^ /^^.e^^^- y}^^,^^ - ^'J^ ,^^:^y^ "^T^-Z- , ^ :^9 -y^^j-. ,,,,. yy^^^ C^^^^^ /^ ^y^ >^ ^^■^ EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES BY THE SAME AUTHOR. LUKE DELMEGE : a Novel. Crown 8vo, 65. GLENANAAR : a Novel. Crown 8vo, 65. 'LOST ANGEL OF A RUINED PARADISE.' A Drama of Modern Life. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., LONDON. MY NEW CURATE. Crown Svo, 5s. net. UNDER THE CEDARS AND THE STARS. Crown 8vo, 55. net. ART AND BOOK COMPANY, LONDON. GEOFFREY AUSTIN, STUDENT. Cro\\'n Svo, 3s. 6d. M. H. GILL & SON, DUBLIN. MARIAE CORONA. Chapters on the Mother of God and her Saints. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. net. BROWNE & NOLAN, DUBLIN. THE SPOILED PRIEST, and other Stories. Crown Svo. 55. T. FISHER UNWIN, LONDON. EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES CANON SHEEHAN, D.D. AUTHOR OF "LUKE DELMEGE," ETC. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1906 PREFACE I HAVE disinterred these short essays and lectures from several magazines, some of ancient, some of more modern date, at the solicitation of a few well-wishers in Ireland and America, who have expressed a desire to possess them in a combined and permanent form. And for this reason, and also because I have marked them as " early essays," I present them just as they were originally written and published, without addition or modification, believing that those who have ex- pressed a wish to possess them would prefer to have them in the shape in which they originally appeared. Hence, perhaps, some of these papers will appear out of date just now, when we have forged so far ahead of the time when such subjects were deeply interesting. But I hope the greater number will be considered of more permanent and vital interest, as they embrace questions that are not of to-day, nor yesterday, but of lasting vi PREFACE human importance. It is quite possible that if I were to write on these subjects now, I would treat them in a different manner, and perhaps in a modified style. But they are at least a record of certain phases of thought on problems of great moment during a literary novitiate, extending over many years. CONTENTS ESSAYS PAGE I. Religious Instruction in Intermediate Schools . . 3 II. In a Dublin Art Gallery 17 III. Emerson 39 IV. Free-Thought in America 53 V. The German Universities (I.) 68 VI. The German Universities (II.) 85 VII. The German Universities (in.) ..... 102 Vni. The German and Gallic Muses 117 IX. Eecent Augustinian Literature 184 X. The Poetry of Matthew Arnold 150 XI, Recent Works on St. Augustine 165 XII. Aubrey de Vere (A Study) 191 viii CONTENTS LECTUEES PAGE I. Irish Youth and High Ideals 209 II. The Two Civilisations 232 III. The Fiftieth Anniversaey of O'Connell's Death , 256 IV. Our Personal and Social Eesponsibilities . . . 271 V. The Study of Mental Science 296 VI. Certain Elements op Character 310 VII. The Limitations and Possibilities of Catholic Literature 333 ESSAYS KELIGIOUS INSTKUCTION IN INTEK- MEDIATE SCHOOLS.! EvEEY decade of years in our century brings a fresh revolution in thought, and every revolution means an advance, and every advance, if not properly directed, is a positive retrogression. I am writing from a Catholic standpoint, from which it is abundantly clear that the activity of individual thought and the interchange of ideas amongst men, if not restrained or controlled by the Gospel teaching, must lead inevitably to that refined atheism with which we are not altogether unacquainted, and which to thoughtful minds is more repulsive than even squalid barbarism. This reflection is of the utmost importance at the present time when the national pas- sion for knowledge has been stimulated by competition for rewards, and artfully directed into those grooves which modern thought has worked out for itself. The Intermediate Education Act was hailed as a measure of infinite good to the youth of Ireland ; its Board was constituted without an objection ; its programmes have been issued and accepted almost without demur ; and its adjudications received as impartial judgments made by enlightened and liberal minds. On all hands it has been pronounced a success ; and if in these pages I point out a few dangerous tendencies, I desire to guard myself against the suspicion that I am contravening public opinion. I merely wish to point out the dangers that would arise if the framers of that Act could follow out their own designs ; and if ample precautions be not ' Irish Ecclesiastical Record, September, 1881. 1* 4 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES taken to supply palpable defects, and neutralise in the working of the Act whatever is positively hurtful. Although this paper is a consideration of the ethical rather than the educational aspects of the system, limited to secular studies and secular advantages, I cannot re- frain from quoting an extract from Sir Charles Dilke's work, Greater Britain, to show the tendency of modern American thought on the subject of competitive and elective systems of education. These conclusions have been accepted by the Michigan and Cambridge Univer- sities after experiments which, if not prolonged, were certainly exhaustive : — " The system of elective studies pursued at Michigan is one to which we are year by year tending in the Enghsh Universities. The Michigan professors say, and Dr. Hedges bears them out, that a far higher average of real knowledge is obtained under this system of independent work than is dreamt of in colleges where competition rules. They acknowledge frankly that there is here and there a student to be found to whom com- petition would do good. As a rule they tell us this is not the case. Unlimited battle between man and man for place is sufficiently the bane of the world not to be made the curse of schools. Competition breeds every evil which it is the aim of education, the duty of a university, to suppress — pale faces, caused by excessive toil, feverish excitement that prevents true work, a hatred of the subject on which the toil is spent, jealousy of best friends, systematic depreciation of men's talents, rejection of all reading that will not pay, extreme and unhealthy cultivation of the memory, general degra- dation of labour — all these evils and many more are charged upon the system." Such are the doctrines evolved from the free, un- fettered experience of Young America. They are worthy of consideration in this land of ancient ideas. One of those rare minds that can at a glance foresee consequences said to the present writer immediately after the passing of the Act of 1878 : " The Tories have out- RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 5 witted the Irish priesthood at last. They have intro- duced into the primary and secondary schools, and they will introduce into the university scheme, the system of payment by results ; and the consequences will be that in a short time your whole educational system, from the lowest bench in the country school to the aida maxima of the university, will be thoroughly secularised." That there is some foundation for these forebodings is a fact beyond dispute. The dangerous tendencies of the system in elementary education have been already explained in two thoughtful articles that have appeared in the Record ; but, practically, they can be minimised by the careful supervision of the managers, by peri- odical examinations in religious knowledge, by epis- copal visitations ; and they would be entirely removed if the system of diocesan inspection, recommended by the Synod of Maynooth, were introduced into Ireland. The extraordinary advantages of this system are well known to those who have visited England, and who must have been struck by the zeal of the teachers and the proficiency of the children, not only in Christian doctrine, but in Scripture and ecclesiastical history, and the devotional practices and ceremonies of the Catholic Church. To obviate therefore the dangers in the primary system, nothing more is required than a patient and precise use of the remedies at our disposal. The case is quite different in Intermediate schools. For here we are dealing with men, not with children ; with ready and eager intellects, not with infantine, un- developed minds ; not with youths, impatient of study and confinement, but with those who are filled with a passion for knowledge and the ambition of excelling ; and here there is an evident and powerful temptation to neglect religious knowledge, which apparently can be of no practical utility in the race of life, in favour of the technical and secular learning that is rewarded not by exhibitions alone, but by the larger prizes which years will bring. We live in a utilitarian age. Every- thing must subsidise secular advancement. Spiritual 6 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES and intangible things must subordinate themselves to visible advantages of v^ealth and position. This is the teaching of the age. This is the cardinal heresy of our century. And this cui bono doctrine has penetrated our colleges and schools, and masters and scholars alike are subject to its influence. The former consult for the interests of the college ; and for the tv^elve months prior to the examinations dream of nothing but the place the college will take in the columns of the Freeman's Journal in September. The latter strain every faculty that they may v^^in honours and gladden their parents' hearts by carrying off exhibitions and prizes. Perhaps there is anger and mortification from failures during former years, perhaps a very exalted position that must be maintained. But there is certainly every incentive to vs^ork for money and honours, and every temptation to neglect and set aside altogether the rehgious knowledge, on which neither teachers, nor commissioners, nor the world will set a premium. The consequences of such neglect to the individual and to society cannot well be exaggerated. For let us remember again that the question now is, not of chil- dren in whose minds the absence of positive knowledge will leave blank ignorance and nothing more, but of matured intellects, restless, active, and inquiring, and far more receptive and retentive of the knowledge that is unto death than of the v^sdom that giveth life. In such minds we can never find the vacuity of sheer ignorance. The want of a thorough, detailed, and com- prehensive knowledge of Catholic theology, will even- tuate in the adoption of those attractive philosophic conjectures, that constitute the literature and almost the religion of the day, and which are so vaporous and unsound, yet, withal, so grandly spiritual, that they have been well called " the dreams of fallen angels ". Even on a lower level there are dangers not the less perilous because more prosaic. History forms a depart- ment in these examinations ; and to reach the required standard, history must be read as a philosophical system, RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 7 and not merely as a narrative of facts and events. That system of mnemonics with which we are familiar — the laborious compilation of dates and names in the mind — is altogether superseded. The senior grade student is now educated to approach his Lingard or Smith with something of the critical tastes and comprehensive views which he has been taught to admire in Hume or Schlegel. He must collate facts, question authorities, make allowances for religious prejudices, and in a short time he will be disposed to take a broad liberal view of things, which to his inexperienced mind will mean the rejection of everything he has learned by sound tradi- tion, and the acceptance of new theories founded very often on the grossest distortion of facts. He will read profane history without the sidelights of ecclesiastical history. He will forget or disbelieve the patent truth that history can be made to prove anything ; and he will think himself advancing to the light when he has been deceived by the dexterity of the playwright. And the supervision of a Catholic tutor will be of httle use. The student has formed his opinion on the subject, and he will look on his preceptor as a judge regards the special pleader who is feed to prove, in spite of all evi- dence to the contrary, that right is wrong, that black is white. Botany and zoology must be studied. What better manual on the subject than the text-book of the College of Science, Darioin on Sioecies ? Natural philo- sophy i must be read. There are Tyndall's admirable treatises on Light and Heat. Pure mathematics are bracketed with 2,000 marks. No ancient or modern writer excels in this logical and deductive science the young atheist, Clifford, who a few months ago, in Madeira, breathed his last, and "vanished," as he be- lieved, " into the infinite azure of the past ". These are the first writers that have clothed the dry skeletons of facts and figures with rhythmic nervous rhetoric, and struck musical poems out of the dumb cold statue of science. Our young enthusiast cannot help admiring their transcendent talents. The admiration develops 8 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES into hero-worship. If he have a real love for his work, they become his saints as surely as Savonarola becomes the idol of the ecclesiastical zealot. And in the cycle of time and thought the suspicion darkens his mind for the first time — perhaps, after all, these men are not deceived in their higher speculations. Can it be that the traditions of my youth are but nursery tales ? If Borne is in antagonism with reason, where is truth? In the new revival this temptation is inevitable. It will arise from scientific or Hterary research as surel}^ as miasma arises from the prairie mould that is turned for the first time. It is onl}^ indifference to the students' highest interests that can believe these dangers proble- matical. And what provision have we made ? Where is the prop for staggered faith ? Where the light for darkened minds ? Is it not a fact that the catechism of the hedge-schools of fifty years ago is the religious class-book of the senior grade student of to-day ? And surely no one can suppose that the categorical question and answer on the rudiments of religion is sufficient to meet systematised infidehty, supported by logic that is incisive enough even to well-trained minds, and pre- sented in the finest sentences into which the English language can be moulded. There is no taste or passion, for it might well be called a passion, so powerful as the taste for literature. It is so exalted, so refining, so free from objections, that it may be indulged at will ; and it has pleasures and fascinations that are second only to those that are en- joyed l)y students of the fine arts. The music of poetry, the subtle analyses of human character that are con- stantly found in novels, the glowing and luscious de- scriptions of scenery, and, above all, the high philosophy that deifies man's intellect and humanity — all these must have an inexpressible charm for a young and enthusias- tic mind eager to measure itself with the boundless in- finity of knowledge. It takes many years and much experience to humble the human mind, and force man to confess that after all he is but RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 9 An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry. The eager schoolboy does not admit it. He must have knowledge . even though it be forbidden. And what that forbidden knowledge is, let those tell who have tasted the fruit and known the sickness of shattered faiths and dreary doubtings, and that terrible darkness that supervenes on partial or total unbelief. And they can tell, too, how a sentence or a phrase will often raise doubts and questionings that derive substance and authority from the ability of the writer. And I appeal to universal experience to testify, that all the literature of the day, home and foreign, poetic or philosophic, didactic or narrative, in books, magazines and news- papers, is filled not only with phrases and sentences, but w^ith powerfully developed arguments and elaborated sarcasms against the Church and Revelation and God. And it is only a healtliy, well-strung, and thoughtfully pious mind that can withstand their influence. I can, however, imagine the reader saying : " What does a boy who is puzzled over the particles of the Anabasis, or an irregular verb in Athalie, know of Comte, or Frederic Harrison, or Swedenborg, or Mill? And is there not an impassable gulf between the mind of the young girl who is spelling out the chromatic scale, and the mighty darkened intellect of George Eliot ? Are they not infinitely more interested about their marks at the examinations than about man's future, or the sacer- dotal system, or the perfectibifity of human nature?" They who say so know but little of the popular culture or the ambitious tastes of the day, and make little ac- count of signs and proofs that daily pass l)efore their eyes. There is no country in the world in which this passion for literature has taken such firm hold of the professional and mercantile classes as in Ireland ; and I venture to say that in Cork, Limerick, or Dublin there will be found a larger average of young men acquainted with current literature than in Manchester itself, the 10 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES centre of English thought and progress. Celtic talent is very versatile, but it is fond of running in Hterary lines. More than half the editors of American news- papers have been born and educated in Ireland ; and every department of literature in England is illustrated by the subtle genius of our race. Last winter I travelled a short distance by rail with a young commercial, who could not have been more than twenty years of age. When he had pulled the collar of his greatcoat around his ears, donned his travelling cap, and carefully wrapped his rug around his feet, he took from his valise, to my utter astonish- ment, the Latter-day Pamphlets of Carlyle, and laid on the cushion as a reserve the last