Chapter XX: 482 (6)

It conjures up pictures before us of a happy, ignorant childhood, peaceful as a meadow-brook--a young life passed amid smiling hills, and fruitful vales, and woods where the honeysuckle twines round the old gnarled hawthorns, and the oak spreads its green, trembling tent over carpets of wild hyacinths. There, before the mind’s eye, rises the vision of a house, gray and picturesque, a broad, lovely terrace, and oriel windows looking down and beyond it into a sloping orchard. At the back, leaning on the grassy bank, dotted by firs and elms, lilacs and guelder-rose, and fragrant syringa and gold-blooming laburnum, stands a gaunt old tower, clad in dark purple-berried ivy--a ghost tower, the haunt of mystery, overshadowing the little cloister and the tall, gray roof of the chapel. But it is winter, and I have been forgetting that the _Venite adoremus_ is a snow-flower of devotion, a “Christmas rose,” not a red June rose, regal in its dusky, velvety mantle of richest, warmest color; for now we hear the chant of the holy Christmas song, and the tapers are lighted on the stone-carved altar, where, on each side of the niched reredos, white angels kneel with their eternal torches, ever still, ever adoring, like some heavenly exile bound to earth’s temples by a divine spell, of which art holds the key. Above, the Annunciation is blazoned forth on the pictured window; but you cannot see it now, the night blots out its fairness. Angels, again, on the frescoed wall, bear scrolls, whose silent voices chant a ceaseless _Gloria_ to the Babe in the tabernacle--_Laudamus te_, _Benedicimus te_, _Adoramus te_, _Glorificamus te_--and the rest of the narrow chapel is dark and voiceless, save where a taper glimmers on the desk of the little, humble harmonium, round which stand reverentially the few singers, whose only guerdon is the smile of the unseen but not unfelt God. Dark and dusky red are the hangings that tapestry the wall, bearing over their surface thick 558 growths of the white fleur-de-lis; while above the simple benches of stained wood, at the back, rises a long, dark gallery. It was there I heard the first Midnight Mass I ever heard in my life.

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

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

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

But it has other scenes to show, other memories to waken. It tells of a Southern church, gaudy and bedizened, full of frivolous worshippers, whose Christmas vigil has been kept in the ball-room they have hurriedly left to listen to the operatic orchestra preparing its musical pyrotechnics for the dread moment of the Elevation. But pass we on to more congenial remembrances. It tells of a simple, white-washed chamber, a prison-ward in the Holy City, where reclaimed and forgiven women are worshipping the divine Babe, who has wrought their salvation and sent them in their hour of need to the arms of his earthly angels, the Sisters of Mercy; it tells of a high dignitary of the Vatican, leaving his purple magnificence to come among the city prisons, and spend with them a more edifying Christmas than the display of the public churches promised his humble devotion. _Venite adoremus!_ It swells up in sweet woman-tones from some recess of faithful memory, but the halls through which the hymn was borne that Christmas night echo only to the heavy tramp of the sentinel now, if not to worse, the blasphemies of the ungodly trooper.

It brings the mediæval glories of St. Mark’s to the mind of a lover of that unique basilica--that petrified dream of the heavenly Jerusalem, with its curious barbaric wealth, its golden mosaics, its Byzantine spoils of victories that were not merely the victories of civilization over decay, but the triumphs of faith over superstition. The glorious church is full, dark masses of human beings sway about its broad-reaching nave, and here and there, like fire-flies, like heart-stars, shine the little _cerini_--the rope-like coils of wax, the picturesque forerunners of garish gas-jets and dream-dispelling coronas. The Mass in Venice is not a real Midnight Mass, however, since, by special permission, it is celebrated at five o’clock in the afternoon of the vigil. It is sad to hear profane music even in this consecrated spot, whose dim, suggestive beauty seems to inherit the 559 vague and solemn halo of the veiled lamps of the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem; but corrupted taste certainly does reign in the Venetian basilica, and a Mass full of modern Italian _fioritura_ is annually performed in it at the festival of Christmas. Still, the mind sees beyond the unhappy aberrations of the modern Euterpe out into the long vista of past centuries, when graver and nobler strains rang through the low-vaulted temple, and the stern and silent heads of the state came in procession to grace the triumph of the new-born Saviour. From Venice to Geneva there is a wide gulf, but the _Venite adoremus_ bridges over that.

