LEVIA-PONDERA
 
 Photo : Whitfield, Cosser &> Co. 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
 (THE RIGHT REV. MONSIGNOR BICKERSTAFFE-DREW, K.H.S. 
 PROTONOTARY APOSTOLIC)
 
 1 
 
 
 LEVIA-PONDERA 
 
 AN ESSAY BOOK 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 1913 
 
 All rights reserved 


 
 TO HIS EMINENCE 
 
 THE LORD CARDINAL BOURNE 
 ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 My Lord Cardinal, 
 
 It was with great diffidence that I ventured on so bold 
 a measure as seeking your leave to dedicate my book to Your 
 Eminence. That I should wish to have the great honour of 
 seeing your name associated with a work of mine was, perhaps, 
 more natural than modest or pardonable : and no doubt it would 
 have been more discreet to wait till I should have had something 
 less inadequate to offer you. But my impatience was stronger 
 than my discretion; and so I offered what I had, rather than 
 delay in the hope of being able, in some problematic future, to 
 produce a worthier offering. 
 
 Your Eminence's kindness has chosen rather to reward my 
 goodwill than punish my presumption. And I can only give 
 my sincere gratitude in return. No one could have been more 
 conscious than myself of the justice of the decision, had your 
 Eminence simply told me that in such a volume as this there 
 could be nothing to render it a suitable offering to a Prince of 
 the Church. 
 
 It is a mere bundle of essays, and mould never have been 
 a book at all but for the strong advice of others whose literary 
 opinion would carry with Your Eminence as much weight as it 
 does with me. 
 
 Why, then, should so great a name as yours have been sought, 
 to set in the Dedication ? On the principle, as I hope Your
 
 vi DEDICATION 
 
 Eminence may feel, that leads a child to offer, lovingly, very 
 trumpery gifts to a father. The gifts may be absurd enough, 
 but the father's kindness will not scan them with cold criticism. 
 They are all the giver has, and all that he who accepts them 
 will see in them is the affection they express. Their value is not 
 in themselves, but in the understanding and generosity of him who 
 receives. 
 
 It is more than thirty years that I have known Your Eminence, 
 and, if your high station has removed me from recent inter- 
 course, neither it nor lapse of time has weakened my memory 
 of the affectionate respect of those far-off days. When the 
 August Head of our Church called you to the highest place 
 a Catholic in England can hold, and the Red Seal of the 
 Holy Father's trust and approval was set upon Your Eminence 
 and your work, no one could have felt more proud and glad 
 than I. 
 
 When, not long ago, Your Eminence spoke to me some words 
 of most generous encouragement, it was with very keen gratitude 
 that I heard them, and learned from them that in your high place 
 you had still leisure to note the goodwill of those who, in a 
 narrower sphere and humbler manner, were trying to serve the 
 cause Your Eminence has most at heart. Perhaps it was then 
 that, being unable to express my sense of your kindness, thus 
 taken unawares, I conceived the desire of doing it in this clumsy 
 fashion. 
 
 Begging the blessing of Your Eminence, 
 And kissing the Sacred Purple, 
 
 I am, My Lord Cardinal, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SIR WALTER 1 
 
 A SCAMP'S PROBATION ....... 12 
 
 " THE ENTAIL " : AN APPRECIATION .... 29 
 
 THE LEDDY o' GRIPPY ...... 64 
 
 FICKLE FAME ........ 103 
 
 KING'S SERVANTS . . . . . . . .113 
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS . . . . . .131 
 
 A NOVELIST'S SERMONS 
 
 PARALLELS ......... 149 
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS . . . . . .164 
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS. 176 
 
 CAUSE AND CURE ........ 187 
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT . . . . . 197 
 
 OF OLD WAYS 207 
 
 SciENTi.(E INIMICI . . . . . . . .215 
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY ....... 227 
 
 EVERYDAY PAPERS 
 
 PRESS AND PUBLIC ....... 
 
 ON BOOK BUYING ....... 
 
 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS ....... 
 
 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE ..... 
 
 ON SITTING STILL ....... 
 
 Til
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DIABOLICAL TREES ....... 269 
 
 FOOTNOTES 274 
 
 "Tnis PUBLIC CONSCIENCE" 278 
 
 STATE AND CONSCIENCE ...... 283 
 
 EMPIRE DAY 287 
 
 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE . . . . . . .291 
 
 ON DECADENCE 297 
 
 MESSRS. HOOLIGAN AND TURVEYDROP .... 301 
 
 Two PESSIMISMS ........ 305 
 
 PEACE AND PEOPLES ....... 309 
 
 DRESS AND CLOTHING ....... 314 
 
 OF CATHEDRALS . . . . . . . .318 
 
 OF STONE SERMONS AND WHITE ELEPHANTS . . 323 
 
 AN ADMIRATION NOTE ...... 328 
 
 WHY NORWICH? 333 
 
 COLD PORRIDGE ........ 337 
 
 OF WEAKER BRETHREN . . . . . .341 
 
 THE ROMAN ROAD 345 
 
 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES ...... 350 
 
 OF GREAT AGE ...... . 356 
 
 MARE'S NESTS AND MUCH BOASTING . . . . S6l 
 
 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES . . 366
 
 LEVIA-PONDERA 
 
 SIR WALTER 
 
 NEARLY thirty years ago I had an opportunity of visit- 
 ing Abbotsford, and for the next ten years I never 
 had any doubt of my deep regret that I had not 
 clutched greedily at the chance and forced it into a 
 fact, to remember ever after; during the rest of the 
 intervening time I have not been so sure. Of course it 
 matters much less being disappointed in a great man's 
 things than finding the great man himself an anti- 
 climax, as has happened to some literary pilgrims who 
 have found in his shrine the object of their worship, 
 still alive and speechless. Certainly there would have 
 been no disappointment if one had lived long enough 
 ago to find one's self face to face with Sir Walter Scott : 
 none who did were ever disappointed. And it is likely 
 that most of those who go to Abbotsford now so 
 fortify themselves with the determination to be more 
 than satisfied that wild horses (proverbially persuasive) 
 would not draw from them any admission that there 
 has been anything lacking. But so much good resolu- 
 tion is a supererogation when we are pretty sure we 
 shall not need it for practical purposes. 
 
 I permit myself to believe that Abbotsford would 
 disappoint me. As a lady devoted to Newman ob- 
 
 A
 
 2 SIR WALTER 
 
 served, after reading Mozley's Book of Reminiscences 
 of the Oxford Movement: "I knew it would be dis- 
 appointing, and it is." 
 
 Abbotsford became baronial at a bad moment; at 
 least half a century too soon, or four centuries too late. 
 No self-respecting architect of fifty or sixty years later 
 would have sanctioned the architecture of the armoury, 
 or even that of the study; and pretty as the whole 
 affectation is, it was an affectation all the same. 
 
 Of the hundreds of thousands who take the place in, 
 in their round of Scottish sights, only a few, perhaps, 
 really care enough about Scott to mind. I care so 
 much that I would mind. 
 
 Some time ago there was a correspondence in the 
 Satv/rday Westminster Gazette, with as many columns 
 in it as there are in the Parthenon, dealing with the 
 question: "Do boys read Walter Scott?" The only 
 thing it established was that if they don't they ought 
 to ; which several of us guessed before. If it had 
 proved, as it certainly did not, that the author of the 
 Waverleys has passed out of fashion with youthful 
 readers, that would only be showing that schoolboys 
 have not a first-rate taste in fiction. To Sir Walter's 
 position in literature, it could make no difference 
 whatever. Boys are often very clever, sometimes 
 nearly as clever as they imagine themselves, but they 
 are not to be our judges as to the best sort of fiction, 
 for their own judgment is not final. Nor was Sir 
 Walter Scott's works intended for them. So kindly a 
 man would rejoice that any book of his should give 
 pleasure to any one, however youthful, but he certainly 
 did not imagine he was producing a series of boys' 
 books. 
 
 Among the letters above alluded to, there were
 
 SIR WALTER 3 
 
 several which picked out The Talisman and Ivanhoe 
 as being indeed excellent, very much to the exclusion 
 of the author's other works. Such a judgment would 
 suffice to show the value of the criticism. No true 
 lover of Scott likes to remember that he ever wrote 
 them ; and no true lover of Scott ever reads them after 
 the first time. Of course they contain fine passages, or 
 Scott could not have written them ; nevertheless, they 
 are showy, wordy, tedious, stagey. 
 
 The true Scott-reader goes on reading him con- 
 tinually; nobody who loves reading could read The 
 Talisman or Ivanhoe often. He would say Ivanhoe 
 is tolerable, The Talisman intolerable. Kenilworth is 
 ever so much better than Ivanhoe, but ever so much 
 worse than Woodstock, and nearly as bad as Anne of 
 Oeierstein. Woodstock, The Fortunes of Nigel, and 
 Peveril of the Peak are much on a level, and that a 
 very high one. The Abbot and The Monastery stand 
 lower, but do not stand low compared with any novels 
 other than Scott's. 
 
 And then we come to the long list of those glorious 
 books of which the true lover of Scott thinks when he 
 thinks of Scott. Let us group them at first, higgledy- 
 piggledy, then sort them : Waverley, Rob Roy, Red- 
 gauntlet, The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, The Heart 
 of Midlothian, The Pirate, The Bride of Lammermoor, 
 A Legend of Montr ose, Old Mortality, The Surgeon's 
 Daughter, The Black Dwarf, The Fair Maid of Perth. 
 
 The more truly you love Scott the more certain will 
 you be that these are his real books, and that for a 
 very simple reason. In these he treats of what he 
 knew, as no one else before or since has known Scot- 
 land ; and those which treat of times nearest to his 
 own are by far the best. For that latter reason, having
 
 4 SIR WALTER 
 
 put it in, let us now leave out, The Fair Maid of Perth. 
 Scott was in love with medievalism, and especially 
 with its trappings ; but with the exception of its 
 trappings it may be questioned whether he knew as 
 much of it as he thought. Feudalism dominated his 
 retrospect of the Middle Ages, and of feudalism he 
 knew the terms, and perhaps the costumes. But side 
 by side with feudalism in the Middle Ages, and much 
 above it, stood the Catholic Church, and of the 
 Catholic Church Scott, with all his genius and his 
 knowledge, was extremely, almost entirely, ignorant. 
 For his interest in the Church was never more than 
 antiquarian. 
 
 However clever a writer may be, if he can regard 
 Mediaeval Christianity only from outside, and only 
 from a Georgian standpoint, he is bound to blunder. 
 The outside view of the Catholic Church Scott had, 
 and he had a keen eye for the picturesque, so he could 
 describe vividly; but even in description he came 
 appalling "croppers" as we shall instance presently. 
 Blunders apart, those descriptions were not always 
 fine; melodramatic, stagey, verbose when intended to 
 be grandiose, they lacked the one thing description 
 imperatively demands, truth and reality. 
 
 The real influence of the Church in the Middle Ages 
 was never revealed to this man of genius, for revelation 
 is accorded not to talent but to sincerity ; and in this 
 matter Scott was not sincere but opportunistic. He 
 did not grasp the heart of the Middle Age; for its 
 heart was its faith ; he had merely read of its behaviour, 
 which was sometimes queer and sometimes scandalous, 
 as was the behaviour of the admired Primitive Age, as 
 has been that of the age enlightened by all the pure 
 beams of Scott's beloved Reformation. Of its slang
 
 SIR WALTER 5 
 
 he reproduced or excogitated fearsome quantities, which 
 make his paladins in The Talisman talk as no man 
 ever could talk and be permitted to live ; of its 
 costumes he had whole wardrobes at disposal, what it 
 ate with, and what weapons it slew its adversaries or 
 brethren in arms withal, he knew as well or better than 
 his purpose required ; but how it thought he had not 
 the least idea. 
 
 Thus The Fair Maid of Perth lives inasmuch as it is 
 Scott's : and is woodenish in so far as it is particularly 
 mediaeval. 
 
 Incomparably better than any other mediaeval romance 
 of his is Quentin Durward ; and half its charm is due 
 to the Scots element in it : the other half to the ex- 
 cellence of the tale, the rapidity and freshness of the 
 action. 
 
 But now let us joyfully turn from his half-successes, 
 which would have been splendid successes for any one 
 else, to the realm where he reigns alone. He is known 
 as the author of Waverley, and had he written nothing 
 else he would have deserved all his fame, and perhaps 
 have kept it, though it is not certain that all deserved 
 fame becomes immortality. Nevertheless, Waverley is 
 not by any means equal to the others in its group, as 
 we have taken leave to arrange our group. It was 
 altogether novel when it appeared : its theme was 
 romantic and yet real, its inhabitants were alive and 
 interesting ; but it has nothing approaching the interest 
 and vitality of Rob Roy, which in turn has to yield 
 even to The Pirate. There are characters in Rob Roy 
 better, perhaps, than any in The Pirate ; there are less 
 convincing characters in The Pirate, it may be, than 
 some of those in Rob Roy, but as a tale The Pirate is 
 more of a book. One great personage in it, Norna of
 
 the Fitful Head, I confess strikes me as a preliminary 
 study for Meg Merrilees in Guy Mannering, and nothing 
 like so fine; only Scott could have prevented her 
 from being a bore, and it took him all his time. She 
 was too Mumbo-jumbo, and her lunacy was really not 
 called for. If she was determined to go mad she 
 should have done something horrible on purpose ; her 
 father's death was so entirely accidental that so clever 
 a woman must have been aware of it. Mordaunt's 
 father was sharp enough to know that he was a bore, 
 out and out, and that was why he shut himself up in 
 Sumburgh Castle. But the Yellowleys are delightful, 
 especially the lady, and the Pirate himself was inter- 
 esting in spite of his goodness. Scott does not insist 
 on his teaching Sunday-School in the final chapters as 
 Ballantyne did with a far naughtier pirate in the days 
 of our own youth, when nobody asked us in the news- 
 papers whether we could read Scott or no. 
 
 Redgauntlet is so excellent that we wonder it is not 
 commonly mentioned as one of Scott's best books ; but 
 perhaps that is because it begins in a series of letters. 
 Scott, however, repents quite early and the story tells 
 itself presently in plain narrative. 
 
 In this most interesting story Scott's hankering after 
 the Royal Stuarts betrays itself again, a hankering, we 
 permit ourselves to fancy, more sincere, as it was 
 certainly more natural, than his rather fulsome lauda- 
 tions of their Hanoverian heir. Perhaps he would 
 have urged that the Stuarts appealed to him merely as 
 romantic properties, on account of their picturesque- 
 ness; and Charles Edward was undoubtedly more 
 picturesque than the Prince Regent or his dismally 
 perverse father. But I suspect there was an attraction 
 for Scott in the Royal Stuarts deeper-lying than the
 
 SIR WALTER 7 
 
 mere obvious fact of their romantic value, though to 
 no one was such a romantic value more appealing than 
 to him ; they represented not only the exiled dynasty 
 of England, but theirs was the ancient, royal house of 
 Scotland, and that mattered much more to the great 
 Scots romanticist. Scotland was mainly the theatre 
 of their final tragedy, and if the throne of Scotland 
 alone could have contented them for a while, it might 
 well have happened that the thrones of England and 
 Ireland would have been added in due time. The 
 hurried advance to Derby was, perhaps, only less ill- 
 advised than the hasty retreat thence. The position of 
 the Regent, Charles Edward, in Scotland was strong 
 enough to have become far stronger; if the Prince of 
 Wales had, after publishing his father's manifesto, sat 
 firm in Edinburgh, and awaited its results, thousands 
 of those who were hesitating would have made up their 
 minds to give in their adhesion to the cause which 
 they knew was that of loyalty and patriotism; and 
 time would have been given to the loyalists of Wales, 
 England, and Ireland to gather their wits together, and 
 to organise their aid with some mutual understanding 
 and confidence. 
 
 It is no matter of conjecture, but historical fact, that 
 large and important forces were at work for the Stuart 
 cause, and were actually ready when their readiness 
 was too late ; that they were late was not entirely their 
 fault, there had been too much hurry, not only in the 
 disastrous resolution to retreat from England, but also 
 in the precipitate though chivalrous resolve to push 
 into it. 
 
 Scott, as I imagine, thought of Charles Edward as of 
 one who might very easily have been his king de facto, 
 who barely missed it, and missed it so gloriously that
 
 8 SIR WALTER 
 
 he could not help dwelling on it ; whether he cared that 
 Charles was undoubtedly king de jure I cannot tell. 
 But it seems to me plain that Scott was at all events 
 Scot enough to prefer the idea of a Scots monarch 
 in Scotland to that of a Hanoverian sovereign in 
 London. 
 
 In the group we have ventured to make of his 
 greatest novels there is an inner group of the very 
 greatest : The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, The Heart 
 of Midlothian, and The Bride of Lammermoor. In 
 these four all his best qualities are at their best : no 
 real Scott-reader is ever tired of reading them, and 
 every reading makes them more dear and more 
 admired. They are the four walls of Scott's monument 
 in the hearts of his lovers all the world over. Famili- 
 arity does not lessen their charm, or weaken their hold, 
 but strengthens it. For my own part I could read 
 through to the last page of any one of them and turn 
 back to the first and read on again with undiminished 
 delight. I do not think the fascination of any of them 
 depends much on the hero. Lovel is not the attraction 
 in The Antiquary, nor the Master of Ravenswood in 
 The Bride of Lammermoor ; in The Heart of Mid- 
 lothian there is no hero at all, and in Guy Mannering 
 the office is put into commission. In The Heart of 
 Midlothian is the finest of all Scott's heroines ; but in 
 the other three the heroines could be left out and the 
 books lose nothing. Lucy, in The Bride of Lammer- 
 inoor, is as anaemic as Amelia in Vanity Fair, and 
 neither so interesting nor so pathetic. One may want 
 to box Amelia's ears, but she had ears, if she hadn't 
 eyes; Lucy had nothing but good looks miraculously 
 existing in space, without any particular human identity 
 to support them.
 
 SIR WALTER 9 
 
 Miss Wardour in The Antiquary is better, because she 
 does exist, though her existence does not matter much 
 to anybody but Mr. Lovel; she was quite a proper 
 young woman for him to marry, but he might have 
 married her in the Morning Post just as well as in The 
 Antiquary. Julia Mannering is far better ; she can be 
 pert, and her father required more pertness than he 
 often got from her; she can he lively, and her good 
 looks are not a mere assertion of the author's; the 
 reader can picture her, and the picture is natural, 
 pleasant, and animated. But the interest of Guy 
 Mannering does not depend on her lover, and she and 
 her young man, who is a nice young man and very 
 pretty-behaved, might have arranged their affairs else- 
 where and the book have been as fascinating without 
 them. 
 
 Jeanie Deans has a different position altogether ; she 
 and Diana are Scott's best heroines, and The Heart of 
 Midlothian could not get on without her; the real 
 story in the book is the story of her journey to London. 
 There .are characters in The Heart of Midlothian as 
 impossible to do without as any in the other books of 
 this group, but the book does not depend on them as 
 the others do really depend on their "minor char- 
 acters." Nor is the interest we feel in Jeanie Deans the 
 interest we may have in her own rather mature love 
 story, but rather in spite of it. Mr. Butler was, no 
 doubt, an excellent minister; as a lover he is not 
 engrossing. It would, no doubt, be esteemed a heresy 
 to say that these four best books of Scott's would have 
 got on very well if there had been no loves of heroes 
 and heroines at all. It is my own opinion, but ordinary 
 readers will probably not share it. 
 
 When Bingley, in Pride and Prejudice, talked of 

 
 10 SIR WALTER 
 
 giving a ball, his sister perceived that Darcy was 
 reading a book, and did not fancy he cared much for 
 the idea of dancing. 
 
 "I should like balls much better," she cried, "if they 
 were carried on in a different manner ; but there is some- 
 thing insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a 
 meeting. It would surely be more rational if conver- 
 sation instead of dancing made the order of the day." 
 
 " Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say," 
 her brother objected, " but it would not be near so 
 much like a ball." 
 
 Perhaps the public will maintain that if Sir Walter 
 had left the love affairs of his heroes and heroines out 
 of these four novels, they might have been just as 
 good, but not nearly so much like novels, 
 
 There remain after these four greatest books other 
 four, as Scott himself would have said: A Legend of 
 Montrose, Old Mortality, The Black Dwarf, and The 
 Surgeon's Daughter, which we also included in our own 
 group of favourites. They are much shorter than any 
 of the novels we have mentioned above, and for that 
 reason, chiefly, they are not commonly classed among 
 the author's " important " works. Their brevity is all 
 I can urge against them. They are otherwise quite 
 worthy of ranking with more admired books of Scott's. 
 Personally I would say that they are equal in bulk of 
 interest to the interesting part of some of their more 
 favoured brethren ; for not all of Rob Roy is particularly 
 interesting, nor all of Redgauntlet, and even- The Heart 
 of Midlothian need not be begun at the first chapter 
 nor continued to the last. No true Scott-reader can 
 dispense with them ; and The Black Dwarf has a sombre 
 power that is sometimes missed in other places where 
 Scott showed more apparent intention to achieve it. 

 
 SIR WALTER 11 
 
 As we mentioned Diana Vernon parenthetically 
 above, as being in our opinion one of his two finest 
 heroines, let us say one word more about Rob Roy; 
 the family at Osbaldistone Hall was, we take leave 
 to feel assured, far nicer than Scott chooses to 
 allow that was just his "whiggery." As for Helen 
 MacGregor, whose pedigree is not given, we are con- 
 fident that the blood of Norna of the Fitful Head ran 
 in her veins; in their Ossianic moments the family 
 resemblance is ponderously close. 
 
 We also mentioned above that Scott, whose interest 
 in the Catholic Church being merely that of an 
 antiquary, lacking sympathy and sincerity, left him 
 without the true key to the spirit of the Middle 
 Ages, fell occasionally into queer blunders even when 
 attempting nothing more than description. An in- 
 stance of this occurs in one of the four books which 
 we believe all fervent admirers of his admire most. 
 
 In the second volume of The Antiquary there is a 
 flagrantly picturesque account of the midnight obse- 
 quies of the Catholic Countess of Glenallan. The priest, 
 dressed in " cope and stole, held open the service-book " 
 (the breviary as we are informed on the next page) 
 " another churchman in his vestments bore a holy- 
 water sprinkler and two boys in white surplices held 
 censers with incense," and the dirge goes on " until a 
 loud Alleluia, pealing through the deserted arches of St. 
 Ruth, closed the singular ceremony." Singular, indeed. 
 Sir Walter Scott was undoubtedly the only human 
 being who ever heard an Alleluia, however loud, in 
 the funeral offices of the Catholic Church. 

 
 A SCAMP'S PROBATION 
 
 IT is odd to note how lightly the English critic has, 
 for the most part, leaned upon the faults of Henry 
 VIII, and how heavily he has dealt with the memory 
 of Charles II. One, indeed, had the great merit of 
 being a Tudor, and the other was so ill-advised as 
 to be a Stuart. Tudor despotism has never deeply 
 scandalised even the devout Constitutionalist, because 
 it was successful : Stuart unconstitutionalism shocks 
 everyone, because it failed ignominiously. When 
 monarchs go about disregarding popular liberties, they 
 are unpardonable should they fail. 
 
 To compare one historical character with another is 
 always a seductive employment, though it does not 
 always lead to much. A comparison between Henry 
 VIII and Charles II does not obviously suggest itself, 
 yet in one particular it is justified by a queer resem- 
 blance in their circumstances ; and the divergence of 
 the event allows pretext for a little praise of a man 
 who has never been overpraised. 
 
 The idea of comparing Henry and Charles could 
 not be suggested by their portraits. Henry in his 
 youth was attractive, fair, and blonde. Even in his 
 youth Charles was ugly, black, and lean. Henry 
 became heavy and fat, his body ponderous and un- 
 gainly, much too big for his legs : his face, no longer 
 comely, grew coarse and bloated, and he was florid 
 and ruddy. His later portraits suggest neither distinc- 
 
 12
 
 A SCAMPS PROBATION 13 
 
 tion nor high breeding. Charles had a ? singularly 
 graceful figure, light and active ; his face, in spite of 
 its harsh lines, was interesting and clever ; and no one 
 could have looked more well-bred. For all his plain- 
 ness he had, as people used to say, " so much counten- 
 ance." Nor was there in their circumstances more 
 than one important parallel ; of that we shall speak 
 presently. Both, indeed, succeeded to a crown to 
 which for a time neither seemed destined, but the 
 cause was not the same. Henry was born a younger 
 son, and only became heir-apparent after Prince 
 Arthur's death, when he was himself eleven years old : 
 at nineteen the peaceful death of his father made him 
 king. Charles was also a second son, but his older 
 brother had not survived his birth, and he was heir- 
 apparent from his own. At nineteen the execution of 
 his father made him king de jure, but he was an exile, 
 and for eleven years England was no longer a kingdom : 
 his chance of reigning appeared, during a long time, 
 more than problematical. 
 
 Henry was born in the old religion, his parents both 
 belonged to it, and he was bred in it. Charles was 
 born of a Protestant father, baptized in the English 
 Church, and brought up in it. Charles I was High 
 Church, and had apparently, for some time, dreams of 
 an Anglican reunion with Rome, but he had no idea 
 of becoming a Catholic himself, and he was determined 
 none of his sons should follow their mother's religion. 
 
 Henry had a weakness for theology, and wrote the 
 famous treatise, against Luther, on the Seven Sacra- 
 ments, which gained him, from Leo X, in 1521, the title 
 of Defender of the Faith ; in later life his fondness for 
 monks was like Tom Tulliver's for birds he liked 
 throwing stones at them. Charles II was not ecclesi-
 
 14 A SCAMPS PROBATION 
 
 astically-minded, and wrote no tracts : but he hated 
 seeing helpless priests and friars falsely accused and 
 persecuted, and, at considerable risk to his own popu- 
 larity, tried to stop it. 
 
 Henry and Charles were both vicious, both sensualists : 
 but Henry, we hear, was virtuous in youth, and Charles 
 was not ; his first illegitimate son was born to him 
 when he was not more than sixteen. Henry certainly 
 had at first been destined to the priesthood, and his 
 early teaching was in good and wise hands. Charles 
 had a silly wiseacre for his first governor, and for his 
 second a notorious scamp, without faith or morals ; at 
 twelve he was in command of a troop of horse, and at 
 fifteen he was a general, living the reckless life of a 
 cavalier soldier. 
 
 Henry had a taste for matrimony and indulged it 
 six times ; Charles only married once, and his wife had 
 the good fortune to survive him. Both were bad and 
 faithless husbands, but Charles was neither brutal 
 nor cruel ; if he tired of his wife he stuck to her, and 
 neither brought her to the scaffold nor divorced her. 
 
 No attempt will be made here to defend Charles's 
 morality: no human being who reverences purity, or 
 even decency, can defend it, Not a word can be said 
 in defence of it ; it was, plainly, too bad to bear speak- 
 ing of. It cannot even be urged in mitigation that he 
 was no worse than his contemporaries ; for, if his court 
 was flagrantly and shamelessly bad, it was chiefly 
 because of his own flagrant and shameless example. 
 But if it is impossible to extenuate Charles II's vices, 
 there is no necessity for insisting upon them, because 
 they never have been extenuated, and they always 
 have been insisted upon. Henry's vices did not make 
 him unpopular with his contemporaries, nor have they
 
 15 
 
 much injured him with posterity. Nor did those of 
 Charles ever make him unpopular while he lived, for 
 he was, in fact, extremely popular; but they have 
 ruined him in history. Henry broke with the old 
 Church and died under her ban ; Charles laid his dying 
 head upon her breast, and with his dying lips sought 
 to obtain, from her promises of mercy, all the consola- 
 tion and hope his misspent life so sorely needed. In 
 the verdict of England it could not be counted to him 
 for righteousness. Henry had been the enemy of 
 France, and it was so counted to him ; Charles had 
 been her friend, and worse: for he was her tool and 
 her pensioner. 
 
 So much must be laid to the charge of Charles, and 
 so little of it can be explained away, or softened, that 
 it is an office of justice, as well as of charity, to point 
 out one important matter in which he compares most 
 favourably with his more-admired predecessor. Of his 
 wit and his good-nature we do not intend to speak: 
 that he was witty all bore witness, but his wit was foul. 
 He was extremely good-natured, but he was more 
 indolent : and his indolence usually got the upper hand 
 when they came in conflict. He was much more grate- 
 ful to those who had served him than kings are wont 
 to be, and he was most grateful to those who had 
 befriended him in adversity, as was natural in so 
 clever and so shrewd a man : for services rendered to a 
 sovereign in prosperity are more apt to eye rewards 
 than to deserve them. 
 
 It seems certain that this scapegrace prince was a 
 good fellow: which of course does not imply that he 
 was good. He had also much more claim to the title 
 of gentleman than George IV: how Charles would 
 have treated a wife like Caroline of Brunswick we can
 
 16 A SCAMPS PROBATION 
 
 only surmise, but we can surmise without uncertainty 
 that he would not have treaied her as she was treated 
 by Mrs. Fitzherbert's husband. Charles II' s portrait 
 is that of an ugly man, but it is unmistakably that of 
 a gentleman ; and the face, harsh and forbidding as it 
 is usually called, is intensely interesting : none the less 
 so from its invariable melancholy. The portrait of the 
 First Gentleman in Europe can interest no one except 
 a student of poses and deportment : its serious simper 
 is more repulsive than any scowl, and it suggests a wax 
 dummy rather than a man if wax dummies could tell 
 lies and betray other dummies silly enough to trust in 
 them. It is not, however, with George IV and his treat- 
 ment of his queen that we wish to compare Charles II 
 in his behaviour towards Catherine of Braganza, but 
 with Henry VIII and his behaviour as a husband. 
 
 Catherine of Aragon had been Henry's wife for many 
 years ; and her conduct as a wife and queen had been 
 faultless. She had borne him several children, of whom 
 one survived, and that one outlived her father : there 
 was no question of the succession involved, as there 
 was in the case of Charles II and his childless wife. 
 For there was no reluctance to accept Princess Mary 
 Tudor as her father's heir, and, until he suggested it, 
 no one imagined there could be the least flaw in her 
 claim. Her religion was the same as his own, and 
 was that of the realm. Whereas the next in succession 
 to Charles, were he to leave no lawful issue, was a 
 brother unpopular with those who would become his 
 subjects, a convert to Catholicity at a time when 
 England had long renounced the ancient faith, and 
 widely suspected of an obstinate determination to bring 
 it back. But Catherine of Aragon was six years 
 older than Henry; she had no beauty, and the king
 
 A SCAMPS PROBATION 17 
 
 was tired of her. Of the delicacy of conscience pre- 
 tended by him as an excuse for seeking divorce, we 
 need say no more than that it did not prevent him 
 from taking as his mistress the woman he wanted 
 before he married her, whom he married before 
 Cranmer pronounced the divorce, and whom he ruth- 
 lessly beheaded three years later whom, within three 
 months of his marriage with her, he had warned " to 
 shut her eyes to his unfaithfulness, as her betters had 
 done, for he could abase yet more than he had raised 
 her." The day after her execution he married Jane 
 Seymour ; and less than three months after her death 
 he married Anne of Cleves, whom he divorced in half 
 a year in July 1540. His fifth wife he beheaded 
 eighteen months after his marriage with her. and his 
 sixth had the good luck to survive him. 
 
 Charles II in one way treated his wife as badly as 
 any man could treat the woman he had married : that 
 is in the matter of unfaithfulness. But he did not 
 behave to her with brutal cruelty, nor did he divorce 
 her : and to this last course he was urged repeatedly 
 and strongly. An important clause in the marriage 
 contract remained unfulfilled, for the immense dowry 
 agreed upon was never paid. But poor Catherine's 
 great failure was in bringing no heir to the crown. 
 Her religion made her many enemies in England, and 
 Charles would have found nothing easier than to rid 
 himself of her if he would but have consented. Henry's 
 divorce from Catherine of Aragon was a most unpopu- 
 lar measure with his subjects, by whom his religious 
 scruples were not appreciated; by whom, too, the queen 
 was liked and respected. A divorce between Charles 
 and Catherine of Braganza would have been popularly 
 approved, and it was persistently urged upon him. 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 Charles was certainly not a good man : had he been 
 as bad as Henry he would have yielded. He liked his 
 wife, but he had never loved her ; she was not beauti- 
 ful, and she was not always complaisant : she could 
 make scenes, and she could give trouble. She had 
 cause, if ever woman had, for jealousy and indignation, 
 and she showed both very early in her reign. Charles 
 was angry, but he had heart enough and conscience 
 enough not to respect her the less. It was her des- 
 perate yielding that half lost her that respect. Then 
 there came one disappointment after another in the 
 matter of an heir. Repeatedly the queen said there 
 was to be one, and as often it came to nothing. Mean- 
 while those most opposed to the Catholic Duke of 
 York became more and more resolved that he should 
 never reign, and more and more open in their sug- 
 gestions that the king should get rid of his wife, and 
 marry another. There were all sorts of pretexts to 
 advance besides the real one that the poor queen was 
 childless some urged that even the necessary dis- 
 pensation from the Pope had never been obtained, 
 or had been granted only after the marriage had taken 
 place; that Catherine had not responded in the 
 marriage service ; that the king had plighted his troth 
 but she had not. And it was remembered that Charles 
 before the marriage, while Catherine was still in 
 Portugal, had stipulated that if the articles of the 
 marriage treaty were not all performed the marriage 
 should be null and void and they had not all been 
 fulfilled. It is not our point, however, to try and 
 see what sort of a case against the royal marriage those 
 might have made out who were eager to dissolve it : 
 the point is merely to remind ourselves that they were 
 eager, and that they could and would have succeeded
 
 A SCAMPS PROBATION 19 
 
 but for one obstacle. The queen was quite powerless 
 to help herself, as powerless as Catherine of Aragon 
 had been: at one time she was within measurable 
 distance of losing not only her crown but her life ; and 
 between her and death there stood again but one 
 obstacle. In both cases the obstacle was the same : 
 the honest resolve of her faithless scamp of a husband 
 to save her from either divorce or death. 
 
 Even in the Tudor age Henry was not the more 
 admired by his subjects for the bloody justice he 
 caused to fall on Anne Boleyri and Catherine Howard. 
 Had Charles merely stood aside and left Catherine of 
 Braganza to the fate prepared for her by those who 
 invented and engineered the Popish Plot, there can 
 be no doubt he would have been himself more popular 
 and more secure. His manly determination that no 
 harm should come to the wife he had neglected and 
 dishonoured by his infidelities by no means made him 
 more popular at the time. His stiffness in the matter 
 only made those who had gone crazy about the plot 
 hint that the king himself was shielding those who 
 were plotting. Catherine stood in grave peril. Titus 
 Gates swore that her own physician, Sir George Wake- 
 man, had been offered 10,000 to poison the king's 
 medicine, and that the queen was in the scheme. 
 Later he swore that he had heard her say she would 
 help Sir George to poison Charles. On November 
 28, 1678, Oates and Bedloe brought these charges 
 against the queen before the Parliament. " I, Titus 
 Oates," that miscreant cried aloud at the Bar of the 
 Commons, " accuse Catherine, Queen of England, of 
 high treason." We may wonder what Henry VIII 
 would have done had such charges been brought 
 against a wife who had borne him no child; had he
 
 I 
 
 20 A SCAMPS PROBATION 
 
 been without an heir ; had the next in succession been 
 obnoxious to the country, and the wife in question 
 been as helpless and friendless as was Catherine of 
 Braganza, and one who had vehemently resented her 
 husband's infidelities and made scenes. What Charles 
 did was to send at once for the queen from Somerset 
 House, whither she had withdrawn from court in 1674, 
 when the Duchess of Portsmouth was in the zenith of 
 her popularity. He brought Catherine back to White- 
 hall, and fixed her in her apartments next his own. 
 He took pains to prove his entire trust in her, and 
 respect for her, by the most careful marks of honour 
 and attention. "If the king had given way in the 
 least Queen Catherine would have been very ill-used," 
 says Roger North, " for the plotters had reckoned on 
 his weakness with regard to women, and nattered him 
 with the hopes of having an heir to his dominions." 
 " I believe," said Charles, " they think I have a mind 
 for a new wife, but I will not suffer an innocent woman 
 to be wronged." 
 
 Gates was put in prison and kept under guard, till 
 the king was himself charged with muzzling a witness, 
 and obliged to let the miscreant out again. Charles 
 himself examined him and proved him to be a liar, 
 and a clumsy one, on more than one occasion. Mean- 
 while Titus Gates' accomplice, Bedloe, stuck to it that 
 Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey had been murdered by the 
 queen's servants in the queen's house ; at first saying 
 that he was smothered with pillows, then that he had 
 been strangled with a linen cravat. It does not matter 
 to us here that this informer was a felon lately come 
 out of Newgate, and that 500 reward, offered for the 
 discovery of the murderer or murderers, naturally 
 appealed to him. It did not matter to the hatchers
 
 A SCAMPS PROBATION 21 
 
 of the plot : on his evidence three of Catherine's 
 servants were executed, one of them a Protestant. 
 What concerns us is that if Charles had been a villain 
 as well as a scamp, he might have been rid of his wife 
 without himself lifting a finger. It was not only Gates 
 who offered him the chance. A Mrs. Elliott was sent 
 to the king on October 23, 1678, and informed him 
 that the queen was concerned in the plot against his 
 own life. He heard her with displeasure and im- 
 patience. When the woman had the insolence to add 
 that she thought he would have been glad to part with 
 her majesty on any terms, Charles turned fiercely on 
 her, and had her removed from his presence, saying 
 angrily, " I will never suffer an innocent lady to be 
 oppressed." Everybody wanted him to believe in the 
 plot, and he would not oblige them, though he was 
 quite able to see how greatly it would have been 
 counted to him for righteousness. It was he who 
 proved the absurdity and falsehood of Gates' evidence 
 against Catherine. Indolent, easy-going, and scape- 
 grace as he was, he behaved throughout like a loyal, 
 conscientious gentleman. When it seemed, for the 
 moment, that even the sovereign's championship of 
 the queen's innocence of any plot against the sovereign's 
 own life might be unavailing, he took secret precautions 
 for her removal from England, if such a measure 
 should prove necessary to her safety. But Charles 
 was not only steadfastly resolved against such a crime 
 as that of ridding himself of his wife by allowing her 
 enemies to take her life : he was equally steadfast in 
 refusing to avail himself of the milder remedy of 
 divorce. 
 
 Long before the Popish Plot suggestions had been 
 made to the king in reference to getting rid of the
 
 
 22 A SCAMPS PROBATION 
 
 queen ; Buckingham urged it upon Charles, one of his 
 schemes being that Catherine should be kidnapped 
 and spirited away to the American plantations, where 
 she would be well treated but no more heard of. Her 
 husband could thus obtain a divorce on the plea of his 
 wife's desertion of him. Bishop Burnet, who was the 
 profligate Buckingham's dependant, is authority for 
 this delightful story. Charles rejected the proposal 
 with horror. But Burnet himself was willing to play 
 Cranmer to Charles II's Henry VIII. The future 
 Bishop of Salisbury concocted a brace of tracts on 
 polygamy and divorce, and tied them together under 
 the name of A Solution of Two Gases of Conscience. 
 His own conscience as a minister of the gospel he 
 seems to have held in complete solution. The an- 
 nulling of marriage on account of the wife's childless- 
 ness may, he teaches us, " be easily justified both before 
 God and man." His talents, had he been at leisure 
 to write thus a hundred and forty years later, might 
 have recommended him to the favourable notice of 
 Napoleon I. As for polygamy, he was even more ingeni- 
 ous and even less correct. Before the Fall, he allowed, 
 one woman was meant for one man ; a handsome ad- 
 mission when one remembers that for the one man in 
 existence, there was only one woman available at the 
 period in question. Things had, however, changed 
 since. Disease and other disabilities had supervened. 
 Monogamy might be the more perfect, but polygamy 
 was noway sinful. Even in the new law there was 
 no " simple and express discharge of polygamy " : and 
 he himself saw " nothing so strong against polygamy as 
 to balance the great and visible hazards that hang 
 over so many thousands if it be not allowed." This 
 successor of the Apostles was certainly one born out of
 
 due time too late for his talents to be available 
 against Catherine of Aragon, too early for them to be 
 used against Josephine. Those talents did not, how- 
 ever, recommend him to Charles II. Instead of making 
 Burnet a bishop he, later on, turned him out of the 
 Chapel Royal. It was to William III this would-be 
 Cranmer owed his mitre. 
 
 But there were always plots against Catherine's posi- 
 tion as queen, though the arch-plotter might change. 
 In 1671 the Duke of York had made open avowal of 
 his conversion to the Catholic Church : the Parliament 
 answered, early in 1673, by passing the Test Act, which 
 required all naval and military officers to receive the 
 sacrament in the Church of England, and to sign the 
 declaration against Transubstantiation : this obliged 
 the king's brother to resign the office of Lord High 
 Admiral, which he had filled with ability and distinc- 
 tion. His second marriage with a Catholic princess, 
 Maria d'Este, daughter of the Duke of Modena, sug- 
 gested to the Parliament two measures, in both of 
 which it failed : one was an Exclusion Bill, by which 
 the Duke of York should be declared incapable, on 
 account of his religion, of succeeding to the crown ; the 
 other was a renewal of the project of the king's divorce. 
 In the Commons one Vaughan was to move that 
 without a Protestant queen there could be no security 
 for the Protestant religion. Charles, always needy, 
 was to be bribed by the offer of 500,000 if he would 
 provide himself with a Protestant consort. He only 
 heard of it when the day for the bringing forward of 
 this motion was fixed. Here was a fine chance for 
 him. Money he always was in want of: the divorce 
 could have gone merrily on, and it would have been by 
 none of his contriving. He at once declared that if his
 
 24 A SCAMFS PROBATION 
 
 conscience would let him divorce his wife it would let 
 him murder her. 
 
 This beautiful scheme had been hatched by Shaftes- 
 bury : its failure did not discourage him. His irritably 
 mischievous brain presently devised another. Of all 
 Charles' sons the Duke of Monmouth was the most 
 popular, and he was regarded as a Protestant champion. 
 Monmouth himself seems to have been cajoled and 
 managed by the evil Achitophel. To Charles himself 
 the matter was opened. The king was reminded that 
 Monmouth was his eldest son, which he knew, if 
 Shaft esbury did not, was untrue, his eldest son being 
 another James, James de la Cloche du Bourg de Jarsey. 
 That James was a Catholic and useless for Shaftesbury's 
 purpose. The king was flattered by being told of 
 Monmouth's popularity and cleverness : he had much 
 affection for his children, though they had no business 
 to exist. If Charles would agree to give his bastard 
 to England as heir to her throne, it could be managed 
 quite simply : he would merely have to declare that 
 he had been married to Lucy Walter, and Shaftesbury 
 would himself provide witnesses to swear to it. Charles 
 undoubtedly believed himself to be Monmouth's father : 
 Shaftesbury must have known that it was at least as 
 likely that the Protestant duke had no royal blood at 
 all, but was probably the son of Colonel Robert Sidney. 
 When the king heard this disgusting and infamous pro- 
 posal, he was amazed at its iniquitous effrontery. " I 
 would liefer," he said, "see James [Monmouth] hung 
 up at Tyburn than entertain such a thought." 
 
 Having failed in two attempts to oust Catherine from 
 the throne, Shaftesbury's efforts were bent in a more 
 sombre direction, and the Popish Plot followed. From 
 this also she was, as we have seen, saved by her bus-
 
 A SCAMFS PROBATION 25 
 
 band. When the Plot had done its bloody work, and 
 the queen was seen to be strong in the king's loyal 
 protection, Monmouth again became the pawn to be 
 played. In 1679 he was encouraged by the Protestant 
 party to figure as Prince of Wales ; he had the three 
 feathers painted on his coach ; his health was publicly 
 drunk with royal honours by the title of Prince of 
 Wales, and he paraded himself before the Protestant 
 mob as their hope and leader, all uncovering to him 
 as to a prince of the blood. 
 
 Charles, however, was determined in no way to con- 
 nive at so monstrous an injury to the rights of his wife 
 and of his brother : and on March 31, 1679, he pub- 
 lished a proclamation from Whitehall as follows : " To 
 avoid any dispute which may happen in time to come 
 concerning the succession to the Crown, the King 
 declares in the presence of Almighty God that he 
 never gave or made any contract of marriage, nor was 
 married to any woman whatever but to his present 
 wife, Queen Catherine, now living." Charles had by 
 no means forgotten Shaftesbury's insolent proposal of 
 the year before, and, in the High Court of Chancery, 
 he proceeded to record that " On the word of a King 
 and the faith of a Christian he was never married to 
 Mrs. Barlow, alias Walter, the Duke of Monmouth's 
 mother, or to any woman whatsoever, besides the now 
 Queen." 
 
 Another attempt to destroy Catherine's position as 
 lawful queen had failed: and again the failure was 
 due to the firmness and conscience of the king. But 
 the efforts against her swayed up and down like a see- 
 saw, from schemes against the legality of her marriag e 
 to plots against her life. 
 
 On July 9, 1679, a month after Charles had registered
 
 26 A SCAMPS PROBATION 
 
 his protest in Chancery as to his never having married 
 Monmouth's mother, or anyone but the queen, his 
 brother wrote to the Prince of Orange that some new 
 plot against Catherine would be sure to be laid. And 
 not many days later a servant of Monmouth's came to 
 Shaftesbury and his committee and declared that in the 
 previous September, when he was at Windsor, he had 
 heard Hankinson, of the queen's chapel, bid her con- 
 fessor have care of the four Irishmen he had brought 
 along with him "to do the business for them." The 
 Privy Council moved that the queen should stand her 
 trial, but Charles indignantly refused to allow "so 
 injurious aspersion on so virtuous a princess." This 
 was in the summer of 1679. In November the Exclu- 
 sion Bill was thrown out, and Shaftesbury, then in the 
 Lords, moved for a Bill of Divorce, which by separating 
 the king and Queen Catherine, might enable him to 
 marry a Protestant consort, and thus leave the crown 
 to legitimate issue. This he affirmed was the "sole 
 remaining chance of security, liberty, and religion." 
 
 Achitophel's love of religion was notorious : it was 
 edifying to see him, who had been so lately willing to 
 see Colonel Sidney's son on the throne of England, 
 thus eager for the descent of the crown to legitimate 
 issue. Here was another chance for Charles to be rid, 
 without any efforts of his own, of a childless wife, who 
 had often quarrelled with him, and whom he did not 
 love, though he liked and respected. But, if he did not 
 love her, he had a manly pity for her defencelessness, 
 and pity is akin to love in hearts that are not base. 
 Shaftesbury' s motion was warmly seconded by the 
 Earls of Salisbury and of Essex, and by Lord Howard 
 of Ettrick ; had the king allowed himself to be supposed 
 favourable or neutral, Catherine's fate, as queen, would
 
 A SCAMPS PROBATION 27 
 
 have been sealed. But Charles was by no means 
 neutral. He took the pains of seeing each peer 
 severally, showed his anger and disgust plainly, and 
 begged each lord to vote against the wicked measure. 
 There was no mistaking his earnestness and righteous 
 horror. The lords did as he wished, and the shameful 
 bill was discarded. 
 
 Once again Charles showed his determination that no 
 injustice should be done to his brother, whatever his 
 interference might cost himself in the way of popularity. 
 On March 26, 1681, the Exclusion Bill was brought up 
 again by the Parliament at Oxford. On the 28th, while 
 the Commons were all agog with eagerness to push it 
 through, the king came down. He had hastily donned 
 his state robes, and had himself carried to where the 
 Parliament was sitting in a chair, with curtains close 
 drawn. Without escort or attendance, he entered the 
 Lords Chamber, and took his seat upon the throne, 
 bidding the Commons be called to the Bar. They 
 came hurriedly, and he briefly told them that proceed- 
 ings so ill begun could end in no good, and forthwith 
 dissolved the Parliament. As stoutly had Charles 
 stood faithful to the lonely queen throughout her dark 
 hour. Through all the evil days of the Plot he kept 
 her close to him, studiously showing his deep respect 
 and full confidence. Her last accuser, Fitzharris, who, 
 like the others, had trumped up against her charges of 
 conspiring to poison her faithless husband, Charles 
 himself detected, as he had detected the others, in false 
 witness : and he himself was brought, by the king's 
 orders, to trial for high treason. He was found guilty 
 and condemned to death, and Charles flatly refused any 
 pardon for the false accuser of his wife. 
 
 What we have said has been said briefly and
 
 28 A SCAMFS PROBATION 
 
 hurriedly. What Charles II did, to his great and un- 
 dying honour, has not been puffed out or magnified ; but 
 it amounts at least to this : that a man confessedly a 
 scamp and a scapegrace had a conscience, though it 
 was not overworked; that there were temptations he 
 could resist ; that when it came to persecuting an ill- 
 used and helpless woman, he would not hold any hand 
 in the game, whatever he might seem to stand to win 
 by it : but laid aside his habitual indolence to work in 
 her defence. That he would purchase neither popu- 
 larity nor personal gratification and profit at the cost of 
 baseness, or by consenting to let injustice be done to 
 wife or brother. That, where a much-glorified king 
 failed, he, who has never been glorified at all, did not 
 fail. Not once but on many different occasions, there 
 came to him an easy chance of doing, or allowing to be 
 done, something which would have been convenient to 
 himself and he would not : it was too bad for him 
 potuit transgredi, et non est transgressus : facere 'mala 
 et non fecit.
 
 " THE ENTAIL " : AN APPRECIATION 
 
 EEALLY great reputations have a vitality which enables 
 them to survive that on which they were originally 
 grounded. 
 
 Thus Johnson's was assured by his written works 
 long before Boswell had given the man himself and 
 his talk to all the world ; but, though Johnson's reputa- 
 tion has suffered no diminution, the number of those 
 who now read the works themselves is probably not 
 great. Miss Jenkyns preferred them to Dickens, but, 
 then, she would neither read Dickens nor listen when 
 Captain Brown " poor, dear, deluded man " would 
 try to read him aloud to her ; and of the very many 
 who prefer Dickens to Johnson there are few who ever 
 read even JRasselas, and if possible, fewer still who 
 have read London, or The Vanity of Human Wishes. 
 It makes no difference : Johnson is as famous as when 
 people were praising and quoting both of those majestic 
 works, and his fame is not confined to the immense, 
 and not decreasing, number of those to whom Boswell 
 is ever dear, or to that, perhaps, less numerous body 
 who still read and delight in the doctor's own Towr 
 to the Hebrides. Swift, who took care never to go 
 to the Hebrides, and had no Boswell, is still a giant 
 among the giants of literature, and few there be who 
 read him. And yet the vigorous life of his fame is not 
 to be explained by the mere fact that very great 
 writers have taken him for theme. That he failed to
 
 30 "THE ENTAIL 11 : AN APPRECIATION 
 
 extort a bishopric from Queen Anne can hardly sur- 
 prise us ; he did not fail in exacting from his con- 
 temporaries a fame so overtopping that it is little 
 attenuated now, though more than two centuries and 
 a half have passed since sceva indignatio ceased to tear 
 his angry heart. 
 
 Johnson, we may believe, was greater than any- 
 thing he wrote ; Swift's writing was as great as himself, 
 and would suffice for his portrait if we had no other. 
 It does him no injustice, and almost anything a bio- 
 grapher might say of him ;would seem unjust were not 
 his work there to sanction it. 
 
 Fear should cast out perfect love, and it would not 
 appear difficult to have feared Johnson ; nevertheless, 
 he was loved, and is loved by many now. Swift one 
 could only fear, and he is fearful still. His hatred of 
 mankind was sincere, and he made no exception in his 
 own favour. The only tribute he asked of men was 
 their admiration and their hate, and it is hard to refuse 
 him either. 
 
 Almost all fame carries with it admiration, and 
 almost all admiration includes some touch of affection. 
 Swift's huge, but not inflated, fame has never been 
 warmed by any such touch. It is the phenomenon of 
 an intellect untempered by humanity, the apparition 
 of an armed head, without a heart or even a stomach 
 to make it human. And it is not littled by neglect, 
 any more than was Swift himself. 
 
 What is true of him, and of Johnson, is true of 
 many others, of Bacon for one. His fame is much 
 wider than the circle of his readers, and may be greater 
 than all he wrote. It weathers even the silly storm 
 stirred about his name in a teacup by the lady with 
 the frightful name who extorts from him a blushing
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 31 
 
 admission of his having " written Shakespeare." Oddly 
 enough, it has not yet been discovered that Virgil was 
 the real author of the Divine Comedy, the manuscript 
 of which Dante basely converted to his own mediaeval 
 uses, and made the vehicle of local and personal ani- 
 mosities. " If and when " the twentieth century shall 
 ever have worked out its own plentiful fooleries it may 
 have leisure for the discovery : that enfant terrible is 
 at present too deeply engaged upon original matter. 
 
 If one may back-skip so far to such trivial purpose, 
 Sappho affords a fine instance of great fame surviving 
 that on which it must have been based : though her 
 undoubted claims on the score of personal impropriety 
 will keep it alive during the present age at least. 
 Meanwhile let it rest on a piece. 
 
 Richardson's reputation stands on too much : the 
 pedestal is by far too big for the statue : and he would, 
 for me, be all the more welcome to it if it stood on 
 a great deal less I do not say the less the better, but 
 much less would have been much better. If Johnson 
 had not made up his mind that Richardson was moral 
 and Fielding wasn't, the former novelist might have 
 been less illustrious and posterity been as much enter- 
 tained. All the same Richardson could undoubtedly 
 have written a good novel or so if he had chosen 
 other themes and kept his characters less under his 
 own thumb. The Bookseller and the Prig in Soots 
 would have done for titles, and the treatment should 
 have been autobiographical ; all the correspondence 
 between his characters should have been committed to 
 the flames, and when his heroines wallowed in reflec- 
 tions his great gifts of decorum should have forbidden 
 him to look on. If there were humbugs in his time 
 Richardson must ere this have had to answer for it.
 
 32 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 Fielding was certainly not a humbug, and he was 
 anything rather than a prig ; neither did he think of 
 posing as one in the interests of the public. He did 
 not pose at all, nor did Tom Jones, who might, on 
 occasion, have behaved like somebody else without 
 damage to his character. He was not a modest young 
 man, but he was, at any rate, free from the prurient 
 modesty of Richardson's young women, and he might 
 have been better than he was if Fielding had perceived 
 anything amiss in him. Fielding, I imagine, could 
 have made him much worse and have thought no 
 worse of him. No one doubts that Fielding deserves 
 his fame, but what we may doubt is that the number of 
 his readers bears any proportion to it. 
 
 The same may be said of those whose fame is, as it 
 should be, immensely greater. Macaulay, no doubt, 
 could learn Paradise Lost by heart while he was 
 shaving, and would read it again after tea in spite of 
 knowing it by heart ; but there is too much reason to 
 fear that few now read that august epic of damnation, 
 while all treasure Milton's fame as a national possession, 
 and it is as great as ever, though it is exceptional to see 
 Paradise Lost in the hands of them that go down to 
 the earth in tubes or occupy their business in motor- 
 ' buses. It would probably be as great as ever even if 
 Comus and Lycidas 'and the Ode on the Nativity had 
 never been written, as they will forever be read with 
 an amaze of admiration and delight. 
 
 Dante is much greater than Milton, as much greater 
 as the Divine Comedy is greater than Paradise Lost* 
 and his fame is greater even in England, yet there are 
 not ten Englishmen who ever read ten cantos of the 
 Inferno, even in a translation, for ten thousand who 
 have read Lycidas and have read it with a personal
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 33 
 
 joy not dictated by mere submission to criticism or 
 convention. Dante's fame, and his right to it they do 
 take on trust, with a just, though in them eccentric, 
 admission of the principle of authority. 
 
 That is what all we have written comes to the 
 fame of the great is independent of the knowledge of 
 the little : and greater than the proofs of it that some 
 of the great themselves have given. In some cases 
 the reputation may have been overstrained : in the 
 best it is justified by the men themselves, whose visible, 
 or legible, work was only a part of themselves, and 
 must have been less than they. Of course, all great 
 fame is not that of letters, but the realm of letters is, 
 on the whole, less contentious than those other realms 
 in which the great bear sway. Even such as are great 
 themselves do not always esteem correctly the great- 
 ness of others : Macaulay, for instance, never dreamed 
 that Newman was a greater man than himself, not 
 because he placed himself too high, but because he 
 placed Newman almost nowhere : the single fact that 
 the Oratorian was one was enough to throw him, for 
 Macaulay, into a false perspective. Theology was to 
 Macaulay a dead language, and the only one that 
 bored him. 
 
 Carlyle over-esteemed Mirabeau, and no doubt 
 Heine under-estimated Wellington, as almost all 
 Wellington's countrymen and contemporaries under- 
 estimated Napoleon. Whether Napoleon himself had 
 a just appreciation of Wellington we can hardly decide, 
 for he did not always pronounce the same judgment, 
 and he said what he chose to say without any special 
 reference to what he thought. 
 
 Burke was a greater orator than any speech of his 
 would of itself prove, and his fame outlives his oratory, 
 
 c
 
 34 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 of which little is now read by anyone, and nothing by 
 the vast majority of those who hold him famous. 
 
 Some reputations have been posthumous, not as 
 merely surviving the vogue of that which created them, 
 but in a much rarer and more surprising sense as 
 actually coming to birth after the death of those 
 who, at last, achieved them. One instance is that 
 of Chatterton, a more recent instance that of Emily 
 Bronte. In her lifetime it never seems to have occurred 
 to anyone that she was even equal to her sister, than 
 whom she was immeasurably greater ; by many it was 
 urged that Charlotte must have been the real author 
 of Wuthering Heights, which she was totally incapable 
 of writing ; and that Jane Eyre was Charlotte Bronte's 
 greatest work was assumed as being without question 
 by those who imagined she had written Wuthering 
 Heights also. The same estimate of the two books held 
 ground for more than a generation after Emily Bronte's 
 death : among many it holds ground still ; nevertheless 
 the astounding greatness of her work is now being more 
 and more perceived, and her fame is surely, if slowly, 
 coming to its own. 
 
 Johnson thought Tristram Shandy odd, and said 
 that on that account it would not live : to an early 
 Victorian public Wuthering Heights may have appeared 
 odd and uncouth, too. It considered Jane Eyre im- 
 proper, and of doubtful morality ; but it recognised 
 that the work was one of genius the incomparably 
 higher genius of Wuthering Heights escaped it alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Tristram, Shandy is odd enough, but its oddity is 
 the author's whim, and it has in it qualities that other 
 odd books wholly lack. Peacock was as odd as Sterne, 
 but his oddity is about all he has, at all events it
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 35 
 
 smothers all else there might have been. Crazy Castle 
 and Headlong Hall are as exotic to this world as the 
 Voyage to Laputa, and no dazzle of brilliance can save 
 them from being almost tedious and barely readable. 
 If Johnson could have handled them he might have 
 "looked them over," in a sense not Mr. Tappertit's, 
 but he would not have read them. 
 
 Tristram Shandy, besides being odd, is unique ; 
 Wuthering Heights is more than unique : it stands not 
 only alone but aloof, in an isolation that is as tragic 
 as itself, more tragic than its amazing creator. In 
 Tristram Shandy there is not a breath of passion } 
 Wuthering Heights is all passion, and without one 
 touch of that which our novelists of to-day mean by 
 it. Heathcliff is as free from animalism as Lucifer 
 himself. 
 
 There are passages in Balzac's Pere Qoriot that can 
 remind us of nothing short of King Lear : there is not 
 a passage in Wuthering Heights that suggests a parallel 
 with anything in any other book ever written. Per- 
 haps that is why it appeared, to those who saw its 
 birth, still-born. It is a mania of criticism to ferret 
 out family likenesses. " This book in its best chapters 
 reminds us of Thackeray in his worst." " The writer's 
 wit proves him to have read Dickens when Dickens 
 was straining after it." " Kenelm Chillingly is a 
 sincere flattery of Richard Feverel." "Robert Elsmere 
 is the result of a lady's indigestion of John Inglesant " 
 and so following. 
 
 As there was no acknowledged masterpiece with 
 which Wuthering Heights could be compared, it did 
 not, for a long time, seem advisable to recognise it as a 
 masterpiece at all. 
 
 One posthumous reputation is even yet unborn,
 
 36 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 though still longer overdue than was that of Emily 
 Bronte. John Gait was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, 
 nearly forty years before the birth of Emily Bronte', and 
 he died nearly ten years before her. His fame, when it 
 arrives, will not rest on his epic poem of The Battle 
 of Largs, which no one will ever read again, and which 
 he had the sense to want no one to read. It will rest on 
 three of his prose works, whereof only two are now read 
 at all, and those two but little, and of which that which 
 is neglected altogether is by far the best. Besides these 
 three he wrote, first, his Letters from the Levant, which 
 were noted at the time and are worth attention now, 
 and eight pieces of fiction : Sir Andrew Wylie, The 
 Provost, The Steamboat, Ringan Gilhaize, The Spae- 
 wife, The Omen, Rothelan, and The Last of the Lairds. 
 They are not only readable still, but are very worthy 
 of being read. They are not so good but what they 
 might be improved, and their author himself could 
 have improved them, and made them not merely good 
 but excellent. They have a shrewd wit, and many 
 characters that deserve a fuller and less hurried pre- 
 sentment. When Gait wishes to be weird he may be 
 too Ossianic, but he does not fail ; when he is content 
 to be quaint his success, even in these eight tales, is 
 very great. 
 
 But no one to whom Gait is unknown should begin 
 with them, lest his real claims should be undervalued. 
 Anyone who has learned the value of his best work will 
 be glad that they exist, and glad to return to them if 
 he can find them, for copies of Gait's books are not 
 too easily come by. 
 
 His three longest books are his three best, which is 
 not always the case with great writers of fiction. 
 George Eliot's shortest was also her most perfect, and
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 37 
 
 her longest is among her most imperfect, though it 
 is not her least good. Mrs. Gaskell's shortest work has 
 a perfection that sets it by itself and makes it hard to 
 realise that the rest, with all their high merit, were by 
 the same author. 
 
 John Gait's three long books were The Ayrshire 
 Legatees, The Annals of the Parish, and The Entail, 
 which we have arranged in the order of their appear- 
 ance. 
 
 The first has the demerit of being written in a series 
 of letters, like Humphrey Clinker, and in it the young 
 man's letters are, like the young man's in Humphrey 
 Clinker, the least entertaining. For iny part I hate 
 tales so told. Redgauntlet suffers from it, and so does 
 even Guy Mannering, though in the latter book Scott 
 indulges his characters less, and snatches the pen out 
 of their hands with less ceremony. 
 
 But most of the letters in The Ayrshire Legatees are 
 uncommonly amusing : Mrs. Pringle's are funnier than 
 Miss Bramble's, and of Miss Bramble's we have not 
 nearly enough in Humphrey Clinker. Dr. Pringle has 
 no counterpart in Mr. Bramble, and he never perse- 
 cutes us with essays. The doctor really wrote letters, 
 and it was no wonder the Kirk Session of Garnock 
 read them aloud in full " sederunt " : they were not 
 often, we may fancy, so well entertained. As for the 
 doctor's daughter she is, at all events, better company 
 than Mr. Bramble's niece. 
 
 To give extracts, or pick out specimens, from the 
 letters in The Ayrshire Legatees, must be a very in- 
 adequate way of trying to give any just idea of their 
 excellence as a whole. No one, to whom Miss Austen 
 was unknown, would arrive at any fair estimate of 
 her singular perfection by reading any extract shorter
 
 .. 
 
 38 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 than an entire chapter, and only a whole chapter of 
 Cranford would be of any use as a specimen. The more 
 equal to itself a book is throughout, the less does it lend 
 itself to brief quotation : little slips of allusion are for 
 the intimate not for the stranger. To attempt extracts 
 from The Ayrshire Legatees is the less necessary that 
 the book was reprinted some years ago by the Mac- 
 millans with delightful illustrations by Mr. Charles 
 Brock. Did not his age (or his lack of it) forbid, one 
 would say he must have known Mrs. Glibbans, Mr. 
 Micklewham, and the Pringles. 
 
 But with The Entail, by far Gait's greatest work, the 
 case is altogether different : no reprint of the book has 
 appeared for many years, and copies of it are rarely 
 met with. There is no other excuse for the neglect 
 of it. How so fine a work of a very peculiar genius 
 should have fallen out of all notice, and out of almost 
 all remembrance, it is hard to say, and cannot be 
 lightly accounted for by merely saying that contem- 
 porary taste is bad. There must be a " reading " public 
 with very bad taste or there would be no market for 
 what is, perhaps, most saleable in latter-day fiction ; 
 but there must be another reading public with a more 
 healthy appetite, or it would never pay the publishers 
 to reproduce, as they are doing, in large quantities, 
 nearly every novel that ranks in any way as a classic. 
 
 When The Entail appeared it was not passed over 
 in silence, though it appeared when the world might 
 almost fairly have pleaded the excuse of preoccupation : 
 Sir Walter Scott had taken novel-readers by storm, 
 and was still holding the field against all comers. He 
 himself read The Entail thrice, and Byron, whose taste 
 was not identical with his, also read it three times 
 within a few months of its publication. Of one of
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 39 
 
 its characters he said to Lord Blessington, "The por- 
 traiture of Leddy Grippy is, perhaps, the most complete 
 and original that has been added to the female gallery 
 since the days of Shakespeare." Lord Jeffrey, whose 
 praise was seldom so impulsive as Byron's blame, and 
 never so cordially profuse as Scott's praise, spoke and 
 wrote of the new book in terms that were, from him, 
 those of high eulogy. 
 
 " Christopher North," himself less universally re- 
 membered than he would have liked to foresee, reviewed 
 The Entail hi Blackwood soon after it appeared, and 
 arrived at the judgment that Gait was " inferior only 
 to two living writers of fictitious narratives to him 
 whom we need not name, and to Miss Edgeworth." 
 
 It will readily be taken for granted that anything of 
 Gait's must be inferior to anything of Scott's or of 
 Miss Edgeworth's by those who have never read The 
 Entail, and only know their Scott and their Edgeworth 
 as George Eliot's auctioneer knew Latin. But it might 
 puzzle them to tell us in which of their books either 
 Sir Walter or Maria did better than Gait, what he 
 did in The Entail. We take leave to think that on 
 his own ground Gait was not beaten by Scott, Miss 
 Edgeworth, or anybody else. To say that he excelled 
 them in the line he chose for himself is not to belittle 
 them in theirs, nor does it imply that he was their 
 equal, much less their superior : Scott was immeasur- 
 ably greater than Gait as a romanticist, as he was 
 also immeasurably greater than Miss Edgeworth. It 
 is not in romance that she excelled, but in graphic 
 and spontaneous preservation of queer, fresh, and 
 extraordinarily living characters some of irresistible 
 comedy, and a few of quite poignant pathos. Sir 
 Walter tells a far better tale, and had many more tales
 
 40 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 to tell, but those who love him best love him less for the 
 tales than for the folk with whom he has peopled them. 
 
 Gait was not a romanticist of a high order, but, in 
 The Entail especially, though by no means in The 
 Entail only, he created and kept in vivid, consistent 
 life a great number of characters as original, striking, 
 and real as any in the whole rich treasury of the 
 Waverleys, or any in Castle Rackrent and The Absentee. 
 They were not borrowed from Scott or from Miss Edge- 
 worth, nor suggested by them, or by any other of Gait's 
 predecessors or contemporaries. 
 
 Sir Walter never thought of Leddy Grippy, nor of 
 Watty: had he thought of them he could not have 
 improved them. Scott is fond of lawyers, good and 
 bad ; the lawyers, good and bad, in The Entail, are as 
 characteristic and, at least, as real and convincing as 
 any in all Scott. In The Entail there is one bore, and 
 in her the fell disease takes the Ossianic form than 
 which none could be conceived more fatal. Norna of 
 the Fitful Head had it, though in her the malady had 
 become chronic in the last stages of cure. But Mrs. 
 Eadie is the only bore in The Entail, and we suspect 
 Gait put her in out of deference to a now fortunately 
 obsolete fashion. Writers much nearer our own time 
 have also bored the public by not realising how soon 
 a "phase of contemporary thought" becomes a tire- 
 some reminiscence of discarded folly or affectation. 
 We have admitted that Gait as a weaver of romance 
 does not rank specially high ; nevertheless there is a 
 romance in The Entail, though not of the conven- 
 tional pattern. It is not the romance of period, or 
 circumstance, or apparatus, but the romance of a fixed 
 idea, and that idea possesses a man who would appear 
 repulsive to any sort of romantic handling. He is not
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 41 
 
 handsome, nor is he, in any sense, noble ; his surround- 
 ings are mean, and he is mean ; no glamour of stirring 
 times sheds upon him a glow that lay outside himself. 
 There is no pathos of a lost cause ennobling ignorance, 
 no venturing all in a tragic gamble for a forlorn hope 
 that the readers know all along to have been forlorn 
 and hopeless. 
 
 Claud Walkinshaw was wholly unlovable as he was 
 entirely selfish, but his selfishness was not of a common 
 sort. He was a money-grubber, and the greed of 
 money made htm shamelessly unjust and intolerably 
 cruel, nevertheless he wanted, for himself, neither the 
 pleasures money can buy, nor the mere possession of 
 the shining yellow friends themselves. He only wanted 
 wealth to spend it, but there was only one thing on 
 which he could bear to spend it. 
 
 His grandfather was a laird of reduced fortune, to 
 whose family for many generations certain lands had 
 belonged. The last remnant of the ancient patrimony 
 he lost by trying to make a fortune in the Darien 
 scheme. At the same time he lost his only son whom 
 he had sent out in one of the company's ships. The 
 grandson, Claud Walkinshaw, " was scarcely a year 
 old when his father sailed, and his mother died of a 
 broken heart on hearing that her husband, with many 
 of his companions, had perished of disease or famine 
 among the swamps of the mosquito shore. The Kittle- 
 stonheugh estate was soon after sold, and the laird, with 
 Claud, retired into Glasgow, where he rented the upper 
 part of a back house in Aird's Close, in the Drygate. 
 The only servant whom in this altered state he could 
 afford to retain, or rather the only one that he could 
 not get rid of, owing to her age and infirmities, was 
 Maudge Dobbie, who, in her youth, was bairns-woman
 
 42 THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 to his son. She had been upwards of forty years in 
 the servitude of his house ; and the situation she had 
 filled to the father of Claud did not tend to diminish 
 the kindliness with which she regarded the child, 
 especially when, by the ruin of her master, there was 
 none but herself to attend him. . . ." "The solitary 
 old laird had not long been settled in his sequestered 
 and humble town retreat, when a change became 
 visible both in his appearance and manners. He had 
 formerly been bustling, vigorous, hearty, and social ; but 
 from the first account of the death of his son, and 
 the ruin of his fortune, he grew thoughtful and seden- 
 tary, shunned the approach of strangers, and retired 
 from the visits of his friends. Sometimes he sat for 
 whole days without speaking, and without even noticing 
 the kitten-like gambols of his grandson; at others he 
 would fondle over the child, and caress him with more 
 than a grandfather's affection ; again, he would peevishly 
 brush the boy away as he clasped his knees, and hurry 
 out of the house with short and agitated steps. His 
 respectable portliness disappeared; his clothes began 
 to hang loosely upon him; his colour fled; his face 
 withered; and his legs wasted into mere shanks. 
 Before the end of the first twelve months he was either 
 unwilling or unable to move unassisted from the old 
 armchair in which he sat from morning to night, with 
 his grey head drooping over his breast; and one 
 evening, when Maudge went to assist him to undress, 
 she found he had been for some time dead. After the 
 funeral Maudge removed with the penniless orphan 
 to a garret-room in the Saltmarket, where she en- 
 deavoured to earn for him and for herself the humble 
 aliment of meal and salt by working stockings. In 
 this condition she remained for some time, pinched
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 43 
 
 with poverty, but still patient with her lot, and pre- 
 serving, nevertheless, a neat and decent exterior. It 
 was only in the calm of the Sabbath evenings that she 
 indulged in the luxury of a view of the country ; and 
 her usual walk on these occasions, with Claud in her 
 hand, was along the brow of Whitehill, which she 
 perhaps preferred because it afforded her a distant view 
 of the scenes of her happier days; and while she 
 pointed out to Claud the hills and lands of his fore- 
 fathers, she exhorted him to make it his constant en- 
 deavour to redeem them. . . ." Every other lesson the 
 faithful, good woman tried to teach was coldly learned 
 and little remembered: that one lesson became the 
 motive-power of the boy's life. As a mere child of 
 eleven years old he started pedlar, and grew up " sly 
 and gabby," frugal, miserly, laborious, and prudent : by 
 the time he was a young man he could have kept his 
 old nurse in decent comfort, but he was too eagerly 
 saving, and left her alone and unvisited. The kind 
 woman, rich then, but herself in fallen fortunes now, 
 who had equipped his pack long ago, would inquire 
 if he gave Maudge any of his winnings, but the old, 
 bed-ridden, dying foster-mother could only say : 
 
 " I hope, poor lad, he has more sense than to think 
 o' the like o' me. Isna he striving to make a conquest 
 of the lands of his forefathers ? Ye ken he's come 
 o' gentle blood, and I am nae better than his servan'," 
 then would she turn herself to the wall and implore 
 the Father of Mercies to prosper his honest endeavours, 
 and that he might ne'er be troubled in his industry 
 with any thought about such a burden as it had 
 pleased heaven to make her to the world. 
 