number of a periodical published in London and Dublin, which has for con- tributors some of the most notorious atheists in England, and which admits every shade of opinion, no matter how advanced, provided it be representative of modern ideas. And who does not know that if educated women still take the Young Ladies' Journal for dress patterns and fashions, they seek sentiment in The Sorrotvs of Werther and piquant philosophy in Faust ? A httle brochure, lately published in Dublin, shows what I mean. It is called A Son of Man, and is a faithful illustration of the " calm despair and wild unrest " that must inevitably follow from advanced secular education, without a re- ligious training, simultaneous and commensurate. And I might take as a text one of the sayings of the victim of the story, who, writing from the university, declares that "when one commences to study botany and physi- ology, he must soon forget Revelation and all supernatural religion ". From the tone of the work it is evident that the writer has seen all the evils to which I am adverting ; but the exalted tastes and comprehensive readings of the day could not be better exemplified than by the author, for that tale could not have been written without an intimate knowledge of German habits, the German language and hterature, which years ago attracted the fancies and tastes of advanced thinkers like Shelley RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 11 and Coleridge and Carlyle, but are now familiar in all educated circles, and to students even of incipient literary tastes. And if our typical boy is now busy with dialects and accents, he will soon pass from this chrysalis state with tastes formed, and developing with riper knowledge. We, too, remember painfully guessing with lexicon and grammar the Sphinx riddle of the GSdipus. We read it now, not as a task, but as a splendid tragedy. And he will revert to his studies ^ to discover in them not dif- ficulties but beauties ; and the transition is easy from ancient to modern tragedy, from ^schylus to Swinburne, and easier still from Racine to Voltaire, from the essays of Bacon and Macaulay to those of Carlyle and Arnold, from the ballad poetry of Scott to the mystic, involved, and refined metaphysics of Emerson, who classifies the Divine author of Christianity with Shakspeare and Plato :— One in a Judsean mangei'. One by the Avon's sti'eam. One over against the mouth of Nile, And one at the Academe. And if habits of restraint and self-respect be not engrafted in him by the discipline of his college career, he may also become liberal in his ethics, and easy in his morals, and may learn in time, with the exponent of our latest school of poetry, to despise The languor and lilies of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice. The consequences, therefore, of this revival of thought, if not wisely restrained or directed, must be mournful in the extreme. Admiration is soon succeeded by imita- tion. It is hard to admire the style without adopting the sentiment ; and it must be admitted that in our day English writers have brought style to a perfection that ^ " The love of study is in us almost the only eternal passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruin." — Montesquieu. 12 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES was undreamt of in the days of Johnson and even of Macaulay. And the more daring the impiety of the idea, the more resonant and thrilhng is the language that articulates it. It is a strange and significant fact that Catholic writers cannot catch the fire and the glow that illuminate every page of profane literature. Since the Oxford revival, England has heen crying for its Catholic poet, who is to eclipse the great pagan poets of the day, and awaken by his music the faith that is fondly believed to be dormant, but not dead, in the hearts of the English people. He is not forthcoming ; and meanwhile human love has its lyrists, and philo- sophy its doctors, and even vice has its hierophants, and the priests of Baal are silver-tongued, and they ring out their new teachings with an audacity that must carry conviction to weak minds. And if the ears of our youth be enchanted, who is to defend their reason, or take the poison from the food that is honey in their mouths? Will they believe that the wisdom of the world is folly before God, or appreciate the subhme humility of the apostle who, from his reverence for truth, would not condescend to use " the persuasive words of human eloquence " ? How will the intellects, trained to believe in the majesty and grandeur of the human mind, suffer to have their belief shaped for them by the Divine dogmatism of the Church? How will they bend before the village curate, whose knowledge, however great, is mediaeval, and whose ideas are so reactionary, to acknowledge their weaknesses, and beg pardon for their transgressions ? How can they, whose ears are filled with the pet phrases of some German transcendentalist, listen to the Sunday homily according to the Petite Methode of St. Alphonsus, the gravity and monotony of which are unrefieved by one racy expres- sion or one bold idea ? Of course the semblance of religion will still be maintained. They know that " free-thinker " is a word that means unutterable things to the minds of our faithful people, and the priest is still a power in the land, and there is the dispensary RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 13 to be competed for, and the suffrages of clients for the Petty Sessions Court to be obtained. But reHgion is not the active principle of their lives ; and take away the restraints imposed by the character of our people, put our young and clever professionals in the mess- room of an English barrack, or on the deck of a British troop-ship, throw them amongst literary men in London, or into the fierce battle of life that is fought out in America, and very soon they will lay aside the mask, talk of religion and country with the easy levity of a Frenchman, and supply the lost objects of early faith with ambitious dreams, or limit their belief, hke Mill, to the caprices of a woman. How is all this to be prevented ? The Intermediate Education Act is practically irrevocable. It has passed from its tentative state, and stands endorsed with the nation's approval. And its principles have been taken up, and are about to be developed and applied to a broad liberal measure of university education. And we, who are particularly interested in this vital subject, have seen with pleasure the nation's pulses quicken under the new-born ambition of proving itself again a nation of scholars. We have witnessed with pleasure the excite- ment that has thrilled the entire country, when the hope was given to it of realising and exhibiting all the grand things that its orators and poets have said and sung. We see the universal interest excited when the results are given to the country, and it is a novel and pleasant experience to behold the farmer or labourer, whose son is in the favoured class in the national school, quite as hopeful and as eager to see the list of prizes, as the city merchant or professional man whose child is in the first bench at Blackrock or St. Colman's. But the system is not complete. It does not form a perfect man. As a means to a projected end, it is very nearly successful. But the end and object of the Act are not quite in unison with the views of the Church on educa- tion. The Christian ideal does not enter into the cal- culations of premiers. The Vivian Grey of Beaconsfield 14 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES is not quite a model for Irish youth. We have higher aspirations. Our ambition does not expend itself in sending year after year into public life, the clever, flip- pant, and sensuous youth, that graduate in English public schools or in Parisian lycees. But if these secularists do their part, why should not we do ours, and establish in all our intermediate schools a system of religious instruc- tion adequate to the wants of the age, correlative with the secular system, and made obligatory either by epis- copal supervision or by public criticism, that can be directed on religious as well as intellectual advance- ment ? This has not yet been done. There is no such thing as a system of religious instruction in our schools. There are, perhaps, the Catechism lessons and the weekly lecture ; but who will say that these are commensurate with the rapid development of thought and taste that are generated by superior systems of education ? It is not the object of this paper to formulate such a system or enter into its details. I merely paraphrase the many words of wisdom that have been spoken on this subject by the leaders of thought among ourselves. And perhaps this application of great principles to present necessities will not be unacceptable to that great brotherhood, the Irish priesthood, into whose hands the gift of Irish faith is committed. From every side we receive warnings of the inception of a great apostasy amongst the nations of the earth. They come to us in grave and earnest admonitions from the princes and pastors of the Church, and in the loud and defiant vauntings of the prophets of agnosticism in England and America. Ten years ago the great prelate who rules the Cathohc Church in England said : " There is a period setting in — not for the whole world, not for the Church of God, but for individuals, races and nations — of a departure from faith, in which the human reason will have to wander once more alone without guide or certainty ; not, indeed, as it did before, but in a worse state, in a state which is, in truth, a dwarfing and a degradation of the human intelligence ". And again : RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 15 " I am old enough to know that, forty years ago, men believed more than they believe now, that doctrines were then held as indisputable which are now openly disputed ". And again : " I will try to bring before you the signs or marks of this rising or revolt of the intellect of men that were once Christians, and to show that the intelligence of Christian nations has, in these last ages, begun to manifest the phenomena and signs of a depar- ture from faith, which shows that there is a current carrying the minds of men away from faith in Christ and in God unto the darkness of unbelief ". ^ And the following contains the pith and marrow of the philo- sophy of morality advocated by one of the boldest of modern scientists : — " Sin is a word that has helped to retard moral and social progress more than anything. Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so ; and the superstitious and morbid way in which a number of entirely innocent things have been banned as sin, has caused more than half the tragedies of the world. Science will establish an entirely new basis of morality ; and the sunlight of rational approbation will shine on many a thing hitherto overshadowed by the curse of a hypothetical God." '-^ To prevent the adoption of these pernicious doctrines by our Irish youth must be the proximate and pressing duty of those to whom the faith and morals of the rising generation are largely entrusted. There is sound material for a new knighthood of chivalrous faith and virtue, if all the generous impulses and ideas of virgin minds and hearts be swayed by the convictions that have hitherto governed our people. The possibilities that the future has in store for Ireland are unlimited. Every- thing depends on our foresight and activity. If religious instruction be practically eliminated from our pubhc schools, by not being raised to a level of importance with secular learning, we shall not remain a high- * Manning, The Four Great Evils of the Day. ^ Mallook, The New Eepublic. 16 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES principled race nor become a cultured one. For, as Emerson says, " The foundation of culture, as of char- acter, is at last the moral sentiment ". But if, to use the well-known figure, human knowledge be made to take its place side by side with its elder sister, the wisdom that is from above, — we may hope to see in our own time our Irish youth abreast of the youth of other nations in the rush of progression, with large compre- hensive knowledge, ready wit and facile eloquence, and with all their generous impulses and enthusiasm swayed and directed by loyalty to Mother Church and Mother Ireland. IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY.^ " For the artists of our age are steadily turning their eyes from the saints, and madonnas, and martyrs of the past, and finding in Nature alone the fittest subjects for their pencils," etc. This statement, taken almost liter- ally from the speech of the late Lord Beaconsfield at the Academy banquet, 1879, and expressive of the speaker's desires as well as of his opinions, irresistibly came to mind as we gazed on its most emphatic contra- diction in one of the noblest works of modern art, the famous picture by Sir Noel Paton, " Satan Watching the Sleep of Christ ". It was exhibited in one of the art galleries of Dublin last year ; and hundreds, at- tracted by the quaint title, as well as by the laudatory notices of the picture that had appeared in the press, visited the gallery, and found, if we may judge by their expressions and visible emotions, that they were stand- ing in the presence of a great work, touching and sublime in conception, and, so far as amateurs could judge, faultless in the many details that are necessary to interpret to the public the artist's mind. The subject of the picture has not been taken from Scripture narrative. The artist has followed either some pious tradition, or a fancy suggested by his own poetic instincts, or one of those terrible Dantesque con- ceptions, so vivid and painful, that rise before the mind " when the soul follows a dream in the house of sleep ". Darkness still hangs in the sky, except where behind rocks and boulders, and far away and far down across the valley, the blue-grey dawn is showing against a ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Record, December, 1881. 17 2 18 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES jagged cloud. The morning star is shining, liquid and lustrous, in the sky ; and dark and brown against the dawn, the form of Satan looms up in the centre of the picture. The tejupter, naked but for a loose strip about the loins, is seated on a rock, one hand convul- sively grasps his knees, on the other he is resting his head. The spear leans against his shoulders ; a strange bluish hght quivers from his hair, and his wings are half closed. So far, in colour and form, the Satan of the picture is only partly original. But when we look on the face we see at once the power of the artist. For into those features he has knit all those passions of fear and anger and hate, which Satan's defeat on the previous night, by one whom he considers a mere man, must have created. He is looking on the face of the sleeping Christ. The Saviour is stretched on the rocks at his feet. His hands are clasped on His breast, and His face is partly in the light which the dawn is shedding on the desert. And what a face ! Traditional ? So it is. The features with which pious pictures have made every Catholic familiar are there, but the long and weary vigil of forty days has wasted them, the temples are sunken, the cheeks hollow and tinged with a pale hectic flush, and the terrible struggle with the tempter, through which He has passed, or perhaps the proximity of Satan at the moment, has left a shadowy expression of pain on the brow and closed eyes, which is inexpres- sibly touching. It is a great work — so great that the artist is forgotten completely. These two figures — the fallen archangel, still great in his strength but baffled, glaring on the Man-God unconscious and the conqueror, but yet troubled — are so terribly realistic and representa- tive, they must remain a memory for ever. Looking on the face of the arch-fiend, we could not help conjec- turing the thoughts that were passing through his mind. He had remained on that rock through the night, and as passion after passion rolled in storms over his soul, one cry echoed ever, ever answered, but never hushed, "Who is He?" There is a far-off look IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 19 in the fierce, questioning eyes, as if he had seen that face before, and a patient and hateful expression, as if he waited only the opening of the Saviour's eyes, to challenge Him again to conflict. And turning from that fierce, dark countenance to the worn and gentle features of Christ, " the eternal strength made perfect in His weakness," we asked ourselves the tempter's question: "Who is He?" and that glorious outburst of eloquence, with which Lacordaire made the hardened infidels of Paris grow pale, and breathe hard with emotion, came to the mind : " There is a man, whose tomb is guarded by love. There is a man, whose sepulchre is not only glorious, as the prophet declared, but whose sepulchre is loved. There is a man, whose ashes after eighteen centuries have not grown cold, who daily lives again in the thoughts of an innumerable multitude of men, who is visited in His cradle by shep- herds and kings, who vie with each other in bringing to Him gold and frankincense and myrrh. There is a man, whose steps are unweariedly trodden by a large portion of mankind, who, although no longer present, is followed by that throng in the scenes of His bygone pilgrimage, upon the knees of His mother, by the borders of the lakes, to the tops of the mountains, in the byways of the valleys, under the shade of the olive-trees, in the still solitudes of the deserts. There is a man, who was scourged, killed, crucified, whom an ineffable passion raises from death and infamy, and exalts to the glory of love unfailing, which find in Him peace, joy, honour, and even ecstasy." And when we looked around, and saw the representatives of the intellect and wealth of the metropolis gathered together