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

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

In this Midnight Mass at Geneva it was touching to see the crowds that flocked to the church through drifting snow and biting wind--real Christmas weather--and, without any attraction in the shape of noted preacher or imposing ceremonial, filled the church as full as the generous heart-blood does the bosom of the Christian martyr. Hundreds of silent worshippers were assembled there, and, when the last Gospel of the Mass had been said, the priests returned, in alb and stole, to give communion to the eager congregation. Hardly one present seemed to have left the church, and gradually the vast body of the faithful broke, like successive waves, at the foot of the altar. For one whole hour was this scene enacting, and no music was heard meanwhile, and, though few rules were enforced and little order reigned, yet the sight was as widely suggestive as any more carefully arranged demonstrations. Somehow these artless, unpremeditated outpourings of the heart of Christendom have a far higher power to interest, a far subtler charm to entrance, and leave a higher impression and a more healthful influence behind, than those wonderful pageants which from 560 year to year draw thousands of curious spectators to Rome. Here is everyday Christianity; here is the inner working of that silent, God-wielded mechanism whose outward robes and draperies only come to us in the shape of those glittering festas; here is the real work, the real core of things, the heart whose pulsation alone gives meaning to all that external magnificence, the sun of which those ceremonies are the radiance, the consuming fire of which that glorious ritual is but the outgoing heat and the coruscant light. And when we think of the darker and varied aspects, the inner complications of the lives of those who were crowding round the altar-rails of St. Germain, what a wonderful, manifold history, what a spiritual landscape of infinite shades of the most delicate pencillings, do we not see! Side by side kneel souls whose life-paths run in opposite channels: here is Martha, the busy household angel, whose faith is inwoven in her every daily movement, her every thought, though it be of toil and anxiety; there is the pensive Magdalen, whose sadness is her soul’s beauty, whose memory brings before her even more tokens of merciful forgiveness and unwearied love than of her own little past, her sins and her hard-heartedness; there kneels the widow whose child has just been given back to her from the very portals of death, and whose only altar for many dreary months has been the darkened chamber and the curtained sick-bed. Close to her is a maiden whose life is one long act of pure preparation for the bridal feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and who, when next Christmas-chimes sound, will hear in them the glad knell that proclaims her death to the outside world, and her life-long vow of obedience to her Spouse. Here is a Monica, wrestling in prayer for a wayward son whose hopeless lapse from the narrow path of virtue is the heaviest cross her Saviour could have chosen for her burden; there again is the bride, kneeling by the side of the simple, joyous, boyish bridegroom, with whom she is just beginning a new stage on the road to eternal bliss. So rough, so uniform, so commonplace is the aspect of the crowd, that these things are only visible to spiritual sight, to the eye of the soul; and, if visible even to our darkened organs of spiritual understanding, how much more clearly and far more touchingly to the eye of eternal Wisdom and fathomless Love! What a rose-garden is a church full of humble communicants before the sight of God! How fragrant and varied the blossoms to his illumined perception! Men in every stage of conversion--those who have just timidly set their foot on the first round of Jacob’s mystic ladder; those who have struggled so far that they can dare to look down one moment, and measure the death from which God’s love has raised them, in order to gain additional grace to correspond with his future and more rapid calls heavenward; those who have left all sin and danger so far behind that they look upon them calmly, as one sees the rolling clouds far below from the crisp-breathing atmosphere of the highest mountains; those whose conversation is in heaven, and whose thoughts are silent angels walking ever with them as the living messengers of God. Such are the miracles of grace that crowd the lowly church; the mysteries that we can only guess at beneath the crust of materiality which we see; the wonders that jostle us in the swaying throng, and of which we have so little knowledge that we hardly even suspect what angel’s robe has swept past our own garments a moment ago. 561

