Chapter XII (5)

Between the monogenists and the polygenists, the question reduces itself very nearly to this: Can beings differing so much as the Europeans and the Bushmen, the Hottentot and the Australian, descend from the same ancestors? No, reply the polygenists; for the differences are greater than those which characterize certain species. In order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to what is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The whole of the external circumstances under which the representatives of a species exist, constitute what is called the middle or medium, to which monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute the power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. The crossing of many types thus modified will give birth to new forms, all, however, belonging to one common kind.

Where do we find the difference between this middle theory and the law of M. Tremaux? In nothing but a greater or less importance attributed to the influence of soil; and even this difference is more apparent than real. The _fundamental law_ so understood--and it appears to us hard to understand it otherwise--constitutes no novel idea or theory; it is nothing more than a variation of the classic theory of the influence of media.

How is this law proved? It is impossible for us to follow the author in the development of his arguments. He gives proof in them of rare learning, and of profound and varied knowledge of ethnography. We observe the marked predilection of M. Tremaux for the soil of Africa, which he has ably described in special works. But when we have finished reading him, and would give an account of his arguments and of their value, we do {848} not find in them all the elements of conviction. We know that many writers have expressed an opinion very different from ours, but even should we be deemed too exacting, we must acknowledge that an attentive perusal has not convinced us. There are no doubt remarkable coincidences in the work; but they are not of a sufficiently trenchant character, and, moreover, most of the facts may be explained otherwise than by the influence of soil. Let us give some examples. "We cannot meet with a single instance of a civilization which has developed itself, nor even been maintained in cases of emigration, under adverse geological conditions." Nothing is more natural, in fact. Why should emigrants on the way of civilization settle preferentially in unfertile countries? For it must not be forgotten that what are here called geological conditions refer simply to the fertility of the soil.

Another argument extensively developed is drawn from the persistence of the same types in the same countries. After having examined Africa and Europe from this point of view, the author concludes thus: "In short, what have the migrations from the East peopling the West produced? They have created Hellenes in Greece, Romans in Rome, Gauls in France, and children of Albion in England." Must we conclude, from this persistence, that the conquering races have in each generation felt the influence of the soil, so as to resemble after some centuries the former populations? Such is the reasoning of M. Tremaux. But the same fact is appealed to by polygenists, who interpret it in a different manner. According to them, this persistence proves that the conquering race has always been absorbed by the indigenous; and they do not fail to conclude from it that between these two races illimitable fecundity, the specific character of unity, is hardly ever realized.

We read at the same page: "If we pass over other continents, the same results strike us on all sides. On certain points of Australia and America, the English type is attached from the very first generation." This fact is stated by some naturalists, but it is denied by others. We can say as much of the pretended transformation of negroes. Messrs. Reiset, Lyell, and E. Reclus tell us that they are transformed in about one hundred and fifty years to approach the white type by one quarter of the distance which separated them from it. But American anthropologists, who are nearly all polygenists, resolutely affirm the contrary.

Thus we see the facts are difficult to ascertain, and still more difficult to interpret. It is one of the grand difficulties of anthropology. We rarely succeed in agreeing about the facts themselves, which only happens in some exceptional cases supported by perfectly exact statistics; and many facts are not of a nature to be consigned to the columns of an official register. Even in a case where the facts are placed beyond doubt, they are generally of a nature to be variously interpreted, and every one with preconceived ideas tortures them at his pleasure, and does not fail to find in them a confirmation of his theories. M. Tremaux is so filled with his idea that he finds proofs in support of it even in politics; and reciprocally, does not hesitate, in the name of geology, to counsel princes on the manner of governing their subjects. For example, we remember the war carried on in 1848 by Hungary against Austria. At that time Transylvania withdrew from the common cause and rallied to the Austrian government. The emperor Francis Joseph rejoiced at this result, hoping to easily propitiate the Croats; but he experienced from them an unexpected resistance, and their assembly of notables declared that Croatia should continue to share the fate of Hungary. Upon this M. Tremaux says: "This would appear paradoxical if we considered only geographical positions, but consult {849} geology and all this will appear perfectly rational, since Transylvania reposes like Austria upon a great surface of old ground; whilst Hungary, Croatia, and Dalmatia stand upon more recent layers." We leave our readers to appreciate this.

The author adds: "As to Venetia, not only is its soil of recent formation, but it possesses a distinct and very different nationality; thus each one recognizes its unalterable tendencies."

