Chapter XXII: Part II: Le Parti (6)

Who can hope, then, to persuade a Catholic that these successful shells, pick-locks, and jimmies have not been instruments of the most iniquitous wrong-doing, seeing that these two men, in the face of heaven and earth, averred its baseness themselves only a few weeks before the formal consummation of the act? Perhaps, too, our converters have never heard how their _divine_ Camillo Cavour said one day to their other _divine_ Massimo d’Azeglio, who has recorded it _ad perpetuam rei memoriam_: “If what we are doing for Italy, you and I had done for ourselves, what a precious pair of big _balossi_ we should have been!” The _Opinione_ knows too well the sense of the Subalpine word _balosso_ that we should put it into good Italian. The editor and his pharisaical colleagues have learned, no doubt, the lovely dialect of the northern masters they have chosen for Italy and for themselves. They can teach us, we dare say, the full force of this fine word _balosso_; that it means all that is contained in the words scamp, scoundrel, robber, rascal, villain, ruffian, knave. Can Catholics, then, be easily persuaded that the _facts accomplished_ by Azeglio and Cavour for the regeneration of Italy have been free from sin and iniquity, seeing that these two _divines_ have stigmatized them as the acts of men bad enough to be _balossi_? For be it observed that Azeglio himself admits that what is criminal in private life is no less criminal in public;[63] showing (though we are losing time in the attempt to throw light upon the sun) that our apostolic friends, in order to justify the _accomplished facts_ resorted to for Italy’s new birth, have been obliged to invent a modern social law the converse of the ancient one ordained by God himself.

If this be admitted, what can prove more incontestably that the acts complained of were acts of sin and iniquity; sin being any act contrary to God’s commands, and iniquity an act opposed to the justice he enjoins?

But Catholics may go further, and say to the apostles of our conversion that not only are the means used for the _regeneration_ of Italy sinful and iniquitous, but that the _end_ itself aimed at by the ringleaders of this pretended regeneration is absolutely antichristian and diabolical, being nothing less than the demolition of the Catholic Church and the annihilation of the kingdom of God among men. Of course, the _end_ is simply absurd, and rendered impossible by the excess of its absurdity. But nevertheless, though it cannot exist as a thing attainable, it does exist as a thing conceivable, and as such inspires the mad career of Masonry, which pursues it with satanic rage and open ostentation as the main objective point of the machinations of the sect.

Mazzini, to whom the _regenerators_ are indebted for their grand _idea_, aimed as far ago as 1834 at the abolition of the temporal power, without regard to cost. His argument was that the downfall of this power carried with it, as a necessary consequence, the emancipation of the human race from the thraldom of the spiritual power. “The Vicars of Christ” he called “Vicars of the Spirit of Evil, to be exterminated, never to be restored.”[64] Visconti-Venosta, a member of the present Italian cabinet, wrote to Mazzini, in 1851, that the rallying-cry of the _regeneration_ should be, “Down with the Monarchy, down with the Papacy.”[65]

Ferrari, the philosopher of the movement, proclaimed in 1853 that the end it proposed was the stamping out of Pope and Emperor, of Christ and Cæsar; the four tyrannies that Machiavelli had delivered over to Italian hate.[66]

To make this matter short, though we might go on for ever, the more rabid partisans of the _regeneration_ do not blush to say that the essential end of the great Italian movement is the emancipation of human consciences from the authority of the church, by laying prostrate the colossus against whom Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII. ineffectually strove. They aim, in a word, at the radical destruction of the entire Catholic Church; to which end, nationality, unity, political liberty itself, were always to be regarded as nothing more than the means.[67]

These preliminaries being understood, our free-thinking friends ought to see that their argument, derived from what they call “providential protection” to their sacrilegious acts, strikes the Catholic mind as a shocking blasphemy, because it makes our blessed Lord an accomplice in detestable transactions, and an instigator to the worst of crimes--a deliberate plotter, in short, of the ruin of that church which is the masterpiece of his wisdom, and the object of his infinite love. We have no objections to their saying that the anger of God has unchained their barbarous allies, and for a time has left them free to do their worst against the children of the church. They may say all this, and Catholics will assent and even approve--not the _animus_, but the words. They will exclaim with St. Jerome of old, when the barbarians of that day were making havoc of the things of God: _Peccatis nostris barbari fortes sunt_[68]--“In our sins the barbarians are strong.” But let them not venture to say that Almighty God, because he allows them a fatal facility of blasphemous impiety, protects and even caresses this impiety. For religious men will answer them: Yes, he protects and caresses you, as he protected and caressed the crucifiers of his only-begotten Son.

And here we entreat the Israelitish editor of the _Opinione_ to pay strict attention to what we have to say, inasmuch as it concerns him in his nationality; since he is an Israelite by nature and nation, and Italian only by the place of his accidental birth.

The synagogue, sustained by the coalition of Pharisees and Sadducees, undertook to regenerate Judea by taking the life of Jesus, Son of God, true God and true Man. The great sin of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the synagogue was similar to that of the church of Jesus in the eyes of the Masonic Order. He was the Son of God and the Word of Truth, as the church is his spouse and the organ of the truth.