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

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

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

_Venite adoremus!_ It has been sung to our infancy when the nurse rocked the cradle where slept the first-born; it has cheered our early childhood when the young mother-voice taught it to us at the Christmas fireside; it has thrilled our heart in youth when, far from the old home, we have listened to its solemn, familiar strains; it will stir a chord of memory through each succeeding year as our early associations grow dim and our path waxes more lonely; it will breathe a sweet farewell and echo in our ears on our very deathbed, linking the thought of our first earthly home to that of our expected eternal one in the bosom of our Jesus and the arms of our new-found, glorified Mother.

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

----------

MR. CLARKE’s LIVES OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS.[118] 562

“Like stars to their appointed heights they climb.”--SHELLEY.

The remark had become trite in the mouths of Europeans, that America has no history. Such was the inertness of our countrymen in the department of American history; such the want of works recounting the thrilling story of early adventure and colonization, the struggles of feeble colonies for existence and permanence, their long and steadfast preservation of free institutions inherited from the mother-country, and their gallantry in defending them against an unnatural mother; the birth and growth of a vast and mighty republic, maintaining at once order and liberty amid the convulsions and revolutions of European dynasties and empires, and eliciting from a European monarch, whose crown was afterwards torn from his head, the remark addressed to an American Catholic bishop, who told him of free and peaceful America, “Truly, that people at least understand liberty; when will it be understood among us?”--all these things remained so long an untold story, that it was believed but too generally that America was without a history to record. The subsequent works of Bancroft, Irving, Prescott, Parkman, and others have pretty effectually dispelled the delusion.

But it seems to have been equally thought, among the historians of the church, that her career in America was also devoid of historical interest, so few and meagre were our published records and histories. In the general histories of the church, such as that by Darras, commencing with the earliest ages, and coming down to our own times, with but slight general allusions to America, no mention whatever is made of the rise and progress of the church in the United States. In the American edition of Darras, there is an Appendix, written for the purpose by an American author, Rev. Charles I. White, D.D., giving a _Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Catholic Church in the United States of America_, and intended to supply, in some measure, the omission.

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

When we penned these lines, though we knew of Mr. Clarke’s long-continued and unwearied labors in that department of American Catholic 563 literature, had cheered at times his earnest and faithful studies, and had, by his kindness, been able to spread before our readers some of his interesting and admirably prepared biographical papers, such as the _Life of Governor Dongan of New York_, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of September, 1869, and the _Memoir of Father Brébeuf, S.J._, in the July and August numbers, 1871, still we scarcely hoped that we should see our desires so soon realized, or that we should so soon have occasion to hail the appearance of the splendid work now before us, the fruits of his accomplished pen and energetic industry, in the two handsomely printed and elegantly bound volumes, _The Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States_. The production of such a work, prepared during the broken and fleeting moments of leisure snatched from a life devoted to professional duties, and to an active participation in the Catholic and public-spirited enterprises of our busy metropolis, is something for which we, as a Catholic journalist devoted to literature, may be permitted to express our own thanks, and those of the Catholic community, and at the same time to commend it as an instance of successful literary toil in a rich but uncultivated field, and as, what we hope and believe it will be, a reward for long and painstaking researches, careful collation, and fine literary study. There were but few published works, as we have remarked, from which to draw the facts and information necessary for such a book. Hence the author had to seek, in a great measure, his materials from the archives of the various dioceses, the unpublished correspondence and journals of the deceased prelates, their pastoral letters and addresses, from the Catholic serial publications and newspapers of the last half-century (a task of great and protracted labor and fatigue), from the personal recollections of surviving friends, co-laborers, and colleagues of the bishops, from family records, from his own correspondence with numerous witnesses of the growth of the church and of the labors of our apostolic men, and even from the silent but sacred marble records of the tomb. The frequency with which the author cites, among his _authorities_, unpublished documents and original sources of information, which were in many cases the individual narratives of living witnesses, committed to writing at his request, and for this work, is a proof of the industry and labor with which this work has been prepared, and give us the means of appreciating the services thus rendered to our American Catholic literature, in securing and preserving from decay, oblivion, or total loss many valuable but perishable traditions and documentary materials. We will refer to two only, among many instances throughout these richly stored pages, of valuable documents thus given to the public; these are the royal charter of King James II., guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics of Virginia in 1686, and the beautiful and touching letter addressed by Archbishop Carroll, in 1791, to the Catholic Indians of Maine, the remnants of the pious and faithful flock of the illustrious and martyred Rale--for the publication of both of which we are indebted to Mr. Clarke.