in this quiet gallery, and studying silently and reverently the great work and the great lesson before them, and when we saw the wonder excited by the bold figure and terrible face of Satan, give way to looks of reverential pity and awe, as the hard, worldly, deep-lined faces were bent on the figure of Christ, we thought that, after all that has been doubted and denied, the preacher is right, religion is 2 * 20 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES still the absorbing subject for human thought, and great artists, like Sir Noel Paton, consult wisely for the interests of art and their own fame, when they refuse to submit themselves to the deteriorating influences of their age, and rise above the world of Nature to steal the fires of artistic inspiration from that world over which God more immediately presides. We use the word Nature here of course in a restricted and limited sense, and as it is used in the remark that opens this paper. Lord Beaconsfield speaks of Nature as the negation of everything supernatural, everything that does not come under the domain of intellect and sense. And he hopes and believes that the artists of our age are emancipating themselves from beliefs that have hitherto been held sacred, and traditions that have been proudly cherished, from the magic of names that have been household words in art circles and schools, and from the inspirations that have been shed on past generations from the deathless works of the dead, from the stone that sprang into life, and the canvas that breathed immortality^ at the touch of vanished hands. And he thinks that art will have reached its highest level, when its disciples, freed from the deadlights of superstition, paint Nature as she shows herself to them, and the humanities of life as they can interpret them ; and, adapting their taste to the materialistic tendencies of the age, exclude everything that will not bear analysis from the scientist, or attract the sympathy of men, whose taste may be refined, but whose ideas on Re- ligion and Nature are very superficial. It is not much to be wondered at that the ruling passion of our age^this passion of ^stheticism, the worship of sensuous beauty, the careful elimination from all art and science of everything moral, didactic, or spiritualising — should have found its way into that art, which more than any other appeals to the senses. The hard, cold materialism of our day, which treats as shadowy and unreal whatever does not submit itself to the arbitrary tests of science and sense, is not con- IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 21 fined to the study of the natural philosopher, or the laboratory of the chemist. It has filtered down from these high places into all the strata of society, has created in poetry what is called by the ill-sounding name of the " fleshly school," and in the sister-art of painting has tried to establish the principle that Nature alone must be studied and reproduced. If fancy must have its flights, let them be limited to the absurdities of pagan mythology ; if models or types are needed, let them be the few relics that Grecian art has left us. The Victorian age has set itself to rival the ages of Pericles in Athens, and the Medici in Florence. These were the two great epochs in human history, when art is, supposed to have been most carefully cultivated, and to have been brought to its highest perfection. That such is not the opinion of the first art critics of our age we shall immediately show. But such is the tendency of present ambition. It aims at excelling or equalling the best works of these periods, whilst adhering so closely to their traditions and principles, that it does not even afl^ect invention or originality. It has taken for its idol the to kuXov, careless whether that beauty be wedded with baseness, or be the reflex of that inner sacredness and spiritual beauty, that lies deep in the heart of all things. The Athenians had their gods and goddesses, their fauns and satyrs, and nymphs and dryads, tales of fleshly love and records of shameless intrigues, histories of triumphs of brute force and of daring deeds, heroic only in their defiance of all natural and moral law. From these their poets had to weave tragedies, and their painters and sculptors had to design groups ; and, as we may well imagine, in this poetry and its kindred arts there is much beauty, perfect and exquisite in every detail, but wanting in that majesty and sublimity that must be suggested by a higher faculty than fancy, and that can be thrown into form only by those who have recognised and cultivated in themselves what we may call the higher supernatural sense. It wanted more. It lacked the suggestiveness 22 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES that can be produced only by high moral and intellectual perceptions, and by the conviction that art has far- reaching, immortal aims, and that a work of art is even of less value than a fashion in dress, if it merely pleases the eye or the fancy for a moment. Nature to them was dead and uninformed, and as such thej' inter- preted it. The great Being, whose existence they knew to be necessary, was "unknown". They substituted for Him such weak representations as poetic fancy could suggest. They knew nothing of the economy of creation. The world was An altar-step without a priest, A throne whereon there sate no king ; and as they could not grasp the mighty mystery, the interpretation of what they did see was necessarily weak and defective. " For we do, indeed, see constantly," says Euskin, " that men having naturally acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart, nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from it, but make it a mere minister to their de- sires, an accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures. And this which in Christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was, in that Pagan hfe of which St. Paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had. I do not know that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found in heathen writers, there are any of which the leadmg thought leans not towards the sensual parts of her. Her beneficence they sought, and her power they shunned ; her teachings through both they understood never." Yet their representations of the objective realities of life, though piecemeal, were perfect. WTaat they wanted was inspiration. But what shall we say of their modern admirers, who confess their despair of approaching the perfection of Grecian work- manship, w^hilst they reject the Christian ideals and Christian inspirations that would enable modern artists to rival and even surpass the ancients ? IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 23 This vast distinction between the Pagan and Chris- tian conceptions of art, and their relative influences on artists themselves, on contemporary students and admirers, and on posterity that has inherited the ac- cumulated treasures of the ages, v^^as most distinctly shown about that period, when the Medici had made Florence a modern Athens, and Greece was robbed of its priceless wealth of statuary and paintings to please the over-refined tastes of the aesthetic city. The two great schools of art, of which all the succeeding classic schools were merely subdivisions, were then brought face to face, their principles were tested by the works of their pupils, they were supported by the dominant influences of the age, they contested the supremacy with all the calm, earnest, unimpassioned vigour on the one hand, and all the fierce, intemperate zeal on the other, that have characterised the eternal war between the Church and the world. It was another and not very dissimilar phase of that uprising against faith and morality of which we are witnesses, the only difference being, that the struggle which is now waged by the pen and the press was then carried on by brush and pencil in the studios and art galleries of the Italian cities. It was the Eenaissance of Pagan ideas. Pagan worship, Pagan theories of art. Pagan habits of life, of which, after all, art and literature are but faithful reflections. On the side of this new Paganism were arrayed artists and men of letters — the restless, unquiet, but gifted spirits that haunt a city of revolutions like Florence ; wealthy and powerful merchants, like the Medici them- selves, proud and retiring aristocrats, like the blind father of Bomola. On the other side, which clung with the tenacity of love and principle to Christian tradition, was the Church, then as now combining a magnificent contempt for the transitory passions of the age with maternal anxiety for truths that might be neglected, and souls that might be imperilled ; and, under the shadow of the Church, protected, encouraged, and inspired, were her faithful servants, working out on canvas or on the 24 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES bare wall the thoughts that were ennobling their minds, and the feelings that were sanctifying their souls. The Renaissance ushered in the Reformation. It was the preliminary and partial revolt that preceded the great rebellion against the majestic dogmas, and the stern dis- cipline of Christianity. The world was growing tired of the supernatural, and was yearning after the human- ities of ancient times, and the soft heathen freedom and voluptuousness to which Rousseau says mankind is per- petually tending. And the first symptoms were exhib- ited in the new departure in art from all that twelve centuries of Christian civilisation had prized, and the new passion for reproducing and embeUishing that ancient civilisation, which had been branded as " an- athema " by the prophets and priests of the Catholic Church. It is true that, before that time, there had been a few attempts to break away from Christian traditions, and establish new schools that might eman- cipate themselves from the prevailing ideas, and fly to the buried past for inspiration. But the faith of the ages would not brook this disinterring of Paganism, nor tolerate representations of the "grand old gods of Greece and Rome," when the pm-e and sublime art of the catacombs was still modern, and painting was yet what St. Basil called it, and the Council of Arras defined it in 1205, " The book of the ignorant who do not know how to read any other ". And when the primitive art school of Florence was established, of which Giotto was the founder, it seemed as if Christian art was so thoroughly regenerated, that no succeeding attempts could revolutionise it, nor introduce again a passion for Pagan or Byzantine types. Work after work came from the pencils of holy men who were inspired, not by anticipation of public applause in national galleries, nor by the hope of amassing money by painting to please the passions of an hour, but by a pious desire of lending their talents to God's service, and raising men's minds far above mundane things to the celestial heights where themselves in spirit were IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 25 dwelling. And, therefore, the Christian Gospels, and not Pagan mythology, were the sources whence they drew subjects for portraits and for larger works. It is marvellous to see how faithful they were to these lofty ideas. Still more marvellous that, though circumscribed within comparatively narrow limits, they were able to infuse variety into their works, and stamp on every pro- duct of their pencils the individuality of their own minds. There is scarcely a name, for example, worthy of respect in the Catholic schools of Italy, that cannot be found subscribed to some painting of our Blessed Lady. In the Siennese school, there are Madonnas by Guido, Lorenzetti, Bartoli, Matteo da Siena, Pacchiarotto, Beccafumi, Eazzi. In the Florentine school, we have Madonnas from Giotto, Buffalmaco, the Gaddi, Giottino, Orgagna, Fra Angehco, Gozzoli, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Lippi, Fra Bartolommeo, Albertinelli. In the Umbrian school, by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Eafaello. In the Bolognese school, by Dalmasio, Francia, who seemed to be able to paint nothing else, for every city in Italy has a Madonna from his pencil ; in the museum at Berlin there are several from his hands, and at Munich and at Vienna. In the schools at Ferrara, the same subject is treated by Panetti, Costa, Grandi, Mazzohno, Garofalo. In the Venetian school, by the Vivarini, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Carpac- cio, Vecelli. And so strongly were these artists imbued with Christian feeling, that a sodality was established, the members of which bound themselves to paint no other subjects but holy men and women on the walls and altars of churches, that by this means the world, in spite of the demons, might be attracted towards virtue and piety. This is the first academy of painting of which history makes mention : the Confraternity of St. Luke, founded in 1350. A century later, so rapid are the revolutions for good or evil, the Medici had per- verted public taste, and mythological subjects came into request. Little by little, painting became the servant of vanity and vice, the pedantry that pervaded the 26 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES schools invaded the studios, and art had fallen very low, when the portraits of patrons were no longer seen at the foot of the pious picture in an attitude of humble supplication, but introduced into the picture itself, and attached with unblushing effi'ontery to the most holy and sacred personages. In former days, the faces of art patrons were seen amongst humble shepherds or en- thusiastic disciples ; now they were to be seen amongst angelic choirs, or representing the holiest that ever trod the earth, and then alternating as an Olympian god or hero. Ancient sources of inspiration were abandoned. The histories of Greece and Eome superseded sacred history. "Pagan inspirations," says M. Eio, "were received at the time from two sources — the majestic ruins of ancient Rome, and the court of the Medici. The Paganism of the Medici sprang from the corruption of morals, as well as from the progress of learning. What did Lorenzo de Medici demand from the artists of Florence, when he wished to exercise towards them that distinguished patronage of which we hear so much in history ? From Pollajuolo he demanded the Twelve Labours of Hercules ; from Ghirlandajo the edifying story of Vulcan's misfortunes ; from Luca Signorelli nude gods and goddesses ; and, as atonement, a chaste Minerva from Botticelli, who, despite the natural purity of his imagination, was also obliged to paint a Venus for Cosmo de Medici, and to repeat the same subject several times with all the changes suggested by his learned protector." This materialism, thus introduced under powerful patronage, and adopted by men of light and leading, has to this day dominated the art of painting. It would reach its final stage of development if the hopes of Lord Beaconsfield could be realised. But as Christian art not only survived Medicean influence, but reached its perfection stimulated by the hostility raised against it, so we may hope that, in our own age, the in- telligent and natural sympathy of artists for purity and subhmity will keep them faithful to the highest tradi- tions of their art, and help them to sustain Christian IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 27 ideas, and follow Christian types, undeterred by false criticism or vitiated public taste. Driven by princes and presidents from museums, academies and private collections, mysticism in art found an asylum in convents and monasteries, w^here the art of painting in miniature was brought to per- fection. The Dominicans and Camaldulenses cultivated the art with the greatest success. The magnificent productions of these monks, and the solitaries of Monte Cassino, can still be seen at Sienna, Ferrara, and the Vatican. They were the immediate precursors of that great saint and painter, still known in Florence as II Beato, the Blessed John of Fiesole, better recognised by the title Fra AngeHco. It was he who never took pencil in hand without previous prayer ; it was he who never painted a Crucifixion without shedding bitter tears at the memory of his Saviour's sufferings. A bare catalogue of his principal works will show the source of all his inspirations. In Paris, at the Louvre, the Life of St. Dominic. In Orvieto, at the Cathedral, Our Lord at the Last Judgment, and the Choir of Prophets. In Kome, at the Vatican, in the Chapel of Nicholas V., The History of SS. Stephen and Laur- ence ; in the Corsini Gallery, The Ascension and The Descent of the Holy Ghost ; in the Fesch Gallery, The Last Judgment. At Fiesole, in the Church of St. Dominic, a Madonna with several saints ; at the Church of St. Jerome, a Madonna between St. Jerome and St. Stephen. At Cortona, in the Gesu, the Annunciation, the hfe of Our Blessed Lady, the life of St. Dominic. At Florence, in the cloister of St. Mark, a Crucifixion with St. Dominic ; in the Chapter Hall, a Crucifixion with many saints, and a genealogical tree of the Domini- cans ; in each cell, a fresco of the Crucifixion ; in the Ulfizi Gallery, St. Peter, St. Mark, a Madonna with many saints, the Martyrdom of St. Peter, the Nativity of St. John, the Preaching of St. Peter, the Espousals, the Adoration of the Magi, the Death of the Blessed Virgin, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgm in the midst of 28 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES celestial choirs ; at the Academy of the Fine Arts, the Descent from the Cross, St. Thomas and Albertus, the Life of Our Lord in thirty tableaux, the Last Judg- mient, the chef d'osuvre of Christian art. In Berlin, at the EiOyal Museum, St. Francis and St. Dominic em- bracing. Yet such is the degeneracy of modern art, that Fra Angelico is numbered by modern connoisseurs amongst the painters of what they are pleased to call i temjn bassi. And yet we are told by the best critics of our time, that "modern Itahans have degenerated into sign-board painters," that now "they can only reproduce," that as "originators they are beneath con- tempt ". Fra Angelico was immediately succeeded by Perugino, Pinturicchio and Rafaello, " a glorious trinity of artists," says Montalembert, "that never has been, and never shall be, surpassed". They belonged to the Umbrian school, which shares, with the Siennese school and the mystic school of Florence, the glory of having been entirely Catholic and Christian, as regards the choice of subjects and the mode of treatinent. " Per- haps," says M. Rio, "the Umbrian school was not so rich in its variety of subjects as contemporary schools ; it did not follow profane mythology, or the study of ancient bas-reliefs, or even the grand historic scenes of sacred history ; it limited itself to the development and perfection of certain types, very restricted in number, but which reunited all that faith could inspire of poetry and exaltation. The glory of the Umbrian school is to have followed without ceasing the trans- cendental aims of Christian art, without suffering itself to be seduced by example or distracted by clamours. It would seem that a special benediction attached to these places particularly sanctified by St. Francis Assisi, and that the perfumes of his sanctity preserved the Fine Arts from corruption in the vicinity of the mountains, where so many pious painters had contri- buted one after the other to decorate his tomb. This happy influence exercised on painting became part of a mission of purification, and we see that Perugino, who IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 29 was the great light of the Umbrian school, extended this influence from one end of Italy to the other." ^ Just at the same time, a mighty and temporarily successful struggle was made against the invasion of Paganism into Art and Society. It was the crusade preached by the great friar of St. Marco, in Florence, against the Renaissance. Its history has been lately made so familiar to the world, that it is needless to enter into it here. It is enough to say that, as at the passing of Paul and Timothy of old, the idols crumbled into dust, so at the voice of the Christian preacher the relics, collected at such mighty cost, of the " grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome" were huddled together in the square of the city of Florence, and the craze of the moment vanished from the minds of men, as the smoke of the holocaust of heathen vanities thinned and whitened into fleecy vapour in the blue Itahan sky. Despite the all-powerful influence which Savonarola exercised on the savants, the artists, and the warriors of his age, Pico de la Mirandola, Salviati, Valori, Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolommeo, Luca della Robbia, Cron- aca, etc., the mighty apostle perished. But ten years after his death justice was done him by the Roman court, for Raphael represented him amongst the Doctors of the Church in the fresco of the Blessed Sacrament, and with the authority of Juhus II., the immediate successor of the Alexander VI. who had condemned him. From that time naturalism became the fashion in art. We read of Signorelli, who pushed his love of anatomy so far, that he studied the dead body of his own son, anticipating the scientists of whom Wordsworth says, "they would peep and botanise on their mothers' graves " ; of Mariotto, who died of a debauch in the flower of his age ; of Andrea del Sarto, who for money ' For the quotations from M. Rio's .standard work, the lists of paintings, etc., I am indebted to Montalemhert's essay, " De la peinture chr^tienne en Italie ". — P. A. S. 30 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES painted the obese wife of Francis I. as a Madonna ; of Piero di Cosimo, whose special horror was the sound of church bells, and the chanting of monks. Even such original and mighty geniuses as Kaphael and Michael Angelo became subject to the passion of the age. Though essentially Catholic, and deriving all their transcendent glory from the works which they executed under in- spirations from faith, they, too, temporarily forgot their allegiance to the highest teachings of their art, and sacrificed the majesty and beauty of spiritualism in a passion for perfect anatomy or sldlful colouring. The perfection of tinting and shading, the scientific and symmetrical reproduction of muscles in action or re- pose, became of far greater importance than the lofty philosophy of Christianity, and its power over humanity, flashed forth upon learned and unlearned, from the faces of " sweet Mother Mary " or a Magdalen, or that warrior-saint, Sebastian, or the midnight horrors of a Crucifixion, or the terrors and splendours of a Last Judgment. And they suffered in consequence. Their right hands lost their cimning, because their minds had forsaken their inspirations. It is well known that Kaphael, for the last ten years of his life, was not equal to the Eaphael who emulated Perugino in his love of Christian art. It is said that monsters issued from the marriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men ; and such must ever be Christian ideas, wrought out in obedience to Pagan theories. However sad this defection might be, and it is saddest in the case of Michael Angelo, who was essentially a poet- painter, and a poet before he became a painter, and was therefore more independent of fashions than any of his contemporaries, these artists are still claimed as masters of Catholic schools, and their fame rests on the sacred pictures they executed, rather than upon their imitations of Grecian art. Now all these painters and all these schools are still regarded with as much reverence by art students, as the Fathers or Scholastics by theological students, or as German philosophers by the lovers of IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 31 the mystic and the undefined. No art education is con- sidered complete, that has not been finished under the shadows of the Old Masters. And though a hope is now entertained of transferring the sanctuary from the Tiber to the Thames, Italy must remain for ever the home of painting. Who could study, for example, the nuances of colour under the aer hruno of the murky metropolis of England ? No ! modern eclecticism, fickle and erratic, will soon wear itself out. Students of far future genera- tions will sit in the dim twilight of cathedrals, and lay the foundations of their fame, in the lessons that are inculcated by the silent and eloquent teachers, that tell the glories of an age, the like of which we shall not soon see. And then, as now, it is Madonnas and pale saints, and stately prophets and grave doctors, "with a far-off look in their eternal eyes," that will rain down inspira- tion into these students' souls, and with such dreams will these latter be afterwards haunted, when they touch, with brush or pencil, the canvas that is to speak back to them the cherished fancy, or reafise the long- worshipped ideal. If, therefore, Keligion from the beginning had been rejected as an element in Art, Art would have had no history, no " names that will hang on the stretched fore- finger of all time ". Eeligion supplied the loftiest in- spirations ; Keligion elevated and exalted the tastes and ambition of artists ; Religion repelled whatever was base and sensual ; and Rehgious Art, therefore, is im- mortal. So far then for History, the testimony of the ages. Now, on purely abstract grounds, let us consider the motives which Religion supplies, and the subjects it pre- sents to the artist's mind, and we shall see that, apart from the influence of traditions, Rehgion must always remain the most potent factor in Art. There was a time when men regarded labour as prayer : with them Art was worship. The present is a time when Art has be- come a trade, and labour means coining mind-thoughts and the heart's blood for gold. Worship nineteenth- 32 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES century progress as we may, can it be doubted for a moment that the inspirations of faith are higher than the promptings of avarice ? That the men who stood day by day face to face with eternity, who dealt famil- iarly, but not without awe, with great solemn mysteries that were terrible realities to them, have not higher ideas and inspirations than Medicean or Victorian artists, whose fancies are busy with cheque-books and art criti- cisms, while their hands are mixing the colours or laying them ? What a comment on our age is the simple and touching inscription under a beautiful Madonna, in the Hospice della Scala at Sienna : " Ojms Laurentii Petri pictoris : fecit oh suam devotionem " ; or the painting of the " Procession of the True Cross " in the Place St. Mark, signed by the artist, " Gentilis Bellinus amore incensus crucis, 1496 ". Where shall we find a parallel in our age to Vitalis, who could never paint a Crucifixion, saying it was too sorrowful a task for him ; or Jacopo Avanzi, who for years was prevented by the same scruple ; or Lippo Dalmasio, who cared only to paint images of the Blessed Virgin ; and in whose eyes this work was so great, that he never undertook it without preparing himself by a fast on the vigil of his work, and receiving Holy Communion on the day on which he commenced his sacred labours ? " Dreadfully super- stitious ! " no doubt our modern artist will exclaim ; yet Guido in the fuller light of the seventeenth century stood for hours, ravished with delight, before one of this painter's Madonnas. Mr. Euskin, whom all agree in considering the first art critic of his age, has a remark- able passage on the subject : — " And, in the last place, it will be found that so surely as a painter is irreligious, thoughtless, or obscene in dis- position, so surely is his colouring cold, gloomy and valueless. The opposite poles of art in this respect are Fra Angelico and Salvator Eosa, of whom one was a man who smiled seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, and never harboured an impure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, the colours of IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 33 the draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted window, chastened only by paleness, and re- lieved upon a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his hfe in masquing and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their colour is for the most part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem as if art had so much of eternity in it that it must take its dye from the close rather than the course of life. ' In such laughter the heart of man is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' These are no singular instances. I know no law more severely without exception than this of the connection of pnve colour with profound and noble thought. The Bellinis, Francias, Peruginos painted in crimson and blue and gold. The Caraccis, Guidos, and Eembrandts in brown and grey. The builders of our great cathedrals veiled their casements, and wrapped their pillars with one robe of purple splendour. The builders of the luxurious Kenaissance left their palaces filled only with cold white light, and in the paleness of their native tone." Lastly, it were easy to show that even for technical reasons Religion is not only a legitimate subject of Art, but the worthiest and most fertile subject, inasmuch as it is Catholic in its sympathies, reaches from the foot- stool of God on earth to the throne of God in heaven, enters deeply into all human concerns, and presents a hundred conceptions that must be of lasting interest to men's minds. Such is the opinion of all those who have given serious and earnest attention to this en- grossing subject. Let us hear the voices of two who may be considered the leading experts on Art and Psychology ; — "Painting," says Mr. Ruskin, "or Art generally as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but of itself nothing. It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective 3 34 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES greatness of the painter or writer is to be finally de- termined." ^ Now by this rule let us try to understand the words of Victor Cousin : — "Art is the reproduction of the beautiful, and not of natural beauty, but of ideal beauty such as the human imagination conceives it by the help of the data which Nature furnishes. The ideal beautiful envelops the in- finite. The object of art, therefore, is to produce works which, like those of Nature, but in a still higher degree, have the charm of the infinite. But how and by what conjuring to draw the infinite from the finite ? Here lies the difficulty of art ; but it is also its glory. What carries us up towards the infinite in natural beauty ? The ideal side of that beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder by which the soul ascends from the finite to the infinite." Now, in another part of the same lecture, he says in language that were worthy of St. Augustine : — " The ideal resides neither in the individual, nor in a collection of individuals. Nature or experience furnishes us the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially dis- tinct from it. For him who has once conceived it, all natural figures, however beautiful they may be, are but shadowy images of a beauty they do not realise. The ^ In the Magazine of Art for December, 1880, the sarcastic re- mark of Lord Beacousfield is indignautly criticised in the following passage : ' ' When at the Academy banquet of 1879 Lord Beacons- field half slightingly X'eferred to pictures of ' saints and Madonnas and martyrs,' there was a symjjathetic laugh. Who laughed? Some of the ' distinguished strangers,' let us hope, and not any of the brotherhood who own a kindred art with M. Angelo, Raphael, Titian and Murillo, and least of all, we may be certain, he who was exhibiting there at the very time not a ' saint or a Madonna or a martyr,' but personages who may be supposed to be equally comic — an angel and a prophet ! The public will rather agree with another speaker at another Academy banquet — the Ai'chbishop of Canterbm'y in 1880 — who said : ' The noblest pictui-es are, as a rule, the embodiment of the highest and noblest ideas, and I hold that saints and angels are nobler subjects than Bacchus with the satyrs and fauns '." IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 35 ideal retreats perpetually in proportion as we approach it more nearly. " Its last term is in the infinite, that is, in God ; or, to speak better, the true and absolute ideal is nothing but God Himself." And after a series of passages rising one above the other in beauty of thought and diction, he concludes by saying : " Thus God is the principle of the three orders of beauty we have distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral beauty ". Now, if art be but the expression of thought, if thought must be exercised about what is beautiful, so that art may reproduce only what is beautiful, if that beauty be not natural beauty alone, but ideal beauty, and if the term and source of all beauty is God Himself, who can eliminate as objects of art that world over which God more immediately presides, of which He is the centre and the life, the world of rehgion and mysticism '? Would we then exclude Nature in its lower forms from the domain of art, paint only purely religious sub- jects, be blind to the beautiful world that lies around us, with its rich landscapes and seascapes, the soft tender dawns, the transparent light of noon, the purple twi- lights, the blush of a rose petal, the pure whiteness of a lily, the clustering vegetation of forests, the still and solitary grandeur of mountains ? Still more, shall we exclude humanity, with its passionate tenderness and sublime dissatisfaction, its yearnings after the infinite, the pulsations of human activity, the flutterings of the human heart? So thought Goethe, the Archpriest of humanity in our age, the leader and interpreter of our modern classical contempt for Christianity. Speaking of the subjects treated by the Old Masters, he says : " They are either miscreants or ecstatics, criminals or fools. There is not a human idea throughout the whole." Not the human ideas, certainly, of suicidal Werthers, or a Faust driven by passion into fearful excesses, or a sad Gretchen, dying a lunatic in a prison. But divinely human ideas of saints who have stilled the wild yearn- 3 * 36 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ings of their hearts by penance and prayer, and learned doctors who have bound themselves with cinctures of chastity, and Magdalens who have found peace after sin in repentance. Christian art is not above humanity. It stoops to it, raises it, ennobles it, consecrates it. Christ- ian art is not above Nature. But it sees in Nature the hand of the Divine Artist, whose works speak His praises so eloquently. It sees the smile of God in the sunshine, the anger of God in the storm, the tenderness of God in the flower and the child, the love of God in the stricken soul, the peace of God on the faces of the dead. It will not rest content with mere material beauty. Everything in its eyes has a subjective beauty. Substances that impress the senses are nothing compared to the Divine thought that flashes for ever athwart them, glorifying and trans- figuring them. "It is the realisation of this subjective beauty," says a late writer in the Magazine of Art, " that has made great landscapists. See how Turner and Cox invariably sacrificed the lesser to the greater. The work of one was a mighty protest against the materialism of topographical draughtsmanship — it was not Ehrenbreit- stein he saw, but the flash of sunlight that fell upon it fresh from the hand of God. The work of the other was a mighty protest against the traditional notion that fine scenery makes fine pictures. Lancaster sands were good enough for him if God passed over them in a storm." This is the subjective beauty which the saints have always seen in Nature ; it was this which was present to the mind of St. Bernard when he declared — " I medi- tated upon the Word of God ; the fields and the forests taught me its sacred meaning ; the oaks and the beeches were my masters ". And to St. Augustine when he de- clared that " all beauties which pass from the soul to the skilful hands of artists are derived from that beauty which is above the soul, after which my soul sighs day and night ". But the artists and admirers of these ex- terior beauties, while they take from that first beauty the rule of approving them, do not take from thence the rule IN A DUBLIN ART GALLERY 37 of using them. It is in its lowest form the vision of the singer who beholds — A light that never was on sea or flood : The consecration, and the poet's di'eam. And in its highest form it is represented by the beauty of "Sovran Blanc," the "thunderous avalanche," the " motionless torrents," the " silent cataracts," the " living flowers that skirt the eternal frost," when Coleridge looked upon them, and heard syllabled in every tone that Nature could assume, the name of God. With such thoughts in our minds, looking again on the picture before us, do we not discern a relative beauty in all the accidents of Nature ? Is not the glimmering dawn more tender because it floats its veil of light over the sleeping Saviour? Is there not a soul, an intelli- gence, in the lone star, that seems to be resigning into the hands of coming day the watch it has kept over its Master ? The rugged boulders even seem to have feel- ing in them, as they support the head of the sleeping Christ. All things are transmuted by the subtle spirit which the artist has thrown from his soul into his work. We, too, are no longer spectators, but worshippers ; the usual interjections of wonder and criticism are silenced ; we hear only the soft sounds of pencils that are stealing ideas from the masterpiece, and the soft breathing of reverential men and women who seem never tired of looking and admiring. The gallery, for the moment, is changed into a sanctuary, and the picture has become a shrine. I cannot forbear closing this paper with a few lines taken from Scribner's Magazine. They express in the narrow space of six stanzas all that we have been labouring to say : — TRANSFIGURED. By S. M. B. Piatt. Almost afraid they led her in (A dwarf more piteous none could find) ; Withered as some weird leaf, and thin, The woman was — and old and blind. 