But there stood many obstacles in the way of compassing his death. First, there needed a lawful sanction, and there was none. Secondly, it was necessary to take him captive, a very dangerous undertaking, for he was always surrounded by throngs of devoted followers and friends. Thirdly, it was necessary to keep the people in good humor, or, as Jesus was their principal benefactor, they might rebel against this public execution. Fourthly, it was necessary to ascertain that the Romans, who had cognizance of capital cases in Palestine, would connive at his trial for life and at his sentence to death. Fifthly, they had to risk the display of his miraculous power, for his miracles surpassed all that had ever been seen in Israel. It must be admitted that these difficulties were very formidable. Yet what happened? _Everything was made easy._ The sanction of law was found in a tissue of lies and political misindictments, successful beyond all expectation. His capture proved the easiest imaginable, through the unexpected treachery of one of his own disciples, who sold him for a bauble. The populace was led with wonderful facility not only not to rise to his rescue, but in a solemn _plébiscite_ to save the robber Barabbas at his expense, and to sentence him to an ignominious death. The Romans made some show, through Pilate, in his defence; but after five times declaring him innocent of every charge, condemned him to the cross, following the will of the synagogue to the last; and finally Jesus, though challenged with insult to the exercise of his supernatural powers, abstained mysteriously from their use, and did nothing to withdraw himself from torture or death. Could any greater facility of consummation be imagined than was here shown in the _accomplishment_ of this tremendous deicidal _act_? But will our Israelitish apostle have the heart to undertake to win over Italian Catholics to the belief that the wonderful _success_ of the crucifixion (permitted, as it undeniably was) is to be construed as a caress bestowed by Providence upon a corrupt and apostate synagogue, and as a palpable and unmistakable proof of his protection of the bloody and treacherous council that sentenced him to death?

Between the Jewish sacrilege directed against the adorable Person of the Incarnate Word, and the Italian sacrilege against the Vicar of that Word, there is but this distinction: that the Person aimed at in the former was God present in his human nature, and the Person aimed at in the latter was God present in his church.

In the days of Pontius Pilate and Caiphas, the Jews slew the material body of our Blessed Lord: the latter-day Jews, in these days of Lanza and Visconti-Venosta, would, if they could, slay the Spiritual Body of the same Jesus Christ. And do you dare, wretched Pharisees, to ask of us Catholic believers to recognize in the facilities that have attended until now this monstrous sacrilege of yours, this second deicidal act, the smiles of an approving Providence, and the marks of a divine protection accorded to the prompt success of your heaven-defying crime?

The capital error of the gross and impious sophism now the subject of our comment, consists evidently in the assumption that easy and unexpected success (in operations ordinarily of a very arduous character) is a sure note of the divine approval, even when the accomplished facts are manifest breaches of the Decalogue.

A proposition of this sort, if it had the least value, would serve to sanction any atrocity, however monstrous, provided it were only successfully and rapidly achieved.

Such wretches as Passatori, Ninco Nanchi, Carusi, and Troppmann ought in this view to be regarded as protected and caressed by Divine Providence. Every prosperous villain would only have to quote to his judges the argument of the _Opinione_ to conciliate their approbation, and to obtain from them not only an acquittal, but an honorable testimonial in high praise of these favorites of heaven.

True it is, however, that a striking and brilliant success dazzles the judgment of men without faith, or of men with faith as sensual as their flesh.

We Catholics, on the contrary, are rich in the possession of a divine promise which keeps us cheerful and buoyant with hope in the face of what seems like the final triumph of the wicked. And this is more especially true when we have to deal with those who plot against the church and its visible Head, _adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus_. Nobody that we know of has set this promise in a truer light than P. Paul Segneri, and we take the liberty to transcribe here for our readers two or three passages of his, which are just so much gold to the purpose we have in view.

“‘The prosperity of fools,’ says Solomon, ‘shall destroy them.’ He does not say ‘destroys them,’ but ‘shall destroy them.’ Why so? Because the prosperity of the wicked does not always produce immediately its disastrous effects. Sometimes the reverse comes after long delay. Wait patiently. You will see the end of what seems to begin so well. Have you never read in the Book of Job how that the Almighty takes pleasure in defeating the machinations of the impious? He brings their counsellors to a foolish end.” Not to a bad beginning. No; all seems prosperous at first. It is the end that is disastrous. He lets them raise aloft their mighty tower of Babel. But afterwards, in the confusion of their pride, they disperse and are gone. He lets them build up the beautiful towers of Siloe; but these fall, and the builders are buried beneath the ruins. For want of this reflection, many men wonder at the prosperity of the wicked. Even the prophets themselves address God sometimes with tender reproaches. They almost accuse him, I might say. We are apt to look too much at the beginning of things, and not, like holy David, at the end. _Donec intelligam in novissimis eorum._ As much as to say, they are so taken up with gazing upon the comely golden head of their tall Babylonian colossus, that they have not thought of lowering their eyes to see its brittle legs of clay. Now hear me, and witness the establishment of the truth. If ever since the birth of Christ there was a race of men who rose by unscrupulous arts to enormous wealth and power, it was doubtless the Greek emperors, tyrants as they may well be called. Now answer me, Have there ever existed empires which have furnished subjects for tragedy more truly horrible than theirs?

