Chapter X (4)

We come now to _The Changeling_; and here again we trace not so much a resemblance as an all but literal reproduction of an Irish legend, known to all readers of _The Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland_ under the title, _The Brewery of Egg-shells_. It must be confessed, however, that the non-Catholic medium through which the Irish version reaches us, has deprived it of the religious turn it may possibly have had in the original. Our Lady does not appear in it, as here in the Breton ballad.

The Changeling.

Grieved to the heart is la belle Marie.
Where may her Laoik, her little one, be?
Carried away by the Korrigan he.

"Forth to the fount as I went on a day,
Safe in his cradle my little one lay;
Home when I came he had vanished away.

"This wretched monster I found in his place.
Rough, like a toad, with a horrible face,
Dumb, greedy, fierce, like the rest of his race.

"Mary most pure, on your snow-gleaming throne,
In your maternal arms holding your Son,
You are in joy, while in sorrow I moan.

"Your Holy Child evermore you are keeping,
Mine I have lost, whom I thought safely sleeping;
Mother of Pity, ah! pity my weeping!"

"Daughter, my daughter, oh! sorrow no more.
Lost is he not whom you thus would deplore,
Laoik, your darling, short time shall restore.

"Who in an egg-shell shall feign to prepare
All that ten laborers need for their fare,
Forces the dwarf into speech, then and there.

"When he has spoken, then whip--whip again!
Whip, till he cry out with anger and pain!
He will be heard: and be borne off amain."

"Prithee, my mother, what do you?" he cries,
"What make you, mother?" he asks in surprise.
Dwarfling can scarcely believe his own eyes.

"What am I doing, my son, would you ken?
Dinner I make, in this egg-shell, for ten,
Ten of the farm-servants, laboring men."

"Ten! in an eggshell! The egg I have seen
Fresh, of the oldest white hen that has been:
Acorn, whose oak is far-spreading and green.

"Oaks have I seen, widening out from their core,
Old oaks of Brézal wood, rugged and hoar;
Nothing like this have I e'er seen before."

"Too many things hast thou seen," she replies:
Flip, flap! flip, flap!--thus upon him she flies.
"Little old man, now I have thee!" she cries.

{404}

"Whip not, nor strike, but restore him to me;
Harm hath been none to thy boy, belle Marie;
King over all in our country is he!"

When to her home returned Marie that day,
Safe in his cradle her own baby lay,
Sweetly asleep, as if wearied with play.

While she stands gazing, entranced at the sight,
Bending to kiss the fair cheeks with delight,
Laoik, her lost one, his eyes opens bright.

Half rising up, and with wondering eyes,
Soft arms outstretched in a dreamy surprise,
"Mother! how long I've been sleeping!" he cries.

We will conclude our present instalment from these interesting relics of Celtic antiquity by a spirit-stirring fragment; for the reader will perceive that it is incomplete. This is _Arthur's March_, (_Bale Arzur,_) written, like the last, in the _Ies Kerne_, or dialect of Cornouaille--_Cornu Galliae_--a district of Brittany. There is a complete change of metre between the parts marked I. and II.; the former being so arranged, that the poetical foot composing the lines is of three short syllables following a long one, and produces a spirited and martial effect, somewhat like the beat of a modern drum.

M. de Villemarqué, from whose _Barzaz Briez_, or _Breton Ballads_, we have drawn so largely in these pages, speaks thus of the ballad before us:

"The popularity which the name of Arthur enjoys in Brittany is
one of the most curious phenomena in the history of Breton
fidelity. Neither defeat nor exile could make the Bretons
forgetful of Arthur. His magic renown, crossing the sea with
them, received new life in Armorica; he became there, as he was
in the Isle of Britain, an armed symbol of national liberty;
and the people, at all periods from the sixth century to our
own time, repeated, with adaptation to circumstances, the
traditions and the sayings or prophecies of which he was the
subject. Thus, whenever war is impending, they see, as a
warning sign, the army of Arthur defiling at break of day over
the summit of the Black Mountains; and the poem here given has
for twelve centuries been in the mouth of Bretons armed to
defend their hearths and altars. I learnt it from an aged
mountaineer named Mikel Floc'h, of Leuhan, who told me that he
had often sung it when marching against the enemy in the last
wars of the west."

The last strophe, which is of later date than the preceding ones, may in some measure have contributed to save from oblivion the _March of Arthur_. It is always sung three times over, and with the greatest enthusiasm.

Some of the strophes, breathing the savage vengeance of pagan times, have been omitted in the English translation. They retain in the original so much of the Cambrian dialect and idiom as to be scarcely in the least understood by the Bretons who sing them.

The March Of Arthur.

I.

Haste, haste to the combat! Come kinsman, come brother,
Come father, come son, to the battle speed forth!
The brave and the dauntless, come, speed one another!
Come all! there is work for the warriors of worth.

II.

Said to his father, at day-dawn, the son of the warrior,
"Horsemen I see, on the far mountain summits, who gather.

"Horsemen all mounted on war-steeds of gray, like the mist-wreaths;
Coursers that snort with the cold on the heights of the mountains.

"Close ranks of six by six: three by three: thousands of lances
Flash in the beams of the sun, to our vale yet unrisen.

"Double ranks follow the banners that wave in the death-wind,
Measuring nine casts of a sling from the van to the rearward."

