils and to prove on the field of battle that they were worthy of citizenship in all its privileges. Ere long, however, Catholics by ability and talent won rank in the army and navy of the young republic.

We Catholics have been so neglectful of our history that no steps were ever taken to form a complete roll of those glorious heroes of the faith who took part in the Revolutionary struggle. The few great names survive—Moylan, Burke, Barry, Vigo, Orono, Louis, Landais; here and there the journal of a Catholic soldier like McCurtin has been printed; but in our shameful neglect of the past we have done nothing to compile a roll that we can point to with pride.

When hostilities began, it became evident that Canada must be gained. Expeditions were fitted out to reduce the British posts. The Canadians evinced a friendly disposition, giving ready assistance by men, carriages, and provisions to an extent that surprised the Americans. Whole parishes even offered to join in reducing Quebec and lowering the hated flag of England from the Castle of St. Louis, where the lilies had floated for nearly two centuries. But the bigotry that inspired some

Then Congress awoke to its error. As that strategic province was slipping from the hands of the confederated colonies, as Hazen’s letters came urging common sense, Congress appointed a commission with an address to the Canadian people to endeavor even then to win them. Benjamin Franklin was selected with two gentlemen from Catholic Maryland—Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll. To increase their influence, Congress requested the Rev. John Carroll to accompany them, hoping that the presence of a Catholic priest and a Catholic layman, both educated in France and acquainted with the French character, would effect more than any argument that could be brought to bear on the Canadians. They hastened to do their utmost, but eloquence and zeal failed. The Canadians distrusted the new order of things in America; the hostility shown in the first address of Congress seemed too well supported by the acts of Americans in Canada. They turned a deaf ear to the words of the Carrolls, and adhered to England.

Canada was thus lost to us. Taking our stand among the nations of the earth, we could not hope to include that province, but must ever have it on our flank in the hands of England. This fault was beyond redemption.

But the recent war with Pontiac was now recalled. Men remembered how the Indian tribes of the West, organized by the mastermind of that chief, had swept away almost in an instant every fort and military post from the Mississippi to the Alleghanies, and marked out the frontier by a line of blazing houses and villages from Lake Erie to Florida. What might these same Western hordes do in the hands of England, directed, supplied, and organized for their fell work by British officers! The Mohawks and other Iroquois of New York had retired to the English lines, and people shuddered at what was to come upon them there. The Catholic Indians in Maine had been won to our side by a wise policy. Washington wrote to the tribe in 1775, and deputies from all the tribes from the Penobscot to Gaspé met the Massachusetts Council at Watertown. Ambrose Var, the chief of the St. John’s Indians, Orono of Penobscot, came with words that showed the reverent Christian. Of old they had been enemies; they were glad to become friends: they would stand beside the colonists. Eminently Catholic, every tribe asked for a priest; and Massachusetts promised to do her best to obtain French priests for her Catholic allies. Throughout the war these Catholic Indians served us well, and Orono, who bore a Continental commission, lived to see priests restored to his village and religion flourishing. Brave and consistent, he never entered the churches of the Protestant denominations, though often urged to do so. He practised his

Maine acknowledges his worth by naming a town after this grand old Catholic.

But the West! Men shuddered to think of it. The conquest of Canada by a course of toleration and equality to Catholics would have made all the Indian tribes ours. The Abnakis had been won by a promise to them as Catholics; the Protestant and heathen Mohawks were on the side of England, though the Catholics of the same race in Canada were friendly. If the Indians in the West could be won to neutrality even, no sacrifice would be too great.