“Nicephorus succeeded at first by the employment of dishonest means to usurp the imperial power, driving away the right inheritress, Irene. What then? Crushed by a series of misfortunes, he began to look upon himself as a modern Pharaoh, hardened by defeats. Finally, vanquished and slain by the Bulgarians, his enemies made a drinking-cup of his skull, and out of joy or derision used it as such in the diversions of the camp. Stauratius by illegitimate alliances, and Leo the Armenian by repeated high-handed rebellions, succeeded in establishing themselves in the height of power. How long was it before these two men died under the blows of the assassin, the former in war, and the latter at the altar he had profaned? Michael the Stammerer was so fortunate as to step, in his famous conspiracy, from the dungeon to the throne; demanding there the worship of his subjects, the chain still on his neck and the fetters on his feet. Intoxicated by his success, he compelled a holy virgin to share his bed. All Sclavonia revolted, his entire army deserted him; nor yet repenting, he was literally devoured by a malady the most disgusting. Theophilus was successful in suppressing, for reasons of state, the veneration of sacred images; but almost immediately after, on being shamefully defeated by the Saracens, died of rage and intense mortification. Michael III., regarded as another Nero on account of his licentiousness and cruelty, succeeded so far as to put his mother and guardians out of the way, in order to reign without opposition or control. He ended his ‘prosperous’ career by kindling against himself the hatred of his subjects, and encountered rebellion after rebellion, in the last of which, in the midst of a drunken debauch, he paid the forfeit of his life. Alexander attained a sort of success in plundering the holy altars, and in appropriating the gold thus obtained to his own private use; but very soon thereafter he was seized with a sudden madness, and he had not held out a year when he ended his life in a fearful vomiting of blood. What shall I say of Romanus I.? He too was successful to all appearance; for, by a stratagem of wonderful adroitness, he expelled the legitimate possessor from the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and placed in it a mere child, his own son. The year following he himself was driven from the imperial throne by another son, and banished to a lonely isle for life. So also fared it with Romanus II. Impelled by the lust of dominion, he took the life of his own father by poison. His own life was taken very shortly after, and by the self-same means. Michael Paphlagonius, by infamous devices, carried his point of usurping the throne. Seized suddenly with demoniacal obsession, he could obtain no repose. Exorcisms and almsgivings were tried in vain. He died as he lived, with his agony unrelieved. Michael Calaphates was ‘successful’ in driving the empress into exile, that he might reign alone; but the people rose against him at once, stoned him, deprived him of sight, and dragged him through the city streets more dead than alive. Diogenes and Andronicus, two usurpers who had ‘succeeded’ in their treason, one by a courtesan’s vile aid, the other by the arm of an assassin, came to the same lamentable end.

“Now answer me! Can you look upon as truly successful the wicked arts which brought these bad men to power? Speak out! Would you be willing to enjoy their ‘prosperity’ if with it you had to accept its reverse? Is there any one so stupid as to envy their short-lived ‘good luck’? Rest assured that such has ever been the fate of those who attain for a time their unhallowed ends by iniquitous means. ‘The prosperity of fools will destroy them.’ Doubt it not, my friends. The prosperity of fools will most assuredly destroy them. It is hardly worth while to labor longer in the proof. All writings, all ages, all powers, attest in unison this truth, that ‘Justice exalteth a nation’; and this other, that ‘Injustice leadeth a nation to misery and ruin.’ These are the words of one who was the wisest among men; and elsewhere he says, ‘Man shall not be strengthened by wickedness’; and, again, ‘The unjust shall be caught in their own snares’; and then, again, ‘They who sow iniquity shall reap destruction.’”

Thus, by examples drawn from the annals of the Byzantines (a race dear to our modern liberals), the eloquent Segneri points out the end which, according to Holy Writ, awaits the criminal successes of the wicked. If he had chosen to embrace a wider range of history, he might have compiled an endless catalogue of examples the most frightful; commencing with the dreadful success of the crucifixion of our ever blessed Lord, of which the sequel was as dreadful a retribution. The synagogue nailed the Messiah to the cross, under the pretext that otherwise the Romans would come and occupy Jerusalem. And _precisely because_ they did this wicked thing, the Romans took Jerusalem and levelled it to the ground. So that the very success of the Jews, which, execrable as it was, the _Opinione_ would have adored as a protecting caress bestowed by Providence upon Sion, ended simply in bringing upon the guilty city a horrible siege and irremediable ruin.

We content ourselves, for our part, in citing the Roman Cæsars, who, in the first three centuries, renewed ten different times, and with all the incidents of success, the bloody persecution of the followers of Christ. All of these, without a single exception, came to a wretched end. When the fourth century arrived to witness the triumph of Christianity, the descendants of the persecuting emperors were found extinct by foul or violent deaths; the series closing with Maximin breathing his last amid the agonies of poison and the blasphemous howlings of despair, and with Candidianus (the adulterous son of Galerius, adopted by Valeria, Maximin’s wife) murdered by Licinius along with another brother, a sister in tender age, and finally Valeria herself. It thus appears that the massacre of the Christians, which our modern Caiphases would have celebrated as an edifying “divine caress,” had this one effect after all, viz., to bring around the lasting triumph of the persecuted cause. It was the children of the slaughtered ones who were victorious in the end; the progeny of the slaughterers died suffocated in the blood which their guilty fathers had shed.