38 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Into his mirror with a smile — Not vain to be so fair, but glad — The South-born painter looked the while, With eyes than Christ's alone less sad. " Mother of God," in pale surprise He whispered, " what am I to paint ? " A voice that sounded from the skies Said to him : " Raphael, a saint ". She sat before him in the sun ; He scarce could look at her, and she Was still and silent. "It is done," He said. " Oh, call the world to see ! " Ah, that was she in veriest truth — Ti-anscendent face and haloed hau* ; The beauty of divinest youth. Divinely beautiful, was there. Herself into her picture passed. Herself and not her poor disguise, Made up of time and dust. At last One saw her with the Master's eyes. EMEESON: FEEE-THOUGHT IN AMEEICA.^ America has become, during the last quarter of a century, the object on which the eyes of the intel- lectual world have been fixed, with all the interest that attaches to a novel and critical experiment. Up to that period she had virtually taken not only her religious systems, but all her ideas on philosophical science, from the Old World. She had mutely acknowledged her indebtedness to the great intellects whom the combined thought of Europe had canonised as men of " light and leadmg," in their respective departments. Her univer- sities were fashioned after Oxford and Gottingen, and their students sat at the feet of Old AVorld professors, and accepted their teachings with the deference that is due to learning and the sanctities of tradition. Mean- while, in the mechanical arts, America had asserted her independence. She took the moulds of European in- ventions, improved upon them, broke them, and cast them aside as worthless and antiquated. And whilst her schools and colleges were accepting European ideas and traditions, there was scarcely a mill in America that had not reached a full half-century of progress beyond the best-appointed and best-conducted factory in Leeds or Sheffield. Such a state of things could not last. A nation of fifty million inhabitants, with infinite possibilities before it, and with all its intehigence quickened into activity by the interfusion of races, with their specific principles and traditions, could not remain in leading strings to any other people, nor maintain a rigid and senseless ^ Iriah Ecclesiastical Record, October, 1884. 39 40 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES conservatism in those very things in which the human mind demands absohite and unconditional freedom. Hence, during these latter years, the mind of America has ascended from mechanical to philosophical experi- ment, and, with the facility begotten of wealth and in- dependence, has explored every system of thought, and revelled in the creation of new and fanciful theories in the world of mysticism. What then is to be the leading system of thought in the great Western Repubhc ? How will its progressive ideas develop themselves ? It starts on its career free and untrammelled by prejudice or superstitions. It enjoys the most perfect freedom, not only in its political life, but even in that social life which amongst ourselves has laws more despotic, and decisions more magisterial, than state constitutions. Nature has thrown open her treasury, and already dowered its children with super- abundant wealth and promises of inexhaustible supplies. America inherits free all the blessings of the civilisation which nineteen centuries with an infinite expenditure of thought and labour have accumulated ; and she com- mences her career without a single care for all those sad and terrible possibilities which hamper progress in the Old World. What is to be the issue of the new civil- isation ? Will it become licentious in its freedom, and reap in the near future the sad consequences of the violation of that political and intellectual discipline which, like the laws of Nature, avenges itself upon its transgressors ? Will it run riot in speculation and con- jecture about the mighty mysteries of mortality, and end, like the Old World, in dreary scepticism ? Or will it accept theology as an exact science, with its truths revealed and absolute, and preserved inviolate in its temple, the living Church? Will its strong democratic spirit eventuate in that freedom which " slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent," or will it issue in a revolution which will dwarf the revolutions of the Old World by its colossal wickedness ? Will its aristocracy of wealth and intellect draw away more and more from EMERSON : FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 41 the masses, and ignoring all Christian obligations seek to establish feudalism and an ohgarchy, until the inev- itable disruption that will fling them and the people in common ruin ? Or will they admit a common brother- hood, and coming down to the level of poverty and ignorance, throw the glamour of intellect and wealth over the forced asceticism of the people ? To reduce the question to its broadest terms, will the future re- ligion of America be the cultus of " sense and science," the Neo-Paganism, in which the God of Sinai, with His commandments, " Thou shalt," " Thou shalt not," and the meek Saviour, with His beatitudes, shall find no place ? or will the pure Christianity of Catholicism, the conserving element in European society, be the active and vigorous agent of the new civilisation of America ? The question is interesting, doubly interesting to us, for assuredly the most powerful auxiliaries on the side of Christianity in the New World are the exiled children of our race. There are two things indicative of the mental and moral genius of a people : its habits of thought and its habits of life. These two agents act and react on each other ; licentiousness of thought producing laxity in moral principles, and easy virtue begetting the utmost liberahty in matters of belief. We will glance at both, and see if, to borrow an expression from Matthew Arnold, " the stream of tendencies " in modern America makes for righteousness or not. We shall put aside for a moment the Catholic Church in America, and consider the systems of religious thought that lie outside it. The whole history, then, of Protestantism in the States at the present time, may be described as the history of a desperate and critical struggle with that Agnosticism which has followed, not very logically indeed, from the theories of the evolutionists. Owing to the absence of copyright, and the consequent enterprise of publishers, all the Agnostic literature of the Old World has become the property not only of the thinking, but even of the reading, public of America. When we are told that the 42 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES poetry of Matthew Arnold adorns the tea-papers of the New World, that the publishers have issued a popular edition of his works, that the treatises of the International Science Series have been cheapened and simplified, that sociology and kindred subjects are matter for study and debate in the homeliest literary societies, and that a vulgar lecturer, like Ingersoll, can always command an audience of three or four thousand persons in every city of the States, we must be prepared to admit that materialism is a growing creed in America, and that it will need the strongest efforts of Christian faith and Christian scholar- ship to resist it. The causes that have led up to such a disposition in the public mind are manifold. In tracing and classifying them we shall best understand how deeply laid are anti-Christian ideas, upon what forms of in- vestigation or imagination they are founded, what influ- ence external causes have exercised upon them. From the depth and strength of the foundations alone can we conjecture to what stature the temple of Unbelief and Unreason shall rise. The future shall be measured by the present and the past. The sources then of Free-thought in America may be stated thus. They are historical changes, speculations in philosophy, the absence of definite dogmas in all the Protestant com- munions, wealth boundless and luxury unrestricted, weak- ness from within, and aggression from without. We will limit this paper to a consideration of the first two of these causes which are also the most important. The dark, intolerant spirit brought over by the Puri- tans in the Mayfloiver, and which is best known to us through the sombre pages of Hawthorne, might be said to have been broken by the great War of Independence. The principles involved in the famous Declaration, and which were simply the expression of the collective feel- ings of the people, were found to be inimical not only to foreign domination, but also to the class and creed ascendancy which had hitherto obtained in the New England States. The right of every man to worship his EMERSON : FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 43 Creator as he willed was made the cardinal doctrine of the New Eepublic, and it broke for ever the power of the fierce bigots who rigidly upheld their ancestral beliefs against Catholic and Quaker by appeals to the branding iron and the pillory. A reaction was inevitable. Intoxi- cated with freedom, the people rushed from the gloomy doctrines and unbending discipline of Puritanism into extreme licence of thought, as the Jews of old, freed from the terrors of invasion and death, revelled in sensuality and idolatry. And events on the European Continent were giving to the mind of America a bias in the same direction. The American Kevolution was immediately succeeded by that in France. An invisible bond of sym- pathy existed between them ; and although in their motives, their objects, and especially in their results, they were essentially different, they agreed at least in their hatred of tyranny, their demand for freedom, their in- sistence on social equality, their impatience of any thing or person who would attempt to limit human freedom, or coerce human thought. And the ideas that led up to the French Eevolution, the Deism of Voltaire and the Encyclopgedists, were wafted to the New World, and be- came the foundation of that Unitarianism, which for so many years was the prevalent behef in America, which counted amongst its professors the most eminent men in science, art and literature, which founded one of the great American universities, and which prepared the American mind to receive with facility all those conjec- tural theories of existence on which the modern philo- sophies are founded. For Deism marks the extreme limit of religious belief. It has its place in the outer spaces of the realms of faith. It stands on the horizon-line of the creeds. Beyond it are the regions of speculation and conjecture. It needs but a single step to fall from it into the abysses of unbelief. And one did fall ; fell too like an archangel, drawing hosts of gifted minds with him. The history of his intellectual life will contain a summary of the second cause of the growth of unbelief which we have cited under the name of philosophical speculations. 44 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Beyond comparison the first name in the annals of Unitarianism, as well as the first in American literature, is that of Ralph Waldo Emerson ; and we introduce his name here, for we believe that his life of lofty spiritual, if not Christian thought, and his character of quaint and earnest simplicity, have had a charm for the young intellects of America, the potency of which can only be measured when its effects are clearly understood. He might have removed for ever his own strong indictment against his nation that it had no distinct national litera- ture, had he not selected as the basis of his philosophy that German ideahsm which originated with Kant, was developed by Hegel, and still holds pre-eminence amongst all other systems in the German schools. His tour in Europe in 1838, and his visit to Carlyle at Eccle- fechan, became turning-points in his professional and literary career. He was seized with the ambition of effecting for America what Carlyle had effected for Eng- land — to create in all minds the belief that what the world was seeking for centuries was to be found in Germany — a perfect system of philosophy which would satisfy every demand of the human intellect, and every craving of the human heart. He became the interpreter of German transcendentalism to the mind of America. And no pro- fessor by the Elbe or Rhine ever disclosed to receptive minds the mysteries of the new philosophy with such passionate earnestness, or preached the naturalism that underlies it, with such faultless eloquence. Rhetoric, in fact, is not only the handmaiden, but the mistress of this vague philosophy. To hide an obscure thought in a cloud of words, or to present a famihar idea in strange and beautiful language — this appears to be the main end of German philosophy. "Know you not," says St. Paul, " that 3^our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost ? " " You touch heaven," says NovaHs, " when you lay your hands on a human body." Here is the same truth arrived at by different ways and clothed in different language. And scattered here and there through the writings of ideahsts we find some such EMERSON : FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 45 precious thought in the very richest of caskets ; yet we may pass over v^hole pages of heavy reading without finding a single idea worth preserving, or a single prin- ciple that could sustain human hope, or brighten the sombre mystery of life. It is a philosophy of phrases : and we know how in our hurried lives men sometimes found their religion on an epigram. It is said that the first requisite for a successful politician is to be able to invent nicknames for an adversary ; and before now a neatly turned expression has overthrown Governments in France. Epeolatry is the fashion of the day. The wisdom of the world is apparently exhausted ; and all that can be done with its worn-out material is to break it up, and remould it in new casts of thought. Yet the play of splendid intellects around mighty problems of nature and mind has in it something highly fascinating to the young and the undisciplined. To leave behind, for a moment, the solid ground of Chris- tian philosophy, founded on Divine revelation, and to ascend into cloudland with the gods ; to see mighty mysteries of life and death, time and space, God and the universe, duty and immortality, treated as freely as the astronomer swings his globe, or the navigator his sex- tant : all this is very daring and attractive to the young. And when the brilliant speculations of these leaders are floated through the world, and through the ears of men, in liquid poetry, and prose that is as firm and measured as the tramp of a conquering army, it is not easy to resist the temptation of worshipping their brilliant but erratic intellects. We know how Carlyle was sage and prophet to half the young intellects of England in his time ; how he drew all London to his lectures on "Heroes," and how silently and respectfully they listened to this uncouth Scotchman telhng them, in his broadest Doric, that there was only one thing worth worship in the universe, that is, strength and success ; how he held spellbound the students of Edinburgh University in his famous address as rector ; and how a single phrase of that address was made the text of a 46 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES hundred sermons. Yet the influence of Carlyle in Eng- land was not equal to the influence of Emerson in America. Nor will it be half as abiding. A far more subtle intellect had the latter, and a far firmer grasp of the principles on which all philosophers are united, and the principles on which they specifically differ. And strange to say, he never acquired that obscure and Germanised style for which Carlyle will be for ever remarkable. Not quite so pure, his style has all the clearness and precision of Lord Bacon's. His sentences are generally short, crisp, and full of meaning. It is only when he speaks of the majesty and beauty of Nature that he broadens out into stately and harmonious lines, that remind one irresistibly of the prose-poems of Euskin. And his essays and addresses are absolutely bristling with sharp, pungent epigrams, each with its grain of wisdom put as neatly as our cumbrous lan- guage wdli allow. The author of the Novum Organum would not have been ashamed of such sayings as these : " Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness". "Nothing divine dies." "All good is eternally reproductive." "Words are signs of natural facts." "Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they continually convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts," etc., etc., etc. And Euskin, in his most inspired moments, might have written of Nature thus : — "But, in other hours. Nature satisfies the soul pm'ely by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporal benefit. I have seen the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from daybreak to sun- rise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid trans- formation ; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements? Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of EMERSON: FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 47 emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria ; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie ; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and understanding ; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the after- noon, was the charm last evening of a January sunset. The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness ; and the air had so much life and sweetness, that it was a pain to come within doors. What was it that Nature would say ? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakespeare could not reform for me in words ? The leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue east for their background, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, contribute some- thing to the mute music." But it is with his thoughts we have principally to deal, and they are manifold and brilliant. Wisdom flashes everywhere through his writings — wise thoughts that have never touched us before, and thoughts as famihar to us as our daily prayers. It is a feature of genius that it can present to us our own ideas, yet so changed and coloured that we can scarcely recognise them. The thought that we see from only one direc- tion presents itself to the mind of a great thinker under every aspect. And under every aspect it is shown us, until we declare it unfamiliar and original. Like the story of Faust, which is totally different as it comes from the hands of Marlowe, and Goethe, and Bailey, or the sweet legend of " the Falcon," which is one thing in Coventry Patmore's verses, quite another in Tennyson's drama, all our wise fancies come back to us in the pages of Emerson, but so glorified and etherealised that we cannot recognise them. The commonplace in his hands becomes brilhantly original. Every page of his writings sparkles with the wisest thoughts and the wittiest con- 48 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ceits ; and conjectures as lofty as ever disturbed the mind of Plato are compressed with Scriptural con- ciseness into a single line. Hence, a generation of American scholars has sat at his feet, and accepted his teachings as the sum and essence of all that is worth knowing in ancient and modern philosophy. And hence, too, to him more than to any other teacher of his time is to be ascribed the fact that the best intellects of America have been swept clear of every vestige of re- vealed religion, and left blank to receive the new im- pressions that have been made by the theories that of latter years have been pushed to the front in the name of science. For Emerson, let it be said, was not a philosopher in the same sense as Plato or Bacon. He is an eclectic ; but by far the most brilliant of eclectics. He did not create so much as collect. His warmest admirers cannot dis- cover a trace of system in his writings. The sincerest critic amongst his friends, Matthew Arnold, has declared that he can never be considered a great philosophical writer on account of his method, or rather want of method, in writing. And yet it was apparently his am- bition to construct such a system. He commenced by removing all traces of the Divine Revelation of Chris- tianity. Speaking of Carlyle he says, evidently in sym- pathy with him, "that all his qualities had a certain virulence coupled in his case with the utmost impatience of Christendom and Jewdom, and all existing present- ments of the 'good old story' ; " and in the introduc- tion to his Essays he says : " The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face ; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original rela- tion to the universe ? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs ? Embosomed for a season in Nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply to action proportioned to Nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of EMERSON : FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 49 the past, or put the Hving generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe ? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works, and laws, and worship." But although he succeeded so far as to remove Christianity from the minds of many, the religion which he was to found, the worship he was to originate, the world has not as yet seen. His religion or philosophical system was essen- tially negative. Whenever he attempts to construct, he drifts of necessity into pantheism as absolute as that of Spinoza. His lofty idealism leads inevitably to this. He cites approvingly the words of Turgot : " He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be as- sured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries ". It is the common opinion of all metaphysicians that, as Sir W. Hamilton says, " The study of mind is neces- sary to counterbalance and correct the study of matter ". But Emerson declares that never yet has there been made a single step in intellectual science that did not begin in idealism. It is a necessity. The moment the mind turns inward upon itself, and stands face to face awe-stricken with its own creations, it begins to regard all external things as dreams and shadows. It is with us as with the monk in the Spanish convent — the men and things that pass before our eyes, appearing and dis- appearing, are but pictures and shades ; the paintings on the walls, that is, our own ideas that are ever pre- sent, are the only reahties. Hence he holds that there is a necessary affinity between idealism and religion. Both, he thinks, put the affront upon Nature. "The things that are seen are temporal," says St. Paul, "the unseen things are eternal." The uniform language of the churches is : " Condemn the vain unsubstantial things of this world ; they are fleeting and shadowy. Seek the realities of religion." Plotinus, he says, was ashamed of his body. Michael Angelo declared that external beauty is but the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into 4 50 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES time. Like his German friends, Emerson has struck upon a truth, but from what a different standpoint from St. Paul's, and with what different conclusions ! He will not rise, like the latter, to the " house of many mansions," nor will he accept the doctrine, that what is " sown in corruption will be reaped in incorruption ". He flouts Nature, because he has not read its meaning, nor will he believe the interpretations which Faith puts upon it. But has he not gone too far ? He who has written so beautifully of Nature, has he come to de- spise her ? No. He sees he is drifting too far in the dangferous current. And although he avows himself an idealist, and holds that all culture tends to idealism, he shrinks from the consequences. " I have no hostility to Nature," he says, " but a child's love to it. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest." What then ? Nature must be underrated and despised in the religion of idealism. No, he says, but Nature itself must be idealised. But how ? Mark the consequences. " The mind," he says, "is a part of the nature of things, the world is a Divine dream, from which we may pre- sently awake to the glories and certainties of day. There is a universal soul in all things. It is within and behind man's individual life. Intellectually considered we call it reason. Considered in relation to Nature, it is Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man, in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language as the Father. That Spirit creates. That Spirit is one and not compound. That Spirit does not act upon us from without, that is, in Space and Time, but spiritually through ourselves. Man has access to the en- tire mind of the Creator — is himself the Creator and the Finite. I am part or particle of God." This, of course, is the purest pantheism, and thus what is called Natural Religion in its worst and lowest sense was put before the thinking mind of America in its most subtle and at- tractive form. The consequences are apparent. All Re- velation is rejected, save such as comes intuitively from EMERSON : FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 51 man's own consciousness, or is produced from the con- templation of external nature. The Sacred Scriptures, like the Koran or the Veda, are simply the histories and legends of a fairly cultured race. The Hebrew prophets are ranked with the priests of Vishnu and Buddha. Christianity is only another form of the universal re- ligion of mankind, and its Divine Author is classed with Confucius and Plato. All divinely revealed doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation are allegories and myths, and God Himself has no distinct personality, but is the soul which pervades all things, and is incarnated in Nature. Thus the young intellect of America has been taught, and taught by a master whose personal character added weight to every word which he spoke. Unlike Carlyle, his idol, Emerson was essentially an optimist. In the very attitude of modern society towards all great spiritual questions, and in which the English philosopher could only discern traces of inevitable spiritual dissolu- tion, the American recognised elements of hope for the future. Probably because he himself was so very san- guine, and knew so little of men, he brought himself to believe that his countrymen would be weaned more and more from the pursuit of wealth and position, and come to live more and more the true life of the Spirit, in which he believed all real happiness to be found. In this he was egregiously mistaken. Once in a century, perhaps, some great hopeful mind like his may be able to wrap itself up in its own ideas, and live a calm life full of all serenity and dignity. But the world at large demands something more positive and real than this. Theories, however splendid, will not satisfy the eternal cravings of the human mind for the knowledge that is not born of itself ; and the grandest pantheistic conceptions may flatter the vanity, but will never meet the wants, of men. Yet a character like Emerson's, so delicate and so elevated, had a lesson of its own for the refined and impressive minds that gathered round him, and took from him the ideas that were to serve for dogma, and the discipline that took the place of virtue. But of 4 * 52 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES them, and in consequence of his influence over them, we may ask in his own words, " AVhere dwells their religion ? " And answer again in his own words, " Tell me where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought, or gesture? They do not dwell or stay at all." And the Divine secret is reduced to the common platitude that religion is the doing of all good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, souffrir de toiU le monde, et ne /aire souffrir personne. FKEE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA— THE SECTS— THE CHURCH.i In our last paper we tried to explain the nature of the changes that took place with the growth of time and thought in the mind of the first of American philoso- phers, and the consequent disturbance of fixed beliefs amongst that large and important section of the American people who accepted his teaching without question. This strong bias towards scepticism was very much increased by the close intercommunication that then was established between the Old and the New Worlds. It is very probable that the growing intellects of America, with that natural elasticity by which the human mind reverts to primal principles and truths, when uninfluenced by external disturbing causes, would have sooner or later recovered from unhealthy doubts and questionings to strong and firm faith, were it not for the constant stream of educated but prospectless men that poured into the American Continent from Europe, and who brought with them no capital, but free and vigorous intellects; no religion, but the most liberal notions of all moral and dogmatic truth. Introduced as the alumni of the great university centres of free thought in Europe, they created the idea, which still prevails, that a finished professional education, much less a perfect philosophical education, was not to be had at home — was not to be had anywhere, in fact, except in the cherished sanctuaries of unbelief. Hence, during these last decades, a returning stream ^ Irish Eccleisiastical Record, November, 1884. 54 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES has passed from the States to Europe, dividing itself at Paris. The aesthetic or pleasure-loving American passes into the cities of Northern Italy, and whiles away the summer in the galleries of Florence, or in the shades of Umbria. But the patrons of advanced thought plunge at once into the German universities, study philosophy under Virchow, and anatomy under Haeckel, and, re- fined by a short residence in a London club, they return, and from newspaper and tribune, in the daily fly-sheets, and in the pages of the Popular Science Monthly, they put forth their ideas boldly and ably, and scatter broad- cast through America the principles they gathered in Europe, and developed at leisure at home. All these causes were remote and preparatory ; but there is not a doubt but that they had undermined the faith of thousands in systems of religious thought which were supposed to be unassailable, and opened the way for the last concentrated and sweeping attack that has been made on Christianity. It commenced in the great controversy that agitated the world thirty years ago, and which originated in the assumption that the dis- coveries of geologists were contradicting the testimony of the Word of God. The controversy raged fiercely at the time ; and nowhere were there more violent asser- tions made that every stratum of rock discovered dis- proved the teachings of Holy Writ ; and nowhere, too, were more brilliant and learned defences made for the integrity of Scriptural inspiration than in America. The brilliant and successful labours of Hugh Miller in England were rivalled in the States by Professors Dana and Hitchcock, and the great naturalist, Agassiz. Then came a lull. The cause of Geology versus Eevelation was withdrawn, but scientific speculation had been awakened. The study of the rocks was set aside ; but in the laboratories of England and Germany, under the clear light of the microscope. Nature was revealing new wonders in plant and animal, and men's minds under fierce excitement were arranging analogy after analogy, and flashing back through countless centuries to the FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 55 nebulae of worlds, and the germs of all existing life. Biology versus Creation now became the bm^ning ques- tion. Is man the product of mechanical forces, working up and out through the strata of matter, or is he indeed the son of God, created to the image and likeness of the Deity ? The doctors of the new science were Haeckel of Germany, and Darwin of England. The apostles were Tyndall in these islands, and Huxley of New York. We remember what a thrill of horror penetrated the world when, in 1874, Tyndall defiantly formulated and unfolded at Belfast the full plan of the naked material- ism that was to supplant the sacred traditions of human- ity. Huxley, still more boldly, fled to America a few years before, and in a series of lectures in New York not only explained the new theories, but deduced from them a series of conclusions as wanton and unconnected as ever agonised the intellect of a logician. The mind of America was agitated. The transcendentalism and ill-concealed pantheism of Emerson were forgotten. Speculation gave place to examination. The scientific journals teemed with praises of the industry and enter- prise of the evolutionists, and the world of science waited on the tiptoe of expectation for the discovery which was confidently promised— the link that was to connect the organic with the inorganic world. It was not forth- coming. But scientific speculation was accepted for certain revelation, and men of science boldly launched themselves against revealed religion under every form. All the caution that was so carefully observed by rational- ists of former years was cast aside ; the fear of wounding susceptibilities, or of darkening the light of faith in minds, where the torch of science could provide no adequate