Little as American statesmen knew it, they had friends there. And if the United States at the peace secured the Northwest and extended her bounds to the Mississippi, it was due to the Very Rev. Peter Gibault, the Catholic priest of Vincennes and Kaskaskia, and to his sturdy adherent, the Italian Colonel Vigo. Entirely ignorant of what the feeling there might be, Col. George Rogers Clark submitted to the legislature of Virginia, whose backwoods settlement, Kentucky, was immediately menaced, a plan for reducing the English posts in the Northwest. Jefferson warmly encouraged the dangerous project, on which so much depended. Clark, with his handful of men, struck through the wilderness for the old French post of Kaskaskia. He appeared before it on the 4th of July, 1778. But the people were not enemies. Their pastor had studied the questions at issue, and, as Clark tells us, “was rather prejudiced in favor of us.” The people told the American commander they were convinced that the cause was one which they ought to espouse, and that they should be happy to convince him of their zeal. When Father Gibault asked whether he was at liberty to perform his duty in his church, Clark told him that he had nothing to do with churches, except to defend them from insult; that, by the laws of the state, his religion had as great privileges as any other. The first Fourth of July celebration at Kaskaskia was a hearty one. The streets were strewn with flowers and hung with flags, and all gave themselves up to joy. But Clark’s work was not done. The English lay in force at Vincennes. Father Gibault and Colonel Vigo, who had been in the Spanish service, but came over to throw in his fortunes with us, urged Clark to move at once on Vincennes. It seemed to him rash, but Father Gibault showed how it could be taken. He went on himself with Dr. Lefont, won every French hamlet to the cause, and conciliated the Indians wherever he could reach them. Vigo, on a similar excursion, was captured by British Indians and carried a prisoner to Hamilton, the English commander at Vincennes, but that officer felt that he could not detain a Spanish subject, and was compelled by the French to release him. When Clark, in February, appeared with his half-starved men, including Captain Charlevoix’s company of Kaskaskia Catholics, before Vincennes, and demanded its surrender with as bold a front as though he had ten thousand men at his back, the English wavered, and one resolute attack compelled them to surrender at discretion. What is now Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, was won to the United States. To hold it and supply the [138] Their generous sacrifice enabled Clark to retain his conquest, as the spontaneous adhesion of his allies to the cause had enabled him to effect it. The securing of the old French posts Vincennes, Fort Chartres, and others in the West which the English had occupied, together with the friendship of the French population, secured all the Indians in that part, and relieved the frontiers of half their danger. Well does Judge Law remark: “Next to Clark and Vigo, the United States are more indebted to Father Gibault for the accession of the States comprised in what was the original Northwestern Territory than to any other man.”

Those Western Catholics did good service in many an expedition, and in 1780 La Balm, with a force raised in the Illinois settlements and Vincennes, undertook to capture Detroit, the headquarters of the English atrocities. He perished with nearly all his little Catholic force where Fort Wayne stands, leaving many a family in mourning.

The first bugle-blast of America for battle in the name of freedom seemed to wake a response in many Catholic hearts in Europe. Officers came over from France to offer their swords, the experience they had acquired, and the training they had developed in the campaigns of the great commanders of the time. Among the names are several that have the ring of the old Irish brigade. Dugan, Arundel, De Saint Aulaire, Vibert, Col. Dubois, De Kermorvan, Lieut.-Col. de Franchessen, St. Martin, Vermonet, Dorré, Pelissier, Malmady, Mauduit, Rochefermoy, De la Neuville, Armand, Fleury, Conway, Lafayette, Du Portail, Gouvion, Du Coudray, Pulaski, Roger, Dorset, Gimat, Brice, and others, rendered signal service, especially as engineers and chiefs of staff, where skill and military knowledge were most required. Around Lafayette popular enthusiasm gathered, but he was not alone. Numbers of these Catholic officers served gallantly at various points during the war, aiding materially in laying out works and planning operations, as well as by gallantly doing their duty in the field, sharing gayly the sufferings and privations of the men of ’76.

Some who came to serve in the ranks or as officers rendered other service to the country. Ædanus Burke, of Galway, a pupil of St. Omer’s, like the Carrolls, came out to serve as a soldier, represented South Carolina in the Continental Congress, and was for some time chief-justice of his adopted State. P. S. Duponceau, who came over as aide to Baron Steuben in 1777, became the founder of American ethnology and linguistics. His labors in law, science, and American history will not soon be forgotten.

Meanwhile, Catholics were swelling the ranks, and, like Moylan, rising to fame and position. The American navy had her first commodore in the Catholic Barry, who had kept the flag waving undimmed on the seas from 1776, and in 1781 Atlanta and Trepassay; and on other occasions handled his majesty’s vessels so roughly that General Howe endeavored to win him by offers of money and high naval rank to desert the cause. Besides Catholics born, who served in army or navy, in legislative or executive, there were also men who took part in the great struggle whose closing years found them humble and devoted adherents of the Catholic Church. Prominent among these was Thomas Sims Lee, Governor of Maryland from 1779 to the close of the war. He did much to contribute to the glorious result, represented his State in the later Continental Congress and in the Constitutional Convention, as Daniel Carroll, brother of the archbishop, also did. Governor Lee, after becoming a Catholic, was reelected governor, and lived to an honored old age. Daniel Barber, who bore his musket in the Connecticut line, became a Catholic, and his son, daughter-in-law, and their children all devoted themselves to a religious life, a family of predilection.

In Europe the Catholic states, France and Spain, watched the progress of American affairs with deepest interest. At the very outset Vergennes, the able minister of France, sent an agent to study the people and report the state of affairs. The clear-headed statesmen saw that America would become independent. In May, 1776, Louis XVI.. announced to the Catholic monarch that he intended to send indirectly two hundred thousand dollars. The King of Spain sent a similar sum to Paris. This solid aid, the first sinews of war from these two Catholic sovereigns, was but an earnest of good-will. In France the sentiment in favor of the American cause overbore the cautious policy of the king, the amiable Louis XVI.. He granted the aid already mentioned, and induced the King of Spain to join in the act; he permitted officers to leave France in order to join the American armies; he encouraged commerce with the revolting colonies by exempting from duties the ships which bore across the ocean the various goods needed by the army and the people. The enthusiasm excited by Lafayette, who first heard of the American cause from the lips of an English prince, soon broke down all the walls of caution. An arrangement was made by which material of war from the government armories and arsenals was sent out, nominally from a mercantile house. A year after the Declaration of Independence, France, which had opened her ports to American privateers and courteously avoided all English complaints, resolved to take a decisive step—not only to acknowledge the independence of the United States, but to support it. Marie Antoinette sympathized deeply with this country, and won the king to give his full support to our cause. On the 6th of February, 1778, Catholic France signed the treaty with the United States, and thus a great power in Europe set the example to others in recognizing us as one of the nations of the earth. America had a Catholic godmother. Amid the miseries of Valley Forge Washington issued a general order: “It having pleased the Almighty Ruler of the universe to defend the cause of the United American States, and finally to raise us up a powerful friend among the princes of the earth, to establish our liberty and independence upon a lasting foundation, it

In July, 1780, another fleet, commanded by the Chevalier de Ternay, entered the harbor of Newport, bringing a French army commanded by an experienced general, John Baptiste de Vimeur, Count de Rochambeau. An army of Catholics with Catholic chaplains, observing the glorious ritual of the church with all solemnity, was hailed with joy in New England. The discipline of that army, the courteous manners of officers and privates, won all hearts. What that army effected is too well known to be chronicled here in detail. When Lafayette had cornered Cornwallis in Yorktown, Washington and Rochambeau marched down, the fleet of the Count de Grasse defeated Admiral Graves off the capes of Virginia, and, transporting the allied armies down, joined with them in compelling Cornwallis to surrender his whole force; and old St. Joseph’s Church, in Philadelphia, soon rang with the grand Te Deum chanted in thanksgiving at a Mass offered up in presence of the victorious generals.

None question the aid given us by Catholic France. Several who came as volunteers, or in the army or fleet, remained in the United States. One officer who had served nobly in the field laid aside his sword and returned to labor during the rest of his life for the well-being of America as a devoted Catholic priest.

But France was not the only Catholic friend of our cause. Spain had, as we have seen, at an early period in the war, sent a liberal gift of money. She opened her ports to our privateers, and refused to give up Captain Lee, of Marblehead, whom England demanded. She went further; for when intelligence came of the Declaration of Independence, she gave him supplies and repaired his ship. She subsequently sent cargoes of supplies to us from Bilbao, and put at the disposal of the United States ammunition and supplies at New Orleans. When an American envoy reached Madrid, she sent blankets for ten regiments and made a gift of $150,000 through our representative. When the gallant young Count Bernardo de Galvez, whose name is commemorated in Galveston, was made governor of Louisiana, he at once tendered his services to us; he forwarded promptly the clothing and military stores in New Orleans; and when the English seized an American schooner on the Louisiana lakes, he confiscated all English vessels in reprisal.

III., and on its refusal by that monarch, for that and other causes she declared war against England. Galvez moved at once. He besieged the English at Baton Rouge, and, after a long and stubborn resistance, compelled it to surrender in September, 1780; he swept the waters of English vessels, and then, with the co-operation of a Spanish fleet under Admiral Solano and de Monteil, laid siege to the ancient town of Pensacola. The forts were held by garrisons of English troops, Hessians, and northern Tories, well supplied and ready to meet the arms of the Catholic king. The resistance of the British governor, Campbell, was stout and brave; but Pensacola fell, and British power on our southern frontier was crushed, and neutralized. Spain gave one of the greatest blows to England in the war, next in importance to the overthrow of Burgoyne and Cornwallis.

On the Northwest, too, where English influence over the Indians was so detrimental, Spain checked it by the reduction of English posts that had been the centre of the operations of the savage foe. America was not slow in showing her sense of gratitude to Catholic Spain. Robert Morris wrote to Galvez: “I am directed by the United States to express to your excellency the grateful sense they entertain of your early efforts in their favor. Those generous efforts gave them so favorable an impression of your character and that of your nation that they have not ceased to wish for a more intimate connection with your country.” Galvez made the connection more intimate by marrying a lady of New Orleans, who in time presided in Mexico as wife of the Viceroy of New Spain.

But it was not only by the operations on land that the country of Isabella the Catholic aided our cause. Before she declared war against England, her navy had been increased and equipped, so that her fleets co-operated ably with those of France in checking English power and lowering English supremacy on the ocean.

Yet a greater service than that of brave men on land or sea was rendered by her diplomacy. Russia had been almost won by England; her fleet was expected to give its aid to the British navy in reasserting her old position; but Spain, while still neutral, proposed an armed neutrality, and urged it with such skill and address that she detached Russia from England, and arrayed her virtually as an opponent where she had been counted upon with all certainty as an ally. Spain really thus banded all Continental Europe against England, and then, by declaring war herself, led Holland to join us openly.

Nor were France and Spain our only Catholic friends. The Abbé Niccoli, minister of Tuscany at the court of France, was a zealous abettor of the cause of America. In Germany the Hessians, sent over here to do the work of English oppression, were all raised in Protestant states, while history records the fact that the Catholic princes of the empire discouraged the disgraceful raising of German troops to be used in crushing a free people; and this remonstrance and opposition of the Catholic princes put a stop to the German aid which had been rendered to our opponent.

Never was there such harmonious Catholic action as that in favor of American independence a hundred

Washington uttered no words of flattery, no mere commonplaces of courtesy, but what he felt and knew to be the truth, when, in reply to the Catholic address, he said: “I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution and the establishment of their government, or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed.”

THE IRISH HOME-RULE MOVEMENT.[139]

What is the real nature of the new political movement or organization in Ireland which emblazons on its banner the device “Home Rule”? Beyond all question it has attained to national dimensions. It has concentrated upon itself more of the attention and interest, hopes and sympathies, of the Irish people than any political endeavor on the same field of action for many years. More than this, it seems to have succeeded in exacting a tribute to its power and authority which no previous movement received from the adverse ministers, publicists, and people of England. These, while they combat it, deal with it as “Ireland.” It makes propositions, exacts terms, directs assaults, assents to arrangements on behalf of and in the name of the Irish people; and, as we have indicated, the singular part of the case is that not only is its action ratified and applauded by them, but its authority so to act in their name is virtually recognized by the government. In the House of Commons it takes charge of Irish affairs; has almost an Irish (volunteer) ministry, certainly an organized party not inferior, if not superior, in discipline to that of the “government” or “opposition.” We hear of its “whips,” its councils, its special division-lists, its assignment

In all this there is much that is new in the history of Irish politics; and it were impossible that it should not intensely interest, if not affect, the Catholic millions of America, bound, as most of them are, to Ireland by the sacred ties of faith and kindred and nationality.

What, then, is Home Rule? Is it Fenianism, “veiled” or unveiled? Is it Repeal? Is it less than repeal, or more than repeal? Is it a surrender or a compromise of the Irish national demand; or is it, as its advocates claim, the substance of that demand shaped and adjusted according to the circumstances, requirements, and necessities of the present time?

With the fall of the Young Ireland party, and the disastrous collapse of their meditated rather than attempted insurrection in 1848, there seemed to foes and friends an end of national movements in Ireland for the balance of the century. It is almost a law of defeats that the vanquished are separated into two or three well-defined parties or sections: those whom the blow has intensified and more embittered in their opposition; those whom it wholly overawes, who thereafter consider they have done enough for honor, and retire entirely from the field; and, lastly, those who recognize, if they do not accept, the defeat; who admit the impossibility of further operations on a position so advanced, fall back upon some line which they imagine they can hold, and, squaring round there, offer battle with whatever of strength and resources survive to them. This is just what resulted in Ireland in 1848-49. The Young Ireland movement of 1848 was never national in dimensions or acceptance. O’Connell’s movement was, from 1842 to 1844; but from that date forward, though there were two or three rival movements or parties, having for their leaders respectively O’Connell, Smith O’Brien, and John Mitchel, no one of them had the nation at its back. The Young Irelanders led away from O’Connell the youth, talent, enthusiasm, and, to a large extent, though not entirely, the resolute earnestness and honesty of the old Repeal party. It is a very common but a very great fallacy that they broke away on a “war policy” from the grand old man whose fading intellect was but too sadly indicated in the absurd conduct that drove the young men from his side. They had no “war” policy or design any more than he had (in the sense of a war attack on England), until they caught up one in the blaze and whirl of revolutionary intoxication scattered through Europe by the startling events of February, 1848, in Paris. They seceded from O’Connell on this point,[140] because they would not subscribe to the celebrated test resolutions (called “Peace Resolutions”) declaring that under no circumstances was it or would it be [141] especially when, the Uncrowned Monarch having died mournfully in exile, his following in Conciliation Hall raised the cry that the Young Irelanders “killed O’Connell.” Soon afterwards the seceders were themselves rent by a secession. The bolder spirits, led by John Mitchel and Devin Rielly, demanded that the Confederation, in place of disclaiming any idea of an armed struggle against England, should avowedly prepare the people for such a resort. The new secession was as weak in numbers, relatively towards the Confederation, as the original seceders were towards the Repeal Association. The three parties made bitter war upon one another. A really national movement there was no more.

Suddenly Paris rose against Louis Philippe, and throughout Europe, in capital after capital, barricades went up and thrones came down. Ireland caught the flame. The Mitchel party suddenly found themselves masters of the situation. The Confederation leaders—O’Brien, Duffy, Dillon, O’Gorman, Meagher, and Doheny—not only found their platform abandoned, but eventually, though not without some hesitation and misgiving, they themselves abandoned it too, and threw themselves into the scheme for an armed struggle in the ensuing summer or autumn. It was thought, perhaps, that although this might not reunite the O’Connellites and the Young Irelanders, it would surely reunite the recently-divided sections of the O’Brien following; but it did so only ostensibly or partially. There were two schools of insurrectionists in the now insurrectionary party: Mitchel and Rielly declared that O’Brien and Duffy wanted a “rosewater revolution”; O’Brien and Duffy declared the others were “Reds,” who wanted a jacquerie. The refusal of the leaders to make the rescue of Mitchel the occasion and signal for a rising, led to bitter and scarcely disguised recrimination; and when, a couple of months later, they themselves, caught unawares and unprepared by the government, sought to effect a rising, the result was utter and complete failure. The call had no real power or authority behind it. The men who issued it had not the mandate of the nation in any sense of the word. They were at the moment the fraction of a fraction. They had against them the bulk of the Repeal millions and the Catholic clergy; not against them in any combative sense, but in a decided disapproval of their insurrection. Some, and only some, of the large cities became thoroughly imbued with and ready to carry through the revolutionary determination—an impress which Cork has ever since retained; but beyond the traditional vague though deep-rooted feeling of the Irish peasantry against the hateful rule of England, the rural population, and even the majority of the cities and towns, had scarcely any participation in “the Forty-Eight movement.”

length succeeded in rallying what could be called a political party on a struggle for “Tenant Right.” It raised in no way the “national” question. It gathered Presbyterians of the north and Catholics of the south, repealers and anti-repealers, in an organization to force Parliament to pass a bill preventing the eviction of tenant-farmers unless for non-payment of rent; preventing also arbitrary increasing of rent that might squeeze out the farmer in another way. “Come, now, this is something practical and sensible,” said matter-of-fact non-repealers and half-hearted nationalists. “Why, it is craven surrender and sheer dishonor!” cried the irreconcilable section of the ’48 men. A band of thirty or forty members of Parliament were returned at the instance of the Tenant League to work out its programme. They were mostly corrupt and dishonest men, who merely shouted the new shibboleth for their own purposes. Were the people thoroughly in earnest, and did they possess any really free voting power (there was no vote by ballot then), all this could be cured; but as things stood, the parliamentary band broke up in the first three months of their existence. The English minister bought up its noisiest leaders, of whom Keogh (now a judge) and Sadleir are perhaps most widely remembered. In some cases the constituencies, priests and people, condoned their treason, duped into believing it was not treason at all, but “a great thing to have Catholics on the bench.” In other places the efforts of priests and people to oppose the re-election of the traitors were vain; free election amongst “tenants at will” being almost unknown without the ballot. The tenants’ cause was lost. Thus ruin, Pacata Hibernia as in the days of Carew and St. Leger.