We might easily continue these examples, and recount, for instance, the end to which a career of successful iniquity at last conducted Julian the Apostate, the idol and exemplar of our Italian regenerators. We might enlarge on the fates of Astolphus and Desiderius, whose “patriotism” they so much admire. We might with still more force bring out contemporary cases, the case of Cavour, for example, withdrawn suddenly away by an ominous death in the flower of life from the hosannas of the people he had misled; the case of Farini, Cavour’s right-hand man, struck also in life’s prime by a shocking frenzy which urged him to acts incredibly revolting, and soon after to a most painful death; the case of Fanti, the plunderer of Umbria, who, before he could die, was tortured for a year with all the agonies of death; the case of Persano, the bombarder of Ancona, who, after making shipwreck on the sea of Lissa of his rank and reputation, avenged himself of fortune by publishing the infamies of the successful revolution. And to these we might add the cases of Pinelli, of Valerio, of La Farina, and of a hundred others equally conclusive. We might even quote examples among the living; of a certain _regenerator_, who, in spite of his impious successes, roams incessantly from place to place seeking a rest he cannot find--condemned, it would seem, to endure the torments of Caina, Antenora, and Ptolomea in Dante’s ninth circle of hell, and to realize in himself the fate described by Alberigo:

“This boon the sufferer hath, if boon it be--
Ofttimes to know the pangs of parting breath,
Ere Atropos shuts down the shears of death.”

To be brief, we shall confine ourselves to the two most distinguished and most successful persecutors of popes--Frederick II., a mediæval emperor of Germany, and Napoleon the First, a French emperor of the modern sort. Both of these men, in the studied outrages they inflicted, the one upon Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., the other on Pius VII., were encouraged by such marvellous successes that our Israelitish proselytizer would have had them canonized as the very Benjamins of Providence. Suffice it to say that Frederick II. had his political Cæsarism preached into right divine by the most learned jurists of his day, just as Napoleon I. made the most powerful monarchy of Europe kneel down and adore his bloodier Cæsarism of the sword. Both the one and the other returning from their triumphs, carried fortune, to all appearance, chained for ever to their cars. The more they raged against Christ’s Vicar, the more their victory seemed complete. The greater the number of excommunications they incurred, the easier seemed to be their subsequent encroachments. It was after the last papal censure that Frederick gained the adhesion of several powerful barons in Rome. It was after the Pope’s worst imprisonment that Napoleon won his greatest battles, making them the subjects of the most vainglorious boasts, that he had thus received from the God of armies special marks of approbation--“caresses,” as the _Opinione_ calls them, when bestowed upon the enemies of the church.

Yet where did they end, these lucky sacrileges, this prodigious and prolonged prosperity of crime? Both these men outlived their glittering fortunes. The false magnificence and grandeur for which they had thrown away their souls, turned to ashes in their grasp.

King Henry, Frederick’s eldest son, dies in prison, leaving a son who was struck dead by a blow from an unknown hand. Enzio, his bastard offspring, created by him King of Sardinia, after twenty-five years of imprisonment in a cage of iron dies a miserable death. Ezzelino, his son-in-law closes with a horrible end a life, if possible, of greater horror. His great champion, Thaddeus of Suessa, is slain with every accompaniment of contempt. Pier delle Vigne, his evil genius, has his eyes thrust out, and commits suicide in his despair. Frederick himself, after surviving all these horrors, is strangled by Manfredi, another of his base-born sons, who, after bathing his gory hands in the blood of Conrad, Frederick’s lawful son, is himself stretched dead on the field of a dishonorable strife. To close this interminable tragedy, Corradino, the last scion of the hated tyrant, ends on a felon’s scaffold his seventeen short years of life. With this unfortunate youth the dynasty of Frederick is closed. The empire passes over into other hands, and Rodolph of Hapsburg reigns, the first of a better line.

The fall of Napoleon I. is still remembered as an event of recent date. Elated with his continual victories, he invaded Russia with the most formidable army the world ever saw. Warned that he had the fate of the excommunicated to encounter, he asked in scorn whether his soldiers would drop their muskets at the sight of a Papal Bull. Forced to retreat after a show of vain success, famine and frost decimated his ranks, and his soldiers’ frozen fingers refused to hold the interdicted arms. Unable to contend against fast-increasing numbers, he found himself by a strange fatality compelled to renounce the crown in the very palace at Fontainebleau which he had turned into a prison for the Pope. The Holy Father had quitted it to resume the throne. The fallen emperor left it to accept in Elba an asylum which he begged as a shelter in his friendless old age. Leaving his place of refuge, in a mad attempt to resuscitate his fortunes, he incurred at Waterloo a ruin the most disastrous ever known. Stripped of every resource, he was dragged to a prison-cell on a miserable island, scarcely noticeable in its vast expanse of sea. From this inhospitable rock, he was permitted to contemplate the plenary restoration of the mysterious Papal power, and simultaneously the downfall of all the thrones he had presented to his brothers and next of kin. After spending, in desolate captivity, the five years he had decreed of prison to the blameless Pius VII., he gave up his tortured soul to meet the just displeasure of his God. What more striking confirmation can we ask of the truth of those awful words, “They who sow injustice” sooner or later “shall reap its bitter fruits”?

It would not do to pass without notice the still living and speaking case of Napoleon III. Who but he has been the foremost leader of the _regenerators_ of unhappy Italy? The Gog and Magog of our Italian pharisees! And are not these the men who fell down and worshipped the divine prosperity of their master’s eighteen years of empire? Have they not claimed it as a miracle of God’s favor, a long and lasting “caress” of Providence, the possible failure of which it would be impious to suspect? Have they not sung and celebrated, time and again, the famous victory of Solferino as a prodigy sent from heaven to show that the Almighty took the side of Italy, and had declared against the Pope?

Well, now, what has become of this epopee of miraculous prosperity, this note of ruin to Catholic Christianity, to the claims of the Holy See, and (as justly we might say) to the repose and peace of Europe? It came to naught in Sedan, in a military defeat and a dynastic misfortune the most appalling that ever was known or written of in the world.