 So old Maudge died, alone and unhelped by the lad 
 who had never known any other mother; but he
 
 44 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 throve and put money together till at last, as a young 
 man, he was able to settle himself in Glasgow as a 
 cloth merchant, and in this trade he prospered too, 
 so that after some years he was able to buy back the 
 farm of Grippy, part of the old estate of Kittleston- 
 heugh. Adjoining the lands of Grippy lay those of 
 Plealands, whose laird had an only child, Miss Girzy 
 Hypel, who was not so specially attractive as to have 
 been exactly pestered by the importunities of lovers. 
 When her father gave her to understand that he and 
 the laird of Grippy had decided she should become 
 leddy of that ilk she had no objection, and in due 
 course she was married to Claud, and bore him three 
 sons and a daughter. In due course also the laird of 
 Plealands died, entailing that property on his daughter's 
 second son, Watty, which he did because he did not 
 think Charlie, her eldest, would be allowed by Claud 
 to change the name of Walkinshaw for that of Hypel. 
 But as it turned out there was such a flaw in the deed 
 as enabled Watty to have the lands and keep his 
 father's name. Charlie married, for love, a girl of good 
 birth and breeding, but penniless, and old Claud 
 secretly disinherited him by a deed of entail of his own 
 the entail that gives its name to the book. The 
 laird's mixture of motives hi this act of cruelty and 
 injustice are given with singular power and insight. 
 His eldest son's marriage had bitterly angered and dis- 
 appointed him, but it was not out of mere rancour 
 or revenge that he cheated him of the inheritance : 
 what he could not resist was the temptation to bind 
 together the lands of Grippy and Plealands, to which 
 he could add those of Kilmarkeckle by marrying Watty 
 to Betty Bodle, the only child of the laird of that ilk. 
 The scheme was all the more alluring that he saw his
 
 . 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 45 
 
 way to an exchange of Watty's own estate of Plealands 
 for another bit of old Walkinshaw property the Divet- 
 hill. If Claud could be said to love anyone, he loved 
 his eldest son, the manly, handsome, generous-hearted 
 Charlie ; and for poor Watty, more than half daft, he 
 had less than a father's natural affection; but no 
 human affection could weigh against the laird's life- 
 longing which was that there might be again a 
 Walkinshaw of Kittlestonheugh. 
 
 On the way home from the lawyer's office where the 
 entail had been executed, neither Charlie nor Watty 
 understanding aught of its purport, " the old man 
 held no communion with Watty, but now and then 
 rebuked him for hallooing at birds in the hedges, or 
 chasing butterflies, a sport so unbecoming his years," 
 for Watty was a strapping young man, big and well- 
 favoured, had there been the steady light of reason 
 on his comely face. 
 
 In their way they had occasion to pass the end of 
 the path which led to Kilmarkeckle, where Miss Bodle, 
 the heiress, resided with her father, and the laird 
 resolved to put that business in train at once. 
 
 "Watty," he said to his son, "gae thy ways harne 
 by thyser, and tell thy mither I'm gaun up to Kil- 
 markeckle to hae some discourse wi' Mr. Bodle, so 
 
 that she needna weary if I dinna come hame to my 
 
 j- 
 dinner. 
 
 " Ye had better come hame," said Watty, " for there's 
 a sheep's head in the pat wi' a cuff o' the neck like ony 
 Glasgow bailie's: Ye'll no get the like o't at Kil- 
 markeckle, where the kail's sae thin that every pile 
 o' barley runs roun' the dish bobbing and bidding 
 gude-day to its neighbour." 
 
 Claud had turned into the footpath from the main 
 road, but there was something in this speech which did
 
 46 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 more than provoke his displeasure ; and he said aloud, 
 with an air of profound dread, " I hope the Lord can 
 forgie me for what I hae done for this fool." 
 
 Watty remembered that the Leedy o' Grippy, his 
 mother, had warned him to sign no papers, and he had 
 signed only for the guinea his father had promised 
 him ; he began now, with obstreperous sobs and wails, 
 to weep and cry, "My father and our Charlie hae 
 fastened on me the black bargain o' a law-plea to 
 wrang me o' auld daddy's mailing." 
 
 For Claud had not dared to tell even his wife of the 
 iniquity he proposed against their eldest son, though 
 Charlie was not the leddy's favourite indeed, so far, 
 she had been taking Watty's part against his father's 
 " mislikening." 
 
 Knowing whom he had really cozened, Claud was for 
 a few moments overpowered by a sense of shame and 
 dread : the idiotcy of the heir he had made had never 
 so horribly disgusted him before : it seemed as if the 
 hand of heaven had fallen more heavily on him. 
 
 The old man sat down on a low dry-stone wall by 
 the wayside and confessed, with clasped hands and 
 bitter tears, " that he doubted he had committed a 
 great sin." 
 
 It was but a brief glint of repentance. Hearing 
 someone approaching, he lifted his stick and moved 
 on towards Kilmarkeckle. Before he had gone many 
 paces a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he looked 
 round. It was Watty, with his hat folded together in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Father," said the fool, " I hae catched a muckle 
 bumbee; will ye help me haud it till I take out the 
 honey blob ? " 
 
 "I'll go hame. Watty, I'll go hame," was the only
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 47 
 
 answer Claud made in an accent of extreme sorrow. 
 " I'll go hame. I daur do nae mair this day." 
 
 And he went back with Watty as far as the main 
 road, where, having again recovered his self-possession, 
 he said : 
 
 " I'm dafter than thee to gang on in this fool gait ; 
 go, as I bade thee, hame and tell thy mother no to 
 look for me to dinner: for I'll aiblins bide wi' Kil- 
 markeckle." 
 
 And he went to Kilmarkeckle and arranged the 
 preliminaries of Watty's marriage with Betty Bodle. 
 Kilmarkeckle was willing and the young woman was 
 not shy. Shyness was no part of her character nor 
 timidity. When the Grippy bull broke fence and bore 
 down upon the Kilmarkeckle bull, who but she rushed 
 forth with a flail to prevent the combat ? 
 
 Nor did Watty dislike the notion of marrying and 
 setting up house, as he supposed, on his own account 
 at the Plealands. Here is the first chapter of his 
 wooing : being taken by his father to ingratiate himself 
 with his destined bride, Kilmarkeckle proposed to 
 leave the young people alone. 
 
 "We'll leave you to yoursel's," said Kilmarkeckle 
 jocularly, "and, Watty, be brisk wi' her, lad; she can 
 thole a touzle, I'se warrant." 
 
 This exhortation had, however, no immediate effect ; 
 for Walter, from the moment she made her appearance, 
 looked awkward and shamefaced, swinging his hat 
 between his legs, with his eyes fixed on the brazen 
 head of the tongs, which were placed upright astraddle 
 in front of the grate ; but every now and then he 
 peeped at her from the corner of his eye with a queer 
 and luscious glance, which, while it amused, deterred 
 her for some time from addressing him. Diffidence, 
 however, had nothing to do with the character of Miss
 
 48 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 Betty Bodle, and a feeling of conscious superiority soon 
 overcame the slight embarrassment whicn arose from 
 the novelty of her situation. 
 
 Observing the perplexity of her lover, she suddenly 
 started from her seat, and advancing briskly towards 
 him, touched him on the shoulder, saying : 
 
 " Watty, I say, Watty, what's your will wi' me ? " 
 
 " Nothing," was the reply, while he looked up know- 
 ingly in her face. 
 
 " What are fear't for ? I ken what ye're come about," 
 said she, " my father has tell't me." 
 
 At these encouraging words he leaped from his chair 
 with an alacrity unusual to his character, and attempted 
 to take her in his arms ; but she nimbly escaped from 
 his clasp, giving him, at the same time, a smart slap 
 on the cheek. 
 
 " That's no fair, Betty Bodle," cried the lover, rub- 
 bing his cheek and looking somewhat offended and 
 afraid. 
 
 " Then what gart you meddle with me ? " replied the 
 bouncing girl, with a laughing bravery that soon re- 
 invigorated his love. 
 
 "I'm sure I was na' gaun to do you ony harm," was 
 the reply, "no, sure as death, Betty, I would rather 
 cut my finger than do you ony scaith, for I like you 
 weel I canna tell you now weel ; but, if ye' 11 tak' me, 
 I'll mak' you the leddy o' the Plealands in a jiffy." He 
 took her by the hand, looking, however, away from 
 her, as if he was not aware of what he had done. . . . 
 Miss Betty was the first to break silence. 
 
 " Weel, Watty," said she, " what are ye going to say 
 to me ? " 
 
 " Na, it's your turn to speak noo. I hae spoken my 
 mind, Betty Bodle. Eh, this is a bonny hand ; and 
 what a sonsy arm ye hae. I could amaist bite your 
 cheek, Betty Bodle, I could." 
 
 " Gude preserve me, Watty, ye're like a wud dog." 
 
 She pushed him away with such vigour that he 
 collapsed into her father's chair.
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 49 
 
 " I redde ye, Watty, keep your distance. Man and 
 wife's man and wife ; but I'm only Betty Bodle and 
 ye're but Watty Walkinshaw." 
 
 " Od, Betty" (rubbing his elbow that he had hurt in 
 his fall), "ye're desperate strong, woman; and what 
 were ye the waur o' a bit slaik o' a kiss ? Howsever, 
 my bonny dawty, we'll no cast out for a' that ; for if 
 ye'll just marry me, and I'm sure ye'll no get anybody 
 that can like ye half so weel, I'll do anything ye bid 
 me ; as sure as death I will there's my hand, Betty 
 Bodle, I will ; and I'll buy you the bravest satin gown 
 in a' Glasgow, wi' far bigger flowers on't than any ane 
 in a' Mrs. Bailie Nicol Jarvie's aught ; and we'll live in 
 the Plealands House, and do naething frae dawn to 
 dark but shoo ane another on a swing between the twa 
 trees on the green; and I'll be as kind to you, Betty 
 Bodle, as I can be, and buy you likewise a side-saddle, 
 and a pony to ride on; and when the whiter comes, 
 sowing the land wi' hailstones to grow frost and snaw, 
 we'll sit cosily at the chimley-lug, and I'll read you a 
 chapter o' the Bible, or aiblins Patie and Roger as 
 sure's death I will, Betty Bodle." 
 
 They were duly and soon married, and the descrip- 
 tion of their wedding neither Smollett nor Scott could 
 have bettered, but Watty's wedded bliss was short- 
 lived. Not a year was gone by when one evening, as 
 Claud sat on his wonted bench outside the house of 
 Grippy, he saw Walter coming. There was something 
 unwonted in his appearance and gestures. 
 
 At one moment he rushed forward several steps, 
 with a strange wildness of air. He would then stop 
 and wring his hands, gaze upwards, as if he wondered 
 at some extraordinary phenomenon in the sky ; but 
 seeing nothing, he dropped his hands, and at his 
 ordinary pace came slowly up the hill. When he came 
 within a few paces of the bench, he halted, and looked 
 
 D
 
 50 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 with such an open and innocent sadness, that even the 
 heart of his father throbbed with pity and was melted 
 to a degree of softness and compassion. 
 
 " What's the matter wi' thee, Watty ? " said he with 
 unusual kindness. The poor natural, however, made 
 no reply, but continued to gaze at him with the same 
 inexpressible simplicity of grief. 
 
 " Hast t'ou lost anything, Watty ? " 
 
 " I dinna ken," was the answer, followed by a burst 
 of tears. 
 
 " Surely something dreadfu' has befallen thee, lad," 
 said Claud to himself, alarmed at the astonishment of 
 sorrow with which his faculties seemed to be bound up. 
 
 " Canst t'ou no tell me what has happened, Watty ? " 
 
 In about the space of half a minute Walter moved 
 his eyes slowly round, as if he saw and followed some- 
 thing which filled him with awe and dread. He then 
 suddenly checked himself and said : " It's naething 
 she's no there." 
 
 "Sit down beside me, Watty, sit down beside me, 
 and compose thysel'." 
 
 Walter did as he was bidden, and, stretching out his 
 feet, hung forward in such a posture of extreme list- 
 lessness and helpless despondency that all power of 
 action appeared to be withdrawn. 
 
 Claud rose, and believing he was only under the 
 influence of some of those silly passions to which he 
 was occasionally subject, moved to go away, when 
 Watty looked up and said : 
 
 "Father, Betty Bodle's dead my Betty Bodle's 
 dead!" 
 
 " Dead ! " said Claud, thunderstruck. 
 
 " Ay, father, she's dead ! My Betty Bodle's dead ! " 
 
 "Dost t'ou ken what t'ou's saying?" But Walter, 
 without attending to the question, repeated with an 
 accent of tenderness still more simple and touching : 
 
 " My Betty Bodle's dead ! She's awa' up aboon the 
 skies yon'er, and left me a wee wee baby ; " in saying 
 which he again burst into tears, and, rising hastily
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 51 
 
 from the bench, ran wildly back towards the Divethill 
 House. 
 
 The old man followed and found poor Betty Bodle 
 had indeed died in giving birth to a daughter, and to 
 her the Divethill must belong, so that the reunited 
 Kittlestonheugh property must again be divided. 
 Already the old man was scheming how to get the 
 better of the Providence that seemed against his 
 plans. Watty was pliant, and must marry again, and 
 have a son. But Watty's pliancy was changed to a 
 witless obstinacy. He was henceforth fiercely sus- 
 picious of the rights of his "wee Betty Bodle." At 
 first he sat by his dead wife, with hands folded and 
 head drooping. 
 
 He made no answer to any question; but as often 
 as he heard the infant's cry, he looked towards the bed, 
 and said with an accent of indescribable sadness, " My 
 Betty Bodle ! " 
 
 When the coffin arrived, his mother wished him to 
 leave the room, apprehensive, from the profound grief 
 in which he was plunged, that he might break out 
 into some extravagances of passion, but he refused ; 
 and, when it was brought in, he assisted with singular 
 tranquillity in the ceremonial of the coffining. But 
 when the lid was lifted, and placed over the body, and 
 the carpenter was preparing to fasten it down for ever, 
 he shuddered for a moment from head to foot, and, 
 raising it with his left hand, he took a last look at the 
 face, removing the veil with his right, and touching 
 the cheek as if he had hoped still to feel some ember 
 of life : but it was cold and stiff. 
 
 " She's clay noo," said he. " There's nane o' my 
 Betty Bodle here." 
 
 And he turned away with a careless air, as if he 
 had no further interest in the scene. From that
 
 52 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 moment his artless affections took another direction. 
 He immediately quitted the death-room, and, going to 
 the nursery where the infant lay asleep in the nurse's 
 lap, he contemplated it for some time, and then, with 
 a cheerful and happy look and tone, said, "It's a wee 
 Betty Bodle, and it's my Betty Bodle noo." He would 
 not leave his baby, and when they bade him dress and 
 make ready to perform the husband's customary part 
 in the funeral he refused to quit the child or take any 
 part in the burial. 
 
 " I canna understan'," said he, " what for a' this 
 fykerie's about a lump o' yird. Sho'el't intil a hole, 
 and no fash me." 
 
 "It's your wife, my lad," said the leddy; " ye'll 
 surely never refuse to carry her head in a gudeman- 
 like manner to the kirkyard." 
 
 " Na, na, mother, Betty Bodle's my wife ; yon clod 
 in the black kist is but her auld boddice ; and when she 
 flang it off, she put on this bonny wee new cleiding o' 
 clay," said he, pointing to the baby. . . . 
 
 "What's t'ou doing there like a hussy fellow?" 
 said Claud. " Rise and get on thy mournings, and 
 behave wiselike, and leave the bairn to the women." 
 
 " It's my bairn," replied Watty, " and ye hae nae- 
 thing, father, to do wi't. Will I no tak' care o' my 
 ain baby my bonny wee Betty Bodle ? " 
 
 " Do as I bid thee, or I'll maybe gar thee fin' the 
 weight o' my staff," said his father sharply. . . . The 
 widower looked him steadily in the face and said : 
 
 " I'm a father noo ; it would be an awfu' thing for 
 a decent grey-headed man like you, father, to strike 
 the head o' a motherless family." 
 
 " There's a judgment in this ! " cried Claud, " and if 
 there's power in the law o' Scotland, I'll gar thee rue 
 sic dourness. Get up, I say, and put on thy mourn- 
 ings, or I'll hae thee cognost and sent to Bedlam." 
 
 " I'm sure I look for nae mair at your hands, father," 
 replied Walter simply, "for my mither has often tell't 
 me, when ye hae been sitting sour and sulky in the
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 53 
 
 nook, that ye wouldna begrudge crowns and pounds to 
 make me compos 'mentis for the benefit o' Charlie." 
 
 Every pulse in the veins of Claud stood still at this 
 stroke, and he staggered, overwhelmed with shame, 
 remorse, and indignation, into a seat. 
 
 The reader needs not to be reminded that the 
 wretched father had beggared his first-born altogether 
 and given his inheritance to this poor natural. Charlie 
 had a son and a daughter of his own now, though 
 Watty had a daughter only. Geordie, Claud's third 
 son, married too, and after the birth of a daughter 
 his wife fell into a sickly state, and no other issue could 
 reasonably be expected of his marriage. Claud's 
 daughter also married, to the laird of Dirdumwhamle, 
 and had a son. And now perhaps we should see ex- 
 actly how the Entailer had settled his estates. They 
 were, then, entailed in the first instance on Watty, his 
 second son, and his heirs male ; then on Geordie, the 
 third son, and his heirs male, then upon the heirs male 
 of Charlie, his eldest son ; and, finally, failing all 
 these, on the heirs general of his daughter Margaret. 
 
 Now the leddy o' Grippy began match-making in 
 her own mind, as her husband was always doing ; but, 
 alas ! their schemes by no means tallied hers was 
 that Margaret's son should, when he was grown up, 
 marry Watty's daughter, whereas Claud hoped that 
 by the marriage of Charlie's son with Watty's daughter 
 the estate might still be kept together in the hands 
 of a Walkinshaw. 
 
 Meanwhile Charlie was in debt and tried to borrow 
 the not very grievous sum of two hundred pounds 
 to put himself right again. He went to Mr. Keelevin, 
 the honest lawyer, who had drawn the entail, and had 
 drawn it with vehement and solemn expostulation,
 
 54 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 and saw, probably, no great difficulty in raising so 
 modest a sum on his prospects as eldest son and heir of 
 an increasingly wealthy father. It was only now that 
 he learned he had no prospects and within a few 
 weeks he was dead, broken in heart and hope. While 
 he was dying Mr. Keelevin went out to the Grippy and 
 attacked the old laird again, himself sick and sorry 
 now. The entail could not be altered, but Claud had 
 "lying siller" in plenty, and the kind lawyer was 
 strongly determined to do all he could to force him 
 to make, out of it, all possible compensation to his dis- 
 inherited first-born. 
 
 The leddy, still ignorant of Charlie's disinheritance, 
 was equally resolved to secure a settlement in money 
 for herself. Watty was only resolved on one thing 
 to sign no paper whatever lest he might injure his wee 
 Betty Bodle. 
 
 The news of Charlie's death brought Claud at last 
 to a dour and desperate repentance. For his father- 
 less grandchildren he did make up his mind to do all 
 possible; but Claud's own days were numbered. He 
 was already marked for death on the day when he laid 
 his first-born in the grave. A day or two later Mr. 
 Keelevin appeared at the Grippy with the papers, but 
 the laird was speechless, though fully conscious and 
 eagerly willing to sign them. Doctor and leddy had 
 been summoned, but the former declared Claud's case 
 hopeless. The latter arrived, drenched to the skin, 
 from visiting her son's widow in Glasgow. And now, 
 rushing in, she found the lawyer with his papers, 
 looking everywhere for ink and pens. 
 
 " What's wrong noo ? " she cried. " What new judg- 
 ment has befallen us ? Whatna fearfu' image is that
 
 "THE ENTAIL 11 : AN APPRECIATION 55 
 
 that's making a' this rippet for the cheatin' instruments 
 o' pen and ink, when a dying man's at his last gasp ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Walkinshaw," said the lawyer, " for heaven's 
 sake be quiet. Your gudeman kens very weel what I 
 hae read to him. It's a provision for Mrs. Charles and 
 her orphans." 
 
 " But is there no likewise a provision for me in't ? " 
 cried the leddy. ..." Ye's get neither pen nor ink 
 here, Mr. Keelevin, till my rights are cognost in a 
 record o' sederunt and session." 
 
 " Hush ! " exclaimed the doctor. All was silent, and 
 every eye turned on the patient, whose countenance 
 was again hideously convulsed. A troubled groan 
 struggled and heaved for a moment in his breast, and 
 was followed by a short quivering through his whole 
 frame. 
 
 " It's all over," said the doctor. 
 
 When the laird's funeral was over, Geordie, selfish 
 and cool as he was, did try to persuade Watty into 
 making some provision for their elder brother's widow 
 and orphans. 
 
 " If my father," said Walter, " did sic' a wicked thing 
 to Charlie as ye a' say, what for would ye hae me to do 
 as ill and as wrang to my ain bairn ? Isna wee Betty 
 Bodle my first-born, and, by course o' nature and law, 
 she has a right to a' I hae ; what for then would ye hae 
 me to mak away wi' onything that pertains to her ? 
 I'll no' be guilty o' any sic' sin. ' 
 
 Geordie urged that their father had, in fact, intended 
 to provide for his daughter-in-law and grandchildren, 
 that it was but a chance the bond of provision was not 
 signed. 
 
 "Ye may say sae, Geordie," retorted Watty, "in your 
 cracks at the yarn-club o'er the punch-bowl, but I
 
 56 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 think it was the will o' Providence ; for, had it been 
 ordain't that Bell and her weans were to get a part o' 
 father's gear they would hae gotten't : but ye saw the 
 Lord took him to Abraham's bosom before the bond 
 was signed, which was a clear proof and testimony to 
 me, that it doesna stand wi' the pleasure o' heaven 
 that she should get onything. She'll get nothing frae 
 me." 
 
 The leddy, in all the pomp of her new weeds, who was 
 at the table, with the tenth chapter of Nehemiah open 
 before her, here interposed. 
 
 "Wheesht, wheesht, Watty, and dinna blaspheme," 
 said she, " and no be ou'erly condumacious ' whosoever 
 giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.' " 
 
 " That," said Watty, " is what I canna comprehend ; 
 for the Lord has no need to borrow. He can mak' a 
 world o' gold for the poor folk if He likes ; and if He 
 keeps them in poortith, He has His ain reasons for't." 
 
 " Ah ! weel I wat," exclaimed the leddy pathetically, 
 " noo I find to my cost that my cousin, Ringan Gilhaise 
 . . . had the rights o't when he plead my father's will 
 on account of concos montis." 
 
 This gave a hint to the wily Geordie, who began 
 thenceforth to feel his way to a setting aside of his 
 brother, as an idiot, in which case he, as next heir of en- 
 tail, would have the management of the estates. Poor 
 Watty gave him chance enough. His wee Betty Bodle, 
 a premature and sickly child, presently dwindled out 
 of life, and Watty stole his elder brother's little girl 
 and dressed her in his own bairn's clothes, calling her 
 his "third Betty Bodle." And the leddy was now 
 against him, for he would give her no money for house 
 or board, and he had brought his brother's widow and 
 her son to live at the Grippy telling her that, since 
 she was finer bred than his mother, she had better 
 manage things and be " leddy," as he had no wife of his
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 57 
 
 own. When the young widow perceived that plots 
 were afoot against her benefactor she bade him go and 
 tell Mr. Keelevin and take his counsel. 
 
 " She has acted a true friend's part," said the lawyer. 
 " And I would advise you, Mr. Walter, to keep out of 
 harm's way, and no gang in the gate o' the gleds as ye 
 ca' them." 
 
 " Hae ye ony ark or crannie, Mr. Keelevin, where a 
 body might den himsel' till they're out o' the gate and 
 away ? " cried Walter timidly, and looking anxiously 
 round the room. 
 
 "Ye shouldna' speak sic havers, Mr. Walter, but 
 conduct yourself mair like a man," said his legal friend 
 grievedly ; "... tak' my advice and speak till them as 
 little as possible." 
 
 "I'll no say ae word I'll be adumbie; I'll sit as 
 quiet as ony ane o' the images afore Bailie Glasford's 
 house. King William himsei', on his bell-metal horse 
 at the Cross, is a popular preacher, Mr. Keelevin, com- 
 pared to what I'll be." 
 
 It was too true. There was to be a legal inquiry 
 into Watty's mental capacity. Of the first day's pro- 
 ceedings, when other witnesses were examined, we need 
 say nothing here. Nothing very materially adverse 
 was elicited against the poor young man's sanity. 
 
 Next day Watty appeared, dressed in his best, hand- 
 some and only showing a reasonable anxiety and 
 interest. 
 
 " You are Mr. Walkinshaw, I believe ? " said the 
 adverse counsel, Mr. Threeper, when Watty had come 
 forward as bidden, and made his slow and profound bow 
 to sheriff and jury. 
 
 " I believe I am," said Watty timidly. 
 
 " What are you, Mr. Walkinshaw ? ""
 
 58 "THE ENTAIL 11 : AN APPRECIATION 
 
 "A man, sir; my mother and brother want to mak' 
 me a daft ane." 
 
 " How do you suspect them of any such inten- 
 tions ? " 
 
 " Because, ye see, I'm here. I wouldna' hae been 
 here but for that." 
 
 " Then do you think you are a daft man ? " 
 
 "Nobody thinks himsel' daft. I daresay ye think 
 ye're just as wise as me." 
 
 A roar of laughter shook the court, and Threeper 
 blushed and was disconcerted ; but he soon resumed 
 tartly : 
 
 " Upon my word, Mr. Walkinshaw, you have a good 
 opinion of yourself. I should like to know for what 
 reason ? " 
 
 "That's a droll question to speer at a man," said 
 Walter; "a poll-parrot thinks weel o' itsel', which is 
 but a feathered creature, and short o' the capacity o' 
 man by twa hands." 
 
 Mr. Keelevin trembled and grew pale ; and the 
 advocate, recovering full possession of his assurance, 
 proceeded : 
 
 "And so ye think, Mr. Walkinshaw, that the two 
 hands make all the difference between a man and a 
 parrot ? " 
 
 " No, no, sir," replied Watty, " I dinna think that 
 for ye ken the beast has feathers." 
 
 " And why have not men feathers ? " 
 
 " That's no a right question, sir, to put to the like o' 
 me, a weak human creature, you should ask their 
 Maker," said Walter gravely. 
 
 The advocate was again repulsed ; . . . . George sat 
 shivering from head to foot : a buzz of satisfaction 
 pervaded the whole court. 
 
 " Well, but not to meddle with such mysteries," said 
 Mr. Threeper, assuming a jocular tone, " I suppose you 
 think yourself a very clever fellow ? " 
 
 " At some things," replied Walter modestly, " but I 
 dinna like to mak a roos o' mysel'."
 
 THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 59 
 
 "And pray now, Mr. Walkinshaw, may I ask what 
 you think you do best ? " 
 
 " Man ! an' ye could see how I can sup curds and 
 cream there's no ane in a' the house can ding me." 
 
 The sincerity and exultation with which this was 
 expressed convulsed the court, and threw the advocate 
 completely on his beam-ends. However, he soon 
 righted, and proceeded : 
 
 " I don't doubt your ability in that way, Mr. Walkin- 
 shaw ; and I daresay you can play a capital knife and 
 fork." 
 
 " I'm better at the spoon," replied Walter, laughing. 
 
 "Well, I must confess you are a devilish clever 
 fellow." 
 
 " Mair sae, I'm thinking, than ye thought, sir. But 
 noo, since," continued Walter, "ye hae speer't sae many 
 questions at me, will ye answer one yourseP ? " 
 
 " Oh, I can have no possible objection to do that, Mr. 
 Walkinshaw." 
 
 "Then," said Walter, "how muckle are ye to get 
 frae my brother for this job ? " 
 
 Again the court was convulsed, and the questioner 
 again disconcerted. 
 
 " I suspect, brother Threeper," said the sheriff, " that 
 you are in the wrong box." 
 
 "I suspect so, too," replied the advocate, laughing; 
 but, addressing himself again to Walter, he said : 
 
 " You have been married, Mr. Walkinshaw?" 
 
 " Ay, auld Doctor Denholm married me to Betty 
 Bodle." 
 
 " And pray where is she ? " 
 
 " Her mortal remains, as the headstone says, lie in 
 the kirkyard." 
 
 The countenance of Mr. Keelevin became pale and 
 anxious. George and his counsel exchanged smiles of 
 gratulation. 
 
 " You had a daughter ? " said the advocate, looking 
 knowingly to the jury, who sat listening with greedy 
 ears.
 
 60 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 " I had," said Walter, and glanced anxiously towards 
 his agent. 
 
 " And what became of your daughter ? " 
 
 No answer was immediately given. Walter hung 
 his head and seemed troubled ; ne sighed deeply, and 
 again turned his eye inquiringly to Mr. Keelevin. 
 Almost every one present sympathised with his emo- 
 tion, and ascribed it to parental sorrow. 
 
 " I say," resumed the advocate, " what became of 
 your daughter ?" 
 
 "I canna answer that question." 
 
 The simple accent in which this was uttered interested 
 all in his favour still more and more. 
 
 " Is she dead ? " said the pertinacious Mr. Threeper. 
 
 " Folk said sae ; and what everybody says maun be 
 true." 
 
 " Then you don't, of your own knowledge, know the 
 fact ? " 
 
 " Before I can answer that, I would like to ken what 
 a fact is." 
 
 The counsel shifted his ground, without noticing the 
 question, and said : 
 
 " But I understand, Mr. Walkinshaw, you have still 
 a child that you call Betty Bodle ? " 
 
 " And what business hae ye wi' that ? " said the 
 natural, offended ; " I never saw sic a stock o' impudence 
 as ye hae in my life." 
 
 "I did not mean to offend you, Mr. Walkinshaw ; I 
 was only anxious, for the ends of justice, to know if 
 you consider the child you call Betty Bodle as your 
 daughter ? " 
 
 "I'm sure," replied Walter, " that the ends o' justice 
 would be muckle better served an ye would hae done 
 wi' your speering." 
 
 " It is, I must confess, strange that I cannot get a 
 direct answer from you, Mr. Walkinshaw. Surety, as 
 a parent, you should know your child ! " exclaimed the 
 advocate peevishly. 
 
 " An I was a mother ye might say sae."
 
 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 61 
 
 Mr. Threeper began to feel that hitherto he had 
 made no impression. After conferring with George's 
 agent he resumed : 
 
 " I do not wish, Mr. Walkinshaw, to harass your 
 feelings; but I am not satisfied with the answer you 
 have given respecting your child. ... Is the little girl 
 that lives with you your daughter ? " 
 
 " I dinna like to gie you any satisfaction on that 
 head ; for Mr. Keelevin said ye would bother me if I 
 did." 
 
 " Ah ! have I caught you at last ? " 
 
 A murmur of disappointment ran through all the 
 court, and Walter looked around cowermgly and 
 afraid. 
 
 " So, Mr. Keelevin has primed you, has he ? He has 
 instructed you what to say ? " 
 
 " No," said the poor natural, " he instructed me to 
 say nothing." 
 
 "Then why did he tell you that I would bother 
 you ? " 
 
 " I dinna ken ; speer at himsel' ; there he sits." 
 
 "No, sir! I ask you," said the advocate grandly. 
 
 " I'm wearied, Mr. Keelevin," said Walter helplessly, 
 as he looked towards his disconsolate agent. " May 
 I no come away ? " 
 
 The honest lawyer gave a deep sigh ; to which all 
 the spectators sympathisingly responded. 
 
 "Mr. Walkinshaw," said the sheriff, "don't be 
 alarmed we are all friendly disposed towards you ; but 
 it is necessary, for the satisfaction of the jury, that you 
 should tell us what you think respecting the child that 
 lives with you." 
 
 Walter smiled and said, "I hae nae objection to 
 converse wi' a weel-bred gentleman like you ; but that 
 barking terrier in the wig, I can thole him no longer." 
 
 " Well, then, is the little girl your daughter ? " 
 
 " 'Deed is she my ain dochter." 
 
 "How can that be, when, as you acknowledged, 
 everybody said your dochter was dead ? "
 
 62 "THE ENTAIL": AN APPRECIATION 
 
 "But I kent better mysel' my bairn and dochter, 
 ye see, sir, was lang a weakly baby, aye bleating like 
 a lambie that has lost its mother ; and she dwined and 
 dwindled, and moaned and grew sleepy, sleepy, and 
 then she closed her wee bonny een and lay still ; and 
 I sat beside her three days and three nights, watching 
 her a' the time, never lifting my een frae her face, that 
 was as sweet to look on as a gowan in a lown May 
 morning. But, I kenna how it came to pass I 
 thought, as I looked at her, that she was changed, 
 and there began to come a kirkyard smell frae the bed, 
 that was just as if the hand o' nature was wishing me 
 to gae away ; and then I saw, wi' the eye o' my heart, 
 that my brother's wee Mary was grown my wee Betty 
 Bodle, and 'so I gaed and brought her hame in my 
 arms, and she is noo my dochter. But my mother has 
 gaen on at me like a randy ever sin' syne, and wants 
 me to put away my ain bairn, which I will never, 
 never do. No, sir, I'll stand by her, and guard her, 
 though fifty mothers, and fifty times fifty brother 
 Geordies were to flyte at me frae morning to night." 
 
 One of the jury here interposed, and asked several 
 questions relative to the management of the estates; 
 by the answers to which it appeared, not only that 
 Walter had never taken any charge whatever, but that 
 he was totally ignorant of business, and even of the 
 most ordinary money transactions. The jury then 
 turned and laid their heads together ; the legal gentle- 
 men spoke across the table, and Walter was evidently 
 alarmed at the bustle. In the course of two or three 
 minutes, the foreman returned a verdict of fatuity. 
 The poor laird shuddered, and, looking at the sheriff, 
 said, in an accent of simplicity that melted every heart, 
 " Am I found guilty ? Oh surely, sir, ye'll no hang me, 
 for I couldna help it." 
 
 If any trial scene in fiction is more simply touching 
 than this, more life-like and less strained, I can only 
 say I do not know where to find it.
 
 "THE ENTAIL' 1 : AN APPRECIATION 63 
 
 But if poor Watty is the most pathetic figure in The 
 Entail, his mother, the leddy, is the most entertaining 
 and the most eccentric. It is only after Watty's " trial " 
 that she appears in all her glory. Already there have 
 been inimitable scenes between her and her husband, 
 her and Watty, her and Geordie ; but her full peony- 
 bloom is reserved for the second half of this wonderful 
 book, of which we have dealt only with the first. If 
 we are to deal with her at all, it must clearly be in 
 another paper.
 
 - 
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 
 
 ANOTHER APPRECIATION 
 
 IN the former paper dealing with John Gait's Entail 
 it was not possible to give the Leddy o' Grippy the 
 elbow-room her peculiar qualities demand and her im- 
 portance deserves. She takes her place among the 
 Dramatis Personce of the book quite early in its course, 
 but, as it continues, to Gait himself she becomes more 
 and more irresistible, and she gets more and more of 
 her own way, to the reader's immense pleasure. There 
 is not the slightest necessity for any indication on our 
 part of her remarkable talents and qualities, as they 
 speak for themselves. 
 
 The reader should, however, in order that he may 
 fully understand what share she had in promoting the 
 general misery of the piece, be reminded briefly of the 
 story set forth in the Entail. 
 
 Claud Walkinshaw was the penniless grandson of a 
 broken laird, in whose hands the last remains of a once 
 good estate had melted to nothing. The old laird died, 
 and the child was supported by the frugal devotion 
 of a faithful nurse, from whom he might have learned 
 noble lessons of self-sacrifice, from whom he did learn 
 only to dedicate his life to the recovery of some part 
 at least of the lost inheritance. That there should be 
 again a Walkinshaw of the Kittlestonheugh was the 
 ambition to which he sacrificed natural justice and 
 
 64
 
 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 65 
 
 natural affection. Beginning as a pedlar, he scraped 
 together, by the time he was a man, enough to set 
 himself up in regular trade : and presently he was able 
 to buy back one farm, the Grippy, which had formed 
 part of the ancestral inheritance. Now, he resolved to 
 marry, and beget children, and entail the property, 
 that none of his descendants might have it in their 
 power to commit the imprudence which had brought 
 his grandfather to a morsel, and thrown himself on the 
 world. After maturely considering the prospects of all 
 the heiresses within the probable scope of his ambition, 
 he resolved that his affection should be directed towards 
 Miss Girzy Hypel, the only daughter of Malachi Hypel, 
 the laird of Plealands. 
 
 The young woman was his distant kinswoman, and 
 her father, who loved law, had come into Glasgow to 
 attend the judges' circuit. He came to congratulate 
 Claud on the re-conquest of a part of his family estate. 
 
 " I hear," said the laird, " that ye hae gotten a sappy 
 bargain o' the Grippy. It's true some o' the lands are 
 but cauld; however, cousin, ne'er fash your thumb, 
 Glasgow's on the thrive, and ye hae as mony een in 
 your head for an advantage as ony body I ken. But 
 now that ye hae gotten a house, wha's to be the leddy ? 
 I'm sure ye micht do waur than cast a sheep's e'e in at 
 our door ; my dochter Girzy's o' your ain flesh and 
 blood; I dinna see ony moral impossibility in her 
 becoming, as the Psalmist says, ' bone of thy bone.' " 
 
 Claud replied in his wonted couthy manner, " Nane 
 o' your jokes, laird me even mysel' to your dochter ! 
 Na, na, Plealands, that canna be thought o' nowadays. 
 But, no to make a ridicule of sic a solemn concern, 
 it's vera true that, hadna my grandfather, when 
 he was grown doited, sent out a' the Kittlestonheugh 
 
 E
 
 66 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 in a cargo o' playocks to the Darien, I might hae been 
 in a state and condition to look at Miss Girzy ; but, ye 
 ken, I hae a lang clue to wind before I maun think o' 
 playing the ba' wi' Fortune, in ettling so far aboun 
 my reach." 
 
 "Snuffs o' tobacco!" exclaimed the laird. "Are ye 
 nae sib to oursel's ? If ye dinna fail by your ain blate- 
 ness, our Girzy's surely no past speaking to. Just lay 
 your leg, my man, over a side o' horse flesh, and come 
 your ways, some Saturday, to speer her price." 
 
 Finding Miss Girzy within his grasp Claud was in the 
 less hurry, and cast about for a wealthier match ; but, 
 failing, he determined to take what he could get ; and 
 to that end wrote to Plealands, proposing a visit and 
 also sent for a tailor to make him a new coat. The 
 tailor was an elder of the Tron Kirk, and had much to 
 say of the backslidings of the times, but opined that a 
 remnant might be saved. 
 
 " Talking," said Claud, " o' remnants, I hae a bit 
 blue o' superfine ; it has been lang on hand, and the 
 moths are beginning to meddle wi't I won'er if ye 
 could mak me a coat o't." 
 
 The coat was made and our lover of forty-seven rode 
 forth on his wooing. He was not wont to ride, and his 
 hired steed was not much wont to be ridden in his 
 fashion. As Claud confessed, " Twa dyers wi' their 
 beetles couldna hae done me mair detriment." How- 
 ever, he did arrive at Plealands House, and as they went 
 into dinner, " Girzy," said the laird, " gae to thy bed and 
 bring a cod for Mr. Walkinshaw, for he'll no can thole 
 to sit doun on our hard chairs." 
 
 Girzy laughed, and returned with the pillow, which 
 she herself placed in one of the armchairs, shaking and 
 patting it into plumpness, as she said, " Come round
 
 
 
 I 
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 67 
 
 here, Mr. Walkinshaw. I trow ye'll find this a safe 
 easy seat. Weel do I ken what it is to be saddle-sick 
 mysel'. Lordsake ! when I gaed in ahint my father to 
 see the robber hanged at Ayr, I was for mair than 
 three days as if I had sat doun on a heckle." When 
 dinner was done and Girzy and her mother had left 
 them, the two lairds fell to bargaining. 
 
 " Weel, Grippy," said Plealands, " but I'm blithe to 
 see you here; and, if I'm no mista'en, Girzy will no 
 be ill to woo. Isna she a coothy and kind creature ? 
 She'll mak you a capital wife. Man, it would do your 
 heart good to hear how she rants among the servan' 
 lasses. Lazy sluts that would like nothing better than 
 to live at heck and manger, and bring their master to 
 a morsel ; but I trow Girzy gars them keep a trig house 
 and a birring wheel." 
 
 "No doubt, laird," replied Claud, "but it's a com- 
 fort to hae a frugal woman for a helpmate; but, ye 
 ken, nowadays it's no the fashion for bare legs to come 
 thegither. The wife maun hae something to put in 
 the pot as well as the man ; and although Miss Girzy 
 mayna be a' thegither objectionable, yet it would 
 still be a pleasant thing, baith to hersel' and the man 
 that gets her, an ye would just gie a bit inkling o' 
 what she'll hae." 
 
 " Isna she my only dochter ? That's a proof in test 
 that she'll get a'. Naebody needs to be telled, man." 
 
 " Vera true, laird ; but the leddy's life is in her lip, 
 and, if ony thing were happening to her, ye're a hale 
 man, and wha ken's what would be the upshot o' a 
 second marriage ? " 
 
 " That's looking far ben," replied the laird. 
 
 However, he and Claud came to terms, and, in little 
 more than a month, Miss Girzy was translated into the
 
 68 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 Leddy of Grippy. In due course she blest her husband 
 with a son, Charles, and on him the Grippy was at first 
 entailed, but not the Plealands, for the grandfather 
 would only settle it on a son of his daughter's who 
 should take the name of Hypel, and of that Claud 
 would not hear yet. So that when Watty arrived the 
 Plealands was entailed on him all of which has been 
 told in our former paper. 
 
 At first the leddy was fonder of poor Watty than of 
 his elder or younger brother, or of her daughter, and 
 often enraged Claud by her praise of him. 
 
 "I won'er to hear you, gudeman," exclaimed the 
 leddy one day her father was now dead, and it was 
 intolerable to Claud to think that Watty should have 
 the Plealands, and that it could not be joined with 
 Grippy " I won'er to hear ye aye mislikening Watty 
 that gait ; he's a weel-tempered laddie, lilting like a 
 linty at the door-cheek frae morning to night." 
 
 " Singing, Girzy ! I'm really distressed to hear you ; 
 to ca' yon singing ; it's nothing but lal, lal, lal, lal, wi' a 
 bow and a bend backwards and forwards. As if the 
 creature hadna the gumshion o' the cuckoo, the whilk 
 has a note mair in its sang, although it has but twa." 
 
 "It's an innocent sang for a' that . . . but ye hae 
 just a spite at the bairn, gudeman, 'cause my father 
 has made him heir o' the Plealands. That's the gospel 
 truth o' your being so fain to gar folk trow that my 
 Watty's daft." 
 
 " Ye re daft, gudewife . . . there are degrees o' capacity, 
 Gir2y, and Watty's, poor callan, we maun alloo between 
 oursel's, has been meted by a sma' measure." 
 
 " Weel, if ever I heard the like o' that ! If the Lord 
 has dealt the brains o' our family in mutchkins and 
 chapins, it's my belief that Watty got his in the biggest
 
 , THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 69 
 
 stoup ... he can say his questions without missing 
 a word, as far as what is forbidden in the Tenth 
 Commandment ? And I ne'er hae been able to get his 
 brother beyond ' What is effectual calling ? ' ' 
 
 " That's the vera thing . . . the callan can get ony 
 thing by heart, but, after all, he's just like a book, for 
 everything he learns is dead within him, and he's ne'er a 
 prin's worth the wiser o't. But it's some satisfaction to 
 me, that, since your father would be so unreasonably 
 obstinate as to make away the Plealands past Charlie, 
 he'll be punished in the gouk he's chosen for heir." 
 
 " Gude guide us! isna that gouk yer ain bairn?" 
 exclaimed the indignant mother. " Surely the man's 
 fey about his entails and his properties, to speak o' the 
 ill-less laddie as if it were no better than a stot or a 
 stirk! Ye'll no hae the power to wrang my wean 
 while the breath o' life's in my body ; so I redde ye, 
 tak tent to what ye try." 
 
 " Girzy, t'ou has a head and so has a nail." 
 " Gudeman, ye hae a tongue and so has a bell." 
 The leddy henceforth had it fixed in her mind that 
 Claud meant, if he could, to disinherit Watty of the 
 Plealands ; but, as he could not do that, and discovered 
 that Watty, through a flaw in the wording of the 
 settlement, need not take the name of Hypel, he did 
 in fact disinherit Charles, so that Grippy and Plealands 
 might keep together. Of this the leddy herself was 
 kept in ignorance, for, though Claud did it, he was 
 ashamed of it. When old Plealands died the minister 
 of that parish betook himself, with his wife, to Grippy 
 to condole with the leddy. 
 
 "Nothing," observed Dr. Kilfuddy, "is so uncertain 
 as the things of time. This dispensation which has 
 been vouchsafed, Mrs. Walkinshaw, to you and yours
 
 70 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 is an earnest of what we have all to look for in this 
 world. But we should not be overly cast down by it, 
 but lippen to eternity. . . . Your father, I am blithe to 
 hear, has died in better circumstances than could be 
 expected considering the trouble he has had wi' his 
 lawing, leaving, as they say, the estate clear of debt, 
 and a heavy soom of lying siller." 
 
 " My father, Mr. Kilfuddy, was, as you well know, a 
 most worthy character, and I'll no say hasna left a 
 nest-egg, the Lord be thankit, and we maun compose 
 oursel's to thole wi' what He has been pleased, in His 
 gracious ordinance, to send upon us for the advantage 
 of our poor sinful souls. But the burial has cost the 
 gudeman a power o' money ; for my father, being the 
 head o' a family, we hae been obligated to put a' the 
 servants, baith here, at the Grippy, and at the Plea- 
 lands, in full deep mourning, and to hing the front o' 
 the laft in the kirk, as ye'll see next Sabbath, wi' a 
 very handsome black cloth, the whilk cost twenty 
 pence the ell, first cost out o' the gudeman's ain shop ; 
 but, considering wha my father was, we could do no 
 less in a' decency." 
 
 "And I see," interfered the minister's wife, "that ye 
 hae gotten a bombazeen o' the first quality. Nae 
 doubt ye had it likewise frae Mr. Walkinshaw's own 
 shop." 
 
 "Na, mem," replied the mourner, "I was, as ye ken, 
 at the Plealands when my father took his departal to a 
 better world, and sent for my mournings frae Glasgow 
 . . . but it happened to be a day of deluge, so that 
 my whole commodity, on Baldy Slowgaun's cart, was 
 drookit through and through, and baith the crape and 
 bombazeen were rendered as soople as pudding-skins 
 ... a sight past expression ; and obligated me to send
 
 . 
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 71 
 
 an express to Kilmarnock for the things I hae on, the 
 outlay of whilk was a clean total loss. But, Mr. 
 Kilfuddy, everything in this howling wilderness is 
 ordered for the best; and, if the gudeman has been 
 needcessitated to pay for twa sets o' mournings, yet 
 when he gets what he'll get frae my father's gear, he 
 ought to be very well content that it's nae waur." 
 
 "What ye say, Mrs. Walkinshaw," replied the 
 minister, "is very judicious ; for it was spoken at the 
 funeral that your father, Plealands, couldna hae left 
 muckle less than three thousand pounds of lying 
 money." 
 
 "No, Mr. Kilfuddy, it's no just sae muckle; but I'll 
 no say it's ony waur than twa thousand." 
 
 "A braw soom, a braw soom," said the spiritual 
 comforter. 
 
 At this juncture Watty the heir came rumbling into 
 the room crying : 
 
 "Mither, mither! Meg Draiks winna gie me a bit of 
 auld Daddy's burial bread." 
 
 " He's a fine spirity bairn," observed Mrs. Kilfuddy ; 
 " everybody maun alloo that." 
 
 " He's as he came frae the hand o' his Maker," replied 
 the leddy, looking piously towards the minister, " and 
 it's a comfort to think he's so weel provided for by my 
 father." 
 
 " Then it's true that he gets a' the Plealands 
 property ? " 
 
 " Deed is't, sir, and a braw patrimony I trow it will be 
 by the time he arrives at the years o' discretion." 
 
 " That's a lang look," rejoined the minister a little 
 
 slyly. 
 
 All this, however, is but a series of hints of what 
 the Leddy o' Grippy was in favouring circumstances to
 
 72 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 become. We hope there is no need to repeat what 
 has been said in our former paper, wherein we told of 
 Claud's secret disinheriting of his eldest son, and of the 
 entail he made, whereby both Grippy and Plealands 
 were settled on Watty, and with them the other lands 
 of the old Kittlestonheugh estate he lived to buy back. 
 We read of Claud's own miserable, conscience-stricken 
 death, and of the death of his eldest son Charles, dis- 
 inherited and broken in spirit. Watty was already a 
 widower, and had lost his one child. George, his 
 younger brother, had only a daughter, and the entail 
 was on his heir male, so that in reality the son of the 
 dead Charles was heir, but no one knew it except 
 George himself, who was anxious to make up a mar- 
 riage between his daughter Robina and his nephew 
 James Walkinshaw, the rightful heir of entail. 
 
 James, however, wanted to marry someone else, and 
 so did Robina, her choice having fallen on another 
 cousin, Walkinshaw Milrookit, son of her aunt Meg, 
 third wife of the laird of Dirdumwhamle. We must 
 for the present, however, return to the afternoon of 
 the day whereon poor Watty had been pronounced 
 fatuus by the Court. 
 
 The scene in the parlour of Grippy, after the inquiry, 
 was of the most solemn and lugubrious description. 
 The leddy sat in the great chair at the fireside, in all 
 the pomp of woe, wiping her eyes, ever and anon giving 
 vent to the deepest soughs of sorrow. Mrs. Charles, 
 with her son leaning on her knee, occupied another 
 chair, pensive and anxious. George and Mr. Pitwinnoch 
 (his lawyer) sat at the table, taking an inventory of 
 the papers in the scrutoire, and Walter was playfully 
 tickling his adopted daughter on the green before 
 the window, when Mrs. Milrookit (his sister) with
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 73 
 
 her husband, the laird of Dirdumwhamle, came to 
 sympathise and condole with their friends, and to 
 ascertain what would be the pecuniary consequences 
 of the decision to them. 
 
 "Come awa', my dear," said the leddy, "and tak a 
 seat beside me. Your poor brother, Watty, has been 
 weighed in the balance o' the sheriff and found wanting ; 
 and his vessels o' gold and silver, as I may say in the 
 words o' Scripture, are carried away into captivity ; 
 for I understand that George gets no proper right to 
 them, as I expeckit, but is obligated to keep them in 
 custody, in case Watty should hereafter come to years 
 o' discretion. Hech, Meg ! but this is a sair day for 
 us a', and for nane mair than your afflicted gude-sister 
 there [Charles Walkinshaw's widow] and her twa bairns 
 [whom poor daft Watty had housed since old Claud's 
 death]. She'll be under a needcessity to gang back and 
 live again wi' my mother, now in her ninety-third year, 
 and by course o' nature drawing near her latter end." 
 
 " And what's to become of you ? " replied Mrs. Mil- 
 rookit. 
 
 " O, I'll hae to bide here, and tak care o' everything, 
 and an aliment will be alloo't to me for keeping poor 
 Watty. Hech, sirs ! wha would hae thought it, that 
 sic a fine lad as he ance was, and preferred by his honest 
 father as the best able to keep the property right, 
 would hae been thus, by decreet o' court, proven a born 
 idiot ? " 
 
 "But," interrupted Mrs. Milrookit, glancing com- 
 passionately towards her sister-in-law, " I think, since 
 so little change is to be made, that ye might just as 
 weel let Bell and her bairns bide wi' you, for my grand- 
 mother's income is little enough for her ain wants, now 
 that she's in a manner bedrid."
 
 74 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 " It's easy for you, Meg, to speak," replied her mother, 
 " but if ye had an experiment o' the heavy handfu' 
 they hae been to me, ye wad hae mair compassion for 
 your mother. It's surely a dispensation sair enough to 
 hae the grief and heart-breaking sight before my eyes 
 of a dementit lad that was so long a comfort to me in 
 my widowhood. But it's the Lord's will, and I maun 
 bend the knee o' resignation." 
 
 The reader will please remember that if poor Watty 
 had been " weighed in the balances of the sheriff and 
 found wanting," it was his mother who had helped to 
 put him in them. 
 
 " Is't your intent," said the laird o' Dirdumwhamle, 
 " to mak any division o' what lying money there may 
 hae been saved since your father's death ? " 
 
 "I suspect there will not be enough to defray the 
 costs of the process," replied George; "and if any 
 balance should remain, the house really stands so much 
 in need of repair, that I am persuaded there will not be 
 a farthing left." 
 
 " Deed," said the leddy, " what he says, Mr. Milrookit, 
 is ouer true ; the house is in a frail condition, for it was 
 like pu'ing the teeth out o' Watty's head to get him 
 to do what was needful. . . . But now that we are a' 
 met here, I think it wad be just as weel an we were 
 to settle at once what I'm to hae, as the judicious 
 curator o' Watty for, by course o' law and nature, 
 the aliment will begin frae this day." 
 
 "Yes," replied George . . . "what is your opinion, 
 Mr. Milrookit, as to the amount that she should 
 have ? " 
 
 "All things considered," replied the laird of Dir- 
 dumwhamle, prospectively contemplating some chance 
 of a reversionary interest to his wife in the leddy's
 
 THE LEDDY <T GRIPPY 75 
 
 savings, " I think you ought not to make it less than 
 a hundred pounds a year." 
 
 "A hundred pounds a year," exclaimed the leddy; 
 "that'll no buy saut to his kail. I hope and expeck 
 no less than the whole half o' the rents." 
 
 The lawyer suggested fifty. 
 
 " Fifty pounds ! fifty placks ! " cried the indignant 
 leddy. " I'll let baith you and the sheriff ken I'm no 
 to be frauded o' my rights in that gait. I'll no faik a 
 farthing o' a hundred and fifty." 
 
 " In that case, I fear," said Pitwinnoch, " Mr. George 
 will be obliged to seek another custodier for the 
 fatuus, as assuredly, mem, he'll ne'er be sanctioned to 
 allow you anything like that." 
 
 " If ye think sae," interposed Mrs. Milrookit, com- 
 passionating the forlorn estate of her sister-in-law, "I 
 daresay Mrs. Charles will be content to take him at a 
 very moderate rate." 
 
 " Megsty me ! " cried the leddy, " hae I been buying 
 a pig in a pock like that ? Is't a possibility that 
 he can be ta'en out o' my hands, and no reason- 
 able allowance made to me at a' ? . . . I'll never agree 
 to ony such thing. I'll gang into Embro' mysel', and 
 hae justice done me frae the Fifteen." 
 
 " But," said Mrs. Milrookit, " considering now the 
 altered state of Watty's circumstances, I dinna discern 
 how it is possible for my mother to uphold this house 
 and the farm." 
 
 "I am quite of your opinion," said George; "and, 
 indeed, it is my intention, after the requisite repairs are 
 done to the house, to flit my family, for I am in hopes 
 the change of air will be advantageous to my wife's 
 health." 
 
 The leddy was thunderstruck, and unable to speak,
 
 76 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 but her eyes were eloquent. Leddy Grippy started up, 
 and gave a tremendous stamp with her foot. She 
 then resumed her seat, and appeared all at once calm 
 and smiling; but it was a calm betoking no tran- 
 quillity ; in the course of a few seconds the hurricane 
 burst forth, and alternately, with sobs and supplica- 
 tions, menaces and knocking of nieves, and drumming 
 with her feet, the hapless Leddy Grippy divulged and 
 expatiated in the plots and devices of George. But all 
 was of no avail her destiny was sealed; and with 
 seventy-five pounds a year for aliment, she found 
 herself under the painful necessity of taking a flat up 
 a turnpike stair in Glasgow for herself and the fatuus. 
 
 There the leddy inveighed against George, who " had 
 cheated her and deprived Watty of his lawful senses " ; 
 and there, some time after, he called to invite her over 
 to the Kittlestonheugh, as he now called Grippy, and 
 bring Watty, whither he had, in his new carriage, taken 
 Mrs. Charles and her children, to spend a day though 
 only one of the new wings was finished. 
 
 " And enough too ! " cried the leddy. " Geordie, tak' 
 my word for't, it'll a' flee fast enough away wi' ae 
 wing." 
 
 " Is my Betty Bodle to be there ? " asked Watty. 
 
 " Oh yes," replied George, glad to escape from his 
 mother's remarks, " and you'll be quite delighted to see 
 her. She is uncommonly tall for her age." 
 
 "I dinna like that," said Walter. "She shouldna 
 hae grown ony bigger for I dinna like big folk." 
 
 " And why not ? " 
 
 "'Cause ye ken, Geordie, the law's made only for 
 them; and, if you and me had aye been twa wee 
 brotherly laddies, playing on the gowany brae, as we 
 used to do, ye would ne'er hae thought o' bringing
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 77 
 
 yon duty's claw frae Enbro' to prove me guilty of 
 daftness." 
 
 The meeting again between the children and their 
 poor uncle is told by Gait in what I cannot help 
 thinking his rare fashion of comprehension, with a 
 sadness most unstrained and most poignant. They 
 were several years older now, but they remembered 
 Watty's good nature, and looked forward to a long 
 summer day with him of frolic and mirth. On alight- 
 ing from the carriage they bounded with light steps 
 and jocund hearts in quest of their uncle ; but when 
 they found him sitting by himself in the garden, they 
 paused, and were disappointed. They recognised in 
 him the same person whom they formerly knew, but 
 they had heard he was daft, and they beheld him 
 stooping forward, with his hands sillily hanging 
 between his knees; and he appeared melancholy and 
 helpless. 
 
 " Uncle Watty," said James compassionately, " what 
 for are ye sitting here alone ? " 
 
 Watty looked up, and gazing at him vacantly for a 
 few seconds, said, " 'Cause naebody will sit wi' me, for 
 I am a daft man." He then drooped his head, and 
 sank into the same listless posture in which they had 
 found him. 
 
 " Do ye no ken me ? " said Mary. 
 
 He again raised his eyes, and alternately looked at 
 them both, eagerly and suspiciously. Mary appeared 
 to have outgrown his recollection, for he turned from 
 her ; but, after some time he began to discover James ; 
 and a smile of curious wonder gradually illuminated 
 his countenance, and developed itself into a broad grin 
 of delight, as he said : 
 
 "What a heap o' meat, Jamie Walkinshaw, ye maun
 
 78 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 hae eaten to mak' you sic a muckle laddie ; " and lie 
 drew the boy towards him as he had formerly done; 
 but the child, escaping from his hands, retired several 
 paces backward, and eyed him with pity mingled with 
 disgust. Watty, again folding his hands, dropped them 
 between his knees, and hung his head, saying to him- 
 self: "But I'm daft; naebody cares for me noo; I'm a 
 cumber er o' the ground, and a' my Betty Bodies are 
 ta'en away." 
 
 The accent in which this was expressed touched the 
 natural tenderness of the little girl, and she went up to 
 him and said : 
 
 " Uncle, I'm your wee Betty Bodle; what for will ye 
 no speak to me ? " 
 
 His attention was again roused, and he took her by 
 the hand, and, gently stroking his head, said, " Ye're a 
 bonny flower, and lily-like leddy, and leal in the heart, 
 and kindly in the e'e ! but ye're no my Betty Bodle." 
 
 Suddenly, however, something in the cast of her 
 countenance reminded him so strongly of her more 
 childish appearance, that he caught her in his arms, 
 and attempted to dandle her; but the action was so 
 violent that it frightened the child, and she screamed, 
 and struggling out of his hands, ran away. James 
 followed her ; and their attention being soon drawn to 
 other objects, poor Watty was left neglected by all 
 during the remainder of the afternoon. 
 
 At dinner he was brought in and placed at the table, 
 with one of the children on each side; but he paid 
 them no attention. 
 
 " What's come o'er thee, Watty ? " said his mother. 
 "I thought ye would hae been out o' the body wi' 
 your Betty Bodle ; but ye ne'er let on ye see her." 
 
 " 'Cause she's like a' the rest," said he sorrowfully.
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 79 
 
 " She canna abide me ; for ye ken I'm daft. It's surely 
 an awfu' leprosy this daftness, that it gars everybody 
 flee me ; but I canna help it. It's no my faut, but the 
 Maker's that made me, and the laws that found me 
 guilty. But, Geordie, what's the use o' letting me live 
 in this world, doing naething, and gude for naething. 
 I'll no eat ony mair it's evendoun wastrie for sic a 
 useless, set-by thing as the like o' me to consume the 
 fruits o' the earth. The cost o' my keep would be a 
 braw thing to Bell, so I hope, Geordie, ye'll mak it 
 ouer to her, for when I gae hame I'll lie doun and die." 
 
 " Haud thy tongue, and no fright folk wi' sic 
 blethers," exclaimed his mother, "but eat your dinner, 
 and gang out to the green and play wi' the weans." 
 
 "An I werena' a daft creature, naebody would bid 
 me play wi' weans and the weans ken that I am sae, 
 and mak a fool o' me for't. I dinna like to be every- 
 body's fool. I'm sure the law when it found me 
 guilty, might hae alloo't me a mair merciful punish- 
 ment. Meg Wilcat, that stealt Provost Murdoch's 
 cocket-hat, and was whippit for't at the Cross, was 
 pitied wi' many a watery e'e ; but everybody dauds and 
 dings the daft laird o' Grippy." 
 
 They are the last words this great master of human 
 nature and pathos puts into the mouth of Watty 
 Walkinshaw. But they were not the I&st words spoken 
 at Grippy that day, for the leddy's sharp eyes were 
 soon open to George's desire, even then, when Jamie 
 and Robina were both children, that his nephew and 
 his daughter should be drawn together. 
 
 " I'm thinking," said she, " that the seeds of a 
 matrimony are sown among us this day, for Geordie's 
 a far-before looking soothsayer and a Chaldee excellence 
 like his father ; and a body doesna need an e'e in the
 
 80 
 
 neck to discern that he's just evising and wiling for a 
 purpose of marriage hereafter between Jamie and 
 Beenie. Gude speed the wark ! for really we hae had 
 but little luck among us since the spirit o' disinheri- 
 tance got the upper hand ; and it would be a great 
 comfort if a' sores could be salved and healed in the 
 fulness of time, when the weans can be married accord- 
 ing to law." 
 
 Geordie dutifully agreed, and the old leddy went on 
 piously: "But marriages are made in heaven; and 
 unless there has been a booking among the angels 
 above, a' that can be done by man below, even to the 
 crying, for the third and last time, in the kirk, will be 
 only a thrashing the water and a raising of bells. How- 
 ever, the prayers of the righteous availeth much ; and 
 we should a' endeavour by our walk and conversation, 
 to compass a work so meet for repentance until it's 
 brought to a come-to-pass. So I hope, Bell Fatherlans, 
 that ye'll be up and doing in this good work, watching 
 and praying, like those who stand on the Tower of 
 Siloam looking towards Lebanon." 
 
 Mrs. Charles, whom her mother-in-law called always 
 by her maiden-name, smiling said: " I think that you 
 are looking far forward. The children are still but mere 
 weans, and many a day must pass over their green heads 
 before such a project ought even to be thought of." 
 
 " It's weel kent, Bell," replied her mother-in-law, " that 
 ye were ne'er a queen o' Sheba either for wisdom or fore- 
 thought ; but I hae heard my friend that's! awa' your 
 worthy father, Geordie often say that as the twig is bent 
 the tree's inclined, which is a fine sentiment, and should 
 teach us to set about our undertakings with a knowledge 
 of better things than of silver and gold, in order that we 
 may be enabled to work the work o' Providence."
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY;>- 81 
 
 But just as the leddy was thus expatiating away 
 in high solemnity, a dreadful cry arose among the 
 pre-ordained lovers. The children had quarrelled 
 Robina slapped Jamie's face, and Jamie returned the 
 slap with instantaneous energy. 
 
 As time went on Robina set her affections on her 
 other cousin Walkie Milrookit, and Jamie set his on 
 a certain Ellen Frazer, whose charms and excellence 
 will not concern us here. Robina was sly, and though 
 she was determined not to marry James, she did not 
 so much want to refuse him, as to seem to her father 
 to be refused by him. To her grandmother she com- 
 plained of her father's tyranny in so openly urging a 
 union that would make her miserable, especially, as 
 she said, when Jamie's devotion to Ellen Frazer was 
 so obvious. But Leddy Grippy neither felt nor showed 
 sympathy. 
 
 "Never fash your head, Beenie, my dear," said 
 she, " about Jamie's calf-love for yon daffodil ; but 
 be an obedient child, and walk in the paths of 
 pleasantness that ye're ordain't to, both by me and 
 your father ; for we hae had ouer lang a divided 
 family ; and it's full time we were brought to a cordial 
 understanding with one another." 
 
 " But," replied the disconsolate damsel, " even though 
 he had no previous attachment, I'll ne'er consent to 
 marry him, for really I can never fancy him." 
 
 "And what for can ye no fancy him?" cried the 
 leddy; " I would like to ken that ? But, to be plain wi' 
 you, Beenie, it's a shame to hear a weel educated Miss 
 like you, brought up wi' a Christian principle, speaking 
 about fancying young men. Sic a thing was ne'er alloo't 
 nor heard tell o' in my day and generation. But that 
 comes o' your ganging to see Douglas tragedy at that 
 
 F
 
 82 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 kirk o' Satan in Dunlop Street ; where, as I am most 
 creditably informed, the play-actors court ane another 
 before all the folk." 
 
 " I am sure you have yourself experienced," replied 
 Robina, " what it is to entertain a true affection, and 
 to know that our wishes and inclinations are not under 
 our own control. How would you have liked had your 
 father forced you to marry against your will ? " 
 
 " Lassie, lassie !" exclaimed the leddy, " if ye live to 
 be a grandmother like me, ye'll ken the right sense o' 
 a lawful and tender affection. But there's no sincerity 
 noo like the auld sincerity : when me and your honest 
 grandfather, that was in mine, and is now in Abraham's 
 bosom, came thegither, we had no foistring and 
 parley vooing, like your novelle turtle-doves, but dis- 
 coursed in a sober and wise-like manner anent the 
 cost and charge o' a family." 
 
 "Ah! but your affection was mutual from the be- 
 ginning you were not perhaps devoted to another ? " 
 
 " Gude guide us, Beenie Walkinshaw ! are ye devoted 
 to another ? Damon and Phillis, pastorauling at hide 
 and seek wi' their sheep, was the height o' discretion 
 compared wi' sic curdooing. My lass, I'll no let the 
 grass grow beneath my feet till I hae gi'en your father 
 notice o' this loup-the-window, and hey cockalorum- 
 like love. . . . Wha is it wi' ? But I needna speer ; for 
 I'll be nane surprised to hear that it's a play-actor, or a 
 soldier-officer, or some other clandestine poetical." 
 
 Miss affected to laugh, saying : 
 
 "What has made you suppose that I have formed 
 any improper attachment ? I was only anxious that 
 you should speak to my father, and try to persuade 
 him that I can never be happy with my cousin." 
 
 "How can I persuade him o' ony sic havers? Na,
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 83 
 
 na, Beenie, ye're an instrument in the hands o' Pro- 
 vidence to bring about a great blessing to your family ; 
 and I would be as daft as your uncle Watty, when he 
 gaed out to shoot the flees so you maim just mak up 
 your mind to conform. My word, but ye're weel aff to 
 be married in your teens I was past thirty before man 
 speert my price." 
 
 Robina urged that James would not, she was sure, 
 consent if she would. 
 
 "Weel," cried the leddy, "I declare if ever I heard 
 the like of sic upsetting. I won'er what business either 
 you or him hae to consenting or non-consenting. Is't 
 no the pleasure o' your parentage that ye're to be 
 married, and will ye dare to commit the sin of dis- 
 obedient children ? Beenie Walkinshaw, had I said sic 
 a word to my father, who was a man o' past-ordinar 
 sense, weel do I ken what I would hae gotten. I only 
 just once, in a' my life, in a mistak' gied him a con- 
 tradiction, and he declared that, had I been a son as I 
 was but a dochter, he would hae grippit me by the 
 cuff o' the neck and the back o' the breeks, and 
 shuttled me through the window. But the end o' the 
 world is drawing near, and corruption's working daily 
 to a head; a' modesty and maidenhood has departed 
 frae womankind, and the sons o' men are workers of 
 iniquity priests o' Baal, and transgressors every one. 
 A', therefore, my leddy, that I hae to say to you is a 
 word o' wisdom, and they ca't conform Beenie, con- 
 form and obey the fifth commandment." 
 
 The leddy sent for Jamie, and the interview was as 
 queer as that just described ; but she liked the hand- 
 some, frank lad better than the sly Miss, and though 
 she rated him she did not frighten him. Then she 
 sent for her son, and tried to find out exactly what he
 
 84 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 had in his mind. She told him plainly she saw no 
 mutual liking between the cousins, but suspected 
 much between James and Ellen Frazer. George 
 anxiously inquired if she had any real grounds for 
 this suspicion. 
 
 "Frae a' that I can hear, learn, and understand," 
 replied the leddy, " though it mayna be probable-like, 
 yet I fear it's ouer true ; for when he gangs to see his 
 mother [who lived in the same village with Miss 
 Frazer] and it's aye wi' him as wi' the saints ' O 
 Mother, dear Jerusalem, when shall I come to thee ? ' 
 I am most creditably informed that the twa do 
 nothing but sally forth hand in hand to walk in the 
 green valleys, singing, ' Low down in the broom ' and 
 ' Pu'ing lilies both fresh and gay ' which is as sure 
 a symptom o' something very like love, as the hen's 
 cackle is o' a new-laid egg." 
 
 "Nevertheless," said the laird, "I should have no 
 great apprehensions, especially when he comes to 
 understand how much it is his interest to prefer 
 Robina." 
 
 "That's a' true, Geordie ; but I hae a misdoot that 
 a's no right and sound wi' her mair than wi' him ; and 
 when we reflect how the mini maidens nowadays hae 
 delivered themselves up to the little-gude in the shape 
 and glamour o' novelles and Thomson's Seasons, we 
 need be nane surprised to fin' Miss as headstrong in her 
 obduracy as the lovely young Lavinia, that your sister 
 Meg learned to 'cite at the boarding school." 
 
 George saw his daughter, and James saw her too; 
 and of this last interview something came, for the young 
 gentleman understood pretty well that, to please her 
 at all events, he need urge no suit upon her. Then he 
 saw his uncle, and made him know he would not be
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 85 
 
 his son-in-law. On getting into Glasgow he called on 
 his grandmother. On entering the parlour he found 
 the old lady alone, seated in her elbow-chair by the 
 fire. A single slender candle stood at her elbow on a 
 claw-foot table, and she was winding the yarn from 
 a pirn with a hand -reel, carefully counting the turns. 
 Hearing the door open, she looked round, and, seeing 
 who it was, said: 
 
 " Is that thee, Jamie Walkinshaw ? Six-and-thirty 
 where cam ye frae seven-and-thirty at this time 
 o' night ? eight -and-thirty sit ye down nine-and- 
 thirty snuff the candle forty." 
 
 He told her he had been with his uncle and that 
 they had fallen out. 
 
 "No possible! nine-and-forty what hast been 
 about ? fifty but hae ye been condumacious ? Seven- 
 and plague tak' the laddie, I'm out in my count, and 
 I'll hae to begin the cut again; so I may set by the 
 reel." 
 
 He told her his uncle had required him to break 
 with Ellen and offer himself to Robina. 
 
 " And sure I am, Jamie," replied the leddy, " that it 
 will be lang before you can do better." 
 
 James went on to say that his mind was now made 
 up; he would work no longer in his uncle's count- 
 ing-house, but in the morning would go out to his 
 mother's at Camrachle and would leave Glasgow 
 altogether. 
 
 "Got ye ony drink, Jamie," asked the leddy, "in the 
 gait hame, that ye're in such a wud humour for 
 dancing 'Auld Sir Simon the King' on the road to 
 Camrachle? Man, an I had as brisk a bee in the 
 bonnet, I would set aff at once, cracking my fingers 
 at the moon and seven stars as I gaed louping alang
 
 86 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 . . . awa' wi' you, awa' wi' you, and show how weel 
 ye hae come to years o' discretion, by singing as ye 
 
 gang, 
 
 ' Scotsman, ho ! Scotsman lo ! 
 Where shall this poor Scotsman go ? 
 Send him east, send him west, 
 Send him to the craw's nest.' " 
 
 All the same she ended by giving him supper and 
 bed. 
 
 "I hope," said she, " nevertheless, that the spirit of 
 obedience will soople that stiff neck o' thine in the 
 slumber and watches o' the night, or I would ne'er 
 be consenting to countenance such outstrapolous 
 rebellion." 
 
 Stiff as the leddy had seemed in opposing Jamie and 
 Robina in the one thing they had in common a firm 
 resolve not to marry each other the moment was 
 approaching when she was to exercise a most sudden 
 change of front; for we next behold her hurrying 
 Beenie into an immediate marriage with someone else. 
 The leddy had all along suspected " Miss " of hankering 
 after some play-actor or soldier-officer, and, believing her 
 to be George's lawful and sole heiress, she thoroughly 
 approved of his determination to keep all he had to 
 leave in the family; but she had no superstitious 
 veneration for the name of Walkinshaw, and, since one 
 grandson was determined not to be laird of Kittleston- 
 heugh at the price of marrying the laird's daughter, 
 she had no objection to helping another grandson to 
 lands and lady both as soon as her eyes were opened 
 to the fact that it was Walkinshaw Milrookit on whom 
 Robina had set her affections. 
 
 " Eh ! megsty me ! I'm sparrow-blasted," exclaimed 
 the leddy, throwing herself back in her chair, and lift-
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 87 
 
 ing both her hands in wonderment. " But thou, 
 Beenie, is a soople fairy ; and so a' the time that thy 
 father as blin' as the silly blind bodie that his wife 
 gart believe her gallant's horse was a milch cow sent 
 frae her minny was wising and wyling to bring about 
 a matrimony, or, as I should ca't, a matter-o' -money 
 conjugality wi' your cousin Jamie, hae ye been linking 
 by the dyke-sides, out o' sight, wi' Walky Milrookit ? 
 Weel, that beats print ! Whatna novelle gied you that 
 lesson, lassie ? Hech, sirs ! auld as I am, but I wad 
 like to read it. Howsever, Beenie, as the ae oe is as 
 sib to me as the ither, I'll be as gude as my word . . . 
 and let your father play the Scotch measure, or shan- 
 truse, wi' the bellows and the shank o' the besom, to 
 some warlock wallop o' his auld papistical and pater- 
 nostering ancestors that hae been gude preserve us ! 
 for ought I ken to the contrary, suppin' brimstone 
 broth wi' the deil lang afore the time o' Adam and 
 Eve." 
 
 When presently her daughter and Dirdumwhamle 
 arrived, the leddy opened on them at once her pro- 
 ject of an instant wedding : the laird jumped to the 
 notion, his wife was for more caution. 
 
 "Meg," said the leddy, "ye speak as one of the 
 foolish women ; ye ken nothing about it. ... Na, na, 
 Dirdumwhamle, heed her not : she lacketh understand- 
 ing it's you an' me, laird, that maun work the wherry 
 in this breeze ye' re a man o' experience in the ways o' 
 matrimony, having been, as we all know, thrice married 
 and I am an aged woman, that hasna travelled the 
 world for sax-and-seventy years without hearing the 
 toast o' ' Love and Opportunity ' . . . and there can be 
 no sin in it, Meg, for is't no commanded in Scripture 
 to increase and multiply ? "
 
 88 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 
 
 Dirdumwhamle was very willing to be persuaded, 
 but Meg still proposed objections. 
 
 " My word, Meg," cried the leddy, " but t'ou has a 
 stock o' impudence, to haud up thy snout in that gait 
 to the she that bore thee ! Am I ane of these that hae, 
 by reason of more strength, a'maist attaint to the age 
 of fourscore, without learning the right frae the wrang 
 o' moral conduct, as that delightful man, Dr. Pringle o' 
 Garnoch, said in his sermon on the Fast Day, that t'ou 
 has the spirit o' sedition . . . when I'm labouring in the 
 vineyard o' thy family ? Dirdumwhamle, your wife 
 there, she's my dochter, and sorry am I to say it; 
 but, it's well known, and I dinna misdoot ye hae found 
 it to your cost, that she is a most unreasonable, narrow, 
 contracted woman, and, wi' a' her through-gality her 
 direction-books to mak grozart wine for deil-be-licket, 
 and her Katy Fisher's cookery, whereby she would gar 
 us trow she can mak fat kail o' chucky-stanes and an 
 auld horse-shoe we a' ken, and ye ken, laird, warst o' 
 a', that she flings away the pease, and maks her hotch- 
 potch wi' the shauwps, or, as the auld by-word says, 
 tynes botles gathering straes. So what need the like o' 
 you and me sit in council, and the Shanedrims o' the 
 people, wi' ane o' the stupidest bawkie-birds that e'er 
 the Maker o't took the trouble to put the breath o' life 
 in? Fey, did ye say? that's a word o' discretion to 
 fling at the head o' your aged parent I Howsever, it's no 
 worth my condescendence to lose my temper wi' the 
 like o' her. But, Meg Walkinshaw, or Mrs. Milrookit, 
 though ye be there afore your gudeman, the next time 
 ye diminish my understanding I'll may be let ye ken 
 what it is to blaspheme your mother ; so tak' heed lest 
 ye fall." 
 
 After this Meg durst urge no more objections against
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 89 
 
 a match she desired, and there and then the minister 
 was called and the marriage carried out before the 
 bride's father came back from Camrachle. When he 
 came he confessed the ill-success of his mission. Jamie 
 was obdurate ; he would go into the army, and he would 
 not marry Robina. 
 
 " Since he will to Cupar, let him gang," said the leddy, 
 " and just compose your mind to approve o' Beenie's 
 marriage wi' Walky, who is a lad of a methodical nature, 
 and no a hurly-burly ramstam, like yon flea-luggit 
 thing, Jamie." 
 
 George declared that he would almost as soon carry 
 his daughter's head to the churchyard as see that 
 match. 
 
 "Weel, weel," said the leddy, winking at those in 
 the secret, " frae something I hae heard the lad himsel' 
 say this vera day, it's no a marriage that ever noo is 
 likely to happen in this world . . . but it's o' the nature o' 
 a possibility that she will draw up wi' some young lad 
 o' very creditable connexions and conduct, but wha', 
 for some thraw o' your ain, ye wouldna let her marry. 
 What would ye do then, Geordie ? Ye would hae to 
 settle or ye would be a most horridable parent." 
 
 " My father for so doing disinherited Charles," said 
 George gravely. 
 
 " That's vera true, Geordie a bitter business it was to 
 us a', and was the because o' your worthy father's _sore 
 latter end. But ye ken the property's entail't; and, 
 when it pleases the Maker to take you to Himsel', by 
 consequence Beenie will get the estate." 
 
 " That's not so certain," replied George jocularly. 
 " My wife has of late been more infirm than usual, and 
 were I to marry again, and had male heirs " 
 
 " Hoot, wi' your male heirs and your snuffies; I hate
 
 90 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 
 
 the vera name o' sic things they hae been the pests 
 o' my life. It would hae been a better world without 
 them but we needna cast out about sic unborn babes 
 o' Chevy Chase, so a' I hae to say for the present is 
 that I expeck ye'll tak' your dinner wi' us." 
 
 They went to dinner bride and bridegroom fright- 
 ened, bridegroom's parents hardly less so, and bride's 
 father absent-minded and worried the leddy alone 
 indomitable. 
 
 Presently she proposed a toast that of the newly- 
 wedded pair, but by circumstance and craftily. 
 
 " It's extraordinar to me, Beenie," said she, " to 
 lo and behold you sitting as mim as a May puddock, 
 when you see us a' met here for a blithesome occasion 
 and, Walky, what's come ouer thee, that thou's no a bit 
 mair brisk than the statue o' marble-stane that I ance 
 saw in that sink o' deceitfulness, the Parliament House 
 o' Edinburgh? As for our Meg thy mother, she was 
 aye one of your Moll-on-the-coals, a signer o' sadness, 
 and I'm none surprised to see her in the hypo- 
 condoricals; but for Dirdumwhamle, your respeckit 
 father, a man o' prospects, family, and connexions the 
 three cardinal points o' genteelity to be as one in 
 doleful dumps, is sic a doolie doomster, that Uncle 
 Geordie there, where he sits, like a sow playing on a 
 trump, is a perfect beautiful Absalom in a sense o' 
 comparison. However, I'll gie ye a toast. . . . Geordie, 
 my son and bairn, ye ken as weel as I ken, what a 
 happy matrimonial your sister had wi' Dirdumwhamle, 
 and, Dirdumwhamle, I needna say to you, ye hae 
 found her a winsome helpmate. Noo, what I would 
 propose for a propine, Geordie, is Health and Happi- 
 ness to Mr. and Mrs. Milrookit, and may they long 
 enjoy many happy returns o' this day."
 
 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 91 
 
 The toast was drunk with great glee, amid the nods 
 and winks of the leddy, and the immoderate laughter 
 of her son at her eccentricity. 
 
 "Noo, Geordie my man," she went on, "seeing ye're 
 in sic a state o' mirth and jocundity, and knowing, 
 as we a' know, that life is but a weaver's shuttle, and 
 Time a wabster, that works for Death, Eternity and 
 Co., great wholesale merchants; but for a' that, I am 
 creditably informed they'll be obligated, some day, to 
 mak a sequester. Howsever, that's nane o' our concerns 
 just now ; but, Geordie, as I was saying, I would fain 
 tell you o' an exploit ... do you know that ever since 
 Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the life o' man 
 has been growing shorter and shorter ? To me, noo sax 
 and seventy years auld, the monthly moon's but as a 
 glaik on the wall, the spring but as a butter-flee that 
 tak's the wings o' the morning, and a' the summer only 
 as the tinkling o' a cymbal as for hairst and winter, 
 they are the shadows o' death; the whilk is an ad- 
 monishment that I shouldna be overly gair anent the 
 world, but mak mysel' and others happy, by taking 
 the sanctified use o' what I hae so, Geordie and sirs, 
 ye'll fill another glass. Noo, Geordie, as life is but a 
 vapour, a puff out o' the stroop o' the tea-kettle o' Time, 
 let's a' consent to mak' one another happy ; and there 
 being no likelihood that ever Jamie Walkinshaw will 
 colleague wi' Beenie, your dochter, I would fain hope 
 ye'll gie her and Walky there baith your benison and 
 aliment. Noo, Beenie, and noo, Walky, down on your 
 knees baith o' you, and mak a novelle confession that 
 ye were married the day ; and beg your father's pardon 
 that has been so jocose at your wedding-feast, that for 
 shame he canna refuse to conciliate and mak a hand- 
 some aliment doun on the nail."
 
 92 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 But George would not pardon them, and the leddy 
 herself had to find them bed and board till George's 
 tragic death left Beenie mistress of herself and of the 
 Kittlestonheugh, where the pair at once immediately 
 entered into possession. This Beenie, to do her justice, 
 did innocently; but Walky Milrookit had learned the 
 truth from the rascally lawyer Pitwinnoch. Jamie, 
 however, had gone soldiering and knew nothing of his 
 rights; neither Milrookit nor Pitwinnoch intended to 
 enlighten him. 
 
 When Jamie parted from the leddy, she was not like 
 herself the self he had always known. Instead of her 
 wonted strain of jocular garrulity, she began to sigh 
 deeply and weep bitterly. 
 
 " Thou's gaun awa' to face thy faes as the sang 
 sings ' Far, far frae me and Logan braes ' and I am an 
 aged person, and may ne'er see thee again ; and I'm wae 
 to let thee gang, for, though thou was aye o' a nature 
 that had nae right reverence for me, a deevil's buckie, 
 my heart has aye warm't to thee mair than to a' the 
 lave o' my grandchildren ; it's well known to every one 
 that kens me, that I hae a most generous heart 
 and I wadna part wi' thee without handselling thy 
 knapsack. So tak the key and gang into the scrutoire, 
 and bring out the pocket-book." 
 
 He was petrified, but did as he was desired ; and 
 having given her the pocket-book, sewed by his aunt 
 Mrs. Milrookit when she was at the boarding-school, 
 the leddy took out several of Robin Carrick's notes, 
 and looking them over, presented him with one for fifty 
 pounds. 
 
 "Noo, Jamie Walkinshaw," said she, "if ye spend ae 
 plack o' that like a Prodigal Son, it's no to seek what 
 I'll say when ye come back ; but I doot, I doot, lang
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 93 
 
 before that day I'll be deep and dumb aneath the 
 yird, and naither to see nor to hear o' thy weel or 
 woe." 
 
 Jamie stood holding the bill, unable to speak. In the 
 meantime she was putting up her other bills; and, in 
 turning them over, seeing one for forty-nine pounds, she 
 said, "Jamie, forty-nine pounds is a' the same as fifty 
 to ane that pays his debts by the roll o' a drum. So 
 tak this, and gie me that back." 
 
 When Jamie was gone the leddy was determined to 
 do something for his mother and sister, but not out of 
 her own pocket. Walky, now laird of Kittleston- 
 heugh, brought Robina to pay duty to their grand- 
 mother, and the old woman at once told him that he 
 ought to continue to Mrs. Charles the annuity even 
 George had felt himself bound to allow her. For six 
 weeks the leddy had given house-room and board to 
 Walky and his wife, and she was not the woman to let 
 them forget it now they were rich. 
 
 " Compliment," said she, " is like the chariot-wheels 
 o' Pharaoh, sae dreigh o' drawing, that I canna afford 
 to be blate wi' you ony langer. Howsever, Walky 
 and Beenie, I hae a projection in my head, and it's o' 
 the nature o' a solemn league and covenant : if ye'll 
 consent to allow Bell Fatherlans her 'nuity of fifty 
 pounds per annus, as it is called according to law, 
 I'll score you out o' my books for the bed, board and 
 washing due to me, and a heavy soom it is." 
 
 " Fifty pounds a-year ! " exclaimed Milrookit. "Where 
 do you think we are to get fifty pounds a year ? " 
 
 "Just in the same neuk, Walky, where ye found 
 the Kittlestonheugh estate, and the three-and-twenty 
 thousand pounds o' lying siller, Beenie's braw tocher, 
 and I think ye're a very crunkly character, though
 
 94 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 your name's no Habakkuk, to gie me sic a constipa- 
 tion o' an answer." 
 
 Walky flatly refused to give the annuity to his aunt, 
 and mumbled something about paying any lawful 
 claim the leddy might have against him. 
 
 " Lawful claim ? ye Goliath o' cheatin' ! if I hae ony 
 lawful claim ? But I'll say naething. I'll mak' out an 
 account and there's nae law in Christendom to stop 
 me for charging what I like. Ye unicorn of oppression, 
 to speak to me o' law, that was so kind to you ; but 
 law ye shall get, and law ye shall hae. Hech, Beenie, 
 poor lassie ! but thou hast ta'en thy sheep to a silly 
 market. A skelp-the-dub creature to upbraid me wi' 
 his justly dues ! But crocodile, or croakin-deil, as I 
 should ca' him, he'll get his ain justly dues ; Mr. 
 Milrookit o' Kittlestonheugh, as it's no the fashion when 
 folk has recourse to the civil war o' a law-plea to stand 
 on a ceremony, maybe ye'll find some mair pleasant 
 place than this room, an ye were to tak the pains to 
 gang to the outside o' my door." 
 
 On this gentle hint, as the leddy afterwards called 
 it, Walky and Beenie took hasty departure, and their 
 indignant grandmother forthwith sought Pitwinnoch 
 " in the bottomless pit o' his consulting room." 
 
 " Ye'll be surprised to see me," said she, " for I hae 
 been sic a lamiter with the rheumatees, that, for a' the 
 last week, I was little better than a nymph o' anguish, 
 . . . but ye maun know and understand, that I hae 
 a notion to try my luck and fortune in the rowly-powly 
 o' a law-plea . . . my twa ungrateful grandchildren, that 
 I did sae muckle for at their marriage, hae used me 
 waur than I were a Papistical Jew o' Jericho. I just, 
 in my civil and discreet manner, was gie'n them a 
 delicate memento-mori concerning their unsettled
 
 THE LEDDY O 1 GRIPPY 95 
 
 'count for bed, board and washing, when up got 
 Milrookit, as if he would hae flown out at the broadside 
 o' the house, and threatened to tak me afore the lords 
 for a Canaanitish woman, and an extortioner. But, 
 first and foremost, before we come to the condescend- 
 ence, I should state the case; and, Mr. Pitwinnoch, 
 ye maun understand that I hae some knowledge o' 
 what pertains to law, for my father was most extra- 
 ordinar at it. Milrookit, as I was saying, having 
 refused, point blank, Mr. Pitwinnoch, to implement the 
 'nuity o' fifty pounds per annus, that your client (that's 
 a legal word, Mr. Pitwinnoch) that your client settled 
 on my gude-dochter, I told him he would then and 
 there refusing be bound over to pay me for the bed, 
 board and washing ... he responded with a justly 
 due but I'll due him ; and though, had he been calm 
 and well-bred, I might have put up with ten pounds ; 
 yet, seeing what a ramping lion he made himsel', I'll 
 no faik a farthing o' a thousand, which, at merchant's 
 interest, will enable me to pay the 'nuity. So, when 
 we get it, ye'll hae to find me somebody willing to 
 borrow on an heritable bond." 
 
 Pitwinnoch reminded her that the entertainment had 
 lasted but six weeks. 
 
 " Time, ye ken," replied the leddy, " as I hae often 
 heard my father say, is no item in law; and unless 
 there's a statute of vagrancy in the Decisions, or the 
 Raging Magistratom, there can be nae doot that I hae 
 it in my power to put what value I please on my house, 
 servitude and expense, which is the strong ground of 
 the case." 
 
 When the leddy was gone Milrookit arrived, and, to 
 his surprise, Pitwinnoch urged him to compound and 
 give the old lady two hundred pounds. "Settle this
 
 96 THE LEDDY O" GRIPPY 
 
 quietly," said the lawyer; "there's no saying what a 
 lawsuit may lead to; considering the circumstances 
 under which you hold the estate, don't stir, lest the 
 sleeping dog awake." 
 
 With Walky's cheque Pitwinnoch sought the leddy. 
 " Twa hundred pounds !" cried she " but the fifth part 
 o' my thousand ! I'll ne'er tak' ony sic payment. Ye'll 
 carry it back to Mr. Milrookit, and tell him I'll no faik 
 a plack o' my just debt ; and, what's mair, if he doesna 
 pay me the whole tot down at once, he shall be put to 
 the horn without a moment's delay." 
 
 " You must be quite aware," urged the lawyer, " that 
 he owes you no such sum as this. You said yourself 
 that ten pounds would have satisfied you." 
 
 "And so it would but that was before I gaed to 
 law wi' him ; but seeing now I hae the rights o' my plea, 
 I'll hae my thousand pounds if the hide be on his 
 snout. Whatna better proof could ye hae o' the 
 justice o' my demand, than that he should hae come 
 down in terror at once wi' twa hundred pounds ? I hae 
 known my father law for seven years, and even when 
 he won, he had money to pay out of his own pocket." 
 
 The leddy got her thousand pounds and invested it 
 for Mrs. Charles: to the young lawyer who came for 
 her signature to the deed of mortgage she boasted of 
 her victory. 
 
 " For ye maun ken, Willy Keckle," said she, " that 
 I hae overcome principalities and powers in this con- 
 troversy. Wha ever heard o' thousands o' pounds 
 gotten for sax weeks' bed, board and washing like mine ? 
 But it was a righteous judgment on the Nabal, 
 Milrookit whom I'll never speak to again in this 
 world, and no in the next either. I doot, unless he 
 mends his manners."
 
 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 97 
 
 Willy Keckle thought it as wonderful as she did, and 
 told his master, an honest lawyer, called Whitteret, 
 who happened to be on the point of starting for Edin- 
 burgh. There, at a legal symposium, he repeated 
 the queer story of Leddy Grippy's law plea. The 
 result was an examination at the Register Office of 
 old Claud Walkinshaw's original deed of entail, so 
 reluctantly drawn by good Keelevin, long ago, him- 
 self long dead. Whitteret was one of the examiners, 
 and he at once began to act for Jamie ; but another 
 was a certain Pilledge, who resolved to make what he 
 could by offering his services to Milrookit. His first 
 call at Glasgow was on the leddy. 
 
 " You are the lady," said he, "I presume, of the 
 late much respected Claud Walkinshaw, commonly 
 styled of Grippy." 
 
 " So they say, for want o' a better," replied the leddy, 
 stopping her wheel and looking upon him, " but wha 
 are ye ? and what's your will ? " 
 
 " My name is Pilledge. I am a writer to the signet, 
 and I have come to see Mr. Milrookit of Kittlestonheugh 
 respecting an important piece of business. . . ." The 
 leddy pricked up her ears, for, exulting in her own know- 
 ledge of the law, by which she had so recently triumphed, 
 as she thought, she became eager to know what the 
 important piece of business could be and she replied : 
 
 "Nae doot it's anent the law-plea he has been 
 brought into an account of his property." 
 
 Milrookit had been engaged in no suit whatever, but 
 this was the way she took to trot the Edinburgh writer, 
 and she added : 
 
 " How do ye think I'll gang wi' him ? Is there ony 
 prospect o' the Lord Ordinary coming to a decision on 
 the pursuer's petition ? " 
 
 G
 
 98 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 
 
 This really looked so like the language of the Parlia- 
 ment House, considering it came from an old lady, that 
 Pilledge was taken in, and, his thoughts running on 
 the entail, he immediately fancied that she alluded 
 to something connected with it, and said : 
 
 " I should think, Madam, that your evidence would 
 be of the utmost importance to the case, and it was to 
 advise with him chiefly as to the line of defence he 
 ought to take that I came from Edinburgh." 
 
 " Nae doot, sir, I could gie an evidence, and instruct 
 on the merits of the interdict," said she, learnedly ; 
 " but I ne'er hae yet been able to come to a right 
 understanding anent and concerning the different afore- 
 saids set forth hi the respondent's reclaiming petition. 
 Noo, I would be greatly obligated if ye would expone 
 to me the nice point, that I may be able to decern 
 accordingly." 
 
 The writer to the signet had never heard a clearer 
 argument, either at the bar or on the bench, and he 
 replied : 
 
 " Indeed, mem, it lies in a very small compass. It 
 appears that the heir-male of your eldest son is the 
 rightful heir of entail; but there are so many diffi- 
 culties in the terms of the settlement, that I should not 
 be surprised were the court to set the deed aside, in 
 which case Mrs. Milrookit would still retain the estate 
 as heir-at-law of her father." 
 
 We must allow the reader to conceive with what 
 feelings the leddy heard this . . . but she still pre- 
 served her juridical gravity and said : 
 
 " It's very true what you say, sir, that the heir-male of 
 my eldest son is a son I can easily understand that 
 point o' law ; but can you tell me how the heir-at-law 
 of her father, Mrs. Milrookit that is, came to be a
 
 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 99 
 
 dochter, when it was aye the intent and purpose o' my 
 friend that's awa', the testator, to make no provision 
 but for heirs-male, which his heart, poor man, was very 
 set on ? Howsever, I suppose that's to be considered 
 in the precognition." 
 
 " Certainly, mem," replied the writer ; " nothing is 
 more clear than that your husband intended the estate 
 to go, in the first instance, to the heirs-male of his sons ; 
 first to those of Walter, the second son; and failing 
 them, to those of George, the third son ; and, failing 
 them, then to go back to the heirs-male of Charles, the 
 eldest son ; and failing them to the heirs-general of 
 your daughter Margaret." 
 
 "I understand that weel," said the leddy, "it's as 
 plain as a pike-staff that my oe Jamie, the soldier- 
 officer, is by right the heir." 
 
 " But the case has other points, and especially as 
 the heir of entail is in the army, I certainly would 
 not advise Mr. Milrookit to surrender." 
 
 " But he'll maybe be counselled better," rejoined the 
 leddy ; " and if yell tak' my advice, ye'll no scaud your 
 lips in other folk's kail. Mr. Pitwinnoch is as gude a 
 Belzebub's baby for a law-plea as ony writer to the 
 signet in that bottomless pit, the House o' Parliament 
 in Edinburgh ; and since ye hae told me what ye hae 
 done, it's but right to let ye ken what I'll do. As yet 
 I hae had but ae lawsuit . . . but it winna be lang till 
 I hae another ; for if Milrookit doesna consent, the 
 morn's morning, to gie up the Kittlestonheugh, he'll fin' 
 again what it is to plea wi' a woman o' my experience." 
 
 To Pitwinnoch the lady hied hot-foot, and opened 
 her case. He began to fence, expressing surprise and 
 inability to understand her meaning: but she took 
 him up.
 
 100 THE LEDDY CT GRIPPY 
 
 "Your surprise, and having no understanding, Mr. 
 Pitwinnoch, is a symptom to me that ye're no qualified 
 to conduct my case ! " and she held Whitteret over 
 his head: after nearly blinding him with heirs-male, 
 heirs-female, and heirs-general, she ended by declaring 
 that Milrookit should renounce the property "the 
 morn's morning, if there's a town-officer in Glasgow." 
 
 " But, Madam, you have no possible right to it ! " 
 exclaimed the lawyer, puzzled. 
 
 " Me ! Am I ' a heir-male ' ? " cried the leddy, " an 
 aged woman and* a grandmother ! Surely, Mr. Pit- 
 winnoch, your education maun hae been greatly 
 negleckit, to ken so little o' the laws o' nature and 
 nations. No ; the heir-male's a young man, the eldest 
 son's only son. . . . Ye'll just, Mr. Pitwinnoch, write a 
 mandamus to Milrookit, in a civil manner mind that ; 
 and tell him in the same that I'll be greatly obligated if 
 he'll gie up the house and property of Kittlestonheugh 
 to the heir-male, James Walkinshaw, his cousin ; or, 
 failing therein, yell say that I hae implemented you to 
 pronounce an interlocutor against him ; and ye may gie 
 him a bit hint frae yoursel' in a noty beny at the 
 bottom that you advise him to conform, because you 
 are creditably informed that I mean to pursue him wi' 
 a' the law o' my displeasure." 
 
 Pitwinnoch hurried out to Kittlestonheugh and there 
 found Pilledge closeted with Milrookit : an angry scene 
 of mutual recriminations had come to blows between 
 the false laird and the false lawyer when in sailed the 
 leddy who had saved coach-hire by the happy chance 
 of meeting Beenie, to whom she had divulged nothing, 
 but had said, " If ye'll gie me a hurl in the carriage, I'll 
 no object to gang wi' you and speer for your gude- 
 man, for whom I hae a manner o' respeck, even though
 
 THE LEDDY <T GRIPPY 101 
 
 he was a thought unreasonable anent my charge o' 
 moderation for the bed and board." 
 
 " Shake him weel, Mr. Pitwinnoch," cried the leddy, 
 looking in, "and if he'll no conform 'I'll redde ye gar 
 him conform." 
 
 " Mr. Milrookit," said Pitwinnoch, " though we have 
 had a few words, is quite sensible that he has not a 
 shadow of reason to withhold the estate from the heir 
 of entail. He will give it up the moment it is de- 
 manded." 
 
 "Then I demand it this moment !" exclaimed the 
 leddy, " and out of this house, that was my ain, I'll no 
 depart till Jamie Walkinshaw, the righteous heir-male, 
 comes to tak' possession. . . . Beenie," said the leddy, 
 with the most ineffable self-satisfied equanimity, " I 
 hope yell prepare yoursel' to hear wi' composity the 
 sore affliction that I'm ordain't to gie you. Eh, 
 Beenie ! honesty's a braw thing ; and I'll no say that 
 your gudeman, my ain oe, hasna been a deevil that 
 should get his dues what they are, the law and 
 lawyers as weel as me ken are little short o' the halter. 
 But, for a' that, our ain kith and kin, Beenie we 
 maun jook and let the jawp gae by. So I counsel you 
 to pack up your ends and your awls, wi' a' the speed ye 
 dow ; for there's no saying what a rampageous soldier- 
 officer, whose trade it is to shoot folks, may say or do. 
 You and Milrookit must take up your bed and walk to 
 some other dwelling-place ; (for here, at Kittlestonheugh, 
 ye hae no continued city, Beenie, my dear, and I'm 
 very sorry for you. It's wi' a very heavy heart, and 
 an e'e o' pity, that I'm obligated not to be beautiful on 
 the mountains." 
 
 Alas! we must tear ourselves from this inimitable 
 woman ; though much remains to be told of her before
 
 102 THE LEDDY O' GRIPPY 
 
 the last scene, in which she bids Mrs. Charles fetch her 
 the old pocket-book, and speaks as follows : 
 
 " Bring me a pen that can spell, and 111 indoss this 
 bit hundred pounds to thee, Bell, as an over and 
 aboon ; and when ye hae gotten it, gang and bid 
 Jamie and Mary come to see me, and I'll gie him the 
 auld gold watch, and her the silver teapot, just as a 
 reward to the sympathising, simpering, and wheedling 
 Milrookits. For, between oursels', Bell, my time is no 
 to be lang noo among you. I feel the clay-cold fingers 
 o' Death handling my feet ; so when I hae settled my 
 concernments, ye'll send for Dr. Deilfear, for I wouldna 
 like to mount into the chariots o' glory without the help 
 o' an orthodox." 
 
 And if any reader can tell me where to find the 
 leddy's equal in all the range of fiction, I can only say, 
 as she would say, that " I'll make a noty beny of it." 
 Till then I am content to agree with Lord Byron that 
 for truth, nature, and individuality the Leddy o' Grippy 
 is surpassed by no female character since the days of 
 Shakespeare.
 
 FICKLE FAME 
 
 " WHERE do good reputations go when they die ? " was 
 a question once asked by the present writer. From 
 the public he received no more answer than a preacher 
 expects who varies the monotony of blank assertion by 
 a brief fusillade of blank interrogation. 
 
 Where do good reputations go when they die ? Into 
 biographical dictionaries. Turn out an old one, itself 
 departed this life, and you will find them there a 
 hundred famous people of whom you never heard, a 
 thousand of whom you have no more than heard. 
 
 No doubt the best reputations do not die, and these 
 exist without much reference to their monuments, 
 which may be little frequented. There comes a point 
 when the fame, for instance, of a great writer ceases to 
 depend on the number of his readers. Dr. Johnson's 
 literary reputation is as huge as himself, and would be 
 very inadequately measured by the extent to which 
 anything he wrote is now read. He is known not now 
 largely by his writings, but by his sayings, and millions 
 of living human beings have a fair sense of intimacy 
 with the great man who only read the obiter dicta of 
 this burly pope preserved for us by Boswell. 
 
 Nevertheless, enormous as Johnson's debt, in the 
 matter of living reputation, is to Boswell : it would be 
 false to assert that without Boswell the doctor's reputa- 
 tion would be now obsolete. Few people to-day read 
 
 103
 
 104 FICKLE FAME 
 
 even Rasselas ; with Miss Jenkyns probably died the last 
 critic who preferred that delightful book to Pickwick. 
 Still fewer read London or the Vanity of Human 
 Wishes : all the same, their author's reputation exists 
 independent of his talk. 
 
 And there are greater names than Johnson's whose 
 present fame is unaffected by the narrowed circle of 
 their readers. Mr. Hall Caine and Miss Corelli may be 
 more widely read than Shakespeare or Milton, but they 
 are not more famous, even for the moment. Mr. Riley, 
 while recommending a classical education for Tom 
 Tulliver to his father, had a sense of himself under- 
 standing Latin generally, though his comprehension 
 of any particular Latin was not ready : and English 
 people have a similar sense of familiarity with Shake- 
 speare and Milton which exists without any particular 
 knowledge of their works. So Burke's oratorical 
 supremacy is proudly felt by millions of his fellow- 
 countrymen to-day who never read a line of any speech 
 of his. 
 
 Absolute fame is of course not to be confounded with 
 reputation or mere famousness. The former is achieved 
 for ever, the latter may be enjoyed, like copyright in 
 books, for life and a few years after, and may lapse 
 much more quickly than copyright. 
 
 Fame is probably personal, due to the man, who 
 only partially expressed himself in his outward achieve- 
 ment in whatever sphere it was; so that the mere 
 bulk of the latter was really accidental, and has not 
 affected the substance of his greatness. It does not 
 matter what kingdoms Alexander in fact conquered, 
 nor would Napoleon be a greater man forever if he had 
 won at Waterloo. Solomon's wisdom did not depend 
 on the number of his proverbs, nor is the sanctity of a
 
 FICKLE FAME 105 
 
 saint invariably demonstrated by all the records of the 
 hagiologist. 
 
 " I have read (says Emerson) that those who listened 
 to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in 
 the man than anything which he said. It has been 
 complained of our brilliant English historian of the 
 French Revolution that when he has told us all his 
 facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate 
 of his genius." 
 
 Carlyle, it may plausibly be argued, happened to 
 over-estimate the genius of Mirabeau ; and, indeed, the 
 capacity of saying greater things than he did say may 
 have been over-estimated by Chatham's hearers. But 
 Emerson continues : 
 
 " The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plu- 
 tarch's heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their 
 own fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure and of few 
 deeds. We cannot find the smallest part of the 
 personal weight of Washington in the narrative of his 
 exploits." 
 
 The greatness of these great men was, in fact, in 
 themselves, and their outward achievements were no 
 more than hints of what they were. A man cannot be 
 lower than his highest thought, but his biggest act 
 may be much smaller than himself. 
 
 " The authority of Schiller," added Emerson, " is too 
 great for his books," and, perhaps, when the essayist 
 wrote, it was still too great for Schiller himself. If he 
 did not carry all the weight of it to heaven, it is lighter 
 at present on earth than the poet of Wilhelm Tell and 
 the Piccolomini would probably approve. 
 
 " This inequality of the reputation to the works and
 
 106 FICKLE FAME 
 
 the anecdotes," Emerson declares, with an insight and 
 judgment none the less fine because his own reputation 
 is attenuated, and his authority a good deal decreased, 
 " is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation 
 is longer than the thunder-clap : but somewhat resided 
 in these men which begot an expectation that outran 
 all their performance. The largest part of their power 
 was latent." 
 
 Their greatness was in fact in themselves: words, 
 deeds, and books were only specimens, haphazard, as 
 called forth by time and occasion. 
 
 The more inward a man's greatness, in proportion 
 to the external show of it, the more substantial, and 
 therefore lasting, his fame ; the more he exhausts his 
 actual stock of himself in visible production, the more 
 his immediate notoriety will be perceived ; but, as most 
 of his acts and words are put out to meet a temporary 
 occasion, so, when the occasion has gone by, his reputa- 
 tion is liable to fall obsolete. In the matter of fame 
 also you cannot have your cake and eat it too. 
 
 But it seems to me that in the neighbourhood of this 
 subject of fame and reputation one or two interesting 
 questions present themselves for consideration. Some 
 once very healthy reputations have certainly expired 
 and are now no longer even mourned : the late Mr. 
 Tupper not only made a good deal of money out of 
 his Proverbial Philosophy, but secured a wide reputa- 
 tion, of the third or fourth class, which has long gone 
 to its account. 
 
 Other reputations, however, have not only died, or 
 died down, but have risen again or sprouted afresh. 
 For quite a generation this was, I believe, the case with 
 Jane Austen, though it may be scarcely credited now. 
 For the last twenty years her delicate and peculiar
 
 FICKLE FAME 107 
 
 genius has been more and more widely and explicitly 
 appreciated ; for the thirty years before, it was almost 
 forgotten, and very frankly ignored. No doubt she 
 always had readers, and they were all sincere if silent 
 admirers. But I suspect they were largely of one class, 
 and were in the main elderly people. In country^ 
 houses, where good books are more read and better 
 tasted than the London public and some literary circles 
 are apt to realise, she was read by the serious ; not 
 much elsewhere except by the genuine book-lovers 
 who go on reading everything, which really is a book, 
 for ever. Nowadays, not only are her books sold in 
 great numbers, but they are read by all sorts of 
 people. There are some books of which scores of 
 copies are bought for one which is read, and others 
 which have dozens of readers for every copy sold. At 
 present Jane Austen's works belong to the latter class ; 
 people not only buy them, but they borrow them to 
 read. 
 
 The same fate, as I believe, was Blake's. He was 
 once very nearly famous, if not quite : he is now very 
 famous indeed: but there was a long interval during 
 which he was neither much read nor much remembered. 
 Perhaps he is just now more praised than read ; not to 
 praise him is, at present, not to care for poetry : yet it 
 may be imagined that some who do not care for much 
 of him may be able to like other fine poetry all the 
 same. Once you know it is your duty there is no 
 difficulty in admiring Little lamb, who made you ? and 
 Tiger, tiger, burning bright, and plenty besides: but 
 there may be readers, who would just as lief The Pro- 
 phetic Books had never been written, who would feel a 
 very deep sense of personal loss if anything happened 
 to Shakespeare's Songs, or Keats' Grecian Urn either.
 
 108 FICKLE FAME 
 
 The re-animation of deceased reputations may be 
 largely due to literary critics, especially of that now 
 numerous class whose own reputation is almost entirely 
 due to their gropings among the bones of their betters. 
 It is a thriving trade, and the writing of introductions 
 must be a lucrative branch of it. No doubt it is use- 
 ful if one has to be introduced to a great man an 
 introduction seems appropriate enough. It is only 
 when the acquaintance is already of some standing and 
 intimacy that the introduction is felt to be officious. 
 
 We have heard Emerson pointing out that some 
 great reputations in literature, and elsewhere, were 
 larger than the productions or deeds of their owners. 
 Anthony Trollope appears to me an instance of the 
 contrary phenomenon. His literary reputation seems 
 much inferior to his literary achievement. The 
 literary critics of the sort just alluded to are, indeed, 
 already making at him : he has been " introduced " by 
 more than one or two such : articles are written about 
 him and his work, and have been, for ten years or a 
 dozen : but they are mostly apologies, and the boldest 
 are craven enough to damn with faint praise. To hear 
 some of these gentry deal out their timid eulogies of 
 such masterpieces as Barchester Towers and The Last 
 Chronicle of Bar set, makes one sympathise more than 
 ever with Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility when 
 he said, " Who would submit to the indignity of being 
 approved by such women as Lady Middleton and Mrs. 
 Jennings, that could command the indifference of 
 anybody else ? " 
 
 Unless a masterpiece can be successfully compared 
 with some other, this kind of critic is commonly unable 
 to realise that it is a masterpiece at all. They wait to 
 acclaim it till some bolder spirit has made the discovery.
 
 FICKLE FAME 109 
 
 It took a long time for Wuthering Heights to obtain 
 common recognition as an achievement of the first 
 class : it was a Bronte"-book, and had to be ranged along- 
 side the other Bronte-books : Jane Eyre was unassail- 
 able, and it was not really particularly like Jane Eyre : 
 it must be inferior. As a matter of fact it belongs to 
 no class, but stands alone and cannot be weighed by 
 comparison with any other book. Dr. Johnson said 
 Tristram Shandy would perish because it was odd; 
 and it certainly was odd though it has not perished. 
 Wuthering Heights is much more than odd, and no 
 doubt its singularity stood, and will always stand, 
 between it and mere popularity. There is, however, 
 something higher than popularity, and that recognition 
 of eminence has slowly been accorded to this astounding 
 work of an isolated, melancholy genius. Even now 
 too much stress is laid on the accident of authorship 
 as if the most remarkable fact in relation to Wuthering 
 Heights is that it was written by a girl : whereas the 
 book itself is the most remarkable thing about it : 
 and the truth is, it would be astounding no matter by 
 whom it had been written. 
 
 Emily Bronte is not cited as an instance of a reputa- 
 tion which died and was brought to life again: her 
 fame is only coming to posthumous birth long after her 
 own death of the flesh. If there be literary justice in 
 posterity, the same recognition awaits The Entail, 
 whose author so far has never attained any but a 
 secondary place, and that for his much inferior Annals 
 of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees. 
 
 Miss Burney and Miss Edge worth are, however, both 
 instances. The authoress of Evelina could support, 
 with resignation, a tolerable weight of fame in her life- 
 time, and she had to do it. She had her Dr. Johnson,
 
 110 FICKLE FAME 
 
 just as the authoress of Robert Elsmere had her Mr. 
 Gladstone : but perhaps the public was more indebted 
 to the latter sponsor than the former. Without any 
 imprimatur Miss Burney's irresistible gallery of pic- 
 tures must have been soon crowded with delighted 
 spectators. 
 
 All the same Evelina went out of vogue, and there 
 came a day when, by the general public, it was neglected 
 as old-fashioned. That day is past : and the pertest 
 critic would not now dare to write himself Dogberry 
 by any depreciation of the great Fanny. 
 
 So of the much less great, but much more lovable, 
 Maria. She had her Sir Walter, just as the older 
 writer had her Johnson : and " the Wizard " was notori- 
 ously more lavish of praise than the doctor. No doubt 
 she owed him much in her day : but no one would now 
 read anyone because the author of Waverley said they 
 had better : authority in criticism is less esteemed just 
 at present than loquacity. And Miss Edgeworth is 
 read again : not as Miss Austen is read, for Miss Austen 
 wrote of England, and the English reader never cared 
 much about Ireland : but still a good deal. The 
 Absentee and Castle Rackrent need not be sought for 
 in second-hand book-shops: they are to be seen on 
 every railway book-stall, and publishers, like the conies, 
 are a timid folk, and would certainly not provide the 
 public with books because it ought to read them. 
 Their concern is not at all with what should be read, 
 but with what is freely bought. 
 
 Yet, in spite of her former and her present vogue, 
 Maria Edgeworth also had her eclipse, during which 
 she was as old-fashioned as an early Victorian 
 wardrobe. 
 
 How about Sir Walter ? Does every American who
 
 FICKLE FAME 111 
 
 dashes into Abbotsford when the family is at breakfast, 
 as if nobody lived there, read Guy Mannering ? 
 
 George Eliot, we are told, has already sunk into the 
 tomb of Mrs. John Cross ; which might serve her right 
 if JRomola and Daniel Deronda had not been preceded 
 by Silas Marner, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, 
 and Scenes of Clerical Life. As they were, we may be 
 pretty easy as to her sure and certain resurrection. 
 Why should her fame be stifled by Theophrastus Such ? 
 Did not Tennyson write the May Queen as well as 
 Ulysses, Tithonus, and the Lotus Eaters ? 
 
 Among poets, two, very different in quality, may be 
 cited as instances of revived reputation Herrick and 
 Wordsworth. The occultation of the former lasted at 
 all events for a century, though his reputation is now 
 probably wider and greater than it was originally. It 
 was not possible that generations esteeming Pope the 
 prince of poets should esteem Herrick as a poet at all. 
 
 Wordsworth in his lifetime took such care of his 
 renown as a poet that his death was an inevitable blow 
 to it. He left it, indeed, in trust to a body of admirers 
 sincere and numerous, but even the trustees had not 
 quite the conviction of the testator. And presently it 
 was rather remembered how much of his work was 
 inferior to his best than how immensely high his best 
 ranks. The zenith of Tennyson's renown was the nadir 
 of his predecessor's in the Laureateship. As for the 
 public, it probably can only put up with one great 
 poet at a time, and it had its living Laureate; there 
 was no room for the dead one; nor, for a long time, 
 for Browning or Swinburne either, though they had 
 the advantage of not having yet joined the immortals. 
 
 The occultation of Wordsworth, however, lasted 
 barely through a generation. During the last twenty
 
 112 FICKLE FAME 
 
 years of the late lamented century his reputation was 
 steadily reviving and being preached up. If he was 
 not always profound when he seemed silly it does not 
 now matter ; no one is anxious to throw We are Seven 
 in his teeth ; and for the sake of some of his sonnets 
 scores of the others are reverently forgotten. 
 
 The highest fame must be impregnable, but even the 
 highest is not subject to the complaint of monotony. 
 Shakespeare himself was once in need of apologists, 
 and Johnson was one of them. It might surprise the 
 public of to-day to learn how poor was his estimation, 
 how obsolete seemed his vogue, during a great part 
 of the eighteenth century, and before Germany existed 
 or the Holy Roman Empire had ceased. To praise 
 him is now an impertinence which we are content to 
 leave to a people without humour like the Germans, 
 who think they invented him. 
 
 To speak of him as the one supreme human genius, 
 would be to use a threadbare and stale phrase. We 
 cannot realise that there was a long period during 
 which he was not only unread, but unadmired ; when 
 he was supposed to belong to the crude, coarse, vulgar 
 times, ere " taste " was discovered : when he was " un- 
 polished," " clumsy " ; careless or even ignorant of the 
 " unities " : when even those who went to see his 
 plays acted could not be expected to bear the infliction 
 of his actual words, but were treated to someone's 
 " Version." 
 
 Fortune has always been called fickle because men 
 have always been inconsequent. Fame is much more 
 unreasonably fickle.
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 BEFORE God came down to earth to make His Church 
 Catholic, the Truth, but half reyealed and half known, 
 was the family secret of one little Nation, lonely in the 
 farthest corner of the Midland Sea : and she carried it, 
 veiled in her heart and hidden from the great pagan 
 world. In those far-off days the Gentile peoples, not 
 knowing the One True and Living God, groped wist- 
 fully for gods, and made them of anything, lovely 
 or potent, that they could perceive beside them on 
 the earth, or above them in the heavens. For in 
 them also was the great worship-hunger, still assert- 
 ing itself against alien and unfriendly appetites; an 
 indestructible witness to the fact, older than the world, 
 that there is a God somewhere, and to the other fact, 
 as old as man himself, that man must fain turn above 
 himself, to something higher than himself, more 
 potent than he and lovelier, that he may worship it. 
 
 Among those things that pagan man presently dis- 
 cerned as better than himself were the Arts, so that 
 them also he deified, or half-deified. He made them 
 daughters of Jove, with tender Memory for their 
 Mother. 
 
 When the Church came, and the sum of truth 
 revealed became the birthright of all Mankind who 
 should choose to share her Divine inheritance, the 
 Muses ceased to be false goddesses and were allotted 
 a hisrher function because a true one. She bade 
 
 H
 
 114 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 them leave a throne that was not theirs, and yield it 
 to Him whose alone it was, but they were not banished 
 nor degraded. She did not mislike loveliness, nor 
 misery it, but she gave it the place and office of 
 witness, that it might preach of Him from whom it had 
 caught some hint and reflection of His own eternal and 
 uncreated Beauty. 
 
 For she gently told them "All men are vain . . . 
 who by these good things that are seen understand 
 not Him who is, neither, by attending to the works, 
 have acknowleged who was the Workman . . . with 
 whose Beauty if they being delighted took them to 
 be gods, let them know how much the Lord of them 
 is more beautiful than they: for the First Author of 
 beauty made all those things. Or, if they admired 
 their power and effects, let them understand by them 
 that He that made them is mightier than they. For 
 by the greatness of the beauty . . . the Creator of 
 them may be seen, so as to be known thereby." 
 
 So that the Arts, driven from the dead temples, 
 were not exiled from the Living Church, but given 
 their home and duty hi it. They were not thrust 
 down and shamed, but raised from a false function 
 of helpless and idle goddesshood to a true function 
 of helpful and real service. 
 
 This, then, was the new and true office of all Arts in 
 the Church : they were to be her mouthpiece and her 
 witness, bearing, under her inspiration, a lovely testi- 
 mony to Divine beauty. In all the ugly and mean 
 jostle of common life they were to remind man of 
 the eternal and ineffable serenity of God's perfection. 
 Man's worship they should no longer seize halfway to 
 heaven: but, with fingers ever pointed upward, they 
 were to bid him look above the world for the supreme
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 115 
 
 and sole object of adoration. This noble function we 
 see exercised by the Arts in all the story of the Church 
 in her freedom and supremacy. She was never their 
 foe, but their grave and guiding Mother and Mistress ; 
 and it is from the Church that the modern world has 
 received the Arts. But as she held them to their high 
 vocation, so they, hi the good days, when the world 
 was Christendom learning at the Church's knee, 
 accepted with proud loyalty their honoured place in 
 her economy. But, alas, there came the ugly and 
 ruinous revolt that willed to dethrone the Church, and 
 changed the noble ideal of united Christendom into 
 the poor makeshift of a split-up Europe. And to the 
 new notions the idea of service was repugnant, and 
 seemed servile, for the inner spirit of the revolt was 
 not monarchic but anarchic. And to anarchy the 
 noble function of ordered service, the highest man 
 and his works can hold towards God, appears mere 
 serfdom. 
 
 In the new scheme of things they who had been 
 proud to be servants set themselves to be rivals and 
 adversaries. The Arts too fell into infection, and slipped 
 away ; instead of being honourable servants of the 
 Church, and proud helpers in her Divine work, they 
 would be tale-bearers against her, and traitors, libel- 
 lous. From her they would take no more guidance, 
 nor inspiration ; her reproofs they would not bear, her 
 canons they would forget and disallow. 
 
 The ripe fruit of the old ways was, in literature, such 
 poets as Dante, in sculpture and painting such Masters 
 as Michelangelo and Rafael ; the latest, but forever 
 unripe and unwholesome fruit of the new revolt is, in 
 Art, God save the mark, the Post-Impressionists and 
 Futurists, in literature the Massa Damnata of current
 
 116 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 fiction if that can be called current which loves to 
 crawl and snuff its inspiration from the dung and 
 slime of a civilisation turned rotten. 
 
 In the good days when Arts were content to be 
 learners of the Church, they taught with a clear 
 coherent message, for they shared in presenting her 
 noble and unearthly lesson : no longer willing to learn 
 of her, they have nothing to teach, having lost cog- 
 nizance of their own meaning. In a futile and trivial 
 ambition to rank above her they have fallen beneath 
 themselves. Despising the old serene simplicity, they 
 are tangled in a webbed confusion of dust and dirt and 
 throttled contradiction. Pointing no longer upward 
 beyond man, they seek to reflect man only, and him 
 they reflect littled and more mean, more bestial and 
 more base. If, in spite of themselves, they are Balaam- 
 prophets, unwilling witnesses on God's side, it is no 
 more by the infinite, sublime, if ever unsatisfied and 
 unavailing effort to depict Divine loveliness, but by 
 proving to the sad angels how ugly man without God 
 is bound to be. 
 
 But, though the aim of the Great Revolt was to 
 dethrone the Church and destroy her, she is, in fact, 
 neither destroyed nor dethroned. Her kingdom on 
 earth may have, for a moment, no territorial frontier, 
 but it smiles at all boundary-limits and governs the 
 hearts of loyal subjects in every realm and every clime, 
 and her vigour is not enfeebled in her august and 
 venerable age. In all the world she has her lieges, 
 who in every tongue proclaim their loyalty and their 
 love : so that, wherever her rule is felt, the function 
 of literature is to-day what it was of old, to learn and 
 so to teach, not a rival message, nor a different, from 
 that of the Mother and Mistress herself, but the same
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 117 
 
 message pitched in a minor key: nor with an inde- 
 pendent, rebel or rival, authority, but, as it were, by 
 grace of faculties derived from her, and so with a 
 sanction incomparably higher than any that could be 
 that of literature herself, were she to set herself apart 
 in a windy autonomy of her own. 
 
 It is true that in this viceroyalty of literature there 
 are many provinces, not alike in function nor equal in 
 dignity and importance. There are, for instance, high 
 alpine regions such as that of theology, which lift 
 white summits up towards heaven itself: there are 
 foot-hills of philosophy that he must first conquer 
 who would mount those loftier heights. 
 
 There is history, time's memory, upon whose chaplet 
 she links together her beads of experience lest they 
 scatter and be lost. There is biography, which is a 
 sort of gallery of portraits in the wider palace of history 
 itself. 
 
 When all these are laid by literature in the lap of 
 her great Mother the Church, they hold a consistency 
 and coherency, a significance and a purpose, that else 
 they would have lost, and must lose. 
 
 But literature has regions less grave and perhaps 
 less august, but grateful to tired and busy feet : her 
 pleasaunces, fragrant and welcome. For the Church 
 herself knows that all work and no play will make of 
 her sons but dull children : so she has her gardens, and 
 her playing-fields, many flowered, with mimic rocks 
 that only seem to frown, and mimic heights that fancy 
 may climb and break no bones. There is the lovely land 
 of poesy, and all the intricate sweet forest of romance. 
 These are set lower, certainly, than those mountain- 
 realms of theology, and philosophy, and history. But 
 though they seem in comparison to be of the plains,
 
 118 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 yet are they upland too, and they also, if their inspira- 
 tion be true, point upward to horizons where earth's lips 
 are lifted to kiss the hem of heaven's clean garment. 
 In an age over practical, as the empty and false- 
 flattering phrase goes, an age of common and mean 
 purposes, poetry is the more essential, the more in- 
 dispensable. To the dull it may seem the mere 
 science of fine and fair words, but in reality it is a 
 golden bridge that carries us, by high speech, arched 
 far above the low swamps of petty ideals, into an 
 enchanted, half-unearthly, land of nobler and so truer 
 thoughts, whose fruit must be nobler desires and less 
 sordid deeds. For noble speech can be born only of 
 noble thought, and be in turn its mother, and from 
 nobler thinking nobler doing is fain to spring. 
 
 Mere thoughts are not so barren, nor so insignificant 
 as the prim and smug would pretend, to whom all 
 thinking, except calculation, is uneasy and wasteful : 
 the Church has never held it so ; that is why, in her 
 wide embrace, contemplative Religion has ever held so 
 secure and so warm a welcome. And to contempla- 
 tion no leaf on any tree in all God's garden is mean- 
 ingless: the Pantheist saw in everything a God, the 
 Contemplative sees God through everything, and reads 
 His Name ineffable in all the alphabet whose letters 
 are this earth and the universe of stars. 
 
 The poet preaches of God though his song may seem, 
 to the deaf, whose ears are wool-stopped with avarice, 
 no sermon. No decent human being can read any 
 true poem without a lifting of his soul, and that at its 
 best is prayer : at its worst it is better than lying 
 among the pots. The poet's clear song lights |a clearer 
 fire among the thorns of our commonplace, we catch 
 from him alpine glimpses that touch close upon the
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 119 
 
 heavens, his high thought begets a higher thought in 
 us than our own, and each higher thought, by the 
 Divine compassion, tends upward to the highest. 
 
 Confronted with such ideas as are generated by 
 great poetry, in every reader capable of conceiving ideas 
 at all, mean things are forced to show their meanness ; 
 low and pedestrian purposes are stripped and made to 
 show their beggarly nakedness. Poetry is not utili- 
 tarian, and to them who need it most it seems useless, but 
 its use is to remind us of matters too willingly forgotten 
 by an age that is disposed to reckon nothing golden 
 except money. Life, it compels us to bear in mind, is 
 more than meat. 
 
 Poetry is the irreconcilable foe of smug and fustian 
 self-complacency, and self-content : and of all re- 
 pentance and true betterment the subtlest enemy 
 is sen-satisfaction among mean ideas and abject 
 purposes. 
 
 In all true and great poetry there is something 
 eternal, and some protest against our over-estimate 
 of what is temporary and of passing consequence : its 
 appeal is never to fashion or whim, but to what is 
 as old as man himself, and is therefore new in every 
 age. All temporary verse dies with the period that 
 occasioned it, or survives it only by a narrow space as 
 a mere monument, with a merely quaint and archaic 
 interest. 
 
 So it is that we find the best poetry the world 
 possesses among its oldest. And this eternal spirit in 
 real and great poetry gives to it a function and use 
 whose importance cannot easily be exaggerated. It 
 serves by its very nature as a protest against the 
 irritable spirit of novelty, shallow fashion-worship, and 
 mean absorption in matters of trivial and temporary
 
 120 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 significance : and against them it is, in its measure, a 
 medicine and antidote. 
 
 To my thinking no age ever needed poetry more than 
 this : and it is wanting precisely because it is needed. 
 Our Miltons are mostly mute, or else inglorious. 
 
 The scope of prose romance is not so high, nor does 
 it stretch down so deep into the roots of humanity. 
 But the scope is, perhaps, wider. It may reach some 
 to whom, as yet, poetry is impossible : and to poetry 
 it may serve as the porch and preparation. For many 
 incapable at first of savouring great poets may be intro- 
 duced to it by the easier appreciation of prose romance. 
 
 The themes of romance seem more varied, and 
 perhaps more intimate and more homely, though it 
 is not to be forgotten that a supreme poetic genius, 
 like Homer's, can appeal with eternal force to the heart 
 of mankind when dealing with things most homely 
 and most simple. 
 
 Prose romance can never be the rival of poetry, it 
 is her younger sister, conscious of a less exalted sphere, 
 and venerating without emulation her elder's more 
 august dignity. The arc of each circle is often touch- 
 ing, but never intersects. A true poem, even an epic, 
 can never be merely a metrical tale, and a prose 
 romance is never to aim at being a long unversed 
 poem with chapters for cantos. 
 
 Nevertheless in genuine romance there is ever dis- 
 cernible its kinship with poetry : it will not deal with 
 common and trivial things or themes. It moves on 
 a higher plane than common experience ; and its aim 
 is ideal truth not sordid or servile realism. For ideal 
 truth is not imprisoned behind the bars of mere actual 
 occurrence, else would not the Master Himself have 
 taught in parables.
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 121 
 
 Its realm is not bounded by the frontiers of dull fact : 
 it does not confine itself to the literal reproduction of 
 figures that have been seen, and of events that have 
 happened precisely thus, in these identical circum- 
 stances : but aims at a certain ideal presentation. 
 
 The supreme sculptor draws out of shapeless and 
 inert marble forms of men more perfect than any 
 experience has installed in his memory ; the supreme 
 romanticist fills his stage with men and women that 
 are nobly human yet surpass any he may have met, 
 or his reader might have imagined. He is not to 
 pretend that all good men are angels, but he is not to 
 seek his type among men by whom the type has been 
 most littled, and most degraded. In this selection and 
 presentation of higher types he does not pander to 
 human vanity, but the reverse : for reading of men 
 that are men but nobler than ourselves does not flatter 
 our self-love, but rather breeds in us a wholesome 
 shame of ourselves. Nor is he insincere, but only 
 loyal. For none treats man with more brutal violence 
 than he who draws the portrait of a beast and writes 
 under it This is Man. It is odd that they who are 
 most disposed to pretend there is no God, and that 
 man needs none but himself, are the most inveterate 
 in stripping man of all divine resemblance or reminis- 
 cence. You would suppose they would depict man a 
 demi-God, whereas it is precisely they who insist on 
 writing him down a pig. 
 
 Nor is this ideal presentation of man, in romance, 
 a forgetfulness of his fall, and an ignoring of original 
 sin; it is not a taint of heresy; the Manicheans were 
 the heretics, who made man Satan's creature. It is 
 but a reminder that man is God's man still and after 
 all ; that the fall itself was not the end of the story of
 
 122 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 God and man, nor God's last word in creation. It is 
 the pornographist, who, while disbelieving in it, witnesses 
 to man's fall in the first Adam, and refuses to witness 
 to his resurrection in the second ; so, in one foul word, 
 he libels man and God. 
 
 Yet, for all this, in high romance there is no affecta- 
 tion; it does not make mealy-mouthed pretence that 
 men are all good, or that all good men are angelic. 
 Cardinal Newman has bidden us realise that all the 
 actions even of all the saints were not always saintly ; 
 and romance is not hagiology ; the story of some saint's 
 life may lend itself to the most perfect romance, but 
 all romance cannot and does not deal with lives of 
 saints. For mankind, as a whole, has never been 
 precisely saintly, and with mankind as a whole romance 
 has concern. It is sufficient that it sets its stage on a 
 plane elevated above that of common life ; upon that 
 stage all the figures cannot be all white. It must have 
 shadow, or its light will be as flat as it is false. And it 
 is a stupidity, as well as a mistake, to assume that 
 good moral can only be afforded by good men. The 
 business of high romance is not to stock literature with 
 a sort of Sunday-school story-book that is, in fact, not 
 literature at all. If it were, then would it be as power- 
 less as it would be useless to do that service to religion 
 which I think it is capable of doing namely of catch- 
 ing the attention and enlisting the interest of readers 
 who will only read that which they perceive to be 
 literature. Such readers may be good Catholics, but 
 they may also be Catholics who are not so good as they 
 might be, and they may not be Catholics at all. In 
 these two latter classes some are little likely to be 
 benefited by a sermon or by a tract ; for they neither 
 love to hear the one nor to read the other. Yet they
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 123 
 
 will read a book that strikes them as worth reading, 
 and which does not strike them as a thinly-veiled 
 sermon. Is it not worth while to try and engage their 
 attention, to make some effort to draw their notice 
 back to higher thoughts than those of contemporary 
 fad and fancy and fashion, to those more ideal themes 
 which romance has for its scope ? If no more were 
 done than to help them to a higher taste in recreative 
 reading, to give them some better substitute for the 
 current fiction of our day, which is neither literature 
 nor romance, I think much would be done. But more 
 may be done; by such romance as I am trying to 
 indicate their attention may be brought back to the 
 noble picture of Catholic faith in practice, to stirring 
 events, and great personages of the past: to times 
 when men, however wrong and passionate, lawless 
 even, were marked by a simpler spirit ; when, with all 
 their faults and frequent disobedience, they were 
 children of the Church, and were still apt to turn to 
 her for comfort in sorrow, and refuge in adversity, keen 
 to realise that she was indispensable and they could not 
 do without her. Perhaps it may seem that I harp too 
 much on the past as the theme of romance ; but is it 
 not the case that the present day is too much pre- 
 occupied with itself, and that, therefore, the diversion 
 of its attention to the great and romantic stories of 
 other days is wholesome ? We must, I know, live in 
 the present and act in it, but by realising that other 
 ages were as much alive once as we are now, we are 
 made to realise that matters which absorb us to-day 
 may not after all be of such final significance as we 
 suppose ; that our fuss and fume, our rancours and our 
 jealousies, are not of eternal importance ? It seems to 
 me that from the pages of high romance we may draw
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 a more serene patience, and a more practical remem- 
 brance that it is by God, and not by us, that the world 
 is ruled ; that somehow, after all our boggling and our 
 crossness, His Providence unties our knots, and may 
 correct our blunders. We see our own follies and our 
 own violence reflected in the calm mirror of the past, 
 and yet see that the world was there then, as it is now, 
 and that God was over the world all the time ; as the 
 world is here now, and God is over us all still. 
 
 If it be said that history should do this, I would be 
 tempted to reply that in history there may be as much 
 fiction as there is history in romance : and further that 
 many who will not read history will read romance. 
 And, further still, that history, like art, is long : that 
 a mouthful of histoiy is not much good, but often the 
 reverse : that in a single work of fine romance there is 
 apt to be a completeness hardly to be found in a single 
 volume, or a single epoch of scientific history. The 
 lesson of one chapter, or even of one epoch in history, 
 however patent it may seem, is often untrue if taken 
 alone, and needs the correction and adjustment of many 
 later chapters and epochs. The romanticist may borrow 
 from an earlier page, and forestall a later, in a manner 
 that could not be tolerated in a historian. 
 
 The story of the Church, of her Popes, and of her 
 saints, of her heroes, and of her humbler servants offers 
 a wide field, still almost untouched by the romanticist. 
 
 But it is not suggested that all romance must be 
 ecclesiological, nor that her theme must be exclusively, 
 or always even definitely, I mean obviously, what is 
 called religious. To insist on that would be to clip 
 her wings, and limit her audience, and that in such a 
 manner as to shut against her voice exactly those 
 ears which, in my thinking, we most need to catch.
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 125 
 
 It seems, indeed, to be assumed by some that a Catholic 
 romanticist has no business to write otherwise than as if 
 he were addressing a Catholic congregation and from a 
 Catholic pulpit : in that case it is pretty sure that only 
 Catholics will listen, and that any hope of drawing 
 towards the Church those who are outside must form 
 none of his ambition. 
 
 The Catholic pulpit exists for Catholics, and there 
 is no reason for using it as though it were assumed 
 that half the congregation at least were non-Catholics : 
 the Church is what she is, and those who do not like 
 her as she is cannot be cajoled into liking her by half- 
 stripping her, and dressing her up in Reformation 
 garments. Such a method might make our people 
 half-Protestant, but could never make Protestants, not 
 in church at all most likely, become Catholic. 
 
 But the function of romance is not identical with 
 that of the pulpit : it may attract the indifferent 
 towards the consideration of subjects which will lead 
 the reader on to friendlier interest in the Church, her 
 children and her august story : it may remind a world 
 much oblivious of the past how the present was made, 
 and compel it to call to mind that religion is not the 
 negligible factor in humanity that many are now eager 
 to make it. What painting has done for religion in 
 one field, what architecture has done in another, that 
 also romance may do in her own. 
 
 Though it be true that romance, and even high 
 romance, is not limited to themes explicitly religious, 
 yet is it also true that all true romance will hold some 
 sort of parable : for every genuine reflection of life 
 must be a parable, as life itself is one. For some 
 readers, indeed, a parable must be terribly obvious, or 
 they will see none in it : but must every writer write
 
 126 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 always only for the dullest, least apprehensive and least 
 sympathetic, reader ? All readers are not dull, nor 
 stupid, nor captious ; priggishness is never literary : 
 must every writer be always currying favour with 
 stupidity and dullness ? Must his teaching be always 
 labelled and placarded, his moral marked in plain 
 figures like the price on a ready-made cheap garment, 
 that is supposed to fit the public, but fits no one in 
 particular ? I cannot help thinking that some readers 
 might learn more morality from a course of the 
 Waverley novels than from a course of mealy-mouthed 
 tract-like tales on the seven capital offences and their 
 opposed virtues. I am sure they would learn more 
 from King Lear than from the excellent Martin 
 Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy. 
 
 One who knew books well said that he knew no 
 spiritual reading better than Thackeray's Vanity Fair. 
 That I honour as a great saying, and a man who was 
 not spiritual could not have made it. Yet Vanity 
 Fair is by no means all white light ; it would never 
 satisfy those critics who demand of the romanticist that 
 he should paint only white figures in clear relief against 
 a white background. 
 
 All fine writers of English fiction have not, of course, 
 been so cleanly as Sir Walter Scott or Thackeray: 
 to cite two, and two who are no favourites of my own, 
 Smollett was not and Fielding was not. And neither, 
 though they wrote with genius, wrote genuine romance. 
 Even from them, though we cannot admit them as 
 teachers what to do, we may learn, to borrow Sir 
 Francis Burnand's delightful phrase, what to don't. 
 
 And they who care to scan pictures of past life, in 
 phases that no one can regret should be past, will con- 
 sider that they have an interest and a value. Smollett
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 127 
 
 and Hume together wrote a history of England, and no 
 one could gather from the whole of it what England, 
 in any period they deal with, was like, half so well 
 as he could gather what some sorts of English life 
 were like in the period sketched by Smollett alone in 
 his brutal novels. 
 
 This portraiture, or even caricature-portraiture, of 
 certain periods and their phases, is one of the func- 
 tions, if a minor one, of fiction. And it may be that 
 by its aid we gather a more accurate and living picture 
 than any history, by herself, can give us. Perhaps the 
 ages now called Dark would not seem to us now so 
 obscure if they too had had their novelists. Shadowy 
 and vague figures, that move like phantoms because only 
 their names, and certain of their deeds, are passed down 
 to us by history, would have more reality and more sig- 
 nificance had they also, in their day or near it, been 
 pressed into the service of romance. We said above 
 that one great use of poetry is its appeal from what 
 is temporary and contemporary to interests that are 
 eternal and unchanging : and romance, in its measure, 
 has the same effect. It widens our view by the mere 
 force of altering it ; that is, by compelling some exercise 
 of the faculty called imagination, which does not mean 
 pretending, but the realisation of images. To some 
 extent this lifts us out of ourselves, and suspends our 
 selfishness and self-absorption ; for it knocks, as it were, 
 the centre of gravity outside ourselves ; and that is no 
 mean function, nor trivial result. Romance tends to 
 extend our humanity and deepen its sympathies by 
 showing us ourselves as parts of the great river of all 
 life, flowing down from the past and flowing on to the 
 future ; is this bad for our charity or our humility ? 
 That which is called, and is not, realism is a special
 
 128 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 idiosyncrasy of our present day : it is twin-sister of a 
 shallow and blind materialism : and true romance is its 
 sworn foe. For the stage of romance is the lofty and 
 the ideal ; its standards are not weights and measures, 
 and nothing is more alien from it than the apotheosis of 
 material success or of money. Of all dumb beasts the 
 last to be idolised in romance is the golden calf. 
 
 Romance is not the business of life, and life is very 
 busy : but the busiest seek recreation, and a recreation 
 that forces us to remember that all life is not the 
 making of money is not the meanest. And romance is 
 opposed to worldliness, which is an excess of individu- 
 alism, and an absorption in the pursuit of material, 
 temporary things, for romance is impersonal and heroic. 
 Its values are not those of the Stock Exchange, nor of 
 Mayfair. Again in all true romance we are brought in 
 presence of pathos and of beauty ; and selfishness can 
 have no natural antidote more poignant than pathos, 
 which is its solvent ; for selfishness arrives by a thicken- 
 ing and a hardening of the heart God gave us. The 
 ugliness of our own meanness is brought inevitably to 
 our notice by ideal pictures of beauty. Sordid aims 
 and satisfactions cannot but be made uneasy in their 
 seat by such contrasts as Romance propounds. 
 
 It will be seen that I think nobly of romance, as 
 Malvolio did of the soul. Its function seems to me 
 neither trivial nor slight. That the soul is noble 
 makes them more indefensible who have dealt ignobly 
 with it : and the same is true of such as deal ignobly 
 with romance. But of them I have neither time to 
 treat here, nor inclination. 
 
 It is enough to repeat that romance should be a 
 worthy relaxation of tired and jaded minds, to whom 
 a brief escape into her golden realm is] like a little
 
 KING'S SERVANTS 129 
 
 uncostly holiday from the stress of toil, and the pre- 
 occupation of dull mechanical affairs. In this use of 
 it many, I think, might indulge more, with gain to 
 themselves. There are some, perhaps, who are too 
 busy, though the busy need it most : but there are 
 many others who might save for it, with no loss 
 to their souls, some of the time they spend in talk. 
 And we must say, too, that those fiction-mongers, to 
 whom we need not allude more precisely, by whom 
 fiction has been dragged down, have so treated what 
 should be a relief to minds fatigued, that in their 
 hands it has become a thing intolerable to anyone 
 with any mind at all. 
 
 In all that I have tried to say it may seem that, 
 while on the whole I have said too much, not enough 
 has been said of Catholic literature in particular : my 
 reason is this. In one sense I would submit that there 
 is no such a thing, apart from such specialised subjects 
 as theology, as Catholic literature: in another that 
 all literature, that is true literature at all, is Catholic : 
 that is, that all true literature is a part of the common 
 inheritance which belongs to us and all men. In this 
 fashion, it would seem, the Church herself has dealt 
 with literature, never disinheriting herself of what 
 even heathen wisdom and beauty have left to us, and 
 never sparing her condemnation of what was vile or 
 untrue, because it was written by a Catholic. 
 
 If we come specially to the function of Catholic 
 makers of literature, I have already tried, though 
 hastily and inadequately, and chiefly by inference, to 
 imply what it seems to me to be : viz. that, as of 
 old, so should it be now and always : literature, like all 
 arts, is no false goddess, but a true servant. She must 
 boast no autonomy. Her jurisdiction is not inherent, 
 
 I
 
 130 KING'S SERVANTS 
 
 but delegated : there is really no republic of letters : but 
 a province of letters within the universal Viceroyalty 
 of the Church : to which it owes obedience, from whence, 
 if it is to be living and coherent, it must draw guidance 
 and inspiration too. Sitting at her feet, encouraged 
 by her urbane glance of approval or smile of conde- 
 scension, our writers will not be scribes teaching they 
 know not what, but, by ever learning, they will know 
 what they teach, and they will teach by a higher 
 authority than their own. Its function can never be 
 that of the Church, its office is not hers, but it will be 
 not her rebel but her child. And even when at play, 
 it may remind us of those other children, playing about 
 the feet of the Master Himself, who would not have 
 them driven away, nor see in their presence there any 
 interruption of His own august lesson.
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 " DON'T tell me," said an elderly lady in my hearing. 
 " I know it isn't round." 
 
 " It is," suggested her nephew, " an oblate spheroid." 
 
 " Oblong or no, nothing will make me believe that the 
 churches in New Zealand hang down like chandeliers." 
 
 Microbes she also scouted M'Crawbies, as the 
 Scotch chemist called them. Doctors, she averred, 
 invented them, for their own purposes; just as they 
 invented appendicitis, about the time each of them 
 took to having a private nursing home of his own. 
 Who, she asked, ever heard of a doctor's wife with 
 appendicitis ? 
 
 Her nephew feebly urged that all mankind was 
 against her. But she didn't care sixpence for man- 
 kind, and had he counted mankind ? On a universal 
 census, not one per cent., she said, of the human race 
 would be found to believe in the rotundity of this earth 
 or in microbes. 
 
 "And one per cent.," she observed with finality, "is 
 what I never would put up with." 
 
 I do believe in microbes : for is it not obvious that 
 an illiterate brute of a microbe fell in with Mr. Birrell, 
 bit him, and turned him from letters to politics ? 
 Why on earth else should a man, who might still be 
 giving us Obiter Dicta, be frittering away time that 
 really belongs to the public in the dismal trivialities 
 of party politics? It would serve him right if some 
 
 131
 
 132 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer were to throw up his 
 excursions and alarms in the undiscovered country of 
 finance, and try his hand on Essays on Mr. Birrell's 
 favourite topic Cardinal Newman, say, or George 
 Borrow. If asked whether he knew how, such a 
 Chancellor might reply, like the man who was asked 
 if he could play the German flute, "I don't know. I 
 haven't tried." 
 
 We have some very good essayists still, and Mr. 
 Birrell is the most perfect essayist living, nor would he 
 take any but a very high place if ranked with those 
 who are living no longer. 
 
 Macaulay was not precisely an essayist, though the 
 pieces to which he assigned the name will always be 
 delightful reading, and are assumed by young persons 
 to be the models of what essays should be. 
 
 An essay, according to the Great Lexicographer, is (1) 
 an attempt, an endeavour ; (2) a loose sally of the mind, 
 irregular, indigested piece ; (3) a trial, an experiment ; 
 (4) a first taste of anything. Macaulay never at- 
 tempted, nor endeavoured, he achieved : his mind had 
 no loose sallies ; and there were no indigested pieces in 
 him, for he was careful to swallow nothing that was 
 hard : his essays were not trials, nor experiments, but 
 603 catJiedra pronouncements; nor were they exactly 
 first tastes, but rather solid meals. Those essays of 
 Macaulay's that deal with books are not really essays, 
 but a sort of long reviews, though not so much reviews 
 of the books that gave him pretext as of the subjects 
 dealt with in the books. At all events they are not 
 suggestions, but measured and weighty statements ; last 
 words rather than first tastes, 
 
 Hazlitt was no more, or scarcely more, an essayist 
 than Macaulay, in the strict sense not that your true
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 133 
 
 essayist ever is strict. Macaulay and Hazlitt were as 
 strict as Dr. Keate, and " loose sallies" and " indigested 
 pieces" were the last thing they would have put in 
 print. When they had anything to write they seized 
 the poker but they could not have written an essay 
 on it : Lamb could have written a delightful series on 
 it, or on the lid of the tea-kettle: but he could not 
 have been strict for he was a prince, nay, an Emperor 
 of Essayists. Hazlitt was only an Antipope, who could 
 issue nothing more trivial than definitions. He had, 
 for an essayist, too much to say. So had Macaulay. An 
 essay should not contain too much Mr. G. S. Street is 
 a charming essayist. 
 
 Of course style is half the battle with an essayist, 
 and style was what Hazlitt and Macaulay both had 
 more than either of them knew what to do with. But 
 both were what is called exact thinkers, that is, they 
 thought exactly what they thought, and could not 
 perceive that anybody had any business to think 
 differently. Elia did not invariably state precisely what 
 he thought, but smilingly suggested what other people 
 might think if they had wit enough. Flat statement is 
 seldom urbane, and dear Charles was always urbane, 
 and never flat : of chill statement he is as niggard as 
 Hazlitt and Macaulay are open-handed. He did not 
 want to corner you: if he found you put hi the 
 corner, he merely came behind and whispered in your 
 ear what funny things you might see in the paper on 
 the wall. 
 
 That is your true essayist. It is not his business to 
 make you yell, or beat your breast : nor even to force 
 you to 6clater de rire burst out at the back, as the 
 schoolboy translated it : a smile is all he aims at calling 
 up, or a sigh with a half smile hi it.
 
 134 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 Like Lamb, whom I am sure he reveres and loves, 
 Mr. G. S. Street is nothing if he is not urbane. He 
 calls for terrible retribution on his foes, but it is as clear 
 as daylight he has none. It is his unmealy-mouthed 
 way of praying for their conversion and ultimate reward. 
 He never laughs, but a very gentle smile is never far off. 
 He never falls flat, and never kicks you high off your 
 feet into regions where the air is rarefied : the first floor 
 of Piccadilly is the worst you have to fear from any 
 impetus he may impart. And he never has too much 
 to say : an eyebrow, even a cocked one, would be too 
 heavy a theme for him and some essayists' eyebrows 
 are like some statesmen's moustaches. He is diffident 
 of statement : even his hints are not broad hints. A 
 whole essay of his is mostly a parenthesis en route to a 
 conclusion never arrived at for so few things are con- 
 cluded till the end of the world: and hurry is even 
 more repugnant to Mr. Street than being kept waiting 
 for dinner. What would really best illustrate his 
 genius would be an essay that might go on forever, 
 and find us all still in suspense when the Archangel's 
 trump should sound. No, not suspense : that suggests 
 hanging : and all Mr. Street wants is to lift a deliberate 
 leg of yours and never set it down again precisely 
 anywhere. 
 
 When we say your true essay should not contain too 
 much, else it can be no first taste, nor loose sally of the 
 mind, nor irregular indigested piece ; and add that 
 Mr. Street is an essayist to the backbone, it is not a 
 spiteful way of implying that he has nothing to say, 
 and says it. He says a great deal, and he has so much 
 to say besides that he never gets it all out. If he starts 
 an essay on Flat Candlesticks, the age in which he lives 
 is brought so overwhelmingly to his mind by the idea
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 135 
 
 of flatness in general that he cannot, that day, get 
 nearer to his title-subject than the conversation of men 
 at his club. He never goes back to Candlesticks, but 
 tries to, in a later essay on Extinguishers: vain 
 attempt ! Far from being led thence, by an easy short 
 cut, to the little hole in the handle of the candlestick 
 where the extinguisher should be, and so to the candle- 
 stick itself he can but realise that, in an age of electric 
 light, there is no need of extinguishers at all ; and all 
 his perfect phrasing is wanted for a protest against 
 extinguishing as currently practised. If you really 
 want to read about Flat Candlesticks you had better 
 study the Army and Navy Stores Catalogue. 
 
 If you don't care much for Mr. Street you will not 
 like him at all. If you really love real essays you will 
 be delighted with him. Many of his qualities are 
 Lamb-like, though he is less cheerful and less pathetic 
 than Lamb, because he reflects the spirit not of Elia's 
 age, but of his own: and Mr. Street's age is neither 
 cheerful nor pathetic. 
 
 Speaking of age in another sense, I do not think the 
 true essayist is ever quite young. Youth is not the 
 period of " attempts " and " endeavours " : it counts on 
 full achievement and takes it for granted. Macaulay 
 might have written his essays at one-and-twenty, and 
 had all the equipment for doing so : there is no wistful 
 afternoon light on them, as there is on Lamb's as 
 there is, too, on Mr. Street's : but those long level rays in 
 Elia are at once homely and ethereal : I find Mr. Street 
 less intimate, for all his familiarity, and more worldly. 
 Comparisons are odious, but I do not believe Mr. 
 Street will think this one impudent ; to be compared 
 with Lamb at all, he would accept as a flattery if only 
 he could believe the comparer knew anything about it.
 
 136 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 Style has been mentioned as half the battle with an 
 essayist : Lamb's is unapproachable and indefinable, 
 as all really perfect style is. Mr. Street's is so good 
 that there is nothing good to be said about it, which I 
 take to be a proof of excellence. Of Macaulay's style, 
 and of Carlyle's, almost anybody might write pages : 
 and the more was said the less would be proved. Of 
 Cardinal Newman's very little could be written, at all 
 events in the way of description. George Borrow has 
 a style of his own, perfect in its kind, and no one could 
 say what it is. What can be said of Jane Austen's ? 
 The best that can be said, which no one could say of 
 Macaulay's, is that you may know her by heart and 
 never suspect its existence. For by her style is not 
 meant her wit, nor her unique perfection of phrasing, 
 nor her capacity of making words her servants to run 
 errands and bring you exact and inimitable likenesses. 
 
 Mr. Street has all sorts of essays : those on anything 
 except anything in particular : those on people on 
 himself, for instance, under various aliases : and those 
 on certain personages. In these last his manner is 
 altogether different. To say they are first-rate is trite 
 for expression, but it is high praise, and it is, like all 
 praise worth having, far within the mark. 
 
 His essays on Sarah Jennings, on Byron, on Charles 
 James Fox, on Horace Walpole, and on George Selwyn 
 deal with themes that have been treated continually, 
 and nothing better has been said by any one upon 
 them. That on the Great Duchess is the best but 
 the others need not be jealous. That they should be 
 original, when so much has been said already, is as 
 miraculous as that Macaulay should not have been a 
 prig, and as true. To the last-named great man we 
 must always owe an incalculable debt, and chiefly for
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 137 
 
 his letters and journals, himself, in fact: and for the 
 fact, above all, that, in spite of his father, he never 
 became a prig. 
 
 To Mr. Street the present writer owes not an apology 
 but an explanation. Among his quite excellent essays on 
 people is one on Anthony Trollope, that I only read for 
 the first time the other day. It says many things that 
 I myself have tried to say in an Essay on a Novelist's 
 Novel-Reading in the hands, for many months, of the 
 Editor of the Fortnightly Review, but still unpublished. 
 Had I known they had been said better already, I 
 should not have been so silly as to say them again. 
 They come to this, that the apologetic tone affected by 
 Trollope's critics is an impudence and an absurdity: 
 Mr. Street mentions one of those critics, though not by 
 name, and I alluded to him perhaps not even in the 
 singular number, but the criticism we both meant 
 appeared some years ago in the Nineteenth Century, 
 I think. 
 
 Mr. Street is the last man to accuse me of pilfering 
 his opinions. Holding Trollope as high as he does, 
 he will only be glad that even an inexpert judge should 
 share his wrath at the systematic belittling of one of 
 our greatest writers of fiction. We must both hope that 
 there are seven thousand in Israel besides ourselves 
 who have not bowed the knee to this Baal of stupidity. 
 
 Mr. Street, like Ecclesiastes, is very bold, and in one 
 particular he places, and rightly places, Trollope above 
 even Jane Austen. He might have placed him above 
 her in another : in tenderness and pathos. All that 
 Jane Austen did she did perfectly ; all that she gives 
 is exquisite of its sort. But there was much she had 
 no mind to do, and much that she never tried to give. 
 Emotion she almost wholly ignores: when Lydia dis-
 
 138 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 graces herself and her family, even Elizabeth is only 
 shocked : there is nothing deeper : and in no other 
 instance is there anything so deep. Of either pathos 
 or tenderness there is no instance at all : the instances 
 of both in Trollope's books are far too many for profit- 
 able citation. 
 
 But neither Trollope nor Miss Austen belongs to an 
 essay on essayists, and we must leave them reluctantly, 
 as we always do leave them. 
 
 Fielding, who was, I take it, the first of the modern 
 novelists, was an essayist even in his novels: for his 
 introductions are obviously essays, and extremely good 
 ones. Here, however, we are concerned with living 
 essayists, though they must, naturally, remind us by 
 comparison, or contrast, with their ancestors. 
 
 Another essayist whom to read must always be a 
 pleasure is Mr. Herbert Paul. He has much know- 
 ledge, and much sympathy ; the best taste, and a fine 
 faculty of appreciation. He is also a very witty 
 quoter : and this happy gift is of priceless service to 
 readers. A writer with a knack of remembering the 
 best things that have been said about everything of 
 which he treats lays us all under an obligation that 
 we can only repay by gratitude. 
 
 His themes are more definite than is commonly the 
 case with Mr. Street : he is more wont to give a head- 
 big that tells you what you are to expect : but he gives 
 more than you have any right to expect, and it is 
 given in a delightful manner. He is also more apt 
 than Mr. Street to finish up: more liable to bring 
 you somewhere and leave you there. And he is more 
 impersonal: it is not his business to confide in you 
 about yourself: he deals with persons of recognised 
 importance.
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 139 
 
 Nor is he whimsical. Since Elia was the prince and 
 pattern of all essayists of all time to come, I think an 
 essayist should have whimsies. This is not saying that 
 you should read Mr. Street, and not read Mr. Paul ; it 
 behoves you to read both. It is not even a personal 
 profession of faith that I enjoy Mr. Street more than 
 I enjoy Mr. Herbert Paul ; but the enjoyment yielded 
 by each is of a different quality. Any intelligent reader 
 must find amusement and high pleasure in reading 
 Mr. Paul's essays; but unless you like literature for 
 its own sake, Mr. Street may be one too many for you ; 
 some of his pieces are bits of literature and nothing else 
 at all. 
 
 In one respect I like Mr. Paul best; he does not 
 reflect the depression, or the dogged resolve not to be 
 depressed, of our elderly young century. In another I 
 like Mr. Street best ; he has a good word for Charles II 
 and another for James II at all events he calls by 
 their right names William Ill's traitors, whom he 
 dismissed that he might get drunk in peace with his 
 Dutch minions. Mr. Paul does not like to hear the 
 Prince of Orange mentioned as a second-rate Dutch- 
 man. And Mr. Street admires as she deserves William's 
 pious and filially dutiful consort. 
 
 That a critic so full of letters as Mr. Street should be 
 eager to do justice to Sterne is altogether to his credit. 
 Tristram Shandy is unique in literature, and Mr. Street 
 could not care for literature and belittle it ; he can 
 quote it, as only those who love it would know how ; 
 but to hesitate in confessing that it is often simply im- 
 pure is a mere derangement of epitaphs. " Laughter," 
 urges Mr. Paul, "is quite incompatible with prurience." 
 Is it ? If you are prepared to admit the theory Mr. 
 Paul's contention is half carried, for, with two excep-
 
 140 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 tions, "there is," he maintains, "hardly a dull page in 
 Tristram Shandy." 
 
 But is indecency always dull ? Was Congreve dull 
 or decent ? Mr. Paul is not content to prove that as 
 a book Tristram Shandy is not immoral. To do so 
 might involve a good deal of refining and denning as 
 to what an immoral book is; but I am not prepared 
 to say it could not be done. I am forced to say that 
 he has failed in proving that it is not in many places 
 wilfully and designedly impure, suggesting, and meant 
 to suggest, impure images and fancies. 
 
 Mr. Birrell, we set out by saying, is the most delight- 
 ful of living essayists. We said of Mr. Paul that even 
 readers who know but little of books must read him 
 with extraordinary pleasure provided, of course, they 
 do not really dislike reading altogether. The same is 
 true of Mr. Birrell, though he is "all over" books, as 
 Mr. Carnegie is "all over" libraries. I should think 
 he is the best-read man in the kingdom democracy 
 I mean ; what he has not read would be much quicker 
 to tell than what he has. And books are his play- 
 mates; so that, when he bids you come and join his 
 play, you may be sure of good sport and good company. 
 His essays are never too long ; and they have so 
 compact a completeness that they scarcely seem too 
 short. He is impishly witty, and full of exhilarating 
 spirits, his sympathy can reach anywhere; and, if he 
 skips with a flippant posture now and then, he has 
 more reverence than hundreds of writers who have 
 not light-heartedness enough to be ever flippant. His 
 essays on books and their writers are really essays, and 
 not reviews or epitomes. He is urbane, like Elia ; and 
 often queer, though with a queerness unlike his. His 
 admiration for everything good is ^an education in
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 141 
 
 taste for those who have none, and an encouragement 
 to those who have a little. He is never gushing nor 
 ecstatic ; and he could not learn to be a prig if he 
 devoted all his great powers during the continuance of 
 the present Ministry to the attempt. 
 
 I read the other day that he hates Nonconformists ; 
 his discriminating reverence for John Wesley does not 
 prove the contrary ; for Wesley was not a Nonconfor- 
 mist ; nor is the statement supported by the fun he 
 sometimes pokes at Nonconformists. But if he hates 
 anybody, he hates no body of men ; and would certainly 
 never parade dislike of the body to which his father 
 belonged. It was a fond thing vainly invented to breed 
 lovers' quarrels between the Minister and a wide section 
 of the dismal party to which he, by Fate's inscrutable 
 decree, belongs. 
 
 Hatred is not Mr. Birrell's strong point ; in that 
 matter he would hardly have passed muster with Dr. 
 Johnson's theory if the doctor himself would have 
 passed it ; for it is hard to perceive whom he really 
 hated; those he gored and tossed he liked all the 
 better, that duty done. He never precisely gored 
 Wilkes, but he evidently liked him in spite of that and 
 everything. Perhaps, after all, there may be other 
 ways of being a good liker than that of being a good 
 hater. 
 
 If Southey had been " worthy to know " Mr. Birrell 
 it would be interesting to read a colloquy by him be- 
 tween the latter and the Great Lexicographer. Would 
 the modern Minister's admiration have disarmed the 
 doctor's wit ? It might be safer to trust to the 
 quondam Laureate, who had a gift that way ; especially 
 as he would not leave much of Mr. Birrell's, and wit 
 was as disarming to Johnson as flattery not that he
 
 142 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 disliked flattery in proper doses, from such as knew how 
 to hold the spoon. And better than flattery he liked 
 affection. That was why he had a sincere kindness 
 for Boswell, whose flattery was served in buckets, and 
 Mrs. Thrale, whom he must have known was as vain 
 as James I and no wiser than the Queen of Sheba. 
 
 Mr. Birrell refuses to believe that Johnson was a vile 
 Tory; not that it makes a pennyworth of difference. 
 Mr. Birrell's affections are not political; they are 
 rooted in letters and humanity, where Johnson stands 
 impregnable. There too stands Cowper, and nowhere 
 is tenderer sympathy and more generous admiration 
 yielded to that great, forlorn, and sweet genius than in 
 Mr. Birrell's brief essay upon him. 
 
 Of Borrow and of Gibbon he writes, as the theme 
 needs, in different vein. Borrow cannot be advocated, 
 and no pleading will make him appreciated by such 
 as do not appreciate him ; he can but be introduced, 
 "Lavengro your tuppeny-ha'penny self." It is an 
 extraordinary tribute to Borrow that Catholics never 
 mind him. He writes vicious nonsense about the 
 Church, and those to whom the Church is sacred, and 
 one cannot help wishing he hadn't ; but they skip it, 
 once they know the place, and it never prevents them 
 if they care for books, from loving Lavengro and the 
 Bible in Spain. The present writer likes the latter best 
 of the two ; for it is interesting all through, and some 
 parts of Lavengro are not ; nor is it unpleasant to note 
 that Borrow in Spain, in spite of all his abhorrence of 
 priests, was not badly treated by them; for my part 
 I believe they liked him. Invincible ignorance is very 
 endearing, so is colossal indiscretion. 
 
 Some writers are very economical ; they scarcely like 
 to put too much in one essay, foreseeing they may
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 143 
 
 need it in another; Mr. Birrell is frightfully extra- 
 vagant. He never looks ahead, nor keeps anything 
 back; you are welcome to every penny in his pocket, 
 and it is not only with the small change he is lavish ; 
 it all comes out, gold and silver as well. He can afford 
 it ; while you are staring at his affluence he pats you 
 on the nose with his wand, and brings a sovereign out 
 of the bridge of it, and another out of your chin, and 
 three or four from your forehead, where no one could 
 have dreamt of it. He will squeeze half a dozen igood 
 things into half as many lines; and, while you are 
 laughing, he draws whole batches of fresh eggs out of 
 the crown of your hat absent-mindedly as it were ; and, 
 without sitting on them, hatches you lively broods of 
 chirpy, funny chickens, that run about with delightful 
 twitterings. He is a master of asides ; in that alluring 
 fashion he quotes and alludes; as if there really was 
 not time to tell you all he wants except in parentheses. 
 One such aside is often an essay in itself ; half a dozen 
 would sum up more than half the intellectual stock-in- 
 trade of the average man. 
 
 He is a noble admirer; he has an instinct for the 
 best things everywhere. Johnson and Gibbon, Cowper 
 and Wesley, Carlyle and Newman, Borrow and Brown- 
 ing, to each he yields, with the same sincerity, the same 
 generous tribute of appreciation and understanding. 
 Macaulay could not have appreciated Newman nor 
 any cardinal, if he had tried; and he never did try. 
 To appreciate anything obsolete he felt to be a waste 
 of time ; and, what Newman stood for Macaulay 
 thought obsolete; the Catholic faith appeared to him 
 merely a feature of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The only writer of a great book to whom it seems to 
 me Mr. Birrell falls short of being just is Benvenuto
 
 144 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 
 
 Cellini ; to the Rogue's Memoirs themselves he yields 
 delighted admiration. I would not insist on his 
 admiring their author. But he calls him flatly rogue, 
 and repeats the judgment at the top of every page. 
 He does not call him hypocrite, nor leave you liberty 
 to do so. Nevertheless I think he is hard on him. Of 
 his great genius, except as a narrator, he scarcely 
 speaks; of the singular qualities that enabled him to 
 hold the terms he did hold with Popes and Kings he 
 says very little indeed. I doubt if Clement VII, 
 Paul III, or Francis I, who knew him perfectly, set 
 him down as a mere scoundrel. He did some shocking 
 things, and avows them ; but they were not rare things 
 in his times ; he ought to have been, as all of us ought 
 to be, better than the age ; but I doubt if he was a bad 
 man as things went then. He committed what we can 
 only call crimes, and he had a religiosity of which he 
 was no more ashamed than of the crimes; but I am 
 sure the religiosity was as real and undeniable as 
 the crimes. He could well have been better; without 
 the religiosity I believe he would have been worse. At 
 all events he was not smug ; had he been so he could 
 have written no memoirs Mr. Birrell would have 
 admired. Cellini lived in an age that was not smug; 
 it had saints and sinners, and Benvenuto was not one 
 of the saints ; he believed in God all the same, and 
 took liberties with Divine patience else, thought the 
 Rogue, what was it all for, since the saints left it 
 undrawn on? He broke commandments when it 
 suited him, but not on that account would he deny 
 the existence of others that he did not wish to break ; 
 still less did he perceive that common logic and 
 decency called for impertinence to the Lawgiver. The 
 modern sinner has a spite against the authority that
 
 AN ESSAY ON ESSAYISTS 145 
 
 makes sins of things he resolves to do: he therefore 
 Hings the Old Man of the Woods off his back alto- 
 gether : but not on that account will he condone your 
 offences should they lie in directions whither his 
 own desires do not tend. Your Agnostic is not hard 
 to shock.
 
 A NOVELIST'S SERMONS
 
 PARALLELS 
 
 IN rhetoric, parallels are a numerous family ; but they 
 are in reality short-lived. The lines soon diverge in 
 one direction, and they run back into mere identity 
 of cause. So that, however interesting a seeming 
 parallel may appear, it is not to be pressed too far. 
 With such limitations in mind it would seem that there 
 might be some interest, and even some use, in con- 
 sidering a parallel between the position of Catholics 
 in England now, and that of Christians in the Roman 
 Empire during the age following that of Constantino. 
 
 For a period roughly corresponding the Christian 
 Church before the official conversion of the Empire, 
 and the Catholic Church in England after the Refor- 
 mation, were much in the same position. During the 
 first three centuries of her history the new religion of 
 Christ in Rome was under a more or less rigorous 
 discipline of repression ; for about three hundred years 
 after the Reformation the old religion of Christ in 
 England existed under analogous, though not identical, 
 conditions of varying but distinct repression. 
 
 No one supposes that the Christians of those first 
 three centuries lived in a chronic state of acute perse- 
 cution ; but their position was always illegal, and from 
 time to time the laws, for longer or shorter intervals 
 tacitly ignored and disregarded, were put in force, and 
 then came outbursts of furious storm. The last of 
 these persecutions occurred during the lifetime of the 
 
 149
 
 150 PARALLELS 
 
 Emperor whose official conversion was to secure 
 freedom of worship for the professors of a faith which 
 had existed for a long time under protest, though be- 
 fore he had arrived at his final complete sovereignty 
 and independence. 
 
 The Romans were not by disposition a more in- 
 tolerant people than the English: like the English 
 they were much disposed to regard the religion of 
 which the Pope was the visible head with a somewhat 
 scornful wonder, as an unaccountable weakness and 
 eccentricity in its professors; but they did not all 
 refuse, to those who had the misfortune to be addicted 
 to it, a measure of half-puzzled respect, grounded 
 chiefly on their obvious earnestness and sincerity; nor 
 did they forget that among them were many families 
 of ancient lineage and illustrious name. This latter 
 consideration had perhaps as much weight as the 
 other, for the Romans, whether imperialists or re- 
 publicans, were at heart a conservative people like the 
 English. 
 
 Such unpopularity, on the other hand, as the 
 followers of the Pope laboured under was due in the 
 Roman Empire to much the same causes as have been 
 the ground of it in England. First of all, they were 
 twitted as believers in a foreign cult ; and the Romans 
 of the Empire, almost as ready as the English to make 
 much of the wrong foreigners, thought that Romans 
 should be content with the religion of the State. 
 Then the head of this faith, alien in its origin, need 
 not be, and often had not been, a Roman : there had 
 been Hebrew, Greek, Asiatic, and African Popes. The 
 patriotic Roman's national amour propre was offended 
 at the notion of subjection, even in spiritual matters, 
 to a pontiff who might be a foreigner : to tell the truth,
 
 PARALLELS 151 
 
 he could not grasp the idea of a subjection that con- 
 cerned only the spiritual world, for that world was 
 beyond the scope of his imagination. His mind was 
 positive and "practical"; he could hardly believe in 
 an invisible kingdom, and suspected there must be 
 more in it than met the ear. When Christ, not dis- 
 claiming His kingship, said, "My kingdom is not of 
 this world," Pilate was puzzled, and pressed Him again. 
 
 Again, the Roman conception of useful religion was 
 altogether national, whereas the religion of the Pope's 
 spiritual subjects was the reverse of national : its claim 
 to be Catholic, universal, made it international, un- 
 patriotic, and objectionable. To the Roman it appeared 
 obvious that the logic of such a claim was opposed to 
 patriotism, for it suggested an authority higher than 
 the State, outside it, and not subject to it, as it also 
 suggested a sort of confederation, independent of the 
 State, and not even confined to those who were within 
 the vast pale of the Empire. All this made it seem 
 that the Pope and his Christians, even when Romans, 
 must aim at being something else as well. The Roman 
 mind, no more than the English, could grasp the idea 
 of sincere loyalty to the State among people who had 
 to admit that there was a law higher than that of any 
 temporal lawgiver. They did not choose to remember 
 that there had been occasions when Romans, and 
 heathen Romans too, had risen against the lawgiver 
 of the moment, and that those men had ever since 
 been acclaimed as national heroes. 
 
 Another count hi the indictment was that the faith 
 of those whose supreme representative was the Pope 
 was itself intolerant. Its claim was exclusive; it did 
 not confess that other religions might be as good ; it 
 refused to allow its followers to take part in the public
 
 152 PARALLELS 
 
 offices of the State religion ; regarding such a com- 
 pliance as treasonable to itself, it was itself regarded 
 as treasonable. It maintained that there could be 
 only one God, and consequently only one Truth, which 
 was surly and discourteous, as the fact was notorious 
 that many gods were publicly recognised, and truth 
 was not commonly supposed to be actually discover- 
 able anywhere. Those of their fellow-citizens who 
 professed this or that cult (many of which cults were 
 as foreign in Rome as Christian Science is in England) 
 had no vehement, much less exclusive, addiction to 
 their own particular form of worship, and were far 
 from laying any surly claim to infallibility in their 
 teachers. Your Mithraite had no objection on season- 
 able occasions to frequenting the Iseum : the cult of 
 Isis and the cult of Mithra were both tolerated by 
 the State and professed by persons of consideration 
 in society. 
 
 What was intolerable in the Pope, and his absurdly 
 subservient followers, was their arrogant, unfriendly 
 claim to a special exclusive possession of truth, resting 
 on a superstitious pretence of a direct, exclusive revela- 
 tion. This sour attitude showed itself not only in a 
 rigorous abstention from the religious worship of their 
 neighbours, but in a marked shyness to admit to the 
 celebration of their own sacred mysteries those who 
 happened not to revere them, but who would have been 
 quite willing to be present as spectators, out of curiosity. 
 This was superstitious and probably worse. There 
 must be something to conceal, and so the wildest 
 theories flew about to account for it. In such a re- 
 ligion there must be more than appeared on the 
 surface; something discreditable to conceal. 
 
 Finally, the fruits of the religion were disagreeable,
 
 PARALLELS 153 
 
 and trees are known by their fruit. To start with: 
 the Pope's faith encouraged enthusiasm ; it went too 
 far. It was notorious that many Christians of high 
 rank had sold estates, palaces, jewels, statues, heir- 
 looms, and beggared themselves to found churches or 
 to feed the poor. Others had flung up positions of 
 eminence to become priests or monks. 
 
 Comparisons were already odious; and this sort of 
 behaviour has always been offensive to those whose 
 own is diametrically opposed to it. " Suppose my 
 daughter should turn Christian," says Tullius, "and 
 become a nun, instead of marrying the wealthy 
 Lucullus!" "Suppose my son," cries Licius, " should 
 get this Christian maggot in his head, and become 
 a priest, like a slave's son, whereas, with his influence 
 and his talents, he might one day be City Prefect ! 
 There' d be an end of the glories of a family that was 
 famous three centuries ago, and has been pretty wealthy 
 ever since." Why, the young Licius might turn out 
 a saint, or even a martyr. And in good families saints 
 and martyrs must be as intolerable as sheer vulgarity. 
 To the well-regulated, prosperous Roman mind sanctity 
 and martyrdom must have seemed as tiresome and 
 uneasy as to that of the eighteenth-century Englishman. 
 
 The Roman noble of the Empire, whose uncle may 
 have been a Proconsul in Egypt, had heard of the 
 Fathers of the desert, and knew that those enthusiasts 
 never entered a bath, or cut their hair, or ate any 
 reasonable human food. He might himself have seen 
 the martyrdom of this perverse and obstinate Christian 
 or that, and it put him beyond his patience. 
 
 Have you ever sat alone, on a windless night, in the 
 Coliseum, and thought of the thoughts of such as sat 
 in your place there seventeen or eighteen hundred years
 
 154 PARALLELS 
 
 before you ? Of some well-dressed, well-read, well-fed 
 Roman gentleman, of no particular belief himself easy, 
 tolerant, not ill-natured, nor specially savage, with a 
 confidence that all which is is for the best, placidly 
 patriotic, proud of his country and iond of its customs, 
 with a layman's mild satisfaction in a national religion 
 that never in his life had interfered with him, that had 
 never snatched one pleasure out of his hands, or scolded 
 him, or asked him to confess his decorous sins, or sug- 
 gested to him that he should be different; a religion 
 with centuries of opulent consideration behind it, 
 splendid in its monuments, satisfactory in its calm, 
 slightly obsolete, ritual; a religion in which he had 
 been born and bred, and his fathers before him, which 
 he loved for that reason rather than for itself well, 
 well ! perhaps he too had believed in it once, as an un- 
 thinking child open to large impressions ; in those 
 unreturning days he had watched the sacrifice, and 
 listened to the half-comprehended words, with a sense 
 that they somehow lifted him, that they were a 
 mysterious link with a touching, greater past. And 
 the huge amphitheatre is filled, the awning is over- 
 head ; it is staring afternoon, but the rude sun cannot 
 tease emperor nor court, vestal college, nor all the 
 dignity of Rome, the world's calm mistress. 
 
 Then the arena fills too. The athletes are down 
 below : they bend before the supreme figure of earthly 
 rule, "Morituri, Caesar, te salutant." Not all slaves, 
 nor barbarian captives : yonder a fine Roman face, a 
 graceful Roman form, familiar features of a patrician 
 house identified with a name as old as the Republic. 
 
 Why is he here ? What brings him as food for the 
 lion's mouth ? A fancy, an exotic superstition yet he 
 too dies: no alien, no criminal, no spoil of ruthless
 
 PARALLELS 155 
 
 war; and in him his glorious race expires, the fabled 
 name becomes extinct because he will not drop one 
 sweet grain of incense on the throbbing, pitiful heart 
 of red charcoal before the little ivory or bronze Jove 
 that cares not one whit whether he drop it or no ! 
 
 Can you not picture the anger of such a Roman 
 gentleman ? Ah, the pity of it, the waste ! What a 
 faith, that leads its luckless children to such insensate 
 end ! How he hates martyrdoms and the religion that 
 has been the prolific mother of martyrs. The very 
 martyrs themselves insult him, and are a sting and a 
 reproach. Cannot a plain man live all his allotted 
 length of days, and covering his head in his toga when 
 the fated hour strikes, bow down aghast, but without 
 vulgar outcry, to the Inexorable Messenger when he 
 comes, without rushing like a fool, midway, to meet him ? 
 
 Must not such a pleasant gentleman have loathed 
 the religion that led its hapless children along so 
 thorny a path ? The faith that knocked aside the 
 sweet, sweet cup of life, carven about with lovely brede 
 of tender flower and laughing faun the faith that 
 cried : " Poison in the cup. Dash it down !" when the 
 wine within it was so dancing sweet, filling the veins 
 with laughter, and the eyes with lovely images. 
 
 Poor kindly gentleman : he saw no one greater than 
 the martyr standing behind him ; had never learned 
 the austere tongue that speaks of happiness in pain, 
 glory in shame, a light invisible beyond these chilling 
 mists of falling darkness. With all the sincerity at 
 his conventional command he hated this foreign, 
 unfriendly, tyrannical, agonising faith that flung its 
 loveliest, noblest children to the lion's mouth. 
 
 Half-sick, all angry, when all was over he strolled 
 away to his pleasant, opulent home, or was carried
 
 156 PARALLELS 
 
 thither, perhaps not immediately forgetting the tragedy 
 just seen : remembering it, maybe, as he lolled beside 
 his lavish table with wife and son and daughter : they 
 too might turn Christian, and for them the shame of 
 the arena, the agony of that horrible death. Let the 
 easy, faulty gods forbid ! the old comfortable gods of 
 the old comfortable religion that asked only sacrifices 
 not sacrifice. . . . But these times came to their end 
 at last : after Diocletian's there was no great persecu- 
 tion, only a hurried interlude of it during Julian's 
 short gasp of a reign, when in Rome few martyrs were 
 added to the list. 
 
 The old laws against the faith of the Pope's followers 
 had been repealed ; the Church had emerged from 
 the catacombs for good, and the churches needed no 
 longer to hide, or half hide, in the basilicas of great 
 Christian houses. Public churches were built every- 
 where, and they were thronged with worshippers, many 
 of whose names were new among Christians. All the 
 old disabilities were done away with, highest offices in 
 city and army were being filled with Christians : to be 
 Christian was no drawback upon the career of patrician 
 or wealthy aspiring plebeian. 
 
 Justice had been done. Let it be done always. 
 Fiat justitia, rued coelum: only if the heavens are 
 falling men need to know where shelter is. Justice 
 was done, as it had to be done, as it is apt to get itself 
 done at long last. So far, good; but not every result 
 of its tardy arrival was particularly good for those on 
 whose behalf it had been done. 
 
 For three centuries the faith had existed in all the 
 concentrated vigour of repression ; it spread much 
 wider now, but it spread shallower. During those 
 unjust years it had been held by men who knew
 
 PARALLELS 157 
 
 that they might have to die for it, who knew 
 that they must suffer for it, paying the lifelong 
 price of social ostracism or isolation, of disabilities in 
 every turn of their worldly fortune; and what cost 
 them dear they valued dearly. Now it cost them 
 nothing; there was nothing to pay for it; and its 
 cheapness cheapened it. Soon indignant doctors of 
 the Church were crying out on the! lives of Christians, 
 sometimes for heinous faults, but chiefly because the 
 ways of these new-fashioned Christians were just as 
 the ways of the pagan, or unbelieving, society in 
 which they were finding themselves quite at home. 
 Fashion was their ruin. To live as nearly as possible 
 the same life as that of their non-Christian friends 
 in society, that was their new endeavour; to share 
 exactly their amusements, their indulgences ; to be 
 as extravagant, as showy, as profuse, as self-indulgent, 
 as little serious, as little restrained. Pagan faults are 
 not hard for Christians to learn, and according to 
 St. Jerome and St. Ambrose the Christians of toler- 
 ating Rome soon learned them. They were in a hurry 
 to repay the toleration they had lately received ; 
 for a long time their forefathers' virtues had been 
 out of toleration: their contemporaries' vices they 
 tolerated in a wonderfully short time and copied. 
 Of course there were saints still ; as in every age of the 
 Church there have been and shall be ; but sanctity was 
 not popular, and the saints, even those of highest rank 
 and birth, as many were, were out of fashion, and 
 scarcely known in society. 
 
 So runs one line of parallel. Need the other be 
 laboured ? In hurriedly describing the state of 
 Christians in the Empire during those first three 
 centuries has not the state of Catholics in England
 
 158 PARALLELS 
 
 during the three centuries following on the Reforma- 
 tion been described obliquely ? Of course, in England, 
 Ireland, and Scotland the persecution was on a less 
 imposing scale. Was it less bitter ? Or was the actual 
 repression less rigorous, less complete, or less out- 
 rageous in injustice? Were not the grounds of the 
 national aversion from our faith rooted in the same 
 causes, the same ignorance, the same half-blundering, 
 all obstinate prejudices? And was not the result 
 of. three centuries of oppression and repression on 
 Catholics themselves alike, if not identical ? Here, 
 too, we were a people half-despised, and yet respected 
 by many for qualities which demand and enforce 
 respect. Our Catholic forefathers were intensely in 
 earnest, as well they might be, seeing what their 
 Catholicity cost them. They were not social leaders, 
 were not always polished, lacked public training, were 
 without the education of home universities, were old- 
 fashioned, had sometimes a foreign smack in their 
 manners, led rather obscure lives, and kept closely to 
 themselves. The patois of current fashion was not 
 theirs; there were among them many of the very 
 highest rank, with historic names, famous long before 
 anyone had ever heard those of the nobility that came 
 up when the monasteries went down; but even these 
 were rustic, living mostly in their country-houses, not 
 seen, or barely seen, at court : when seen regarded with 
 a picturesque curiosity. 
 
 Yet how compact a body they were; with every 
 difficulty in their way how rigidly they held their 
 faith, and how unflinchingly they followed it up in 
 every consequence. Scarcely breathing the common 
 atmosphere, they had their own, and its influence 
 was with them from baptism to death. They were
 
 PARALLELS 159 
 
 in many ways unlike other people, and they did not 
 mind. They had to be. It was part of being what 
 they were. 
 
 Then came the slow-footed justice, grudgingly and 
 of necessity, not very cheerfully given, not out of 
 breath with haste, nor out of countenance for un- 
 punctuality. She came not out of love but without it, 
 selling herself, elderly courtesan as she was, and, with 
 her price in her hand, wondered that her advent was 
 not more acclaimed. Still she had arrived ; and her 
 coming caused many to look into the skies to watch 
 their fall. Of course they did not fall: when clouds 
 break it is not because justice is done, but because 
 injustice has fetched them clattering about our ears. 
 Well, in England we had no catacombs, only slums, 
 and we came out of them. Our churches had been in 
 ambassadors' houses, or those of country lords and 
 squires ; now they leapt up in the streets and squares 
 of London and all the towns. And a thousand other 
 good results grew of our new toleration, honest results 
 hard won, and ours by right long before we had them 
 in our hands. No one but a maniac would sigh for 
 the old bad days of shameless repression back again. 
 
 Yet those oldj shadowed times had compensations 
 that God gave while man's hand was against us. Let 
 us be chary of losing them. 
 
 We breathe the common air now: has it no infec- 
 tion ? Do we remember, as we used, that after all we 
 live in an atmosphere alien from our faith ? That the 
 common opinion about us is founded on the assump- 
 tions we have always denied ; that every newspaper 
 breathes them, almost every public speech of orators and 
 politicians ? That the more we grow like our pleasant 
 neighbours the less we may be resembling Catholics ?
 
 160 PARALLELS 
 
 Are we learning, is there no danger of our learning, 
 to regard marriage as it is regarded outside the Church ? 
 Do we remember that the Sacraments, and not Insti- 
 tutes for this or that, are our way of salvation ? 
 
 Are we not too eager that our benevolences should be 
 exactly like the philanthropy of those who believe in 
 nothing beyond philanthropy ? Half the philanthropy 
 of our time is founded on disbelief in God and the 
 immortality of the soul of man. When "charity" 
 becomes a department of the Modern State, it is mostly 
 because the State has no faith in anything higher than 
 Man. When governments promise to annihilate 
 poverty it is commonly because they have officially 
 annihilated God, Who can alone rob poverty of its 
 sting: not because they love the poor for Christ's 
 sweet sake, the Poor Man of Nazareth, but because 
 they fear them, and recognise in them a danger and 
 a menace. Is not that also like pagan Rome? The 
 poor were fed there too, wholesale : bread and games 
 were flung to them, and did anyone pretend it was for 
 love? The loaves were to stop their mouths, which 
 else might shout too loudly, not to stay their hunger 
 out of any brotherly compassion for the hunger itself. 
 
 The conditions of poverty in England after the Re- 
 formation were the direct consequence of the Reforma- 
 tion itself, as even such Protestants as William Cobbett 
 could see plainly enough. Before it the poor were the 
 care of the Church, and especially of the religious houses, 
 and their lot was never so pitiable as it became when 
 the monks' charity was changed for the scurvy ^recogni- 
 tion of the Poor Laws. 
 
 To our questions again. Does it strike us that our 
 amusements, too, are provided by those who believe 
 almost nothing that we believe? Millions of people
 
 PARALLELS 161 
 
 every year pass hours of their lives in theatres, where 
 the plays they see are the work of writers who have no 
 faith, either in God or God's commandments, certainly 
 none in. His Church or her right to guard our conduct 
 as she guards our belief. Millions are reading books, 
 novels, essays, biographies, snippings of history, satires, 
 the enormous majority of which are written by those 
 who have scarcely any conviction so strong as that the 
 Church has always been in the wrong, her teaching an 
 arrogant medievalism, obsolete and negligible. 
 
 We do not go to novels or to poetry to be taught, it 
 may be urged; nevertheless, we are taught by what- 
 ever we read, in higher degree or lower. The age just 
 concluded was one of immense literary importance : in 
 poetry, in fiction, in history, in social ethics, in natural 
 science it produced in England a crowd of names so 
 illustrious that we are convinced they are to be im- 
 mortal. How few of them stood on the side of faith 
 our faith, which we must think of as the only one. 
 Did Thackeray love the Church, or respect her 
 principle ? Did Dickens, Meredith, Hardy or Scott 
 before them ? Yet their attitude was respect itself 
 compared with that of Mr. Bernard Shaw and his 
 crowd of imitators to-day; and perhaps Mr. Shaw's 
 plays teach in a week more hearers than his greater 
 predecessors' books taught readers in a month of 
 weeks. 
 
 Tennyson was the worthiest of men, and knew it ; 
 but he was as Protestant as the parish clerk. Browning 
 thought so many things at a time that it was not easy 
 to decide which thought was actually predominant : 
 but there was always the thought that the Vicar of 
 Christ was an elderly nuisance, and that the best of his 
 nominal children were the rebellious and disobedient. 
 
 L
 
 162 PARALLELS 
 
 His Lyric Love, half-governess, half-bore, was never in 
 two minds about it : to her the Old Man of the Moun- 
 tains was the Old Man who sat among the Seven Hills 
 beside the yellow river, whence she was inspired to 
 dislodge him with every odd rhyme at her command. 
 
 Swinburne was as much irritated by one sort of 
 Christianity as another, and, like Lothaw in Bret 
 Harte's parody, said, "Please, I'd like to be a pagan." 
 We know how Macaulay loved the Church and all 
 her ways, how Froude loved them, and Carlyle, and 
 Motley. 
 
 Matthew Arnold disliked Catholicity as much as a 
 brilliant man could ; and Ruskin's attitude to it was 
 that of a travelled old maid who had taken Protestant- 
 ism with him to Italy in his trunk, and brought it 
 back a good deal creased, distinctly old-fashioned, 
 smelling of camphor, and odd to wear, but by no means 
 discarded. John Stuart Mill had a number of hardish 
 ideas in his capacious intellectual stomach, and a good 
 many of them his successors have spat up again as 
 undigested as ever, but one of them was not that 
 Christendom was a better idea than Europe, and that 
 with the Pope at the head of it a good many things 
 had been better managed. 
 
 Of those who taught natural science how many 
 started with any assumption that, whatever might be 
 wrong, God must be right ? Was not the real theory 
 this? If, when we ihave done, God can continue to 
 exist, so much the better for Him, but all that's as may 
 be; the point is quite different. Our business is to 
 erect a universe without Him; if He can creep in 
 afterwards, well, it will be a satisfaction to our aunts 
 and the rector. 
 
 Of course the current point of view, which meets
 
 PARALLELS 163 
 
 those who are growing up now, is not precisely identical. 
 The Church's God does not exist, but there may be 
 a different person of the same name : the great thing 
 is to remember that he is different. He has no rights ; 
 he does not know anything, or care about anything. 
 The things he is supposed to have done were done 
 by other people, or more probably were never done 
 at all; his existence, such as it is or ever was, is 
 morbid and subjective. He is only real at all because 
 man made him ; and very soon indeed he will cease 
 to be real because man does not want him any longer. 
 His existence then will resemble that of Homer, who 
 never did exist, and whose epics were composed by a 
 number of other people. 
 
 Is it not now worth while to remind ourselves that 
 this is the atmosphere we are breathing all day long ; 
 that, as George Herbert sang with more force than 
 grace, " the fly that feeds on dung is coloured 
 thereby " ?
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 A CATHOLIC may be a good Conservative or Tory, and 
 a Catholic may be a good Liberal or Kadical: and we 
 do, in fact, see excellent Catholics in all these political 
 camps. And, undoubtedly, a Catholic may be a most 
 loyal patriot : a good deal of ink has been used to 
 prove, what really needs no proof, the loyalty of 
 Catholics and their patriotism. But it is not to be 
 forgotten that whether Radical or Tory, Republican 
 or Monarchist, a Catholic must be something greater 
 than all or any of these things: and that, however 
 "loyal" he maybe, and however " patriotic," there is 
 in him a principle deeper than either what is called 
 loyalty or what is commonly meant by patriotism. 
 
 Some false accusations brought against Catholics 
 have their root in a suspected truth, that is, in a fact 
 whose existence is instinctively divined by those who 
 do accuse, but whose significance is misunderstood by 
 them and falsely stated. Patriotism is assumed, by 
 those who arrogate to themselves a monopoly hi it, to 
 be a civic virtue so important that he who lacks it 
 must, as a citizen, be worthless and indeed dangerous. 
 But in so far as it is a real virtue at all, it is more than 
 civic, and only one phase or expression of a much 
 wider and more far-reaching virtue, that of Christian 
 charity. It does not consist solely in the love of 
 country: it begins, like charity in the proverb, at 
 home. The forgetfulness of this leads to an inflated 
 
 164
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 165 
 
 pseudo-patriotism, which is so far unreal that it has no 
 real basis, but hangs in the air, neither linked to 
 heaven or logically supported by earth. 
 
 The first step in genuine patriotism must consist in 
 love of family and home, and its first efforts must tend 
 to the true Igood of home and family : in this each 
 individual of the family must start with himself, not 
 as seeking for himself the best goods, but as aiming at 
 his own best good : for this does not imply selfishness, 
 but the reverse: the best goods are temporary in im- 
 portance and unnecessary, but the best good is of eternal 
 necessity and indispensable : in the attainment of it by 
 each human being consisting the Divine Plan hi his 
 regard. Thus each member of the family must aim at 
 his own eternal good, not jostlingly, so as to interfere 
 with the attainment of the same good by every other 
 member of the family, but so as to help every other 
 member to attain it. And, so far is this from imply- 
 ing jostling or rivalry that it implies the opposite : as 
 there are only so many temporal "goods" on earth it 
 is true, in theory, that the more one gets the less 
 another can get : but, as the best good is not thus 
 limited, it is not true that the harder I strive for it the 
 less likely is it that you can attain it : on the contrary, 
 every sincere effort of mine must help you. 
 
 To the pseudo-patriot this appears nonsense, and 
 your pseudo-patriots are commonly but indifferent 
 members of families, and very unsatisfactory heads of 
 them, as they are commonly far from being exemplary 
 as individuals. 
 
 The State, however, consists only of so many families, 
 just as the family itself consists only of so many 
 individuals : and it is because of the frequent neglect 
 of this principle of ours by the State itself that the
 
 166 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 State suffers. Euclid tells us that the whole is greater 
 than its part, but no whole can be greater than the sum 
 total of its parts, and no whole can be better than the 
 parts of which it consists. 
 
 If the members of a family are severally rotten, the 
 family will be rotten ; if the families in a State are 
 rotten, the State can be no better. The priest who 
 tries to make each individual in his charge better is 
 a finer patriot than the doctrinaire politician who 
 vapours about the good of the State, neglecting his 
 own, and that of his family. There is no such thing as 
 the good of the State apart from the good of all the 
 individuals in it. 
 
 After the family come groups of families ; hamlets, 
 villages, towns, cities, counties, provinces ; and people 
 can be, and have been, furiously " patriotic " about 
 these; the patriotism of the Greeks mostly confined 
 itself to what would seem to us very narrow limits. 
 In much later times patriotism in Italy was much 
 more of this sort than of that which concerns a whole 
 "country" in the English sense of the word. In Italy 
 a man speaks of his village as his paese, his country, 
 and he means it ; not merely that paese is Italian for 
 village, which it is not. A Florentine or a Pisan was, 
 and largely is, " patriotic " for Florence or Pisa, and 
 only in a much cooler degree for Italy : a Roman had, 
 and has, the same feeling ; only in him it had not the 
 same twang of localism, because he felt that Rome was 
 the Metropolis of the world; to think of it as the 
 capital of Italy was not an enlargement of his concep- 
 tion but a stunting of it and a narrowing. Until 
 recently, however, Italy was not, even politically, one 
 country ; and at present it is only so politically and in 
 theory. Whereas Spain, France, England, Ireland,
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 167 
 
 Scotland, Wales, have for many centuries been each 
 a country single in itself, though some of them are 
 joined together politically. In these countries, there- 
 fore, the notion of patriotism has been less local, and 
 wider, and also less compact and intense. 
 
 In this broader sense true patriotism is still only a 
 part, and an expression, of the Christian rule of charity, 
 viz. the obligation of loving; less easy, perhaps, 
 because less intimate and more theoretical. The 
 members of our family we see, even the members of our 
 native town or village we know, or may know, by 
 sight; but we cannot have personal knowledge of all 
 our compatriots, or personal relations with them ; the 
 charities of daily life are not called into play in their 
 regard, so that to some extent we are endeavouring to 
 love an idea. 
 
 To love is, none the less, the real duty of patriotism, 
 whereas, in the mouths of many of its noisiest pro- 
 fessors, the point would rather seem to be to hate. 
 It is not, with them, so much a question of loving 
 their country as of disliking, envying, or despising other 
 countries. Such others as appear to claim the dignity 
 of rivals they vilify and slander ; the rest they ignore 
 as beneath notice. This patriotism would seem to 
 be composed largely of vanity and largely of spite. 
 The vanity is not hard to understand, for your patriot 
 of this kidney has often little in himself on which to 
 ground that pleasant sensation, and brags of the great- 
 ness (i.e. bigness) of his country to blind the public 
 to his own littleness. 
 
 Beyond the idea of country this sort of patriotism 
 can, obviously, not reach. It could not occur to these 
 patriots that the virtue of which patriotism is a part 
 has a further scope still ; that, just as every in-
 
 168 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 dividual is a unit in the family, and every family a 
 unit in the State, so the State itself is only a larger, 
 less interesting, though more important, unit in the 
 final unit of the human family of which God is the 
 Head. 
 
 As things now stand, probably the Catholic Church 
 alone maintains this wide view. In the despised 
 Middle Ages it was of general acceptance, because 
 when the huge, but artificial and material, unity of the 
 Roman Empire disappeared, it was succeeded by the 
 vaster and unmaterial unity of the Church. The 
 split-up of this union, whereby a single Christendom 
 was changed into a divided Europe, did not take 
 effect till the Reformation, which substituted for the 
 splendid and noble idea of a universal Christian family, 
 united under one father, the petty and selfish idea of 
 rival nationalities under a group of mutually suspicious 
 stepbrothers, and the makeshift compromise of a 
 balance of power, which none of those in the balances 
 would agree to in his own case. 
 
 The Catholic Church must have the broader idea of 
 patriotism, and always have it, because she is Catholic. 
 The Hebrew Church treasured the truth of One only 
 God as the family secret of one nation : the Catholic 
 Church proclaims all truth as the equal birthright of 
 all mankind, and refuses to house herself in any one 
 nation, or call herself by the name of any one country. 
 Countries arise upon the world's great stage, and play 
 their parts, and go : empires fatten, fall apoplectic, and 
 expire, like the empires whose heirs they are: the 
 Church cannot bind herself to what is mortal and has 
 its allotted death as surely as it had its appointed birth. 
 So she sits, not coldly outside the nations, but serenely 
 above them, gathering them into her arms, if they will 

 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 169 
 
 come, yet never isolated by the bounds, or by the 
 " interests " of any one of them. 
 
 This the world divines, by an instinct so unwelcome 
 that it harbours it as a suspicion and an accusation, 
 and broods over it as a grudge. The instinct is a true, 
 involuntary, intuition : the statement of the suspicion 
 a slander, and the grudge envious and malicious. The 
 Church has always been higher than the world: and 
 a sense of inferiority will ever make the mean spiteful. 
 
 " A Catholic cannot be a genuine patriot." The 
 accusation means that every genuine Catholic must 
 be something more than a mere "patriot" because 
 the boundaries of the largest empire cannot bind his 
 patriotism, or forbid its range "as far as God has any 
 land." 
 
 Was there ever a finer patriot than St. Gregory the 
 Great, or a more papal Pope ? He did more, not only 
 for the part of it he actually governed, but for all 
 Italy, than any man of his age ; but he was never a 
 mere Italian. The nations were his inheritance and 
 the uttermost parts of the earth his possession. Thus 
 his eye could range, far beyond the bounds of his own 
 loved and lovely land, to the fog-girt island lonely in 
 the cold seas of the north, that had been Christian 
 Britain once and was heathen England then, and be- 
 come its apostle, though his own place must be still 
 by Peter's tomb. 
 
 There may have been instances, enough and to spare, 
 of Catholics whose patriotism has been of the narrower 
 sort, and who have vaunted themselves of it because 
 there have always been Catholics whose Catholicity has 
 been skin-deep, and because it is the perverse tendency 
 of man to value himself on the wrong things. Our 
 own trivial achievements and personal, private dis-
 
 170 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 tinctions are apt to strike us more than what is greatest 
 in us, because what is greatest is common and not 
 confined to ourselves. The greatest thing about every 
 Catholic is that he is one; but, the smaller he is in 
 himself, the likelier is it that he will pride himself on 
 some small thing he has to himself or shares with but 
 few besides. The greater he is in himself the more 
 will he think of that which he has in common with 
 everyone of his faith. 
 
 " After all," said St. Theresa, dying, " I am a child 
 of the Church." It was not that she chafed at 
 
 " The petty done, the undone vast." 
 
 God has plenty of time to do all His work: His 
 greatest helpers have not vexed themselves with the 
 little they have had time to carry out in their own day 
 and their own way. Nor do I believe it was because 
 she despised her own work: she was too reverent; it 
 was all His, and she could no more belittle it than St. 
 Paul would slur over what God had wrought, with him 
 for tool and labourer of a day. But in the hour of 
 death it is comfort we need, and she found it, as we 
 all must at last, saints and sinners, not in what she 
 had done for Him, but in what He had done for her : 
 in what He is, not in what she was. " After all, O 
 Lord, I am a child of the Church." 
 
 Then, loyalty. Oh, frequent word ! Oh, rare virtue ! 
 Must not that also begin at home, and the loyal man 
 be first of all loyal to himself? 
 
 "Ah, Liberty!" cried Madame Roland, lifting her 
 eyes to its image before laying her head upon the 
 block " Ah, Liberty ! the things that are done in thy 
 name." 
 
 And how queer excursions loyalty has taken : what
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 171 
 
 cheap proofs of itself it offers. Out of loyalty King 
 Charles's subjects levied war against him and removed 
 his head, lest a royal tongue should go on telling lies. 
 Your rebel of to-day is your loyalist of to-morrow. 
 Who was the loyalist when that Charles's namesake 
 and great-grandson, and the butcher Cumberland, 
 fought at Culloden ? which commanded rebels ? Did 
 it not all depend on the issue of a battle? If the 
 Prince of Wales had won then, as well as at Preston- 
 pans, and the Elector had gone off to Hanover, as he 
 was ready to go, I suppose the victorious troops would 
 have been the loyalists, and those who had been trying 
 to keep King James III out of his throne and dominions 
 would have been allowed by history to be the rebels. 
 In our own days loyalty often consists, like gratitude, 
 in a lively apprehension of favours to come: in an 
 eager resolve to be about a court, if possible, to be a 
 guest of royalty, and to bask in princely smiles. How 
 anaemic such loyalty grows when courtly doors remain 
 shut, and royal invitations are not forthcoming. It by 
 no means thrives when it has to be its own reward. 
 
 But there is a Catholic notion of loyalty, too : which 
 is a virtue, as is patriotism, and, like it, is part of 
 another virtue : for, just as true patriotism is not 
 national vanity, but a phase of Christian love : so 
 loyalty is not a lick-spittle servility, or a self-seeking 
 sycophancy, but a part of the great law of sincere 
 obedience. 
 
 And this we owe to many, " to the king as excel- 
 ling," but to many beneath him, and to some above him. 
 The holy spirit of discipline flees from the ungodly, 
 and it is not so easy for the ungodly to be loyal as 
 they think. 
 
 Here, again, the Catholic is unjustly suspect because
 
 172 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 of a true intuition falsely stated. It is perceived that 
 in the Catholic idea there is something higher than 
 any temporal sovereignty, and thence it is concluded 
 that the Catholic cannot be a thoroughly loyal subject 
 of any earthly prince or ruler. So far as this means 
 anything it means that there is, for the Catholic, a 
 court of higher appeal. Has not non-Catholic loyalty 
 always presupposed one ? Else why were your Hamp- 
 dens patriots, and not mere rebels? How can those 
 who sent James II packing be absolved? 
 
 However men may prate when "loyal" prattle 
 serves a turn, has it not always been recognised outside 
 the Church that loyalty has its breaking-point ? And 
 have not they who, when that point has been supposed 
 to be reached, flung loyalty aside, been most loudly 
 acclaimed in loyal England ? When the subjects of 
 every Italian State but one threw off their loyalty 
 to their sovereigns, whither did they turn for surest 
 praise and blindest applause, but to loyal England ? 
 not to Radical English, nay, nor Liberal English, but 
 to Tory England, good, solid, constitutional England. 
 If anywhere in Europe Portugal found flatterers and 
 sympathisers when she drove her King away, it was 
 in loyal England. 
 
 And why? Because to the non-Catholic English 
 mind loyalty is rather a personal sentiment than a 
 logical principle bound up in religion. As a whole 
 the British nation has a strong, personal attachment 
 not so much to the Crown as to the monarch who 
 wears it. But, lacking imagination, and being per- 
 sonally indifferent to monarchs of other countries, it 
 is not personally interested in their vicissitudes, nor 
 deeply moved by their misfortunes. 
 
 This sort of personal loyalty is very well : but it is
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 173 
 
 not the highest, or safest conceivable. The loyalty 
 taught by St. Paul had Nero for its object. That 
 Emperor's personal claim could hardly have been less ; 
 but it did not affect the Apostle's principle. Loyalty 
 based on religion and the duty of obedience is apt to 
 be really more weather-proof than that which in fact 
 depends chiefly on the popular or excellent qualities 
 of the sovereign: since the best sovereign cannot 
 guarantee the perpetual excellence of his successors. 
 
 That genuine loyalty is bound up with the principle 
 of authority those in authority have persistently 
 ignored ; and so they themselves have often assailed 
 the principle, while promising themselves that the 
 loyalty they desired in their own case would be still 
 forthcoming after its foundation had been destroyed 
 by themselves. 
 
 There have been no more wanton assailants than 
 kings and heads of States of the authority of the 
 Sovereign Pontiffs. Now it was one, now it was 
 another; kings of France, kings of Naples, Venetian 
 oligarchs or doges, Florentine magnificos and grand 
 dukes, Spanish monarchs and Austrian, all have taken 
 their turn of sowing the windy seed of opposition to 
 authority in its supreme seat on earth, and all have 
 reaped, or are reaping, their own predestined whirlwind. 
 The real root of modern revolutions lies farther back 
 than the pretexts advanced in explanation of them : 
 the principles which produced the Reformation pro- 
 duced also the excesses of the French Revolution. 
 Peoples who had been taught the nobility of dethron- 
 ing God's Vicegerent were not likely to leave earthly 
 rulers enthroned. 
 
 The Church's theory is that all authority, her own 
 included, is from above: the Reformation theory is
 
 174 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 
 
 that all authority, including that of all Churches, is 
 from below, i.e., from the people who comprise them. 
 In England the King was declared supreme head of 
 the Church as well as of the State : and, whatever he 
 may have chosen to think himself, that declaration 
 was the first step in the destruction of his own position. 
 The monarch in question happened to be a tyrant, and 
 the concession to him of his new claim to supremacy 
 in spiritual affairs gave him the appearance of more 
 complete absolutism : but the appearance was delusive 
 for the concession implied powers in Parliament that 
 no Parliament had ever before dreamed of. It was 
 Parliament that made Henry VIII head of the Church, 
 and because it so acted, out of timidity and subservi- 
 ence, the King's autocracy seemed more assured. But 
 the mere acceptance of such a grant from Parliament 
 recognised in Parliament powers that would inevitably 
 be used again for widely different purposes. Parlia- 
 ments that had been taught to set aside the primitive 
 authority of the Pope would presently realise their 
 power to set aside the authority of the King an 
 authority by no means primitive, and resting on a 
 much more recent prescription. 
 
 Henry, clever as he thought himself, did a stupid 
 thing for the continued solidity of his own throne 
 when he made his Parliament pretend to believe it 
 had the right to overturn the throne of the Fisher- 
 man. 
 
 Time and again the kings of France set up the 
 Gallican liberties against the authority of Peter, and 
 the Eldest Son of the Church was as blindly stupid 
 in doing so as was the Defender of the Faith. For 
 the Catholic Church is the citadel of authority, and 
 every success, or seeming success, gained against her
 
 LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS 175 
 
 outworks sapped the foundations of an authority that 
 could never have so much to say for itself. 
 
 Wise monarchs have all perceived that " religion is 
 good for the people," by which they mostly mean that 
 religion among their people is good for themselves : 
 but they have not been equally clear-sighted in re- 
 cognising that the basis of religion is a ticklish matter 
 to play with : that if the people are taught that the 
 only authority for the Church rests in their own will, 
 they will not be constrained by any church to what 
 is not agreeable to themselves. No man will obey 
 orders coming from a quarter subservient to himself, 
 except so far as those orders embody his own wishes. 
 
 No Church whose authority is derived from the 
 State can expect to rule the members of the State 
 even in spiritual matters. It can only offer sugges- 
 tions : and its suggestions will only be taken in good 
 part by those who happen to approve them, that is, in 
 general, by those to whom they are superfluous. 
 
 A preacher or a prelate may, in such a church, 
 possess an accidental weight or influence, but it can 
 be only that of his own eloquence or of his own per- 
 sonality : he will only speak for himself. The moment 
 he attempts more, the instant he tries to teach with 
 authority of mission, he will be asked: "Who told 
 you so ? By whom are you commissioned ? "
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 IN a very interesting paper, that appeared some ten 
 or a dozen years ago in the Cornhill Magazine, it was 
 remarked that Christian Science is so-called for reasons 
 that remind us of the name of the guinea-pig, which 
 is not a pig and neither comes from Guinea nor costs 
 twenty-one shillings : so the religion invented by Mrs. 
 Eddy is not a science, and has nothing to do with 
 Christianity. 
 
 If it were scientific it would have fewer followers, 
 and its remoteness from Christianity may account for 
 its having so many. The " religionists " of the present 
 time seem intuitively aware that novelty is their only 
 chance, and, so far from standing on the old ways, their 
 most feverish aim is to strike out paths that may at 
 least appear original. Even those who hoped to work 
 inside the Catholic Church, and would have worked 
 but for their detection, had the same object ; an object, 
 one may observe, totally different from that professed 
 by heresiarchs of a less irritable age. The pretence 
 of most, if not all, Protestant reformers whose re- 
 formation (unlike proverbial charity) never troubled 
 itself to begin at home, was that of an appeal to primi- 
 tive Christianity. The pretence was false, and only 
 passed for true among the ignorant, who knew as 
 little about primitive Christianity as they cared for the 
 real reformation of the Christianity of their own day : 
 but the appeal was respectable in form, however it may 
 
 176
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 177 
 
 have been insincere in fact. Even Dollinger, much 
 nearer the present day, was willing to condone the 
 rebellion of the " Old Catholics " by admitting the 
 name as if in the fond hope that the Universal Church 
 and its Head might thus be made to appear as con- 
 sisting of New Catholics, who had in some way 
 wandered into novelty, and by such wandering lost 
 just claim to be Catholics at all. 
 
 Whether Dollinger's erudition saved him from, in 
 his secret heart, lapsing into heresy may be doubted, 
 and it certainly did not save 1 him from falling into 
 schism ; but he was not at any rate shallow enough to 
 sink into the bathos of Modernism. 
 
 A learned priest who suffers himself to succumb to 
 a determination of self to the brain, and refuses to 
 submit to the Voice of Christ speaking through His 
 earthly Vicegerent, can no longer care as much for 
 Christ as he cares for his own vanity ; but it may be 
 surmised that Dollinger would have cared enough for 
 Christianity to have been sincerely disgusted by the 
 Modernists, had their voice been audible in his day. 
 Obstinate as he was, and self-satisfied as he was, he 
 was too clear-sighted not to have known that Modern- 
 ism is merely an attempt to explain away Christianity 
 in such a fashion as to make it palatable to those who 
 dislike Christianity. With all his fatal faults he was 
 not puzzle-headed : and he knew well enough that 
 black and white can never be interchanged : the 
 whitening of black can only result in a dirty or obscure 
 
 The pretext of Modernism and its congeners is that 
 the gate of truth should be made wide, so as to admit 
 those whose mental conformation renders entrance by 
 a narrow door difficult. But it does not seem to strike 
 
 M
 
 178 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 them that there is a breadth which can only find 
 admission by a total razing of walls. After all, the 
 building is of more moment than any gate of it : and 
 when all the sides shall have vanished, and the roof have 
 been taken off (to admit the tallest figures), and the 
 foundations tampered with as unnecessary when the 
 weight of the superstructure has been correspondingly 
 reduced there is not much building left. 
 
 Modernism affects to be an intra-mural affair, and as 
 such it concerns us. But there are, in fact, Modernists 
 who are proud to be outside. 
 
 The vitality of truth is so innate and so robust, that 
 even the retention of some vestiges of it acts as a pickle 
 or preservative, though vestiges alone can no more 
 keep permanently alive a body that retains only such 
 extracts of truth than salt can make the liveliest pig, 
 once deceased, anything but bacon. Thus, certain of 
 the Reformed Churches at the time of their suicide, 
 which was that of their nominal birth, retained, or 
 tried to retain, so much at least of Christianity as served 
 to stave off their predestined end. The first step of 
 their life was a step towards their inevitable grave : 
 the first muling and puking of their infancy had 
 already the choke of a death-rattle in it, but the agony 
 was to be long as I think, for the reason at which I 
 have hinted. 
 
 English Protestantism professed to hold fast much 
 of the integral faith of that Church from which it shook 
 itself free : it flung away five out of seven sacraments, 
 but loudly affirmed that it kept the two best ; it turned 
 from God's mother, but did not openly assail the 
 Divinity of her Son ; it fell into infinite revolt against 
 Christ's Vicar, but it did not dare to explain away 
 either Himself, His virginal birth, or His Resurrection.
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 179 
 
 On such isolated scraps of truth as it clutched at it 
 lived on, though marked with the fatal blain of plague 
 and inexorable death. 
 
 But who that says to the black waters of untruth 
 "thus far and no further" is ever heeded? I never 
 heard that Canute was a theologian, but he knew better 
 than that. The rising tide respects no throne that sets 
 itself upon the fickle sandy shore. Henry VIII was a 
 theologian, his title of Defender of the Faith is a livid 
 mark upon his wretched forehead now : he was no 
 Protestant : he knew all about that, as the devil does : 
 his son was knock-kneed Protestant enough : and his 
 virginal daughter was a bad woman, but not a bad 
 Catholic like her wicked father ; none of the precious 
 triad aimed at flinging the Scriptures to the swine, 
 though they snatched them out of the hands of the 
 Church that had kept them for the world through all 
 the "darkness of the dark ages"; Henry would not 
 have them jangled by clowns in every ale-shop : his 
 reformers, whose aims were widely different from his 
 own, had no objection to such jangling, but they at 
 least made much of the Scriptures. It was their 
 pretence that the Church was at issue with the Bible, 
 and they preferred the Bible, setting it upon a pillar 
 hi the midst of their tabernacles, as about the only 
 sacred thing worth retaining. Their pretence was 
 singularly foolish, as it was necessarily insincere: for, 
 if the Bible was the one thing of which the Church 
 was afraid, the arch-enemy of her claims, and the 
 obvious antidote to her doctrine, how unaccountable 
 that she, with all the guile wherewith they credited 
 her, and she alone, should have treasured it down the 
 ages and kept it intact for posterity. 
 
 Where would the Scriptures be but for her and her
 
 180 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 monks ? How easy a thing it would have been, during 
 those ages, that the last three or four centuries love to 
 call dark, for the Church to have smothered the Bible 
 altogether, when there was no learning anywhere but 
 hers, and all letters were her monopoly. In the slow 
 irony of fate it is odd to note that it is at the hands of 
 Protestant sectaries that the Scriptures have met with 
 assault, and that now the Church that guarded them 
 for the modern world is the sole and unflinching 
 champion of their integrity. The descendants of 
 Luther have striven to boil them down to a gelatinous 
 pudding, innutritions as it is flabby. 
 
 When England started on her eccentric orbit of 
 independence, in defiance of the central sun of Christi- 
 anity, she seemed resolved to hold sacred two things 
 in memory of her former religion ; the Bible and the 
 observance of Sunday. Her attitude to both may have 
 been marked by the exaggeration of superstition ; the 
 Bible she seemed to imagine had dropped down from 
 heaven, in English, with gilt edges, straight into the 
 lap of James I; and her Sunday might seem more 
 connected with Moses than with Christ. Still she did 
 revere both, and held them as sacred things which 
 man's petulance or self-indulgence was not to tamper 
 with. All that has changed, and with a change so 
 rapid that one need not be old to be able to note its 
 strides. Forty years ago almost every English man or 
 woman who could read, and hundreds of thousands 
 who could not, would instantly recognise any quotation, 
 though it were only that of a phrase, from the Bible ; 
 and for the simple reason that those who could read 
 did read the Bible, and those who could not went 
 habitually to church. It is quite different now. Both 
 habits have fallen into disuse, and both are falling
 
 - 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 181 
 
 yearly into a disuse more complete. You may borrow 
 a phrase, or an illustration, from the Scriptures and 
 they will admire your originality, and wonder at the 
 vigorous force of your ideas, without a suspicion that 
 you are borrowing from the wisdom whence Solomon's 
 was borrowed. 
 
 Again; even dignitaries of the Anglican Church are 
 heard smoothly explaining away such central doctrines 
 of Christianity as their forbears would have been 
 furious at the idea of abandoning as monopolies to 
 the Catholic Church, e.g. the Virginal Birth of Christ, 
 and the fact of His Resurrection. Old Protestants had 
 an odd leaning to St. Paul because, I suppose, he was 
 not St. Peter what would they have thought had 
 they foreseen that a day would come when their 
 descendants would forget how their beloved Apostle 
 of the Gentiles cried aloud: "If Christ be not risen 
 again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
 also vain ... if Christ be not risen again, your faith 
 is vain, for you are yet in your sins. Then they also 
 that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If hi this 
 life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
 most miserable." 
 
 The various Christian sects which are spoken of 
 collectively in England as Nonconformists, descend 
 from founders even more exclusively devoted to the 
 Scriptures than were the founders of the Anglican 
 Establishment. The latter made almost everything 
 of the Bible, the former made quite everything ; they, 
 for the most part, cared as little for two sacraments 
 as for seven ; they wanted no sacraments, and they 
 wanted no dogma, no "articles," no liturgy, no holy 
 orders; the Bible was to be the one and sole ark of 
 their salvation, and it required no interpretation, for 
 
 *
 
 182 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 it interprets itself; the plainest and most literal sense 
 of every line of it was to be accepted, and to do 
 their business, without priest or paraphrase. This atti- 
 tude is now being hurriedly abandoned, and a new 
 fashion has sprung up. It is among the younger and, 
 of course, the wiser members of the Nonconformist 
 ministry that the New Criticism has received its most 
 effusive welcome in England. Having bolted it them- 
 selves they make haste to illustrate their acceptance of 
 it in the pulpit, for the farther they recede from the 
 venerable delusion that every word of Scripture was a 
 word of God, the more complacently assured are they 
 of possessing the brightest illumination in the most 
 brilliant of all ages. But it is the simple fact that the 
 Nonconformist laity is for the most part scandalised 
 and astounded at the rationalistic treatment of the 
 Bible to which they are being forced to listen in their 
 meeting-houses. This, then, is how the Protestant 
 boast of the Bible is ending. 
 
 The system, and group of systems, that professed to 
 need it and nothing else but it, only uses it now to 
 turn all its substance into shadow, or neglects it alto- 
 gether more and more completely. The religions 
 which cared for nothing but "faith" are hurriedly 
 stripping themselves of all that is the objective of 
 faith, by flinging from themselves all that is super- 
 natural. It is they, not the Catholic Church (here- 
 ditary foe of the Scriptures, as they would make her 
 out), that Avould melt the Old Testament and the 
 New down into graceful allegories, and would thus 
 leave of God nothing but a Name, and of Christ 
 nothing but an Idea. 
 
 Thus has boasted faith subsided to a loose surmise ; 
 thus has a tough revolt rotted down into a vague
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 183 
 
 anarchy : thus has such windlestraw of truth as the 
 ruinous blast of the Reformation left to the reformed 
 come to be trodden and trampled into sodden slush of 
 silly conjecture and sheer untruth. 
 
 Again, the English Sunday is, year by year, losing 
 more and more of its character of sacredness : for the 
 English are rapidly ceasing to go to church, and an 
 Englishman is the last man on earth to do nothing 
 at all he amuses his Sunday. On Good Friday he 
 used only to plant his potatoes; now he cycles off 
 somewhere to pass a jocund day watching somebody 
 else play football, or listen to the negro-minstrels on 
 the shore, till the merry afternoon lapses into the 
 noisy night. 
 
 On Sunday also he goes somewhere anywhere you 
 like, so it be not to church. Nor is this a merely vulgar 
 habit confined to the hard-worked, who has such ex- 
 cuse for stealing an idle day as six days of bustling 
 toil may suggest to him. His "betters" set him the 
 example. It is their day to scour the country in their 
 motor-cars ; their day for distant visits ; and more and 
 more their special day for hospitality ; though for such 
 purpose the day may begin, like a Jewish sabbath, 
 which it resembles in naught else, about the sunset of 
 the day before. There are thousands of fashionable 
 houses that open no hospitable doors except on Sun- 
 day, or from Saturday to Monday ; and, though hospi- 
 tality is not servile work, it involves it, and usually 
 involves the impossibility for a servant of attending 
 any place of worship. In England, nowadays, many a 
 Catholic servant will tell you : " On Sunday I cannot 
 go to Mass. It is our busy day. On Saturday com- 
 pany comes down : on Sunday morning there is a big 
 breakfast to send up, or twenty breakfasts to different
 
 184 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 rooms. Then luncheons to get ready, then ever so 
 many to tea; then a dinner party. There's not a 
 chance of Mass or Benediction." And the heads of 
 such households may be Catholics themselves, who 
 save their conscience by eschewing Catholic servants 
 when they can, or choosing foreigners who, if Catholic, 
 they assure themselves, are less fidgety about Mass 
 every Sunday. 
 
 For there are all sorts of Liberal Catholics : not only 
 such as are "liberal" in belief, but such as confine 
 their liberality to easiness in observance of ecclesias- 
 tical laws. 
 
 A Liberal Catholic is also like a guinea-pig : for liber- 
 ality consists in an open-handed readiness to part with 
 what is our own ; and neither the Church's faith nor 
 the Church's rule is his to give away : so that he is not, 
 after all, particularly liberal, nor is he apt to remain in 
 any true sense Catholic. Catholicity is so delicately 
 compact together that he who light-heartedly surren- 
 ders a bit of what he thinks mere fringe presently 
 finds that the whole garment is gone, and he is left in 
 the mere nakedness of non-belief. Ask any priest 
 who has laboured long in England, and he will tell 
 you that he himself knows of whole families once 
 Catholic, who have slipped out of the Church by 
 nothing else than the sheer neglect of Sunday Mass. 
 
 That way out into the night calls for no delibera- 
 tion; still less does it imply what are called intellec- 
 tual difficulties. It is open to the idlest and least 
 thoughtful. Not that I would for a moment seem to 
 suggest that the intellectual difficulties themselves 
 usually assail the most intelligent. Such difficulties 
 are mostly of the shallowest quality, ot the flimsiest 
 texture.
 
 TIME'S REPRISALS 185 
 
 Even Catholics themselves are far too much apt to 
 yield, to such as affect them, a fantastic respect to 
 which they have no claim whatever. 
 
 " Poor father ! No, he isn't a Catholic," the devout 
 Catholic child of a mixed marriage will tell you. " He 
 doesn't believe in anything. He is very clever, you 
 see, and he doesn't believe in any religion. Perhaps 
 you will pray for him." And such a dull ignoramus as 
 he is ! His reasons for unbelief, God save the mark ! 
 Why, the simplest and most unquestioning believer 
 could suggest to him a dozen difficulties more re- 
 spectable than his. 
 
 Show me an " atheist " or an "agnostic," and in nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand I will 
 show you a green goose, if you want such vulgar, 
 greasy, unfledged, indigestible bird. 
 
 God is a judge strong and patient, and He is pro- 
 voked every day ; we, who are neither patient nor 
 strong, are provoked daily by the meek concession of 
 believers that the unbelievers are too deep for what 
 St. Thomas Aquinas not only believed but knew that 
 reason insisted on his believing. The great majority of 
 those who profess to be unable to believe are taken too 
 seriously. They are encouraged to regard themselves 
 as terrible creatures, gloomy, tragic familiars of Satan, 
 when they are only his jack-in-the-boxes and tin 
 whistles. Such figures of fun as they are intellectu- 
 ally are best reformed by the laughter their oddity 
 suggests. 
 
 However, as we said already, Liberal Catholicism 
 consists more commonly in " liberal " practice than in 
 "liberal" theory; and it is not the less fatal on that 
 account, for its example is the more contagious, and its 
 result equally effectual ; the chimney-sweep next door
 
 186 TIME'S REPRISALS 
 
 who can see for himself that you never go to Mass, 
 and that the butcher calls punctually every Friday 
 morning, is as likely to be injured by your example as 
 if he heard it mentioned that your views concerning 
 the hypostases were grievously unsound ; and perhaps 
 those views of yours might themselves fade into a just 
 significance if you would leave them alone, and betake 
 yourself to Mass eschewing chops on Friday. Besides, 
 the Liberal Catholicism which follows on careless 
 practice is more fatally easy to fall into. It requires 
 uncommon little thought to become a doubter it 
 requires none at all to become a defaulter in the 
 matter of religious obligations ; a man may have very 
 hazy notions on which to ground liberal beliefs (or 
 hesitation to believe), but the clearest possible percep- 
 tion that it is more trouble to go to Mass than to stay 
 away. 
 
 Self-indulgence is the real root of what we may call 
 Easy Catholicism, and it leads to the final loss of faith 
 much more commonly and much more simply than 
 the intellectual alertness and spirit of inquiry which 
 are supposed to suggest " difficulties."
 
 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 IN the second of these papers I took occasion to 
 speak of the fact that Catholics, whether calling them- 
 selves, or called by their neighbours, by this or that 
 political or party name, must always have in them- 
 selves something deeper and more permanent than 
 their adhesion to any political party. For the interests 
 of parties are shifting and evanescent, while the 
 principles of the Church are stable and unchanging. 
 It may and does happen that some matter of im- 
 portance ranges almost the whole Catholic vote in a 
 country for the moment on the side of a Liberal 
 Government ; and some other question presently arises, 
 even in the same country, which ranges all the 
 Catholics in it on the opposite side the Conservative 
 Government, or Opposition, happening to favour what 
 the Catholics desire, or the Liberal Cabinet, or Opposi- 
 tion, chancing to be bent on some measure repugnant 
 to what Catholic principles demand. It can hardly ever 
 be said with safety, at any given moment, that the whole 
 Catholic world is Liberal in politics, or Conservative. 
 
 This sort of apparent uncertainty is not an element 
 of weakness, but the reverse, even politically speaking ; 
 for it is not a secret that more deference is paid by 
 party rulers to bodies of voters whose vote has to 
 be conciliated than to groups whose adhesion can be 
 securely counted upon without any conciliation at all. 
 Catholics therefore act wisely when they teach party 
 
 187
 
 188 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 rulers to understand that their support can only be 
 gained by conduct in consonance with the unchanging 
 principles and permanent interests of their unchanging 
 Church. Politicians may resent the rigidity of this 
 Catholic attitude resent it because it may be hamper- 
 ing for the moment to themselves but even politicians 
 are apt to recognise conscience in others, though not 
 invariably exclusively dominated by it themselves; 
 and the more consistent Catholics are the more they 
 are respected. Strict Catholics may hear themselves 
 accused of bigotry, intolerance, or stiff-neckedness, but 
 lax Catholics are not deeply venerated even by Pro- 
 testants or unbelievers. The Holy See itself is often 
 reviled for its stiffness and unyielding immovability; 
 but in its stiffness lies its strength. As a temporal 
 sovereignty it does not for the moment exist, whatever 
 may happen next ; yet it is as much as ever a World- 
 Power ; and its significance as such comes from the 
 well-appreciated fact of its solidity and moral force. 
 Were it to study chiefly pliancy and adaptability to the 
 times, hurriedly grabbing at new methods and novel 
 catchwords, hastily admitting every freshly-discovered 
 social, political, or ethical nostrum, its moral force 
 would no longer impress the times, of which it would 
 become the pupil instead of the teacher. " Apres moi 
 le deluge," said Louis XIV, and the modern world is 
 given to call the Holy See antediluvian, as in a sense 
 it is. It was there before all the deluges out of which 
 modern society is blankly trying to pick itself together, 
 and it will be there to the end, after all the further 
 deluges to which modern society may be helplessly 
 drifting. Meanwhile politics and parties are here ; and 
 what I would like to say is this too much cannot be 
 hoped from them, or any of them.
 
 CAUSE AND CURE 189 
 
 It seems to be admitted almost everywhere that 
 society, that is, the present artificial fabric of society, 
 is sick and sorry. One party ascribes the mischief to 
 the stupidity, greed, selfishness, and obstinacy of its 
 opponents ; and those opponents blame the rashness, 
 imprudence, and ignorance of the experimentalists, 
 whose haste and itching ambition for present applause 
 lead them into devious and thorny paths whose final 
 exit no one can foresee without misgiving. Whether 
 either side really believes that if it could remain always 
 in power the wounds of society would be healed, we 
 cannot tell. But, whatever they may believe, we can- 
 not believe it. The wounds of society lie deeper than 
 that : and they never will be healed by any merely 
 political physicians. We have heard of Symptomatic 
 Treatment, and we are informed that it is not only 
 superficial, but false in principle, beginning, as it 
 were, at the wrong end : beginning, that is, from the 
 outside. Whereas true healing can be wrought, not by 
 chasing local symptoms about the sick body, but only 
 by finding out the cause of disease and removing it. 
 
 To say that all merely political attempts to heal the 
 sickness of society will in the long run prove superficial, 
 a radically vicious course of cure, because amounting 
 to no more than symptomatic treatment, may sound 
 gloomy and pessimistic : nevertheless I believe it to 
 be the sad, if dismal, truth. " Are we, then, to do 
 nothing ? to let everything drift, and make no attempt 
 at relief ? " the political physician may, quite plausibly, 
 demand. The answer is trite and dull : " Medice cura 
 teipsum." A sick doctor may, as the phrase goes, 
 save your life. But if the doctor's own disease lies 
 not in his body but in his mind : if all his principle 
 of healing be at fault then what good will all his
 
 190 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 diplomas do you ? All the letters after his name will 
 not spell health for you. That is what's the matter. 
 The political physician is making a partial, incomplete, 
 superficial diagnosis all the time. 
 
 Certain crude symptoms he may attack and in 
 attacking them he does bring temporary relief, if his 
 method of attack be not clumsy and ignorant ; but his 
 method may be both, and even the irritating local 
 trouble may be driven to another part, and reappear 
 there with greater suffering to the whole body, or forced 
 inward to some vital spot where it works unseen to 
 its fatal climax. Meanwhile he earns applause and 
 gratitude : good doctors know well how popular a 
 quack may be for a time. " Wait," they, like Mr. 
 Asquith, say, " and see." All this onslaught upon local 
 symptoms will avail nothing to radical cure, till the 
 radical disease is frankly confessed, and, if not too late, 
 removed. 
 
 God made the world, and all men in it : all they have 
 is His, and all their good comes from Him. All their 
 ill is of their own making : and yet they cannot mend 
 it by themselves. Only He who created can recreate. 
 Men can make themselves sick, but perfect health can 
 come back only at the word of the one Divine Physician, 
 and by obedience to that word. The pool is troubled 
 every day, but only when He comes by is the man 
 healed eight-and-thirty years sick of his infirmity. 
 Then no scrambling haste brings back health, but one 
 act of unhalting obedience to one word of omnipotent 
 command : " Arise, take up thy bed and walk." 
 
 The evils which afflict society are traced by many 
 different observers to many different causes: but the 
 underlying cause of all those causes themselves is one 
 selfishness, a selfishness deep-rooted and not planted
 
 CAUSE AND CURE 191 
 
 in one soil alone. There is the selfishness of capital, 
 the selfishness of labour, the selfishness of some who 
 cling desperately to vested interests being fiercely torn 
 from them, and the selfishness of others who can see 
 no betterment for themselves except in the dragging 
 down and worsening of the position of such as seem 
 to have already that which they are in hot haste 
 to get. Will any State ever be able to root out 
 selfishness? Can any State's legislation ever change 
 it into brotherly love and sympathy ? Legislation can 
 make anything the State chooses criminal: it can 
 punish privilege, and destroy it : it can set a class up, 
 and it can tear a class down ; it can drive capital away 
 into another State, and it can also drive labour away 
 into some other State where employment for labour 
 is to be found. It can make inequalities illegal, and 
 it can try to make equality obligatory. Can it succeed ? 
 Has it ever succeeded anywhere ? 
 
 Any government that is wanton enough to do so can 
 pit class against class no government can insist on 
 each class loving the others. The business of the Church 
 is to try ; not by sledge-hammer legislation, but by teach- 
 ing what the Founder gave her charge to teach. God 
 alone can do what needs to be done, and the States 
 of the world are in a conspiracy to ignore God, and so 
 cause Him to be ignored. That is what's the matter. 
 
 Selfishness is inevitable in men who have ceased to 
 believe in God, whatever altruism may urge or pre- 
 tend. A man will not yield his own profit, or even 
 his own pleasure, once he believes that he himself is 
 the being of paramount importance. There is no 
 radical cure for selfishness except the sincere belief 
 and recognition that there is something greater than 
 self : and that belief and recognition the States of the
 
 192 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 world have for some time been sedulously smothering. 
 Man has never admitted any greater than himself 
 except God; set God aside, and he sees nothing but 
 himself. You may prate of mankind, and the greatest 
 good of the greatest number, but his greatest good, 
 once he disbelieves in God, is the good of "number 
 one" for that intensely significant minority he will 
 care more than for all the majorities that ever turned 
 any minister's brain. What is the greatest good of the 
 greatest number to a man discontented with the little 
 share of good he sees himself to have in a world which 
 he believes to be the only world ? The mere reduction 
 of the general bulk of suffering will not make him 
 patient, though the sufferers be made few, so long as 
 he suffers anything himself. Can any State by any 
 legislation make pain and sorrow, poverty and suffer- 
 ing and discontent, illegal ? Can any legislation breed 
 patience, or set undaunted hope in the hopeless ? Can 
 any State secure ease and comfort to the idle, the 
 incapable, the deficient, the improvident, the foolish ? 
 It may try, and in trying it may deal great injustice 
 to the industrious, the capable, the provident, and 
 the prudent : even so it cannot succeed. There 
 are obstinacies of ineptitude that will always defeat 
 the most grandmotherly legislation. Or States may 
 bluntly ignore such helpless, hopeless minorities, and 
 leave them to the tender mercies of the law of survival 
 of the fittest. Such minorities are helped on suffer- 
 ance ; weak and feeble minorities do not count on a 
 division. God only has patience for cognizance of 
 minorities that are not noisy. 
 
 Radical wounds of society come from radical faults 
 in the men of whom society is composed, and the State 
 is not concerned to heal those faults. At all events
 
 CAUSE AND CURE 193 
 
 the State does not concern herself with healing them, 
 for they come from a deeper root than social in- 
 equalities, huge accumulations of wealth and horrible, 
 staring contrasts of squalor and poverty ; they are bred 
 in the swamps of unbelief. They are the rank growth 
 of the cold, wet, and sour lands of low-lying denial of 
 all that is above this present life. Hope is the only 
 balm for present pain, and of all men must they be 
 most hopeless who have been allowed to grow up 
 believing that Christ is not risen from the dead, and 
 that death is the bitter end of all. Hopelessness of 
 aught beyond this life must lead to greediness while 
 this life lasts, and greed unfed must lead to despair 
 and fury. Why should the hopeless poor be patient ? 
 Why should the hopeless rich loosen his clutch upon 
 his wealth ? Life is so short : the most outrageous 
 millions can be so guarded as to last a lifetime or two ; 
 the most hopeless poverty must make haste to seize 
 what it can, no matter whence, no matter how, else it 
 will be too late, and death come and find it empty- 
 handed still since death ends all. 
 
 God's lessons are the follies of States. His justice 
 is their laughing-stock, His adjustment their fables. 
 Material good is the only good, and material good they 
 promise, break their promises, and invent new ones. 
 The promises of States that persist in ignoring God, 
 and prove their persistence by eliminating altogether 
 when they can as far as possible when total elimina- 
 tion does not yet seem feasible the teaching of belief 
 in God, the promises of such States, I say, are all based 
 on the theory that the State has everything to bestow 
 and God nothing, that the only things man can need 
 or desire are the things a government can give: in 
 other words, that this life and its profits are all there is 
 
 N
 
 194 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 to hope for. Under such teaching majorities must be 
 progressively formidable, for the majority of men will 
 always perceive that there are still desiderabilia in 
 other people's possession : the logic of unbelief leads 
 to hungry greed and furious discontent, and so to 
 anarchy, for human law alone can never abolish un- 
 bridled wants, nor muzzle the mouth of majorities 
 unsatisfied. Anarchy is only the final consequence of 
 negation of God, and to it the public negation, or 
 ignoring of God, inevitably tends. Should the weaken- 
 ing of government, which seems to exist in many 
 States, become general, and pass on to a phase of 
 chaos, those who may rejoice in it, the triumphant 
 anarchists, may justly boast that the Reformation was 
 the first phase ; that the intervening condition of 
 things was a mere temporary compromise, a futile 
 endeavour to fire a train without any consequent ex- 
 plosion an attempt to set in operation certain potent 
 causes and prevent the causes producing the result 
 involved in them. 
 
 From the teaching of the Reformation arrived, in 
 due time, the idea of States without God ; and nothing 
 would have seemed more ludicrous to the "positive" 
 eighteenth century than the dictum that a State 
 without God is an impossible idea. In its old age it 
 declared itself in favour of a State without God, and 
 the anarchy of the French Revolution was the re- 
 sultant enfant terrible. Since then other States have 
 proclaimed themselves self-existent without God, and 
 the result we have yet to see. Those who believe 
 that a State without God will not long continue to 
 exist as a State at all will not be sanguine as to that 
 result. There is a perverse disposition in mankind to 
 believe that identical causes need not produce identical
 
 CAUSE AND CURE 195 
 
 results, and the fact that causes do not always proceed 
 at a uniform pace, owing to special obstacles, or the 
 dissimilar gradients of roads, encourages them in this 
 perversity. Thus English people, shocked at the con- 
 sequences of a Godless State overseas, have always 
 refused to believe that any deplorable result would 
 accrue from similar behaviour at home. The English 
 being, as they complacently averred, a believing people, 
 nothing lamentable could happen from merely abstain- 
 ing from teaching belief in the schools of the nation. 
 It did not seem to occur to those who did believe that 
 their belief was the consequence of their having them- 
 selves been taught to believe. 
 
 And there really was a mass of habitual, inherited 
 belief and conscience. The fruits of the Reformation 
 were not hi England so quick to ripen as they might 
 have been had not the English substitute for the 
 Church clutched wistfully at much of the old Church's 
 teaching, and endeavoured, more or less hopelessly, to 
 retain it. Men were certainly free to believe what they 
 liked, but they ought, in conscience, to go on liking 
 to believe something. It was a later result of freedom 
 to believe what you liked that you might prefer not to 
 believe anything at all. Of course, if you did not, it 
 seemed illogical to insist on your being taught belief. 
 Still you ought to be good ; a bad man or so, here and 
 there, could be no excuse for your being bad too. 
 Society must be respectable: whatever you disliked 
 believing, you must, as a member of society, be re- 
 spectable, or where were we? National respectability 
 is a foregone English conclusion, like the National 
 Debt an impregnable security at three per cent. A 
 disreputable England, without gilt-edged securities, 
 would be an idea at which the English mind would
 
 196 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 reel and stagger. France without God may very likely 
 have lapsed into disreputable courses, but then French 
 people and English are widely different. England is 
 the land of home and large families ; respectability is 
 a national asset like the cotton trade. 
 
 That the basis of respectability is morality, and the 
 only permanent security of morality is belief in God, 
 and the only security for a continued national belief hi 
 God is the continuance of a national teaching of God 
 that idea has been lost. Until it is regained, here and 
 elsewhere, I, for one, do not place much hope in the 
 efforts of any party or of any government, at home 
 or abroad, to deal with the radical evils of which society 
 complains.
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 OF all the charges brought against Catholics none is 
 staler than that of bigotry ; but what is effete is not 
 always obsolete, and this old stone is still in vigorous 
 use. To throw stones does not call for any acquaint- 
 ance with geology, and wanton boys who throw them 
 could not often tell you of what they actually consist. 
 Thus it is with them who are bitterest against Catholic 
 bigotry; they find the missile handy, and do not 
 concern themselves greatly with what it means. In 
 what, precisely, bigotry consists they have in general 
 the vaguest knowledge. 
 
 That a religion, which believes itself to be the only 
 true one, cannot possibly admit that any other is 
 equally good, does not seem to occur to these subtle 
 logicians. Their own attitude is puzzle-headed, and 
 perspicacity is offensive to those in their predicament. 
 Their position usually amounts to this: that in all 
 religionsjthere is some good, and that it cannot matter 
 to God Almighty what men believe about Him. It 
 certainly would not matter much to a lion if an explorer 
 took him for a leveret : but it might affect the future 
 of the explorer. In false religions stray reflections of 
 truths or half truths may be detected, as in a wrong 
 solution of a mathematical problem some figures may 
 appear which are to be found in the true solution. 
 Their presence does not make the false conclusion true, 
 nor gain much respect from correct mathematicians. 
 
 There is, of course, invincible ignorance ; and by its 
 
 197
 
 198 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 lowly gate we hope many will arrive. But the gate is 
 lowly, and the fact remains that it is nobler to have 
 invincible truth on one's side. A man rooted in the 
 conviction that two and two are five need not be a 
 blackguard, but it is not mere bigotry or prejudice to 
 hold him, so far, a dunce. One who should affirm that 
 tigers are harmless little songsters, useful in gardens 
 infested with green-fly, might conceivably be a worthy 
 poor law guardian, or a successful organiser of charity 
 bazaars, but he should beware the criticism of zoolo- 
 gists. His amiable willingness to see paupers well fed, 
 and his pious zeal in providing funds for a new pulpit, 
 will not save him from derision in circles that under- 
 stand natural history. 
 
 Catholics do not desire to ignore the respectable 
 citizenship of many who disbelieve in the Catholic faith, 
 but, when correct belief is in question, they cannot 
 admit that civic virtues are to the point or private 
 virtues either. A stockbroker might make a fortune 
 though he held erratic views concerning algebra; so 
 much the better for him, but not so much the worse 
 for algebra. What these good folk can never under- 
 stand is that, to those who hold the Church's faith, the 
 truth is a fact, as actual as light, and that nothing else 
 will do as well. To themselves the fact does not appeal 
 any more than light appeals to the blind : so they talk 
 nonsense about it, as a man born blind would, who 
 insisted on laying down the law about colours and per- 
 spective. The blind man chooses to have his own 
 ideas, and perhaps condemns the superciliousness of 
 those who happen to have the gift of sight. If he be 
 a moral person why should he be silenced though he 
 insist that water is scarlet, and meadow-grass of a royal- 
 blue tint ?
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 199 
 
 This position of the Catholic Church is the real 
 ground of the tedious charge of bigotry against her : 
 that she will not consent to treat the sum of Revelation 
 as an open question, any more than the arithmetician 
 will agree to treat as an open question the sum of any 
 given number of figures. She sticks to it that where 
 the truth is concerned only absolute truth will do ; she 
 will not admit conjectures where Divine Revelation has 
 been given, and tolerates no working hypothesis in 
 place of certainty when she holds herself possessed of 
 certainty. That possession of certitude is the grievance 
 for it rests on Divine Revelation : and what is valued 
 outside is cocksureness resting on human discovery. 
 
 The real gravamen is the Church's willingness to hear 
 God rather than men. The natural man dislikes what 
 is supernatural ; and the theory of private judgment is 
 implicitly opposed to the recognition of absolute and 
 immutable truth. The Reformation, which launched 
 the leaky ship of private judgment, had no fear of the 
 ocean of unbelief, its rocks and its whirlpools, its iron 
 coasts of pitiless atheism, its leeshores of dull, swampy 
 indifference and negation ; all it dreaded was the 
 presence of a pilot for a pilot with full knowledge 
 and complete authority seemed, to mutineers, a mere 
 tyrant. 
 
 Free theory was to take the place of assured belief, 
 and perhaps the Reformers themselves did not all 
 realise what game they were playing. They professed, 
 anyway, to have no quarrel with the King, but only to 
 be in revolt against His accredited Viceroy. But their 
 seed brought its due crop, as seed will, in spite of the 
 private fancies of any gardener ; and the dethronement 
 of the Viceroy could never satisfy those who had really 
 disliked the King's law. King and law must go too.
 
 200 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 The Catholic Church, however, is one thing, Catholics 
 are another. If the Church herself be not bigoted, 
 unless it be bigotry to affirm truth and deny all that is 
 logically inconsistent with truth, are Catholics bigoted ? 
 It would be a large assertion to say that all are not, 
 that none ever has been. There may be some who 
 find it easier to be bigoted than to follow the Church's 
 counsels of perfection; simpler to perceive beams in 
 other eyes than to pluck mere motes out of their own. 
 As long as men are men, charity will be more difficult 
 than criticism. 
 
 But are Catholics in the main more bigoted than 
 Protestants or unbelievers ? Is a Catholic more apt to 
 dislike and distrust, decry and belittle another man 
 simply because he is not a Catholic, than a Protestant 
 or unbeliever is to mislike, mistrust, misery, and mis- 
 prize a man because he is a Catholic ? In that is sheer 
 and real bigotry. How do the facts stand ? Of course 
 the answer must depend on experience, and everyone's 
 experience is not the same. Each man must recall his 
 own before he can reply. My own is this : I have met 
 with very few bigoted Catholics in the sense in which, I 
 take it, real bigotry lies. Indeed, I may truly say that 
 I have met none. 
 
 One may meet Catholics who know very little of the 
 best sort of non-Catholics, and, out of lack of experi- 
 ence, are inclined to lump all Protestants together as 
 little better than non-believers. It being perfectly true 
 of many Protestants that they believe very little of 
 Protestantism itself it is quite true to say that its 
 ultimate logic is unbelief; but many decent people are 
 better than their logic they conclude that no Pro- 
 testant believes much. That is a mistake, and experi- 
 ence would disabuse them of it : for many Protestants
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 201 
 
 still hold much Catholic doctrine. Such want of 
 experience may be quite innocent and honest, but it is 
 ignorance all the same. Ignorance, however, is not 
 bigotry. And such ignorance is more common among 
 Protestants than among Catholics. One finds it, among 
 them, not only in people who would naturally be ill- 
 informed, but in many whom one would suppose to 
 possess reasonable information. 
 
 Not many weeks ago the present writer made the 
 acquaintance ,of an elderly lady who would certainly 
 consider herself well-educated. It was almost an 
 adventure to her to find herself in friendly conversation 
 with a priest a servant of the Pope. And I think she 
 enjoyed it ; adventures did not occur frequently in her 
 somewhat monotonous life. She was so favourably 
 impressed that she was good enough, when the priest 
 was gone, to express some frank approbation. " But, 
 ah ! how sad," she wailed, " to think that he may not 
 believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ." 
 
 She was sure he would, if his terrible Church would 
 let him. Not that they had discussed religion at all ; 
 but he seemed so respectable. 
 
 For one Catholic rather ignorant as to what the 
 better sort of Protestants believe, one would find 
 hundreds of non-Catholics wholly ignorant of what it is 
 all Catholics believe. I have never met any Catholic 
 who would refuse to trust a man, to believe his word, 
 or to like him, if he were likeable, merely because he 
 happened to be a Protestant. And I have met, and 
 often meet, many Protestants who will not trust, or 
 believe, or like a Catholic, for no other reason whatever 
 than that he is one. These people call themselves 
 Christians, but they will not so distrust or dislike 
 a Jew, they have no misgivings about Parsees, or
 
 202 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 Buddhists, or Mussulmans. Atheists they revere for an 
 intellectual eminence that they take for granted. But 
 Catholics are unpardonable, because they are Catholics. 
 It does not alarm them if they perceive their sons 
 making friends with a Jewish peer's son, still less are 
 they perturbed if the Hebrew nobleman's son bestows 
 attention on one of their daughters. Nor are they 
 nervously apprehensive though their children develop 
 intimacies with Atheists, Mohammedans, Parsees, or 
 Buddhists. Why not ? Why is there so much fear of 
 Catholic influence, so little of any other ? 
 
 Why should it be only an amiable eccentricity if a 
 son or daughter turns Buddhist, and forswears meat 
 altogether, but so grievous an affront if he or she 
 turns Catholic and only eschews it on Fridays ? You 
 might suppose that a parent who every Sunday pro- 
 fesses to believe in the Holy Catholic Church would be 
 less grieved to see a child of his return to the faith once 
 held by all his boasted ancestors than to learn that 
 that child had abandoned all belief. But it is not 
 commonly the case. The agnosticism of a son in his 
 teens is treated as of small account : but if another 
 son, a year or two older or younger, should become a 
 Catholic, then there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
 and, not seldom, for him, ostracism from intercourse 
 with his brothers or sisters. 
 
 Is it really in these people's opinion " safer to believe 
 too little than to believe too much " ? Is it really of 
 the soul of their child they are thinking at all ? Do 
 they care sixpence for his soul ? Are they in honest 
 dread of its perdition ? If one believed that, one could 
 have a respect for their trouble : but if one believed 
 that, one could believe anything. Alas ! it is not 
 possible. If there were any such tender solicitude for
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 203 
 
 the soul of a son or daughter, then would they not 
 be more at ease when one lost faith altogether than 
 when the other went back to the faith of illustrious 
 forefathers ? It is sheer hatred of the Church, and 
 mean suspicion and paltry fear. 
 
 On what is such a fear, and dislike, and suspicion 
 grounded ? To a very large extent it is a question of 
 money. An ignoble reason, but, I believe, very often 
 the true one: these folk imagine that Catholics give 
 all their substance to the Church, and it is by no 
 means held a virtue in them. " It's no use giving 
 anything, or leaving anything, to him," they say, " he 
 would hand it all over to the Pope." 
 
 The Pope ought to be better off than he is. Catholics 
 are truly good about giving: rich and poor they are 
 more than generous in this sort for generosity is not 
 always self-denying : but I confess that, after four-and- 
 thirty years of Catholic life, I do not perceive any 
 violent tendency on the part of the Pope's spiritual 
 children to adopt him as their temporal heir. The 
 truth is, these people grudge fiercely anything given to 
 Catholic objects, and they are right in surmising that 
 a Catholic who cares for his Church will even deny 
 himself to support it. Once I heard a Protestant lady 
 complain piteously that, owing to her husband's elder 
 brother having joined the Church and become a priest, 
 all his money went to Catholic uses, and so following 
 to the unjust detriment of her husband. The facts 
 of the case happened to be well known to me. 
 
 The elder brother in question had a family estate, 
 and certain moneys that had come to him by inde- 
 pendent bequest to him personally. The whole income 
 of the paternal property he had, for over thirty years, 
 from the time he became a priest, made over to his
 
 204 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 younger brothers who had for thirty years enjoyed 
 an income that certainly would never have been theirs 
 had he remained a Protestant, married, and had 
 children in due course. At his death, the estate, 
 instead of passing to any child of his own, would go 
 to the husband of my complaining lady. As to the 
 income that had been left to him personally, and 
 would certainly never have been left to any other 
 member of his family, he held himself free to spend 
 it as he chose, and he chose to spend none of it upon 
 himself, but devoted it to pious uses. There was the 
 grievance : had he given it to his second brother, his 
 sister-in-law would have had more pin-money. No 
 human being would have complained, had he not 
 turned Catholic, had he lived to man's allotted spell in 
 selfish extravagance ; but in becoming a priest, in 
 giving his own means to support works of eternal 
 profit, he had behaved ill, and was another flagrant 
 instance of the mischief to families of having a 
 Catholic in them. 
 
 More recently a friend of mine joined the Church, 
 and as his only son was a child, he had him instructed 
 in his own faith, and received into the Church, too, 
 and presently sent him to a Catholic school. The 
 child's mother had not the least objection. But people 
 wholly unrelated to either father or mother flew to 
 arms, as if it were an unheard-of thing for a father to 
 bring his son up in his own faith ; people whose own 
 religious zeal found no other expression than in furious 
 quarrelling with their parish clergyman. Why should 
 they care ? Well, the small boy stands in succession 
 to an estate, and the Pope naturally would know that, 
 and have an eye to it. 
 
 What makes this sort of fussy bigotry the more
 
 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 205 
 
 annoying is that it is commonly betrayed by people 
 whom one cannot reasonably believe to have any 
 real religious susceptibilities whatever: they are not 
 scandalised by defective morality, profanity does not 
 shock them, unless it be of the clumsy sort that is 
 ill-bred; they often are without even the pretence of 
 any religious belief themselves, but that does not 
 disarm their hostility to one particular religious belief, 
 and only one, that of the Catholic Church. As they 
 have no faith in any future life, they cannot possibly 
 have any misgiving lest the eternal future of the con- 
 vert to Catholicity should be imperilled. They do not, 
 in fact, concern themselves with any such matter. 
 They think the Catholic religion a bad business for 
 this life, because they perceive there is so much of it : 
 and the less the better in their opinion. 
 
 They like a Sunday religion, or rather an every- 
 other Sunday religion. They dislike the all-the-week- 
 ness of Catholicism, and angrily resent its ubiquity, its 
 tiresome proneness to assert itself in daily life. The 
 religion, they think, of a well-bred person should be as 
 well concealed as his ribs, whereas that of a Catholic 
 is apt to show itself disconcertingly. 
 
 When a member of some wholly unreligious family 
 turns Catholic the other members are affronted ; and 
 I cannot help suspecting that one reason for this not 
 very logical attitude of theirs is this : they divine, by 
 an uneasy instinct, that a standard of life and conduct 
 is being set up in their neighbourhood the presence of 
 which will be a sting to religious indifference, a disagree- 
 able suggestion of contrast, a reminder of things they 
 find it convenient to forget. To the fixedly worldly 
 person nothing is less welcome than the intimate 
 society of some one whose very life and presence com-
 
 206 THE SHOE AND THE FOOT 
 
 pels them to a constant remembrance that there is 
 another world, and that the way to it is not all ease 
 and self-indulgence. 
 
 One of the great advantages of Protestantism, these 
 people feel, is that you can have as little of it as you 
 like. It is not, they surmise, quite so with Catholicism. 
 And they shrewdly suspect that the son or daughter, 
 brother or sister, of their own, who returns to the old 
 faith will not take so much trouble merely to be a bad 
 Catholic. It is the introduction of a markedly religious 
 element into their household that they resent.
 
 OF OLD WAYS 
 
 JEREMIAS vi. 16 
 
 WHEN Eliseus bade the Syrian go and wash in the 
 Jordan he was angry : not because the thing enjoined 
 was difficult, but because there was nothing striking in 
 it. And the world is like him. It can never under- 
 stand how great effects can follow on causes that seem 
 inadequate to them ; for it never wishes to recognise 
 the miraculous or the supernatural. St. Dominic's 
 answer to a heresy that seemed to threaten Christendom 
 was a string of beads ; and yet in those chains the dead 
 heresy was presently hanging hi the wind, like the 
 bones of a dead malefactor. 
 
 When St. Benedict perceived the rottenness of the 
 great Roman world of his day, he fled into the wilder- 
 ness out of its sight : an odd way, men would say, to 
 heal or help it. Yet he was an apostle, and his apos- 
 tolate long outlived himself, and brought to the feet of 
 Christ nations far beyond the frontiers of the Roman 
 power. That apostolate was of a sort that, to the 
 materially-minded, appeared then, and appears now, 
 wholly unfitted to the task before it; for it was not 
 one of loud speech, nor of bustling interference. Its 
 essential feature was silence and thought. 
 
 Neither of those things are more popular now than 
 they were fourteen hundred years ago. Even with 
 some Catholics they are unpopular, There are, nowa-
 
 208 OF OLD WAYS 
 
 days, plenty of Catholics who imagine, and even say, 
 that contemplative religion is unsuited to our time as 
 there were Catholics in St. Benedict's time who mis- 
 cried him, and saw no sense or use in his methods ; who 
 deemed him egoistic, selfish, almost crazy. The atti- 
 tude of those contemporaries of Benedict I take to 
 have been this : here, they urged, is a world half-pagan, 
 how can you convert it by hiding yourself from it in 
 the glens of the hills or on the top of precipitous 
 mountains ? Every man with a zeal for religion whom 
 you draw to your side is a preacher silenced, a worker 
 lulled into idleness. You are God's thief, who are 
 stealing from His apostolate the very men whom it 
 needs. 
 
 And that is precisely what many who are Catholics, 
 and not unzealous in their fashion, say or think now. 
 They can realise no fashion but their own. In a 
 very noisy, very irritable, very shallow, and intensely 
 materialistic age, they cannot perceive that they them- 
 selves are infected with its microbe. They do indeed 
 desire the conversion of the world; but only by a 
 noise as loud as its own, by counter-irritants, and very 
 shallow expedients, and by material efforts, can they 
 conceive the possibility of anything being done. They 
 do not indeed say, and we must not discredit them 
 by supposing that they mean, that prayer is of little 
 account ; but the only kind of prayer they understand 
 is that which many of those they would convert admit 
 also the prayer of demand, or intercession. And it 
 does not seem unfair to surmise that prayer, in their 
 estimation, is of far less consequence than action and 
 speech. 
 
 The prayer of oblation, self-dedication, and of con- 
 templation, they are often disposed to belittle : even to
 
 OF OLD WAYS 209 
 
 miscall, as mediaeval and out of date, as they would say. 
 They cannot believe that Carthusian and Cistercian 
 monks or Carmelite nuns, behind the meek curtain of 
 their silence, are working for the conversion of England 
 and of the world. It is all too supernatural for them. 
 They can see only what is material, and hear only 
 voices as loud as their own : it slips their comprehen- 
 sion that God sees without eyes and hears without ears ; 
 that He hears when there is no crying or uplifting of 
 noisy talk in His Holy mountain, and sees oblations to 
 themselves invisible and, therefore, to them non-existent. 
 They cannot perceive that sacrifice is the highest 
 worship, and that the total sacrifice of self, in union 
 with the Eternal Sacrifice of the Master, is noblest 
 service. They are all Marthas, willing to complain of 
 Mary sitting to listen, while they run about. 
 
 This I take to be the effect of environment. There 
 is no Catholic boast truer than that of the identity of 
 the Church in all lands. The outer world is unable 
 to gainsay it, and they who mislike her love her no 
 more here than there. Somebody once asked what 
 there was in common between Cardinal Newman and 
 a Calabrian peasant. The answer is the Catholicity of 
 both. One was learned, the other might be ignorant ; 
 one was steeped in theology, the other was only born 
 heir to its inheritance; one was gifted with insight 
 into the grounds of faith, the other merely stood on 
 them. Nationality, taste, education, were widely dif- 
 ferent ; there was only one thing in common, but that 
 one thing was the thing that mattered most to each 
 of them that they were each of them Catholics. 
 
 I have knelt before the Blessed Sacrament with 
 a Hindu peasant on each side of me; a Hindu is far 
 less like a European than a Calabrian is like an English- 
 
 o
 
 210 OF OLD WAYS 
 
 man; but in one thing we were simply the same, in 
 being both of us converts and both Catholics. 
 
 I have stood in St. Peter's when, in a late autumn 
 afternoon, fifty thousand pilgrims showed like a dark 
 shadow on its floor, and only high up, hundreds of 
 feet above our heads, long yellow shafts of light 
 seemed caught hi a mesh of gold ; the crowd was 
 of many nations and many tongues, of conflicting 
 political aims and interests ; the wise, maybe, and the 
 unwise, lettered and unlearned, the tender and the 
 rough, the refined and the coarse. Then, from the 
 great chapel, where Sixtus and Julius lie before the 
 Blessed Sacrament for ever, came forth a procession, 
 not striking by force of numbers, but striking in all 
 besides. A soldier-group, that seemed ending a march 
 started in the Renaissance, tall, stalwart, manly, erect, 
 strong in all the gracious strength of youth ; a group 
 of prelates, in princely purple; courtiers in grave 
 Spanish dress, sedately black; more soldiers, and, in 
 their midst, a carrying-chair closely shut, whose occu- 
 pant the people could not yet see. Slowly, to the 
 bottom of the shadowy great church, the procession 
 moved down, and there the chair gave up its burden, 
 and the old, old man that had sat hidden within it 
 crept forth and took his seat in another, like a throne, 
 resting on a broad, flat stage that now was raised on to 
 men's shoulders, so that in the dim light the bent white 
 figure could at last be seen. 
 
 Then, in all the packed crowd, for a moment was a 
 hush, like a gasp ; and then a rustle, as when a gust 
 shakes the forest, and all the black mass was whitened 
 with a flutter like snow, but that it was flung upward ; 
 and one great cry, in a hundred tongues, broke, like a 
 moan or a sigh at first, and burst into such acclaim as
 
 OF OLD WAYS 211 
 
 gripped the heart and made the ears swim and tingle 
 that heard only a single word : " The Pope ! " 
 
 But that one word, like one seal upon an inviolable 
 treaty of union, made all these strangers brothers; 
 each other's speech they could not understand, but 
 one thing they understood, the name that means 
 Father. They were all his children; gathered from 
 the four winds of God, for one supreme moment they 
 were all at home. For they were there, and he was 
 there, and it was his house, and theirs, too. Diverse as 
 they were, in colour and speech and race, in a hundred 
 human warring interests, his blessing falling on them 
 made them all one ; for the only thing that mattered, 
 then and there, was the one thing shared equally by 
 all : that they were all Catholics. 
 
 Ah ! yes, the Church of God is one. " My perfect 
 one is but one," sings the divine spouse to her. But, 
 for all that, her feet are set in many lands, and her 
 children are scattered up and down the earth. She is 
 divine, they are human ; and human things press upon 
 them and affect them. 
 
 The Church is not less one that these children of 
 hers are so different, each from other; her oneness is 
 the more amazing. Let us say again that the world 
 itself is sullenly aware of it, and hisses against that 
 wall of unity, never daring to hope that, like the walls 
 of Jericho, it will fall at its voice. 
 
 I never forget that essential unity for a moment : 
 but neither should we forget the natural influences 
 that, unheeded, might end in tearing us, ourselves, 
 down out of our citadel of unity. Against the Church 
 hell's gates shall not prevail, but against you and me 
 they may prevail, unless we take good heed. She shall 
 be always one: let us mind ourselves, that in every-
 
 OF OLD WAYS 
 
 thing we are one with her. There is, then, the influence 
 of environment to beware of. 
 
 For centuries English Catholics have been a tiny 
 islet in a sea, first Protestant and Puritan, and now 
 more and more pagan. Has it had no influence ? To 
 me it seems that the effect is double ; on the one hand 
 there is the effect of repulsion : we have suffered more 
 from outside than they have in Latin countries, and 
 naturally we feel a deeper repugnance and antagonism, 
 a sterner resentment, even. We are more self-conscious 
 of the presence of alien forces. Latin Catholics have 
 not needed to be constantly thinking of non-Catholic 
 scrutiny ; they have not suffered from persecution and 
 libel at the hands of men professing the name of Christ. 
 The sword has not entered into their flesh, as it has 
 into ours ; to them Protestantism is not much more 
 than a name for a thing to them merely silly and 
 incomprehensible. We think too much of it: we are 
 over-sensitive of its opinion, its criticism, its judgment, 
 and its odious comparisons. And so this first effect 
 merges to the other. 
 
 A certain puritan tinge results. We know that 
 puritan standards have nothing to do with us : never- 
 theless we would like to disarm them. We are not 
 amenable to alien criticism, but we would fain silence 
 it. It is not in affairs of faith that this affects us, but 
 in matters of method ; though in matters even of faith 
 some are timidly anxious to make such presentations 
 as may render points of doctrine less obnoxious to 
 those who have none. Such timidity, like all timidity, 
 is ten times more dangerous than plain courage. 
 
 But it is in matters not of faith but of method that, 
 as it seems to me, this nervous wistfulness to forestall 
 a criticism that need not at all concern us most
 
 OF OLD WAYS 213 
 
 manifests itself. That we should earnestly desire the 
 salvation of all souls is a part of the alphabet of 
 religion. But the first letter in it is the salvation of 
 our own. That, as it would seem, is not the Protestant 
 counsel of perfection: everybody else's soul should 
 come before it ; and something before that the phil- 
 anthropy that is specially concerned with material 
 betterment. So that non-Catholic piety is, before all 
 things, utilitarian. 
 
 Now, Catholic piety is wholly different, for it rests 
 not on the theory of the rights of man, but on faith in 
 the indefeasible rights of God. I cannot help thinking 
 that in some there is an uneasy feeling that unless we 
 copy every species of non-Catholic activity, we are idle, 
 and falling behind in the race. With Protestantism we 
 have no race ; we start from a different point, and do 
 not follow the same course. 
 
 That we should be active, industrious, energetic, not 
 sparing ourselves for others, is not merely well, it is pre- 
 understood. But I cannot perceive why every branch 
 of non-Catholic activity need have a counterpart of 
 ours. If non-Catholics twitted us with not having such 
 a society, or such an institute, our answer might be, 
 "We have seven Sacraments. Where are yours?" 
 Our object is not merely the promotion of comfortable- 
 ness here, but the attainment of bliss ineffable here- 
 after. Till our object is the same our methods may 
 well be different. 
 
 I am making no plea for Catholic laziness, or indif- 
 ference, but only asking that natural activities should 
 not make us belittle or forget supernatural means to 
 supernatural ends. It is not true that the Church 
 must fit herself to a new age : her fitness for every age 
 is part of her inherent Divine being. God knows
 
 214 OF OLD WAYS 
 
 everything, but He knows nothing of accommodation ; 
 He is the self-same, and His Church reflects Him. A 
 Church which fussily attitudinised to suit the twentieth 
 century could never be the Church of any other. 
 
 Does the twentieth century need a St. Benedict less 
 than the fifth ? The cave at Subiaco was an odd- 
 seeming cure for the huge Eoman world ; but it 
 cured it, not by a new gospel, but by the old. Its 
 silence was a reminder of the silence of Christ during 
 thirty out of three and thirty years. To do God's 
 work on earth it taught the primary necessity of 
 thought of Him in heaven. This is no quietism. Was 
 St. Ignatius a quietist f ? Are the Jesuits quietists ? 
 Yet, is there any Order that, in its practice as in its 
 theory, makes more of meditation ? 
 
 The shallow and irritable vulgarity of criticism 
 would discern in Benedict one spirit, in Ignatius another. 
 A thousand years divided them, nothing else. And 
 across all those years of change an indestructible bridge 
 stretches to unite them the theory of the highest 
 prayer : contemplation of God.
 
 SCIENTLE INIMICI 
 
 IN the last of these essays incidental and brief allusion 
 was made to that identity of Catholicism with itself all 
 over the world which causes it to be equally disliked 
 and suspected by the same sort of people everywhere. 
 That identity with itself not only in all places, but in 
 all ages also, is illustrated by their treatment of its 
 history. Those unmistakable features which are re- 
 cognisable everywhere to-day they do not fail to 
 perceive as distinctive of it from the beginning, and 
 when they compose history, or survey it, they are 
 always confronted by the same qualities, principles, 
 methods, and obstinacies in the Church which arouse 
 their opposition and animosity now. It is obvious that 
 when they are assailing contemporary Catholicity, and 
 when they are sitting in judgment on the Church in 
 other ages, they are assailing and judging the same 
 thing. Their enemy of the present day is identical 
 with the historical enemy whose presence on the stage 
 of past times they so fiercely resent. 
 
 There are now, as there have been almost from the 
 beginning of Christianity, those who claim the name of 
 Catholic, but are not in communion with the visible 
 Head of the Church on earth. It is certain that they 
 have never been regarded as Catholics by those who, 
 as outsiders altogether, are themselves unconcerned by 
 the claim : a Jew has nothing to do with the Church 
 but he is perfectly able to recognise its existence, and 
 
 215
 
 216 SCIENTI.E INIMICI 
 
 to know where it is : no Jew ever yet spoke of Catholics 
 and meant any but those who are under the Pope's 
 obedience : but a Jew believes in God, and there are 
 historians, sociologists, and what not, who believe in no 
 God, yet they are bitterly aware of the Catholic Church 
 as a pregnant historical fact, and none of them in 
 alluding to the Catholic Church has ever meant any 
 Church but that of which the Pope is the Head. 
 
 This identity of Catholicism with itself, in every 
 place and every period, makes it easy for those who 
 have a statement about it to formulate to do so with- 
 out reservation, whether the statement be eulogistic or 
 intended in accusation. 
 
 A Catholic writer who would say anything about 
 Protestantism is not in the same easy position. He 
 may, indeed, perceive one logical principle underlying 
 all Protestantism, as the principle of anarchy, which 
 was its mother and will be its daughter; but nothing 
 is less agreeable to Protestantism, or more alien from it, 
 than logic : and, so far as it continues to hold on to 
 Christianity at all, it does so chiefly by refusing to hold 
 hands with logic. But though this one principle of 
 anarchy may be discernible in all Protestantism, it can 
 never be a principle of union, but must, of its nature, 
 be one of disintegration and division. To say that all 
 Protestantism is united by an innate principle of 
 anarchy would be the same as saying that a house is 
 united by being divided against itself. And Protes- 
 tantism has no other common feature recognisable in 
 different countries and different periods : for to say that 
 it has always the common feature of antagonism and 
 rebellion against the Pope is only to say the same thing 
 over again. In the Pope Protestantism always and 
 everywhere perceived, and perceives, the embodiment
 
 SCIENTI.E INIMICI 217 
 
 of the principle of authority, with which that of 
 anarchy is incompatible. 
 
 Even at their birth English and Continental Protes- 
 tantism had little in common beyond this instinctive 
 recognition of the Pope as the arch-enemy. For in 
 England it was the great preoccupation of the new re- 
 ligion to seem as like the old as circumstances per- 
 mitted, and Continental Protestantism was eager to 
 get as far from Catholicity as might be consistent with 
 retaining the name of Christianity at all. Those who 
 engineered the Reformation-process in England were 
 willing that the people should go on thinking them- 
 selves Catholics ; for they wanted a national change, and 
 the people, as they well knew, wanted no change at all. 
 Foreign reformers, less sanguine of national results, 
 aimed more at individual conversions, and could be more 
 outspoken. Not that even foreign reformers followed 
 the same lines everywhere, either in doctrine or hi 
 externals. Some were still willing to mount on a spar 
 of wreckage and call it a visible Church, others wanted 
 no visible Church; some clung to one or two sacra- 
 ments, others would not hear of any; some had no 
 objection to bishops and priests, so long as they had no 
 essential use, and others were determined that every 
 man should be his own priest and his own pope. The 
 ineffable Knox brought his Protestantism from over- 
 seas, and Scottish national Protestantism hated English 
 Prelacy as venomously as it hated Romish papistry 
 itself. 
 
 But English Protestantism was never one and in- 
 divisible; that was a title reserved in petto for the 
 Republic that set up the goddess of Reason; or said 
 so, only Reason, knowing herself the daughter and 
 servant of God, would not act, and Folly clambered up
 
 218 SCIENTLE INIMICI 
 
 to masquerade upon the new and bloody altar in her 
 name. As soon as England found itself Protestant 
 it began chopping Protestantism for itself. Acts of 
 Parliament might have been necessary to make one 
 new religion, but without any Act of Parliament the 
 English felt themselves capable of inventing newer 
 religions for themselves. If the Pope had been in 
 the King's way, they found archbishops and bishops in 
 theirs. The Pope had claimed obedience as speaking 
 in God's name ; to yield religious obedience where no 
 particular claim was made was even more intolerable. 
 So the dragon's teeth sent up their rotten harvest. 
 All this is stale enough, and the restatement of it 
 is only made as being essential to what I want to 
 say next. 
 
 Protestantism being so diverse, the Catholic writer 
 who aims at being just and candid finds himself in 
 a difficulty. There is hardly anything he can say of 
 Protestantism which would be true of all sorts of 
 Protestants, and he desires to libel no one. All non- 
 Catholics who remain, or think they remain, Christians, 
 are in fact protestant ; this is true even of schismatics 
 who hold nearly all Catholic truth, and have sacra- 
 ments and a priesthood. It is taken as granted by the 
 world at large, that never would speak of " Orthodox" 
 Greeks or Russians as Catholics. 
 
 But many things a Catholic writer might say of 
 Protestantism he would not mean of schismatics, like 
 the Greeks, nor even of sections in the Anglican 
 Church. Among these latter he knows well there are 
 many who hold much of the Catholic faith, as there 
 are many more who hold to very little of revealed 
 Christianity of any colour. This being premised, it 
 will be understood with what limitations we say that,
 
 SCIENTI.E INIMICI 219 
 
 just as Protestantism has loved to accuse Catholicism 
 of bigotry, so has it loved to fling other stones and 
 heavier. 
 
 There are certain favourites, of which we may men- 
 tion three. The Church is accused (1) of being obscur- 
 antist, hating knowledge, and desperately eager to hide 
 herself in a sort of giant's coat of darkness ; (2) of being 
 immoral; (3) of being untruthful. Of these three 
 accusations we have only space in this paper to speak 
 of one. 
 
 And first, then, that she is obscurantist, an enemy to 
 knowledge, and desirous of fleeing to ignorance as a 
 last refuge and forlorn hope where her saints are 
 hidden by fifties in a cave. It is held proved that she 
 is obscurantist when she cannot prove that she has 
 flung herself into the arms of a new theory in science 
 or sociology; this she is very backward in trying to 
 prove. She prefers waiting, in case the new theory 
 should itself be disproved by a newer yet ; and she has 
 a tiresome habit of refusing to receive the ambassadors 
 of a brilliant conjecture as though they represented an 
 impregnable fact. She did not begin last week; and 
 in the course of nearly two thousand years she has 
 witnessed the arrival of a good many new theories. 
 They mostly announced themselves pretty loudly, 
 without any painful diffidence, and she has had time 
 to note their departure, though they withdrew more 
 silently, with no definiteness of leave-taking. "We 
 have come ; you had better look to yourself, madam," 
 they said, with some asperity. But they seldom have 
 declared, "We are retiring, madam, and leaving you 
 where we found you." 
 
 Obscurantism is darkening up the light, and a lot of 
 new rags can shut it out wonderfully for a time : when
 
 220 SCIENTI.E INIMICI 
 
 wind and weather have torn and worn them to shreds, 
 the light is found to have been behind all the time. 
 
 She is accused of hating knowledge because she fears 
 it. One thing she admits : that she is sure God is 
 the source of all knowledge, and that that cannot be 
 knowledge which begins by saying, "I am here to 
 knock God to pieces." Fear is the apprehension of 
 evil, and she is very ready to fear that which comes 
 threatening the greatest of all evils to her conceivable. 
 She has no fears for God; He does not stand or fall 
 by man's belief in Him; He is not more omnipotent 
 when His creatures confess His power, nor less Almighty 
 when they are blind to His might. He is not like 
 earthly kings, whose sovereignty is lost when their 
 subjects are lost. But though she has no fear of God's 
 losing anything, she fears lest men should lose every- 
 thing ; and all is lost to them when their belief in Him 
 is lost. The Eternal Monarch can be deprived of 
 nothing ; but if His subjects renounce their allegiance 
 it is they who are exiled, homeless, beggared, hopeless. 
 
 This attitude of the Church is always misunderstood 
 or misrepresented. It is glibly assumed that she fears 
 knowledge as her own natural enemy, and on her own 
 account ; that she is aware of her hold on men being 
 rooted in men's ignorance, and therefore obstinately 
 and malignantly opposed to the spread of knowledge, 
 because it would narrow her boundaries and emancipate 
 the minds of her subjects from their slavish deference ; 
 because, in other words, she is guiltily conscious that 
 the spread of knowledge is the antidote to priestcraft. 
 
 Those who bring this accusation choose to regard the 
 Church as a human invention, or an inhuman. They 
 never have enough of the critical faculty to bear in 
 mind that she regards herself as a Divine institution,
 
 SCIENTLE INIMICI 
 
 with no independent aims at all, and no hand of her 
 own to play; existing not for herself but for Him 
 whose earthly vicegerent she is. When anything 
 novel or unproved is presented to her cognisance, for 
 examination and judgment, she tries it not by the 
 subtle, intricate considerations by which they suppose 
 her to be influenced, but by one so simple that they 
 refuse to believe in it. How, she asks, will this stand 
 one plain test ? Is it from God ? If so it must be 
 for God. That which is not for Him is against Him ; 
 and that which is against Him is against man, who 
 is not independent of Him, but dependent on Him. 
 Man's interest, in her simple view, cannot be served by 
 anything directed against Him. This is all her craft. 
 There is nothing subtle in it, and nothing secret. It 
 is not a late refinement of policy, but has been her 
 single principle from first to last. 
 
 If she has seemed antagonistic to some things called 
 knowledge, the antagonism has not been originated by 
 her, but provoked by those who spoke in its name, for 
 they have been at pains to assert that the new know- 
 ledge and the old God were incompatible. If that be 
 so, she says, the new knowledge must be ignorance; 
 and, in opposing it, she takes arms not for darkness, 
 but for light. And this she does not as in trepidation 
 for her God, who has nothing to lose, for He can lose 
 nothing, but because she is the Divinely appointed 
 custodian of the eternal interests of men, who may 
 lose everything, should she suffer them to be robbed 
 in silence. In such a robbery she can be no accom- 
 plice. 
 
 This singleness and simplicity of view gives her a 
 different judgment as to ignorance from that held by 
 her critics. In ignorance, as in knowledge, i there are
 
 222 SCIENTI^: INIMICI 
 
 many degrees ; but to her the deepest ignorance is that 
 of essentials, and the most essential thing of all is God. 
 She is not, therefore, ashamed to own that, in her view, 
 a scientific discoverer who has undiscovered God, is 
 more ignorant than a peasant who, if he knows little 
 else, is as sure of God's existence as he is of his own. 
 Nor does she shrink from confessing that she would 
 liever have men believe in the Creator with but a partial 
 understanding of all the marvels of creation, rather 
 than that they should accumulate whole encyclopaedias 
 of theoretic explanations of created nature and lose 
 sight of the Creator behind the mass accumulated. 
 Her refusal to rush out and evacuate her position at 
 every summons does not spring from a jealous dread 
 of selfish loss, but from an impregnable certainty that 
 God is indestructible, and that they who would destroy 
 Him are dooming themselves to destruction. It is her 
 business to keep her children from ruin. Of selfish 
 loss she takes wonderfully small account. Material 
 loss she constantly suffers rather than suffer one 
 principle to be relinquished. That is why Popes have 
 died in exile, and the Pope at this moment stands with 
 only enough of earth for his feet, but his head in 
 heaven. That is why the Church in England is not the 
 Church of England, and the Church of France exists 
 not by the State's help, but in spite of the State's bitter 
 endeavour to strangle her. 
 
 Material loss she faces, and has always faced, with a 
 magnificent courage, founded not on human valour but 
 on Divine faith : it is spiritual loss she will not agree 
 to. For herself she is quite fearless ; in time she knows 
 herself indestructible. The gates of hell cannot prevail 
 against her ; she has the promise, and she never forgets 
 Who made it, though men forget. But there is no
 
 SCIENTI^E INIMICI 223 
 
 promise that those gates shall not prevail against men, 
 and men are her charge, as they are God's creatures 
 and subjects. It is her business to save them from 
 ruin. If there comes something calling itself know- 
 ledge, and announcing its errand to be the emancipa- 
 tion of men from belief in God, it is her function to 
 warn them, and to make no treaty with their confessed 
 foe, till the only terms of agreement are offered that in 
 her Master's name she can accept. 
 
 It is not she, but the soi-disant knowledge that 
 declares the war. All real knowledge is from Him, 
 she knows; Lignum crucis arbor scientice. But she 
 cannot forget that former tree whose bitter fruit the 
 red juice of the cross healed, and the false promise 
 made by the enemy: Eat of it, and Man shall be as 
 God and know all things ; and man ate, and his first 
 fruit of knowing all things was to think that behind a 
 bush he could hide himself from God. 
 
 The last tree with the old name is worse than the 
 first. Adam's eating made him silly enough to hide 
 from omniscience behind a few green leaves, it did 
 not make him silly enough to deny God's presence 
 altogether. They who feed on the gaudy fruit of the 
 new tree, in the world-old lust of knowing all things, 
 run about and cry that there is no God, and, naked, 
 they are not ashamed. They prate of law ; the whole 
 universe, they say, is the growth of inexorable law; 
 and they say, in the same breath, there is no lawgiver ; 
 as if any law could make itself and force itself to be 
 obeyed. The first Adam lost the garden and had to 
 wring reluctant fruits out of the slow soil with sweat 
 and secular toil; these new Adams run out into the 
 desert of themselves, to fill their hands with its hot 
 sand, and cry out to those in the garden to come
 
 224 SCIENTI.E INIMICI 
 
 thence and eat with them; and all the while the 
 sands themselves are running out of their clutching 
 grasp, Time watching with dry smile how Eternity 
 draws on. Shall we leave the garden for Fools' 
 Paradise ? We know what we believe, ye believe ye 
 know not what. 
 
 Is it ignorance to hold fast the Church's serene 
 unearthly certitude, where one clear voice says always 
 one sure thing, rather than run out, like wanton babes, 
 to play at bursting bubbles of conjecture ? The most 
 brilliant conjecture may be false : if it turn out right, 
 it has but caught a little truth upon the wing. Where 
 it arrives we started. Can we not bear to be called 
 fools for the sake of being on the side of Omniscience ? 
 
 Do let us understand this : the Church's call to 
 obedience is no invitation to take our stand in the 
 ranks of ignorance, but to resist the most destructive 
 of all ignorance. God knows all things, and it is 
 on His side she asks us to be. He has brought us 
 into His citadel of light and peace, and we can say, 
 " One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see." 
 Are we to jump overboard from Peter's ship of safety 
 because a man comes drifting by on a bobbing plank 
 he has found for himself in the waste of waters ? 
 
 For my part I do not believe in the sincerity of this 
 accusation brought against the Church that she is 
 obscurantist, hating and fearing knowledge, and find- 
 ing her Adullam in the cave of ignorance whither those 
 of mean parts may resort to her. Her history too 
 flagrantly gives the lie to it : her fostering of learning 
 and letters, when there was none else to keep learning 
 and letters alive, her encouragement of scholars, her 
 rewards to them, her motherly pride in them. The 
 whole foundation of letters was laid in Catholic times
 
 SCIENTIJE INIMICI 225 
 
 by Catholic hands, the Church guiding and blessing 
 their work. When such a word as University is used, 
 the very idea brought to the mind is not of a modern 
 degree-shop, but of one of those seats of immemorial 
 learning that sprang up in ages of Catholic faith and 
 acquired prestige from the intellects trained in them by 
 the Church, sent to them by the Church, and taught 
 in them by masters that the Church herself had taught. 
 
 This is so true that it has acquired the flatness of a 
 truism. But no one honestly forgets it. When it is 
 ignored, it is ignored on purpose. 
 
 Just as the Church is accused of bigotry by those who 
 are most bigoted themselves, so is she accused of hating 
 knowledge and wishing to keep knowledge from the 
 people, by those whose own aim it is to deprive the people 
 of the one essential knowledge the absence of which is 
 impregnable ignorance. The accusation is too passion- 
 ate : it protests too much. It betrays a shrill note of 
 envy and jealousy. The unbelievers have no Aquinas, 
 agnosticism can have no pope, for definitions of un- 
 certainty cannot be infallible, or even claim infalli- 
 bility; though unnumbered antipopes of agnosticism 
 bid the people take ship with them, on a stormy 
 voyage, for the dull and bleak haven of indecision. 
 
 It is their instinctive sense that they have so little to 
 promise that makes them bitter in their envy. Life is 
 not over-jocund. " See how dark the present is," they 
 say, " and your Church has only Hope to offer." And, 
 in place of it, they have only despair to propose as sub- 
 stitute. It is not the Church's ignorance that really angers 
 them, but her serene knowledge : conjecture based on a 
 mosaic of ever-shifting human discovery cannot forgive 
 certainty founded on divine revelation. It is not really 
 the Church that disconcerts them but the Holy Ghost. 
 
 p
 
 226 SCIENTI^E INIMICI 
 
 Are they convertible ? All things are possible with 
 God ; and many of them have been converted. Many 
 more will be, but not by any homo30pathic cure, not by 
 conceding small doses of the very poisons that infect 
 them. It is not true that the best way of fighting the 
 devil is by borrowing his own weapons. God has his 
 own armoury and needs no borrowing. Read St. Paul's 
 description of the whole armour of God, and see how 
 little condescendence is in it, and how sublime faith. 
 If we should fail in this new struggle it would not be 
 because we had neglected to arm ourselves with new 
 weapons, but because we had neglected the old. Un- 
 faith is never cured by timid advances to meet it half- 
 way on its own ground. With what a little pebble 
 David felled Goliath : our danger would lie in despising 
 the little pebbles ourselves, and consenting to cumber 
 ourselves with an armour like the Philistine's. The 
 saints conquered heresies by being saints; but we 
 think it easier to learn the wisdom of the unbeliever 
 than to spell out the slow alphabet of sanctity. It will 
 be by what we are, not by what we know, that we shall 
 convert the Church's modern foes, if we ever do con- 
 vert them. 
 
 Can we not be patient, like our Mother the Church ? 
 We can never force God's hand, nor teach Him to do 
 things our way. May we not, we who are so clever, be 
 content to be thought fools this little while ? 
 
 Is the folly of the Cross a new idea ? And must 
 we be greater than the Master : is it not enough on his 
 own warning that the servant should be as his Lord ? 
 And yet He will no more call us servants but friends. 
 The friendship of God should console us for the little 
 stone of folly flung from outside, though it be aimed at 
 the heads we make so much of.
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 IN the last of these papers we spoke of three, among 
 many, of the stones flung at the Church by the more 
 wanton and unscrupulous, or the more ignorant and 
 stupid of her ill-wishers. There are many entirely 
 without faith themselves, or without that degree of 
 faith that leads to recognition of the Church's super- 
 natural character and divine mission, who throw no 
 such stones. Their attitude is not always lacking in 
 respect: and, if there must be a supernatural religion 
 at all, they would as lief have the Catholic faith as any, 
 though it be obviously the most supernatural of all ; 
 and they are ready to admit the existence of much that 
 is noble in her history, great wisdom and instinct in 
 her dealings with men, and a splendid philanthropy 
 in her most typical children, as, for instance, in her 
 religious of the active kind, and even in some of her 
 saints. 
 
 Those who do malign the Church are not particularly 
 consistent in the charges they bring, nor are the charges 
 commonly formulated with any great precision. They 
 are apt to take the shape of vague generalisations, or of 
 ill-natured innuendo. 
 
 So, when the Church is miscalled as immoral, all 
 sorts of different charges are meant, ranging from flat 
 and coarse accusations of immorality in her priesthood, 
 to the insinuation that high morality is not consistent 
 with the submission of the individual conscience to a 
 
 227
 
 228 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 human and absolute authority interposed between it 
 and God. 
 
 As to the first of these sorts of charges, it is very 
 wholesale in character, and is apt to assume that 
 Catholic priests are of defective morality chiefly because 
 of the Church's discipline as to clerical celibacy. The 
 Church perversely insists on an unmarried priesthood, 
 and the priesthood revenges itself, so to speak, by a 
 shocking laxity in morals. Such an accusation pro- 
 ceeds from a very ugly pessimism, which really assumes 
 the impossibility of continence, and throws a somewhat 
 lurid light on the mental purity of those who bring it. 
 So far from proving them to be the superior persons 
 they figure as, it destroys the value of their opinion by 
 the intimation it gives of their inability to conceive a 
 very high standard of morality. A perfectly honest 
 man is the last to accuse others of dishonesty : the man 
 who shows us that he believes everybody is sure to 
 pilfer or peculate who is short of money, and has the 
 means of helping himself out of other people's pockets, 
 we infallibly perceive to be himself of a low standard 
 of rectitude. His uncharitableness is not only stupid 
 and narrow, but mean, and we are warned not to trust 
 him. The readiness to bring certain charges labels the 
 person who has it. It amounts in the case we are 
 dealing with to the unconscious confession : " I, if I were 
 unmarried, would be loose all unmarried persons are. 
 The Catholic clergy are unmarried, therefore we may be 
 pretty sure they are of lax morality." 
 
 These gentry have very short memories for what is 
 good, and obstinately tenacious memories for what is 
 bad. The history of the Church is nearly two thousand 
 years old, and no one denies that there have been 
 scandals. That they would come we were warned by
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 229 
 
 the Founder of the Church; they are not forgotten 
 and never will be, so long as there are people in the 
 world whose idea of a nose is of a thing to be kept 
 fixed at the leaks in a sewer. But it is odd to re- 
 member that such scandals occurred oftenest when the 
 Church's discipline of celibacy was most disregarded: the 
 Popes who strove hardest to enforce it did most to 
 maintain and revive the highest standard of sacerdotal 
 perfection. 
 
 At the Reformation the new sects finally cast off the 
 discipline of clerical celibacy : we are not here pointing 
 to any connection between the apostasy of the heretical 
 priests with their violation of celibacy, we merely 
 mention a boasted fact. At the same time the retention 
 of the discipline of celibacy became a special note of 
 the Church that held to its obedience, and remained 
 Catholic. Since that time, then, the Catholic priest- 
 hood has been notoriously celibate : the reformed clergy 
 notoriously married. Has the advantage, on the side 
 of purity since, been clearly with the latter ? 
 
 We do not wish to throw stone for stone. We have 
 no desire to brand the reformed clergy as immoral; 
 but have scandals been more common and notorious 
 among us than among them ? It must be remembered 
 that, owing to our much more stringent ecclesiastical 
 supervision, and to the watchfulness of our people 
 themselves, a scandalous priest is singularly unlikely 
 to escape detection and disgrace. And in England such 
 detection is followed by a gloating publicity. Yet, for 
 one such miserable shame to us, do we not see in 
 newspapers very many cases of outrageous scandals 
 among clergy who do not belong to the Church ? It is 
 a hateful subject, and we have no intention of labouring 
 the point.
 
 230 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 As to the old and very stale accusation of monks and 
 nuns, that also proceeds generally from mouths that 
 plainly prove their own extreme uncleanness ; when, in 
 place of an obscene rhetoric, judicial investigation is 
 attempted, the result is most disappointing to those 
 who would hope to see the blackest case made out. 
 Candid witnesses confess that no evidence is forthcoming 
 to justify those who were eagerly alert to detect general 
 corruption in the body of religious, men or women, as a 
 pretext for the dissolution of the abbeys and monasteries 
 whose property Henry VIII had determined to steal. 
 Great Catholic historians, like Abbot Gasquet, have 
 done incalculable service to truth in this matter, but 
 they do not stand alone; and judicially-minded his- 
 torians on the non-Catholic side have only supported 
 their testimony. 
 
 The accusation of the religious, like that of the celibate 
 priesthood, is, we must say again, not an evidence of 
 Catholic corruption, but a most patent and most shame- 
 ful proof of the prurience of them who have revelled 
 in it. "Escaped" nuns and "escaped" monks grow 
 rich on filth, or remain poor. An itching prurience 
 fills the halls where they fabulate charges ; and the 
 halls will not fill again for the same speakers unless the 
 foul appetite is fed. It is a crusade of dirt. 
 
 Those who take arms in this crusade are evidences of 
 the untruth of what they pretend that the Church 
 is less moral than themselves. They label themselves 
 unclean, and the sound of their bell is a warning that 
 lepers are about. They cannot believe in a lofty ideal, 
 and by their inability to conceive of the highest standard 
 they show us how great is the fall from Catholic 
 practice to Protestant theory, from Catholic purity to 
 Protestant respectability; for it is quite respectable
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 231 
 
 to take your wife and your daughters to listen in a 
 crowded hall to a man or woman talking the most 
 unbridled beastliness. 
 
 Against all this accusation of low morality in practice, 
 stands the huge bulk of the sanctity of the saints. To 
 leave alone altogether " primitive " saints who were as 
 like modern Protestants as Primitive Methodists are 
 like the Archbishop of Canterbury let us concern 
 ourselves only with modern saints, i.e. with those whom 
 the Church has canonised since Dr. Martin Luther went 
 to claim his crown from the Lamb, followed whitherso- 
 ever He goeth by the hundred and forty and four 
 thousand which were undefiled with women, redeemed 
 from among men, the first-fruits to God and the Lamb. 
 
 We take those post-Reformation saints not because 
 they differed in any way from pre-Reformation saints, 
 but simply because they belonged to the Church against 
 which the reformed sects were in arms after the de- 
 fection of the latter : they were " only Roman Catholic 
 saints." At what precise period saints began to be 
 only Roman Catholic saints we are not in a position 
 to say, for we never have been told ; it must have been 
 a long while before the Reformation, as St. Dominic 
 was obviously a Roman Catholic saint, or he would not 
 have founded the Inquisition ; so must St. Francis, or he 
 would not have had the stigmata ; so must St. Gregory 
 the Great, as he certainly was not Pope without know- 
 ing it. But by the time the Reformation arrived the 
 whole business of sanctity had become exclusively 
 Roman Catholic : the reformers would have no more 
 saints and they never have had. The Roman Catholic 
 saints were peculiarly offensive for two reasons : because 
 they were so typically Roman Catholic, and because 
 Roman Catholics worship them. St. Ignatius of Loyola,
 
 232 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis Borgia were not only 
 Roman Catholic, they were much worse: they were 
 Jesuits. So were many other post-Reformation saints. 
 St. Charles Borromeo was a cardinal. St. Theresa was 
 a nun, and not even a nun of an " active and useful 
 order " ; and so with hundreds of the post-Reformation 
 saints: they were Popes, or Cardinals, or Jesuits, or 
 monks, or nuns, or traffickers with such. In a word, 
 they were deadly Catholic. They were more than 
 typically Catholic, they were the quintessence and 
 sublimation of Catholicity. The Protestants disapprove 
 of them on that very account. Were they immoral ? 
 Was their standard low and their practice lax ? Was 
 it by reason of their defective virtue that they received 
 the honours of canonisation ? 
 
 These post-Reformation Roman Catholic saints, if 
 they represent anything, represent the Catholic ideal of 
 morality carried into perfect practice. And by their 
 practice anyone who read their lives, and knew nothing 
 else of Catholic standards of morality, might understand 
 what the Catholic standard is. These people realised 
 it. These canonised Popes, like St. Pius V., cardinals 
 like St. Charles, Jesuits like Francis Xavier, nuns like 
 Theresa of Jesus, monks like St. John of God, illustrate 
 in real life what the Roman Catholic Church inculcates 
 as the rule of Christian life to be aimed at. I can 
 understand an Exeter Hall devotee disliking St. Pius V. 
 uncommonly, but I cannot understand any reasonable 
 person rating the morality of an " escaped " monk, with 
 his mouth full of dirt and his eye full of obscene 
 innuendo, higher than that of the austere Dominican. 
 
 The post-Reformation saints do not appeal to the 
 reformed taste, because they are too Roman Catholic : 
 is it because the morality of those saints was too low ?
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 Or can it be because it was too high ? Common sense 
 must decide. A standard of ethics that prefers Dr. and 
 Mrs. Luther to St. Francis Xavier and St. Theresa, is so 
 eccentric that no sane argument can ever appeal to it, 
 or ever has appealed to it. Any who are capable of 
 venerating the apostate monk and nun must be incap- 
 able of appreciating real sanctity. But they are also 
 incapable of recognising a high standard of morals, and 
 the less they talk about morals the better. 
 
 The saints are objectionable to these persons not only 
 because they were so typically Roman Catholic which 
 we admit, but also because Roman Catholics " worship " 
 them. This we do not admit in the sense in which it 
 is meant ; and I cannot help thinking it a mistake when 
 we use the word in our sense without insisting on its 
 not being used as our accusers mean it. What these 
 people mean is that we worship the saints as only God 
 can be worshipped. That is nonsense: as much non- 
 sense as it would be to say that we consider the moon 
 hotter than the sun, and starlight more effectual in 
 ripening our crops than sunlight. The moon has no 
 light of her own, but only that reflection of his that the 
 sun lends her. She is much nearer to ourselves than 
 the sun, and we can gaze on her brilliance without 
 being blinded; nevertheless she is not the origin and 
 source of even that lesser light she casts down upon our 
 night ; it is only caught by her in the long immensity of 
 space and held there for us. She is the sun's witness, 
 and without him she would be as dark as ourselves on 
 a moonless night. Without the sun it would be all 
 night for us, and there would be no moon. 
 
 What these people can never understand is that our 
 veneration of saints is a perpetual witness to our adora- 
 tion of God. They are saints because He is God: if
 
 234 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 there were no God there would be no saints. Their 
 light is perfect in its kind and degree, lovely and of 
 ineffable purity and serenity, but it is all reflection ; 
 in the wild night of sin and human imperfection it 
 compels man to remember that there is God. The 
 world's bulk is between us and Him, but the sanc- 
 tity of the saints insists on our keeping in mind His 
 existence. 
 
 I am disposed to suspect that we are accused of wor- 
 shipping saints, as only God may be worshipped, because 
 they who bring the accusation have themselves but a 
 poor and mean idea how God should be worshipped. 
 Sacrifice may not be offered to any saint, and these 
 people cannot perceive that the supreme expression of 
 worship is sacrifice. In this the ancient religions of 
 mankind were nobler than they ; for, though they were 
 but groping blindly in the dark, they at least were 
 capable of discerning that to give something to their 
 gods was a higher expression of worship than merely to 
 ask something of them. It is true that what they gave 
 was often inadequate and trivial, but it was typically 
 meant; and it is true that some of the moderns who 
 refuse any sacrificial offering say that the only oblation 
 worthy of God is the offering of self. But the Catholic 
 Church has something ineffably higher to offer. Holy 
 Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, much dearer to 
 him than himself; but he prophesied a greater victim 
 than Isaac, when he said God will provide Himself a 
 Victim : for the morrow of Mount Moriah was the Holy 
 Mass. God Himself provided the Lamb for the sacrifice, 
 and in it is an oblation unspeakably greater than that of 
 ourselves, though that is included, the Man-Christ being 
 sum and representative of all men, for Christ is not only 
 man but God. Those who pretend that the Mass is an
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 235 
 
 offering unworthy of God are ignorant of what it is, or 
 must believe God to be unworthy of Himself. 
 
 Of all things the Mass is the most Roman Catholic 
 and how little are the saints even mentioned in it. 
 And the saints themselves, if these accusers but knew 
 their lives, how little in all they say and write are they 
 concerned with each other. Was there ever a more 
 Roman Catholic saint than Catherine of Siena, with 
 her ecstasies and her stigmata, her miraculous fasts and 
 her miraculous communions ? And is not all her life 
 the breathing of one word, Jesus Christ ? 
 
 Again, we "worship saints." Is it because of their 
 lax and low morality ? Is not our " worship " of them 
 an irrefragable proof and witness of our veneration of 
 high virtue, our wistful yearning towards the perfection 
 we miss in ourselves, of the value we have for purity 
 and justice and charity and holiness ? Of the Church's 
 desire to point with the fingers of saints towards the 
 ideal Christ sets for us ? Has the Church ever canon- 
 ised anyone of middling piety, of but average goodness ? 
 It is a contradiction in terms to pretend at once that 
 Catholics worship saints and condone laxity of morals. 
 
 But formless and vague as the accusations all are, 
 one form they take we have alluded to. It is urged 
 that the Catholic Church debilitates the conscience 
 of her children by interposing between it and God 
 human influence and human interference, especially in 
 the practice of the confessional. So I suppose physi- 
 cians debilitate the constitutions of their patients by 
 interposing untasty medicines, and ^ unwelcome warn- 
 ings, between them and their well-loved indulgences 
 and ignoble excesses. There are patients who love 
 their over-eating and over-drinking better than health, 
 and such persons kick at the doctor. But common-
 
 236 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 sense recognises that they need him and his purga- 
 tives, and his plain threats of what will follow on 
 neglect and disregard. If men were all healthy and 
 all wise there would be no such calling as the 
 physician's. 
 
 If we were what we should be, cry these wiseacres, 
 there need be no confessional. Perhaps it was because 
 Jesus Christ perceived that men never had been what 
 they ought to have been, and never would be all they 
 ought to be, that in His Divine condescendence He 
 left to the Church the great sacrament of healing. 
 
 It might be very spirited in a doctor to say, " Your 
 sickness is all your own fault, I leave you to yourself. 
 You have no business to be ill. Either you are guilty of 
 excess, or your ancestors were. The human body should 
 be perfectly healthy : your gout, or your debility, is all 
 abnormal slightly scandalous, my dear sir, or madam, 
 and you should be normal. All illness is more or less 
 abnormal. Be normal." 
 
 However spirited such fine talk might sound, it 
 would be dismal hearing for the sick creature inclined 
 to suspect that sickness itself was normal in him. 
 
 The Catholic Church has to deal with mankind as 
 Adam left it ; and her Master knew it, and left her the 
 means. Man is sick and He left her a medicine, and 
 bade her play the part not of preacher only, but of 
 physician too. 
 
 He, it may be urged, is the Physician. Precisely, 
 and it is He who cures in the confessional. The 
 Catholic Church can invent no sacraments : they are all 
 Divine institutions. That which is her claim for them 
 should be their justification. Her assertion that they 
 were all God's invention, not her own, is not an instance 
 of her arrogance, but an illustration of her humility.
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 237 
 
 The Church could give no man power to bind and loose : 
 Jesus Christ gave it, and that is her point, which 
 invariably escapes her adversaries. Her physicians 
 claim no power of healing by right of their innate or 
 acquired personal skill ; it is a matter of delegation. If 
 God cannot do what an earthly monarch does, and 
 delegate judicial faculties, then there is an end. But it 
 is not irreverent or presumptuous to say that He can. 
 
 Does the earthly monarch attenuate morality by 
 appointing courts of justice ? Are judges notorious 
 for encouraging infractions of the law? There are 
 countries where there are no such courts and no judges ; 
 it is, of course, well known that in them the highest 
 standard of morality prevails. It is equally well known 
 that the confessional is largely absent from Scotland, 
 and from Norway, and I suppose quite an established 
 fact that in those favoured countries the prevalence of 
 illegitimate births is due to the chill of the climate. 
 It is odd that in Catholic Ireland the humidity and 
 softness of the climate should produce a contrary result : 
 odd, but certainly fortunate. 
 
 In the confessional the human conscience is supposed, 
 by these people, to be separated by a human barrier 
 from the Divine Lawgiver : thus a bridge separates the 
 opposing banks of a river, and nobody is ever helped 
 by it to pass from one to the other. It is, as has been 
 remarked by a more illustrious writer, odd to note 
 what different results accrue from a mere change of 
 metaphor. 
 
 The enemies of the confessional assume that the 
 object of the priest in it is to put himself between the 
 penitent and God ; but, then, they are not in the habit 
 of going to confession. In one breath they thank God 
 that they know nothing about it, and assert that they
 
 238 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 
 
 know all about it. They have never been inside a 
 house, but they can tell what it is like inside, because 
 they have picked up stones out of the muck outside 
 and flung them at the windows. It is all very logical 
 and very charitable and very superior. But it is not 
 exactly common sense. 
 
 When our Lord said that a tree is known by its 
 fruits we presume that these critics of ours believe that 
 He meant it. Well, there are, alas, many Catholics in 
 the whole world who never or seldom do go to con- 
 fession, as there are, thank God, vast numbers who do. 
 Which of these classes are the more moral, lead the better 
 lives, have the more delicate consciences ? Is a delicate 
 conscience a debilitated one ? Or is it because the 
 confessional enfeebles the conscience of those Catholics 
 in the habit of frequenting it that their lives are purer, 
 more religious, more charitable and more just than are 
 those of Catholics who never make use of it ? 
 
 Does the priest in the confessional impose his own 
 conscience on the penitent, and so deprive him of any 
 real conscience of his own ? If those who talk so glibly 
 on the subject had as much knowledge and experience 
 of it as they have ignorance, they would be aware that 
 a confessor lays down no private law, but asserts and 
 reasserts the unchanging law of God ; and it is precisely 
 because every Catholic knows perfectly that he does so, 
 that bad Catholics, who have no desire or intention of 
 abiding by the law of God, will not trust themselves in 
 the confessional. They know that it is useless to enter 
 there merely to give a historic account of their sins : 
 absolution cannot be obtained without sorrow, and part 
 of that sorrow is a purpose of amendment, and such 
 purpose of amendment includes a resolve to avoid the 
 occasions of relapse. The maligners of the confessional
 
 LAXITY OR SANCTITY 239 
 
 pretend to believe it an easy way of obtaining licence 
 to sin, or a patent method of getting forgiveness without 
 repentance : the most ignorant Catholic in the world 
 knows fully that without repentance the confessional 
 will do nothing for him. It is not a laxative of con- 
 science, but an astringent. 
 
 But the priest absolves, and he is a man ; how dare 
 he ? Because he is himself sinless, or pretends to be ? 
 No, but because God has given him authority to do 
 what only could be done by God's delegation. Jesus 
 Christ said that He gave the power, and delegated the 
 authority : do those who deny the power not believe 
 that He is God ? Or do they deny the authenticity of 
 the words ? There are no plainer in Scripture ; Christ 
 did not in any Scripture more plainly declare His own 
 Godhead than He declared His delegation of the power 
 of binding and loosing. To believe Him and His words 
 in their plain sense is not to despise Scripture ; to admit 
 that He could Himself forgive sins is to admit that He 
 was God, to refuse Him the power is to refuse to confess 
 Him God : and if He be God and Almighty, He can 
 delegate any function that He chooses. He said that 
 He did delegate His own authority of binding and 
 loosing. He must have meant something : is it arrog- 
 ance, is it impiety, to believe that He meant what He 
 said, and that He could do what He said ?
 
 EVERYDAY PAPERS
 
 PRESS AND PUBLIC 
 
 "MR. DARCY," said Elizabeth Bennet, in Pride and 
 Prejudice, " has no defect. He owns it himself without 
 disguise." And the Catholic public, with very little, 
 has lately shown signs of expecting a literature and 
 press free from defect and all to itself. Its novelists 
 must not strain at wit, but must be as funny as 
 Dickens, and equally moving without ever wallowing 
 in pathos or growing maudlin. They must show a 
 complete grasp of life, like Thackeray's, but without 
 hinting at anything in the lives of men that has no 
 business to be there. They must produce works of 
 fiction that may freely be read in convent boarding- 
 schools, but of a quality that will force men of a world 
 not Catholic to read them, that so the Catholic present- 
 ment of things may reach outside. They are therefore 
 not to be goody-goody, but the whiteness of holiness 
 must by no means be thrown into relief by any con- 
 trast with anything darker than pale grey a lofty 
 standard, not, perhaps, to be obtained, as you may 
 obtain a new fish-kettle, by ordering it at the stores or 
 from the nearest ironmonger. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, the standard actually 
 reached by English writers belonging to the Church 
 has been for some time a high one. At the present 
 moment they may claim a position not merely pro- 
 portionally good, but high even without the proviso of 
 relative numbers considered. 
 
 243
 
 244 PRESS AND PUBLIC 
 
 Dr. Barry, Canon Sheehan, Monsignor Benson. Kathe- 
 rine Tynan, Mrs. Hugh Fraser, and Mrs. Wilfrid Ward 
 are certainly not inferior to any English novelist now 
 writing; and Canon Barry's contributions to literature 
 are not confined to fiction. Francis Thomson, dying, 
 left no poet greater than himself in England alive and 
 still writing poetry ; and at the present moment Lord 
 Alfred Douglas and Mrs. Meynell are the best poets 
 England has living. Abbot Gasquet, the Rev. H. K. 
 Mann, and Monsignor Ward are the best historians 
 now writing in English ; and in the neighbour field of 
 serious biography Mr. Wilfrid Ward and Mr. Snead- 
 Cox are ahead of all competitors. Of living essayists, 
 few surpass Mr. Hilaire Belloc in brilliance and 
 originality. 
 
 If we come to periodical literature it may fairly 
 be said that the Dublin Review is the best of the 
 quarterlies, and no shilling monthly maintains a higher 
 level of interest, excellence, and literary distinction 
 than the Month. 
 
 Then there is the " Press." This also must be a 
 branch of literature, or the mission entrusted to it can 
 never be seriously carried out. In the non-Catholic 
 Press there are papers that by no stretch of courtesy 
 could be ranked as falling within any definition of 
 literature; all printed words, indeed, are composed of 
 letters ; but they have nothing else to do with letters. 
 The Tablet is a literary organ of very high standing ; 
 not now equalled in consistent excellence, nor in im- 
 portance, by weekly reviews that were once names to 
 conjure with. The Catholic Times appeals to a large 
 public, not, in all its ramifications, so literary ; but, 
 besides its popular features, it also is distinguished by 
 the generous weekly provision of a mass of very con-
 
 PRESS AND PUBLIC 245 
 
 siderable and very able literary matter. In this place l 
 it does not behove me to speak of the Universe, but 
 this may be said : Whatever degree of excellence it may 
 have attained so far, it aims at bringing itself higher ; 
 concerning which something must presently be enforced. 
 
 The Catholic public, like the general public, is 
 formed of various groups or sections in these demo- 
 cratic days we must not say, of classes and to these 
 diverse groups the different Catholic newspapers 
 appeal, so that they have never regarded each other 
 as rivals. The divisions are not precisely political. 
 Some Catholic reviews, magazines, and newspapers 
 may probably circulate chiefly in quarters where Con- 
 servatives are not held in derision, others among those 
 who are most sanguine as to the benefits promised by 
 Liberal Governments; but it has never been the way 
 with the Catholic Press in England to attach to itself 
 this or that political label. And this is altogether to 
 its credit, and much to its advantage even politically 
 No Liberal administration can count on the blind 
 obedience of any English Catholic newspaper let it 
 put forward an Education Bill obnoxious to Catholic 
 feeling, and try nor can a Conservative Government 
 be sure that any English Catholic review will whisper 
 soft nothings in its ear on all occasions. 
 
 This attitude of our Press has been its strong point. 
 Let us maintain it. 
 
 In some quarters lately I have noted with regret a 
 disposition to assume that every good Catholic must 
 be a good Democrat. Against any such assumption, 
 little as I like politics of any colour, I take leave to 
 protest. In matters that are really only political the 
 Church leaves us a free hand. There are, of course, 
 
 1 The present paper appeared in the Universe.
 
 246 PRESS AND PUBLIC 
 
 questions that claim to be merely political in which 
 there is strictly involved some deeper question of faith 
 or morals. In those we are not free, for the Church 
 has never professed to leave her children free to believe 
 what is mischievous and false, nor to behave without 
 reference to God's commandments and her own. In 
 matters of political significance only, she holds herself 
 unbound, and does not bind us, neither must we try to 
 bind one another. 
 
 Democracy may be the thing now ; it certainly was 
 not the thing always, and the Church was there all the 
 time. Christendom was almost wholly feudal once, 
 and the Church made the best of it. The world may 
 be entirely democratic soon, and the Church will 
 make the best of that, too. The old heathen empire 
 crumbled and passed, and slowly out of its rums 
 arose the feudal Christendom. Feudalism passed, and 
 Christendom with it, modern Europe emerging, her 
 mouth full of promises of freedom. The world may 
 keep them, and all be one democracy, but the world 
 itself will pass, and, before it passes, something else 
 may grow out of the ruins of democracy, just as 
 democracy itself arose out of the ruins of monarchy. 
 The Church stands, as she has always stood, watchful, 
 not aloof, but uncompromised, a finger on her lip, 
 blessing where she can, expostulating when she must. 
 
 The Church has had from the beginning a side that 
 democrats love to call democratic. She has never 
 existed for any class; she belongs to all alike who 
 belong to her. Her sympathy has been always for 
 those most in need of it, and there have been times 
 when that sympathy has called for the reproof of the 
 mighty. All that she has to give isj for poor and rich 
 alike. And her highest places are open to the lowest.
 
 PRESS AND PUBLIC 247 
 
 But her organisation is anything rather than demo- 
 cratic ; it is not based on assumptions of equality. 
 Her rule is for the people not this section or that, 
 highest or even lowest it has never been, and never 
 can be, by the people. Her constitution reflects that 
 of heaven, and, though one hears God called by many 
 odd names nowadays, I have not yet heard Him de- 
 scribed as President of the Celestial Republic. What- 
 ever happens to the Government of the world, that of 
 the Church will always be a Viceroyalty, the reminder 
 in time of Eternal Sovereignty. 
 
 The Voice that speaks from the Seven Hills beside 
 the yellow river has sent its sound into all lands, insist- 
 ing on the Apostolate of the Press, and every Catholic 
 ear is listening. But the message cannot, in the nature 
 of things, be to the Christian Press alone; it implies 
 the correspondence of the Christian public. A duty is 
 never, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all on one side. 
 
 Political nostrums change and fail, but the law of 
 demand and supply will work in spite of us. Forced 
 feeding is not possible outside prisons, and readers are 
 at large. The Apostolate of the Catholic Press depends 
 not on the Catholic Press alone, but on the reasonable 
 co-operation of the Catholic public. And that is pre- 
 cisely what the Catholic public does not seem alert 
 to comprehend. A Press, however solidly good, cannot 
 maintain itself in vogue by its own weight. Writers 
 presuppose readers. That the Catholic writers are 
 there we believe is proved. Let the Catholic readers 
 keep them going. The Pope's wise and solemn re- 
 minder of an imperious duty is to the public on which 
 every Press must depend, as it is to those by whom 
 the Catholic Press must be provided.
 
 ON BOOK BUYING 
 
 IN the previous paper I spoke of the correspondence 
 necessary on the part of the Catholic public if the 
 Apostolate of the Press is to be as effectual as the 
 Sovereign Pontiff wishes it to be. Recently Miss 
 Lucy Curd, in an interesting article, wrote in the 
 Universe of the Apostolate of Fiction. In that matter 
 also the Catholic public has its part to play. And, 
 though it may not seem pretty in a writer known 
 principally as a contributor to fiction, to urge the 
 point, it is my intention briefly to do so. 
 
 There is no doubt that Catholic novelists would 
 obtain far larger audiences if they were content to 
 write what may be called non-Catholic novels; and 
 the labourer in the field of fiction is as worthy of his 
 hire as any other worker. But they are willing to 
 forego larger hire that their work may be in a special 
 corner of the great field of letters. In other words, 
 they are content with restricted payment of their toil 
 in order that they may help in the supply of a Catholic 
 literature of fiction. Nor is their self-denial merely 
 in the matter of pecuniary rewards ; every writer 
 desires to have as many readers as possible, and most 
 writers find that the wider their audience is the greater 
 is the stimulus to good writing. A novelist labelled in 
 the public estimation as Catholic must be content to 
 know that ninety-nine out of every hundred novel- 
 readers in England will abstain from putting his or her 
 books down upon their library-list. 
 
 248
 
 ON BOOK BUYING 249 
 
 It does seem, therefore, that Catholic novel-writers 
 have some right to complain if they find themselves 
 also unsupported, or very weakly supported, by 
 Catholic novel-readers. 
 
 But, first, as to the buying of books. 
 
 There is nothing, it seems to me, in which people are 
 more careful of their money; and I do not mean 
 Catholic people particularly. You will find those who 
 can afford almost every other kind of expenditure too 
 poor, in their own estimation, to spend anything on 
 books. 
 
 There are, of course, a few wealthy persons who lay 
 out large sums on books, as they lay out large sums on 
 pictures, old furniture, miniatures, gold snuff-boxes, 
 fans, and china. But the amount spent even by them 
 on books is very small indeed in comparison of what 
 they lavish on the purchase of other things. And 
 they do not buy books to read them. They are merely 
 collectors; and it is the desire of possession that 
 makes them purchasers, which has nothing at all to 
 do with the love of reading or of literature. 
 
 It is not of such people we are speaking. Nor of the 
 much larger class who care neither to collect rare 
 books nor to read books of any sort. There is another 
 class, numerous also, that likes reading pretty well, and 
 does read to a certain extent, but will on no account 
 buy the books it wants to read. Not all of these 
 people are poor ; some of them are wealthy, and deny 
 themselves hi very little. In books they practise their 
 economies. 
 
 Some new book appears, which they imagine they 
 want to read, and to read soon, while other people are 
 talking of it. It costs a good deal less than a smart 
 hat, less in most instances than a theatre-ticket, perhaps
 
 250 ON BOOK BUYING 
 
 as little as a cab-fare, nothing like what it would cost 
 to fill a bowl with flowers or a dish with asparagus. 
 Do they buy it ? They would stare with amazement 
 if you suggested such an extravagance. The book may 
 be worth reading again and again; it may outlast the 
 fashion of twenty hats; it does not wither like the 
 lovely flowers, or get eaten up like the asparagus ; but 
 to buy it would be the road to ruin. 
 
 Against many books much may be urged, but the 
 buying of books has led few to financial embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 A lady, not indeed wealthy, poor thing, but struggling 
 along on six thousand a year of her own, independent 
 of her husband's separate thousands, remarked lately 
 to a writer of novels : 
 
 " I like to have your books, not only to read them." 
 
 She liked, she explained, to read them often. What 
 could be more flattering ? 
 
 "And," she went on, " I always do get them. I wait 
 till I can get them from Boots' for ninepence." The 
 author could not but wish she might have to wait 
 long, but he was constrained in justice to commend 
 her: 
 
 "You are," he said, "one of the few book-buyers, 
 and deserve great praise." 
 
 People like to be given books by their writers. To 
 the same author the same lady in straitened circum- 
 stances, once wrote, shortly before Christmas : 
 
 " Do not buy me a present " (he had not meant to) ; 
 " send me your last book." 
 
 Of course, he did; and it only cost him three 
 shillings and fourpence, whereas it would have cost 
 her four-and-six. 
 
 "Ah!" I have heard rich folk say really rich folk,
 
 ON BOOK BUYING 251 
 
 not anxious strivers how to make ends meet on six or 
 
 seven thousand a year "Ah! I see you have 's 
 
 last book, from Mudie. We belong to 's, and can't 
 
 get it. Don't send it back till I've read it. I like his 
 books better than any that one reads now." 
 
 If rich people cannot afford to buy books, how can 
 you expect poor people to buy them ? I do not. One 
 must not count on uncovenanted mercies. All the 
 same, it is chiefly poorish people who do buy the few 
 that are bought ; unfashionable folk in country-houses, 
 whose inhabitants can no longer afford annual visits to 
 London, and much poorer people still. 
 
 A man of letters, who was also " literary adviser " to 
 a firm of London publishers, once took me on his way 
 to worship at the shrine of Mr. Thomas Hardy, and, 
 after showing him the neighbouring dens in which 
 literary lions had once lived, I hospitably entertained 
 him to tea at the expense of a spinster-poetess who 
 had about sixty pounds a year. 
 
 " Good gracious," he exclaimed as we came away ; 
 " that lady buys books. Her cottage is full of them." 
 She did not happen to be a Catholic, but I daresay 
 Catholics buy as many books as other people. But, 
 leaving the question of downright purchase aside, there 
 is the other way of supporting Catholic writers, viz. 
 by demanding their books at libraries, and continuing 
 to demand them till the books are supplied; and in 
 this matter I think Catholic readers are backward. 
 They are apt, it seems to me, to ask for the work of a 
 Catholic author as if they knew they were asking a 
 favour at the hands of their librarian ; and librarians 
 never make haste to get books asked for In that way. 
 They would never get any book if they could help it. 
 They regard all books as mole-catchers regard moles
 
 ON BOOK BUYING 
 
 tiresome things by the extermination of which they 
 live. Nevertheless, the man who pays the mole- 
 catcher expects a certain number of moles to be forth- 
 coming; and the librarian knows that his besotted 
 clients will have certain books, but he will never let 
 them have any he can help letting them have. If a 
 Catholic subscriber asks meekly for a work by a 
 Catholic writer, the librarian will boldly aver it is not 
 yet out ; if it be urged that the work has been in 
 circulation some time, he will say, "Oh yes! Ah! 
 That book. Oh yes; that book's about finished. A 
 'Remainder' by now, I expect." This is not odium 
 theologicum (though I think almost all librarians are 
 Congregationalists) ; it is merely hatred of books. And 
 if you show boldly that you know you have a right to 
 choose your own reading, and that you simply mean to 
 have the book you mention, it will be there in a day 
 or two.
 
 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS 
 
 WE have all heard of the man who confessed that 
 he only knew two tunes when he heard them, of which 
 one was God Save the King, and the other wasn't. I 
 only once met anyone who went further, and admitted 
 that he disliked music; but there must be many 
 who do dislike it, such tunes as the happily defunct 
 " Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay " could not have been so widely 
 beloved, else. 
 
 No one frankly declares that he cannot abide books, 
 nevertheless it is obvious that many do. 
 
 They prove it by their reading. 
 
 I am sure one way of disliking books is to like 
 newspapers. There are, I know, papers which are a 
 sort of books. No one would deny that the Dublin 
 Review is a book, a different book appearing under 
 the same title four times a year ; so is the Month a 
 book, with twelve slim but stalwart volumes a year; 
 because the Dublin and the Month are literature. A 
 paper that frankly aims at being literary is also a 
 book, though its shape be not bookish, and it appears 
 every week. But there are papers that are no more 
 books than Christian Science is Christianity or Science ; 
 for they have nothing to do with literature. They 
 are not with it but against it. They gather not with 
 it, but scatter. And the more a man, or a boy or 
 a girl, reads them, the less capable does he, or she, 
 become of reading. They may not be bad morally,
 
 254 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS 
 
 though the burden of proof that they are in any way 
 good lies on them. They are certainly not good from 
 the literary point of view, for the reason just given ; 
 they destroy a sound stomach, and ruin anything like 
 a literary digestion. A man who fills himself with 
 sweet cakes, overlaid with chalky sugar, has no appetite 
 for good meat. 
 
 They are made of snips and shreds, and full of in- 
 formation that is curious only in the sense of being 
 inquisitive. They are equally inquisitive concerning 
 criminals and crowned heads. What the Czar has 
 for breakfast every day, what the murderer hanged 
 to-day had for breakfast this morning, is equally their 
 concern ; what costume was worn in the dock by the 
 woman arraigned for the poisoning of her husband, 
 and what costume the Queen of Bulgaria had on when 
 she "sustained an accident in her motor car" is de- 
 scribed with the same gusto. The Liberty of the 
 Press is understood by them to mean the taking of 
 astounding liberties against taste, decency, even 
 humanity. 
 
 Some time ago, a very kindly man of letters delivered 
 himself of a philippic against capital punishment ; but 
 all he wrote was no more than an indictment of the 
 indecent morbidity of a press that makes each succes- 
 sive murderer its hero, from the moment his crime is 
 attributed to him, to the moment in which he pays the 
 penalty it has brought upon him. The scandal is not 
 that a murderer should know that he will, if convicted, 
 have to suffer justly what he has made another suffer, 
 unjustly, but that he should be aware, and the public 
 should be aware, that every inflection of his voice, 
 every feature in his face, the cut of his trousers, the 
 spots on his waistcoat, his tie-pin, and his tie, the colour
 
 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS 255 
 
 of the pencil with which he writes notes to his counsel, 
 the significant twist of his lips, the pregnant droop in 
 his left eyebrow, that all this, and a thousand particu- 
 lars other than all this, will be noted down, and tele- 
 graphed all over the world, and read by hundreds of 
 millions of morbid creatures who can see no difference 
 between such obscene publicity and fame. Not even 
 fact, for even a ring or an albert-chain are facts of a 
 sort brazen facts sometimes suffices the spreaders of 
 these foul Barmecide feasts; countless inferences are 
 drawn or suggested ; nothing in a loathsome murderer, 
 no episode in his wretched life, no jest of his, is 
 let slip by unnoted. The waxed ends of his moustache 
 are as important as the colour of Oliver Cromwell's 
 hair. 
 
 The more such ghoulish filth is savoured the less 
 does it become possible that those who savour it can 
 like books, and they who provide it are the worst 
 enemies of reading. 
 
 It may seem an anti-climax to say so, when they 
 are also the worst enemies of public morality. For it 
 is all glorification of crime, whatever they may think 
 of themselves, who deal in the stuff. Criminals are 
 not normally healthy-minded persons, and they are 
 recruited from the morbid, who gloat on every circum- 
 stance of crime. The class of which murderers are 
 made is the class that has learned to see in murder 
 the one sure road to instant and universal notoriety. 
 Decadent lads and girls " educated," God save the 
 mark, in ignorance of God, perceive that without 
 work, without capacity, without any of the self-denying, 
 toilsome climbing that has led the famous to fame, 
 they, too, in the last desperate collapse of infamy, may 
 secure a notice, a world-wide publicity, that cannot be
 
 256 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS 
 
 without its poisonous charm to those who, beyond life, 
 see nothing, and in life see only leaden failure. 
 
 Against this prostitution of print every decent paper 
 that strives to be a book is a protest, as every good 
 man's life is a protest against the mean cry that good- 
 ness is beyond our mark, and, as things are, impossible. 
 The use of monks is not only in their prayers ; the life 
 of perfection, however hidden, forces the reluctant 
 world to remember that the Councils of Perfection 
 are not Councils of Impossibility. And the goodness 
 of a good paper is not merely a refusal to avail itself 
 of the profits of prostitution, but an insistence on the 
 fact that goodness can and does exist in print, however 
 hidden behind the flaunting crowd of vulgar truckling 
 to vulgar and mean tastes. Just as the monk in his 
 cell proves that there can be Poverty, Chastity, and 
 Obedience, so does the paper prove it that prefers 
 poverty to a wealth gained by appeal to what is basest 
 in those who have learned to read, that will not sell 
 legally translated pornography, nor forget that the 
 ultimate Censor of a Christian Press is the imprisoned 
 Head of the Church of Christ. 
 
 There is many a man who says, honestly and truly, 
 that he cannot be, that, at all events, he is not, as are 
 holy monks and nuns in their heavenly cloister, but 
 he can and will help a work above himself, and so he 
 spares them a coin or so out of his superfluities, and 
 knows himself blest, for a pipe foregone, or a pleasure 
 abdicated, that he may send help to build a convent, 
 or a chapel of some monastery. Let him aid by his 
 support and subscription an undertaking that depends 
 on him. Every man who spares his penny to buy 
 a Catholic paper is helping the utterance of clean 
 words: doing his share in the work of a great mis-
 
 OF DISLIKE OF BOOKS 257 
 
 sionary enterprise: helping the Voice that teaches 
 from the Seven Hills to come at the ears to which it 
 speaks. A penny is not much, nor was the widow's 
 mite, nor was the cup of cold water but, alas ! cold 
 water is not wont to be given in cupfuls, but rather to 
 be poured out of buckets. 
 
 R
 
 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 
 
 IN a former paper we spoke of the buying, or rather 
 the non-buying, of books. Let us return to the pre- 
 vious question the buying, or, to be more matter of 
 fact, the non-buying, of newspapers : meaning here, of 
 Catholic newspapers. 
 
 Though there are many who cannot plead poverty as 
 the true reason for their extreme unwillingness to buy 
 books, since they habitually buy much more costly and 
 less necessary things, it may be truly urged by many 
 others that they do not buy books simply because they 
 cannot, because they have not the means. And they 
 may also plead with truth that they cannot even 
 afford the luxury of a library-subscription, though it 
 remains the case that numbers, who afford themselves 
 indulgences more expensive and more useless, imagine 
 themselves too poor to spend a guinea, or half a 
 guinea, a year on this. 
 
 But who pretends that he cannot buy a newspaper ? 
 Everybody does buy newspapers ; and Catholics buy as 
 many as their neighbours ; and this is our grievance 
 ihey are given to buy precisely the newspapers bought 
 by their non-Catholic neighbours, and to buy them 
 only. In England, Catholic papers are only a weekly 
 matter, yet those who every day buy at least one non- 
 Catholic paper, and often several others as well, do not 
 recognise it as a duty to buy a Catholic paper even 
 once in a week. 
 
 258 
 
 -
 
 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 259 
 
 But to do so is, in fact, nothing less than a duty. In 
 every Catholic family that can provide itself with a 
 daily non-Catholic paper, and usually provides itself 
 with at least one weekly non-Catholic paper sporting, 
 comic, or what not besides it is a simple duty that a 
 Catholic paper should be provided also. It is merely a 
 matter of a penny, and the expense is not the real 
 obstacle. 
 
 Catholics in a country like England are bound to 
 bear in mind that the atmosphere they breathe is not 
 Catholic. The ordinary intercourse of business and of 
 recreation brings them in lifelong contact with people 
 who believe altogether differently from themselves, or 
 who believe, only too probably, nothing in particular. 
 The tone of conversation at its best is un-Catholic ; the 
 principles vital to us are not held by those with whom 
 we are in daily intimate communication. The Church, 
 to large numbers of them, stands for obsolete, exploded 
 ideas ; of the teaching of the Church they are probably 
 densely ignorant ; such as they imagine it to be, they 
 dislike it; and they impatiently await the day when 
 that teaching shall be universally forgotten and 
 unheeded. To be subject to it they assume to be a 
 fetter, a drawback on freedom, a handicap, as it is 
 called, in life. And they are not averse from assuming 
 also, that their Catholic friends are conscious of this, 
 though unavowedly ; that they would like to be more 
 "free" in opinion, less subject to rule and guidance, 
 and that either Catholics do not really give all the 
 inward submission they seem to give, or that they 
 would be glad to emancipate themselves from it. 
 
 They assume, often quite innocently, that their 
 Catholic intimates do really regard all the matters of 
 daily life from their own standpoint ; and talk accord-
 
 260 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 
 
 ingly. It may happen, and must often happen, that 
 they who thus take their own non-Catholic, non- 
 believing point of view for granted, are older, more 
 experienced, perhaps cleverer, perhaps better-instructed, 
 than the Catholics who listen to them. 
 
 Every Catholic in England outside a monastery is 
 subject to this kind of influence ; and in a country 
 like England it must be so. It would not be possible, 
 were it desirable, for Catholics to forswear non-Catholic 
 society in every class of life, from the cradle to the 
 grave. Catholics in England are bound to be in constant 
 relation of business or pleasure with those who live in 
 an atmosphere alien to the Catholic ideal. 
 
 Books are an influential sort of companion, and if 
 Catholics read chiefly Catholic books, such reading 
 would, as far as it went, provide a certain corrective. 
 But Catholics, we believe, are not so disposed. And 
 there are immense numbers of Catholics, as there are 
 of non-Catholics, who read few books of any sort. 
 They are just the sort who read newspapers. 
 
 And non-Catholic newspapers are like non-Catholic 
 people; they exercise something of the same kind of 
 inevitable influence ; and it is, as it must be, non- 
 Catholic. It is not, as a rule, the role of secular news- 
 papers to indulge in plain abuse of the Catholic Church ; 
 religion is not, in any shape, their preoccupation. But 
 they are written by men who do not believe in the 
 Church, or greatly like her ; who are apt to suspect 
 her, and are willing to despise her ; who regard her as 
 an incubus on modern thought, and even on modern 
 society, as a quaint and not unpicturesque relic of the 
 Middle Ages, useful for occasional purple patches of 
 copy, but tiresome too, wrong-headed, perverse, narrow, 
 dictatorial, scheming, the enemy of modern man.
 
 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 261 
 
 On the whole, they ignore her ; and a Catholic who 
 should read nothing but secular papers might run 
 some risk of ignoring her too, as an element in daily 
 life. If he goes to Mass he will be reminded of her, 
 no doubt, but only, as it were, in church, not in the 
 street, nor at home, nor on his way to his work and 
 from it. 
 
 Of the Church in his own land he will hear very 
 little indeed from his daily paper ; often, nothing at all 
 for weeks together. But the Church is Catholic, and 
 her life is not lived in England alone ; of her doings 
 and her sufferings abroad he will learn still less, and 
 that little is almost always falsely coloured. Odd and 
 portentous would be the misconceptions of a Catholic 
 as to the events of the last few years in Italy, France, 
 Portugal, or Spain, as they concerned the Catholic 
 Church, if his knowledge of them were derived from 
 the secular press of England. And what other notion 
 of them can he have if he will not, even once a week, 
 turn to a Catholic paper and learn the truth ? 
 
 It is not merely that non-Catholic papers give but a 
 meagre presentment of foreign affairs as concerning 
 the Church ; the presentment is not only stunted, it is 
 unjust and misleading. Those who send over to the 
 non-Catholic press in England their accounts of matters 
 concerning the Church in foreign countries, such as 
 Portugal, France, Spain, and Italy, neither desire to 
 accord to such matters their due importance nor to 
 permit English readers to arrive at a just view in 
 reference to them. It is their aim to make what 
 is really anti-Christian appear merely anti-clerical. 
 Their axiom is that the Pope must be wrong, and in 
 the cipher of that axiom every despatch concerning 
 him and his Church is written. The English being
 
 262 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 
 
 addicted to liberty, every struggle on the part of the 
 Vatican and the Church to secure freedom of Christian 
 conscience and worship in Portugal, or France, or Italy, 
 or Spain, is represented as an onslaught on liberty; 
 every attempt to ward off the fetters of militant 
 atheism is made to look like a desperate effort to bind 
 fast the shackles of intolerant bigotry. Into this pit of 
 misconception Catholics who will not read Catholic 
 newspapers fling themselves with deliberate indolence, 
 or they sit on the brink, and have only themselves to 
 thank if it crumbles and lets them in. 
 
 In home affairs, too, the Catholic who will not read 
 a Catholic paper, condemns himself to much inevitable 
 ignorance in matters which concern his most vital 
 interest. Semi-political affairs often involve such 
 questions, and Catholic pulpits are not perpetually 
 resounding, like Nonconformist pulpits, with even 
 semi-political matters. Concerning the evils of Social- 
 ism, concerning the obligation of securing at every 
 cost, Catholic education for Catholic children, the 
 Catholic who eschews Catholic newspapers must remain 
 a good deal in the dark, and will probably acquire, 
 what is so easily acquired, a fine equipment of ignor- 
 ance ; especially as the Catholic who only hears Mass 
 once a week, is often fond of choosing a Mass where 
 there is no sermon. 
 
 Again: Catholics in such a country as ours suffer 
 from a certain religious isolation, and particularly in 
 the case of those who do not live at home, who earn 
 their living at a distance from their families, and live, 
 perhaps, in lodgings, or board in some non-Catholic 
 household. This sort of religious isolation is much 
 corrected by the habitual reading of a Catholic news- 
 paper, which brings before the memory and mind what
 
 ATMOSPHERE AND ANTIDOTE 263 
 
 Catholics are caring about, what they are doing, what 
 they may be suffering, what their special preoccupa- 
 tions, needs, and objects of the moment, are. Such 
 reading destroys indifference, and a kind of religious 
 selfishness and narrowness. It creates Catholic 
 sympathy and warms it, fosters devotion to Catholic 
 causes, and deepens loyalty to the Church and her 
 August Head.
 
 
 ON SITTING STILL 
 
 THE present writer used to know a Cistercian monk 
 who was extremely amusing. It is not implied that 
 he diverted the monastery with funny gestures, but he 
 had occasion to speak sometimes, and when he spoke 
 it was his custom to be at once witty and sage almost 
 the same thing in the undegenerate sense of these 
 words, for a wit need not be precisely a cracker of 
 jokes, and a sage was not originally a chartered bore. 
 
 Occasionally this delightful monk was sent by his 
 abbot to do duty in the chapel attached to a certain 
 large country-house. Even there he kept his rule, so 
 far as was possible ; but in such circumstances the rule 
 of silence did not apply, and what he said was generally 
 worth remembering. 
 
 There was in that house a very devout person of 
 whose goodness he had, I am sure, a great opinion ; all 
 the same, he thought she dashed about too much 
 always in pursuit of good works. 
 
 "You should try and learn," he observed mildly, 
 " the ABC of spirituality." 
 
 "What is the ABC of spirituality?" she inquired 
 meekly. 
 
 " Sitting still." 
 
 Long afterwards I knew an American lady who had 
 never heard this advice of the Cistercian, but acted 
 on it. 
 
 " My rule," she explained, " is never to walk when I 
 
 264
 
 ON SITTING STILL 265 
 
 can ride, and never to ride if I can drive, and never to 
 drive if I can sit still." - 
 
 "And what," demanded her brother severely, "do 
 you suppose your legs were given you for ? " 
 
 " To balance myself with when I do sit still," she 
 replied serenely. 
 
 That, of course, is going very far. But it seems to 
 me that the habit of sitting still is almost a lost art, 
 and that the loss of it is a misfortune to society I do 
 not mean to societies; they mostly imply running 
 about. It is my impression that society is also losing 
 the art of reading; and the two losses are not un- 
 connected with each other. 
 
 To read involves sitting still, and that is what people 
 can less and less abide doing. Nobody is ever any- 
 where now if he or she can possibly be anywhere else. 
 Least of all can anybody abide stopping at home. 
 Houses are more dressed up than they used to be, 
 more luxurious, and more smart ; but that is to receive 
 other people in them ; their owners have not the least 
 idea of staying in them themselves. So that they 
 become less and less homes. When people are At 
 Home, it is in some hotel ; their homes, or flats, are 
 not homes, but places whither they return to get clean 
 linen, and leave behind the linen that is clean no longer. 
 They are a sort of box-rooms, or left-luggage-omce ; 
 that is all. 
 
 Hard-worked husbands have to sleep in their own 
 houses, on certain nights of the week; but only the 
 very abject stay in them from Friday afternoon to 
 Monday. This lovely custom has given us the lovely 
 new word, " week-end." 
 
 Week-end folk are sure to dislike reading; and 
 printed matter suitable to those who do dislike it is
 
 266 ON SITTING STILL 
 
 piled upon the railway book-stalls, Some of this 
 stuff is called magazines, though only two real magazines 
 survive for the general, i.e. non-Catholic, public. The 
 week-ender in his railway carriage is embedded in 
 printed matter, and one glance at it is enough to show 
 you he is confirming himself in a rooted habit of dis- 
 like of books. 
 
 Of course, week-enders who are better off eschew 
 trains, and are wafted somewhere else in motors or on 
 motor-cycles ; and those who are worse off fly from the 
 bosoms of their families on bicycles. But if they do 
 not take with them a cargo of printed (and illustrated) 
 matter of the kind that no one can bear to read who 
 can bear also to read real books, they are merely in 
 the position of those who are saved from eating amiss 
 by eating nothing at all. 
 
 A public which simply cannot sit still is precisely 
 the public for which the sort of novels now written are 
 good enough. The less they resemble literature, the 
 more likely are they to find readers. For the novelist 
 whose aim is popularity (and profit) has to appeal not 
 to the love of literature, but to a wide distaste for it. 
 
 Publishers are quite aware of this, and take their 
 measures accordingly. Their business is not literature, 
 but to sell things made up as books to the illiterate. 
 No doubt they would say, and many of them would 
 say quite sincerely, " If a Sir Walter Scott were to 
 ' come along/ or a Jane Austen, we should be only too 
 pleased to publish them." It is not pretended that we 
 have among us unpublished Scotts or Austens ; but if 
 we had, and if they found their publishers, I, for one, 
 do not believe that they would leap into fame and 
 popularity. Can anyone believe that Miss Austen, Miss 
 Edgeworth, and Miss Burney would achieve now the
 
 ON SITTING STILL 267 
 
 quick recognition that was theirs when they began to 
 give their works to the world ? 
 
 It is not only that the ground is choked up with 
 rubbish, but that the public has vitiated its taste. 
 
 About everything classic there is a certain serenity ; 
 whether it be in the realms of art painting, or sculp- 
 ture, or architecture or in those of music and of 
 letters. This serenity is intolerable to a people that can- 
 not abide to sit still. Post-Impressionists and Futurists 
 have arrived at the only possible moment for them ; 
 had they endeavoured to turn up in the ages of the 
 great masters we know well what would have happened 
 to them. Is serenity much more apparent in the works 
 of modern sculptors ? They durst not attempt it, lest 
 they should be dull. 
 
 There are some living novelists who would seem to 
 have powers that are not slight, and who nevertheless 
 " sell." But not because they make the real best of 
 those powers ; rather because they secure themselves a 
 public by enshrining in each new work some new phase 
 of evanescent, contemporary idiosyncrasy. Thus they 
 sell largely for the moment ; but it will be seen that 
 they will not be read when the fads and follies of their 
 moment shall have fallen stale. They can never be 
 classical, because they appeal to what is temporary, and 
 will soon be old-fashioned. 
 
 My old Cistercian friend thought true spirituality 
 incompatible with an incapacity to sit still, because in 
 the most active spirituality there must be a contem- 
 plative element, else benevolence will always be no 
 more than a fussy philanthropy, and will never have 
 the inward quality of Christian charity. 
 
 I am quite sure that the love of books and the hatred 
 of sitting still cannot exist together, and I suspect that
 
 268 ON SITTING STILL 
 
 my wise Cistercian would say that, in a people that has 
 learned to read at all, the reading of books that are 
 real books is a part of spiritual life. And I do not 
 believe he would count among good books only those 
 that treat expressly of religion.
 
 DIABOLICAL TREES 
 
 OF Libraries there are several sorts : what we may call 
 Great Libraries, as that of the Vatican, the Bodleian at 
 Oxford, and that of the British Museum, for instances ; 
 Public Libraries, of the municipal sort ; the libraries of 
 private houses, some of which might also well be called 
 Great Libraries, as Lord Derby's at Knowsley, to mention 
 only one ; and Lending Libraries. 
 
 With these last we may concern ourselves first. 
 
 " In my way hither, Mrs. Malaprop," said Sir Anthony 
 Absolute, "I observed your niece's maid coming forth 
 from a circulating library ! She had a book in each 
 hand they were half-bound volumes with marble 
 covers ! From that moment I guessed how full of duty 
 I should see her mistress." 
 
 " Those are vile places, indeed ! " said the lady. 
 
 " Madam, a circulating library in a town is an ever- 
 green tree of diabolical knowledge ! It blossoms through 
 the year ! And depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they 
 who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the 
 fruit at last." 
 
 " Fy, fy, Sir Anthony ! You surely speak laconically." 
 
 A hundred and thirty-seven years have gone by since 
 Sir Anthony Absolute delivered this weighty judgment, 
 and his "evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge" is 
 flourishing still. Some of its leaves deserve all his 
 condemnation, not "laconically," but in sober and 
 
 269
 
 270 DIABOLICAL TREES 
 
 righteous earnest. For, in the region of fiction alone, 
 there is every year a large output of what is really bad 
 and unwholesome, and much more that is worthless : 
 and all of it finds its way to the shelves of the lending 
 libraries. Many take out these books because they like 
 them ; but many more take them partly out of ignor- 
 ance of the nature of their contents, and partly because 
 they do not know what else to take. The books are on 
 the "new" shelf; they look clean (which in fact they 
 often are not) ; and a library subscriber has no idea of 
 going off empty-handed. She wants something for her 
 money; and she wants something to read: and not 
 one library subscriber out of a hundred ever dreams 
 of buying books, so there is little, or even nothing, 
 at home to read. Thus, utterly worthless books, or 
 absolutely bad books, find readers not only among those 
 whose taste is perversely bad, but among those who 
 have scarcely any taste, good or bad, to start with, but 
 who end by acquiring a debauched taste, largely out of 
 idleness or hurry. 
 
 Lydia Bennet, in Pride and Prejudice, did Hot think 
 her new bonnet very pretty, but thought she might as 
 well buy it as not, and vowed there were two or three 
 much uglier in the shop. 
 
 So a good many modern Lydias might candidly con- 
 fess that the new book they had borrowed was not very 
 pretty, but they thought they might as well borrow it 
 as not, and assure us with perfect truth that there were 
 two or three much uglier in the shop. 
 
 With all their faults, and they are not few, Lending 
 Libraries are here; and they have come, like some 
 cheap watches across the Atlantic, to stop. Nor, though 
 we may be keenly alive to their abuse, can we deplore 
 their existence. All who love reading themselves want
 
 DIABOLICAL TREES 271 
 
 others to read, and they are quite aware that it is out of 
 libraries that most people do read. 
 
 Now it seems to me that Catholics might easily do 
 a very good and practical work in this matter. They 
 also subscribe to libraries, and each of them could 
 effectually influence the quality of the books on the 
 shelves of his or her local library. One way, which may 
 appear the most obvious, would be by exclusion. I 
 mean by plainly protesting against certain books : and 
 in many cases this might really be done with more 
 effect than would be believed by those who have never 
 tried. All the same, it is not on that obvious-seeming 
 method that special insistence is laid here. The effect 
 would largely depend on the librarian's opinion of the 
 objector: where he happened to think the objector 
 altogether prudish, narrow-minded, or of little authority 
 in bookish matters, he would not attach great weight 
 to objections, and he might have this opinion of the 
 objector quite fairly, as he might have it quite unfairly. 
 But librarians are much in the habit of quoting local 
 opinions on books ; and, if you return a book, or refuse 
 it, with a strong but well-advised condemnation of book 
 or author, the chances are you will be quoted if the 
 librarian believes you know what you are talking about. 
 
 "Mr. Blank says it's rubblish. Mrs. Dash simply 
 couldn't get through it. Miss Asterisks found it a 
 sleeping-draught. Lady Smith couldn't stand the 
 vulgarity. Sir John won't have any of her books he 
 hates middle-class high-life." All these dicta one hears, 
 especially the last two, for in these democratic days 
 we all have titles, and none of us are middle-class. To 
 be thought middle-class is what no courage can face. 
 
 I knew a spiritual director once who was tormented 
 by a lady's-maid with scruples. In vain he essayed
 
 272 DIABOLICAL TREES 
 
 every remedy suggested by a wide and deep acquaint- 
 ance with the best mystical writers. At last, in 
 desperation, he hinted that scruples were middle-class, 
 and the lady's-maid suffered no more. Nor did he. 
 
 If it is not with works of fiction that the objection 
 has to do, but with such works of pseudo-science as are 
 to be seen on lending-library shelves, the expression of 
 adverse opinion should be differently phrased. Such 
 books, as the librarians themselves confess, like too 
 attractive step-daughters of too youthful step-mothers, 
 " are not much taken out." 
 
 But some subscriber with a pretty taste in Agnos- 
 ticism orders them; and some other subscribers, not 
 averse from being esteemed intellectual, handle them 
 dubiously, with a temporarily mortified longing for Miss 
 Corelli ; and hesitate. 
 
 " Ah ! " observes the Librarian, " The Origin of Life, 
 by Professor Thickness. Yes. A New book? Oh, 
 yes ! But quite Mid- Victorian, I understand." Poor 
 Professor Thickness ! Upside down, in the Inferno of 
 Mid-Victorianism, he goes back to the shelf, the ill-lit 
 shelf in the draughty corner away from the stove, where 
 the Memoirs of General Sir T. Duffin, K.C.B., and the 
 Recollections of a Consul at Five Ports, bide a while till, 
 like Lady Clara Vere de Vere, they return to town. 
 And the terrified intellectualist turns with relief to 
 " Hall Caine's Last " : with the feelings of a chicken 
 aware of having providentially been saved from an 
 attack of the gapes. 
 
 But they are there, look you : the Memoirs of nothing 
 memorable, the Recollections of nobody in particular, 
 and the rest of them: not cheap books either. They 
 are there because someone ordered them; and you 
 yourself might have ordered much better books. Apart
 
 DIABOLICAL TREES 273 
 
 from fiction altogether there are a great number of 
 really excellent Catholic books, history, biography, and 
 the like, which would be there if you ordered them, 
 and did it as though you meant it. If they were there 
 they would be read by many who are not Catholics, and 
 who would thus learn a great deal" about the Church. 
 In this matter Catholics are somewhat backward: 
 perhaps out of a sort of shyness and modesty. But 
 it is really false modesty. Catholic library-subscribers 
 have as good a right to confront other subscribers with 
 Catholic books upon their library shelves, as non- 
 Catholic subscribers or anti-Catholic subscribers have 
 to confront Catholics there with non-Catholic or anti- 
 Catholic books.
 
 FOOTNOTES 
 
 THE late Bishop Paterson, of Emmaus and Chelsea, 
 used to say that there is a sort of pulpit eloquence that 
 keeps you with one leg in the air. " When we behold 
 the trees in spring dress themselves anew in all their 
 green bravery : when we hear the lark pour down her 
 song from heaven's gate, or near it ; when we smell 
 the fragrance of a million blossoms borne on the 
 summer breezes from a thousand fields ; and when, my 
 brethren, the harvest gilds the upland. But . . ." 
 
 It seems to me that these papers of mine are in a 
 similar predicament. I lift the leg of introduction, 
 and, before I can set it down again on my conclusion, 
 my allotted space is full, and, without room for more 
 than a nod of parting, I must be gone. It is like a 
 game of chess with an elaborate opening, and then not 
 so much checkmate as a hasty pushing of all my pieces 
 back into their box. 
 
 They seem, these papers, a series of parentheses, each 
 longer than the statement that embraces it. This is 
 hard on a writer who abhors haste, and loves elbow- 
 room : but it cannot be helped, and he can but hope 
 that whoever reads him will charitably understand that 
 he is himself as much disconcerted as anyone could 
 be by this sort of interjectional literary gasping, or 
 hiccough. Above all things, he trusts that no one 
 will take this gulping method as suggesting a model : 
 let it serve merely as a warning. 
 
 274
 
 FOOTNOTES 275 
 
 In their proper place, parentheses are useful creatures, 
 and, at their worst, they are less intolerable than foot- 
 notes. Footnotes are the curse of history. They are 
 pestilent excrescences on erudition, and stumbling- 
 blocks in the path of readers who are not erudite, and 
 want to get on. 
 
 Everybody does not read history to cram for an 
 examination; one of the consolations of declining life 
 is that examinations are done with, except the great 
 and final one which is not competitive; and we are 
 at liberty to read history for pleasure, just as we read 
 comic papers lest our ebullient spirits should carry us 
 too far in liveliness. 
 
 But the pleasure a good history-book should yield 
 us is often spoiled by these footnotes. They catch us 
 by the heels and forbid our pushing on. A novelist 
 who should so interrupt his readers would never be 
 read, and there is no particular reason why history 
 should weight itself thus, as if in dread of being too 
 readable and too light. Even Thackeray would not 
 have dared to plunge his readers to the bottom of his 
 page that they might learn his reasons for believing 
 Amelia to have been Mr. Sedley's only daughter, or 
 Sir Pitt Crawley to have been a baronet. Dickens 
 assures us that Mr. Weller's knowledge of London was 
 extensive and peculiar; he does not drag us down 
 into small-print proof of it, or enumerate, in a note 
 that undermines two following pages, all the parts of 
 the metropolis familiarly known to that engaging 
 young man. 
 
 Are historians afraid of being easier reading than 
 Vanity Fair or Pickwick ? Do they do it to teach us 
 our place ? " I'll learn you to be a toad ! " said the 
 boy. "We'll learn you to think yourselves capable of
 
 276 FOOTNOTES 
 
 enjoying the ripe fruit of our labours ! " mutter the 
 historians, and, flinging their tentacles about our necks, 
 they suck us down, like so many octopuses, into chill 
 mirk of unfathomable notes of an outrageous specific 
 density. 
 
 Of course, you may skip the notes altogether ; and it 
 will be well for you if you are able. You will learn 
 much more quickly; just as you will learn French 
 or Italian much more quickly if you lock up your 
 dictionary somewhere, and lose the key, and read on 
 pleasantly without one. 
 
 But there are people who can no more skip in any 
 book they want to read than they can read a problem- 
 novel. I am one. I have often tried to ignore the 
 fifty lines of austere print at the foot of a page, and 
 read only the blander, mellower three lines of big type 
 at the top ; it is no good. Ten pages further on those 
 unread lines still vex, and no resolution can stand 
 against the temptation to turn back. Till the notes 
 have been read the text is read in an absent-minded 
 haze. But I hate the man who wrote them. 
 
 Were they after-thoughts ? Are they parentheses ? 
 In either case they are a plague and nuisance where 
 they are. 
 
 If they are second thoughts, the author should not 
 have been in such a hurry at first. If they are 
 parentheses, he should have English enough to be able 
 to manoeuvre a parenthesis without losing his way in 
 his sentence. 
 
 Perhaps they are sometimes a sort of false conscience : 
 the author is afraid of being believed too implicitly, 
 or so determined to be believed that he thrusts you 
 down into his authorities, and dances on you. That 
 is all very well for him, but rather dull for you.
 
 FOOTNOTES 277 
 
 As the poet sang in the village epitaph : 
 
 " Poor Martha Anne is gone to rest, 
 Her place is now on Abram's breast. 
 Glory and grace for Martha Anne ; 
 It's hardish tho', on Abraham." 
 
 There should be more give and take between author 
 and reader, and more confidence. If I could not believe 
 my author without a crack on the head with a footnote, 
 six hundred footnotes would not make me more trust- 
 ful. It might be edited with sixteen hundred that 
 would totally demolish the original six. 
 
 An author is at liberty to give all his authorities in 
 an introduction or an appendix. It is not skipping not 
 to read them. If he and his authorities make two tales 
 of it, that is for the critic to nose out how else are 
 they to live, poor things ? It is hardly fair on them to 
 snatch the bread out of their mouths as you go on. 
 Besides, there is no law that compels the erudite author 
 to tell all he knows in his footnotes. Sometimes, like 
 the play Queen in Hamlet, they have the air of pro- 
 testing too much. And sometimes they do not prove 
 quite enough; such a king, says our historian, was a 
 glutton : very well, it is a failing not confined to royal 
 personages. It does not even, of itself, prove that he 
 really was a king he might have been an alderman. 
 But in a note our historian brings chapter and verse. 
 
 Such a demagogue, we are told, was the mirror of 
 courtesy. The proof lies far below in Note 31 : at table 
 the great man would say " Please " when he asked his 
 neighbour to pass the salt. 
 
 Historians should skim us along without insisting on 
 our seeing how thin their ice is.
 
 "THIS PUBLIC CONSCIENCE" 
 
 THE three words, as above, inverted commas and all, 
 running across the whole front page of Public Opinion, 
 gave, with certain following words, text for the leading 
 article in that paper on February 9th, 1912. The 
 following words were : " The Real English Conquest " 
 in the same huge type as the first three ; and then, 
 in a bold, black, but smaller type: "The State has 
 largely taken the place of the Church as the organ 
 of the collective conscience of the community." 
 
 The inverted commas were to indicate quotation 
 quotation from Professor A. F. Pollard, Professor of 
 English History in the University of London, "one," 
 says Public Opinion, " of the most brilliant of our 
 historians." Whether the big letters and black type 
 were intended to delight the public, or to alarm it, or 
 merely as a delicate tribute to Professor A. F. Pollard's 
 brilliance as a historian, we are left free to decide for 
 ourselves. 
 
 It is not my ambition to controvert the judgment 
 quoted, but merely to draw attention to it. In the 
 first instance, the dictum is levelled at the Church of 
 England ; and perhaps the Church of England has 
 already pleaded or denied the soft impeachment. 
 That is not our business. But the dictum is not meant 
 for the Church of England only. Public Opinion 
 quotes as follows : 
 
 278
 
 279 
 
 State replaces the Church 
 
 " In a final chapter on English Democracy Professor 
 Pollard, pointing out the growth in number of the 
 departments of State, says that 'they are merely 
 machinery provided to give effect to public opinion, 
 which determines the use to which it shall be put. 
 But its very provision indicates that England expects 
 the State to-day to do more and more extensive duty 
 for the individual.' 
 
 " For one thing, the State has largely taken the place 
 of the Church as the organ of the collective conscience 
 of the community. It can hardly be said that the 
 Anglican Church has an articulate conscience apart 
 from questions of canon law and ecclesiastical property ; 
 and other Churches are, as bodies, no better provided 
 with creeds of social morality." 
 
 The Eighth Commandment 
 
 " The Eighth Commandment is never applied to such 
 genteel delinquencies as making a false return of income, 
 or defrauding a railway company or the Customs ; but 
 is reserved for the grosser offences which no member 
 of the congregation is likely to have committed; and 
 it is left to the State to provide by warning and pen- 
 alty against neglect of one's duty to one's neighbour 
 when one's neighbour is not one individual but the 
 sum of all." 
 
 Professor A. F. Pollard, it is seen, does not mince 
 matters with the Church of England. It can hardly be 
 said, according to him, to have an articulate conscience 
 " apart from questions of canon law and ecclesiastical 
 property." Canon law, we never knew before to be the 
 strong point of the Established Religion. Ecclesiastical 
 property is undoubtedly one of its solid assets.
 
 280 "THIS PUBLIC CONSCIENCE" 
 
 But Professor A. F. Pollard has no prejudice ; and he 
 hastens to aver that other Churches are, as bodies, 
 no better provided with creeds of social morality. 
 Whether it is "as bodies" that some of them are 
 provided with the Ten Commandments we are not told. 
 Of one of the Ten Commandments he proceeds to 
 speak in terms not altogether unflattering to the 
 morality of people who still go to church. It appears 
 that no member of the congregation is likely to have 
 committed grosser offences against honesty than false 
 returns of income, defrauding railway companies, or 
 the Customs. We hope that it is so; if it be so, 
 "members of the congregation" had better, it would 
 seem, go on going to church, that they may still 
 be restrained from open or secret stealing, helping 
 themselves out of their masters' tills, falsifying ac- 
 counts, floating bogus companies, and so following. A 
 good many species of fraud exist ; and it is comforting 
 to learn that those who go to Church do not indulge 
 in them. Rigidly honest to "one's individual neigh- 
 bour," they may even come in time to apply the 
 principles they have learned so well as "members of 
 the congregation" in the case of "one's neighbour 
 when one's neighbour is not one individual but the 
 sum of all." 
 
 It appears certain from the newspapers that "grosser 
 offences" than false returns of income, &c., are com- 
 mitted ; if Professor A. F. Pollard is right in his 
 suggestion that they are not committed by " members 
 of the congregation," so much the better for the congre- 
 gations. It might even seem plausible to suggest 
 that some benefit to general morality might accrue if 
 everybody went to church. Whether " other Churches," 
 say our own, are " no better provided with creeds of
 
 "THIS PUBLIC CONSCIENCE" 281 
 
 social morality" is a question the answer to which 
 partly depends on terms, creeds, for instance. So far 
 as I know, it is dogma which the Church formulates by 
 means of creeds ; her formulation of ethics summing 
 itself up briefly in Commandments or Precepts, and 
 expressed at length and large in her system of Moral 
 Theology. That she has two separate systems of 
 Moral Theology, one for Personal Morality, one for 
 " Social Morality," I am not prepared to maintain. It 
 would seem probable that she finds herself unable to 
 make the distinction. For society has no existence 
 except as consisting of individuals, and it is with each 
 individual who will listen to her that she deals in 
 reference to his duty towards God, towards his neigh- 
 bour, and towards himself. In her mind, as I venture 
 to read it, this is the only effectual method of per- 
 fecting society, by impelling towards perfection every 
 human being. You may make a bucket of water 
 wholesome for drinking, but only by the purification of 
 every drop in it. There may be a true and wholesome 
 Public Conscience, but not unless the men and women 
 who make up the public have wholesome and true 
 consciences. All conscience implies a recognition of 
 obligation, and all obligation implies a sense of law ; no 
 sense of law can long survive belief in the existence of 
 the law-giver ; while it does survive such belief it is not 
 true conscience, but a fortunate, though illogical, force 
 of convention. The Church's business, therefore, is 
 to preserve belief, in each member of society, of the 
 existence of the law-giver a Law-giver, competent and 
 supreme, the force of Whose law will appear to every 
 sort of man binding on himself, at cost of convenience, 
 personal desire, or apparent profit. This is her Creed of 
 Social Morality.
 
 282 "THIS PUBLIC CONSCIENCE" 
 
 It may not appeal to Professor A. F. Pollard, or it 
 may ; we cannot tell. It may appear to have nothing 
 to do with the State ; it has everything to do with 
 those of whom the State consists. If the State should 
 insist on being herself the sole law-giver, then the 
 State must rely on herself for the enforcement of her 
 laws, and not complain of the Church if the human 
 beings who compose the State evade inconvenient 
 laws when they see their way to it. These human 
 beings may be naughty children towards the Church, 
 too, but their naughtiness towards the State must be 
 brought home to them by such arguments as the State 
 is mistress of. The State must not cry out : " Slap me 
 these naughty children that don't belong to you." 
 Slapping other people's children is indiscreet and 
 interfering. It may cause the slapped to make faces at 
 the slapper, but rarely generates obedient affection for 
 the parent who requisitions the discipline. When the 
 Church slaps her own naughty ones, the State is apt 
 to call out: "Poor dears! What harshness! A 
 scandalous old persecuting mother ! " 
 
 After all this, let us say that there seems to be a 
 good deal of force in Professor A. F. Pollard's announce- 
 ment that " the State has largely taken the place of the 
 Church as the organ of the collective conscience of the 
 community." 
 
 " But men may construe things after their fashion." 
 " We are in God's hands, brother." 
 
 And, remembering, we may say more of this.
 
 STATE AND CONSCIENCE 
 
 THE State, according to Professor A. F. Pollard, has 
 largely taken the place of the Church as the organ of 
 the collective conscience of the community. If this be 
 so it is portentous enough : for the State's power is 
 chiefly penal. She can make a law, and having made 
 it, must punish those who break it ; she cannot make 
 them lovers of the law. Of course, she may profess 
 her desire to educate the people up to admiration of 
 her own particular laws, and even to love of law in 
 general. But the manner in which modern states are 
 apt to set about this effort is not likely to produce the 
 only recognition of the real binding force of law that 
 can stand against the strain of self-interest. It would 
 be a pious work, but they are not prone to set piously 
 about it. They talk at large about education; but 
 their first principle in education is the elimination of 
 God. In some countries the elimination is positive ; 
 and the non-existence of God is taught without dis- 
 guise. In others, the elimination is negative; the 
 subject must not be treated at all. The result in both 
 cases is the same, whether it is intended to be the same 
 or no. The origin, source, and sanction of all funda- 
 mental, eternal law is ruled out. 
 
 It may be the case that concurrently with such 
 process another process is attempted the inculcation 
 of morality, and respect for the law, for their own sake. 
 No such attempt is made in some instances. Where
 
 284 STATE AND CONSCIENCE 
 
 it is made, it fails, and will fail more and more com- 
 pletely the further back the old teaching of God as the 
 Lawgiver recedes into oblivion. 
 
 It is not asserted that all unbelievers are flagrantly 
 immoral, any more than it can be asserted that all 
 believers have always been faithful to the moral 
 standard set them by belief in God. Some men are 
 prone to a decorum that immorality must shock. But 
 the majority of men will never be long held captive by 
 anything so artificial as decorum ; by the time they 
 have ceased to care what they think of themselves, 
 they cease to care what other people think of them 
 and there is nothing higher than self-respect, and the 
 respect of Morality is a restraint : a restraint so con- 
 trary to self-will and self-indulgence that even the love 
 and fear of God has not always been sufficient to enforce 
 it throughout life on those who really have believed in 
 God. Such a restraint will not long be suffered when 
 no belief in God survives. Immorality of any sort can, 
 to such as have no faith in God, only be proved to be 
 obnoxious as injurious to self or to one's neighbour, 
 and the selfish do not care about their neighbour, nor 
 will they be forced to pursue their own best good at 
 the cost of present loss in profit and pleasure ; second- 
 best good is often good enough for them. 
 
 Teach those who are learning that God is not, but 
 that Morality must be, and they will ask themselves, 
 Why ? For a time they will protest in silence, or 
 seem to acquiesce silently ; lest perchance some finger 
 of scorn may point their way ; nevertheless, they bide 
 their time, and presently they outgrow the pupil's dis- 
 like of scorn. Morality, they perceive, is merely a 
 convention, or else a sacrifice of self to altruistic 
 theories ; and convention is not outraged by decorously
 
 STATE AND CONSCIENCE 285 
 
 veiled offence ; whereas altruism, like reciprocity, they 
 feel, should not be all on one side ; until everybody else 
 sacrifices his own profit or pleasure to them, why must 
 they be monopolists of self-sacrifice ? As for the pretty 
 plea that in obedience to irksome ethical restraints they 
 are securing their own superiority, they will mostly 
 be content with something short of such invidious 
 eminence ; why should they set themselves above their 
 neighbours ? Of course the reasonably intelligent 
 learner, taught to disbelieve in God, whether by posi- 
 tive statement that there is no such Being, or by the 
 analogous process of total absence of any statement on 
 the subject, may assimilate the teaching that the State 
 herself is the guardian of morality. What then ? Why, 
 the State's guardianship must be evaded when it leads 
 to inconveniences as obvious as those that formerly 
 followed on belief in the Existence of an Omniscient 
 Law-giver, viz. the sacrifice of personal profit or 
 pleasure. Fortunately, they remember, the State is not 
 omniscient ; and therefore evasion is easier. Detection, 
 no doubt, will lead to punishment; but then, how 
 much that is immoral the State makes no pretence of 
 punishing, even when detection has supervened ? 
 
 As for rewards, in what State are they accorded to 
 eminent morality ? Stupidity, if blatant enough, may 
 earn its meed ; shallow, noisy parts are not likely to 
 languish in the shade; even real genius and capacity 
 may extract a grudging recognition. But where is 
 mere goodness though it be but the goodness of stoic 
 morality rewarded by power and place ? Your pupil 
 of unbelief knows better than that. The rigid equity 
 without God that he has heard belauded, he gathers by 
 observation, is only a handicap. Does his altruistic 
 virtue help the successful agitator? Not unless his
 
 286 STATE AND CONSCIENCE 
 
 altruism takes the inverted form. " The less there is of 
 mine, the more there is of yours," a formula applied 
 not to what he has himself, but to what some third 
 party may monstrously possess. 
 
 Are Ministers or party-leaders selected anywhere for 
 their consistent practice of even such morality as we 
 are told may exist when the existence of God has been 
 disproved or forgotten? No Council-School teachers 
 have the impudence to teach that, and, if they taught 
 it, Council-School scholars would not swallow it, though 
 hard and indigestible are the things they are made 
 to swallow every day, till their intellectual stomachs 
 are at breaking-point with flatulent crudities and 
 obduracies. 
 
 Where the State has openly avowed itself director 
 of the public conscience, and ousted, or tried to oust, 
 the Church from her function of teacher and guardian 
 of the consciences of men, the results have been pre- 
 cisely what might have been expected : morality and 
 justice have not lingered long, but have followed 
 religion into hiding or exile. 
 
 Believing, therefore, that religion and morality are 
 inseparable, and that as a moral educator no State, 
 complacently assuming the Church's office and function, 
 has achieved or ever will achieve success, we cannot 
 hear with equanimity the dictum that the State has 
 largely taken the place of the Church as the organ of 
 the collective conscience of the community. What- 
 ever foundation of fact may lie under the statement 
 is ground for serious apprehension and alert watch- 
 fulness.
 
 EMPIRE DAY 
 
 WHEN M. Comte invented the positivist religion he 
 enriched it, not only with a Catechism but with a 
 Calendar, celebrating on every day of the year the 
 name of some great person or of some group of persons, 
 who, in his opinion, had been of use to humanity. 
 He also invented a set of sacraments for instance, 
 that of Retirement, to be administered, forcibly if 
 necessary, on attaining the age of sixty. 
 
 When England made her official religion national, 
 in place of remaining a part of the Church that is 
 Catholic, she provided herself with a new Catechism, 
 but abstained from the invention of a Calendar. In 
 process of time, however, the shrunken remnant of 
 the old one, prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer, 
 was enriched by three special Commemorations that 
 of King Charles the Martyr on January 30, that of the 
 Restoration of King Charles II on May 29 (which was 
 also Royal Oak Day), and that of Gunpowder Plot 
 on November 5. These three Commemorations, after 
 long holding their place in the Calendar, were removed 
 from it by Act of Parliament in 1859. But Comte was 
 right in believing that people have a liking for days of 
 Commemoration, and, when they cease to commemorate 
 Saints, they commemorate something else. In Scotland, 
 where they will have no Saints' Days, nor even feasts 
 like Christmas, they celebrate New Year's Day with 
 national ardour. In America there is the great feast 
 
 287
 
 288 EMPIRE DAY 
 
 of the Declaration of Independence. Even official 
 France celebrates July 14. 
 
 And now in England there is a new Feast : Empire 
 Day. 
 
 I am a very loyal person, and I love my country. 
 Her greatness I earnestly pray may be maintained ; 
 that her sons may grow up in unselfish love for her, 
 and in unselfish patriotism, I pray also. That Empire 
 Day and its celebrations may foster true patriotism we 
 must all hope. There is no reason why they should not. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is something quaint about it all ; 
 something perhaps a little pathetic. St. George and 
 Merry England was the old thing, but St. George is 
 not greatly remembered now. Perhaps because he was 
 a saint. " Saints," as a picture-dealer once assured me, 
 " are at present down." Nor is England exactly merry. 
 The loss of faith does not tend to cheerfulness in in- 
 dividuals, and never will tend that way in nations. 
 
 In schools, I understand, there is a flag-ceremony : 
 how to call it I do not quite know. But it appears to 
 be a sort of veneration of the Union Flag a pretty 
 ritual, and intended to promote the patriotic idea ; not, 
 perhaps, precisely the Imperial idea, or the symbol 
 would be that of the Emperor, as it was in Imperial 
 Rome. The veneration of the Imperial symbols in the 
 Roman world was frankly pagan, and connected with 
 the subsequent deification of the Emperors themselves ; 
 the tendency of modern Empires is not at all in the 
 direction of any such deification. Nevertheless, there 
 seems to be something semi-pagan in this cultus of a 
 flag, especially when one notes that it is carried out in 
 places where no higher cultus is encouraged. 
 
 I wonder if it strikes anyone what these children are 
 venerating the Cross of St. George and England,
 
 EMPIRE DAY 289 
 
 St. Andrew's Cross of Scotland, St. Patrick's Cross of 
 Ireland. Perhaps it is because the three together lose 
 something of their likeness to the Cross that no one 
 objects to the ritual. For three conjoined Crosses make 
 rather a Star : the star of Great Britain's ascendancy, 
 the star of the seas of which England is the mistress. 
 But Catholics wot of another star of the seas, and to 
 her also we may turn, that her ancient dowry be not 
 forgotten, and that the merry day may come back 
 when it shall be her dowry once again. 
 
 Empire Day suggests loyalty, not only to the Flag, 
 but to the figure-head of the Ship of State : and that 
 figure is the Sovereign's, by whom more than by any- 
 thing else the whole great Empire is really bound 
 together. For the plain truth is that the only point 
 of absolute union in that vast Empire is the possession 
 of a single Sovereign at its head. It is not true to say 
 that there is the link of common speech, for English 
 is not the language of scores of millions of our fellow- 
 subjects, and it is the language of scores of millions who 
 are not our fellow-subjects. Cabinets and Governments 
 may be all-powerful where they hold their sway; but 
 none of them hold sway throughout the Empire. The 
 link which binds all Canada, all India, all the islands 
 of the South and of the West, the Commonwealth of 
 Australia and South Africa, to the British Empire is 
 not the link of any law, nor that of common blood and 
 common speech, but that of the possession of one 
 Sovereign. Vivat Rex. 
 
 That God may save and strengthen him, guide and 
 protect him, must be the prayer of Empire Day : that 
 his subjects may be leal and loving, and those who act 
 for him be wise and loyal. 
 
 To a Catholic there must seem something, as we 
 
 T
 
 290 EMPIRE DAY 
 
 have said, pathetic in any commemoration that reminds 
 us how the old commemorations have faded out of 
 national veneration, and old bonds of union have 
 ceased to bind. For St. George's Merry England was 
 part of Christendom, a province in the Church's fair 
 realm, and now there is no Christendom, but only 
 Europe. St. George's Merry England was united not 
 only in one loyalty to one king, but in one faith, and 
 one deference to the head of the faith. 
 
 How much is gone ! How much is lost ! That 
 England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales may once 
 again be one in faith and hope we are strongly 
 reminded to pray by to-day's celebration: the crosses 
 conjoined into a star our fellow-subjects are willing to 
 venerate already as symbol of national unity. May a 
 union more eternal yet bind us and them at last. 
 May they give again the old allegiance to the cross for 
 which Patrick lived, and George died, and on which 
 Andrew learned the last chapter in the lesson of like- 
 ness to his master. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us cling fast to the link of union with 
 our fellow-subjects that is left loyal veneration for the 
 august head of the Empire.
 
 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 ONE of the obvious advantages of having your name 
 hi some directory is that it enables you the more 
 readily to receive appeals for contribution to charities 
 and to hopes. It also leads to invitations to join in 
 Movements. 
 
 The present writer quite recently received one to join 
 the Duty and Discipline Movement. In the simplicity 
 of his heart he had taken it for granted that in joining 
 the Catholic Church he had already become a member 
 of a rather widely-diffused organisation, one of whose 
 objects is the inculcation of Duty and Discipline. 
 And, even after reading the book of essays which 
 accompanied the explanatory pamphlet on Duty and 
 Discipline, he still suspects that the Catholic Church is 
 the best organisation for that purpose. 
 
 The essays are by all sorts of people : some of whom 
 are very distinguished, and all of whom are evidently 
 agreed that there is a " lack of adequate moral training 
 and discipline, the effects of which are apparent hi 
 these days amongst many British children, in rich as 
 well as in poor homes, and which constitutes, in the 
 opinion of many, a serious danger to society and to the 
 permanent security of the Nation and of the Empire." 
 In that opinion we entirely concur ; as we concur also 
 in the belief that the organisers of the Duty and Dis- 
 cipline Movement do not imagine or exaggerate the 
 evil of which they complain. 
 
 291
 
 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 The promoters of the Movement decline, we are told, 
 to recommend any special methods by which the 
 objects they have at heart may be attained. The 
 Movement deals with principles, not with methods ; 
 they consider that one of its aims is to discover the 
 means by which juvenile indiscipline may most 
 effectively be combated in the home and in the school, 
 and that a right decision can only be arrived at by the 
 united practical experience of a large number of men 
 and women working earnestly and independently in 
 their homes (and elsewhere) with this object in view. 
 They feel that the decisions as regards the best methods 
 of dealing with juvenile indiscipline must be left to the 
 intelligences and consciences of individuals, or groups 
 of individuals. 
 
 The establishment of Correspondence Circles is re- 
 commended, by which means it is hoped that valu- 
 able interchange of ideas, comparison of experiences, 
 and observation of methods may help to achieve the 
 above object. 
 
 The idea of these Circles is to enable young parents 
 who desire, in the training of their children, to carry 
 out practically the ideas advocated in the Essays on 
 Duty and Discipline, to exchange their views and 
 experiences quite frankly, by means of letters ad- 
 dressed to the Centre of the Circle, assured that 
 their names and addresses, or those of the children 
 discussed, can never be known to any but the Centre 
 of their own Circle, who undertakes not to disclose 
 to anyone the name and address of any member of 
 the Circle. The members of a Circle never meet 
 in Session. 
 
 Each person who undertakes to form a Circle invites 
 a few friends, having practical experience in the
 
 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 293 
 
 management and training of children, to write letters 
 to him, or her, descriptive of the methods of training 
 which they have found most useful and practical, or 
 containing accounts of various phases, difficulties, or 
 incidents in connection with the training and develop- 
 ment of the children with whom they are concerned. 
 
 The originator, or Centre of the Circle thus formed, 
 has these letters, or extracts therefrom, copied or 
 typed, without any name or address appearing on them, 
 and sends these copies to each member of his or her 
 Circle. 
 
 Then follows a list of suggestions, as to the circula- 
 tion of the essays among friends, societies, clubs, 
 schools, libraries, &c. : as to public and drawing-room 
 meetings, articles in magazines and reviews, and so on. 
 
 All this is very well. And we can hope that the 
 Correspondence Circles, the Essays, the Public and 
 Drawing-Koom Meetings, &c., will have all the ex- 
 cellent results that the promoters of the Movement 
 desire. We can only repeat that we heartily agree with 
 them in deploring the evil they wish to combat, that 
 we have recognised its existence for some time, and 
 that we are as fully convinced as themselves that its 
 continuance and growth must be a menace to Society, 
 the Nation, and the Empire. 
 
 If English children, in rich as well as in poor homes, 
 are increasingly lacking in duty and discipline, it is 
 chiefly because their parents and elders are also in- 
 creasingly lacking hi the spirit of duty and discipline. 
 And that is because, in rich as well as in poor homes, 
 the source of discipline and duty is becoming more and 
 more weakened and rare. In other and more direct 
 words, because there is less and less religion.
 
 294 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 We have not the slightest wish to speak disparagingly 
 of excellent people who are trying to achieve an ex- 
 cellent object. But we cannot help saying that, in spite 
 of their disclaimer, they do propose methods, and that 
 those methods must largely fail because they are laid 
 on an inadequate base. 
 
 It seems that they aim at producing their desired 
 results by natural means, and only by supernatural 
 means can they be attained. The effort to produce 
 virtues by natural means can result mainly in produc- 
 ing only pagan virtues ; and pagan virtues, even when 
 produced, will never cure ills that, in fact, proceed from 
 a growing paganism. 
 
 We believe that the lack of Duty and Discipline is 
 due to the increasing paganism of English society in 
 poor as well as in rich homes. 
 
 Of course, it may be urged that, even in pre-Christian 
 Paganism, there were pagan virtues; and that what 
 some of the promoters of the Duty and Discipline 
 Movement lament is that in England to-day even the 
 pagan virtues are falling obsolete. But the Paganism 
 of Greece and Rome was pre-Christian, and English 
 society is not. A society which had never heard of 
 Christianity had to defend itself by maxims of natural 
 law and reason only ; for without natural virtue it 
 perceived that it must rot. But a world that has 
 known Christianity, when it ceases to be Christian, 
 will not readily submit to wear old shackles under new 
 names, albeit the new names are but antique ones 
 revived. And every virtue is a shackle to those who 
 want to do what they like, no matter whether they be 
 children or such as are of riper years. 
 
 When Christianity appeared it brought with it a law 
 that was only partly new ; but it propounded the law
 
 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 295 
 
 with a new and a higher sanction. In some respects 
 the new law was more stringent, even more austere 
 than the old ; for it demanded a perfection not previ- 
 ously dreamed of, and it aimed not merely at the 
 regulation of outer conduct, but at the subjugation of 
 the will. It did not content itself with the obedience 
 of act, but claimed to rule the thoughts whence acts 
 are born. But, though more stringent and austere 
 in some respects than the old law, it was more sweet, 
 because it gave a sweeter motive for obedience, and a 
 more compelling. It gave, first, the presentment of 
 Christ, and then asked those who had seen to love. 
 Obedience was only the proof and test of love, as it 
 was also the inevitable result of love : for love tends not 
 merely to please the beloved, but to union with Him. 
 It no longer called for virtues because they were useful 
 to the State : but because they were the bond of like- 
 ness with the Lawgiver Himself and the bridge whereby 
 fallen man might come near Him. 
 
 The world cannot quickly forget this. If any portion 
 of it loses the old faith which taught thus, it is not 
 ready to go on keeping the law whose old sanctions 
 have been withdrawn. If it ceases to believe in the 
 fair promises of Christ, because it has ceased to be- 
 lieve in Him, it will not submit to His law all the 
 same. And a world which has once known Christi- 
 anity is not like the world to which it was as yet 
 unknown: it will persist in regarding virtue as part 
 of the law of Christ and it has rebelled against Christ. 
 Nobody goes on obeying a monarch dethroned and 
 exiled. 
 
 The distinction between Christian and Pagan virtues 
 is too subtle for ordinary people, and all virtues are 
 lumped together as part of the incubus of Christianity ;
 
 296 DUTY AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 when Christianity is felt to be an incubus, those who 
 so feel will no longer consent to bend their back to any 
 part of the weight. For it is precisely to escape that 
 weight that they have slipped the cords which have 
 bound them to belief.
 
 ON DECADENCE 
 
 IT would not seem, since Jerusalem stoned them, 
 that the prophets were popular in their day ; and Jere- 
 mias was probably as little popular as any of them. 
 He did not prophesy smooth things. Like the son of 
 Jemla, he prophesied evil, and Achab hated Micheas. 
 
 But one needs not to be a prophet in order to read, 
 in one's own fashion, such writing as may be seen 
 upon the wall. If the reading be not flattering to the 
 national amour propre of one's contemporaries, one 
 must be content to be called a Jeremias, and to be 
 unpopular in one's turn. England has a writing on 
 her walls, on the walls which have been for centuries 
 her national glory and her especial pride. They were 
 wooden walls once ; hearts of oak were her ships, hearts 
 of oak were her men ; they are of iron now. And upon 
 them it is written that England can no longer afford 
 to trust to them alone, under God, for the safety of her 
 possessions in the Midland Sea. All the ships she can 
 spare money for are wanted elsewhere ; for the defence 
 of her Eastern highway, and of the fortresses that 
 should guard it, she must trust to the uncovenanted 
 benevolence of a friendly State, for with that State we 
 have not even a treaty of alliance. 
 
 Long ago Spain was England's rival on the seas, and 
 her foe there. The Dutch took their turn. Then 
 came France, and the naval victories which set the 
 seal of supremacy on British fleets were won over hers. 
 
 297
 
 298 ON DECADENCE 
 
 The old secular hatred and rivalry has died down, 
 and they who love peace thank Heaven that it is so. 
 But we are going far beyond friendship, and assuming 
 the meek role of protege. That should, at all events, 
 mitigate our national vanity. Purse-proud England is 
 to be no longer rich enough for a navy adequate to 
 protect her sea-roads and gate-houses. Friendly France, 
 oblivious of the past, must protect them for her. 
 
 This is not a political paper, and the present writer 
 abhors politics. Those who live by them will have 
 much to say on this matter, and much to make of it, 
 if they can. 
 
 What we have to say has nothing at all to do with 
 politics. We have nothing to say for or against those 
 whose position in affairs enables them to make this 
 plan. But we would like, all the same, to say some- 
 thing about the national spirit which causes them to 
 feel strong enough to devise so original a method of 
 national defence. In the last essay we alluded to a 
 movement that calls itself the Duty and Discipline 
 Movement ; and we mentioned that they who receive 
 its literature receive a collection of essays, on duty and 
 discipline, written by certain distinguished people. Now, 
 it seemed to us, in reading these essays, that what all 
 these writers said, in most various ways, from most 
 varied standpoints, amounted to this: a recognition 
 of decadence. 
 
 That decadence they read in certain domestic symp- 
 toms, and we do not doubt the justness of their 
 reading. The same decadence, as it seems to us, 
 accounts for the apathy with which certain public 
 questions are ignored. They are too public. They 
 do not peremptorily appeal to those who are entirely 
 preoccupied with private interests. Selfishness is a bad
 
 ON DECADENCE 299 
 
 soil in which to grow Patriotism : for selfishness is 
 myopic, and can see no farther than to the end of its 
 own personal profit, and no higher than to the top of 
 its own greediness. It is odd to see what close neigh- 
 bours extreme animosity and extreme indifference can 
 be; but the spectacle does not amount to a pheno- 
 menon, for it requires no scientific explanation. The 
 animosity is due to the same cause as the indifference 
 a parochial-minded selfishness. Those who have some 
 private gain to achieve can be full of bitterness till 
 they have got it, and they will be full, also, of indiffer- 
 ence to any other matter that does not strike them as 
 nearly touching their own pockets, or their own case. 
 
 If those who are charged with the public defence make 
 a mistake in a grave instance, it must be a public misfor- 
 tune ; but it is a much greater misfortune if the public 
 itself be indifferent and unmoved. Ministers of every 
 shade of political colour have made mistakes ; and it has 
 been mostly they who have had, themselves, to pay for 
 it. When they are suffered to proceed unchecked, then 
 the nation pays ; and what it loses, it has deserved to 
 lose. 
 
 It is a human thing to fall into error, and not, of 
 itself, a thing to scandalise us. I, for my part, am 
 never scandalised, though they who rule my country 
 for me (and some others) do many things that seem to 
 me ill-calculated to serve her, or gain themselves credit. 
 But healthy people are apt to discern really unhealthy 
 symptoms in others, and it is not a sign of general 
 sanity when a lunatic passes muster in general society 
 as a sane man. 
 
 It seems to us that the party opposed to those at 
 present in power will make great capital out of the 
 Ministerial decision to confide the defence of the
 
 300 ON DECADENCE 
 
 Mediterranean another navy than our own. But it 
 also seems to us that this was foreseen, and discounted ; 
 because it was foreseen that there would be an in- 
 different majority. 
 
 Of the political sentiments of any majority we have 
 nothing to say ; it is a political affair, and none of ours. 
 Of national indifferentism we may speak, for it has 
 nothing to do with politics, and concerns national 
 character. To say the same thing over and over again 
 is, no doubt, tedious ; but the thing may be true and 
 vital for all that. We attribute the indifference to 
 certain great questions of national import, which we 
 cannot help believing to exist, to the thing called 
 Decadence ; and that Decadence we believe to be 
 rooted in a swift-growing cancer of selfishness ; and the 
 cause of that selfishness we can explain by the growth 
 of disbelief in God. And how is a nation to believe 
 in God which, as a nation, is not taught to believe in 
 Him?
 
 MESSRS. HOOLIGAN AND 
 TURVEYDROP 
 
 AMONG the lost arts may be counted that professed 
 by the late Mr. Turveydrop, if it be not a contradiction 
 in terms so to speak of an immortal personage. Of 
 course we allude to Mr. Turveydrop senior; young 
 Mr. Turveydrop's art of dancing is not by any means 
 lost, though it seems to have lost its way. The elder 
 Mr. Turveydrop modelled himself on the Prince Regent, 
 and professed Deportment. 
 
 It is not likely that anyone now admires the First 
 Gentleman in Europe ; if he really were the first, we 
 could but hope he would be the last also. Nor is the 
 Act of Deportment as practised by Mr. Turveydrop to 
 be regretted. It was false and insincere : more vulgar 
 than any roughness. But that was specially the fault 
 of the copyist, and of his choice of a model. Vain 
 and vulgar, silly and selfish, old Turveydrop would 
 have been insufferable no matter what he adopted as 
 his stock-in-trade. As it was his whole stock-in-trade 
 was Deportment, and on it he lived, idle and intoler- 
 able. But Deportment was not invented by him, nor 
 even by George IV. And it survived both of them. 
 It began before George III went mad, and it lived on, 
 in boarding-schools and middling society, till quite late 
 in the reign of his granddaughter. It is as dead as 
 Queen Anne now. 
 
 301
 
 302 MESSRS. HOOLIGAN AND TURVEYDROP 
 
 Becky Sharp knew how to jeer at it : but funny as 
 her scorn of Miss Pinkerton was, it was only scorn, 
 bitter and savage, and does not make her undoubted 
 genius more admirable. Miss Pinkerton was, like Mr. 
 Turveydrop, an old hypocrite, though of a different 
 pattern: with her, Deportment was also a stock-in- 
 trade; she sold it, as she sold the dates in English 
 history, to the young ladies at her Academy on 
 Chiswick Mall. And to her, and her sort, it did not 
 occur that it stood for something better. 
 
 To her and Mr. Turveydrop alike, it was merely part 
 of the art of polite seeming. And, because she and he 
 had thousands of fellow-artists, the idea of Deportment 
 became identified with the general scheme of humbug 
 and pretence, against which a revolution began some 
 years ago. Revolutions are much less afraid of destroy- 
 ing what is good or harmless than of not destroying 
 what they perceive, half-perceive, or imagine, to be bad 
 and noxious. 
 
 But all along there had been a practice of Deport- 
 ment that was not at all like that of Mr. Turveydrop 
 and the elder Miss Pinkerton. The lady, at all events, 
 was shrewd enough to be aware that there was a sort 
 of demeanour that was apt to distinguish people of 
 high station, birth, and breeding. It seemed a part of 
 them. She was not herself highly born, nor highly 
 bred, nor was her station lofty; many of her young 
 ladies were in the same predicament : the only thing 
 she could perceive to do was to ignore those little facts, 
 and behave herself, and teach her pupils to behave, as 
 though the facts were different. And facts hate to be 
 ignored : they always revenge themselves. So that all 
 the Pinkerton School of Deportment had the same 
 unlucky quality of sham, pretence, and unreality. That
 
 MESSRS. HOOLIGAN AND TURVEYDROP 303 
 
 was what doomed it. I am not in Nature's confidence, 
 and I take it entirely on trust that she abhors a 
 vacuum : if she does, it is because a vacuum has 
 nothing in it. She can't bear things with nothing 
 in them. That is why the Pinkerton Deportment 
 perished ; it had nothing in it. Where it lived on, it 
 had most reality: it expressed something that was 
 there : something perhaps not of the first importance, 
 but something not altogether unimportant, an idea 
 that social intercourse was not exactly the jostling of a 
 crowd, where elbowing, or shouldering, one's way was 
 the only mode of progression. 
 
 By the less strong it was used as a weapon of defence, 
 by the less weak it was admitted as a concession to 
 natural defencelessness. When Deportment received 
 its Death Warrant, good manners were not mentioned 
 in the indictment: but in Revolutions it is custom- 
 ary to execute on a large scale. Much that was true 
 was chargeable against Deportment, and, though good 
 manners were innocent, it was easier to kill both 
 together since they were a kind of step-sisters. 
 
 In Revolutions it is criminal to have even cousins 
 who are suspect. That was why so many thousands of 
 harmless and good creatures were massacred in France 
 when Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality took each her 
 sword in hand for the purification of society. The 
 poor things had done nothing against Freedom, Brother- 
 hood, or that equalness of everybody to everybody else 
 which Nature herself has made so obvious, but they 
 might have kinsfolk who might have liked to : so their 
 heads had to fall too. 
 
 And, though good manners do not consist in Deport- 
 ment, there may be a family likeness. The best sort 
 of Deportment was an expression of good manners, and
 
 304 MESSRS. HOOLIGAN AND TURVEYDROP 
 
 the worst sort of good manners are not much more 
 than decent Deportment. So, in our revolution against 
 humbug, pretence, and unreality we decided to let 
 good manners perish as well as her passee step-sister. 
 
 Certainly bad manners are real enough : there is no 
 nonsense about them, and no one mistakes them for 
 anything but what they are. They do not pretend 
 respect for anything, except, perhaps, money, and that 
 is no pretence: the rudest cringe and grovel to it. 
 They have no idea of seeming interested, or even 
 patient, when they are bored ; they make no show of 
 deferring to anything that cannot insist on their de- 
 ference. They intend to do what they like, and it 
 does not matter in the least what anyone else may like 
 or dislike. They are not afraid of being vulgar, they 
 are only afraid of not getting precisely what they want 
 at once. They are not distinctive of any social class : 
 in the lowest they are expressed in one way, in the 
 highest in another, but the same thing is expressed in 
 both selfishness that is naked, and not at all ashamed. 
 
 The middle classes are now what they never were 
 before, by far the best mannered : but that will only last 
 till the middle classes have discovered that it is "smart" 
 to be ill-bred. Men are not much worse- mannered than 
 women, though the expression is different : the ill- 
 mannered modern woman, who chances to fall in with 
 a man better-mannered than herself, simply takes ad- 
 vantage of it, and gives nothing in return. So that he 
 is tempted, unless he be very good, to suspect that he 
 has made a fool's bargain, everything for nothing. 
 
 Really good manners are a delicate bloom on the 
 ripest fruit of Christianity : a last refinement of the 
 civilisation Christianity brought into the world. That 
 is why they are grown old-fashioned.
 
 TWO PESSIMISMS 
 
 THERE was once a promising little friendship on paper 
 an epistolary friendship, as the elder Miss Jenkyns 
 and Dr. Johnson would have called it nipped in the 
 bud owing to the alleged pessimism of one party to it. 
 He was the less well known of two authors, and the 
 better known gave over complimenting him on his 
 books, and gave over writing him charming letters, 
 because he was not in love with the present age this 
 so-called twentieth century, as the curate witheringly 
 described it. 
 
 Of a century not quite in its teens it is rash to say 
 much ; not every enfant terrible is disagreeable when 
 grown up. But I cannot perceive that it is a sacred 
 duty to admire the present moment. Swift loathed 
 his own species, and men are to be excused for not 
 loving him ; to dislike the age in which you live is not 
 inhuman, though it is probably impolitic, and unlikely 
 to help you in being of service to it. Whether it be 
 also silly must depend on the reasonableness or un- 
 reasonableness of your grounds of dislike. If the 
 qualities you imagine yourself to perceive in another 
 person, or group of persons, are unattractive, you are 
 held excused from being attracted; no one is angry 
 because you cannot admire selfishness, bumptiousness, 
 rudeness, hooligan manners, profanity, shallow conceit, 
 irreverence, and what-not. And, if one who lives in a 
 certain period, thinks it marked by bad and ominous 
 
 305
 
 306 TWO PESSIMISMS 
 
 characteristics, it is hardly fair to abuse him for liking 
 it less than some other age, distinguished, as he thinks, 
 by finer traits. Of course, his judgment may be at 
 fault in both instances ; the age that is deceased, and 
 has left only its memoirs and its miniature behind, may 
 be flattered in both ; the miniature may display only 
 the upper portions of the figure, the lower limbs were 
 perhaps unsightly or deformed ; and the memoirs may 
 observe a wise economy of detail. The qualities sup- 
 posed to exist in the living people may mean less than 
 is imagined. The rudeness you deprecate may be wit 
 whose point you merely failed to see: your fancied 
 hooligan may be a light-hearted creature who only 
 cracks your head open out of high spirits, and so on. 
 
 All this we must admit ; but, all the same, I cannot 
 see that it is criminal to be a laudator temporis acti. 
 'Tis an ancient calling, and was freely exercised so long 
 ago that our name for it belongs to a language dead for 
 centuries. It is not conceited, for he who thus praises 
 the past does not flatter what is his own. Nor is it 
 servile, or time-serving, for the past is not suborned, 
 nor tickled, nor grateful; he who praises it can get 
 nothing out of it for his pains, not even a smile or a 
 caress. The past is a dead king who makes no peers, 
 and rewards his living courtiers with no ribbons or 
 stars ; he has not a penny in his pocket. He will not 
 flatter back; in his silent mouth are no puffs, no 
 advertisements; he can bestow no vogue, nor fashion, 
 nor popularity. The praise of him may be half blind, 
 but it is not mean, nor cringing, nor self-seeking. It 
 cannot be corrupt, nor venal, even though it were 
 affected and but half sincere. The excessive laudator 
 temporis acti may be a little morbid ; there is apt to 
 be something half pathetic, half wistful, about him ;
 
 TWO PESSIMISMS 307 
 
 we may doubt if his backward glances of admiration 
 will ever make the present more admirable; but his 
 weakness is not ignoble. He is a sort of martyr, though 
 not the best sort. Every Christian makes daily sacri- 
 fice of something pleasant ; that is a better sacrifice, 
 for it is to make the future better : but the laudator 
 temporis acti makes his sacrifice, too, not on the altar 
 of faith, but on that of his ideals ; for the present has 
 more to give him, and he lets it all go because he will 
 not grow rich by time-serving. 
 
 The successful author of whom, higher up, mention 
 was made, was scandalised by what seemed to him the 
 pessimism of his younger literary brother, in that the 
 latter said hard things of the present age by reason of 
 its unbelief and religious indifference or shallowness. 
 This, he urged, was really wicked, as contravening the 
 onward procession of time towards perfect good. To 
 him such gloomy estimate of the world's actual condi- 
 tion, in this its latest moment, appeared profane. 
 
 The onward procession of time towards perfect good 
 is not merely a phrase, but one that involves a 
 metaphor. Does every long procession, then, move 
 continuously upward, and always straight forward ? Is 
 its course really up an inclined plane that has no dips 
 and no turnings ? If not, the procession must go down- 
 hill at times, and at times proceed in directions not 
 directly pointing to its goal. 
 
 If faith in Divine Goodness and Divine Providence 
 really insists on our belief that this present age is 
 better than all its predecessors, then each of them must 
 have been better than any that came before it. So 
 that primitive Christianity, of which we hear so much, 
 must be a complete delusion, and the tenth century 
 stand ten pegs higher on the ladder of perfection than
 
 308 TWO PESSIMISMS 
 
 the first. The Dark Ages must, of course, have been 
 incomparably lighter than the Augustan, or any earlier 
 age; all the dismal groans of historians about the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries must be sheer affectation, 
 for they must have marked a huge advance and im- 
 provement on the eighth and ninth, and still more on 
 the second, third, or fourth. If it be a covert profanity 
 to hint that the present age is marked by a wider 
 spread of unbelief, then it must be openly profane to 
 assert that the eighteenth century was less believing 
 than the sixteenth or the fifteenth, 
 
 That there will be an ultimate goal of perfect good, 
 we must indeed believe, and do. But is it promised 
 that all shall reach it ? Shall there be no defections on 
 the way, no stragglers, and no deserters ? 
 
 Are there not two sorts of pessimism ; one that may 
 be nervously inclined to call all the darker colours 
 black, and one that perversely calls black white ? To 
 my thinking he was a pessimist who thought the reign 
 of the Goddess of Reason an advance in human pro- 
 gression on the ancient Reign of Faith in Catholic 
 Christendom. Yet the latter came first, and the 
 Goddess of Reason only set her uncouth throne on 
 altars that had stood for over a thousand years, in a 
 land that had called herself Eldest Daughter of the 
 Church. 
 
 The most fatal of all pessimisms is that which calls 
 Evil, Good, and sees no menace in evil growing, but 
 sits smiling on it, and declaring that it is all healthy 
 progress and upward, onward movement.
 
 PEACE AND PEOPLES 
 
 PROFESSOR Wilhelm Forster, the well-known astrono- 
 mer and worker in the peace movement, has issued 
 and circulated a complete and verbal translation of 
 Mr. Churchill's speech on the Navy Estimates in 
 order to correct wrong impressions caused by erroneous 
 translations and summaries. 
 
 So we read in the Times newspaper, and the reading 
 reminds us of the existence of a certain society to 
 which, some while ago, we ourselves were invited to 
 belong. It is called the British Council of the 
 Associated Councils of Churches in the British and 
 German Empires for fostering friendly relations be- 
 tween the two Peoples, but we quote from memory 
 and the title is rather long ; perhaps we have not got 
 it quite right. At first we seemed to savour something 
 odd as well as long-winded in this society's name, and 
 hardly expected, on turning to the long list of Vice- 
 Presidents, to find among them the names of Catholics. 
 In some cases it was not easy to guess whether the 
 distinguished personages mentioned were Catholic or 
 no : thus between the names of the Right Rev. Lord 
 Bishop of Bangor and Right Rev. Lord Bishop of 
 Gloucester, came those of the Right Rev. Lord Bishop 
 of Liverpool, and Right Rev. Lord Bishop of Birming- 
 ham. Were the present Archbishops of Liverpool and 
 Birmingham intended ? Lower down the list another 
 Right. Rev. Lord Bishop of Birmingham supervened, 
 
 309
 
 310 PEACE AND PEOPLES 
 
 though no second Bishop of Liverpool. Clearly one of 
 the Right Rev. Lord Bishops of Birmingham must 
 mean the Catholic prelate, and it did not matter which. 
 But the question as to whether or no Catholics could 
 belong to this society was set at rest by the appearance 
 of his Eminence Cardinal Bourne's name upon the list ; 
 and we joined the society accordingly. With the 
 object of such a society every one should feel deep 
 and earnest sympathy. That every one does not is 
 evidenced by the need for the society's existence. Of 
 the methods pursued by it we have nothing to say in 
 criticism ; but we would like to say something in the 
 way of advice. And that advice is very simple, and 
 even more brief than the society's own name. Let it 
 direct its influences on the right people. Deputations 
 from it have waited, we believe, on august personages, 
 and have been received with courtesy and respectful 
 attention. So far, so good ; and let us hope the benevo- 
 lent reception of such emissaries in such quarters may 
 produce all the permanent effect desired. 
 
 But our own belief is that much more practical 
 results would be produced if the society could bring 
 any real influence to bear upon the public press in 
 Germany and in England. For it is also our belief 
 that if peace should be broken between the two 
 Empires it will not be through the action of the 
 Sovereign of either country, but by means of the 
 irritant forces of a section of the press in both countries. 
 What Sovereigns really think or wish can only be 
 conjectured by their own people in each case, and 
 very incorrectly estimated by the people under the 
 allegiance of the other monarch. What newspapers 
 are trying to effect can be felt by even the stupidest 
 reader in England and in Germany, and that which
 
 PEACE AND PEOPLES 311 
 
 many of them are willing to bring about is clearly a 
 state of morbid irritation, suspicion, and passion that 
 could only lead to war in the long run. A habit has 
 grown up, even among responsible speakers here, of 
 alluding to England as a Democracy which is hardly 
 polite to the head of what is still an unconstitutional 
 Monarchy. Nor is the term very descriptive, for, if 
 anything, our condition is rather that of a temporary 
 oligarchy, which reminds us of Venice erected on piles 
 rooted in the mud. But, though England be not pre- 
 cisely a Democracy, and Germany is an absolute 
 Monarchy with a Parliament, we must repeat that it 
 is not by addresses or deputations to the British or the 
 German Sovereigns that the society with the long 
 name can hope to produce its desired effect, but by 
 bringing, if it can, persuasion to bear on the militant 
 press of the two countries ; for the whole ignorance of 
 modern peoples lies in the power of the press. By it 
 the passions of the peoples can be, and often are, 
 inflamed; vulgar jealousies can be aroused, fostered, 
 and made noisy; national prejudices and suspicions 
 hatched into bitter hatred ; and every sincere effort 
 at mutual understanding made by official diplomacy 
 brought to nought. 
 
 In this line of business nothing is more lamentable 
 than the indulgence in personalities and insults which 
 a certain section of the press, both here and in Germany, 
 allows itself. Anything likely to insult or annoy the 
 German Emperor, his heir, or his family is seized upon 
 and given prominence by such English papers as we 
 have in mind; and they are not a bit worse than 
 similar papers in Germany, wherein much has ap- 
 peared insulting to our present Sovereign and his two 
 immediate predecessors. And, though august person-
 
 PEACE AND PEOPLES 
 
 ages naturally afford the most obvious target for this 
 sort of pitiful attack, it is not by assaults on them 
 alone that it can keep itself supplied with offensive 
 matter. Everything German is liable to such vilifica- 
 tion here, everything English held up to scorn or 
 derision there. 
 
 If the Associated Council of Churches, &c., has any 
 real power which we hope it may have it would do 
 far more good by urging, with all its force and the 
 whole strength of its organisation, a more gentlemanly 
 tone, a more amiable spirit, upon the peccant press, 
 than by any number of Imperial or Royal receptions. 
 
 The society has its organ, a very readable monthly 
 report, called the Peacemaker ; but granting that every 
 member of the Association reads it which is granting 
 a good deal it can only convert the converted. Its 
 funds and its energies would be better spent in the 
 effort to bring to a better mind those who are not yet 
 on the side of peace. The Peacemaker is something 
 in the position of a preacher who harangues the con- 
 gregation he has on the iniquity of those that have not 
 come to church. If the preacher could, he would 
 fill his benches better by enlisting on his side the 
 proprietors of places of rival attraction; for the ab- 
 sentees would hear them, and do not hear him. 
 
 In this matter much would be done, if it could be 
 done, by carrying the peaceful war into the camps of 
 those capitalists in whose hands the newspapers really 
 are. They also may have consciences, and it would be 
 worth while to carry on extensive excavation works in 
 search of them. They need not, either, be impervious 
 to the argument that colossal wars are hardly favour- 
 able to commerce, and that commerce and capital are 
 apt to suffer simultaneously. The present writer is
 
 PEACE AND PEOPLES 313 
 
 unable to resist the conviction that, if wars should 
 ever cease from a world constituted as ours now is, it 
 will be, humanly speaking (which means, apart from 
 miracles of Divine grace), by the understanding of 
 Governments and of those that make them that war 
 is too destructive of commerce for the patience of an 
 age that cares for nothing else.
 
 DRESS AND CLOTHING 
 
 CLOTHING was one of the immediate results of original 
 sin, but dress was a later and slower development. 
 
 Nevertheless, one may be reminded even now of the 
 primary connection between clothes and original sin. 
 It was not, indeed, vanity, but shame that led our first 
 parents to cover themselves : but it was vanity that 
 brought them to their fall they wanted to be as gods 
 and know all things. And as time went on vanity 
 refused to content herself with coverings that merely 
 answered the purposes of modesty, and of protection 
 from cold and heat. 
 
 Vanity, having made herself thoroughly at home, 
 sought a mate and found one in the irritable spirit of 
 Novelty : their union produced Fashion, now very old, 
 but condemned to a chronic second-childhood. Her 
 dictates are often silly and apish, sometimes mis- 
 chievous, and her obedient votaries are apt to make us 
 remember the original connection between dress and 
 original sin. For vanity leads some to head the pro- 
 cession, and shame crowds others into the pitiful tail 
 of it. It certainly is not the frank love of beauty that 
 makes the most eager followers of fashion ; for fashions 
 are very often ugly. But every new fashion is novel 
 for a time, and in novelty the easiest satisfaction 
 of vanity is to be attained. It calls for no gifts of 
 mind or person, neither cleverness or loveliness is 
 required: an empty head can display the most out- 
 
 311
 
 DRESS AND CLOTHING 315 
 
 rageously new sort of hat quite as conspicuously as 
 one filled with all the wisdom of Solomon : and the 
 hardest-featured and most ungainly creature will look 
 no uglier or more ridiculous in a hobble skirt than 
 Helen of Troy would or Mary Stuart. 
 
 In this way fashion is a leveller : for it destroys the 
 superiority of natural gifts. The foolish and the un- 
 beautiful are aware of it, and hide their deficiencies, in 
 the world's masquerade, under the cheap domino of 
 fashion. Not, of course, that this goddess is an in- 
 expensive one to worship, but many silly and ugly 
 people have plenty of money, and many others behave 
 as though they had. 
 
 The alliance between vanity and shame is of so 
 long standing that they appear to be almost naturally 
 related. And there is a sort of shame that is merely a 
 sort of vanity : such is the shame of not being in the 
 fashion. 
 
 If vanity could ever be of any use at all you might 
 expect it to be so in hindering people not ill-looking 
 from making themselves appear so by dressing mon- 
 strously. But it does not seem to serve them much. 
 
 Thousands of women whom Jane Austen would 
 describe as " well enough," have, within the last year or 
 two, made themselves monstrous by meek and servile 
 adoption of fashions that no beauty could carry off. 
 And this shame of not being fashionable has blinded 
 thousands more to a shame they ought to have felt ; 
 for the dress in which it has led them to display them- 
 selves to the public has been not only ugly, and " un- 
 becoming" in the new sense, but unbecoming in the 
 original sense of that innocently debased word, that is 
 to say, indecorous and indelicate. 
 
 It is odd to see ladies who would not read a " sugges-
 
 316 DRESS AND CLOTHING 
 
 tive" novel, parade themselves in costumes that are 
 simply not modest, with no better excuse than that 
 such dress is the fashion, which means that it was 
 recently novel. 
 
 And they must be well aware that their example 
 will be followed, and, as such examples always are, in 
 descending, exaggerated. 
 
 For fashion is not one of the monopolies of the upper 
 classes, as in meeker ages they were called, or of the 
 leisured classes, as they are called in an age which is 
 never witty except by accident. 
 
 Once every class had its own sort of dress, and all of 
 them were dressed more picturesquely. Now all are 
 dressed alike, that is to say, one class serves to another 
 as a mirror in which it could see, very soon if it chose, 
 how silly and how unsightly its fashions are, since they 
 become vulgar when they are become common, and 
 intolerable when they have grown cheap. 
 
 And fashion changes so rapidly that no cheapness of 
 material in the copy can prevent its being expensive. 
 The living wage has to take count of this : for husbands 
 have wives and even daughters, and daughters and 
 wives alike must be fashionable. The dresses of last 
 year would be impossible this. 
 
 Any decent person must wish to see poorer people 
 well-dressed ; but it is not pleasant to see poor children 
 wanting warm clothes in winter, half-shod, and wet 
 through, for lack of reasonable wrappings against the 
 weather, but clad in tawdry finery, thin, draggled and 
 often dirty, with necklaces and bangles, and half the 
 useless etceteras of costume, and scarcely any of its 
 essentials. 
 
 In a hot summer one may just as often see such 
 children, who would be more comfortable and more
 
 DRESS AND CLOTHING 317 
 
 clean in a washing frock, sweltering in the fusty 
 velveteen of last winter, with ponderous velveteen hat 
 to match, and smothered in a fur or feather boa by way 
 of cape. 
 
 In this matter " the poor " are not much sillier than 
 many in the classes ranging up above them. If council- 
 school children must have glass pendants, subalterns' 
 wives must have diamond tiaras convertible into 
 necklets. And middle-class folk take it for granted 
 that they must dress like peeresses; where were 
 Democracy else ? 
 
 It is not comfort they seek. Comfort, the late 
 Laureate assured us, is scorned of devils; and, if that 
 be so, they have a devilish scorn of it. Silly creatures 
 who will not be content even to look nice, who prefer 
 to look nasty so they look fashionable, will not be 
 content to be comfortable. 
 
 If Mr. Lloyd George could enrich us with an Act to 
 insure the life of any one fashion for twenty years, even 
 the people with fixed incomes would be better off. 
 But who on earth can say where Mr. Lloyd George, 
 or any of us, will be in twenty years' time ?
 
 OF CATHEDRALS 
 
 A CATHEDRAL is the basilica, church, or chapel in which 
 a bishop's chair is. We know that, and so we know 
 that there need, essentially, be nothing grandiose about 
 the building, and that, in the beginnings of churches, 
 there could hardly have been anything grandiose in the 
 places where bishops had their seat. The room, in the 
 house of Pudens, where the first chair of Peter was, was 
 the forerunner of the Lateran, and Omnium Ec- 
 clesiarum Urbis et Orbis Mater et Caput, the Cathedral 
 of the World. 
 
 But, since, nearly two thousand years have passed of 
 Time's procession towards Eternity, and twenty cen- 
 turies of experience have taught the people to associate 
 with the word cathedral ideas of beauty and dignity ; 
 so that, on the one hand, even ecclesiastical authorities 
 are wont to recognise this, by giving to a church in 
 which a bishop's throne is set, but which is felt to be 
 inadequate to the name of cathedral as lacking the 
 fitting dignity or importance, some name, as Pro- 
 Cathedral, implying a promise of something better to 
 come ; and, on the other hand, simple folk, who are not 
 ecclesiastically learned, are apt, whenever they see a 
 church of distinguished beauty or size, to call it a 
 cathedral. We Catholics have no bishop at Norwich, 
 or at Arundel, but the visitor to either town will have 
 had his attention complacently drawn by some in- 
 habitant to the Catholic Cathedral. 
 
 318
 
 OF CATHEDRALS 319 
 
 It is a mistake of fact, but not a bad sort of mis- 
 take, for it is an unconscious witness to long and true 
 experience. Men expect something of a cathedral, 
 because for many centuries the word has signified 
 something lovely, noble, and above common. 
 
 The Catholic Church, when the Arts ceased to be 
 false goddesses, adopted them as her children, and 
 took them into her service. The service of literature 
 has always been acknowledged, for it is a direct form of 
 speech, and so a quite obvious means of instruction. 
 The service of painting is so like it that it also has been 
 acknowledged commonly and freely; for pictures are 
 books, not only for the lettered, but for those who 
 cannot read. And music, even without words, has a 
 voice so clear that it may speak of God to the blind, 
 who can see neither letters nor pictures. But the 
 service of architecture to religion is not so explicitly 
 recognised, though it has almost from the begin- 
 ning of the Church been admitted implicitly by its 
 use. 
 
 The method of service is not so obvious as that of 
 spoken or written language, or that of pictorial art, or 
 even that of song and musical sound. No dogma is 
 set forth, plainly and without allegory, by architecture, 
 as dogmas can be set forth in literature and in painting. 
 It, however, is also among the prophets, and there is 
 only gracelessness in measuring and comparing the 
 service of the prophets ; it is like plaguing one lost in 
 admiration of the Matterhorn by reminding him that 
 Mont Blanc is higher, 
 
 Perhaps the teaching of noble architecture belongs 
 rather to the sphere of moral than of dogmatic 
 theology; it influences faith by ethic, and binds the 
 soul to faith by cleansing it. And if a cathedral
 
 320 OF CATHEDRALS 
 
 cannot formulate Catholic doctrine, neither will it lend 
 itself to teach any other. For over three centuries and 
 a half the pulpits of all the old Catholic cathedrals in 
 England have been listening to an alien teaching, but 
 the cathedrals have never turned Protestant. They 
 express what they were built to express, and ignore the 
 Reformation. Their air is as bland as ever, as devout ; 
 they make no descent from their serene aloofness into 
 the lists of controversy ; but their aloofness is as strong 
 a protest as though it were not silent. No Reformer 
 in England or elsewhere has ever converted them : the 
 ancient cathedrals may be freeholds of new religious 
 corporations, but the mark of ownership has never 
 obliterated the birth-mark of origin and purpose. 
 Perhaps that is why they have borne, and bear now, 
 so little share in the actual contemporary life of 
 " reformation countries." I suppose many a Catholic 
 has dropped in at one or other of them, in England, 
 and, as it chanced, heard some portion of a service, 
 heard lovely boy-voices singing the old king's im- 
 mortal songs, and watched the yellow evening light 
 fall on the great, empty, pathetic spaces, tipping with 
 gold, perhaps, the niddle-noddling autumnal bonnets of 
 the literal two or three gathered together for worship. 
 Whatever else may have struck him, one thought 
 could not fail : that it all had nothing on earth to do 
 with the people. England was outside. Here, within, 
 was an archaism : an attempt to pretend that some- 
 thing gone was present. Out in the street, beyond the 
 green close, was the life, the interest, the business of 
 the people; inside, nothing but a monument and a 
 decorum. 
 
 High overhead, as the little, withered, meek, un- 
 questioning congregation creeps home to cosiness and
 
 OF CATHEDRALS 321 
 
 tea, old bells, baptized centuries ago with Mary's name, 
 or Peter's, proclaim their patience. 
 
 He Al-so Serves 
 Who on-ly Stands 
 
 9 
 
 And Waits. 
 
 So they stand, the old Catholic cathedrals, and wait, 
 in patience, faith, and hope. 
 
 There is no such a thing as Protestant Church archi- 
 tecture. There is post-Reformation architecture for 
 theatres, skating rinks, railway stations, and municipal 
 baths. And the post-Reformers are welcome to it. 
 But if Protestants who rejoice in bishops, as pew- 
 openers enjoy poor health, are for building a cathedral, 
 they try to build a Catholic one. The architect goes 
 a-gleaning, and scrapes together bits from Salisbury, 
 bits from Chartres, bits from Cologne, an arch from 
 Amiens, a nave from Notre Dame, a lady-chapel (for 
 the Ladies chapel, cosier for morning prayers), and so 
 on. The new stones are all dug from the old quarries. 
 The more like a real cathedral the thing looks, the 
 more it will resemble what it is not an old Catholic 
 building meant for the old Catholic Mass. 
 
 Cathedrals are for bishops, and some Protestant 
 branches of the Reformation-tree kept bishops on their 
 bough, partly by accident, partly for the look of the 
 thing. But a new non-Catholic cathedral can never 
 be induced to express the new non-Catholic idea. It 
 refuses to look like a cathedral at all, or insists on 
 expressing the old, disallowed idea, of a place for a 
 Catholic bishop to pontificate in. 
 
 Other Reformation religions declined to be bothered 
 with bishops. They saw no sense in scotching the 
 queen-bee and hiving common bees with the queenly 
 
 x
 
 OF CATHEDRALS 
 
 title. They want no cathedrals: they require preach- 
 ing-halls, and they build them, something like dull 
 theatres, but more recently with a half-hearted affecta- 
 tion of ecclesiasticism. Money is seldom lacking, and 
 money is deemed capable of purchasing taste, but it 
 cannot buy conviction; and a Gothic meeting-house 
 is one of the most unconvinced-looking things I know. 
 "Which shall I be?" it seems to ask of itself, and 
 (aside) of the public, "A chapel or a church? If a 
 chapel, why these mediaeval airs ? Where was I in the 
 Middle Ages? If a church, what is going on in my 
 inside ? " 
 
 One may even see, nowadays, meeting-houses with 
 crosses on them, venerated as religiously as the cross 
 on a hot-cross bun.
 
 OF STONE SERMONS AND 
 WHITE ELEPHANTS 
 
 WE read of an American lady to whom an enthusi- 
 astic fellow-tourist appealed, to know if the Venus de 
 Medici did not overpower her. 
 
 " I guess," she declared, " none of those stone women 
 ever sat on me." 
 
 Cathedrals do not sit on us ; their influence is potent 
 without being oppressive. No influence, however 
 strong, affects all alike, and there may be some who 
 are not sensible of the appeal of these stone sermons. 
 They are right not to pretend to feel it ; all attempt to 
 affect a taste we have not leads to false taste, and 
 affected feeling is worse than affected taste. The 
 wonderful loveliness of Nature is quite invisible to 
 some people, and they are no more to blame than 
 if they were colour-blind. So, too, with really great 
 Music; it is quite meaningless to certain hearers, and 
 the lack of a sense is not a fault in them, but only an 
 unfortunate deprivation. Yet it is equally true that 
 there are others to whom a forest-glade or a symphony 
 are more than sermons; they seem to serve them as 
 a sort of sacramentals. No one is to affect such a 
 quality; but, to those who have it, it is as real as 
 another's capacity for getting all that there is in them 
 from the sermons preached in church ; and we are not 
 to undervalue it, or laugh it off.
 
 324 OF STONE SERMONS 
 
 So of stone sermons cathedrals, and all that in this 
 place we mean to signify by cathedrals, such as an 
 abbey, or a cloister, a noble church, or even the ruin 
 of one : for the ruin of a beautiful building has often 
 a deeper loveliness than the building ever had when it 
 stood intact, the pathos of its ruined state having no 
 taint of degradation : it is only the ruin of a man that 
 is ghastly and horrible. 
 
 By stone sermons, then, we do not mean stony 
 sermons in pulpits, but the preaching of a certain sort 
 of noble buildings, as of cathedrals. 
 
 In England, owing to their alienation in actual use 
 by the dismal Reformation, they have a special effect 
 of pathos, as of beauty widowed, suffering in a patient, 
 immortal hope. They carry, too, a message of indomit- 
 able fidelity. But England is not all Christendom, and 
 there are cathedrals, elsewhere, that still serve their 
 original, dedicated purpose. In any country they 
 preach, and of themselves, apart from effects produced 
 within them, as by great ceremonial, the actual pre- 
 sentments of sacred things by image or picture, holy 
 music, and the like. The sort of influence whereof we 
 speak is independent of those things, and can work in 
 us without them, though the complete effect intended 
 is made up of the combination of building, sacred 
 function, devout representations, and the rest, all 
 together : for the sense of sacredness in any place must 
 be deepened by the presence of all these things; as, 
 for instance, by the knowledge we may have that some 
 great relic is preserved there, or That Which is greater 
 than any relic is adored there. These things, however, 
 are themselves objects of worship or of veneration, and 
 this is true of the building itself only by association. 
 The actual stones of which it is made might have
 
 OF STONE SERMONS 325 
 
 lain unhewn in their quarry, or served some meaner 
 purpose : they are holy only by dedication, use, and 
 benediction. Yet the building, now it is made what 
 it is, preaches of itself, and goes on preaching even 
 when, as in the old English cathedrals, those other 
 things are no longer present. In Gothic church-archi- 
 tecture almost every detail is given some definite 
 mystical significance, though, perhaps, this minute 
 intention has been read into it by the zeal and piety 
 of commentators rather than been originally present to 
 the mind of the architect. Anyway it is lawful and 
 profitable to find any possible good meaning in what 
 only means what is good. Nevertheless, the influence 
 of this building does not depend upon such readings, 
 for few comparatively are aware of them, and the 
 influence is felt by many. This is, roughly, paralleled 
 by the spiritual effect of some holy and ancient book, 
 which the merely devout reader experiences, though 
 he may be without familiarity with the critical, and 
 beautiful, expositions of this or that passage or phrase. 
 The first, most simple, and most important, impression 
 produced, for instance, Is that of reverence, and such 
 reverence is excited very little by any expert admiration 
 of detail. Condescendence upon detail, indeed, many 
 find rather a distraction than a help: as a reverent 
 worshipper of the Blessed Sacrament would be teased by 
 officious explanations from the sacristan of the meaning 
 involved in the jewelled designs of the tabernacle. 
 
 Such persons, potently affected by the force and 
 message of a great cathedral, are not helped by in- 
 struction as to detail of significance. Expert apprecia- 
 tion is too scientific for emotion, and the emotion of 
 reverence is too spiritual to be aided by admiration of 
 completeness or ingenuity.
 
 326 OF STONE SERMONS 
 
 It is hard to believe in any true emotion not being 
 on the side of the angels : and reverence is the last 
 emotion fallen angels would suggest. The reverence 
 effected, in those who are capable of it, by a great 
 or lovely cathedral is so intimately connected with 
 worship, that worship has almost a twin-birth with it. 
 And this is no "light thing or slight." For genuine 
 worship is rarer in us than we like to recognise or admit. 
 Worship implies faith, and cannot exist without it, for 
 it must have an object higher than ourselves ; but our 
 faith is sometimes lethargic, chilly, and habitual, rather 
 than actual and vital, and what awakens it, warms it, 
 and brings it to that life and movement that act 
 necessitates, cannot be of trivial use or import. 
 
 The building of great cathedrals was not, when they 
 were built, the mere provision of a need ; it was an Act 
 of Faith, and an Act of Worship : to such active faith 
 and worship they move us still, even though, as in 
 England, the faith they were built to illustrate, and 
 the worship they were meant to serve, has been out- 
 lawed from them. In our own day we have seen the 
 building of our great cathedral at Westminster. Our 
 friends the Weaker Brethren might have objected, 
 some, we may be pretty sure, did object, that it was 
 not a necessity : by which they meant that the Catholic 
 population of that part of London did not demand or 
 justify so huge a fane, and that Catholics in other parts 
 of London had their own churches, or had them not. 
 The bdte noire, if such a bull may serve our turn, of 
 Weaker Brethren is the White Elephant. A Catholic 
 cathedral at Westminster, they would urge, was a 
 White Elephant. What it really was requires no 
 metaphor to express it an Act of Faith noble enough 
 to link modern Catholic England with the ages in
 
 
 OF STONE SERMONS 327 
 
 which, faith was not pushed aside as an anachronism : 
 an Act of Worship that proclaims to a selfishly utilitarian 
 world that, in the Catholic idea, man's gifts to God are 
 not to be measured by the inch-rule of man's conscious 
 needs for himself. We are not to say to God : " All I 
 have is Thine, and this mean sum I will invest in Thee, 
 because thus I see my way to getting back for myself a 
 higher rate of interest than by spending it elsewhere."
 
 
 AN ADMIRATION NOTE 
 
 GREAT cathedrals, we say, inspire in the first place 
 reverence, a religious reverence indissoluble from 
 worship, and not to be confounded with the different 
 veneration aroused by the sense of their immemorial 
 age. And such reverence is a stimulus of faith, which 
 it awakes, so that out of the dormant habit an act is 
 produced. 
 
 But a word may be said of the other veneration to 
 which we have just alluded. 
 
 In the case of our alienated English cathedrals, as 
 also in that of the still Catholic cathedrals and abbeys 
 of the Continent, we are moved to this sense of venera- 
 tion by the impression of their historic age. We may 
 be unlettered in history, but the effect does not at all 
 depend upon expert historical knowledge. The archae- 
 ologist may, indeed, be able to read by a mere glance 
 at the form of an arch or the style of a pillar the 
 precise period to which this or that part of the build- 
 ings belongs. He finds a great and legitimate pleasure 
 in this. But the sense of which we speak is much 
 more than a pleasure : and to those who are not 
 archaeologists the age of the great and sacred fane 
 appeals quite as strongly, without any effort of theirs 
 to decide or surmise as to precise date. It is not a 
 mere consciousness of interest they are aware of, but 
 an emotion that they feel. And this emotion is also 
 
 328
 
 i 
 
 AN ADMIRATION NOTE 329 
 
 spiritual and refining, that is, purifying. All spiritual 
 emotion is purifying, because it is essentially opposed 
 to the appetite of mean and sordid things. This 
 veneration, aroused in us by ancient cathedrals and 
 the like, enters our soul by more than one avenue. 
 First by the historical sense, even though we be not 
 ourselves accomplished historians : few lads are, and 
 yet a lad is often specially susceptible of this emotion. 
 It is enough that we should perceive the gracious and 
 venerable antiquity of the place, for the perception 
 connects us with a chain whereby we find ourselves 
 linked back personally with a history which we can 
 only surmise, or may know but in part, and remember 
 in part : we are, perhaps, more affected by the whole 
 from our very ignorance of parts. What we know 
 is not, maybe, much; yet it is enough. We know 
 that the place is very old; that it has seen the rise 
 and fall of dynasties, and outlived the growth and 
 decay of governments: that it antedates the changes 
 whereby the new Europe was fashioned out of ruins 
 of the old Christendom. Especially in England we 
 remember that the cathedral was here before the 
 ungainly and uncheerful Reformation: papal bulls 
 have been promulgated in it : crusades, no doubt, 
 preached hi it : here Crusaders gathered for their last 
 Mass before setting out, and here they received the 
 Cross. It is not only of them we fall to think, nor of 
 the way-worn, battle-bruised remnant that came back 
 hither to thank God who had brought them safe home 
 again. One Crusader's battered tomb suffices to raise 
 in our mind the whole pageant of the Crusades and of 
 chivalry, that was like a brave trimming and galon 
 upon the old habit of Faith. The certainty that Popes' 
 bulls have been proclaimed here calls up the whole
 
 
 330 AN ADMIRATION NOTE 
 
 idea of the Papacy, to which the whole Middle Ages 
 serve but as background. Again, apart from this more 
 historic sense, our emotion of veneration is quickened 
 in us by another sense, that of association and sym- 
 pathy. Perhaps it is not actually a cathedral in which 
 we find ourselves, but something much smaller, as the 
 chapel of some ancient college at Oxford, for instance, 
 or at Cambridge. Innumerable generations have been 
 young here, many lads destined to be great, great 
 prelates, great statesmen, or great scholars; the place 
 is crowded with their ghosts, not grim spectres of 
 cadaverous shape, but eager spirits, bland and hopeful, 
 with the sunrise on their faces, and generous light of 
 high and noble purpose in their eyes. Nothing touches 
 us closer, or grips our heart with a tenderer warmth of 
 fellowship, and admiration, and sympathy, and com- 
 passion. How immortal their youth seemed to them 
 as did ours once : what a sacred capital was all life, 
 to be invested by each almost too vast, and so 
 precious that each must be in eager and alert haste 
 lest there should be loss or waste . . . the chapel seems 
 like a great heart with the pulsing of thousands of 
 young lives in it. 
 
 This emotion, also, I class as veneration Maxima 
 pueris debetur reverentia, and not to the living 
 young only, but to those as well who, in the great 
 procession, have passed on to the imaging youth of 
 Eternity. 
 
 This marvellous sacredness of youth how the 
 Beloved of Love Himself felt it. He, who had leant 
 near the Heart of the Son of Man, though he lived to 
 so great age, could not grow old, nor wither with old 
 wintry carpings at youth. "I write unto you," said 
 his pen, sixty-six years after the Ascension had drawn
 
 AN ADMIRATION NOTE 331 
 
 between him and his own heart's Master the holy arras 
 of faith, "I write unto you, young men, because you 
 are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and 
 you have overcome the wicked one." 
 
 And, finally, there is admiration. This is put last 
 because, in truth, I hold it least of the motive forces to 
 veneration. But it has also place. If I put it last it is 
 because it depends in some measure upon taste, which 
 is a much less sure guide to a really spiritual emotion : 
 if I put it down at all it is because the admiration here 
 meant does not depend entirely on taste, and depends 
 very little on what is often meant by taste. A 
 perfectly tasteless person cannot be Tnoved by the 
 beauty of a cathedral: but the necessary taste need 
 not be reasoned, nor aware of itself, nor founded on 
 expert knowledge of canons of beauty. When a thing 
 is beautiful, simple people, if they be clean of heart, 
 are apt to see that it is beautiful. The clean of heart 
 who see God are not all theologians. 
 
 Just, then, as the beauty of nature does teach many 
 simple souls, out of an easy book, what the beauty of 
 God must be Who made it, so the loveliness of these 
 places, made by man, reminds them of the Divine 
 Beauty to which even man is constrained, by fitness, to 
 offer such lovely gifts. No palace ever made by man 
 for himself has ever had half the beauty of the fanes 
 even fallen man has raised to God. Is that an 
 accident ? The simple will not believe it one : they 
 believe, not in accident, but in Providence and His 
 inspiration. 
 
 So the stones preach : it they, being dedicated to a 
 Divine service, can be so noble and so exquisite that 
 men are fain to confess that they who built such places 
 at all events believed in God, what service should not
 
 332 AN ADMIRATION NOTE 
 
 we render, who know what we are about, who need not 
 wait for others to build us up into a Temple of the 
 Holy Spirit of God, or let chance decide whether from 
 the quarry we go to make a part of His Church or go 
 to help build some new Devil-Temple on earth ?
 
 WHY NORWICH? 
 
 LEEDS and Newcastle were obvious places for a Catholic 
 Congress ; so would Liverpool be, so would Birmingham 
 or Manchester. But why Norwich ? 
 
 A good many people seem to have asked themselves 
 this question as, on August 1, 1912, the train carried 
 them far into the East Country. 
 
 That the choice of place was the Cardinal's we were 
 told by himself, and from His Eminence, as from the 
 Duke of Norfolk, we learned that at first his choice was 
 frankly criticised, and that by three critics who seemed 
 most concerned hi it : by His Grace, by the Bishop of 
 the diocese, and by Canon Fitzgerald, of Norwich. It 
 does not appear that any of them were dubious of the 
 friendliness of the Norwich citizens: their ground of 
 hesitation was merely that the Catholic population of 
 the city is quite small, whereas the Congresses of Leeds 
 and Newcastle had their success largely secured before- 
 hand by the great Catholic population of those cities. 
 The Cardinal did not lay open to the Congress what 
 his own reasons had been: whatever they were, they 
 were justified by the event; and perhaps we may in- 
 dulge our surmises as to some of them. 
 
 As the train ran over the flat and not striking 
 country of East Anglia, there was not much to be seen 
 from the carriage windows: a land of narrow fields, 
 with rather mean hedgerows not dignified by fine 
 timber: the villages seeming ugly to one who came 
 
 333
 
 334 WHY NORWICH? 
 
 from the county of lovely villages but a land of 
 churches, and all old churches, persistent monuments 
 and reminders of the faith that set them there. Then 
 came Norwich, itself anything but flat, with twisting 
 streets winding eternally up hill and down: and at 
 every turn a church, always an old one, always another 
 monument and another reminder of the ancient faith 
 whose death-warrant King Henry signed as nonchalantly 
 as though it were merely that of a wife ; and finally 
 another church, crowning the hill and the city, set 
 there by another Henry in noble, wordless protest that 
 the death-warrant has never been carried out, and 
 never can be : a church that is itself an act of sublime 
 faith, not uttered with chattering lips, in one easy 
 moment, but slowly, with the deliberate silence of 
 thirty years, spelling itself out, stone by stone, till now 
 the whole great Word stands, and will stand while 
 Time has ears to hear it Credo. Was not that church 
 the Cardinal's reason ? How better could so princely 
 a gift be welcomed and acknowledged by the Church 
 than by the gathering into it, as for a second dedication, 
 by a Prince of the Church, of the Episcopate of England, 
 and the delegates of her faithful ? 
 
 And was the Cardinal willing to set us praying as we 
 went thither and came back? In Norwich are over 
 forty ancient churches, and could we pass them in our 
 way without memory of the Exiled Master of them ? 
 Who could see them and not think of their arches, like 
 praying fingers, and of the Absent Object of their 
 worship ? No White Christ in any of them now, where 
 once He hid Himself from sight, but proved Himself to 
 faith, by the sheer impossibility of such a thing as such 
 a Presence occurring to any imagination but that of 
 God. Man could no more have invented the Eucharist
 
 WHY NORWICH? 335 
 
 than he could have invented the Incarnation : only He 
 who thought of entering the world by the lowly gate of 
 birth could have devised how to remain in it in the 
 time-long silence of that White Disguise. All great 
 ideas are simple, and I hope the Cardinal will pardon 
 me if, unwarranted, I attribute to him these. No 
 wonder he stuck to them. 
 
 The place of our meeting in Norwich may well have 
 had some minor influence upon the decision of His 
 Eminence, too. Could any see him, on that first 
 evening, when the Lord Mayor was giving him 
 courteous welcome there, and not think that he himself 
 might be truly regarded as host, and the Lord Mayor 
 guest, in that old church of the Black Friars ? Is there 
 any hall, in any English city, where a Cardinal could 
 more fitly gather about him his fellow-bishops and the 
 representatives of their flocks to remind England and 
 them that England was Catholic once and may be 
 again ? 
 
 The conversion of England can we believe in it? 
 Faith has not intricate problems, but she has hidden 
 treasures; and to her children she lets the shine of 
 them peep forth, the golden gleam of substance of things 
 to be hoped for, evidence of things that appear not. 
 
 England was Britain once, and heathen : it stretched 
 forth praying hands to Rome, and from the father that 
 sits among the Seven Hills beside the yellow river, 
 came the faith. Then was the British nation driven 
 westward to the hills, and the old land took a new 
 name from a new people, and they were heathen, too. 
 This time Rome did not wait to be called, but the old 
 father with a new name, because he could not come 
 himself, sent the Black Monks, with Christ upon their 
 lips and Heaven hi their hands, to carry the beacon-
 
 336 WHY NORWICH? 
 
 light to our island lonely in the bitter sea. And for a 
 thousand years England was a jewel on the hem of her 
 garment who is God's great Mother. 
 
 This time the people were not driven out, nor did 
 they send the faith packing : they were rifled of it, and 
 cheated : very slowly, with cruel fraud, was the old 
 treasure stolen, and something to look like it foisted in 
 its place. The inevitable always happens, and the sorry 
 substitute, discredited and unloved, is losing, daily, the 
 hold that was never due to itself, but externally im- 
 posed, so that the cold, borrowed light of Protestant 
 England is swiftly guttering down to the stink and flare 
 of weary paganism ; not the simple, groping paganism 
 that has never known Christ, but the stale and vapid 
 paganism that has half-known Him and lost all savour 
 of His sweetness. 
 
 Can there be another youth for an old, tired people ? 
 Whence can it come ? Whence came the light before ? 
 
 Is this sad worsening a prelude to a new bettering ? 
 Perhaps an England weary of its follies, sick of dry 
 and savourless Dead Sea fruit, thirsty, hungry, utterly 
 weary, may turn her eyes again to the hills whence her 
 help came before, those two times, and cry to the 
 World-Father to give his children Bread and Wine 
 and Water again : the Bread that comes from Heaven, 
 the small, round, White Thing, the Red Wine and the 
 White that the soldier's lance let loose, upon whose 
 double tide of Love and Sorrow we are carried out 
 beyond these swamps of time into the deep, deep ocean 
 that is God.
 
 COLD PORRIDGE 
 
 AN unobtrusive, though elderly, gentleman, on a 
 Sunday evening in August, less than a century ago, 
 took his way to church through the streets of an East 
 Anglian city: they were what is called back-streets, 
 though they curved more than is considered necessary 
 in backs. It was a treat for him to be going thus to 
 hear a famous preacher, instead of having to preach 
 some sort of sermon himself. For nine years he had 
 been listening to himself, and the idea of listening to 
 someone else gave him a holiday sense of peace and 
 goodwill. He naturally thought of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes's clergyman, who perished through lack of 
 religious instruction by reason of having during half a 
 lifetime had to preach at every service he had been 
 attending. Smiling at the witty American's conceit, 
 the elderly priest became aware of a young boy who 
 had begun to dance around him, as he walked, in 
 a witch-like fashion, as though he took his harmless 
 elder for a cauldron. As he skipped he flung up the 
 fingers, first of one hand then of the other, and snapped 
 them, not as implying a compliment. 
 
 "Oh, Catholic!" squeaked the boy. "Catholic! 
 Rotten Catholic ! " He must have been used to dancing 
 backwards, for he did not trip, or stumble : and as he 
 danced he repeated, almost to monotony, his simple 
 chaunt : " Catholic ! Oh, Rotten Catholic." 
 
 "You are not strictly correct," the elderly priest 
 
 337 y
 
 COLD PORRIDGE 
 
 a stickler, perhaps, for accuracy pointed out. "A 
 Catholic, perhaps, but not rotten. Not even dead yet, 
 much less rotten." 
 
 The young boy, a little touched in the wind, maybe, 
 seemed disposed to consider the argument, and would 
 have slowed down to do so; but there supervened a 
 mother, not necessarily his own, but all maternity, and 
 with motherly provision of a small stool, which she 
 seemed able to wield with precision, and inclined to 
 employ as a rod. The priest had heard of whipping- 
 stools, but never seen one : if this should prove to be 
 an example it would be interesting. 
 
 " I'll warm you ! " bawled the lady (not to the elderly 
 gentleman). 
 
 " Madam," said he, " it is not necessary. The even- 
 ing is close, and he seems active." 
 
 "Til learn him," bawled the lady (though an ex- 
 cellent thing in woman her voice was not low). "I'll 
 learn him to dance at gentry and call folks Catholics." 
 
 But the boy was averse from learning, and retreated, 
 and the whipping-stool was hurled after him, and hit 
 him, flat side on, in such fashion that, if he had but 
 sat down at once, everything would have been perfectly 
 regular. 
 
 The lady was pleased and she liked being called 
 madam: though it was what she called her own 
 daughter when that daughter was, like Ecclesiastes, 
 very bold. 
 
 "That'll learn you," she called out, "to call folks 
 names as might be your grandfathers." 
 
 " Madam," said the priest, " I might not even be one 
 of his grandfathers. And he only called me what I am, 
 and what I shall be. When I am rotten I shall, please 
 God, be Catholic still. He's premature, that's all '
 
 COLD PORRIDGE 
 
 " Rotten Catholic," yelped the boy, from a safe corner, 
 by a church with a convenient alley hard by it. 
 
 A clergyman was approaching the church and also a 
 sort of nun, half-deaconess, half old-maid. On such a 
 breezeless night it was odd how her garments could 
 float so wide, as upon a gale. And how insistent were 
 her feet .' Catholic nuns never have any so far as the 
 public can depone. Protestant nuns are all feet. The 
 elderly priest had been a schoolboy once, and they 
 made him think of a schoolfellow, called Hart, who 
 had the same peculiarity: when a certain psalm was 
 sung all the choir would fix merciless eyes on him, and 
 carol forth: "Thou shalt make his feet like Hart's 
 feet." 
 
 "Rotten Catholic!" yelled the lively boy, with 
 renewed wind, and skipping again. 
 
 The clergyman and the nun (so to speak) frowned : 
 half as disapproving rudeness, and half wistfully : the 
 rudest boy in Britain had never called " Catholic" after 
 them, and never would. 
 
 Which things are an allegory. 
 
 On his homeward way, the elderly priest paused a 
 moment in an open market, where a preacher, not 
 indigenous, nor racy, of the somewhat lethargic soil, 
 was lashing himself to imbecility, with denunciations 
 of the Pope and the Pope's Church. He seemed to 
 find it easy. It all depends on your starting-point and 
 the distance you have to get. He was rather noisy, 
 but he was also rather dull. His audience was not 
 innumerable : and it hardly seemed on fire. It was not 
 uninteresting to cast a glance on them. Some were 
 easy creatures, not readily shoved into anger with 
 people who came to their city to spend money in it : a
 
 340 COLD PORRIDGE 
 
 confluence of Catholics they clearly esteemed a sort of 
 protracted picnic, where the picnickers could not reason- 
 ably be supposed capable of bringing their provisions 
 with them in paper-bags : anyway they could not sleep 
 in paper-bags, and fifteen hundred or two thousand 
 Catholics, however erroneous their theology, must be 
 good for local hotels. Many of those who came to scoff, 
 and seemed disinclined to remain to pray, had the look 
 of that class of youthful theologian that deals chiefly in 
 graffiti on blank walls. They were not, apparently, 
 elated. They wanted to hear something indecent, and 
 wouldn't stop for anything else. 
 
 A church clock or two began to strike. 
 
 "Oh, fie! Oh, my! My eyes! What lies!" they 
 called out, by way of preparation, and then struck 
 solemnly. "Poof! Poof! Poof!" Another alle- 
 gory : and, incontinently, it brought to the elderly 
 priest's mind a rhyme he had not heard for years : 
 
 " The man in the Moon 
 
 Came down too soon, 
 And lost his way to Norwich. 
 
 The man from the south 
 
 Has burned his mouth 
 Eating of cold plum-porridge." 
 
 Yes, the man belonged to the moon, and had lost his 
 way completely ; and, eh, how cold the porridge was !
 
 ONE never meets them : Weaker Brethren are never 
 in company : like Mr. Chevy Slyme, it is their peculi- 
 arity to be always round the corner. " He is," said Mr. 
 Tigg, "round the corner at this instant. Now," said 
 the gentleman, shaking his forefinger before his nose, 
 and planting his legs wide apart as he looked attentively 
 in Mr. Pecksniff's face, "that is a remarkably curious 
 and interesting trait in Mr. Slyme's character, and 
 whenever Slyme's life comes to be written, that trait 
 must be thoroughly worked out by his biographer, or 
 society will not be satisfied. Observe me, society will 
 not be satisfied." 
 
 In any treatise on Weaker Brethren that "comes 
 to be written" that trait, which they share with Mr. 
 Chevy Slyme, must be thoroughly worked out, or 
 society will not be satisfied : but this is not a treatise, 
 and we can merely allude to the curious and interesting 
 feature in their character. Weaker Brethren, we say 
 then, are never actually present : but they are always 
 assumed as being round the corner. 
 
 They are never seen any more than Mrs. Bennet's 
 nerves: but that lady was not justified in supposing 
 her husband to be oblivious of them. 
 
 " You mistake me, my dear," he said. " I have a high 
 respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I 
 have heard you mention them with consideration these 
 twenty years at least." 
 
 341
 
 342 OF WEAKER BRETHREN 
 
 We cannot see the Weaker Brethren, but we have a 
 high respect for them: they are our old friends, and 
 we have heard them mentioned with consideration for 
 much more than twenty years by the time we are on 
 the practical side of thirty. 
 
 Except in being always round the corner, they do 
 not at all resemble Mr. Tigg's friend. Messrs. Slyme 
 and Tigg were not respectable, and they are all respect- 
 ability. It is, perhaps, part of their weakness to 
 imagine in themselves a monopoly of respectability. 
 But then in their weakness lies their strength: they 
 would not be Weaker Brethren at all, else, and they 
 would not be important. 
 
 No one doubts their importance. They often pre- 
 vent things being done which admittedly ought to be 
 done, or might be done with a large probability of use- 
 fulness. True things are often left unsaid, even in 
 pulpits, because Weaker Brethren might not like it. 
 The weakness of Weaker Brethren is never in the 
 tongue: they are not backward in criticism, though 
 their strength is not best displayed in argument. It 
 is precisely because they are impervious to argument 
 that they are Weaker Brethren, and redoubtable. 
 
 They are very long-sighted for future difficulties 
 when anything is to be done which calls for courage 
 rather than heavy calculation: cold water is their 
 element; not for drinking purposes, or mere ablution, 
 still less for floating anything, but for damping. For 
 the quenching of smoking flax they are the gentry. 
 They are not specially desirous of doing anything: 
 what they enjoy is stopping things being done. When 
 they cannot prevent something being done they are all 
 for doing something else. If you have to build a 
 church they will try to stop your building anything :
 
 OF 'WEAKER BRETHREN 343 
 
 as a last resource they will insist you should build a 
 school : if it is a school you want, they will vote for an 
 institute instead. 
 
 "There is," said Cardinal Manning long ago to 
 the present writer, "a class of persons who have 
 never done anything that mattered, or written any- 
 thing that mattered, but have something to urge 
 against anything anybody does and anything anybody 
 writes." His Eminence was describing the Weaker 
 Brethren. They are decent people in general, and 
 never give scandal: they take it about once a week. 
 To do so they esteem a sign of delicacy of conscience. 
 The Saints were singularly backward in taking scandal, 
 it was their own faults that shocked them; but the 
 Saints were never Weaker Brethren. 
 
 Children are never Weaker Brethren either, for 
 children are simple, and simplicity is not a charac- 
 teristic of the Weaker Brethren. There are countless 
 numbers of grown persons who are as simple as 
 children, and have much of the innocence of children, 
 but innocence of even a higher kind, for it is not 
 ignorance. They are never Weaker Brethren. The 
 Duke of Wellington observed that he was much ex- 
 posed to authors : editors, I suspect, are much exposed 
 to Weaker Brethren ; but they do not publish all their 
 letters. Priests suffer still more from them, for they 
 inhabit everywhere and have not a mean opinion of 
 their own judgment. Bishops probably receive many 
 letters from them. It would be very wrong to forget 
 that they have their rights : but perhaps there is more 
 danger of their forgetting that the other brethren have 
 rights, too. Much should be conceded to weakness of 
 any kind : but not everything. For things have to be 
 done, and inexpert criticism is not precisely motive 

 
 OF WEAKER BRETHREN 
 
 power, but only the drag on the wheel of motion : now 
 a drag is all very well down a steep hill, but not quite 
 so useful if it is desired to mount one. 
 
 There were plenty of Weaker Brethren in Siena in 
 St. Catherine's time, and they would have liked to 
 extinguish her altogether. If Weaker Brethren had 
 got their own way there would have been no restored 
 Hierarchy in England. But they can't expect to get 
 it always. St. Francis Xavier was terribly exposed to 
 them : so was St. Ignatius, his master : they are not a 
 modern growth, for in almost all the lives of the Saints 
 they occur, though never as the principal character in 
 the story. St. Thomas of Aquino would never have 
 been a Dominican if they could have stopped him. 
 They looked on without misgiving while the Blessed 
 Joan of Arc was being burned at Rouen: but with 
 much misgiving one of their ancestors looked on while 
 the woman that was a sinner washed Our Master's feet 
 with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her 
 degraded head. Simon was only a Pharisee, we are 
 not told he was a bad man : like the other Pharisee, he 
 fasted and paid tithes, and behaved himself morally : 
 he merely belonged to the Weaker Brethren and never 
 suspected it. It is hard for decent people to suspect 
 there is anything amiss with themselves. We can only 
 guess what the ninety and nine feel when the Shepherd 
 goes out into the wilderness to catch one wilful, silly 
 sheep. But the strayed sheep must not bleat at the 
 pushing welcome he receives in the fold : it is enough 
 that the Shepherd thought it worth while to go out and 
 bring him home. 

 
 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 WHILE this paper is being printed a certain number of 
 our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen will be on 
 the road to Rome : and it is fitting, as it is natural, that 
 our thoughts should go with them. They go not as 
 themselves only, but as a sort of Ambassadors to repre- 
 sent us all. Many thousands, who must stay at home, 
 would go, too, if they could: all should go in spirit. 
 For the National Roman Pilgrimage concerns all the 
 Catholics of England, and is more than the personal 
 journey of them who are able to make it. It must 
 carry with it all our hearts, and express for us all the 
 fealty and faith of the whole Catholic people of this 
 country. 
 
 Time was when the Roman Road was very long, and 
 very arduous : when the journey took a great while, and 
 was not always free from hardship and danger. Saracens 
 were at the very gate of Italy ready to swoop down 
 upon the pilgrim from their mountain-eyrie by Fraxi- 
 neto. But still the English pilgrims went to the Tomb 
 of the Apostles, and to the feet of St. Peter's "Vicar. 
 Long after the danger of Saracens had ceased, there 
 were difficulties ; and the journey even down to our own 
 times was very costly. Now it is easy, and quick, and 
 grown very cheap. But such cheapness is comparative. 
 Scores of thousands who would long to make the 
 Roman Pilgrimage have not the means. Perhaps some 
 of them might be able if they would make it a slow, 
 
 345
 
 346 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 deliberate purpose, and save a little from year to year 
 that they might put together enough to make the 
 Roman pilgrimage at least once in their lives. Poorish 
 people save as much for less important things. And 
 to have made the Roman Pilgrimage once in life they 
 would find to be more than a memory, it would be a 
 possession. Many holidays are far more costly, and 
 none could be remembered as this : we do not wish to 
 speak of the devout journey to St. Peter's Tomb and 
 Throne as a mere holiday : but it is true that the pil- 
 grimage is not meant to be a dolorous penance. The 
 pilgrims of old days had as much faith and piety as 
 any, but they were a jocund folk, or Chaucer described 
 out of his own head. 
 
 This idea of representation on the Roman Pilgrimage, 
 simple as it is, and obvious, hardly seems to be enough 
 remembered and acted upon. Of those who cannot go 
 themselves not all are hindered by lack of money ; some 
 are too old, and some too delicate ; and of these many 
 are rich enough to go or to send others in their stead. 
 Is that often done ? Many a poor relation might well 
 carry to Rome a wealthier kinsman's vota: and such 
 vota would be doubled, offered as they would be in his 
 person, or hers, who went, and in his name, or hers, 
 who gave the means. 
 
 Again, a whole family might join to send one mem- 
 ber, and this would involve no great cost for any one 
 member of it. Thousands are rich enough to put by 
 some slight thank-offering to St. Peter every time they 
 go to Confession ; and such alms, clubbed together by 
 a family, would easily equip a pilgrim to carry to St. 
 Peter's Tomb, and St. Peter's Seat, the whole gratitude 
 of the family for what St. Peter does for them, year by 
 year, in the gracious sacrament of reconciliation. Do
 
 THE ROMAN ROAD 347 
 
 we remember, I wonder, when we receive absolution, 
 that it is St. Peter's special sacrament ? He is the arch- 
 custodian of them all, but in this the sacrament of our 
 daily need, the medicine of our quotidian fevers and 
 sicknesses, we are brought into a life-long personal rela- 
 tion with him. Are we half mindful enough of it, half 
 grateful enough to the Christ-appointed Patron Saint 
 of the Confessional? To him the keys were given: 
 every priest that absolves us does it by his authority, 
 and by delegation from him. The Fisherman himself 
 sits in every Confessional of the world, with keen and 
 eager eyes scanning the waste of waters, turbid waters, 
 and muddy, dark and troubled, to catch our souls for 
 Christ. Is this duly remembered ? Each may choose 
 his patron-saint for himself: there are of every sort, so 
 that every sort of man and woman may see in all these 
 mirrors of Christ's perfectness that which may most 
 surely draw him or her to the love of Christ by cords 
 of a man, Adam-strings of the manhood that is Christ's 
 and was the Saints' too. 
 
 But as we are all sinners, and all need penance and 
 forgiveness, Christ Himself chose St. Peter to be 
 Patron Saint of all : the shadow of his gold and silver 
 keys lies over all our lives, for without the golden love 
 and silver sorrow of his sacrament of healing we are all 
 dead men. So that thousands of times in our lives 
 St. Peter and we meet in a matter of poignant interest, 
 ineffable consequence : to forget it is to forget half of 
 St. Peter's perennial office in the Church. The other 
 half is his office of perpetual and indefectible teacher. 
 That we are Catholics at all implies devotion to him : 
 shall we be content if our gratitude is implicit only ? 
 The best thing about the best of us is that we are 
 Catholics : Papists, as those outside, with a just instinct,
 
 348 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 call us for nick-name. Pope-folk are Peter-folk, and 
 Catholics are Peter's folk, holding unspilt and unsullied 
 the Peter-faith which Christ promised he should carry 
 in his storm-vexed ship unwrecked, till this bitter sea 
 of time is crossed at last, and Peter's passengers shall 
 have been landed by him on the shores of that other 
 sea, unvexed by cloud or storm that smiles beneath the 
 great White Throne of God. And those who take the 
 Roman Road travel not only to Peter's tomb ; they go, 
 not only to venerate his relics unviolated through 
 nineteen centuries, but to offer homage at his un- 
 shaken throne. Peter lives, not in heaven alone, but 
 on earth; for he is perpetual Viceroy till the King 
 comes again. His word is not a written memory, a 
 manuscript, a monument, but a living voice speaking 
 through live lips that human ears can hear. 
 
 That voice is more than an echo among the Seven 
 Hills: it is an utterance never stilled, never silent. 
 And so it has no staleness and no novelty, but sounds 
 in many tones a steadfast, divine unison. The world 
 itself knows it, and ever turns, half-astonished, pricking 
 averse ears, in spite of itself, to hear what that change- 
 less voice shall say : often it hears with bitter protest, 
 . for the light, sweet burden is intolerable to many, who 
 want no burden at all but such as they pile for them- 
 selves; and, that Christ will not change Himself, nor 
 wear new suits, and babble new promises, is a hard 
 hearing for them. Though He sent them Moses from the 
 dead, and the prophets, they would not listen ; for they 
 want a Moses with no law in his hands, and prophets 
 with no God-Man upon their lips. 
 
 But for us : we lift our eyes to the hills, whence help 
 came hither when this was Britain, and whence it came 
 again when Christian Britain had become heathen
 
 THE ROMAN ROAD 349 
 
 Saxon-land : Rome brought our fathers to Christ, and 
 Rome keeps us His. The least we can render back is 
 our leal homage and gratefulness. If we be too poor, 
 or too old, or too weak to carry our bodies down that 
 glorious road, we can send our hearts in their hands 
 who go ; and bid them, who go for us, with their lips 
 pray for us beside the Apostle's tomb, and with their 
 lips kiss for us the tired feet of him who holds the keys 
 that have so often opened again for us the gates our 
 sins had shut against ourselves.
 
 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES 
 
 THE Protestant Reformers were great abolitionists ; they 
 promised themselves the abolition of all sorts of things 
 the Pope, purgatory, indulgences, sacred images, 
 sacraments, saints, and much besides. In the case of 
 the Pope the procedure was to be by the method of 
 division : infallibility was thenceforth to reside in every- 
 body everybody, that is to say, who did not remain 
 Catholic ; for a judgment that should happen to coincide 
 with that of the Pope and of some hundreds of millions 
 of Christians still adhering to the Pope, however private, 
 could never claim the noble prerogatives of real privacy. 
 In the case of the saints there arose another sort of 
 substitutes. Instead of saints the reformed churches 
 plumed themselves on Worthies. Luther, Calvin, 
 Melancthon, Zwingle, and the rest of them, were not set 
 up as saints, and no one can be greatly surprised. The 
 title of saint had, in the course of fifteen hundred years, 
 acquired a meaning so definite that to apply it to any 
 of those personages would have suggested comparisons 
 proverbially odious. And the meaning of the word 
 saint was not one acceptable to the Reformers. In the 
 first place, all the saints had from immemorial time 
 been singularly Roman Catholic. Differing immensely 
 in personal characteristics, in worldly rank, in education, 
 in natural tastes, in a thousand other ways, they had 
 all been distinguished by a peculiar loyalty to the 
 Catholic Faith and to the visible Head of the Church 
 
 350
 
 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES 351 
 
 that was both Catholic and Roman, Catholic in univer- 
 sality, as opposed to nationality or localism, and Roman 
 as having the Bishop of Rome for its supreme earthly 
 head, and Rome as its metropolis and central seat of 
 government and authority. The saints, too, had been 
 pestilently Roman Catholic in other ways, as they had 
 shown by their prayers and their pious practices. They 
 went to Confession, they heard Mass, they adored the 
 Divine Prisoner of Love in His white shackles of the 
 Blessed Sacrament, they venerated sacred relics and 
 images, they went pilgrimages to holy places, they loved 
 and glorified Christ's Mother, and made hymns in 
 honour of her and her unique prerogatives ; they sought 
 her intercession and that of the martyrs and other great 
 servants of God. Many of them were monks or nuns, 
 many of them had actually been Popes. They used 
 great austerities on their own bodies, they bound them- 
 selves by vows to perpetual chastity, to religious 
 obedience and religious poverty. They did worse than 
 all this, for they wrought miracles hi life and after 
 death. English or French, Spanish or Italian, German 
 or African, they were all alike in being intolerably and 
 incurably Catholic : mere Papists all of them. It was 
 inevitable that the Reformers should dislike and miscall 
 them. For centuries these canonised Popes and car- 
 dinals, bishops, abbots, monks, nuns, and so on, had 
 been keeping alive the wicked superstition that the 
 Catholic Church is the home and house of sanctity. 
 The Reformers did not like either them or their sanctity ; 
 in the reformed churches they should have no home, 
 and they never have had. So far these abolitionists 
 have been as good as their word; the old-fashioned 
 sanctity did not, indeed, obey the proclamation that it 
 was to die out. Saints of the original type and quality
 
 352 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES 
 
 went on appearing; the Reformation period produced 
 a singularly notable group of them, as heroic as ever, 
 as supernatural, as inexplicable by human standards 
 and logic. But the new saints did not swarm in the 
 new hives of reformed Christianity. It was not in any 
 one of the new religious bodies that they showed them- 
 selves; but they went on blossoming on the old tree 
 that had always borne them, just as if the dropping 
 off of dead and rotten boughs had made no difference. 
 No complaint can reasonably be made of the Reforma- 
 tion churches' peculiar objection to the post-Reformation 
 saints, for the post-Reformation saints proved them- 
 selves, one and all, peculiarly opposed to the Reformation 
 doctrines and ideals. 
 
 If saints of the old sort have continued to appear in 
 the old Church, the Reformers have not been troubled 
 by anything of the kind within their own gates. So 
 far they have succeeded; without precisely abolishing 
 sanctity, the superstitious sanctity so obnoxious in 
 Papal religion, they have kept their own ranks quite 
 clear of it. 
 
 There have been no Reformation saints, which would 
 seem almost a providential circumstance, as it would be 
 hard to decide whose business it would have been, had 
 any supervened, to canonise them. The Church of 
 England produced a Royal martyr, but poor Charles I 
 was never much revered by overseas Protestants, and 
 his cult even at home was chiefly confined to a vener- 
 able political party now equally defunct with himself. 
 Those who did not belong to that party seem to have 
 thought that even cutting off that head could never 
 put much into it, and that the martyr to some extent 
 fell a victim to his unlucky predilection for telling fibs. 
 He was not, at all events, our Martyr, and it does not
 
 concern us to be Advocatus Diaboli or Promoter 
 Causes ; but I would wish to say, frankly, that I for my 
 part do not ascribe the King's execution to his faults, 
 but to the ambition and hypocrisy of his enemies. 
 That he was a saint I do not believe ; that he was better 
 than nine-tenths of the Protestant worthies I do firmly 
 believe. Had he been a saint I doubt whether- either 
 Laud or Strafford would have been beheaded. That he 
 and they died very nobly no enemy of theirs has ever 
 tried to deny. Charles I and Laud were not by any 
 means Protestant worthies, but they were among the 
 best of the Anglican. 
 
 Real Protestant worthies were creatures like the 
 unspeakable Knox, and the really disreputable Burnet ; 
 but out of Scotland the former has never been admired, 
 and even in England the latter has long been recog- 
 nised as a conscienceless time-serving courtier and 
 sycophant who would have been glad to play Cranmer 
 to Charles II's Henry VIII, had that too much decried 
 scapegrace been willing to descend to such infamy as 
 the royal author of the Reformation in England un- 
 blushingly perpetrated. 
 
 Tillotson was a worthy, too, and the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury was a far better man than the Bishop of 
 Salisbury; but even the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, 
 whose chaplain he was in 1664, complained that "since 
 Mr. Tillotson came, Jesus Christ has not been preached 
 among us." If he was not Christian enough even for 
 a corporation of Restoration lawyers, his Christianity 
 must have been vague indeed. Still, it was enough to 
 plant him on the throne of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and 
 St. Thomas a Becket, not in the time of Charles II, for 
 Charles gave no mitre either to him or Burnet, but in 
 that of the Prince of Orange, another Protestant worthy 
 
 z
 
 354 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES 
 
 and Patron-Worthy of all Protestants in Ireland to this 
 day. If ever Protestantism could have longed to 
 canonise anyone, William of Orange would have been 
 the man, though whether the process would have been 
 carried out by the States-General of Holland, the 
 Parliament of England, or the Orange lodges of Ireland 
 no one can now determine. Henry VIII and his 
 daughter Elizabeth (of virginal memory) have always 
 been regarded as Proto-worthies by the full-blooded 
 Protestant, by whom the elder monarch's bluff 
 adulteries have never been counted to him for un- 
 righteousness, who can never perceive that he was 
 simply a bad and villainous Catholic, and that Elizabeth 
 was merely a sceptical autocrat with no idea of per- 
 mitting in her realms any religion she could not carry 
 in her own pocket. Father and daughter hanged 
 priests and tried to lay the Pope under an interdict; 
 so they are Protestant worthies and entitled to the 
 smug halo of the same. The royal triad is completed 
 by Edward VI, also a worthy, in addition to being 
 an anaemic prig, which Protestant worthies usually 
 are not. 
 
 But the race is not confined to princely personages 
 and Erastian Bishops. (Hoadly deserves a niche to 
 himself, and it is a shame to mention him thus in 
 parenthesis.) Oliver Cromwell was a worthy, and he 
 was no king, though that was really not his fault. Sir 
 Walter Raleigh was another, as was Drake, as were 
 Hawkins and Frobisher, all very eminent men and fine 
 seadogs ; but it was not their valour or sea-science that 
 made them worthies, it was their fondness for piratical 
 enterprises against Catholic Spain. Titus Oates was a 
 worthy, and to this day there are those who love him 
 none the less for the infamy of his life. If his vices
 
 OF SAINTS AND WORTHIES 355 
 
 did not lean to virtue's side they were enlisted against 
 the Catholics, and the multitude of his sins was more 
 useful than any amount of charity could have been. 
 
 Some of the worthies had none of the high colouring 
 distinctive of a few whom we have mentioned; they 
 were harmless, half-forgotten men of letters like Fuller, 
 himself the historian of the worthies, and to his book 
 the reader may refer who wants more detailed instances. 
 He will find among them many very respectable people, 
 some famous in their day, some still remembered. But 
 what will strike the Catholic reader most is the singular 
 difference between these Reformation worthies and the 
 saints of the old religion. The former at their best 
 scaled the giddy heights of respectability; to have 
 attempted more would have been to risk their place 
 among the worthies. What would Burnet have been 
 had he aimed at sanctity ? We can only say that he 
 would certainly not have been Burnet. It is to be 
 regretted that they were not all respectable. Had 
 Henry VIII been so, Queen Elizabeth would never have 
 existed.
 
 
 OF GREAT AGE 
 
 LORD MELBOURNE is supposed to have said that the 
 best of the Order of the Garter was that there was no 
 " D d nonsense of merit about it." We must suppose 
 he meant that it was given, not for anything you might 
 have done, but for what or who you were. Perhaps 
 that is why others besides Lord Melbourne so deeply 
 venerate them who get it. 
 
 For it is odd how much more people are esteemed 
 for things they cannot help than for things they do of 
 themselves. Most kings can't help it: they are born 
 so, not precisely kings, but with circumstances so 
 powerfully in favour of their becoming kings that they 
 only have to wait and it happens. Sovereigns who 
 do it of their own accord are not so much admired. 
 Napoleon could perfectly help becoming an emperor, 
 but he didn't try, and an emperor he became, and it 
 was the only thing for which anybody could laugh 
 at him. And even regular kings, who have to 
 be, because their fathers were before them, are not 
 commonly thought so much of on account of their 
 virtues as for the fact that they are kings. It is the 
 inherited sovereignty that dazzles, not the wisdom or 
 excellence. When a hundred thousand persons wait for 
 many hours in the rain to see a king go by, it is not 
 because he is as good a man as any in his realm, but 
 because he is the only one in it who can, off the stage 
 use a sceptre instead of an umbrella if he pleases. 
 
 356
 
 
 OF GREAT AGE 357 
 
 And so of all high birth. Nobody that has it can 
 help it. The most industrious ingenuity is unable to 
 arrange it. Even Chinese emperors could not ennoble 
 folks' ancestors in such a manner as to cause the 
 ancestors to have been noble. There is no nonsense of 
 merit about high birth : if you have got it you may not 
 deserve it, and though you deserve it never so much 
 you cannot attain it by your deserving if it happens to 
 be wanting. And that is precisely why it is really 
 esteemed. Almost anything can happen to you in a 
 Republic : your father may have been a crossing- 
 sweeper, and you may be a senator. Your father may 
 have been a senator, and you may be a perfectly honest 
 man. But even in a Republic you cannot rise to be 
 well-born : that is why in Republics they are so fear- 
 fully in earnest about pedigrees. Again, if you, my 
 dear reader, are a miracle of beauty, you can't help it. 
 That is why you are so immensely applauded for it. 
 If you could prove that you were originally a hideous 
 person, and had arrived at your present degree of 
 loveliness by industry and no sparing of expense, every- 
 one would laugh at you. If you could convince us that 
 your wonderful hair was a matter of faultless taste and 
 judicious choice, and an ungrudging purse; that your 
 left eye was your own idea, and selected from a thousand 
 others by an unerring judgment, to fill a hollow left by 
 nature or accident; that your teeth replace a row of 
 uncouth tusks, extracted anything but painlessly ; that 
 your complexion was not a gift but a purchase why, 
 how we should all pish and giggle at you. 
 
 If Mary Stuart had made herself the loveliest woman 
 of her day, and had meekly explained the process, she 
 might have outlived Queen Elizabeth, but not the gibes 
 of Elizabeth's courtiers.
 
 358 OF GREAT AGE 
 
 Beauty is accounted meritorious because no one by 
 any degree of merit can achieve it. 
 
 And, next to high birth and beauty, and the Order of 
 the Garter, there is nothing folk so much pride them- 
 selves upon as great age. The public admits the claim 
 and applauds. The newpapers chronicle the meritorious 
 circumstance, and the sovereign telegraphs approval. 
 He has to; it is his business, in a constitutional 
 country, to reflect the feeling of his people. For sixty 
 years you may have been doing your duty very labori- 
 ously, nay, for seventy-five there is nothing magical 
 in those numbers : you are not commemorated in even 
 the column that records that a Mrs. Smith has had 
 triplets (and she could not help that either), and that 
 the sovereign of a Balkan State has "assumed the 
 regal title." But twiddle your thumbs till you are a 
 centenarian, and you are sure of your paragraph. Let 
 your youngest daughter be turned of eighty, and all 
 Tallis Street will encourage you to go on doing nothing 
 in particular for, if possible, another decade. 
 
 People are apt in middle-life to resent the circum- 
 stance and hate you for seeming aware of it. Wait 
 a bit. Wait a good bit. No one frankly admits the 
 foul offence of being nearer sixty than fifty, but no one 
 over ninety can resist boasting of it. Some attribute 
 it to having never eaten salt, some to never having 
 eaten anything else. Some to being life-long total ab- 
 stainers, others to having never abstained from any- 
 thing. But it is not the cause that interests us ; for at 
 our own age, say, at sixty, we cannot begin to be life- 
 long abstainers from salt, or from nothing : it is the 
 mere longevity that is admired. 
 
 Those who write reminiscences of eighty or ninety 
 years are so alive to the merit that is really theirs that
 
 Or GREAT AGE 359 
 
 they endeavour to enhance it by linking on their own 
 lives to someone else's. "I was not born till 1815," 
 says the autobiographer, " and I do not remember the 
 Battle of Waterloo; but my grandmother (Georgiana 
 Duchess of St. Ives and Chiltern) often described to me 
 her godfather, George I, who died when she was seven. 
 Hie grandmother was the Winter Queen, and could, of 
 course, remember James I, her father. So that I have 
 been kissed by one who was kissed by a king who had 
 often been slapped by a lady that the first Stuart King 
 of England had corrected for childish faults. It seems 
 to bring one very near to Queen Elizabeth, whom the 
 Modern Solomon succeeded." In this way the remi- 
 niscencer can introduce anecdotes of the Tudor court 
 as if they belonged to himself. 
 
 Are we laughing at great age ? God forbid we should 
 at age, or youth, or venerable childhood. If Jaques 
 talks of the mewling and puking babe, the slippered 
 pantaloon, the second childishness and mere oblivion, 
 there is more sadness than gibe in it : he is the melan- 
 choly Jaques. And be sure there was no gibe in the 
 great tragic-comedian who put the seven stages in his 
 mouth. He would not be Shakespeare without a 
 reverence for every phase of our poor human life. 
 Winter has beauties more lovely and more poignant 
 than any of summer's ; not sadder than autumn's, nor 
 less divinely hopeful than any in spring. The year's 
 resurrection is nearer in frozen January than in many- 
 hued October. The dawn is loveliest on a February 
 morning, when the sun, unrisen yet, turns all its frosty 
 pearl to opal, than in staring August, when day comes 
 hustling back before the earth has had time to rest her 
 dazzled eyes. 
 
 To the sight of the aged there comes a change that
 
 360 OF GREAT AGE 
 
 is not an accident nor a failing: near things and 
 little are no longer seen so well ; their detail is merged 
 and softened. But the great distant things are drawn 
 nearer, and the eyes seek them the more willingly that 
 the small, petty things at hand are grown mistier. You 
 shall note the gaze of the very old turned oftenest to 
 far horizons, especially if these rise to heights behind 
 which the clouds sink with day-fall. Another light than 
 that on the child's is on their faces, or the same come 
 back and falling from the same place at a wider angle. 
 It fades often from the child-face, or loses itself in 
 a hotter and more common light : from the old white 
 face it is the shadows that fall away, while the sun, 
 unrisen yet, foretells the full dawn in a glow of un- 
 earthly delicacy and radiance.
 
 MARE'S NESTS AND MUCH 
 BOASTING 
 
 SOMETHING in a paper never read by the present writer 
 was quoted to him the other day, and, as it was only a 
 quotation, it would be worse than temerarious to attempt 
 a requotation. But the point urged appears to have 
 been that Catholics, if not the Catholic Church, make 
 undue parade of accessions to our religion from other 
 bodies, as, for instance, from the Church of England. 
 That those who join us make some sort of boast of it, 
 and so do we on their account ; whereas recessions occur 
 from our Church to other bodies, as to the Church of 
 England, and the receders make no boast of it, nor is 
 any made on their behalf by the religion which satisfies, 
 better than ours, their ideals of unity, sanctity, catho- 
 licity, and apostolicity. It is not meant that the above 
 phrasing represents that of the paragraphs in the news- 
 paper ; it is merely what I understood to represent the 
 subject matter of the complaint or twit. Probably there 
 was no allusion to the unity, sanctity, catholicity, or 
 apostolicity of the religion, or religions, whither lapsed 
 Catholics may betake themselves. 
 
 Is there any truth in the assertion conveyed ? Are 
 we concerned to deny it altogether ? I do not see that 
 we are. 
 
 If those who become Catholics boast of what they 
 have done, self-righteously, they are in fault, as all self-
 
 362 MARKS NESTS AND MUCH BOASTING 
 
 righteousness is faulty. If they held themselves as 
 though their conversion were so great a thing for the 
 Church that the Church ought to feel herself slightly 
 overpowered by the honour done to her, they would 
 show themselves singularly lacking in a sense of pro- 
 portion. But they may glory in finding themselves 
 where they are without any personal boast in the 
 matter: the woman in the Scripture who found the 
 groat she had been seeking called her friends and 
 neighbours together to rejoice with her, and He who 
 tells us of it does not blame her ; and the true faith is 
 a greater find than a groat. The rejoicing is a sign of 
 appreciation of the thing found, and need not imply 
 vanity or self-consequence. I think it is true that our 
 converts do so rejoice, and their joy does not quickly 
 evaporate : it does not wear away when the novelty of 
 their position, as co-heirs of all the Church's treasures, 
 has been worn away, but deepens through life and is 
 deepest when life itself is ending. 
 
 It may be true that those who leave the Catholic 
 Church for some other make no boast, personal or 
 otherwise. It is very likely. They may betray no pride 
 and no elation: and one does not wonder. It is a 
 humble moment; and, if they are aware of it, it may 
 mean some remnant of grace. At all events their silence 
 cannot surprise us. If they abstain from calling friends 
 and neighbours to rejoice with them, they doubtless 
 have their own reasons, and one who is no wizard may 
 divine them. To rejoice, even rather loudly, over 
 treasure-trove is as natural as it is human and harmless : 
 to make much cry over the acquisition of a mare's nest 
 only proclaims an imbecility it were better to hide. To 
 find your mare's nest, and hold your tongue about it, is 
 a natural result of some suspicion as to the importance
 
 363 
 
 of your discovery. It would not appear that we are 
 much concerned to deny that converts to Catholicity 
 arrive with a sense of elation and delight they are 
 unable to repress ; and that receders from Catholicity 
 withdraw with all reasonable meekness, in perfect silence, 
 and without the least tendency to betray elation, or 
 even relief. 
 
 But does the Catholic Church, or do Catholics, make 
 a great to-do over the arrival of converts ? These are 
 two separate questions though one in principle. The 
 Catholic Church at large is not commonly aware of the 
 accession of converts unless they arrive in masses, so to 
 speak, or their importance is peculiarly significant in 
 some special way. If it could be aware of each in- 
 dividual conversion it would rejoice over each, as the 
 Good Shepherd in the parable rejoiced over the finding 
 of the one sheep that had been wandering hi the 
 wilderness. When converts are made in striking 
 numbers the Church, and her Head on earth, are aware 
 of it, and there is great rejoicing : so there has been in 
 Rome over the conversion of whole nations brought to 
 the faith by the apostolic men Rome has sent forth to 
 carry God's truth to them. 
 
 On ordinary occasions it is different. If the writer of 
 the gibe, or complaint, we speak of, were to be con- 
 verted to Catholicity, the Pope would perhaps not be 
 informed, nor would the Catholics in America, Australia, 
 or even Austria : and Rome, New York, Melbourne, and 
 Vienna would go on just as if nothing particular had 
 happened. If, however, the fact were known in all those 
 places it would cause rejoicing : not that the Universal 
 Church had escaped a great menace, or plumed her cap 
 with a remarkable feather, but because another soul 
 had been brought to what is meant for the safety and
 
 364 MARE'S NESTS AND MUCH BOASTING 
 
 sanctification of all souls. In the meantime those who 
 did know would be glad: not all Rome (such is the 
 defective supply of information even in these days of 
 telegrams and postcards), nor all the Catholic Church 
 in England, or Bayswater, but all Catholics who should 
 know that another spiritual brother had been born to 
 them. 
 
 Converts themselves should know as much about it 
 as those who have not the least intention of becoming 
 converts. What is their experience ? Did we find, 
 when we became Catholics, that the Catholic Church 
 had her head turned ? Did the Pope suffer from an 
 accession of blood to the head ? It was a great day for 
 us : was it made a festival for Christendom ? Was the 
 priest who received us promoted, or has he since con- 
 fided to us his just disappointment at the delay in his 
 promotion ? Was all Catholic Battersea agog, and the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, even anonymously, warned 
 that he had better look out Mr. Smith had turned 
 Catholic, and the Established Religion was on its last 
 legs? 
 
 Nay, but Mr. Smith is given a friendly welcome and 
 a friendly warning. He has made a beginning, let him 
 see to it that he walks worthily of the great grace God 
 has given him. He is a child of the Church now, but 
 her babe; let him learn, and let him, above all, learn 
 obedience. Of babes not much else is required. Much 
 talking is not seemly in babies : they are but stammerers, 
 and precocious speech is seldom instructive. He is not 
 greatly flattered, but he is sincerely congratulated. He 
 has done as good a day's work in becoming a Catholic 
 as he could do under the circumstances. Certainly he 
 is congratulated on his own account, not because the 
 Church stood in special need of him, but because he
 
 MARE'S NESTS AND MUCH BOASTING 365 
 
 and all men stand in great need of her. Is there no 
 such congratulation for the neophyte who flings himself 
 into the arms of the Church of England ? Has she no 
 such embrace for him ? Why not ? Is there no warm 
 congratulation ? Does such congratulation seem out of 
 place ? It may be. I, for one, can believe it. Perhaps 
 those to whom he goes wonders why he comes. What 
 brings him ? What has he to gain spiritually, what 
 is he willing, spiritually, to lose ? Dr. Johnson was a 
 devout Anglican, a hundred times more devout an 
 Anglican than any thousand Anglicans you shall 
 commonly meet. " I shall never," said he, " be a Papist, 
 unless on the near approach of death, of which I have 
 a very great terror." What says he of converts from 
 " Protestantism to Popery " and vice versa ? " A man," 
 declared the Doctor, "who is converted from Pro- 
 testantism to Popery, may be sincere: he parts with 
 nothing : he is only superadding to what he already had. 
 But a convert from Popery to Protestantism gives up 
 so much of what he has held as sacred as anything that 
 he retains . . . there is so much laceration of mind in 
 such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and 
 lasting." 
 
 Laceration of mind hardly begets elation in those 
 who have to endure it : and if they who welcome them 
 do so with a calm that is much like coldness, who can 
 wonder ? 
 
 Many receders from Catholicity even abstain from 
 making their names public, we are told, and, upon my 
 word, I can readily believe it.
 
 
 
 IN our last paper we spoke of the difference alleged to 
 exist in the bearing of converts to Catholicity from that 
 of such as have left the Church for some other religious 
 body. But there are differences other than those of 
 bearing and demeanour ; and it may be worth while to 
 allude to them briefly. 
 
 To many Catholics it comes with a shock of surprise 
 to learn that there are people who leave the Church 
 with deliberate intention. In many missions and 
 parishes such a thing has never happened within their 
 memory. They hear with horror that there is a con- 
 siderable annual leakage in England ; but they under- 
 stand that for the most part the leakage is due not to 
 any wilful decision of adult Catholics to abandon the 
 faith of our fathers, but to quite other causes, however 
 deplorable. Some of the causes given are the follow- 
 ing: Children of Catholic parents are left orphans, 
 and without relations willing or able to support them ; 
 such children are taken into workhouses or homes, and 
 are brought up in non-Catholic religions, either through 
 ignorance of what their parents' religion was, or through 
 a more or less deliberate unwillingness that they should 
 receive Catholic instruction. Or, in the case of a mixed 
 marriage, the Catholic parent dies ; the children, being 
 still very young, no longer receive Catholic instruction, 
 either because the non-Catholic parent is glad to recede 
 from his undertaking, or because he or she is too 
 
 366
 
 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES 307 
 
 indifferent. In many instances the surviving non- 
 Catholic parent sends the children to a non -Catholic 
 school because it is, or claims to be, of a higher standing 
 than any Catholic school in the neighbourhood. In 
 many cases the surviving non-Catholic parent marries 
 again, and marries a non-Catholic, and the step-parent 
 is more indifferent or more antagonistic to the religion 
 of the Catholic children than their remaining parent. 
 It is not difficult to understand how little chance, under 
 such circumstances, there is of the semi-orphan Catholic 
 children being brought up in the religion of their dead 
 father or mother. 
 
 Again, children who are not drafted into workhouses, 
 or homes, or industrial schools, but who have lost one 
 or both parents, are often received into the families of 
 non-Catholic relations: even where both the deceased 
 parents were Catholics, such people are not always 
 willing that their adopted children should have a 
 religion different from their own. Where only one 
 parent was Catholic, and the children are taken home 
 by the relations of the non-Catholic parent, they are 
 very unlikely to receive a Catholic education. The 
 non-Catholic parent may survive, but may be quite 
 indifferent, or unwilling to propose vexatious conditions 
 to those who are relieving him, or her, of the support of 
 children it is convenient to be rid of : that convenience 
 is specially obvious in the case of poverty, or in the 
 case of the surviving non-Catholic parent wishing to 
 marry again. 
 
 All these cases must be of such frequent occurrence 
 in an enormous population like that of England, that, 
 though we may be startled to hear any estimate of their 
 numbers, we can hardly be astonished. It is truly 
 lamentable to hear of them, but in none of these cases 

 
 368 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES 
 
 does the lapse of those who ought to be Catholics 
 suggest the least choice or deliberation on the part of 
 the lapsed. The faith was never relinquished by them, 
 but simply withheld from them. 
 
 What shocks as well as distresses is to hear of grown 
 people, brought up Catholics, lapsing from the Church. 
 Of what sort are they, and how does it happen ? 
 
 In some instances it comes about thus : A Catholic 
 makes a mixed marriage, and makes it in the worst 
 way possible, without seeking any dispensation and 
 without making, or asking the non-Catholic party to 
 make, the undertakings necessary in order to secure a 
 dispensation. The marriage takes place, therefore, in 
 a non-Catholic place of worship, or in a registry-office. 
 The Catholic willing to do this either marries a person 
 without religion, or with religious prejudices hostile to 
 the Catholic Faith; and in either case a Catholic in- 
 different enough to behave thus will probably be easily 
 open to the irreligious or anti-Catholic influence of the 
 other party. In such cases the nominal Catholic, who 
 has begun by violating the law of the religion thus 
 loosely professed, is very apt to continue an outlaw, and 
 to remain in that neglect of the practices of religion 
 which is so nearly certain to end in complete, if gradual, 
 loss of all faith. Such loss of Catholic faith is grievous 
 and lamentable, but it does not count as an accession to 
 any other opposed religion. In very much rarer in- 
 stances the Catholic who has shown himself or herself 
 thus careless of his own, or her own, religion is drawn 
 by the non-Catholic to frequent non-Catholic places of 
 worship, and to become more or less informally, if 
 practically, a member of that other religion. Such 
 cases are by no means common, even when there has 
 been a mixed marriage in a registry-office or non-
 
 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES 369 
 
 Catholic place of worship. Where they do occur they 
 prove chiefly this, that the Church is wise in her strict 
 conditions as to the permission of mixed marriages, and 
 that those who violate the condition are but nominally 
 Catholics. They illustrate the truth that it is only a 
 very bad sort of Catholic who is ready to fling aside 
 what can barely be called his faith for some other 
 religious profession. 
 
 Again, there are cases where, mixed marriages apart, 
 Catholics so progressively neglect the practice of religion 
 that they lapse from religion altogether, and finally 
 cease even to call themselves Catholic. Such as these 
 seldom join any other religious body : when they do, it 
 is scarcely because they even profess to find hi it a 
 loftier presentation of faith or a higher standard of 
 morals ; but rather because there is no absolute rule of 
 faith, and morals are left to private taste and judgment. 
 Their adhesion to the,' new religious body is chiefly 
 outward, and involves no special admiration of it. To 
 be free to believe as little as you like, and to be relieved 
 from the recurrent obligations of Catholic practice, is a 
 great convenience if you have become very nearly an 
 agnostic. 
 
 It may be urged that some cases might be produced 
 of undeniably earnest Catholics having lapsed. But 
 such cases would, if examined individually, be found to 
 range themselves into two very small classes. The first 
 would consist of persons who had been converts to the 
 Catholic faith, but had probably never truly grasped it ; 
 who had, in reality, perhaps, never been Catholics at all. 
 They joined the Church for sentimental or aesthetic 
 reasons, without ever arriving at the idea of an infallible 
 authority, out of a sort of preference, not out of any 
 conviction of the obligation of belief. If it be contended 
 
 -
 
 370 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES 
 
 that those who have left the Church for other bodies 
 and return to it, return to it for the same reason 
 because they never were convinced and real Protestants 
 at all, I am not concerned to deny the probability of 
 the contention. 
 
 But two small classes were mentioned above ; the other 
 consists of a very few individuals, but of individuals of 
 more note, for seriousness and earnestness. In each 
 instance it will be found that these persons have been led 
 astray into some teachings or professions which have led 
 to ecclesiastical prohibitions and censures : not until they 
 fell under the Church's condemnations have they shown 
 any disposition to leave her. Even under condemna- 
 tion, and even when refusing to submit to the Church's 
 rulings, they have not commonly joined any other 
 church : when they have done so, it is not because they 
 specially admire that other church, but on the principle 
 that any port is better than none in a storm, and 
 because of the convenience of belonging to a body that 
 exacts no profession of faith. They shelter there faute 
 de mieux, not because they profess to think it best of all. 
 The Church will not allow them to call themselves her 
 members and teach what is not her teaching, so they 
 loosely attach themselves where they may teach as they 
 choose. 
 
 The significance of conversions to the Church, on the 
 other hand, very greatly depends on the fact that con- 
 version to it implies and necessitates a definite accept- 
 ance and profession of the whole of her faith. The 
 Church will not admit those who merely dislike the 
 religious teaching of other bodies ; she does not open 
 her arms to those who find other religions too strict in 
 exacting conformity to some rule of faith, or standard 
 of practice : what she demands is conformity, and more 

 
 OF LAPSE AND LOSSES 371 
 
 than conformity, inward acceptance, of her whole rule 
 of faith, and of her ordinary practice. No priest would 
 receive into the Church a person whose confession of 
 faith amounted only to condemnation of the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, or who betrayed his intention of not 
 hearing Mass every Sunday, or not going to Confession 
 and receiving Holy Communion according to ecclesi- 
 astical law. 
 
 No one does, or could, become a Catholic because he 
 had lapsed into practical agnosticism, or because he 
 had fallen under the censures of any other religious 
 authority. 
 
 To re-state what is so obvious may seem dry and 
 tedious enough, but it happens to make all the differ- 
 ence. It suggests very simply a reason why non- 
 Catholic bodies should make but small capital out of 
 lapses from our Church to theirs. There is not much 
 wool, and no great wonder if there be very little cry. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by BALLANTTNE, HAK8ON & CO. 
 
 Edinburgh fr London 


 
 A CLASSIFIED LIST OF WORKS 
 
 MAINLY BY 
 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC 
 WRITERS 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES 2 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER LIBRARY 3 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 4 
 
 FOR THE CLERGY AND STUDENTS . ... . 5 
 
 BIOGRAPHY 7 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH 8 
 
 LIVES OP THE FRIAR SAINTS 9 
 
 HISTORY ".10 
 
 WORKS BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF A PRIG" . 11 
 
 EDUCATIONAL 12 
 
 POETRY, FICTION, ETC 14 
 
 NOVELS BY M. E. FRANCIS (MRS. FRANCIS BLUNDELL) . 16 
 
 WORKS BY THE VERY REV. CANON SHEEHAN, D.D. . . 16 
 
 WORKS BY CARDINAL NEWMAN 17 
 
 INDEX 22 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
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 FOURTH AVE. AND THIRTIETH ST., NEW YORK 
 
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 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
 Stonyhurst Philosophical Series. 
 
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 THE INSTRUCTION OF CONVERTS. By the Rev. 
 
 SYDNEY F. SMITH, S.J.
 
 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 6 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 Lives of the Friar Saints. 
 
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 ST. BONAVENTURE. 
 
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 ST. JOHN CAPISTRAN. 
 
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 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. 
 
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 ST. VINCENT FERRER, 
 
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 Holy Rosary. 
 
 Pope of the 
 
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 ANTONY. With Preface 
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 10 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 12 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 MAINLY BY ROMAN CATHOLIC WRITERS. 13 
 
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 14 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 MAINLY BY ROMAN CATHOLIC WRITERS. 15 
 
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 16 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
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 MAINLY BY ROMAN CATHOLIC WRITERS. 17 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Works. 
 
 i. SERMONS. 
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 Portion. Quinquagesima : Love, the One Thing Needful. Lent : The Individuality of 
 the Soul Life, the Season of Repentance Bodily Suffering Tears of Christ at the Grave 
 of Lazarus Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Christians The Cross of Christ the 
 Measure of the World. Good Friday : The Crucifix on. Easter Day : Keeping Fast and 
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 Scripture a Record of Human Sorrow The Danger of Riches Obedience without Love, 
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 Greatness and Littleness of Human Life Moral EfTects of Communion with God The 
 Thought of God the Stay of the Soul The Power of the Will The Gospel Palaces- 
 Religion a Weariness to the Natural Man The World our Enemy The Praise of Men 
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 Miracles no Remedy for Unbelief Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed The Shep- 
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 Natural Virtue The Usurpations of Reason Personal Influence, the Means of Pro- 
 pagating the Truth On Justice as a Principle of Divine Governance Contest between 
 Faith and Sight Human Responsibility, as independent of Circumstances Wilfulness, 
 the Sin of Saul Faith and Keason, contrasted as Habits of Mind The Nature of Faith 
 in Relation to Reason Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition Implicit and 
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 Our Lord's Last Supper and His First Dangers to the Penitent The Three Offices of 
 Christ Faith and Experierce Faith unto the World The Church and the World 
 Indulgence in Religious Privileges Connection between Personal and Public Improve- 
 ment Christian Nobleness Joshua a Type of Christ and His Followers Elisha a Type 
 of Christ and His Followers The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish The 
 Principles of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches The Christian 
 Church an Imperial Power Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire Condition of 
 the Members of the Christian Empire The Apostolic Christian Wisdom and Innocence 
 Invisible Presence of Christ Outwaid and Inward Notes of the Church Grounds fcr 
 Steadfastness in our Religious Profession Elijah the Prophet of the Latter Days 
 Feasting in Captivity The Parting of Friends.
 
 18 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Works continued. 
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 MAINLY BY ROMAN CATHOLIC WRITERS. 19 
 
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 20 MESSRS. LONGMANS' LIST OF WORKS 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Works continued. 
 
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 THE VIA MEDIA OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
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 MAINLY BY ROMAN CATHOLIC WRITERS. 21 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Works continued. 
 
 8. DEVOTIONAL. 
 
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 INDEX. 
 
 Pag* 
 
 Adventures of King James II . of England 
 Antony (C. M.) St. Antony of Padua ... 
 
 St. Pius V. ... . ... 
 
 Arundell (Lord) Papers 
 
 Assisi (St. Francis of) A Biography, by 
 J.Jorgensen 
 
 Balfour (Mrs. Reginald) The Life and 
 Legend of the Lady Saint Clare 
 
 Barnes (A. S.) The Origin of the Gospels 
 
 Barrett (E. Boyd) Motive Force and 
 Motivation-Tracks ... 
 
 Barry (W.) The Tradition of Scripture ... 
 
 Batiffol (P.) Credibility of the Gospel ... 
 
 History of the Roman Breviary 5 
 
 Primitive Catholicism 
 
 ii j Clarke (R. F.) Logic 
 9 | Class-Teaching (The) of English Corn- 
 
 Page 
 
 Benson (R. H.) Christ in the Church ... 
 
 Cost of a Crown 
 
 Friendship of Christ ... 
 
 Mystery Play 
 
 The Maid of Orleans ... 
 
 Non-Catholic Denomina- 
 
 tions 
 
 The Child's Rule of Life 12 
 
 Boedder (B.) Natural Theology 
 
 Bosch (Mrs. H.) Bible Stories told to 
 
 " Toddles " 
 
 The Good Shepherd 
 
 and His Little Lambs 
 
 When " Toddles " was 
 
 Seven 12 
 
 Bougaud (Mgr.) History of St. Vincent 
 
 de Paul 7 
 
 Brown (H.) Handbook of Greek Composi- 
 tion 13 
 
 Homeric Study 13 
 
 tion 
 
 Latin Composi- 
 
 (M. J.) Historical Ballad Poetry 
 
 position 13 
 
 of Ireland 15 
 
 . (S. J.) A Reader's Guide to Irish 
 
 Fiction 15 
 
 Burton (E. H.) Life and Times of Bishop 
 
 Challoner 10 
 
 and Myers (E.) The New 
 
 Psalter and its Use 
 
 Catholic Church from Within 4 
 
 Challoner, Life and Times of Bishop ... 10 
 Chapman (J.) Bishop Gore and Catholic 
 
 Claims ... 4 
 
 The Study of the Fathers 3 
 
 Chisel, Pen, and Poignard n 
 
 Christ, A Life of, for Children 12 
 
 Coffey (P.) The Science of Logic 
 
 Conway (P.) St Thomas Aquinas 
 Corcoran (T.) Studies in the History of 
 
 Classical Teaching 
 
 Costelloe (L.) St. Bonaventure 
 
 Cronin (M.) The Science of Ethics. Vol. I. 
 
 Curious Case of Lady Purbeck 
 
 Cuthbert (Fr.) Life of St. Francis of 
 
 Assisi 
 
 Delehaye (H.) The Legends of the Saints 
 
 Delecta Biblica 
 
 De Montalembert (Count) Life of St. 
 
 Elisabeth of Hungary 
 
 Devas (C. S.) Political Economy 
 
 The Key to the World's 
 
 Progress 6 
 
 De Vere (Aubrey), Memoir of, by Wilfrid 
 
 Ward 7 
 
 Dewe (J. A.) Psychology of Politics and 
 History 10 
 
 De Wulf (M.) History of Medieval Philo- 
 sophy 5 
 
 Scholasticism, Old and New 5 
 
 Digby, Life of Sir Kenelm 
 
 Dobr^e (L. E.) Stories on the Rosary ... 
 Drane (A. T.) History of St. Catherine of 
 
 Siena 
 
 Memoir (Mother Francis 
 
 Raphael) 7 
 
 Dubray (C. A.) Introductory Philosophy 13 
 Dwight (T.) Thoughts of a Catholic 
 
 Anatomist 6 
 
 Emery (S. L.) The Inner Life of the Sou} 4 
 
 Falklands n 
 
 First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-on- 
 
 Tyne n 
 
 Fitz-Gerald (V.) St. John Capistran ... 9 
 
 Fitzgerald (K.) Parlez-vous Francais ... 13 
 
 Fletcher (M.) The Fugitives 15 
 
 Fortescue (A.) The Mass 3 
 
 Fouard (Abbe") St. John and the Close of 
 
 the Apostolic Age 8 
 
 St. Paul and his Missions 8 
 
 St. Peter 8 
 
 The Christ the Son of God 8 
 
 Last Years of St. Paul 8 
 
 13 
 
 Fountain of Life (The)
 
 INDEX. 
 
 23 
 
 Francis (M. E.) Christian Thai ... 
 
 Dorset Dear 
 
 Fiander's Widow 
 
 Lychgate Hall ... 
 
 The Manor Farm 
 
 Yeoman Fleetwood 
 
 Page 
 
 ... 16 
 
 ... 16 
 
 ... 16 
 
 ... 16 
 
 ... 16 
 
 ... 16 
 
 Friar Saint Series 9 
 
 Gerard (J.) The Old Riddle and the 
 
 Newest Answer ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 Gerrard (T. J.) Cords of Adam 5 
 
 Grammar Lessons, by the Principal of 
 
 St. Mary's Hall, Liverpool 13 
 
 Hedley (J. C.) The Holy Eucharist ... 3 
 
 Hogan (S.) St. Vincent Ferrer 9 
 
 Hughes (T.) History of the Society of 
 
 Jesus in North America n 
 
 Hunter (S. J.) Outlines of Dogmatic 
 
 Theology 5 
 
 Index to The Month ... 6 
 
 Irons (G.) A Torn Scrap Book 
 
 Joppen (C.) Historical Atlas of India 
 Jorgensen (J.) St. Francis of Assisi 
 Joyce (G. H.) Principles of Logic 
 (P. W.) Ancient Irish Music 
 
 -Child's History of Ireland 12 
 
 English as we Speak it in 
 
 Ireland 12 
 
 Grammar of the Irish 
 
 Language 
 
 -Handbook of School 
 
 Management 12 
 
 -History of Ireland for 
 
 Australian Catholic Schools ... 
 
 Irish Peasant Songs 
 
 Old Celtic Romances 
 
 Old Irish Folk Music 
 
 Origin and History of 
 
 risk Names of Places 
 
 -Outlines of the History of 
 
 Ireland 12 
 
 Reading Book in Irish 
 
 History 12 
 
 Short History of Ireland 10 
 
 -Social History of Ireland 
 
 Story of Irish Civilisation 10 
 
 Wonders of Ireland ... 10 
 
 -(R. D.) Ballads of Irish Chivalry 14 
 
 Kane (R.) The Plain Gold Ring 5 
 
 The Sermon of the Sea ... 5 
 
 Keating (T. P.) Science of Education ... 13 
 
 Page 
 Leith (W. F.) Memoirs of the Scottish 
 
 Catholics 10 
 
 Lives of the Friar Saints 9 
 
 Lumsden (C.) The Dawn of Modern 
 
 England... 10 
 
 Maxwell-Scott (Hon. Mrs.) Life of the 
 
 Marquise de la Rochejaquelein ... 7 
 
 Maher (M.) Psychology 2 
 
 Marshal Turenne n 
 
 Maturin (B. W.) Laws of the Spiritual 
 
 Life 4 
 
 Self-Knowledge and 
 
 Self-Discipline 4 
 
 The Price of Unity ... 4 
 
 Miles (G. H.) Christine and other Poems 15 
 
 Review of Hamlet 15 
 
 Said the Rose 15 
 
 Montalembert (Count de) St. Elizabeth 
 
 of Hungary 7 
 
 Month, The 6 
 
 Moyes (J.) Aspects of Anglicanism ... 4 
 Mulhall (M. M.) Beginnings, or Glimpses 
 
 of Vanished Civilizations 10 
 
 Explorers in the New 
 
 World before and after Columbus ... 7 
 
 Myers (E.) The Breviary 3 
 
 Newman (Cardinal) Addresses to, 1879-81 21 
 Apologia pro Vita 
 
 A rians of the Fourth 
 
 Century 19 
 
 Callista, an Histori- 
 
 cal Tale 20 
 
 Church of the Fathers 19 
 
 Critical and Histori- 
 cal Essays 19 
 
 D evelo pment of 
 
 Christian Doctrine 
 
 Difficulties of Angli- 
 
 Congregations 
 
 Discourses to Mixed 
 
 Discussions 
 
 and 
 
 Arguments ............ 19 
 
 -- Dream of Gerontius 20 
 . --- Maurice Francis 
 
 Egan, D.D., LL.D., With Notes by 20 
 ---- Facsimile 
 
 Edition 20 
 
 Presenta- 
 
 tion Edition
 
 24 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 Newman (Cardinal) Essays on Miracles 19 
 
 Grammar of A ssent 18 
 
 Historical Sketches 19 
 
 Idea of a University 18 
 
 Justification 18 
 
 Letters and Corre- 
 spondence 21 
 
 - Life, by Wilfrid 
 Ward 7, 21 
 
 Loss and Gain ... 20 
 
 Meditations and De- 
 
 votions 21 
 
 Memorial Sermons... 21 
 
 Oxford University 
 
 Sermons 17 
 
 Parochial Sermons... 17 
 
 Present Position of 
 
 Catholics 20 
 
 Select Treatises of St. 
 
 Athanasius 19 
 
 Selections from Ser- 
 mons 17 
 
 Sermons on Subjects 
 
 of the Day 17 
 
 Sermons Preached on 
 
 Various Occasions 18 
 
 Theological Tracts 19 
 
 University Teaching 18 
 
 Verses on Various 
 
 Occasions 20 
 
 Via Media .. .. 20 
 
 O'Brien (Mrs. William) Unseen Friends 8 
 O'Malley (A.) and Walsh (J. J.) Pastoral 
 
 Medicine 6 
 
 Pryings among Private Papers n 
 
 Quick and Dead 13 
 
 Rickaby (John) First Principles of Know- 
 ledge 2 
 
 General Metaphysics ... 2 
 
 (Joseph) Moral Philosophy ... 2 
 
 and Mclntyre (Canon) 
 
 Newman Memorial Sermons 21 
 
 Rochester and other Literary Rakes ... u 
 
 Roche (W.) The House and Table of God 12 
 Rockliff (E.) An Experiment in History 
 
 Teaching 13 
 
 Rose (V.) Studies on the Gospels 5 
 
 Rosmini (A.) Theodicy 5 
 
 Page 
 
 Russell (M.) Among the Blessed 6 
 
 At Home with God 6 
 
 The Three Sisters of Lord 
 
 Russell of Killowen 8 
 
 Ruville (A. Von) Back to Holy Church 4 
 
 Ryder (I.) Essays 8 
 
 Scannell (T. B.) The Priest's Studies ... 3 
 Sheehan (P. A.) Blindness of Dr. Gray 16 
 Early Essays and Lec- 
 tures 16 
 
 Glenanaar 16 
 
 Lisheen 16 
 
 ' Lost A ngel of a Ruined 
 
 Paradise' 16 
 
 Luke Delmege 16 
 
 Parerga 16 
 
 The Queen's Fillet ... 16 
 
 The Intellectuals . 16 
 
 Smith (S. F.) The Instruction of Converts 3 
 STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL 
 
 SERIES 2 
 
 Stuart (J. E.) The Education of Catholic 
 
 Girls 13 
 
 Terry (R. R.) Old Rhymes with New 
 
 Tunes 14 
 
 Thurston (H.) Lent and Holy Week ... 4 
 The Christian Calendar ... 3 
 
 Vacandard (E.) The Inquisition 
 
 Walker (L. J.) Theories of Knowledge ... 
 Ward (B.) Dawn of the Catholic Revival 
 
 in England 
 
 Eve of Catholic Emancipation 
 
 -(Wilfrid) Aubrey de Vere, a Memoir 7 
 
 Life of Cardinal New- 
 man 7, 
 
 Ten Personal Studies ... 
 
 The Life of Cardinal 
 
 Wiseman 
 
 (Mrs. Wilfrid) Great Possessions... 
 
 One Poor Scruple 
 
 : Out of Due Time... 
 
 The Job Secretary 
 
 The Light Behind 
 
 15 
 15 
 '5 
 15 
 
 WESTMINSTER LIBRARY (THE)... 3 
 Wiseman (Cardina \Life.by Wilfrid Ward 7 
 Wyatt-Davies (E.) History of England 
 
 for Catholic Schools 
 
 : Outlines of British 
 
 12 
 
 History 12 - 
 
 No. 13. 10,000 viii/ 1 2. A.U.P.
 
 Illlill llll Hill Hill '"''!JJ!I1 Ji QCO c.