What caused the sanguinary war which has just desolated America? Why, because the Southerns, dwelling on virgin soil, fought for their independence and would not be governed by men from old lands. And reflecting that the new lands of the South are more fitted to improve the races which cultivate them, M. Tremaux fears not to predict, notwithstanding the unforeseen victory of the North, that "in the future the South will govern the North, if it be not separated from it."

As to Ireland and Poland, it is again in the name of geology that our author defends their independence. Not hoping to obtain this result, he at least gives the princes who govern them wise counsels for their guidance.

Let us come to the scientific conclusions which the author pretends to draw from his principle in favor of natural history in general and of anthropology in particular. Since the soil acts so energetically in the modification of types, it is evident that the species ought to be essentially variable. Let a race be found isolated on a favorable ground, without any communication with the rest of mankind, and the modifications will be produced, transmitted, and increased in every generation; and, after a longer or shorter time, the new type will be so different from the old one, that illimitable fecundity will no longer exist between them; there will only be one species the more. Transformations in reality are not made as rapidly as might be believed, because the isolation which we have supposed never exists. It thence follows that the crossings with the primitive race, or even with a race on the road to degeneracy on an imperfect soil, constantly check the effect of the superior soil. At length there is an equilibrium between these two causes, and then there appears a medium type, which preserves its identity so long as the circumstances remain the same. This necessarily happens in a period of several thousand years, like our historic period. But if we take in at a glance several thousand ages, we shall understand that the geological changes effected by time on the surface of the world will cause the action of the soil to prevail over the influence of crossings, in such a manner as to modify slowly but progressively the types and the species.

Starting from these principles, what does M. Tremaux require in order to explain the actual state of creation? A simple _primordial cell_ or _utricle_, the most simply organized being, whether animal or vegetable matters little. If this being so simple existed at the epoch which geologists term the _Silurian period_, it is many millions of ages past. Since then the surface of the globe has been constantly modified and ameliorated, life has been constantly developed, and form been brought nearer to perfection. It is thus that even in the most elementary beings nature has arrived at the numerous and complicated forms which we know. In this manner man at his appointed hour appeared on earth, where he strove to improve himself and is striving in that direction still. M. Tremaux does not exactly admit that we are descended from apes. No; but he contends that both man and ape sprang from one common source, which has now disappeared; and that whilst the quadruman, placed under unfavorable geological conditions, has suffered from its inevitable influence and been degraded, man has on the contrary, under happier influences, developed himself, and is become able, by {850} his intelligent activity, to combat those external influences. Hence his actual superiority--hence his future progress.

A serious objection here presents itself. Does the influence of the soil perfect the _instinct_ of animals as well as their bodies? Has _it_ given man that intelligence which, better than all zoological characters, especially distinguishes him from the brute creation? M. Tremaux meets this difficulty with a reply which might have been taken from Nysten's dictionary. In his comparison "of man with the ape," he tells us "that M. Gratiolet divides the subject into two sections, the one referring to organization, the other to faculties. He concedes the resemblances of the first, he refuses to acknowledge those of the second, without observing that _these differences in faculties_ are only the consequence of a greater or less degree of organic development." This philosophical heresy does not slip by chance from the writer's pen; we find it repeated in several places, nearly in the same terms. Moreover, in refuting another passage from Gratiolet, he says: "I am astonished that Gratiolet does not recognize in instinct a rudiment of intelligence; in the constructions of the beaver, in the nests of birds, in the cells of bees, elements of sculpture and of design, etc."

M. Tremaux divides the opinions of Gratiolet into two; the first part is serious, and is that of the learned anatomist; the second is that of sentiment, wherein he speaks by the same title as the philosophers _who develop the void of their entities_. This contempt for philosophy well explains the strange ideas of our author about the intelligence of man and the souls of brutes. To see nothing between both but a difference of organization is not philosophical. A little metaphysics would spoil nothing, and it really does not require a strong dose to behold the abyss which separates human intelligence, capable of seizing the abstract and the absolute as well as the concrete and the continent, from that of brutes, acting by instinct, able only at the most to combine some sensations, without ever having any general ideas.

We think we have now given a pretty exact epitome of M. Tremaux' ideas. The whole work rests upon an ill defined principle, which, in the sense in which we have understood it, the only one which appears to us to be feasible, cannot be considered new. This principle, although true in a certain sense and within certain limits, is not to be proved irrefragable, as the basis of any theory should be. The consequences which are sought to be drawn from the premises are not necessarily contained in them, and many bear not the seal of a wholesome philosophy. We shall perhaps be thought a little too severe upon this work. We think we should be so, especially as the author is in many respects recommendable. _Apropos_ of the question of species, M. Tremaux writes: "M. Kourens has his merits, but they lie elsewhere; it is in his researches on the periosteum and on the vital cord that he acquires them." We may be allowed to use the same expressions and to say: "M. Tremaux deserves well, but not herein; his actual labors on ethnography and archaeology are very good. Read the account of his travels to Soudan and into Asia Minor, and you will acknowledge him a man of talent and undoubted science. But as to his theoretical ideas on the question of the species, he must not reckon upon them to support his reputation." Some journals may waste their incense upon him; the _Constitutional_ may exclaim: "The veil has been lifted... a new law is about to unite all disputants. . the arguments of M. Tremaux abound, and we feel only an embarrassment in choosing."_ L'Independance Beige_ will join the chorus. Even the _Moniteur_ will grant its approval. But all this is no set-off against the opinions of the learned, and M. Tremaux knows very well that our great naturalists do not {851} look upon his ideas as acceptable, or his arguments as conclusive.

It will be observed that we have not spoken of the Bible, although its narrative appears compromised by the transformation theory. We believe it to be useless to mix up theology with scientific debates, at least, when it is not directly attacked. Now, M. Tremaux is far from attacking revelation; he does not believe his ideas reconcileable with Genesis; he never speaks of the Bible narrative but with the greatest respect. Hence we believe it advisable to show great tolerance toward sciences which are still in their infancy, which require their elbows free for development, and which must wander a little in unknown countries, free to make a false step from time to time. It is thus they will progress and arrive at the truth.

We will add one last remark on the address of the anthropologists. The origin of man concerns historians as much as naturalists; for this reason we should not, in works of this character, neglect historic monuments. Of all those monuments, books are the surest. Even in abstracting the special value which the Bible possesses as an inspired volume, it is not the less true that it is a document which must be considered, and which as a written document has an incontestably safer meaning than all the fossils in the world.

For a higher reason we should beware of all theories or hypotheses which do not agree with the sacred text. The Bible no doubt is not intended to instruct us in the secrets of the natural order, and it is perhaps for that that we find in it so little relating to these subjects; but the Holy Ghost, who inspired the sacred writers, could not have dictated to them errors, and every assertion which would be contrary to the _clear_ and _certain_ sense of a passage in it should, for this reason, be rejected as untrue. When the sense is obscure or doubtful, which is nearly always the case in passages relating to physics, we should, we think, be very cautious, and it is prudent for the learned to be on their guard, for fear of falling into very numerous and grave errors.

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From The Victoria Magazine.

WISDOM BY EXPERIENCE.

What a shame! What abominable interference! What cruelty! What tyranny! These and many other strong expressions of the same kind proceeded from a collection of rose-stocks planted ready for budding. They were all fiercely angry and indignant, and first one and then another uttered some exclamation of disgust, and then all joined in a chorus of maledictions on the gardener who had done them so much injury. It was in the month of June that their feelings were so much excited, just when the sap was most active, and they were throwing out their most luxuriant shoots. I don't know how they went on when the gardener first dug them up out of the hedges, and cut away all their side branches and left only a single straight stem. If they did not make a fight for it then, it must have been because their sap was all dried up, and their leaves had fallen off, and they were in low spirits, and did not much care what became of them. But even then I don't think they yielded without a struggle, and I have no doubt there was a good deal of scratching and dragging back, {852} and a great show of independence and sullenness. But they had not the spirits to keep up resistance, and the gardener did not give them much chance, for he pruned them close, and planted them in rows just far enough apart to prevent the possibility of their having much intercourse, or of the evil disposed corrupting the more docile. But it was different in June, when, as I said, the sap was active, and their branches began to grow out on all sides, so that they could reach each other and even take a sly pinch at the gardener or any of his friends who happened to come near. And the particular irritation now was because the gardener had discovered how wild they were becoming, and set resolutely about restraining them. First of all he cut off all the suckers that grew from the roots, and the lower shoots, leaving only those that grew at the crown of the stock, and then he put them all straight up, and would not let them loll about or hang over the path--a habit they had got into which was very disagreeable to those who passed by. And if they would not stand upright without, he fastened them to pieces of board let into the ground. This was a great grievance, but I think they most rebelled at having their lower boughs cut off, for if left to themselves they would have spread and puffed themselves out in a most ridiculous way.

Now it so happened that Madame Boll, a stock of a former year which had been budded, but left in its place and not removed with the rest into the flower-garden, heard their exclamations of anger and impatience, and having perhaps gone through some such phase of feeling herself, and thus gained wisdom by experience, she thought she would try if she could put their case to them in a better light; so she took advantage of a little lull in the storm, and said in a gentle, ladylike tone,

"My young friends, I am very sorry to see you so unhappy; but perhaps if you will hear what I have got to say, you might think better of your present position."

"Well," said Miss Strong, who was tossing her long arms about in a very excited way, only luckily she was out of reach, "if you are going to take the gardener's part, and preach patience and submission, and that sort of thing, I can tell you you had better keep your remarks to yourself, or if I can get at you, I'll spoil that neat head-dress of yours, which, let me tell you, is not half as pretty as hundreds in the hedgerows, or as ours would have been, if we had been left to our own devices as we were last year;" which tirade she ended with a scornful laugh in which many of the others joined.

But little Miss Wild-Rose, who was nearer, said quietly,

"Perhaps it would be as well to hear what is said on the other side; particularly as, it is too hot to go on screaming and abusing people who don't seem to care about it;" and as several of the others were of the same opinion, Madame Boll took courage, and said what was in her mind.

"Perhaps it may give you more confidence in me to know, that when I was first placed here I had many of the same thoughts and feelings that you appear to have. I did not know why I was taken out of the hedgerow, and trimmed and restrained, and not allowed to have my own way; and I confess I thought it very hard. Particularly I was indignant, as no doubt you will be when the time comes (for you have still a good deal to undergo which you know nothing about at present),--I was, I say, very indignant when the gardener cut a slit in the only shoot which he had left me, and which was growing very luxuriant, and I was quite proud of it; and introduced a meagre little bud from another tree, and made me nourish and strengthen it, though I knew that my own shoot would suffer by it; and so it turned out; for after a while, when the bud began to grow, he cut away {853} my natural shoot altogether, and left only that which had been inserted."

Here Miss Strong broke in.

"You were very tame to submit to it. I would have banged and twisted about till I had got rid of it some way or other."

"Ah!" said Madame Boll, "we shall see; you are stronger and more resolute than I was. All I know is, I could not help myself."

"Cowardly creature!" muttered Miss Strong, scornfully. But Madame Boll resumed:

"I soon got used to the change, and gradually began to take an interest in the bud I had adopted; and though of course Miss Strong may affect to despise its beauty, I can assure you that most people have a different opinion."

Whereupon, Madame Boll gave herself airs, and coquettishly moved aside a leaf or two, and displayed a most perfect and symmetrical rose.

"But," said Miss Wild-Rose and her party all in a breath, "do you mean that we shall all bear roses like that?"

"Not all, certainly, possibly none of you exactly like, for there are hundreds of varieties, and many of them much more beautiful. It will be just as the gardener fancies, though he is generally guided in his selection by the habit and vigor of the stock, I daresay he will give Miss Strong, who is so energetic, a bud of Gloire de Dijon, or Anna de Diesbach, and you, being weaker, will have Devoniensis, or Niphetos."

Miss Strong gave a scornful toss at this, but did not vouchsafe any remark, though I think she felt rather complimented, and the others began to muse, since it must be so, what rose they would be likely to have, and which would become them best.

A little time after this it turned out just as Madame Boll had said--the gardener came one morning and began to bud the stocks, and just as he was preparing Miss Wild-Rose for the operation, a young lady came by, and asked what bud he intended for that one, for, she said, "I want a Devoniensis, and I think it would just suit it."

"I have got a Devoniensis bud here," he said, "and will put it in."

"And that tall one I think I should like for Gloire de Dijon."

"I will try," he said, "but somehow I am half afraid I shall have some trouble with it, for though vigorous it is rather awkward, and the thorns are very spiteful. To say the truth, I am half afraid of it, and have been leaving it till the last."

"But what," said the lady, "is this in the corner? Surely it is Madame Boll; and such a beauty! What is it doing here?"

"To say the truth, ma'am, I overlooked it when I planted the others out, and now it must remain where it is for another year."

"Well," she said, "I hope the others will take pattern from it and do as well."

"So," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, "that accounts for my being left here: I must confess I was a little mortified, for I thought it was a slight; but I generally find, if we wait awhile, everything comes right in the end, and possibly my being here has done you some good, or given you comfort; and if so, instead of regret, I ought to feel pleasure. But now, my young friends, I will tell you a conversation I overheard one day, between the young lady who was here just now and another, which your foolish behavior a short time ago brought to my mind. They were talking about the children in the school, and how difficult it was to make them feel the advantage of being submissive and conforming to their rules. They said they were so anxious to have their own way, and seemed to think it was a pleasure to their teachers to thwart them, or make them do what they did not wish, and not that it was intended for their good; and if their teachers thought they paid too much attention to their dress, {854} and wished to be smart, and wear flowers and feathers, when they ought rather to be adorning their minds, and beautifying their tempers, and enriching their understanding, they were ready to cry out, as you did just now, 'What tyranny!' 'How interfering!' 'Why can't they let us dress as we like?' But what they were particularly complaining about on that occasion, was that the children would persist in wearing hoops which stuck out their clothes, and made them take up twice as much room as they otherwise would have done. For, it seems, the benches where they sat were only large enough for them if they sat close together, which they could not do with hoops on, so they were obliged to tell them they could not take them into the school if they did not lay aside their hoops, and some of them were foolish enough to say that they would not come to school if they were not allowed to wear hoops. Now, it struck me, this was just like your folly in wishing to keep your wild-growing suckers and lower branches, when you know very well that they would take away all the nourishment which is needed to bring the beautiful rose-buds to perfection; the bud, in your place, answering to the knowledge and other excellences which it is the object of education to impart to their ignorant and lawless natures, and which, in after years, when they are able to appreciate them, they prize highly, and can hardly understand what it was that made them so averse to go through the process necessary for their acquirement."

A year or two afterward I saw the young lady and the gardener looking at a bed of beautiful roses on the lawn, and heard the young lady ask what had become of the Devoniensis she had asked him to bud.

"Don't you see it, ma'am," he said, "growing against the wall? I think it is almost the gem of the whole garden."

"Oh, what a beauty!" she exclaimed; "and how well it has grown!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said; "it has always done well; it seemed to take to it kindly from the very first, and has never gone back at all. But I had a good deal of trouble with this one; perhaps you may remember my saying I thought it likely I should. It is that strong growing one you remarked at the same time when you told me to bud the Devoniensis. It won't make much show this year. It wasted so much energy in putting out side-shoots and suckers. But I think it has got out of its bad ways, and next year I hope it will make quite a grand tree."

"Oh!" she said, "and here is my old friend Madame Boll, I see. I am glad you put it here, it is well worth a good place."

"You hear," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, to her neighbor Gloire de Dijon, "what they say of us, and I hope you have become reconciled to the change, and will let the good that is in you show itself."

Whereupon there seemed to come rather a lachrymose murmur from the dwarfed shoot of Gloire de Dijon. "But am I not to flower at all this year?"

"Well, my dear," said Madame Boll, tenderly, "I do not wish to be severe or say anything to hurt your feelings, but you must know that your present disappointment is the natural result of your past conduct. You were so determined to indulge in perverse and self-willed suckers, and you never let the gardener touch you without trying to prick his fingers or tear his clothes. And now all you want is a little patience. Who knows but you may be allowed to bloom in the autumn, and perhaps win the prize at the last flower show? But if not, why it will be all right next year. Do you think it was no mortification to me to be neglected and almost unnoticed last year, and that, as it appears, entirely owing to the carelessness of others, and not from any fault of mine? Well, you see, I have got over it; and very likely next year {855} you will have the gratification of hearing the lady praise you as she did me just now. Be thankful that experience with you has not come too late."

When Madame Boll ended, I could see on the edge of one of her delicate leaves a drop of dew, and I said to myself, "How very like a tear!"

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From The Month.

LABORERS GONE TO THEIR REWARD.

In the days in which we live, more perhaps than at any other time, education, the school, and the college are made the positions of vital importance in the battle-field of contending principles. Services rendered and losses sustained on such points are, therefore, worthy of special notice, of particular gratitude, or of sorrow. In the month of May of this year two souls went to their rest, both of whom had labored long, signally, and successfully in the cause of Catholic education--especially for the higher classes; both of whom have left behind them institutions in which their spirit is enshrined: destined, we trust, to continue through centuries yet to come the work, the beginnings of which were committed to those whose loss we are now lamenting. On the 14th of May Monsignor de Ram, the restorer of Catholic university education in the countries over which the French revolution had swept, died peacefully, but almost without warning; and a few days later, his decease was followed by that of the reverend mother Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress and first superioress-general of the congregation of the nuns of the Sacred Heart. Let us devote a few lines to each.

Monsignor de Ram was born at Louvain, of parents distinguished for piety and noble descent, September 2, 1804. He early devoted himself to the service of the Church; was ordained priest, March 19,1827; and became at once professor in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native diocese, Mechlin. He had no sooner grown up than he was struck by observing that his native language, the Flemish, which of all European tongues most nearly resembles our own, was almost wholly without books of a good tendency. The reason was evident. The population by which it is spoken is comparatively small, and is hemmed in by others which speak French, Dutch, or German. Hence it has almost sunk into a _patois_. Men who speak Flemish to their servants and laborers read and write in French. The first labors of Mons. de Ram were devoted to meet this want, by publishing several very useful books in Flemish. He was only thirty when the bishops of Belgium resolved to erect a Catholic university. The attempt could never before have been made; for in Belgium, almost more than anywhere else, education had for two hundred years been seized by the state, and used to an irreligious purpose. The revolution of 1830, though not made by the Church nor in its interests, had given it a freedom which it never possessed before. The first use made of this freedom by the bishops of Belgium was to erect a Catholic university, and the young and zealous priest de Ram was set over it by their deliberate choice. To its service he devoted the rest of his life. Beneath his care were trained during thirty years a continual succession of young men, who are at this day the strength of the Church in Belgium, and to a considerable degree in France. {856} England also has sent students there. Those who have had the happiness of attending the meetings of the Catholic congress in Belgium must, we think, have been struck by the high Catholic tone of a number of young men of the middle and higher classes, and by their intelligence. For those men Belgium and the Church are indebted to the Catholic university of Louvain, and of that university Monsignor de Ram has, until his death, been the soul. On Friday, May 12, he returned from attending a meeting of the academy of Brussels. On the evening of Sunday, 14th, he had entered into the unseen world. His age was only sixty; and as he was willing, so it might have been expected that he would be able, to continue for years to come the labors in which his life had been spent. Such was not the will of his Lord, whose call he was at once ready to obey.

At Paris, on the morning of Monday, May 22, only seven whole days later, the superioress of the Society of the Sacred Heart had attended the mass of the community. She had completed in the preceding December her eighty-fifth year. Her day of labor was at last over. She was seized with apoplexy, and never recovered the power of speech. She gave, however, clear signs of intelligence, and received the viaticum, as well as the last unction. On the 24th the blessing of the Holy Father reached her by a telegraphic message. On the 25th she slept the sleep of the just.

She was born in December, 1779. She had an elder brother, who before 1800 was a priest, and had joined himself to a society which was formed at Vienna in the latter part of the French revolution, under the title of the "Fathers of the Sacred Heart." The first superior of this society, Father Tournely, had been a pupil of the illustrious Father Emery at St. Sulpice. His object seems to have been to continue under another name the spirit and practices of the Society of Jesus, which had been swept away twenty years before by the insane union of the monarchs of Europe with the revolutionary infidels, until times should allow of its re-establishment. This, however, he did not live to see. His successor, Father Varin, joined it at its restoration. He relates that the great desire of Father Tournely was the foundation of a congregation of nuns devoted, under the protection of the Sacred Heart, to the education of young persons of their own sex. At one time he had hoped to see this project carried into execution by the Princess Louisa of Bourbon-Conde, who actually came from Switzerland, where she was in exile, to Vienna, to confer with him on the subject. But God called her to the contemplative life, and she became a Benedictine. Father Tournely, however, never doubted its execution. Walking one day on the fortifications now destroyed, but then surrounding Vienna, he said to Father Varin, alluding to this disappointment, "Dear friend, I thought this had been the work of God, and if it is not, I confess I do not know how to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood." Then, after remaining silent awhile in recollection, he turned to his friend, with something of fire more than natural in his expression, and added: "It is the will of God. As to the occasion and the instrument, I may have been deceived; but, sooner or later, this society will be founded." His friend used to say that the impression left by these words, and the manner in which they were spoken, never faded from his mind. They impressed him with the same conviction; and he added, that when he repeated them to his brethren, it took possession of all their minds.

"In truth," said Fr. Varin, "God had not chosen for the commencement of this work instruments great in this world. That the glory might be his alone, he was pleased that the foundation of the building should be simplicity, littleness, nothingness."