And it _so_ came to naught precisely because of the “success” at Solferino. That victory of Napoleon’s, chanted so loudly and so often by the pious Jew editor of the _Opinione_ as an unmistakable revelation of God’s decision in favor of Bonaparte and his new Italy--that victory (when the hour of Sedan had come) was plainly seen as the manifest cause of his every subsequent reverse. Who can help perceiving now that, had not Austria lost the battle of Solferino, won by France that Italy might be “made,” Austria would not have lost the battle at Sadowa, achieved by Prussia that Germany might be “made”? And had not Austria lost at Sadowa, is it not plain that Napoleon would never have been dragged down into the horrible catastrophe of Sedan? In this catastrophe we find the meaning of the “approving smile” at Solferino. The “caress,” we are told, was intended for the third Napoleon. For whom, then, was intended the crushing dispensation at Sedan?

Will our kind converters to the new reading of the ways of Providence reflect maturely on this matter? All genuine Christian gentlemen, all admitted men of honor (except a few who were misled), regarded the war of 1859, so well characterized by the victory of Solferino, as iniquitous in its motives and as anti-Christian in its scope. It was looked upon by all as a _magnum latrocinium_, a godless scheme of robbery; but it had what its perpetrators called “a great success.” Eleven years roll by, and what do we see?

Napoleon III., at first so splendidly victorious by the force of an act of larceny that dispossessed four princes and displaced the Pope, is caught at last like a weasel in a trap, dethroned in his turn, driven off in scorn, steeped to the lips in indelible disgrace; all his marshals and generals, without a solitary exception, ignominiously humbled, soundly beaten, and detained in durance vile by a logical rebound from their first Italian success; all his army, four hundred thousand strong, lately invincible, now led into exile or captivity, to shiver with cold or to wince under the epithets of scorn. Victorious France, in retribution for her “new idea” of _nationality_, and to set the good example, yields up the costly tribute of _two_ of her wealthiest provinces; just the number she had stolen from Italy, on the strength of the “new idea,” as her due for allowing Piedmont to absorb the entire peninsula within her ravenous maw.

How is it possible not to recognize, in this unprecedented drama, the real lesson of divine retaliation, the exclusive right of Providence to repay--to exact eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and life for life, when such extremity is required? Who will hesitate to say with the poet:

“The sword of God is strict, and cuts amain.
But still in stated measure, time, and place,
Till all things find their equal own again.”

And in this most memorable reverse of Napoleon III., we invite our apostolic interpreters of Providence to note a special fact. The fallen emperor not only lives to realize the forfeiture of all his fame, differing herein from those who die before the loss, but has to endure the bitterness of witnessing the demolition of all the proud creations of his reign. He had raised France to the pinnacle of earthly greatness, had just crowned, as he himself phrased it, the glorious edifice his genius had successfully constructed. France is now dismembered, dilapidated, a mass of melancholy ruin; reduced to chaos militarily, morally, politically, and to a great extent materially, if this last trait be deemed of much account.

He had decorated the palaces of St. Cloud and the Tuileries with munificence more than Asiatic. They are stripped to the bare walls. He rose, on the wings of the _plébiscite_, from obscurity to a throne. The _plébiscite_ is now an obsolete absurdity. The treaty of Paris, which crowned the triumphs of the East; the Chinese victories and ovations at Canton and Palikao; the Mexican Empire, the fruit of so much toil and treasure, the price of the good name and fame of France; the Prague conventions, intended to defeat the growth of Prussia into a vast and consolidated Germany--of all these magnificent enterprises not a trace. In short, the countless dazzling exploits of the prosperous reign of the third Napoleon have vanished for ever like so many dissolving views. One work, one only work survives--the Subalpine government of Italy, to lick which hideous monster into shape the unhappy monarch threw recklessly away his honor and his crown. We might pursue this train of thought to its logical conclusion, but we refrain. Too strict an application of the laws of logic might bring us into conflict with other laws which we prefer not to provoke. But we may perhaps venture to request our pious friends of the “Regeneration” to undertake the argument themselves--an argument which runs on almost of itself, being one of the kind which dialecticians call reasoning from analogy. Let them look to it well, and say if there be not better ground to be anxious about the life of their _Italy_ than there is to be solicitous about converting Catholics to the modern dogma, that the voice of an accomplished fact is no less than the voice of God; that the lucky consummation of a crime is itself the signal of the divine applause. Let them reflect that not a fact, which ceases afterwards to be a fact, can come into being or go out of it, without, at least, the permissive sanction of Almighty God. Let them pause and consider that the series of events, opened by Providence in 1859, is not absolutely or finally closed. Let them ever bear in mind that, when least it is expected, Providence may complete the line of this analogy by dissolving into nothingness the only remnant left of all the Napoleonic creations. The world and the ages will then believe that not a single one of the supposed marks of the divine “caress,” claimed by Italy’s _regenerators_, was really a mark of favor; but simply one of the many illustrations of the way in which the scorner is caught in the midst of his devices: _In insidiis suis capientur iniqui_.