"Pendragon's army! I know it! Great Arthur Pendragon
Leading his warriors, marches 'mid clouds of the mountain.

"If it be Arthur, then quick to our bows and swift arrows!
Forward, and follow him. Set the keen death-winged dart flying!"

{405}

E'en as he spake rang the fierce cry of war through the mountains:
"Heart for eye: head for arm; death for wound!" through hill and valley.

If in such manner we die as befits Breton Christians,
Too soon we cannot sink down on the field of our conflict!

If our readers are not yet wearied with details of the ancient poetry of this exceptional part of France, we hope to present them in our next number with further specimens; including the death of Lord Nann from the spells of a malignant Korrigan, or Breton fairy, and the argument by which a Breton maiden persisted in choosing the cloister against all the persuasions of a suitor to her hand. Both these poems date at least from the sixth century of Christianity.

----------

Indian Summer.

Upon the hills the autumn sun
His radiance pours like golden wine;
And low, sweet music seems to run
Among the tassels of the pine;
Around us rings the wild bird's scream;
Above, an arch of dark-blue sky;
While, like a maiden's summer dream,
The mists upon the meadows lie.

O peerless Indian Summer hours,
With bracing morn and slumbrous noon!
How pale are June's bright, flaunting flowers
Amid thy wealth of gorgeous bloom.
The river ripples softly on,
With purple hills upon its breast;
And soft cloud-shadows, floating down,
Have found a scene of perfect rest.

The evening darkens; from the hills
The glory fades, so proudly worn;
And in the west serenely fills
The fair young moon her silver horn;
While from the deep'ning blue above
The stars steal slowly, singly forth;
And night-winds, like the breath of love,
Come floating o'er the silent earth.

Veronica.

Cornwall Landing.

----------

{406}

Creative Genius of Catholicity. [Footnote 136]

[Footnote 136: We take pleasure in presenting in our pages
the following able article, from the pen of the late lamented
Colonel James Monroe. Few writers have left behind a
testimony more striking of their devotion to our holy faith,
or of their confidence in its elevating social power. It
meets living questions of the day with a rare aptitude, and
presents views and applies principles in a manner worthy of
attentive and thoughtful consideration.--ED. C. W.]

If the creative genius of Catholicity were to be stated from an _a priori_ point of view, it would reduce itself to the form of an axiom; for Catholicity being the body of revealed truth, confirming and agreeing with truth in every order, truth being essentially "that which is," (to employ the words of Bossuet,) Catholicity must be pre-eminently endowed with the germinative and fruitful spirit of origination. But inasmuch as truth has in this world a clouded scene for her activity, as effects arise constantly, and almost invariably, from an intermixture of causes of a diverse and contending character, and as the divine, the human, and the material elements are incessantly conjoined in action, it becomes necessary to trace the chain of events and to elucidate the influence of principles. This process does not, with the mind which is gifted with faith, arrive at the dignity of the highest proof; it rather serves to record examples and to collect illustrations.

In executing such a process, the difficulty is, not to find instances, but to decide which of them to choose amidst the boundless variety. I think it germane to the subject to compare Catholic genius with that of the most polished nation of the Gentile world, as the two have been displayed under the sensuous relation of form. The Greeks, beyond all other people, possessed a native capability in art, and there remains of the productions of the Greek mind enough for a just estimate of its rich capabilities. The models of Greek genius have won the enthusiastic admiration of mankind, and they dominate with a strong mastery over all cultivated minds which lack the Catholic faith. "Even from their urns, they rule them still."

Whatever difficulties language, poetry, philosophy, may labor under from the lapse of time, that which is tactual and visual needs but to be present to be appreciated. If art be the emanation of a creative spirit; if it be not, in its highest sphere, a copy or an imitation, then must it be admitted that the evolution of the Greek orders of architecture, combining majestic strength, radiant grace, and flowery beauty, embodied in pure and enduring material, is the loftiest expression of impassioned heathen genius. It is higher than their types of the human form, because it was wrought without a model and shaped directly from the mind's ideal. The conception is one so strong and great that it has never had a rival outside of Catholicity--and indeed hardly a respectable imitator. The coarser capability of the Roman mind not only originated nothing and added nothing to Greek invention, but it marred and misapplied that which it undertook to adopt. Later copyists have aimed no higher than a restoration of what their masters had created.

{407}

All that addresses the eye, and through it the mind, under form alone, may be objectively resolved into lines and surfaces, which may be again subdivided into yet simpler elements. The combinations of these elements--their union, tangencies, and contrasts--may be classified, and may furnish certain deductions which are incontrovertible general conclusions. Indeed, the deduction may become so far generalized as to pass beyond the boundary of the art which suggested it--as "the perfection of form is said to annihilate form;" it then arrives at abstract truth, which seeks its illustration in matter, without deriving its validity therefrom. This is so far true that the science whose highest deductions fall short of such generalization is yet in a rudimentary condition. [Footnote 137]

[Footnote 137: As an example, we may take the principle of
beauty as shown in the simplest and least beautiful of the
regular curves, the circular. In the circle variation in
direction is combined with identity in the distance from a
fixed point. There is, then, unity in diversity--a general
principle, of which the circle is but an example. Nature,
ever affluent in resources, varies the tameness of the circle
by presenting it to the eye as a right line, an ellipse,
etc., according to the point of view. Thus again illustrating
the law of unity in diversity; for the knowledge that the
figure is still a circle is _one_, while the gradations
in its appearance are many.]