Fr. Tournely died soon afterward, {857} in the flower of his age. Fr. Varin succeeded him, and the conclusion of the revolution enabled him and his brethren to return to Paris. To Paris they went in the year 1800. It was exactly the moment when to human eyes the night seemed darkest, but when the morning was ready to spring. Pius VI. died a prisoner in the hands of the infidel French revolutionists, August 29, 1799. "At this moment," says Macaulay, "it is not strange that even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel power in the ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting-houses for political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels; such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction had commenced, which after the lapse of [sixty-five] years appears to be still in progress." As yet, however, no human foresight would have observed the tokens of that reaction. Paris was no longer the city where the eldest son of the Church was enthroned, and where the great of this world were rejoiced to heap their wealth upon any new plan which promised to promote the glory of God. Still, Napoleon Bonaparte had just seized the reins as first consul, and there was at least toleration to priests. The community lived in a single mean room, which served them as dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and study. Here Fr. Varin was sitting upon the edge of a very shabby bed, and by his side sat one of his community, Fr. Barat. "I asked him what relations he had. He said, one _little sister_. The words made a strong impression upon me. I asked how old she was, and what were her powers. He said she was eighteen or nineteen; that she had learned Latin and Greek, and translated Virgil and Homer with ease; that she had qualities to make a good teacher; but that for the present she had gone to pass some time in her family." Father Barat, good man as he was, was not above human infirmity, and like other elder brothers, however proud he might be of his younger sister, could never fancy that she was really grown up; for when he said she was about eighteen or nineteen, she was one-and-twenty. Two months later she came to Paris. "I went to see her, and found a young person of very delicate appearance, extremely retiring, and very timid. What a foundation-stone! said I to myself, in reply to the feeling I had had within me when her brother had mentioned her to me for the first time. And yet it was upon her that it was the will of God to raise the building of the Society of His Divine Heart. This was the grain of mustard-seed which was to produce the tree whose branches have already spread so wide."

On November 21, 1800, she dedicated herself to the Sacred Heart, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, together with an intimate friend, Mlle. Octavia Bailly, who shared her aspirations. It was the first streak on the sky which told of the coming day. The day the society was formed, in 1802, she became superioress of the first house, which was at Amiens. In 1806, a second was founded at Grenoble; that year the first general congregation elected her superioress-general. In 1826 there were seventeen houses, and the rules were approved by Leo XII. Before her death she had under her rule ninety-seven houses and 3,500 nuns. She had been superioress of the congregation for sixty-three years; and it is probable that the majority of the French ladies now living who have received a religious {858} education at all have received it at the hands of herself or of her children in religion.

Her body was taken to Conflans, where is the novitiate in the neighborhood of Paris. During three days her cell was visited by all whom the rules of the community permitted to enter--the nuns of the different houses in Paris, pupils present and former of all ages. Not only these, but many priests were so desirous to have medals, chaplets, etc., touched by her remains, that two sisters, who were continually employed, were hardly able to satisfy the general desire.

At the beginning of this short notice we spoke of sorrow and a sense of loss as feelings natural in those interested in the great works undertaken by such laborers as Mons. de Ram and Madame Barat on the occasion of their removal from the scene of action. We need hardly do more than allude to the other feelings which must at the same time blend with and qualify these; to the joy and exultation that must always hail the close of a noble career long persevered in, from the thought of the rest and the crown that have been so faithfully won; and to the confidence that the works which those who have been removed from us have been allowed, while in the flesh, so happily to found, promote, and guide, will certainly not suffer by the Providence that has now, as we trust, placed them where they are enabled to see, without any intervening shadow, the value of the great end for which these works were undertaken, and where their power to help them on is to be measured, not by the feeble and inconstant energies of a will still subject to failure and perversion, but by the mighty intensity of the intercession of those who are at rest with God.

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MISCELLANY.

_Mont Cenis Railway_.--Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis tunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along the present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its portion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism, to produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary rails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which will wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed cable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be put in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the base of the incline.

_Homes without Hands_.--A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above title, gives an account of the habitations, "which are never marred by incompetence or improved by practice," constructed by various animals, classed according to their principles of construction, and illustrated by some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the work. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia, and then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole appears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. "This extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit at the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean dwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other arrangements of wonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding grounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of a modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean network of metropolitan sewers." . . . "How it manages to form its burrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem, because it is always in {859} black darkness, and we know of nothing which can act as a guide to the animal." The real abode of the mole is most extraordinary. "The central apartment is a nearly spherical chamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around the hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the apex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular passages, or galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some height above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five short descending passages connect the galleries with each other, but the only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of which three passages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore, when the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first to get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery, and so descend into the keep." The mole appears unequalled in ferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or even the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter, the cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only having to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a passage through solid earth.