In what we have advanced, we have, as seems to us, fairly and fully refuted the boastful syllogism of our adversaries. We shall conclude by exhorting them to lay aside all hope of converting Catholics by a show of blasphemous successes or an appeal to the longest impunity of crime. Go on, gentlemen! Enjoy your fortune! Vaunt as loudly as you will the triumphs you have secured over us, over the church, over the rights of the Holy See. Do all this, and welcome. But when you come to tell us that Providence is “caressing your cause,” and ask our adhesion to this impiety, we warn you to desist. Satan himself would not dare to give utterance to such an insult, or even to harbor such a thought. Providence has allowed you, in the abuse of your own free-will, a certain measure of easy success; as he allowed it to the synagogue, to the Cæsars, to Julian the Apostate, to Desiderius, and to all such of your predecessors as were permitted for a time to triumph over Christ and his commandments. And this he has allowed to you, not as to his loved ones, but as to his persecutors, that you may be the rod of his justice against the sins of the world. He will make this to yourselves, if you repent not, a snare and a delusion; to the church, an assurance of greater exaltation; and to all of us, a call to better service and obedience. We as Catholics know that we must bow beneath your blows. We bear the pain of them in peace, because faith teaches us that even scourges are wielded by God, and that his hand is to be kissed as much when it strikes as when it strengthens. For this reason we can accept you as you are. And yet we see in you no higher mark than that of our flagellators and the exercisers of our patience; but be warned in time. God makes use of his scourges, and then destroys them. We have made this plain to you by innumerable examples. Beware! for the prosperous days of God’s scourges end invariably in misfortune and disaster. Beware, for the good times of the enemies of Jesus Christ and his church have ever been as pitfalls with a covering of roses; yokes of iron masked by a drapery of flowers. On the contrary, from her greatest tribulations the church has ever issued brighter, lovelier, and more radiant than before. She numbers as many victories as battles, as many prisoners as foes. All the promises of God are for her and against you, and all history attests that of these promises not a syllable has failed. The church is our mother; her cause is our own. We have, therefore, no fear for the result. You may scorn us, you may strip us, you may deny us the protection of the laws. You may tear us limb from limb during the brief occasion of your power. But conquer us, no! In all eternity, you cannot. God has ordered it that we shall be _your victors_. Rallying close to the Vicar of the King of heaven, and faithful to the call of his immortal Spouse, we shall announce to you, with front uplifted, that we have conquered you; or (if that better pleases you) that Christ has conquered you through us. Laugh to your hearts’ content at this faith of ours. All your predecessors have done as much. Yet who triumphed in the end? So certain are we of the victory that we scarce dare hasten it by our desires. The thought of the bolts of divine wrath impending over you appalls us, and we abstain, out of pity for you, from asking what Dante, on a like occasion, prayed for in these words:

“O God! when wilt thou give me to be blest
To see thy vengeance, which, long hid, made sweet
The sacred anger garnered in thy breast?”
_Purg._, c. xx.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] In Psalm liv.

[63] See _Diary of C. Pisano_, fourth part, p. 125.

[64] _Ai giovani Italiani_, p. 15.

[65] See _L’Unità Italiana di Milano_, April 14, 1863.

[66] See _The Republican Federation of the Peoples_.

[67] See _Il Diritto_, July 31 and August 11, 1863.

[68] Epist. i. ad Eliod.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LITTLE PIERRE, THE PEDLAR OF ALSACE; or, The Reward of Filial
Piety. Translated from the French by J. M. C. With 27
illustrations. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 236. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1872.

The French can write charming stories, as every one knows. _Little Pierre_ is one of the best we have seen in a long time--such a one as enchants a child, and makes him or her unwilling to lay it aside for supper or bed. It leads one through the romantic scenes of Alsace and the country of the Rhine, has plenty of stirring adventures, and, what is best of all, ends in a capital and satisfactory manner: Pierre and his little sister happily married, the old lady comfortable, Pierre a well-to-do merchant at Niederbronn. The illustrations, twenty-seven in all, which have been recut from the originals for the American edition, are uncommonly well executed. Little Pierre is destined to become an intimate friend of our young folks, to say nothing of Christine and Lolotte. Perhaps the most comical scene in the book is where Little Pierre is put by Madame Frank in the top of a Christmas-tree, with the name of little Cecile pinned on his breast. The most touching scene is the finding of little Lolotte in the wood, with her eyes bandaged and her hands tied. We advise our young readers not to rest until they get possession of this pretty book.

* * * * *

THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, from the Days
of Wolsey to the Death of Cranmer. Papal and Anti-Papal
Notables. By S. H. Burke, author of “The Monastic Houses of
England.” 2 vols. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1872.

This is a work which fairly answers its title, and we have in its two handsome duodecimo volumes sketches and descriptions so graphic of the men and women of the English Reformation as to place them most vividly before us.

Beginning with the unlovely correspondence of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, and recounting many interesting details of the divorce question, the narrative passes on to a review of the leading incidents and the principal personages of the reign of Henry. The political murders of Sir Thomas More and of Bishop Fisher, the death of Queen Katharine, and the fall of Anne Boleyn, are described with fresh details of interest drawn from newly opened sources of historic information.

On the subject of “Clerical Reformers and their Spouses,” there is a very readable chapter, and, with a full disquisition upon the “Religious Institutions of Old England,” we have startling statements concerning the character of the “Monastic Inquisitors” under that arch-villain, Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s Secretary of State, as will open the eyes of such as are unaware of the depth of infamy fathomed by the scoundrels who stole or wasted the wealth of England’s grand mediæval charities and robbed the poor and the sick of their sole heritage of succor and consolation. At the sight of the suffering entailed by the destruction of the monasteries, those glorious asylums of religion, charity, and learning, even as enthusiastic a panegyrist of the Reformation as Froude cannot help exclaiming: “To the universities, the Reformation had brought with it desolation. _To the people of England it had brought misery and want. The once open hand was closed._ ... The prisons were crowded.... Monks and nuns pointed with bitter effect to the fruits of _the new belief, which had been crimsoned in the blood of thousands of the English peasants_.”