Mr. Clarke has devoted many years to these valuable and excellent studies and compositions, and those who have read our Catholic periodical literature during the last fifteen years, will remember his _Memoirs_ of Archbishops Carroll and Neale, of Bishops Cheverus and Flaget, of the Rev. Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, of Fathers 564 Andrew White and Nerinckx, of Governor Leonard Calvert, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Commodore John Barry, the father of the American navy, and Judge Gaston; which were published in 1856 and 1857 in _The Metropolitan_ of Baltimore. The favor with which these papers were received at the time, and the earnest recommendations of prelates, priests, and laymen, have, as we have learned, induced the author to enlarge his plans and undertake a series of works, which will give the American Church a complete biography of ecclesiastics and laymen, and, at the same time, literary monuments of classic taste and scholarship. The present book of the prelates will, as we rejoice to learn, be followed by the second work of the course, containing the lives of the missionaries of our country, such as White of Maryland, Marquette, Jogues, and Brébeuf of New York, Rale of Maine, the missionaries of the Mississippi Valley, of distinguished priests in later times, and of the founders of our religious houses, male and female. The remaining work of the series, more interesting probably than even the preceding ones, because not the least attempt has so far been made in that direction, will contain the lives of distinguished Catholic laymen, who have rendered signal services to our country, such as Calvert, Carroll, and Taney of Maryland, Iberville of Louisiana, Dongan of New York, La Salle and Tonty, explorers of the Mississippi River, Barry of Pennsylvania, Vincennes of Indiana, Gaston of North Carolina, and many others. The whole will form a complete series of Catholic biographical works, issued in the appropriate order of bishops first, priests and religious second, and finally of statesmen, captains, explorers, and jurists. We cannot withhold the expression of our pleasure at the prospect of results such as these in a department of literature which it has ever been one of the objects of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to encourage, promote, and cherish.

That valuable materials exist in the country for all of these important works, we feel quite sure. We hope care will be taken of them and that they will be freely placed at the service of our Catholic historians and authors. Their publication would be the best means of preserving them, while rendering them useful to the present generation. We will give an incident in the experience of Mr. Clarke, in preparing his _Lives of the Bishops_, related by him to us, as an evidence of the danger to which valuable historical matter is constantly exposed of being lost and destroyed. He applied, in one instance, to the custodians of the papers relating to the Catholic history of an important diocese and state, and was informed that the diocesan papers and documents had been for many years locked up in a strong chest or safe, before and for some time after the death of the first bishop, and, on being opened and examined, they were found to be in a state of complete decay from the damp, fell to pieces when handled, and that scarcely a line of the writing was legible. Other cases are related of valuable materials for American Catholic history lost or sent out of the country. We observe, in the first volume before us, a new and appropriate feature--a distinct and separate return of thanks by the author to a long list of prelates, priests, and laymen who have supplied him with materials or aided him in his labors. The appeal he makes, in his preface, for the assistance of such as possess materials, has our cordial sympathy; and we hope the appeal will not be made in 565 vain.