Of the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious excavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and grass. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the soft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set forth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such to human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the act of laying eggs.

_The Wealth of Mexico_.--M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French government to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has already published several reports in the _Moniteur_, has completed his task. These reports, according to a paragraph in the _Moniteur Belge_, are shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact situation, extent, and richness of the principal mineral veins of that country. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old workings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that they will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the early days of the Spanish occupation.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DIE HEILIGE ELIZABETH. Ein Buch fuer Christen, von Alben Stolz. Freiburg im Breisgau. 1865. 8vo, pp. 315.

The Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. A book for Christians, by Alben Stolz.

The author of this new life of Saint Elizabeth is one of the popular Catholic writers of Germany, if not the foremost. He is the Abraham of Sancta Clara of this century.

The principal events of the saint's life are narrated in simple and familiar language. The point treated of in each chapter is concluded with a practical instruction. These are far from being dry. We would suggest the translation of this book into English, were it not that it is, like all this author writes, thoroughly German, and exclusively adapted to the circumstances and difficulties of the Catholics of Germany. What our Catholic English reading public needs, is that some of our writers should take a lesson from this agreeable as well as edifying writer, and do for them what he is doing with so much zeal for the good of his countrymen.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 32mo, pp. 64. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

This is an American edition of the lecture of the late Cardinal Wiseman on William Shakespeare, which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for July. It contains, in addition to the lecture, an appendix, in which the eminent author makes suggestions for, and observations on, "a tercentenary memorial of Shakespeare." {860} The cardinal suggested a splendid edition of the great poet's works, illustrated, and printed in the best and most elaborate style possible. His eminence went into the most minute details in regard to the manner in which such an edition should be illustrated, printed, bound, etc. The binding and paper of this little volume are excellent; but the type from which it is printed is too small. We are sorry Mr. Donahoe did not get it out in larger type. Were it not for this slight defect, the book would be faultless.

NATIONAL LYRICS. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated. 32mo, pp. 104. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This is another of the cheap volumes of poetry issued by Ticknor & Fields. It contains several of Mr. Whittier's earlier pieces, as well as many of his late poems. Among the latter are "Barbara Frietchie," and "The Poor Voter on Election Day."

SYBIL: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By John Savage. 12mo, pp. 105. New York: J. B. Kirker.

This tragedy was written by Mr. Savage--well known in the literary world as the author of several excellent poems, and now editor of the New Orleans _Times_--some years ago, and met with a good reception in the cities in which it was played. It contains many good passages of high poetical merit, and is, we should think, well adapted for the stage. The scene is laid in Kentucky, in the beginning of the present century, and describes society as it is supposed to have existed at that time.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. l'Abbe J. E. Darras. With an Introduction and Notes. By the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: P. O'Shea.

We have received numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this excellent history. Number 12 brings the work down to the pontificate of Sixtus III., 432.

THE MARTYR'S MONUMENT. Being the patriotism and political wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, as exhibited in his speeches, messages, orders, and proclamations from the presidential canvass of 1860 until his assassination, April 14, 1865. 12mo, pp. 297. New York: The American News Company.

The title of this handsome volume sufficiently explains its purpose. The origin of the work is set forth in the following extract from the preface:

"A few days after the assassination of President Lincoln, the publishers of the present volume received the following letter from the distinguished gentleman whose name it bears:

"_Gentlemen_: Collect and publish, in the speediest possible manner,
the inaugural and other addresses of Abraham Lincoln, his
proclamations, messages, and public letters, indeed, all he has
written as President, and you will contribute to the mournful
celebrations of the American people your share of lasting value, and
of far more impressive eloquence than the most fervent orator could
utter. You would thus make the martyr rear his own monument, which
no years, no centuries, could level and cause to mingle again with
the dust.
"Your obedient,
"FRANCIS LIEBER.
"NEW YORK, April 18, 1865."

This book is got out in elegant style, and will be valuable hereafter on account of the many documents it contains which relate to the late civil war.

_Received_: PASTORAL LETTER OF THE RT. REV. M. DOMENEC, D.D., BISHOP OF PITTSBURG TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE, PROMULGATING THE JUBILEE: together with the late Encyclical of the Holy Father. Published at the office of the Pittsburg _Catholic_.

THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH, FROM THE DIARY OF A STAFF OFFICER. By Brevet-major George Ward Nichols, aid-de-camp to General Sherman. New York: Harper & Brothers.