In adjusting the elements of form under harmonious combinations, and in expanding them into imposing dimensions, the Greek mind was so subtle and appreciative that it missed nothing, and exhausted everything within the reach of its science, "unwinding all the links of grace, without a blunder or an oversight." If the Gothic architecture had borrowed from the Greek, or had simply carried forward into further development the same formative idea, it might be said that the case was that of the dwarf upon the giant's shoulders, who sees further than the giant himself. But the fact is entirely otherwise. The projectors and moulders of the Gothic church architecture found the field of invention limited--as must ever be the case--by preceding invention. The genius, therefore, must have been the greater which not only discovered new combinations of excellence, but anticipated and antedated yet surpassed all predecessors.

Among tribes of men whom the Greek styled "barbarous" emanates a life in art which transcends his highest conception. We encounter fabrics loftier, broader, deeper; the arch which _he_ did not employ is lifted from its circular character into a higher curvature, and its key-stone boldly stricken out. We find pillars massed, scalloped, and filleted; mouldings of a more graceful contour, every way flexure of contrast and gradation; a mazy web of tracery combining lightness, symmetry, permanence, and equilibrium; in mid air, a shapely dome, poised by the daring hand of science, where the cloud might visit it and the rainbow circle it. All this prodigality of invention and unequalled execution, springing forth as from an exhaustless fountain, is not confined to some favored peninsula, but is common to Italy, Germany, France, and England. The common cause of an effect so uniform and remarkable was the inspiring and elevating influence of the One Catholic faith.

I will quote here a Protestant writer's view of the difference in design between the Greek and Gothic building:

"The essential, germinal principle of difference between the
temple and the cathedral is, that the former is built for
exterior effect, the latter for interior. On occasions of
worship, the multitude surrounded one edifice, but filled the
other. The temple has, as regards architectural impression,
really no interior at all; for the small _cella_ or
_naos_ which hid the _penetralia_ entered not at all
into the effect of the structure. From this difference in
character and design, the whole diversity between the
characters of Greek and Gothic forms and decorations may be
derived. To the former, viewed from without, an aspect of
elevated repose must belong; and all the decorations must be
superficial. The elaboration of an impressive and inspiring
interior led necessarily to soaring height and a general
upwardness of all the courses; to long-drawn vistas, side by
side; to grand portals to give entrance, and a multitude of
windows to give light; and to a general style of decoration,
concave, receding, and perspective."

{408}

The same writer says:

"If England's cathedrals are inferior to those of France, they
are more beautiful than anything else in the world. Durham and
Ely, and Winchester and Salisbury, what needs the soul of man
more impressive, glorious, transcendent, than these?"

Another competent authority--also a Protestant--says:

"There is infinitely more scientific skill displayed in a
Gothic cathedral than in all the buildings of Greece and Rome;
nor could these latter have resisted the shock of time so long,
had they not been almost solid masses of stone, with no more
cavity than was indispensably necessary."

Let us examine the principle of delineation in the human form--that which has ever captivated the efforts of the greatest artists. In the classic execution of the highest human types there is an evident straining after the expression of something above the actual. Sir Charles Bell has shown that this effect is attained by a refined species of exaggeration. It consists in exaggerating whatever distinguishes man from the animals in enlarging, for example, the facial angle. It is a further remove from the animals than man is, but _in the same direction_. The Hercules, for instance, is an embodiment of the central form of strength--it is an exaggeration of muscular development. The highest expression is the embodiment of human passion. In this way the Greeks attained the delineation of the _superhuman_. Under the tutorage of Catholicity the human lineaments achieved the expression of the supernatural. One was the idealization of nature; the other the supernaturalization of humanity. Of this latter classic art had no conception; while therefore it may equal or surpass Catholic art in execution, it must fall far below in its ideal. [Footnote 138]

[Footnote 138: In this connection let us record a few remarks
from the ablest writers upon the subject.

Solger has said: "Philosophy can create nothing: it can only
_understand_. It can create neither the religious
inspiration nor the artistic genius: but it can detect and
bring to light all that is contained therein."

Hegel, in stating the relation of art, religion, and
philosophy, says:

"Art fulfils its highest mission when it has established
itself with religion and philosophy in the one circle common
to all, and is merely a method of revealing the godlike to
man, of giving utterance to the deepest interests, the most
comprehensive truths pertaining to mankind. Nations have
deposited the most holy, rich, and intense of their ideas in
works of art, and art is the key to the philosophy and
religion of a nation."

Schilling, with his peculiar theory, says: "That artist is to
be accounted happy to whom the gods have granted the
_creative spirit_. When the artist _recognizes_ the
aspect and being of the _indwelling creative idea_, and
produces it, he makes the individual a _world in
itself_, a _species_, an _eternal type_."

Not one of these three statements is beyond the reach of
cavil or of just exception; but, for the purpose in hand, we
see that the first says that "philosophy can create nothing;"
the second, that "art is a method of revealing the godlike to
man, and of giving utterance to his most holy and intense
ideas;" and the third, that it involves a gift or endowment
of the "creative spirit."]

Finally, all art is expression. Given a knowledge and mastery of the instruments of expression, and the thought will determine its character; the nature of the thought expressed depends upon the conceiving mind; the highest conception of the mind is the offspring of religious affection, the Catholic is the true religion; therefore the expression of Catholic genius is the summit of art. It is by no means a necessity that the soul shall express itself under sensuous forms; but to all outward manifestation a power over the instrument is a condition--in which sense the body is itself an instrumentality. What the soul expresses must be thought--either its own, or another's--it must either imitate or originate; imitation is merely repetition, and is in the power of a mirror. So that what in every art cannot be taught is expression. {409} The highest effort of the soul is spontaneous and original. Herein we find the superiority--visible at a glance--of Catholic architecture over the Greek orders, of Catholic delineations of the human countenance over the finest models of antiquity.

We have sufficiently considered the originative character of Catholicity under the aspect of constructed form. We have contemplated her moulding and shaping matter in her flexible fingers, and evolving that wilderness of artistic grace and loveliness which, in the ruins of a Tintern or Melrose Abbey, compels the admiration, but defies the rivalry, of the apostate sons of Catholic sires. We shall now consider her influence in the building up of states and the organization of societies.

Christianity took its rise under a universal military despotism. It sustained for three hundred years the superincumbent pressure of a hostile heathen empire. It exhausted the malice and the power of a pagan and brutalized temporal order; and when the Roman empire shook the world with its fall, Christianity survived the death-throes of that mighty organization.

When she rose from the catacombs, she did not sweep away the temples of the heathen gods; she drove from those fanes the unclean spirits which so long had dwelt within them; she rescued them from their demon desecration, monuments of her triumph, trophies of her victorious agonies; she made them the basilicas of her majestic worship.

When the fierce tribes from the north poured over Southern Europe, the church preserved what was sound in the Roman civilization, instructed the barbarians in agriculture by the example of her laborious monks, and taught them all the arts of life; instituted laws and polity; tempered and restrained tyranny; planted and nourished the seeds of liberty; developed civilization and refinement, and built up the whole grand fabric of Christendom.

In this formation of new states out of new populations, they did not become perfect exemplars of Christian ethics and morals, nor exact exponents of the formative power of Catholicity. The church encountered in those ages, as she does in this, incessant obstacles, difficulties, and resistance. Whatever was good and admirable in those constitutions came to them from the Catholic religion and was derived from the papal see.

The canon law had, under the emperors, tempered and modified the civil code; and among the new states it operated a beneficial change in the feudal principles. Both these systems prescribed for the mass of men an unchristian servitude. Enlightened equity and justice, and equality before the law, originated in the jurisprudence of the church, and not in barbarous feudalities, nor in the capricious and tyrannical decrees of Roman emperors. There are men in this age and country who profess great love for the people and great regard for the rights of labor, but who are stanch partisans of the tyrants of the middle age in the contentions which arose between them and the papal see. Inherited ill-will blinds them to the fact that the only power in those days which could hold tyranny to an accountability or check kingly license was that of the pope. The exercise of the papal protectorate not only tended to prevent causeless wars, but it controlled the corrupting influence of royal vices by stamping them with reprobation and, where needful, with degradation. It was the bulwark of the feebler states, the barrier against princely ambition, and everywhere the advocate, the friend, and the defender of the toiling multitude.

{410}

The new organization of states was to be marked by a characteristic which was also new. Human government is ordained of God. Christianity was to recognize and to exemplify this truth. She was to legitimate and ennoble human government in its own separate order. To effect this in the fullest manner, there must be an exemplification directly from the personality of the hierarchy; for, sacrifice being the most exalted human action, the priest, whose office it is to offer sacrifice, is by his function first among men. The highest recognition must therefore derive from the priesthood. But there would always be something lacking of the _highest_, unless the head of the hierarchy were a temporal ruler. The temporal power of the pope is the consecration of human government. Unlike others, he receives no dignity from the office, but confers grace upon it and upon its order; and Christendom, created by the church, receives the key-stone of its strength and its crowning symmetry when the first of Christian priests becomes a ruler among the nations. And consequently, religion suffers its direst outrage when, reversing the order, the temporal power lays its unfaltering hand upon the vessels of the sanctuary.

The church not only created the interior coherency of states by introducing just principles into their constitution; she not only bound them in links of fellowship whose _nexus_ was at Rome; she also organized their exterior defence. In uniting Christendom during the crusades to repel the Moslem invasion, the popes caused the reconstruction of systematic and scientific strategy, which had disappeared with the Roman legion, thus furnishing to civilization a needful defence and a desirable superiority, while at the same time the narrow spirit of the feudal method and its local strifes were rendered obsolete.

For a thousand years the struggle begun by Mohammedan invasion continued to rage on the confines of Europe. At its early period it penetrated to Tours in France, where it was checked by Charles Martel, in 732. But the triumph was not completed on that wing of Christendom till the capture of Granada, and the annihilation of the Moorish power in Spain in the year of the discovery of America. On the other border, the Turks besieged and took Belgrade, and suffered a final repulse at Vienna from John Sobieski, King of Poland, in 1683.

But, so far as human causes indicate, the question whether the faith of Europe should be Christian or Moslem was decided in the Gulf of Lepanto, in 1571. These were all European battle-fields. The struggle was against an invasion which struck at the existence of Christianity. The master-spirit which created, combined, informed, and directed the resistance dwelt in the Vatican.

The modern age is distinguished for the intense application of human intelligence to the laws and conditionalities of time, space, and matter, in their triple relations; and Providence seems to be permitting to man the reassertion of his dominion over the earth. "Knowledge is power," but the right employment of power is _virtue_; and unless the moral forces keep pace with the conquests of mind in the realm of matter, there will ensue antagonisms more destructive than before, as well as a more profound desolation of the human race. The rectification of the will is of an importance prior and superior to the activity of the intelligence; and without a religious faith and sanction the fruits of the understanding are but dust and ashes.

{411}

When we consider the spirit of invention and examine its results, three great products assume an acknowledged superiority. These are, the magnet, with its corollary, the extension of geographical discovery; the printing-press in its action upon intelligence; and gunpowder in its relation to physical forces in war. The magnet can never again point the way to a discovery like that which was achieved by Columbus; the art of printing cannot be applied to a higher purpose than that of multiplying copies of the Holy Scriptures; and gunpowder, which still controls the practice of the art of war, was never employed upon an occasion so critical to civilization and so momentous in the world's affairs, as when the cannon of Don John of Austria won for Christendom the great fleet-fight of Lepanto. These three commanding discoveries, and these their greatest applications, belong to Catholic nations and to Catholic individuals. The Protestant religions have no part in these discoveries, because there is an awkward metaphysical axiom which says that the cause must exist before the effect, and these greatest of inventions all preceded--some of them by centuries--the birth of Protestantism.

Some writers have claimed that the inventive spirit began with the dawn of the Reformation, at which time, according to Robert Hall, the nations "awoke from the sleep of ages to run a career of virtuous emulation." If this be so, why is it that later discoveries have not equalled those which we have just specified? According to this theory, the dawn eclipses the noon-day; and Protestantism would seem to belong to that class of things of which the _less_ you have of them the _better_.

The revival of letters is usually dated in the thirteenth century, and that honor is universally accorded to Italy. The first bank and the first newspaper are found at Venice. The Bible had been published in numerous editions before Luther began to dogmatize from a printed copy of it in Saxony. The system of modern commerce took its rise under the papacy, and ran a brilliant career in the Italian republics, and in the free cities of Germany, long before the era of the Protestant religions. Columbus had discovered the New World, and Vasco da Gama had doubled the Cape of Good Hope and marked the pathway to India, before the rise of England's commercial greatness. The "progress" had been installed, and had achieved such works as these, before the century in which Lord Bacon lived to write his _Inductive System of Philosophy_.

It would be an incomplete view of the subject if we failed to remark the _enduring_ character of the work which is of Catholic creation. Not like the mutable religions which protest against her; nor struck with incurable sterility, like the Greek schismatic; nor frozen into lifeless forms, like those of the Asiatic world; the living faith of the church incessantly and indefinitely advances the nation and the individual who faithfully correspond to it. That vitality, once infused into the pulses of a people, goes forth from them only with its lifeblood. There is an exemplification of this truth in the persecution which the Irish people have sustained, and are sustaining, at the hands of the English government. History presents no parallel to this antagonism of physical power, on the one hand, and moral determination on the other. {412} To sustain her wars of aggression, and to uphold her detestable system of classes and privileged orders, England has taxed everything, even the air and the light of heaven. This legalized oppression has ground down the English laborer and operative, but it has fallen with crushing cruelty upon the Irish peasant, whose country, in addition to the evil of partial and jealous legislation, has been compelled to pay tithes to a hostile and hating creed.

This merciless system has depopulated the land, and in the enforced emigration the Irish peasant has found no powerful government to aid him in his going; he has paid, to the last farthing, the exactions and robberies of English domination, and then has made his own unassisted way, dogged by an inflicted poverty but with his gallant spirit still unbroken. What has England gained by this conflict of centuries with Ireland? She has sapped her own strength and merited the condemnation of mankind. Moral causes control the universe, and the moral heroism of Ireland has vanquished every odds and every disaster. A temporal power far greater than that of Rome when her eagles were invincible has pursued for ages the determined purpose of forcing the people of the sister-island to join in protest and hostility against the Apostolic See. But the imperial monarchy, the riches, the splendor, the craft of England have found their master in the stern, unyielding, unconquerable fidelity with which the Irish people have clung to the Catholic faith.

The existence of this hemisphere was made known by agencies altogether Catholic. The first act of Columbus on his landing in the New World, that of planting a cross upon its soil, the meaning even of his baptismal name, was significant. In South America, in those self-same years that nations were torn from her communion by the abuse of learning and liberty derived from herself, Catholicity was engaged in widening the domain of Christendom and adding a continent to the faith.

I will briefly quote a New England Protestant writer in this connection. In the second volume of his _Conquest of Peru_, Prescott says:

"The effort to christianize the heathen is an honorable
characteristic of the Spanish conquests. The Puritan, with
equal religious zeal, did comparatively little for the
conversion of the Indian. But the Spanish missionary, from
first to last, has shown a keen interest in the spiritual
welfare of the natives. Under his auspices churches, on a
magnificent scale, have been erected, schools for elementary
instruction founded, and every rational means taken to spread
the knowledge of religious truth, while he has carried his
solitary mission into remote and almost inaccessible regions,
or gathered his Indian disciples into communities, like the
good Las Casas in Cumaná, or the Jesuits in California and
Paraguay. At all times the courageous ecclesiastic has been
ready to lift his voice against the cruelty of the conqueror,
and when his remonstrances have proved unavailing, he has still
followed to bind up the broken-hearted, to teach the poor
Indian resignation under his lot, and light up his dark
intellect with the revelation of a holier and happier
existence. The same nation which sent forth the hard-hearted
conqueror from its bosom sent forth the missionary to do the
work of beneficence, and spread the light of Christian
civilization over the farthest regions of the new world."

Elsewhere the same historian speaks thus of the Spanish conqueror of Mexico:

"The conversion of the heathen was a predominant motive with
Cortes in his expedition. It was not a vain boast. He would
have sacrificed his life for it at any time; and more than
once, by his indiscreet zeal, he actually did place his life
and the success of his enterprise in jeopardy. It was his great
purpose to purify the land from the brutish abominations of the
Aztecs by substituting the religion of Jesus. This gave to his
expedition the character of a crusade. It furnished the best
apology for the conquest, and does more than all other
considerations toward enlisting our sympathies on the side of
the conquerors."

{413}

For the benefit of those who have a tender sympathy for the Incas and Montezumas, and naught but execrations for the Spanish invaders, it may be remarked that the religions of Mexico and Peru were stained with human sacrifices, followed in the former by cannibalism. The same unerring and irresponsible Being--ever adjusting the retribution to the crime--who hurls the avalanche from its mountain, gives its mission to the tempest, and scourges the city with pestilence, likewise directs the fearful visitation of the sword, whether in the hand of a Joshua, a Cyrus, an Attila, or a Pizarro. On the southern continent Catholic colonization preserved, christianized, and elevated the aboriginal races; while in the north, Protestant colonization swept away even their graves.

It is time to consider, and in a more special manner, the agency of the Catholic religion in the formation of this majestic Republic of the United States.

The fundamental principle upon which our ancestors based their resistance to England was, that they were Englishmen, and had lost none of the rights of British subjects by being transplanted to these shores. They claimed the system of the common law as an inheritance, and also all those guarantees which had grown up into that frame-work called the English Constitution. Upon this issue they went into the Revolution, and upon the same issue Chatham, and Burke, and others defended the cause of the colonists in the British parliament. The definite question, then, is, What were those principles, and whence were they derived?

The first declaration of public rights in England is the document called Magna Charta, delivered by King John, at Runnymede, in 1215. This instrument begins as follows:

"John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland,
Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Earl of Anjou: To the
archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciaries of
the forests, sheriffs, governors, officers, and to all
bailiffs, and other his faithful subjects, Greeting: Know ye
that we, in the presence of God, and for the health of our
soul, and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and the
exaltation of his holy church, and amendment of our kingdom, by
advice of our venerable fathers, Stephen, Archbishop of
Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Cardinal of the Holy
Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, Bishop of
London, ... have, in the first place, granted to God, and by
this our present charter, confirmed for us and our heirs for
ever.

"ART. I. That the Church of England shall be free, and enjoy
her whole rights and privileges inviolable," etc.

Many of the articles are occupied with matters relating to feudal tenures, which, of course, are without application to this country. The twentieth article is as follows:

"ART. XX. A freeman [that is, a free-holder] shall not be
amerced for a small fault, only according to the degree of his
fault; and for a great crime, in proportion to the heinousness
of it, saving to him his contenement, [means of livelihood;]
and after the same manner a merchant, saving to him his
merchandise; and a villein shall be amerced after the same
manner, saving to him his wainage, [carts, etc.,] if he falls
under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall
be assessed but by the oaths of honest men of the neighborhood.

"ART. XXX. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other, shall
take horses or carts of any freeman for carriage, without the
consent of the said freeman.

"ART. XXXI. Neither shall we or our bailiffs take any man's
timber for our castles or other uses, unless by the consent of
the owner of the timber.

"ART. XXXIX. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or
disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any way destroyed; nor
will we condemn him, or commit him to prison, unless by the
legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

{414}

"ART. XL. To none we will sell, to none will we deny, nor
delay, right or justice.

"ART. LI. And, as soon as peace is restored, we will send out
of the kingdom all foreign soldiers, cross-bowmen, and
stipendiaries, who are come with horses and arms, to the injury
of the kingdom.

"ART. LV. All unjust and illegal fines, and all amerciaments
imposed unjustly, and contrary to the law of the land, shall be
entirely forgiven," etc.

The sixty-third and last article is:

"ART. LXIII. Wherefore we will, and firmly enjoin, that the
Church of England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have
and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions
peaceably," etc.

Copies of this charter were found to have been deposited in the cathedrals of Lincoln, Salisbury, and Gloucester. When, in the next reign, that of Henry III., circumstances required that the charter should be confirmed, the ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops. Coming before the king, in Westminster Hall, with tapers in their hands, they denounced excommunication against the breakers of the charter; and, casting down their tapers, exclaimed, "So may all that incur this sentence be extinguished." To which the king responded, "So help me God, I will keep all these things inviolate."

Hallam says, of this great charter:

"It is still the key-stone of English liberty," "and all that
has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or
commentary."

Sir James Mackintosh and Sir William Blackstone agree essentially with Hallam. In respect to the merit of obtaining the charter, Mr. Hallam says:

"As far as we are guided by historical testimony, two great
men, the pillars of our church and state, may be considered as
entitled beyond the rest to the glory of this monument--Stephen
Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William, Earl of
Pembroke."

Of the charter, Sir William Blackstone says:

"It protected every individual of the nation in the free
enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and his property, unless
declared to be forfeited by the judgment of his peers."

The Petition of Right, passed in 1628, was based confessedly upon Magna Charta. Its principal provisions are:

1. That no loan or tax might be levied, save by consent of
parliament.

2. That no man might be imprisoned but by legal process.

3. That soldiers might not be quartered on people against their
will.

4. That no commissions be granted for executing martial law.

This Petition of Right, in its third article, quotes entire the thirty-ninth of the charter, which is there styled "the great charter of the liberties of England." Coke, who drew up the petition, in his speech against the king's prerogative, says: "In my opinion, it weakens Magna Charta and all our statutes."

The Bill of Rights, passed at the Revolution of 1688, assumes it as the clear duty of the subjects "to vindicate and assert their ancient rights and liberties." The Act of Settlement declares that "the laws of England are the birthright of the people thereof."

{415}

The correspondence and analogy between the principles of the great charter, together with its successive commentaries and confirmations, and those upon which the American Revolution rests, are obvious and striking. We may particularly instance the royal infringements upon the rights of the colonists, in refusing assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary to the public good; keeping up standing armies in time of peace without the consent of the legislature; affecting to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power; quartering armed troops upon the inhabitants; imposing taxes upon them without their consent; depriving them, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury; and altering fundamentally the form of their government.

Without a basis of right principle, the American Revolution would have been a rebellion against legitimate authority, and the people would have been deprived of that rectitude of conscience which bore them through the war; they would have been demoralized by the overthrow of their inbred loyalty, without which no free government is secure. If there was not a violation of conscience in withdrawing their allegiance to the British crown, it was because they had sovereign rights which were above that allegiance. It was because there was a Magna Charta which, in the words of Coke, "would brook no sovran." The contest was for those transmitted liberties which the American people claimed as a birthright under the British Constitution. Nearly six centuries divide 1776 from 1215; but the gulf is spanned by that arch of immortal principles which was projected by Cardinal Stephen Langton and his Catholic compeers in the meadow of Runnymede.

In violating the unity of Christendom in the sixteenth century, England thus outraged the national conscience, and her disloyalty to the truth that she had inherited for a thousand years was followed by the oppression of her colonies, which finally led to their separation from her. There was this great principle involved in that contest, and this great difference in favor of the colonists: England oppressed them, from her want of Catholic guidance and restraint and the observance of her own organic principle; _they_ resisted _her_ on that basis of public right, and loyalty, and reason, which had been embedded in the English Constitution by their common Catholic ancestry. Not for the defence only of those rights, but for the knowledge of them--for their very existence--were our ancestors indebted to the Roman Catholic religion.

Upon the traditional laws and free principles of the English Constitution, we have erected an unrivalled system of order and right, while in English hands they have degenerated into a scheme of legalized oppression which is without a parallel among nations claiming to be free. Providence, acting on events, has so disposed them that England's persecution of the faith has transferred the Catholic population from that country to this, where with the language are found also the true tradition and the just development of the English Catholic constitution.

What is wanted to the perfection of American nationality is a firm moral, that is, religious foundation. It is easily susceptible of proof that no strong nationality has ever subsisted without such a basis. I do not, of course, limit the proposition to the Christian religion. But the foundation must be the more stable as the religion which underlies and props it is nearer to a conformity with unmixed truth. The first step in our career of greatness was to turn from England and to advance toward that unity which she had abandoned--when we seized upon the traditional Catholic principles and defended them against her attempted despotism. {416} The true course of our national welfare and security lies still in the same direction--toward unity, and toward the Catholic Church. For what is to supply the spiritual needs of this young, and energetic, and glorious people? Surely not these transmitted and transplanted heresies which have passed into their decline and are tottering in their dotage. The creed which might answer for some bounded island, a petty electorate, or a mountain canon, is too narrow for this continental power, which needs a religion confederate as its own union and wide as the expansion of its own domain.

We have here many difficult and dividing moral questions already pressing for a solution. The fusion of the Caucasian tribes--already harmonized by the Catholic traditions, and never very remotely divided by characteristics--will probably serve but as the origination of a superior race: at least physiological laws give no ground to fear a deterioration. But we have here a numerous distinct race which must ever remain distinct, and which increases more rapidly than the white population.

I am not aware that history furnishes an instance of the just _reconciliation_ of two distinctly different races of men upon the same soil, except by the aid of the Catholic religion. In Mexico and in South America the Catholic religion is establishing such a reconciliation, and it is the only harmonizing element in those societies.

It is impossible to say what peaceful solution of the problem will be reached here; but the ultimate destiny of the African blood planted and rooted on this soil will be either adjudicated upon Catholic principles, or else philanthropic theories, veil them as we may, will apply to the evil the remedy still worse of civil war. Questions like this demand a guide to conscience and a clear and uniform exposition of moral obligations.

The United States government has never denied the due spiritual authority of the Head of the Church--has never done aught to infringe his just prerogatives. There has never been enacted here an original or formal protest against the rights of the Apostolic See.

This people have never thrown off the claims of the Catholic religion, and they have not rejected it. The nation is not under the ban of a misguided defiance of the right spiritual authority.

In no sense, therefore, has this nation as a nation compromised itself as against those fundamental principles of unity and liberty of which the Catholic Church is, in the spiritual order, the true and only representative. As from her and her alone it can receive the perpetual impulse of a free, progressive, national development, so in yielding to her influence is it guilty of no inconstancy to its organtic law, of no infidelity to its historic past. The destiny which it is destined to accomplish in the political depends upon the position which it voluntarily assumes in the moral order, and this in turn upon the source from which it drinks in the springs of its religious life.