substitute, was stated to be pusillanimous and childish. Scepticism became dogmatic ; and by every class of literary men, historians, metaphysicians and philo- sophers, all faith in the supernatural was ridiculed as a remnant of the weak and puerile superstitions of the world in its infancy. Arrogant infidelity became supreme in America. The absolute freedom of the press enabled 56 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES the active propagandists of this new religion of science to scatter their pernicious doctrines broadcast through the land. Scientific journals of immense weight and authority were assisted by the lighter magazines, and these in turn by the daily papers, in making the theories and deductions of evolutionists familiar to the masses of the people. Light scientific lectures, ably illustrated, opened up to wondering minds the spectacle of the world, with all its vast complexities of animals, vegetables and minerals, unfolding itself from the first atom, and growing under the hands of some unseen power, with mechanical precision, into a universe of surpassing love- liness. And if these, in their exclusive devotion to science, spared the susceptibilities of their audiences, there were not wanting in the American cities street preachers, and day lecturers, and pamphleteers, who repeated in coarse and indecent jests the unqualified contempt of their superiors for everything savouring of religion. All our fundamental ideas of God and Reve- lation, the soul and its everlasting destiny, the higher moral sense, the spiritual desires and aspirations of men, everything in fact that could be a motive of virtuous actions, and a mainspring of noble deeds and ambitions, was stigmatised as the fancy of superstition, or the dream of enthusiasts, kept alive by an elaborate system of priestcraft throughout the world. The fact that nearly every preacher of the new creed had been obliged to retract his assertions under the pressure of science itself ; that Tyndall in all his later lectures withdrew from the advanced position which he had taken at Belfast; that Huxley, in his article "Biology," in the EncyclopcBclia Britannica, absolutely contradicted his own favourite theories ; and that Haeckel himself in his addresses before the French Association, and in his Natural History of Creation, was driven to admit the necessity of an absolute beginning, was most carefully kept in the background. In Germany and England the ancient conservatism of the races, and their stern and pitiless examination of these subversive doctrines, FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 57 compelled the materialists to limit their dogmatism. America and France, let it be said, have stood forth in ugly pre-eminence as the countries where infidehty has taken its firmest foothold. In these lands it is no longer disreputable. It is no disgrace to be known as an atheist. That terrible name, which Voltaire in his worst moments would have repudiated, that term of shame which, even to depraved minds, carries with it some nameless idea of turpitude, has been freely ac- cepted, and even boasted of, under the euphemised form of Agnostic and Materiahst. And all sacred things of rehgion, names that were spoken with bared heads and bended knees, sacred stories that had so often brought comfort to the sorrowful, and sacred hopes that had so long had their consecrated shrines in the human heart, are made subject to derision. The scoff of the unbe- liever has degraded in the eyes of thousands the purest and holiest revelations of heaven. Our examination into the growth of free-thought in America would hardly be complete, did we not advert for a moment to the luxury and voluptuousness of social life, and to the corruption and venality that exist in all the State departments. So far as the mere material growth and progress of the States is concerned, these things, which in an older and more thickly populated country would be the prelude to extinction, will scarcely have a perceptible effect. So long as the population is not wedged together within limits that are impassable, so long as there is free power of expansion, and unused land with its teeming wealth lies open to the people, there never can be those awful collisions between wealth and poverty, the governing classes and the governed, that are such perilous possibilities in older states. But that excessive luxury, the facility of making and squand- ering fortunes, and the competition for wealth, which is so keen, that dishonesty is reputed a virtue — that these things are inimical to religious feeling, and direct incen- tives to infidelity, is beyond all dispute. The history of the world testifies it. Athens, in the very climax of 58 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES freedom and prosperity, forgot its ancient deities, and built statues to the Great Unknown. Rome, under the emperors, lost faith in the gods, under whose tutelage it was supposed to have waxed so strong. Florence, under the Medici, became classic and pagan. Paris, under Louis XIV., became the cradle and school of all modern infidelity. England, under Victoria, is drifting every day into the abj^sses. And America, whose am- bition it is to rival and surpass these states and empires, may succeed too in securing the doubtful honour of towering above all in colossal iniquity. Certainly, if there be any connection between free-living and free- thinking, and some one has said, " Les passions sont athees," it would not be rash to predict a supremacy in evil for America. We will not go into details, but mention that, as far back as the Civil AVar, and even amidst its horrors, an outcry was raised against the extravagance and voluptuousness of the cities of the Union. Descriptions of revellings and riotous living are quoted largely by Dr. Brownson in his Review,^ and they read like a page from the Arabian Nights, or from a history of Eome under Caligula. Now, if these things were done twenty years ago, what shall be said of America at present ? The answer, in all its painful and vivid truth, may be read in Mr. Henry George's latest work, called Social Problems. We now come to the question, what defence has been made b}^ the Christian communions of America against the terrific assaults of infidelity ? We put aside for a moment the Catholic Church, and we candidly admit that all that could be done b}' human zeal, intensified by the deadliness of the struggle, and fortified by learn- ing as wide and deep as that of the adversary, was done by the Evangelical churches of America. That their pastors were at an earlj^ period quite alive to the dangers which w^ere pressing on their traditional creeds, from "^ Review, January, 1864; Art. "Popular Corruption and Venality ". FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 59 within and without, was apparent from the efforts that were made to secure for their theological students a most accurate knowledge of those sciences which were as- sumed to be in direct hostility to revealed religion. Hence, divinity students from America crowded the universities of Germany for the last fifteen years, and returned to their missions fully equipped with every fact and argument that could tell against the advancing lines of infidelity. And if we except the standard works, written by German divines, we hardly exaggerate when we say, that by far the fullest and ablest defences of Christianity have been made by the elders and professors among the Non-Cathohc creeds of America. A mere catalogue of the works issued by the religious press of America during the last fifteen years would fill a volume. To each succeeding phase of unbelief — Rationalistic, Materialistic, and Positive — they opposed scholarship that was very profound, and a tenacity for their faith that was heroic. They established in their professional schools, notably at Princeton and Andover, lectureships on the relation between religion and the sciences. And, not being impeded by strict theological courses, they had leisure to devote themselves to the philosophical studies which have become of such supreme importance in our days. It ought, therefore, to be a matter of regret that they were unable to counteract the influences of free-thought. In their defeat there is the pathos that always hangs around the brave defenders of a hopeless cause. They went down like the Israelites before the Philistines, be- cause they had not the Ark of God in their midst. Stubbornly they contested every issue, and gradually they had to abandon point after point of cherished beliefs, which were doubly hallowed by the worship of their ancestors and the robust traditions of their race. But no purely human institutions could stand the merciless criticism that rained from press and platform on doc- trines that had no better support than the frail logic of the class-room, set in stereotyped forms, and supported by ancient texts, which had lost all their inspired vigour, 60 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES because they had been irreverently handled by every in- dividual who claimed the right of private judgment. The Nemesis of the Eeformation has assuredly come. Its own children have risen against it. They have pushed its lessons to their logical conclusions. With audacity unheard of before our century, they have as- sailed every doctrine, not only of Christian, but even of Theistic behef, and the churches have gone down before their assaults like cities built upon the sand. Every familiar doctrine must be modified to meet the require- ments of science ; the integrity of Scriptural inspiration must be abandoned ; the deeply cherished doctrines that the Pm-itans brought over in the Mayjiotver, and which were reverenced as the Israelites reverenced the Ark and its Tables — the dogmatic articles which lit the faggot and heated the brand in the New England cities — have been swept away ruthlessly by the broader views of that liberahsm which environs all thought in om- time. The texts and tenets which went to build up the edifice of Calvinistic theology, and which generations of elders regarded as irrefragable, have been torn in pieces and flung to the winds by the contemptuous logic of latter- day infidels ; and even that sacred belief, in which were centred all hopes of comfort here and happiness here- after — the behef in the Word of God, the " sword of the spirit" — has become as vague a source of religious thought as the intuitions of the philosopher, or the reason and spirit of Emerson. "Faith in spiritual and divine realities," says an American divine, "may, in some of its older forms, be passing into Herbert Spencer's ' family of extinct beliefs ' ; " and his only hope is, that he may be allowed to help in the general movement towards a faith at once " more simple, more rational and more assured ". It is the same writer,^ whose works have become very popular in England, who declares, " that the system of philosophy in the Westminster confession we are not bound to accept"; "that we are anxious to do ^ Dr. Newman Smith. FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 61 the real work of revision, to adjust our own faiths happily to modern conditions of thought, and to learn to preach them in new tongues of knowledge ".^ And he says that he would be far more reticent of his views in addressing a lay than a clerical assembly ; " for if I had been called upon to address, upon the same topic, an ecclesiastical assembly, my growing conviction of the need of a re- vised theology, suited to our scientific environment, and fitted to survive our modern thought, would have led me to lay the stress of my argument even more strongly upon the desirability of a restatement of the standards, particularly of my own, the Presbyterian Church ".^ And he quotes with approval the Cambridge platform of the Congregational churches, in which it was expressly writ- ten that in the examination of candidates for admission to the Church, a " rational charity " should be exercised, and the " weakest measure of faith " should be accepted. A creed which thus can be recast and fitted in every new setting of science has neither elements of cohesion and unity in itself, nor powers of resistance sufficient to maintain a distinct and specific existence as a religion. We can hardly be surprised to hear then, that, in New York, the churches are comparatively deserted, nor to read the following verdict on Protestantism by one of its own professors: "The great bulk of the Protestant Church is identified with the world. It has a name to live, while it is dead. It has turned its doctrines into nationalism, or rationalism, and its life into selfishness. The old landmarks are gone. Family prayer is given up. Prayer meetings are ignored, worldly partnerships are formed, social sins are connived at, and even ex- cused, the pulpit is made a stage on which to strut and pose before a gaping world, and rehgion is made one of the instruments of fashion."^ We turn at last from the weakness and defeat of the sects to contemplate the attitude of the Church towards ^ Orthodox Theoloffi/ of To-day. '^ Idem. See Preface. ^ Dr. Crosby, Now York. 62 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES free-thought. And at first sight there seems to be such absolute indifference in the Church to the dangers that paralysed the sects, that we are inclined to set it down to a want of forethought and prudence that seems in- explicable. We recognise none of that anxiety, and even panic, that drove hundreds of Episcopalians and Presbyterians to the Divinity schools of Germany, we see no chairs of biological, or other sciences, established in Catholic schools, we notice the total absence of any desire to adapt the teachings of the Church to the dic- tates of the sciences, or the wants of the age. But the closer the subject is studied, the more majestic appears the attitude of perfect security with which the American Church regards the last and worst of the heresies. In this she presents in miniature the history and character of the Church from the beginning. Far removed from the tumult and warring of sects and creeds, the Church looks imperturbably on the ever-shifting phases of spirit- ual thought in which heresy and infidelity present themselves ; but is calm about her own future, for her lease of existence and of triumph reaches unto the years of eternity. This attitude of security the Church in America has assumed. She, too, inherits the eternal promises, for she is linked in visible bonds of unity with the Catholic Church. And with singular facility she has adapted herself to the free institutions of America, as easily as if she were not born under an Empire. Democratic ideas fit in with her dogma and discipline, as easily as those of monarchies. Here is her strength — that whilst she allows her children the fullest liberty in pohtical and social life, she maintains her authority in doctrine and discipline as firmly as in the lands where saints were born and the blood of martyrs was shed. Inflexibihty in her teaching, universality in her sympathies, and constancy in active well-doing — here are her credentials to the American nation, here are her answers to the controversies which agitate the world around her. Whilst patronising the sciences, and adapt- ing to her own wants every element of human progress. FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 63 she continues to preach and demand submission to doc- trines that were weighty with age in the remote periods when the prototypes of our modern agnostics assailed them. To all objections against the truth of her teaching she has but one answer — the steady unvarying assertion of her exclusive right to teach the world. This Divine despotism, even in the land of freedom, is her buckler and defence. And hence is she free to exercise her undoubted strength to bind closer and closer in compact organisa- tion the territories and races that acknowledge her supremacy. With a hierarchy chosen, not so much on account of the great oratorical abilities, or liberal scholar- ship of its individual members, as for their splendid administrative talents ; with a priesthood which com- bines in a singular manner the freest republican habits and sympathies with the steadiest adhesion to ecclesi- astical principles ; with a press second to none in the world, in abihty and enterprise, and characterised by special zeal for the sacred cause it espouses ; and with an aggregate of races, differing in customs and even in language, but united in the bonds of religion ; the Church in America appears to be not so much a human association as a vast mechanism, which is for ever giving and receiving, expanding and developing, with a silent power that seems irresistible. It has all the advantages of action over speculation, for it has all the advantages of firm faith over wavering unbelief. Carlyle somewhere quotes Goethe as saying that " belief and unbelief are two opposite principles in human nature. The theme of all human history, so far as we are able to perceive it, is the contest between these two principles. All periods in which belief predominates, in which it is the main element, the inspiring principle of action, are distinguished by great, soul-stirring, fertile events, and worthy of perpetual remembrance ; and on the other hand, when unbelief comes to the surface, that age is unfertile, unproductive and intrinsically mean. There is no pabulum in it for the spirit of man." The Church in America is proof of this. It anticipates all the am- 64 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES bitions of the philosopher. It foreshadows all the benevolent ideas of the best among the unbelievers. Its charity is wider than the world's philanthropy. Its devotion to the arts, which consecrate civilisation, is for ever showing itself far in advance of the barren sympathies of the educated and irreligious. Shall we then complain of the inaction of the Church in America ? Or wonder that it has not come down to the