The second volume gives us the principal events and personages of the end of the reign of Henry VIII. and of the reigns of Edward VI. and of Mary Tudor; and effective use is made not only of authentic documentary evidence which has come to light within the past seven years, but also of the important, because impartial, testimony of distinguished Protestant writers, such as Hook, Maitland, Brewer, Blunt, and Stephenson. We commend the work as one of exceeding interest.

* * * * *

THE LIFE OF MARIE-EUSTELLE HARPAIN, the Sempstress of St.
Pallais, called “The Angel of the Eucharist.” Second
edition. London: Burns, Oates, & Co.; New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1872.

This is one of the most interesting lives which we have read. The lives of the saints always should be interesting, but often the methodical and dry way in which they are, as we may say, constructed, has a discouraging effect upon the reader greater than that which the heroic virtues of their subjects can produce. This is not the case with this memoir of one whom we may be allowed to call a saint, though she has not yet been recognized as such by the church, always prudent, and especially so with regard to canonizations. Marie-Eustelle died in 1842, at the age of 28, and belongs entirely to this nineteenth century, which is so ignorant of its true glories. Her life is quite imitable in most respects, as well as admirable, which is an additional reason for reading a book that is so very readable.

* * * * *

THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. With
twenty-one Illustrations, from original designs by D. Mosler,
H. Warren, and J. H. Powell, engraved by Holman and Bale. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society.

The Rev. Mr. Formby, whose zeal, learning, and taste have so enriched the library of Catholic books for the young, gives here a popular work on the Parables, which will be wonderfully attractive. The Parables are all given in full, with fine illustrations to fix them on the mind, and explanations of their spiritual sense, drawn from the holy fathers. These beautiful lessons of our Lord cannot be too deeply impressed on minds to serve as subjects of meditation, and, well understood, they will prove sources of many graces. Outside the church, they remain to most “mere parables, not unfrequently indeed admired, and even quoted, beautiful in their way as anecdotes, but without in the least disclosing their true meaning.”

* * * * *

THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; or, The Seven
Pillars of the House of Wisdom. A Brief Explanation of the
Catholic Doctrine of the Seven Sacraments, in connection with
their corresponding types in the Old Testament. Illustrated
with sixteen original designs by J. Powell, engraved on wood
by the brothers Dalziel. By the Rev. Henry Formby, Priest of
the Diocese of Birmingham. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society.

Another of Mr. Formby’s charming books, “not meant as a book of piety alone, but rather intended as a book of general popular knowledge.” He saw clearly the want of our time. “The whole tone and spirit of modern civilization is built upon the denial that there either is or can be anything superior to itself, or, indeed, anything that is not of its own order of things in the world.” “The young mind cannot be too soon made aware of the contradiction between the world and our Lord, and cannot be too soon and too effectually brought up to love and abide by all that our divine Lord has taught, and made firmly to disregard and despise all that is contrary to it in the world’s doctrine, from the knowledge that our Lord is greater than the world.”

* * * * *

THE SCHOOL KEEPSAKE, AND MONITOR FOR AFTER LIFE. By Rev.
H. Formby. With illustrations. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society.

This perfectly beautiful little gift for the young leaving school is one so attractive in itself that it cannot fail to be kept; so sound, so clear, so distinct in its matter, that it cannot but be such a help as will gladden the guardian angel watching over the child as it steps from the school into the busy world.

* * * * *

THE DEVOTION OF THE SEVEN DOLORS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
Translated by the Rev. Henry Formby. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society.

A devotion approved by the highest authority, commended by the example of saints, and one full of consolation and piety, is here presented in a form that will give it currency among many who had overlooked it. No one can sorrow with Mary over the sorrows of Jesus without a return on self, and a sense of what our sins, the cause of all, demand on our part.

* * * * *

SCHOOL SONGS, to which music is adapted. Complete volume
containing--Part I., The Junior School Song-Book; Part II.,
The Senior School Song-Book. Edited by the Rev. Henry Formby.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

Amid the abundance of bad books, it is delightful to find a miniature volume like this of 200 pages, containing hymns, nursery rhymes, ballads, and minor poems suited to the young selected with care. The young must laugh and play; they will sing hymns sometimes, touching ballads sometimes, nonsense sometimes; give them all this to sing, but keep them from the immoral and low, slangy songs that even our music stores are now flooding the land with. We hope this little collection will sell by the thousand. It is cheap and it is good.

* * * * *

WILD FLOWERS OF WISCONSIN. By B. J. Dorward. Edited by his son.
Milwaukee: Catholic News Co.

The productions of our author, under the signature of “Porte Crayon,”[69] have long been favorites of the Western public. The late Dr. J. V. Huntington, a poet and critic of no ordinary ability, sought him out and secured his contributions to the St. Louis _Leader_. His poems are characterized by a beautiful simplicity and spontaneity, genuine sentiment, and native good sense. Other poets may exhibit the delicate touch of the artist in elaborate and polished images, but the efforts of writers like the present must be the inspiration of the moment, and the less forethought they show, the more are they enhanced in value. To change the figure, the wild flowers lose their hues and fragrance if subjected to hot-house processes. The former excite our admiration, the latter elicit our sympathy, and perhaps live longer in the memory by those “touches of nature which make the whole world kin.”