It needs but to be true to its origin, its constitution, its equity, and its ancestral virtues to become and to remain the foremost of the nations of the earth. But truth to these necessitates fidelity to her from whom visibly and directly not only they, but all that is noble and elevating in art or arms or civilization has originated, and in whom they have found an impregnable defender--the Catholic Church, the Communion of the Apostolic See.

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{417}

Translated From The Historisch-politische Blaetter.

Schaff's Church History.

In the year 1854 appeared a work of great merit, entitled _A History of the Apostolic Church_, together with a _General Introduction to Church History,_ from the pen of Philip Schaff, a professor in the Lutheran Seminary at Mercersburg, and a literary colleague of Dr. Nevin, called "the American proto-martyr of the suffering church." At that time, Professor Schaff, who is a native of Graubündten, in Switzerland, was making a long stay in Europe. In the same year he published two other works--_St. Augustine_, Berlin, 1854, pp. 129, a brochure or precursor of the present large work, and _America--the Political, Social, and Ecclesiastico-Religious Condition of the United States_, which is a continuous eulogy of his adopted country. That Dr. Schaff has for thirteen years zealously prosecuted the study of ecclesiastical history, the unusual size of the work before us sufficiently evinces. It is dated from the Bible House in New York, January, 1867, and dedicated to the teachers and friends of the author, August Tholuck, Julius Müller of Halle, J. A. Dorner of Berlin, and J. P. Lange of Bonn.

From the preface and dedication we learn that Schaff studied exegesis in Tübingen under Dr. Schmid, history under Dr. Bauer, and attended the lectures on systematic theology of Dr. Dorner. At this time he resided in Halle, "under the hospitable roof" of Tholuck, and by him and Julius Müller he was encouraged to choose an academical career. Since his residence in North America he has twice visited Europe, in 1854 and in 1865. His friends frequently wished him to obtain a professor's chair in Germany, but he could not determine to separate himself from a land in which since his twenty-fifth year he had found a second home, and desired his days to close in the "noble mediatorship between the Evangelical Christianity of the German and English languages." His book shows that he has defended in America, not altogether unworthily, the German theology--"the true, liberal, catholic, and evangelical theology."

An English translation of the present history of the ancient church, entitled _History of the Christian Church; or, History of Ancient Christianity,_ appeared at the same time. Editions of this work were simultaneously published in New York and Edinburgh, in the years 1859 and 1862. It is indeed a continuation of _The Apostolic Church_, but, like it, a separate work "it contains the fruits of twenty years' active labor as professor of church history in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania."

Dr. Schaff remained in New York two years, for the purpose of availing himself of the use of its larger libraries. Here the Astor Library was at his command. {418} This library, founded in the year 1850, by the German, John Jacob Astor, with a capital of four hundred thousand dollars, has been extensively increased by his son. It contains in a magnificent building one hundred and fifty thousand carefully selected volumes, among which are many costly and classic works on all branches of literature. He had also access to the library of the Union Theological Seminary, "which has purchased the Van Ess Library, (that of the well-known Catholic Bible translator,) with a collection of the fathers of the Church and the great learned compilations; it has since been increased by the addition of the library of E. Robinson, and the productions of recent Protestant theology. It is worthy of remark that the libraries of our celebrated German church historians find their way to America. Thus, the Neander library has been for a length of time in the Baptist Seminary at Rochester; the Thilo Library in Yale College, New Haven; and the Niedner Library in the Congregationalist Seminary at Andover. Neander's library, together with the manuscript of his church history, are shelved in a separate room at Rochester." This is unfortunately the customary way in which the important libraries of German theologians find their way either to England or North America, or, at least, are sold under the hammer.

The author honors the truth when he acknowledges and prefers the older and mostly Catholic investigators to the labors of Protestant inquirers. He mentions the Benedictines in the editions of the fathers of the church, the Bollandists in hagiography, Mansi and Hardouin in the collection of the councils, Gallandi, Dupin, Ceillier, Oudin, Cave, and J. A. Fabricius in patrology and the history of church literature; in particular branches he mentions Tillemont, Peteau, (Petavius,) Bull, Bingham, and Walch as his favorite guides. Whether he will prepare for the press his numerous manuscripts on the church history of the middle ages and modern times, the author refers to a distant and indefinite time. It will be done if "God grants him time and strength." For the present, his leisure time will be employed with the enlarged English edition of Lange's biblical works.

The peculiarity of our author consists in working up and turning to advantage the studies of others. In Schaff we find little or no independent research, for which he needs both time and inclination, but he excels in an exact and erudite employment of that which has been prepared by others. We are not finding fault with this, but rather approve of and commend it. In more personal and independent investigation, the present lacks the results of his previous intellectual labors. Dr. Schaff may make these once more respected; indeed, he avails himself more extensively of the labors of Catholic authors than any other modern Protestant historian.

In a book so rich in its contents, we are obliged to confine ourselves to a notice of special points only; we prefer this limitation to an estimate of the general contents, which of course embrace the ordinary well-known topics. The author treats of the inner life of the church, monasticism, ecclesiastical customs, worship, and Christian art more minutely than any of his predecessors.