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

The antiquity of the Catholic Church in America, her struggles and triumphs, are well worthy of the study of all. Her struggles have ever been against vice and error, and in favor of liberty and virtue. Her triumphs have been the conquest of souls for heaven. No impartial mind can study the career of the Catholic Church in the United States without being convinced of the purity of her motives, and the sacredness of her aims. Her conservatism, her sacraments, her defence of Christian marriage, her labors for religious education, her chastening influence over the consciences of her children, of which every day’s record affords examples, her maintenance of law and order, have made her in the past, what they will prove in the future, the mainstay of society, of liberty, and of the republic. Her growth in our midst has been the work of Providence, not of man; a growth which, as our author shows, has proportionately far outstripped that of the republic. While the country has increased from thirteen states to thirty-seven states and eleven territories in ninety-five years, the church has increased from one bishopric to sixty-four bishoprics, six vicariates apostolic, and four mitred abbots in eighty-one years. The population of the country has increased from 2,803,000 to about 40,000,000, while the children of the Catholic Church have increased from 25,000 to 5,500,000. The increase of the general population of the country has been 1,433 per centum in ninety-five years, and that of the church has been 22,000 per centum in eighty-one years. The Catholic clergy have increased from twenty-one priests in 1790 to about four thousand eight hundred priests in 1871; they dispense the blessings of religion in 4,250 churches and 1,700 chapels.

After giving these statistics, the preface proceeds thus:

“To Rome, the capital of the Christian world, Eternal City,
destined in our hopes and prayers and faith to be restored to us
again as the free and undesecrated Mistress and Ruler of
Churches, and to the Sovereign Pontiffs therein, Vicars of Christ
on earth, we turn with love and gratitude for the care,
solicitude, and support bestowed upon our churches, and for the
exemplary prelates bestowed upon them by the Chief Bishop of the
church. To our venerable hierarchy, bishops and priests, and 566
to the religious orders, both male and female, we render thanks
for their labors, their sacrifices, their sufferings, and their
suffrages.

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

‘Zeal and duty are not slow;
But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.’
--_Paradise Regained._

“To assume the task of creating, as it were, building up, and
governing the infant churches thus confided to their care, was
the work that was faithfully and zealously performed by our
bishops. It was no uncommon thing for a bishop to be sent to a
diocese where there was scarcely a shrine or a priest; where he
not only had no friends or organized flock to receive him, but
where he had not even an acquaintance; where he would not meet a
face that he had ever seen before. In some instances, he had to
enter a diocese rent with disunion or schism among the people; in
others, he was compelled to reside out of the episcopal city by
reason of disaffection prevailing within. In other cases, such
was their poverty that they had not the necessary means to
procure an episcopal outfit, to provide a pectoral cross and
crosier, or to pay their travelling expenses to their dioceses.
In many cases the humble log-cabins of the West were their
episcopal palaces and cathedrals; and frequently church,
episcopal residence, parish school, and theological seminary were
all under the same contracted roof. In the midst of such
difficulties, we behold examples of humility, patience,
cheerfulness, zeal, charity, love, poverty, and untiring labor. A
study of such examples, and of lives so good, so heroic, has led
us to undertake the work now presented to the public, in order to
repeat and continue their holy influences, to preserve the memory
of such deeds, to render a tribute to those honored names, and to
rescue, as far as we could, our Catholic traditions from oblivion
or total loss. We applied to ourself, and yielded to the spirit
of, the poet’s appeal:

‘Spread out earth’s holiest records here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear;
A zeal like this what pious legends tell?’”