We bespeak a welcome to these flowers of song on the part of those who love poetry in its native simplicity, who set a proper estimate on all that is gentle, pure, and kind in the sentiments of our common nature, noble and sublime in our common faith, and would cultivate an indigenous literature worthy of the name.

Among many gems of thought and feeling, we can only particularize: “To a Bird in Church,” “By the Rivulet,” “To the Memory of Dr. J. V. Huntington,” “St. Mary’s of the Pines,” “The Datura,” and “A Soldier’s Funeral.”

* * * * *

A SISTER’S STORY. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the
French, by Emily Bowles. Fourth American edition. 1 vol. 8vo,
pp. 539. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

It is with pleasure that we announce the appearance of a fourth American edition of this exquisite and charming book, whose reputation and circulation have become world-wide. Even the publications most hostile to our holy religion have been compelled to eulogize it, although evidently feeling very uneasy about its great and increasing popularity among non-Catholic readers. The great discovery of a forgery in one part of the history which the _New Englander_ fancied itself to have made, is known to a great part of the reading public. This supposed _forgery_ was a profession of faith by the subject of the story, differing in form from one given in a French edition (14th of Didier, Paris), which the _New Englander_ rather hastily concluded to be the genuine and authentic form which Mrs. Craven had published. The _New Englander_ did not, however, express any suspicion that this forgery had been perpetrated by the American editors--on the contrary, disclaimed any such suspicion. Refinement of language, cautiousness in making infamous charges against persons of high character, and similar marks which denote gentlemanly and conscientious principles in a literary man, are, however, unhappily too rare among the conductors of the “Moral Spouting Horns” of the American press. Following those instincts by which they are usually impelled, and imitating a long series of precedents furnished by those who have been their precursors in their honorable trade, several of these papers, the _Independent_ leading off, accused the American editors and publisher of the work with having forged a “profession of faith” to suit themselves. Says the _Independent_ of Jan. 15:

“The creed of this good Catholic was not half papistical enough
to suit these American editors; so they have introduced into
it not only what she did believe, but what, in their judgment,
she ought to have believed. We desire to call the attention of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD and the _Tablet_ to this translation. It is
possible there may be some explanation of what seems to be an
astonishing piece of literary knavery. If there be, we should be
glad to hear of it.”

To this the publisher, in the “Literary Bulletin” of THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April, replied that--

“The Catholic Publication Society’s edition is printed exactly,
word for word, from the first London edition, published by the
respectable house of Bentley, in three volumes. If any deviation
from the French was made, ‘The Catholic Publication Society’
did not make it, but followed the London edition in good faith,
knowing the high source from which it emanated. But as the
writer in the _New Englander_ quotes from the _fourteenth French
edition_, how does he know that the alteration may not have been
made in that or previous French editions? We have written to the
translator [Miss Bowles] in reference to this matter.”

But this did not seem to satisfy the _Independent_, for in its issue of April 4 it reiterates its accusation of forgery as follows:

“Let us ask once more (this makes three times) what our Catholic
neighbor thinks of that forgery in one of the books of ‘The
Catholic Publication Society’ which was exposed in the January
number of the _New Englander_. We have looked in vain in the
columns of the _Tablet_ for a denunciation of this pious fraud,
and our diligent questioning has failed to elicit from that
usually fair journal any reply.”

The Chicago _Advance_ is another paper that took particular pleasure in re-echoing the “forgery”; but, unlike the _Independent_, it notices the denial put forth in the “Bulletin” of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and says:

“THE WORLD at last notices the forged prayer in the ‘Sister’s
Story,’ brought to light by the _New Englander_, but affirms that
‘The Catholic Publication Society’ reprinted it verbatim from
Bentley’s London edition; and rather improbably suggests that the
alteration may have been made in one of the later French editions
of the original. Meanwhile, the editor says that the translator
[Miss Bowles] has been written to about it. We want THE WORLD to
be sure to publish her reply.”

To which we reply: Here is the letter.

“5A DAVIES ST., BERKELEY SQ.,
LONDON, W., March 18th, 1872.

“SIR: The ‘Profession of Faith’ in the first edition (3 vols.) of _A Sister’s Story_ was the correct one, given me by Mrs. Craven herself. I think she said it was incorrectly given in Didier’s editions, having been copied from those commonly used. She was very particular in writing it out herself for _A Sister’s Story_. Mr. Bentley published the one vol. edition in a singular manner, without referring to me at all, and I never knew why he had shortened the ‘Profession.’ I have never compared the editions, but possibly there are other mistakes.

“Your obed’t serv’t,
“EMILY BOWLES.”

We do not think it necessary to add anything to the above. The newspapers which have published remarks similar to those we have quoted cannot make any apology which will entitle them to notice on our part, and we take leave of them until we are compelled to refute some new libel.

Mr. P. DONAHOE announces for early publication: _Six Weeks
Abroad, in Ireland, England, and Belgium_, by Father Haskins;
_Sketches of the Establishment of the Church in New England_, by
Father Fitton; _Catholic Glories of the Nineteenth Century: The
Old God_, translated from the German; _Conversion of the Teutonic
Race_, by Mrs. Hope, as well as several others.

“The Catholic Publication Society” announce for early
publication, in addition to the books already announced, Canon
Oakeley’s two books, namely, _Ceremonial of the Mass_ and
_Catholic Worship_. Also, _Aunt Margaret’s Little Neighbors; or,
Chats about the Rosary_.

FOOTNOTE: