Chapter XIV · (continued 4)

Aubiet formerly had many clergy, and religious services were conducted with a splendor scarcely to be found now in the largest cathedrals. This was principally owing to a celebrated confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, which was organized in 1526 by Cardinal Clermont-Lodève, archbishop of Auch, at the request of eighteen priests of the town, who, with uncovered heads and robed in their surplices, presented themselves for the purpose before that prelate when he came to make his pastoral visit. The act of foundation still exists. Every Thursday a solemn Mass was to be sung with deacon and sub-deacon in honor of Corpus Domini, and on the first Thursday of every month the Blessed Sacrament was to be carried in procession around the church of Notre Dame de Pitié.

This institution became very popular, for it was an outburst of faith, love, and reparation; and numerous legacies and foundations were made all through that century for its support by people of every condition. One of the priests, foremost in founding the confraternity, was the first to show his pious liberality. This was Jehan Jourdan, the elder, a venerable old man, who, in 1626, appeared before the assembled clergy of the place and begged them to accept, out of his devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the sum of two hundred and twenty crowns, that Mass might be offered in perpetuity at the altar of Our Lady of Pity for the welfare of the donor and his relatives during

This same Jehan, the elder, in his last will and testament, likewise founded seven votive Masses on every Friday in the year—one in honor of God the Father; another of the Holy Ghost; the third, of the Holy Trinity; the fourth, of Notre Dame de Pitié; the fifth, of St. Joseph; the sixth, for the dead; the seventh, in honor of the Holy Name of Jesus. The latter was to be sung with deacon and sub-deacon. All the chaplains were to assist devoutly at its celebration, and if any one failed to attend he was obliged to pay a fine of olive-oil for the lamps. No one was to be appointed chaplain unless a native of the place and doctus in musicâ, et non aliter.

Another remarkable foundation is still to be seen in an old Latin will of a notary at Aubiet. He requests to be buried before St. Peter’s altar in the church of Our Lady of Charity (as it was sometimes called). Among his curious legacies are nine sous for nine requiem Masses for his soul, showing what was the customary fee in those days. He also founds a solemn Mass of requiem at St. Peter’s altar every Wednesday, for himself and all his relatives who have died in a state of grace, for which purpose he bequeaths various lands.

Pierre Lacroix, in a will of the sixteenth century also, leaves a certain sum for his funeral expenses. Six torches are to burn around his bier, and eighty priests were invited to aid in the service. They are to have bodily refreshments: habeant refectionem corporalem. On the ninth day after his death all the priests of Aubiet are to assemble to pray for his soul. They are to receive duas duplas—two doubles—but no refreshments. At the end of the month the eighty priests are again to be invited, who are to sing Mass for his soul; six torches, of half a pound each, to burn meanwhile. They are to be provided with bodily refreshments. At the end of the year the eighty are again to be summoned, and this time they are to have eight liards each pro labore et pœna, but nothing to refresh the body.

The lord of Beaupuy, who during his life always had three Masses a week celebrated, leaves at his death a legacy of seven and a half sacks of wheat a year from his lands at St. Mézard, with one-third of the produce of the vineyards, to be delivered to two priests, each of whom is to say one Mass a week for his soul.

Jehan Cavaré, a man of considerable distinction at Aubiet, makes several rich bequests and foundations to the different chapels of the place. At his funeral two wax torches of half a pound each are to burn. To the attendant priests qui cantabunt he gives three doubles and no bodily refection. If they do not sing, nothing is to be given them.

One hundred poor are to be fed on Good Friday with a loaf, wine, and one sardine each. The same obligation is imposed at All Saints, but this time there is no mention of the sardine.

Thirty crowns are to be given to two girls of irreproachable morals at Aubiet on the day of their marriage; and a woollen gown, all made, is to be given to twelve widows or poor single women of Mauvezin.

“Moved,” as he says, “by the grace of God and love for the church of Notre Dame de la Charité,” he also founds seven Masses a week in perpetuity in the chapel de lacrymâ Christi, in honor of the Holy Tears of Christ. For all these services he leaves numerous lands and revenues.

These and many other foundations, extraordinary for a small country village, express the reaction against the innovations of the age, and are remarkable proofs of the deep faith and piety of the people. And they are only examples of similar cases throughout the country, the records of which it does the heart good to ponder over. How pious are the formulas with which such bequests are made: In remissionem peccatorum suorum—Pro remedio animæ suæ et animarum parentum suorum, et aliorum pro quibus deprecare tenetur, etc. Everywhere they express devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and to some saint in particular, as well as to all the inhabitants of the heavenly country in general. This was in accordance with the traditions of the country, where the heart naturally turns to Jesus in the arms of Our Lady of Pity at the awful moment of death. St. Bertrand of Comminges, when his end drew near, had himself transported to the chapel of the Virgin and breathed out his soul at the foot of her altar. Bernard de Sariac, a distinguished bishop of Aire, founded on his death-bed a chapel in honor of Notre Dame de Pitié. The old lords of the country show, by the solemnity of their last bequests, their faith in Mary’s powerful assistance at the supreme hour of death. William, Count of Astarac, in his legacy to Notre Dame de Simorre in 940, says: “Inspired by God and the hope of Paradise, and in order to increase my reward in the day of judgment, I give the most holy Virgin the following lands in Astarac.” Raymond de Lavedan, in 1253, left this clause in his will: “I give my land to St. Mary with all it bears towards heaven and contains in its depths.” There are a thousand similar examples of illustrious barons of the olden times whose tombstones in the Virgin’s chapel in many instances remain an enduring testimony of their devotion to Mary, though the building itself is demolished.

The confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Aubiet only admitted thirteen of the most notable persons of the town. Among other obligations, they had to accompany the Holy Eucharist when carried to any of the members who were ill, bare-headed, wearing surplices, and bearing lighted torches in their hands; to assemble in like robes on the first Thursday of every month; to follow the divine Host in procession; and every Thursday to attend a Mass of the Corpus Domini under the penalty of a fine. One peculiarity of this Mass was the Kyrie Eleison, which they sang with a thousand modulations:

Kyrie, Pater æterne, fontana Deitas, ex quo manant flumina rerum, ELEISON![53]

Kyrie, fons co-æternæ lucis et claritas, lucem formans primo dierum, ELEISON![54]

Kyrie, fons superne, redundant bonitas, panem mittens de cœlo verum, ELEISON![55]

Christe, lucis fons, lux de luce prodiens; Dei pinguis mons, quo pascente vivit esuriens et impletur pane vivente, ELEISON![56]

Christe, cordium via, vita, veritas; cibus mentium, in quo sistit summa suavitas et satietas consistit, ELEISON!

Christe, sumptio tui sacri corporis est refectio vires præbens immensi roboris, et molesta salutis demens, ELEISON!

Kyrie, decus amborum, Patris Natique, et duorum non duplex Spiritus; quo spirante lux datur morum, ELEISON![57]

Kyrie, qui veritatis lumen es diffusum gratis, dictus Paraclitus, dans solamen his desolaris, ELEISON!

Kyrie, sana palatum, quo gustamus panem gratum et missum cœlitus, in Marid per te formatum, ELEISON![58]

This is an example of the tropus or farcius, so common in the middle ages, which is a paraphrase or extension of the liturgy by inserting additional words between the important parts—as at the Gloria in Excelsis, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, etc.—the word farsus, farcius, or farcitus, as it was differently written by the monks of the middle ages, being derived from the Latin farcire, used by Pliny the naturalist, Apicius, and Cato the agriculturist, in the sense of filling, distending, enriching. Pope Adrian II. is said to have instituted these farci to be sung in monasteries on solemn festivals. They were the festivæ laudes of the Romans. Others attribute them to the Greek church. These farci were of three kinds in France: the usual liturgy being expanded by inserting additional words in Latin; or the text was Greek and the paraphrase in old French; or, again, the latter was in the vulgar tongue of Oil and Oc. These paraphrases in the vulgar tongue became popular, not only in France, but in England and Germany. From them was derived the proverbial expression, Se farcir de Grec et de Latin—that is, to have the head full. These tropes or farcies of mixed French and Latin are still very common in southwestern France, especially in the popular Noëls, which are often rude lines in patois alternate with Latin, after the following style:

It is not surprising that, with daily High Masses and a perpetual round of imposing services, the people of Aubiet should feel the change when the place became impoverished, the number of priests diminished, and most of the churches destroyed at the invasion of the Huguenots. We are told that when the vicar was unable to sing High Mass on the festival of St. John the Baptist in 1623, there was universal murmuring, and the magistrates drew up a solemn protest against so unheard-of a scandal, which document is still extant.[59]

But the church of Notre Dame de Pitié, although profaned, was left Kyrie eleison farci was still chanted in his time.

We find a similar confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament at Touget, another village of Gascony, which suffered horribly from the religious wars. It was for a long time in possession of the Huguenots, who abolished the Catholic religion and ruined the churches. To repair these profanations the association was established, the statutes of which are still extant in the Gascon tongue. By these we learn that there were nine chaplains in honor of the nine choirs of angels; twelve laymen in honor of the twelve apostles; seventy-two other lay members in memory of the seventy-two disciples (husband and wife being counted as one); and seven pious widows in honor of the seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin. They were all to be natives of the place, but “no ruffian, renegade, public usurer, or vicious person admitted among them.” Every Thursday all the members were to attend High Mass in the parish church, robed in their surplices. They were to accompany the Host in solemn procession through the village, at stated times, tapers in hand; sing the Office of the Dead before the door of any deceased member, and attend the requiem Mass for his soul. These and various other pious obligations were encouraged by the bishop of Lombez, who granted certain indulgences of vray perdon, especially on the festivals of St. Germain, St. George, St. Vincent, and St. Fritz, whose relics were honored in the church. Such is the spirit of love, sorrow, and reparation which perfumes a few of the countless chapels of Our Lady of Pity in southwestern France, where so many hearts have forgotten their own grief before that of Mary! In all these sanctuaries, wan and desolate, she seems to plead for the nation. So pleads she all over the earth. Every mystery of religion is perpetuated in the church. Christ is always crucified somewhere on the earth. Mary is always sorrowing over his bleeding wounds.

We have seen her weeping over the door of many a tabernacle in Italy, as if over the Saviour wounded anew in the sacrament of his love. Who can turn away from the affecting appeal in this day of profanations in that unhappy land, where the very angels of the church Planh referred to at the beginning of this article:

“I conceived thee without corruption; to-day my heart is broken with grief: thy Nativity was exempt from all suffering; now is the day of my travail—

“Alas! my Son, on account of thy torments!

“When thou wert born the shepherds came singing with joy, dancing to the sound of their pipes; now traitorous and cruel Jews come to seize thee with horns and cries, staves and swords.

“Alas! my Son, loving and beautiful.”

Ay filh! amaros e bel!

THE ETERNAL YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”

III.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—ABUNDANCE.

We have adverted to the indirect government of the creation by God—to the government which he condescends to administer first through the primary laws which he has stamped upon the universe; and, secondly, through the moral and physical activity with which he has endowed mankind.

We are making vast and rapid strides in this day towards discovering and unravelling these primary laws. At the present moment we seem to have got ourselves somewhat into a tangle of knowledge, which threatens to asphyxiate us with the overpowering perfume of its lavish blossoms, like that of the exuberant growth of the tropical flora.

We are caught as in the meshes of a net, and are hardly allowed time to solve one problem and satisfy ourselves with a conclusion before some new tendril of the ever-growing parasite has flung another flowering coil of verdure around us and arrested our steps once more. We have come upon the time long ago predicted by the Archangel Michael to the prophet Daniel: “Plurimi transibunt, et multiplex erit scientia.”[60] We are dazzled and bewildered; and some timid souls are like ostriches, which hide their heads in the sand, preferring not to see and know, and hoping that their ignorance and the ignorance of the multitude generally will serve as a dam to the coming flood, and leave us freed from a torrent of questions which, if once they are there, must be answered. It is to be regretted that these persons cannot learn to possess their souls in patience, and to watch calmly and intelligently the progress of this gigantic growth of science, assured that it will all arrange and classify itself in time, in perfect harmony with what they know to be true and enduring, and which they so dishonor by their apprehensions.

However, since this is too much to expect of many, there is nothing for it but to allow such people to keep themselves in peace in the way that suits them best; only not permitting them to discourage others from investigation and reverent inquiry. St. Thomas tells us that the end of all science is contained within the end of all theology and is subservient to it. Theology, therefore, ought to command all other sciences and turn to its use those things of which they treat. But we shall not arrive at this virile steadfastness until the real study of theology has become more general. There is very little in our modern education or habits of thought to teach that calm gaze into the depths of the divine mysteries which imparts such strength of within the end of theology.” Meanwhile, if we would not find ourselves swamped in the torrent of surmises, partial discoveries, inverted reasonings, and unreverential decisions, we must go back to the spirit and method of the ages which produced the deeply metaphysical thinkers and theological writers of old. The flood of events pours on, and the concussion of each tears through our daily life and ploughs up the hours and the days in hurried disorder, leaving no time for seed to develop in the fallow soil, for the green blade to strengthen and the harvest to ripen. Modern inventions speed the latest intelligence into the innermost recesses of our homes, and we live like people in a house without doors or windows, open to every blast; while the age, whose needs seem most to call for contemplative recluses, on the contrary stamps contemplation out of the heart of man, and substitutes the paramount necessity for outward activity. There is no solace, there is no rest, but in prayer. There is no consolation but in cultivating thought in the hidden recesses of our minds, and, amid the racket of life, to go deep down into the silent caverns of our souls and dwell in an inner solitude with thoughts of eternal truth. The tendencies of the age have added a new difficulty to the treatment of many of the questions more or less inextricably mixed up with any largely philosophical views of the union of science with divine truth.

We have perverted our language because thought, of which language is the clothing, is perverted. We dare not handle questions that in themselves are pure, because we have allowed necessary words to represent unnecessary indelicacy. No word that expresses a necessary fact is in itself evil; but woe to the imagination which makes it so! Purity is always dignified. But if you take the white roses of innocence to crown a wanton, white roses will fall into disrepute; and this is what we have done with language. Words no longer only mean the thing they represent. They have been made to insinuate the foul underflow of evil fancy that corruption has poured forth. How shall we cleanse the source, that we may once more use language of strength and purity? How shall

It is probable that some of the hurry and absence of precision and of tenacious research which characterize the modern form of mind may be the natural result of the sudden rush of new discoveries which have taken us, as it were, by surprise and carried us off our feet. By degrees it is probable we shall, as a race, accept the changes in our condition, and shall become gradually adapted to the varied forms of life imposed upon us by the vast and multiplied combinations which every day are extending our power over the external world and opening new paths for activity and enterprise. Doubtless this power will increase rather than diminish, and at the same time take less hold upon us in a revolutionary way, and we shall lose some of that flurry and excitement which now characterize us—much in the way that the young colt of a week old starts no more than does the old mare when the engine rushes down the railway that skirts the field; and yet when railways first began both were alike alarmed.

But for the present we have lost much of our original moral and intellectual dignity. Upon such questions as interest us we are excited and flurried. Those which we do not affect to understand we cannot seriously listen to; and between the bustling activity of the first and the listless frivolity of the last it is not an easy task to bring forward old truths with new faces, old facts with a fresh moral, lest those who listen should persist in viewing the question from the wrong side, and in taking scandal where no scandal was meant.

We have set ourselves the task of investigating the chief attributes of God’s government of creation and its uniformity of design in complexity of action. To do this we

The three chief characteristics which we discover in the government of creation are abundance, patience or longanimity, and progression. The first command which the Creator uttered over the first recorded living and moving creatures of his hand was, “Increase and multiply.” This was the initial law of all that we see and know in the external world; and as no temporal law or material condition exists in God’s creation without its spiritual intention and inner meaning, this law is typical of what is beyond sight and belongs to the domain of faith. In attempting to define that command we find it conveys an impression, wider than the heavens and more diffused than the ambient air, of generosity, benevolence, and paternity. It is the law of “our Father who is heaven.” It beams upon us like the genial warmth of the noontide sun. It shadows us like the stretching boughs of a large forest perfumed with the dews of earth. It was spoken first to the products of the water and the denizens of the air; and again it was spoken over the two first beings created “after His own image and likeness.”

Wherever there is life, even life in its lowest form—and so low that science hesitates to pronounce upon it as being life, and stands uncertain how to designate evident growth without equally evident life, like the unintelligent but absolutely accurate formation of crystals—there too the law reigns of “increase and multiply.” Attraction and affinity declare the law, and carry it on, while repulsion is but the inverse of the same; and though, for aught we know, and judging by induction, there is not one molecule added on our earth to the original chaotic matter, and all reproductions are composed of the same elements passing through varied forms and phases, nevertheless the same impulse governs all living things and everywhere represents the large, lavish benevolence of the God of life.

The animal creation is the unreasoning and innocent embodiment of the natural law, and carries out its mandates unconscious of the why and the wherefore; whereas in fallen man the natural law has overlapped the moral law, and the latter has become warped by the pressure of the former, making all things discordant. As abundance is one of the characteristics of the natural law, so the modes and forms of its execution lie at the very root of all creation. The Spirit of God, the brooding Dove, moved over the face of the waters. The same image of incubation and consequently of imparted heat (motion and heat being allied as reciprocal cause and effect), was in the mind of the old Egyptians when they carved a winged world amongst their mystic signs. So sacred, so holy, so full of deep-hidden meaning was the idea as it lay from all eternity in the divine Mind, that it was through the four thousand historic years which preceded the birth of the God-Man the mode through which God taught the chosen people to expect the Redeemer. It became the hope of every maiden to form one link in the long chain which was to lead up to the Messiah. It sanctified all the ties of domestic

So universal was the sentiment that many, in the tenacity of their desire to carry on the holy tradition, and too earthly to perceive the sin of doing wrong that good might come, thrust aside the law of conscience rather than fail in what weighed upon them as an overwhelming necessity—to continue the natural line—that perhaps they, too, might form one of those from whose loins should spring the Saviour of the world. It was thus that a dignity was imparted to natural ties which surpassed among the Israelites the same sentiment among the Gentiles, but which was but a foreshadowing of their sacred and sacramental state in the church of God.

“Wisdom is justified by her children”; and all that God has ordained must reach its ultimate perfection in his church before it can pass into another phase. “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.”[61]

As all things in creation are by and for him, as all culminate in him, so when the prophecies were accomplished, and Mary, the immaculate and virgin daughter of the House of David, had, through the operations of the Holy Ghost, become the Mother of God—the law “increase and multiply” having thus ascended to its mystical fulfilment and ultimate development—so from henceforth did it confer a new and more holy character on natural ties by consecrating them as the type and image, of what is spiritual.

The one end in view had survived through all, despite man’s ignorance, infirmity, and sin; and that end once attained, the sinless Mother clasping to her bosom the Infant God who was from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, from that moment all that was human had a new and divine element in it. All creation, all life, all we have and are, became in a special way “holy to the Lord.” “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God? If any man violate the temple of God, him will God destroy. All things are yours, the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours: and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”[62]

Through long centuries man had failed to comprehend even while he felt the underlying mystery of creation. He looked on the fair fields of nature with undiscerning eyes. He hardly guessed at the enigma of the outer world as leading upwards to something nobler; and therefore he dragged the image of God down into the mire of his own existence. He even sought the Deity in what was below himself, worshipping, not men and heroes, but beasts and creeping things; because, being dominated by the idea of the great and all-pervading force of the laws of life and nature, the lower creation presented a more simple and abstract image of their potency. The idea of the principle of life haunted him like a dark and perplexing riddle. Its magnitude weighed upon him. Its universality perplexed him. He had not the light of truth in its plenitude to illumine the dark places of the earth. He could only make guesses at the typical meaning of creation; and as the whirr of life rushed ceaselessly around him without bringing any answer to his questionings, it became a relief to embody the idea which obseded

Thus had man covered over with the veil of his iniquities and the thick darkness of his ignorance all the sanctities of life, until the church of God revealed to him that Christ is the head of the church, as the husband is the head of the wife, and placed matrimony among the sacraments; because as a sacrament only is it holy to the Lord, and because, as a sacrament, it is typical of that highest and most divine union of Christ with his church—that union which is her strength, her inviolability, her guarantee, and her ever-enduring and indisputable infallibility.[63]

How little did poor fallen humanity dream of the sanctity and dignity of common life until the church turned the full light of revelation on the laws of our being and taught us what those laws prefigured in the Eternal Mind! It is not until St. Paul wrote by inspiration that astonishing chapter to the Ephesians that the laws of being were really less awful in their hidden sanctity. They were never in themselves mean, miserable, and degraded. It is true the state of matrimony only foreshadowed a sacrament; for under the old law there were no sacraments in the specific sense in which we now use the term in the Catholic Church. It was holy under the old law, and it may be said to have had a sacramental character; and that character was the anticipation of what it was to become when it should be raised into one of the seven sacraments of the church, and the type of Christ as head of the church. But at that time mankind was still in darkness. Humanity could not earlier review the expression of the mystery. Only the Gospel could open their eyes to the full understanding of the sacramental principle which alone makes life holy, and, O sorrowing, suffering hearts! which alone to you can make it endurable.[64]

See how the beneficent thought of God has touched all our common lot! See what flowers blossom amid the thorns, what gems of light sparkle in the dark ways of life, ennobling all, beautifying because sanctifying all, and enabling us, while the heavy burden of sorrow, disappointment, regrets, and even ruined hope, may seem to take all the color out of life, and to send us back to a treadmill existence and a gray, despairing twilight, to realize that nothing can alter the fact that we are holy to the Lord, and that in our daily, hourly lot, as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, masters, and servants, we are carrying on the ceaseless weaving of that web of sacred typical life which has from all eternity been in the mind of God as the law of our natural being, and in one form or another envelops, like the husks of the sweet nut, the gradually-ripening

Can any one seriously doubt that, if a greater and more hallowed veneration for the laws of our natural existence became more general and more intense, they would, in their typical and sacramental character, develop further heights of holiness—not as the exceptional ways of a few miraculous saints, but as the table-land of all humanity? As it was the hardness of heart in the Israelites which compelled Moses to give a law of divorce, so may it not be our hardness of heart, lessened indeed, but not yet melted, which leaves us so often such mere commonplace appreciation of natural ties, and thus fails to realize in them all that they possess and can yield?

Jesus is our father, our brother, our friend, our master, and our spouse. These titles are taken from our common life. But the abstract idea which these titles express by subdivision and restriction dwelt for ever in the mind of God as the form and fashion he would give to human life in his foreknowledge of the divine Incarnation, for which end solely do all things exist. What further thoughts can we need to make us tender over our own duties and our own condition? What a noble origin there is to all that we are apt to look upon as an encumbrance, a failure, a mere unfortunate accident! Our ties enchain us; then let us hug our chains, and find in wearing them “the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free.” All our life is a God-directed education of our souls; and the fashion of our human life is the mould which God has prepared for us each as individuals, save always where there is sin or its proximate occasion, or where a higher vocation—that sublime infringement of the common law—comes to impel the soul to forsake all and follow the divine Spouse. Then all else melts before the furnace of divine love; the intermediate, ordinary steps which lead others to God through the sanctities of common life are cleared at one bound, and God puts in his claim to do what he will with his own.

To resume all in a few words: all we see around us, from the soil beneath our feet, through the vegetable and animal worlds, even to ourselves, is the working out of the first law of increase and multiply. Consequently, this being, as we have already said, the representative idea of the creation, its sacredness lies in that very fact, and dates not merely from the new dispensation nor from the old, but from the Eternal Mind before creation was. We have arrived at the facts which prove this representative idea by the aid of natural science, of which the old spiritual writers knew next to nothing, and who consequently, looking at nature through the black mists of man’s defilement, sometimes took distorted views of laws and facts the exquisite harmony of which come out in the deductions of modern research, and so establish the claim we are now making to the absolute beauty and sanctity of all the fashion of human existence as leading up by typical forms to spiritual truths. The witness of this like a golden thread in the dim web of patriarchal times may be found in the fact that it was the eldest son who officiated as the priest of the family, thus blending the natural and spiritual by making the former the basis of the latter. This was the reason of the envy and malice of Joseph’s brethren. He was not the first-born; and yet it was for him that his father made the sacerdotal

Little did they dream that while, in the full exercise of their own free-will, they gave license to their thoughts of hatred, they were enacting as in a type the one great fact of the universe, the world’s one important history, the tragedy of all creation, when he who, though in his human nature he is the younger born of God’s children, holds, and for ever shall hold, sacerdotal rank over the elder and fallen Adam.

They who said, “See whether it be thy son’s coat or not,”[65] were the forefathers of those who exclaimed, “Let Christ the king of Israel come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”[66] They mocked at the father who claimed to have made his younger son the priest of his house, and their descendants declared of the great Priest of our race that “he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.” In both cases their pretensions were turned into ridicule and treated as a crime. They dipped the sacerdotal coat of Joseph in the blood of a kid; but the great High-Priest they covered with his own blood, in derision of his claim to be their King and their God. And through it all, through the good and the evil, the adaptive government of God worked out his ultimate designs, turning the wickedness of men to his own glory and hiding the secrets of his providence beneath the course of events, the incidents of common life, the history of a people, of a tribe, of a family. We look back on the long-drawn-out story and understand somewhat of the underlying mystery. But while it was going on it was but little even guessed at. God is unchangeable, the same for ever and ever. What he did then does he not do now?—for his church, his bride, above all, but also for all humanity, all the wide universe according to its measure, as it can bear it, when it can receive it; leading on by degrees so slow that to us they seem almost imperceptible, but which widen and spread like the rings on the surface of the water when a stone has been flung into its depths.

Our range of vision is so narrow, and our knowledge of even the past so limited and so full of inaccuracies, that we can do little more than guess at the manifold unrolling of the divine intentions. We know enough to fill us with hope as to the ultimate destination of all creation, and of ourselves as the children of God. We know not the future, save faintly as faith reveals it. Even of the past we know but dimly and in broken lines. To one only of the children of men, so far as the Holy Scripture informs us, was the past fully and entirely made known, so far as that was possible to a mortal man supernaturally sustained to bear it. How many in the hallowed, bold, and rash moments of inarticulate prayer have ventured in their lesser degree to say with Moses, “Show me thy glory”! As the thought grows upon us of God’s wonderful ways and of his unutterable love and beneficence, we too long to know with certain knowledge something of that Glory which the great lawgiver intuitively felt would be at once the knowledge of all and the consummation of every desire. [67] And thus Moses saw the back parts of Him who is from all eternity, through the aperture of time. He had revealed to him the far-off intention of creation. He looked back, in God, to the time before time “when he had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world; when Wisdom was with him forming all things, playing before him at all times, playing in the world, and whose delights were to be with the children of men.”[68] The back parts were beheld by him, and even this he could not have endured in his feeble flesh had not the Eternal “right hand protected him.” All that the past could teach him in the flash of one moment was then made known to him. What floods of light, knowledge, and divine hope and expectation must that wonderful backward view have imparted to Moses, the man singled out of all mankind to read the past! But even with the strength which knowledge such as that must have conferred upon him, still he could not see the face of God and live. We are using weak human words, because they alone are given us. It was the forward look of God which Moses could not see and live. It was the unutterable Glory that is prepared for us in the future, with and through Jesus, that not even the man who had conversed with God as man speaks with his fellow-man, face to face, could see and live. Its stupendous and exceeding brightness, would have shattered his being as the flash of lightning shatters the oak; even as our Lord revealed to one of his chosen saints that, could she perfectly realize his immense love for the souls of men, that moment of intense joy would snap the frail thread of her life with its excessive ecstasy. What Moses saw he tells us not. No word escapes him of that transcendent vision. He neither tells us of its nature nor of its effects upon himself. But who could marvel if, having had it, he was henceforth the meekest of men? What could ever again disturb the serene patience of him who could divine so much of the future from having seen all the past? And how impossible it must have been for any torments of pride to ruffle the calm serenity of one who was humbled to the very dust by the unutterably lavish and surpassing developments of love and grace and glory which his vision of the past bade him anticipate in that future which even he who had borne to see the past could not gaze upon and live!

As “the end of all science is contained

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Student’s Hand-Book of British and American Literature. Containing sketches, biographical and critical, of the most distinguished English authors, from the earliest times to the present day, with selections from their writings, and questions adapted to the use of schools. By Rev. O. L. Jenkins, A.M., late president of St. Charles’s College, Ellicott City, Md., and formerly president of St. Mary’s College, Baltimore. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 564. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. (New York: The Catholic Publication Society.) 1876.

This book has many excellencies. The author shows himself thoroughly versed in his subject. He writes with elegance, occasionally with force, as in the remarks on the influence of the Protestant Reformation on literature. His taste is true and his judgment sound. In fact, judging by the work itself, he would seem possessed of the qualities fitted to make him an admirable compiler of a literary manual.

The first sentence of the author’s preface explains the object of the book: “The compiler of this work has long felt the necessity of some text book of British and American literature which, in its general bearing, would be free from sectarian views and influences, and, in the extracts, be entirely unexceptionable in point of morality.” This sentence is open to misinterpretation. It is plain, however, from the general plan of Father Jenkins’ work, as well as from numerous passages in it, that he has had in view from the beginning to restore to the Catholic Church, the inspirer of the highest literature, the mother of Christian art, and the fosterer of the sciences, her rightful place in English letters. In most of the text-books used in schools her influence on thought and literature is altogether ignored and herself in too many instances derided. It is clear, then, what the learned author meant by freeing his book from “sectarian views.” While giving their lawful place to all writers, of whatever manner of belief or no belief, he had for his direct object the

No object could be better calculated to confer more lasting benefit on the minds of the young generation growing up around us, for whom chiefly the present work is intended. We open the book with eagerness, therefore, and turn over page after page with interest, often with admiration, until we come up to the present century, when, especially within the later half of it, Catholic literature in England and the United States has, from a variety of causes, received a new and remarkable impulse. It is hardly too much to say that Catholic questions are among the chief questions of the day here as well as in England; they have been such for the last fifty years; they promise to be such for at least fifty years to come; and Catholic writers to-day hold their own in every branch of literature. After three centuries of silence, of death almost, the church has risen again among these peoples who went astray, the voice of truth is heard, and its utterances are manifold. Surely there is reason to expect that due notice of such awakening, of such signs of life and hope, be taken in a literary text-book, which, after all, can only hope to make its way in Catholic schools. Yet here, in this crucial point, Father Jenkins’ work is singularly and lamentably defective. Whether or not he intended to supply the deficiency is not known to us; but those who took up the work after his death ought to have supplied it.

We turn to the book, and what do we find? The only Catholic writers of the century who are found worthy a place in this Catholic manual are, to take them as they occur: Dr. Lingard, Thomas Moore, Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Newman, Aubrey de Vere, in England and Ireland; Bishop England, Robert Walsh, and Archbishop Spalding, in America. And these are all!

Where is Dr. Brownson? His name occurs in a casual note of the author’s, in the same way as the names of Griswold, Cleveland, or Reid occur. Where is Dr. Pise, Dr. Huntington, George H. Miles, Dr. White, Colonel Meline, John G. Shea, Dr. R. H. Clarke, Archbishop Hughes—they simply run off the pen—together with dozens of others, many of whose names will not need recalling to the readers of this magazine? We shrink from extending the catalogue of the absent to England and Ireland.

Writers conspicuous by their absence are by no means restricted to the Catholic faith. Among strange omissions are the following: Southwell is in, but not Crashaw; Shakspere, but not Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher; Addison, but not Steele; all the earlier novelists are absent. The dramatists of the reign of Charles II. are ignored. Goldsmith is remembered, but Sheridan is forgotten. Scott is in, but Burns is out. Moore and Byron, and even Rogers, find their place; but Shelley and Keats are nowhere to be found. Dickens and Thackeray are here, but Bulwer Lytton is absent; and so the list goes on.

The book is supposed to reach up to the present day. The writers on political philosophy, the scientists, the theologians, many of the writers on history known to us as living among us still and destined to live long after us, are altogether omitted. Not a hint even of their existence is given. The “compiler,” as he styled himself, says in the preface that “whatever has relation to our common humanity, and interests all men alike, whether it be fictitious or real, in poetry or in prose, comes within the appropriate province of literature. Even popularized science is not excluded.” And he adds, strangely enough in the light of the chief defect we have noticed: “If, in the early periods, the name of an eminent divine or scholar is introduced whose writings might seem to belong rather to the department of science than belles-lettres, it is because he ranks among the few men of his epoch who were remarkable for intellectual vigor and general knowledge.” This being so, where are the English, Irish, and American Catholic theological, philosophical, and polemical writers of the last half-century?

Of course a work of this kind, which aimed at doing justice to our Catholic writers of the present century, would quite overrun the limits of an ordinary

The Eden of Labor, the Christian Utopia. By T. Wharton Collens, author of Humanics, etc. Philadelphia: H. C. Baird, Industrial Publisher, 810 Walnut Street.

Labor and Capital in England, from the Catholic Point of View. By C. S. Devas, B.A., Lecturer on Political Economy at the Catholic University College, Kensington. London: Burns & Oates, Portman Street.

These two publications may be combined in one notice. They treat of the same subject, essentially in the same spirit, though looking at it in different lights. Both deal with that momentous struggle between labor and capital which has shaken the world in all ages; both profess to find the solution of the economic problems of the day in the teachings of Christianity as interpreted by the Catholic Church; but one invokes the aid of the imagination in portraying what labor might be if all men were just and charitable; the other confronts the actual position of labor in England. Each is equally valuable in its own way, and both are champions of the rights of labor.

Mr. Collens’ work, The Eden of Labor, is the fruit of much thought upon the subject, a powerful imagination, and a feeling heart for those who labor. The author pictures Adam as founding a patriarchal empire after the fall, in which, under wise and equitable laws, labor was universally rewarded by competency and happiness. In the description of this antediluvian Utopia—of its system of government and society, of its condition and rewards of labor, of its land tenure, its trade, foreign and domestic, and its currency—the author gives himself the opportunity of promulgating his conception of the true doctrines of political economy. In this he takes issue with the liberal school of political economists which recognizes Adam Smith as its founder. He denounces its teachings as framed solely in the interest of the selfish and tyrannical employer of labor, and as leading irresistibly to the robbery and enslavement of the over-matched laborer. While admitting the truth of Adam Smith’s law that “labor is the true measure of exchangeable values,” the author strenuously argues that he (Smith) and his disciples nullify the just results of that axiom by defending the specious but unchristian doctrine of “supply and demand,” which results in the supremacy of might over starvation, and by losing sight of their original affirmation of the common right of all to the use of “natural values,” which the liberal economists in the end surrender absolutely to the capitalist.

As a foil to his picture of the “Eden of Labor,” Mr. Collens gives, in his description of Nodland, or the empire of Cain, a history of the enslavement and misery of labor, and the corruption and tyranny of the “money lords,” consequent upon the surrender of society to purely selfish instincts, and its abandonment of laws which Adam had derived from his original intercourse with God. This second part may be regarded as a satire upon our modern civilization. An ingenious monogram representing Labor, half-starved, drawing a miserable subsistence from the reservoir of “Natural Values,” which at the same time feeds the plethora of Capital, is prefixed to the work and fully explained by the author in the appendix.

Philosophers from Plato to Sir Thomas More have sought, in their descriptions of Utopia under different names, to portray a commonwealth in which justice should reign and labor receive its rightful reward. In following the steps of those illustrious thinkers Mr. Collens has the opportunity of presenting to his readers, with freshness of treatment and originality of plan, his solution of the labor questions specially affecting this age. The danger besetting works of this kind, where the author is dissatisfied with the existing order of things, and feels a strong sympathy with oppressed labor, is that they insensibly verge towards the vindication of the theories of communism and the revolutionary rights of man. We are convinced that no conclusions could be more opposed, or even abhorrent, to Mr. Collens’ mind than these. His preface, written on “the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus,” and the whole spirit of his work, bespeak him a fervent Catholic; but, if followed to a logical and forcible conclusion, it would be difficult to distinguish the goal to which the doctrines embodied in the author’s denunciation La propriété, c’est le vol.” This, however, is a defect inherent in all Utopias—not of their own nature, but from the fallen condition of man. With this caution we can safely recommend Mr. Collens’ work as both interesting and instructive.

Professor Devas’ pamphlet is on a more ordinary plane of authorship. It is historical and practical in the sense, as to the latter word, of treating of the existing facts of labor in England and their remedies. But we are not of those who would confine the meaning of the word “practical” solely to results immediately before us. A work like that of Mr. Collens, depending largely upon the imagination and investigating first principles, may be practical in the highest and most extensive sense, so far as it influences the original sources of human action. In his special treatment of the subject, however, Professor Devas has written a very able treatise. It is a reprint of three articles originally published in the Month, two of them containing the substance of a paper read before the Academia at Westminster. The first treats of labor and capital in general; the second, of the economic powers in manufacturing industries; the third, of their relative positions in agriculture. In his first article Professor Devas discusses the question whether contracts should be left to competition or a fair rate of wages—justum pretium—fixed, and, if so, how and by whom. He holds a middle view between the liberal economists who will listen to nothing but the rule of “supply and demand,” and the socialist school which denounces all competition and would have the state fix a compulsory rate. He cites the Nottingham hosiery trade as a case in point where wages are not fixed by competition, but by tariff determined upon at a periodical meeting of masters and workmen, in which the state of the market and all attending circumstances are mutually considered, and suggests this example as a mode of arriving at the justum pretium in all trades. In his chapter on manufacturing industries Professor Devas takes the bold ground of defending trades-unionism, not in its details but in its general principles. He is of opinion that the trades unions have been one of the chief agents in alleviating the condition of the working classes and raising the rate of wages in England during the last forty years. In this latter conclusion he is supported by Dr. Young in his recently published work on Labor in Europe and America. In spite of the fact that the large strikes in England and upon the European Continent have been in the majority of special cases unsuccessful, the general result, according to Dr. Young, has been an advance of wages during the last twenty years. The effects of trades-unionism in Europe may be likened to the flow of the tide, which, repulsed as to each successive wave, yet gains slowly upon the beach. This advance, however, is not always aided by strikes; on the contrary, they have frequently postponed it, by the exhaustion of the struggle, for many years. Their potential combination, or what O’Connell, in a different agitation, called “moral force,” has been a more successful factor in obtaining justice for them.

Ordo Divini Officii Rectandi, etc., 1876. Baltimoræ: Apud Fratres Lucas, Bibliopolas.

Whether by the word “rectandi” the compiler of this guide for the clergy would imply that the principal duty devolving on them with regard to the Office is its correction rather than its recitation, we are unable to say. We do not, it is true, find the verb “recto” in the dictionary, but feeling confident, from the Ciceronian style displayed in other parts of the Ordo, that it must be good Latin, especially as it has appeared two years in succession, presume that it must be the dictionary which is at fault, and cannot suggest any other meaning for the word.

Whether that is its meaning or not, however, it certainly well might be.

We do not profess to have made a thorough examination of the book. It is full of misprints, as usual, of which the one just mentioned and the familiar “Resurect.” are good examples. Whether the putting of St. Anicetus for St. Anacletus, which was also noticed last year, can be considered as such seems rather doubtful.

There are some trifling omissions which really ought to be supplied. The anniversaries of the consecration of about forty of the bishops of the United States are passed by in silence. For what special reason the remainder are given it is Ordo that they ought to take notice of such an anniversary and find out when it occurs; but, unfortunately, it has just a contrary effect, for every one who sees the anniversary of another diocese noticed expects to be similarly reminded of his own, and only remembers that he has not been when the time has gone by.

The law according to which the feast of St. Leo varies between the 3d and the 7th of July is a matter of curious speculation. From its occurrence for two successive years on the 3d we are inclined to cherish the hope that it has finally settled down upon that day.

Why cannot we have an Ordo that would be creditable to the compiler and the publishers, and in which confidence could be placed? More care is all that is needed.

This notice has been delayed till this month on account of more important matter. It will probably do as much good now as if it had been published at an earlier date.

Sermons by Fathers of the Society of Jesus. Vol. III. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is somewhat rare to meet with sermons that will bear publication. The circumstances attending their delivery, the authoritative character of the priest, the sacredness of the time and place, tend to disarm the critical faculty and dispose the hearers to a favorable impression. Not so, however, when they are given to the world in book-form, to be subjected to the cool criticism of the closet. Sermons that can stand this test are certainly worthy of praise; and this merit, we are happy to say, belongs to the volume before us. The selected sermons are by Fathers Kingdon, Purbrick, Coleridge, Weld, and Anderdon—names already familiar to many of our readers. Their subjects are such inexhaustible themes as the Passion of Our Lord, the Holy Eucharist, Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, etc., treated mainly in their devotional and practical bearings. They thus form a collection of spiritual reading rendered particularly attractive by many excellencies of style and expression. Regarded merely as sermons, they are models in their conformity to the accepted canons of this branch of composition. The subjects are clearly divided, with an easy transition from point to point. The style throughout is graceful and flowing, and there are many passages full of eloquence—a kind of eloquence not merely ornamental but practical in its effects. The secret of it lies in that warmth and earnestness which can proceed only from those who are animated by a fervid zeal for the good of souls.

Father Segneri’s Sentimenti; or, Lights in Prayer. Translated from the Italian by K. G. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Father Segneri is one of the greatest of the distinguished preachers of the seventeenth century. His name is frequently met in the Italian dictionaries, as an authority of the language. His sermons are based upon the classic models of eloquence. Though not as exhaustive as those of the great French masters of sacred oratory, they are more forcible in rhetoric and more luxuriant in style. We have a great desire to see the complete works of Father Segneri rendered into English, and those who have read the volume of his sermons, lately put forth by the Catholic Publication Society, will doubtless welcome anything bearing his name.

The little book before us is made up of pious reflections found among the papers left by Father Segneri, and evidently intended for his own private perusal. They give us a glimpse of the tender religious, seeking obscurity, craving the higher gifts, while the world applauds his brilliant and conspicuous talents. This contrast is always pleasing. The Sentimenti reveal how far this holy man had advanced in virtue, and how well founded is the reverence which has ever been felt for his sanctity.

Brief Biographies: French Political Leaders. By Edward King. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Son’s. 1876.

These are bright and readable sketches of various prominent Frenchmen of the day. Whether all of those whose biographies are given may be fitly designated “political leaders” is for the reader to satisfy himself and the future to determine. Mr. King does not aim at profound reflection. He cuts skin-deep and passes on. The title of the book seems Mgr. Dupanloup, the Bishop of Orléans, very properly holds a place. We scarcely recognize the bishop, however, as painted by Mr. King. One sentence will suffice to show our meaning: “The haughty mind which sneered at the Encyclical Letter [which Encyclical Letter?] and the Syllabus became one of the most ardent defenders of illiberal measures.” By “illiberal measures” Mr. King seems to mean freedom of education in France, of which Mgr. Dupanloup has been a lifelong, and recently a successful, advocate. “The haughty mind which sneered at the Encyclical Letter and the Syllabus” is something new to us, particularly as Mgr. Dupanloup, long previous to the Council of the Vatican, wrote a pamphlet in defence of the Syllabus for which he received the special thanks of the Holy Father. It is to be hoped that all Mr. King’s biographies are not equally as accurate as that of Mgr. Dupanloup.

Five Lectures on the City of Ancient Rome and her Empire over the Nations, the Divinely-sent Pioneer of the way for the Catholic Church. A supplement to the student’s usual course of study in Roman history. By Rev. Henry Formby, London: Burns, Oates & Co.

In these lectures Father Formby essays the proof of what many a well-read student would at first hearing pronounce as a thesis exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of demonstration—viz., that the Roman Empire, the arch-persecutor of the church of God, drunk with the blood of ten millions of martyrs, and nursing-mother of every heathen idolatry, had, in spite of these seeming contradictory characteristics, a divine mission, fulfilled especially by her universal empire and the singular part she played in the formation of the political and social life of the nations of the world.

The learned author signalizes among other marks of the divine providence shown in the history of the mistress of nations, which point her out as a pioneer of the kingdom of Christ, the following remarkable classes of services rendered by her to the accomplishment of that work:

1. “The formation of the nations of the world into a political unity of government, in which there existed a great deal to foreshadow and prepare the minds of men for the future church; while every eye was taught to look up to the city of Rome, not only as the centre of all political action, but as supreme in religion, as well as the fountain of all civil honor and dignity.

2. “The preliminary mission of the Roman Empire to civilize the nations, and to promote among them education and the cultivation of literature and the arts of life, the care of which was to become, in a far higher and more effective manner, part of the mission of the future church.

3. “The mission of the Roman Empire to inculcate and preserve among the nations the knowledge of a certain number of the doctrines and virtues forming part of the original revelation which Noah brought with him out of the ark.

4. “The advantage, for the formation of the Christian society, of the firm establishment of the outward framework of good public order, of municipal liberties, and of the general peace of the world, including the necessary security for life and prosperity.”

These are weighty considerations, and worthy of a much more extended development than the author gives in the lectures before us. His thesis affirmed as probable (and we deem it no less), Roman history would need to be re-written, and by one who should be not only an historian, but a philosopher and a Christian. The perusal of these lectures cannot fail to interest the student, and particularly those who pretend to study the philosophy of history.

Popular Life of Daniel O’Connell. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 294. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Public attention in these days is being

Elmwood; or, The Withered Arm. By Katie L. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 233. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

The title of this story, though sufficiently thrilling, gives but a faint indication of the chamber of horrors that lies concealed between the pleasant-looking covers. The title of the first chapter is “Midnight,” and it begins as follows: “W-H-I-R-R! groaned the old clock. The sound rang throughout the immense corridor, reverberating like the moan of a lost soul.” Three lines lower down, “A wild, unearthly yell” breaks “with fearful distinctness on the midnight silence.” Chapter III. begins: “Silence! Gloom! Remorse! Anguish! Alone! all alone!” and so on. We spare the reader the prolonged agony.

The story might be called a series of paroxysms, and, were it only intended as a caricature of the dime novel, would be one of the most successful that was ever written. Murder glares from every page, and agony reverberates along every line. There is an abundance of “tall, slight figures robed in white,” “ethereal oil-lamps,” “howling tempests,” “deathly faintnesses,” thrilling “ha! ha’s!” “blue chambers,” “north-end chambers,” “awful arms,” “blood-stained hands,” poison, murder, despair, agony, death. There are the usual heroes with the conventional marble brow and clustering curls around it, and the heroines, tall and stately, sylph-like and sweet, blonde or brunette, according to order. Everybody is Maud, or Elaine, or Edwin, or Herbert. One quite misses Enid, Gawain, Launcelot, and Guinevere. Of course there is no special quarrel with nonsense of this kind, beyond the regret that there should be found persons not only to think and write it, but sane persons to publish and propagate it. When, however, we find religion dragged in to give it a kind of moral flavor—dragged in, too, in the most absurd and reprehensible fashion—what might be passed over as a foolish offence against good sense and good taste becomes a matter of graver moment, to be utterly condemned as irreverent and harmful, however unintentional the irreverence and harm may be. It is necessary to be severe about this kind of literature. Uninstructed Catholics who, by whatever misfortune, have access to paper and types, do a world of harm, though they themselves may be actuated by the best motives possible. This book would do no more harm to sensible persons than cause a laugh, possibly a shudder, at its tissue of absurdities. But falling into the hands of non-Catholics, it would by many be taken as the natural outcome of Catholic teaching, and disgust them with everything connected with the Catholic name. The preface to the book speaks of “the moral conveyed in the following

The Scholastic Almanac for 1876. Edited by Professor J. A. Lyons, Notre Dame, Ind. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 1876.

This is modelled on the Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, the first of the kind published in this country, only it is not illustrated. Its literary matter is very good, and in its paper, press-work, etc., it is a creditable publication.

The Spectator (Selected Papers). By Addison and Steele. With introductory essay and biographical sketches by John Habberton. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

This is the first of a series to be made up of selections from the standard British essayists. The present volume contains careful selections from the Spectator. Those who care to see what journalism was in the days when Addison and Steele were journalists will welcome this series, so well begun in the elegant volume before us. It is to be feared that Addison or Steele would stand a poor chance of employment in the present “advanced” stage of journalism. Nevertheless, our editorial writers would do neither themselves nor their readers much harm in trying to discover what is the special charm that lingers about the pages of these dead-and-gone magazines. When they have made the discovery, they will be in a fair way to make it worth the while of an enterprising publisher, say a century hence, to wade through the pages of their journals for the purpose of unearthing the author of such and such articles, with a view to giving them again to the world.

THE