Now came the turn for the unchanged and exasperated section of the ’48 war party. Few in numbers, and scattered wide apart, they had hissed forth scorn and execration on Duffy’s parliamentary experiment as a departure from the revolutionary faith. If he in 1849 answered to their invectives by pointing to the fiasco of the year before, they now taunted him with the collapse of 1853. Not more than two or three of the ’48 men of any prominence, however, took up this actually hostile attitude. Most of them—O’Brien, Dillon, Meagher, O’Gorman, and even Martin—more or less expressly approved the recent endeavor as the best thing practicable under the circumstances in Ireland. Now, however, the men who believed in war and nothing but war, in total separation and nothing short of separation, would take their turn. The Fenian movement thus arose.

If neither of the sections or subsections of the Irish nationalists in 1848 could be said to have succeeded in rallying or representing the full force, or even a considerable proportion, of Irish patriotism, this new venture was certainly not more fortunate in that respect. Outside its ranks, obstinately refusing to believe in its policy, remained the bulk of the millions who had followed O’Connell or Smith O’Brien. Yet the Fenians worked with an energy worthy of admiration—except where the movement degenerated into an intolerance that forbade any other national opinions save those of its leaders to be advanced. In truth, their influence on Irish politics was very mixed in its merits. In some places it was a rude and vaunting rowdyism that called itself Fenianism; in others an honest, manly, self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who were its confessors and martyrs. If in their fall they drew down upon Ireland severities worse than anything known since 1798, it is only fair, on the other hand, to credit in a large degree to the sensations aroused by their trials the great awakening of public opinion on the Irish question which set in all over England at the time.

And now once more the board was clear. England had won the game; not a pawn remained untaken on the Irish side. Not an Irish association, or society, or “agitation,” or demand of any kind challenged Britannia’s peace of mind. Once more it was a spectacle of the lash and the triangle; state-trials, informers, and prosecutors; the convict-ship and the hulk; the chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham.

“Who will show us any light?” exclaims one of the Young Ireland bards in a well-known and beautiful poem. Such might well have been the exclamation of Ireland in 1867. Was this to be the weary cycle of Irish effort, for ever and for ever? Was armed effort hopeless, and peaceful effort vain? Was there no alternative for Irishmen but to become “West-Britons,” or else dash their brains out against a dungeon wall? Could no one devise

Suddenly a new element of consideration presented itself; new, indeed, and rather startling.

It was Irish Protestantism offering the hand of reconciliation to Ireland.

The Tory party had come into power in the course of the Fenian prosecutions, and had carried on the work in a spirit which Cromwell himself would approve. They really held office, not because they had an effective majority in the House of Commons, but because the liberals were broken up and divided, unable to agree on a policy. To turn to his own account the “Fenian scare” was Mr. Gladstone’s brilliant idea. To make a dash on the Irish Church establishment would rally all the mutinous fractions of liberalism, on the principle of “hit him, he has no friends.” It would gratify all England as a sort of conscience-salve for the recent dragonnades and coercion laws. Yes; this was the card with which to beat Disraeli. True, Mr. Gladstone had only a few years before put down his foot and declared that never, “no, never,” could, would, or should that Irish Church be disestablished or interfered with in any way. What was he to say now to cover this flank movement, made for purely party purposes? In all Britain there is no brain more subtle, none more fertile of strategic resource, than that of W. E. Gladstone. He put it all on Fenianism. He had changed his mind, not because he was out of office with a weak and broken party, and wanted to get back with a strong and united one, but because he had opened his eyes to Fenianism! He never hit on a more successful idea. On the cry of “Down with the Irish Church!” he was swept into office at the head of the most powerful majority commanded by any minister since Peel in 1841. It must not be thought that Mr. Gladstone was insincere, or meant anything but service to Ireland (while also serving his party) by this move. He has the faculty of intensely persuading himself into a fervid conscientiousness on any subject he likes, whether it be Free Trade, Church Establishment, Church Disestablishment, or Vaticanism.

The Irish Protestants had an unanswerable case against England—that is, as between them and her—on this matter of disestablishment. It was, on her part towards them, an open, palpable, and flagitious breach of faith—breach of formal treaty in fact. The articles of the Union in 1800 expressly covenanted that the maintenance of the Irish Church establishment was to be one of the cardinal, fundamental, essential, and everlasting conditions of the deed. Mr. Gladstone snapped his fingers at such considerations. “Mind, you thereby repeal and annul the Union,” cried Irish conservatives. “We will kick another crown into the Boyne,” said Parson Flanagan at an Orange meeting. “We have held by this bargain with you with uneasy consciences,” said and wrote numbers of sincere Irish Protestants; “break it, and we break with you, and become Irishmen first and before everything.”