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

The antiquity of our church in America is strikingly illustrated in this volume--an antiquity equal to that of the church in some of the old countries of Europe, extending back to the ages of faith, when the church was fighting her battles with paganism, and before the time when altar was raised up against altar by the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, and before the more modern phases of infidelity and communism had declared war against all altars and all religion. In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the Northmen of Iceland, hardy adventurers on the seas, pushed their exploits beyond the continent of Europe, and landed colonies on the shores of this continent. Coming from their ice-clad homes, our extreme north-eastern regions were to them a country of enchanting verdure, and received the name of 567 Greenland; and, pushing their cruises farther south, they entered our own Narragansett Bay, where, seeing the country festooned with vines teeming with grapes, they called it Vinland. Our poet Longfellow, aptly quoted by Mr. Clarke, has celebrated some of the exploits of Vikings and Northmen on sea and shore. They were the freebooters and highwaymen of the ocean;

“Joining the corsair’s crew.
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders;
Wild was the life we led,
Many the souls that sped.
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.”

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

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

“I was a Viking old:
My deeds, though manifold,
No skald in song has told,
No saga taught thee.”

A glowing tribute is paid by the author to the Catholic faith and genius of Columbus, the unrivalled discoverer of America. In the very generation in which Columbus lived, the church established a bishopric within the present limits of our republic. Among the ambitious and hardy captains of that day was Pamphilo de Narvaez, who, in attempting the conquest of Florida, aspired to add to the Spanish crown a realm equal in extent and wealth to Mexico, and to rival the fame of Cortéz by his own exploits. The Franciscans were at his side, seeking a holier conquest, fired by no earthly ambition, but by a heavenly zeal. A bishopric was erected for Florida as the expedition was about to sail from the ports of Spain, and Juan Juarez, who had already won the title of one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, was appointed, in 1526, Bishop of Rio de las Palmes. He spent his brief sojourn in Spain in securing ample provision for his future flock, and in obtaining royal guarantees for the liberty and kind treatment of the natives. No time was left for his consecration; he hastened on board the fleet, and rushed to the spiritual relief of his children, whom he knew and “loved only in Christ.” After the disastrous termination of the expedition, he and his companions suffered shipwreck, and are believed to have perished of hunger--the second martyr of our church. Well has our author said of him, that he gave up his own life that he might 568 bestow upon others life eternal; and that he who died of hunger for God’s sake was greatly rewarded by that same God with celestial feasts, and replenished with seraphic delights; and has aptly applied to him those beautiful words of the Canticle:

“Esurientes implevit Bonis.”

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

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

“The most brilliant and fruitful service rendered by Bishop
Dubourg to the church, not only in America, but throughout the
most remote and unenlightened portions of the world, was the
leading part he took in founding the illustrious ‘Association for
the Propagation of the Faith.’ It has been well said that ‘the
establishment which M. Dubourg, while on his return to Louisiana
from Italy, made at Lyons, is of itself enough to immortalize his
name. He there formed, in 1815, the Association for the
Propagation of the Faith. This single institution, which conveys
benedictions unnumbered to millions, and which daily sounds the
glad tidings of a Saviour to those who are seated in the silence
of death, becomes a monument sufficient to eternize the memory of
Dubourg, and to shed a full ray of brightness on any college
associated with his name.’”

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

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

“‘And more formidable than all these, you must have girded
yourself to encounter, and by God’s help to overcome, that 569
fickleness and ingratitude of multitudes just released from
benumbing bondage, which could clamor in the wilderness to be led
back to the flesh-pots of Egypt; which, among the contemporaries
and even the followers of our Saviour, could leave him to bear in
solitude the agony of the cross; and which in your case, we
apprehend, will yet manifest itself in unreasonable expectations,
extravagant hopes, impetuous requirements, and in murmurings that
nothing has been earnestly intended, because everything has not
been already accomplished.

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

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

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

“The great struggle of Bishop England’s life in this country
seems to have been to present the Catholic Church, her doctrines
and practices, in their true light before the American people. In
his effort to do this his labors were indefatigable. His means of
accomplishing this end were various and well studied. He
endeavored, from his arrival in the country, to identify himself
thoroughly with its people, its institutions, its hopes, and its
future. He was vigilant and spirited in maintaining and defending
the honor and integrity of the country, as he was in upholding
the doctrines and practices of the church. In his oration on the
character of Washington, he so thoroughly enters into the
sentiments of our people, and participates so unreservedly in the
pride felt by the country in the _Pater Patriæ_, that his
language would seem to be that of a native of the country. There
was no movement for the public good in which he did not feel an
interest, and which he did not, to the extent of his
opportunities, endeavor to promote. His admiration for the
institutions of the country was sincere and unaffected. Though no
one encountered more prejudice and greater difficulties than he
did, he, on all occasions, as he did in his address before
Congress, endeavored to regard the prejudices and impressions
entertained by Protestants against Catholics as errors, which had
been impressed upon their minds by education and associations,
for which they themselves were not responsible. In his writings
and public sermons and addresses, he travelled over the wide
range of history, theology, and the arts, in order to vindicate
the spotless spouse of Christ against the calumnies of her
enemies. If Catholic citizens and voters were attacked on the 570
score of their fidelity to their country and its institutions,
Bishop England’s ready pen defended them from the calumny and
silenced their accusers. If a Catholic judge or public officer
was accused of false swearing or mental reservation in taking the
official oath, he found an irresistible and unanswerable champion
in the Bishop of Charleston. He found the church in the United
States comparatively defenceless on his accession to the See of
Charleston, but he soon rendered it a dangerous task in her
enemies to attack or vilify her; and many who ventured on this
mode of warfare were glad to retreat from the field, before the
crushing weapons of logic, erudition, and eloquence with which he
battled for his church, his creed, and his people....

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

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

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

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

The second volume contains the lives of thirty American bishops, and, in the Appendix, the lives of Right Rev. Charles Augustus de Forbin-Jansen, Bishop of Nancy, France, who visited this country in 1840, and rendered signal services to religion while here; of Right Rev. Edward Barron, who volunteered from this country for the African mission, was made Bishop of Africa in 1845, and died at Savannah, Georgia, in 1854, “a martyr of charity”; and of Cardinal Bedini, whose 571 visit to this country is in the recollection of our readers.

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

[118] _Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church
in the United States, with an Appendix and an Analytical
Index._ By Richard H. Clarke, A.M. In two vols. Vol. I.
New York: P. O’shea. 1871.

----------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

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

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

The present series of lectures on the Pope is fully equal to the former publications of the author in ability and excellence, if not superior to them. The subject, at any rate, makes it far the most interesting and important of any. F. Preston has merited well of the church by his zealous and efficient devotion to the cause of the Pope and the Holy See, and his continual efforts to instruct the Catholic laity in sound doctrine in this most essential matter. In this volume he has given us a lecture on the supremacy, another on the Papal infallibility, a third on the temporal sovereignty, and a fourth on the Pontificate of Pius IX. At the end, the decrees or constitutions of the Vatican Council and several recent allocutions of the Holy Father are given in Latin and English; and the whole is concluded by a carefully and critically prepared chronological list of the Sovereign Pontiffs, in which we are glad to see the Avignonian and Pisan claimants of the tiara relegated to their proper place on one side, while the succession is continued through the Roman line, which is unquestionably the true one. The lecture on infallibility is especially marked by solid learning and ample citations from the fathers, proving conclusively that this article of the faith was explicitly held and taught from the beginning. The style is grave and serious, copious and flowing, and warmed with a spirit of fervent love to the souls of men. It is the style, not of a mere essayist, but of 572 a preacher. It is, therefore, far more pleasing and popular in its character than that of most books on the same topic. Every Catholic in the United States ought to read it, and we doubt if any book has been published on the Pope equally fitted for general circulation in England and Ireland. Neither is there any so well fitted to do good among non-Catholics. We hope no pains will be spared to give it a wide and universal circulation.

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