arena of controversy with the unbeliever? Well, controversy was never yet the vehicle of Divine Faith. But Faith itself, manifested in works which touch the sympathies of all, may generate Faith in the infidel. " Show us your works," was the cry of the Parisian students which inspired Frederic Ozanam to found his great society. And it is not to great scholars like the Abbe Moigno, but to the Sisters of Charity and the priests, who hovered round the beds of the cholera patients, that we are to attribute that relenting towards the Church which we witness in contemporary France. The world, we are told, now demands what is real and positive in preference to what is imaginary and conjectural. Well, here is the Divine Positivism of the Church, its active benevolence, its never-failing charity, its patronage of the arts and sciences, its persistent devotion to the cause of education. And after all, is not the attitude of the Church completely justified by the fact that the strongest assertions of the infidels have been withdrawn ? We have already quoted some retractations. But it may be safely said that the history of heresies affords no parallel to the dogmatism and assertiveness of the materialists, or the abject manner in which they have withdrawn, in the face of the world, their boldest and most impious declarations. We must not, however, be supposed to hold either that a liberal scholarship is not necessary for the priesthood of America, or that the American seminaries do not afi"ord it to ecclesiastical students. The Church must always be in advance of the world. The priest must lead the flock. And his spiritual instructions will carry all the more weight when FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 65 it is understood that the pastor is a man of culture and refinement, and that his condemnation' of new and fanciful theories comes from his belief, founded on fair and exhaustive reading, that they are utterly untenable. A Secchi in his lone observatory may be doing the work of an apostle. Men will reverence knowledge wherever found, and the natural abilities of the scholar may lead many souls to acknowledge the supernatural mission of the priest. Hence it has delighted all lovers of the American Church to hear that of late years the students in theological seminaries have been able to read a complete course of divinity and philosophy, and that missionary requirements will not for the future necessitate a curtailed and unsatisfactory preparation for the greatest of missions. We may mention, too, that the exhibitions of the Brothers of the Christian schools in London lately have shown that in Manhattan College the professors are quite alive to the necessity of taking their places in the foremost lines of scientific thought ; and we might fairly judge by analogy, if we did not already know it as a fact, that a similiar spirit prevails in every Catholic seminary in the States. There are just two difficulties that bar the progress of the Church in America. Both will engage the earnest attention of the prelates who, on the 9th of this month, will meet in solemn council at Baltimore. The first and greatest is the question of State schools. That these schools do not subserve the interests of religion or morality is already proved by the fact that the bishops have found it necessary, at enormous sacrifices, to es- tablish Catholic schools in their cities. These schools are supported by the different churches ; and we can understand what a hardship this is, when we are told that many churches in the city of New York are obliged to spend 12,000 dollars, or £2,500 a year, in maintain- ing these schools in such a state of efficiency that they can compete successfully with the public schools. There appears to be no great probability that the State will change this secular system of education, and thus reheve 5 66 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Catholics from the burden of double taxation. Neither is there any likelihood that these public schools will im- prove their teachings. And, of course, following the tendencies of our age, many Catholic parents will send their children to the Government schools, reckless of their faith, if their temporal welfare be secured. The second great difficulty for the Church is to re- claim the thousands who, with singular perversity, have chosen for their homes the tenements of New York in preference to the freedom and health of the broad prairies towards the West. That these dark places of the great city are nurseries of vice, that the children born in them are reared in spiritual bHndness, and that myriads of them drift away towards heresy and in- fidelity, are things which no one desires to conceal, but for which no remedy has yet been found. But all future emigrants will be protected and warned against the most unhappy social tendency of our age — the con- centration of vast masses of people in districts where the laws of God and the laws of health are alike disre- garded. If the evils of public schools and the evils of the cities be once removed, the Church in America has a future before it which the imagination itself fails to reach. We expect to see in the States a rehgious re- volution such as we behold at present in Europe. We think that wdth the advance of education, most of the Protestant sects will disappear, or, merging with each other, descend to the dead level of Unitarianism. AVe do not believe that Atheism, pure and simple, can ever become the creed of vast masses of the population in America or elsewhere. But the Deism of Emerson and the philosophers will probably draw to itself all other creeds, except in some remote districts where, in a rustic Sion or Bethel, the local deacon will still read the Bible and preach some surviving doctrines of the ancestral faiths. The Church will then be confronted with the rational and consistent beliefs of the followers of natural rehgion. And then, too, even as now, will it show that FREE-THOUGHT IN AMERICA 67 it is the custodian of all Divine Revelation, the living interpreter of the mind of God towards men, that it knows no change or shadow of change, but is perfect in its light as at the beginning. And the Universal Church will recognise it as a fair compensation for all the losses she has sustained in her combats with heresy and in- fidelity in these evil days — as the fairest province in The fair Kingdom wide as earth, . Citied on all the mountains of the world, The image, glory-touched, of that great city Which waits us in the heavens. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I.^ The question of higher or University Education, which is generally regarded as one of vital issue from its bear- ings upon the moral and intellectual hfe of a nation, is in the near future to be submitted to us again. And this fact alone, apart from the transcendent importance of the subject, is the only apology we offer for present- ing this paper to the readers of the Becord. University Education in this modern world is sup- posed to have reached its most perfect form in Germany ; and to Germany we must go to understand fully what appears to be the highest conception of University life, its spheres of thought limited only by the boundary lines of human knowledge, and its work, free and flexible, vnthin rigid principles of religion on the one hand, and patriotism on the other. As a guide we shall take one of the most interesting books produced in our genera- tion, written, strangely enough, by a French priest, Pere Didon, who made the largest sacrifice a French- man can make, that of national vanity, for the purpose of teaching a wholesome lesson to his nation. The book appears to have been wrung from him by a kind of torture, to which, indeed, he voluntarily subjected himself ; and his broad philosophical habit of general- isation is very often broken abruptly by an exclamation of pain, when he sees some striking instance of German superiority, or some special manifestations of the patriotic instinct, which is so universal in its extent, and so well directed in its energies. From the day when, ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Becord, June, 1886. 68 THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 69 midst a crowd of students, German and foreign, he signed his name, Guliehnus Didon, in the album of the University of Berlin, and touched the rector's hand as a kind of honourable oath to be true to the traditions of the place, down to the time when his book came forth from the press, and was received with a scream of agony from his vain countrymen, Pere Didon went through purgatorial pains, with one sentence of solace in his heart : " You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ". The two best books on Germany have been written by French litterateurs. Madame de Stael was the first in Europe to understand and manifest the riches and power of German literature. Pere Didon, nearly half a century later, has written the latest and best book on the springs and sources of the political and hterary pre-eminence of the same nation. But De Stael at least commenced to write in a tone of superiority as one who, brought up in more than Attic or Augustan refinement, had suddenly discovered pearls amongst barbarians. Pere Didon wrote in a more humble, and perhaps truthful, spirit, when German power and intel- lect were acknowledged through the world, and his own country was writhing in the shame of a defeat, which resulted from forces generated in the German Universities, and directed through the channels of mili- tary organisation. To trace to its springs the power that had proved so disastrous to his own country— the power that came down like the rock cut from the ixioun- tain, which shivered the statue of brass with the feet of clay;; to study the secrets of the energies which trans- formed a race barbarous up to yesterday into kings of intellect to-day, clothing themselves with the richest spoils of Greek and Oriental culture, and evolving and creating with superabundant plenteousness ideas and institutions that will minister to the intellectual wants of generations yet unborn — this was a task of observa- tion and analysis, repulsive and uncongenial enough, yet all the more fruitful, let us hope, for his own country and for the world. 70 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES There are twenty-two Universities in Germany,^ as uniform in teaching, and as easy in discipline, as the most rigid dogmatist on the one hand, or the broadest Epicurean on the other, could desire. They are scattered through the empire and its provinces as if by accident, sometimes buried in mighty cities, hke Berlin, sometimes, like Gottingen, creating quiet towns by sleepy rivers. In the more modern Universities like Munich and Berlin, the patrons of science amongst the regal and ducal families have built palaces as the homes of the learned. In the more ancient, the University building is an old convent, as at Leipsic ; or a dismantled fortress, forming the centre of a splendid architectural pile, as at Tiibingen. The teaching of the smallest, as well as of the largest University, embraces the four great faculties of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine and Philosophy. The Theological faculty is sometimes exclusively Protestant, as at Berhn, Gottingen and Halle, at which latter place one of the strongest assaults ever made on Christianity was led by the rationalist. Wolf ; sometimes Catholic exclusively, as at Breslau, Miinster and Wiirzburg ; sometimes Catholic and Pro- testant, each, of course, with its own professors, as at Tiibingen, where there are 374 Protestant and 179 Cathohc students of Theology. And a student is at perfect hberty to pass from University to University, from one famous professor to another, according to the bent of his own inclinations, and the attractions of the great intellects, which direct thought in these schools of the highest science. There with the humming of the busy world around him, if his University happens to be located in a city ; or if in a country town, in a ^Tliat is in the Empire, viz., thirteen in Prussia, the duchies and the annexed provinces — Berlin, Bonn, Braunsberg, Breslau, Friburg, Grieswald, Halle, Heidelberg, Kiel, Konigsberg, Marburg, Miinster and Rostock ; one in Saxony — Leipzig ; one in the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — Jena ; one in the grand duchy of Hesse — Giessen ; three in Bavaria — Munich, Wlirsburg, Erlangen ; one in Wiirteraburg — Tubingen ; one in Hanover — Gottingen ; one in Alsace — Strasburg. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 71 silence and calm as deep as that which falls upon Char- treuse, when the evening antiphon has been sung, and the echoes of the last footsteps have died along the twilight corridors, the student, with his mind already stored with the facts of science and history, and the principles of art, is enabled to collate, combine, and generalise in that high faculty of Philosophy, which is the term of all education. And how easy and elastic is the discipline of those German Universities, and how charmingly Bohemian is the hfe the students lead ! A slice of ham and a glass of beer for breakfast — an adjournment to the hall where the students leap over desks and benches to their places with the inevitable note-book in their hands, the solitary black-board and piece of chalk for the professor, who enters with the students, places his cap with theirs, and commences his hour's lecture without comment or preface, and without the slightest attempt at style, telling the hardest facts, and explaining the highest problems in the plainest manner that the German tongue will allow ; then an adjournment to the restaurant, where professor and students sit around the same table, and the thread of the lecture is taken up, and in a perfectly informal manner the difficulties of Arabic, or cuneiform in- scriptions, or absolute idealism are explained ; or a quiet stroll by the banks of the river, and confidential revela- tions of the arcana of Science and Philosophy, when the professor has gathered around him some of his favourite pupils, who may yet perhaps, he thinks, stand on the high table-lands of science with the masters at whose feet he himself sate and studied ! I suppose no two races were ever more dissimilar in habits, tastes, and temperament, than the ancient Greeks and the modern Germans. The capricious, artistic, wayward sons of Athens were the exact antitheses of the dreamy, yet plodding and practical Germans. Yet the genius of both lands has struck out a University system, which in its scope and object, and even in the details of working, are very much alike. The Athenian 72 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ephebi were the prototypes of the modern German students. Living either in private residences, or to- gether in colleges, they attended at will the lectm-es of the philosophers, who attracted admiring crowds at the Lyceum, or in the Academy, or in the Porch ; and these halls of learning, as well as the hospitahty of Athens, were thrown open not only to the children of the city, but to dusky strangers from Egypt, the cradle of all philosophy ; to students from the distant shores of the ^gean, and, above all, to those of the great Semitic race, which even then, with its Sacred Books, held a foremost place in the world of culture, for its professors were inspired and its Philosophy divine.^ And in Athens, as in the Germany of to-day, the professorial system obtained. Zeno in his porch, Plato in his little garden near the sacred Eleusinian way, Aristotle in the Lyceum, or in his residence by the banks of Ilyssus, seem to us the far-off images of Kant and Hegel and Fichte, or the more modern professors, as they move freely amongst the students, who look to them for guidance, and teach the highest synthesis of all Science by the banks of rivers as famed as Ilyssus, or under the shadows of mountains, peopled with the phantoms of poetic dreamers, and as sacred to German genius as Olympus or Parnassus to the Greeks. It is to men and not to books that these two great nations, separated by fifteen centuries of time, commit the intellectual training of their youth. Schools are founded bearing the names of great professors or the philosophical systems they established, and each student attaches himself at will to that school or that professor to whom he feels him- self particularly attracted. The professor dictates, the students listen and VTrite, for the note-book is the armoury of the modern German student, as it was of the Athenian, who, however, more aristocratic and luxurious in disposition, took his slave to the lecture as ^ Vide Card. Newman's Idea of a University. Discourse, " Chris- tianity and Letters," p. 264. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 73 amanuensis. No pedagogic system of question and answer ! Athirst for knowledge, the student hangs on the nps of his professor, and it is only after the lecture is finished that he can approach his master, and lay his difficulties before him. Hence, too, there is no pro- gramme in our sense of the word. Twice a year the Senate of the University appoints the subjects to be treated, and the hours for lecture. In the Maxima Aula, or corridor of the University, the professors put up their notices, written and signed by themselves. The students must select the lectures they wish to attend. They give their names to the quaestor, and pay the master's fees. They call on him once more to get their books signed, and are then free to be studious or idle, careless or assiduous, as they please. The Univer- sity course terminates with the examination for a Doctor's degree. The title is indispensable for those who are about to practise medicine, or who aspire to a professorship. Otherwise it is purely a title of honour ; but such honour as to make men, during the eight half- years of the University course, study and toil in a manner which makes the students of other countries the merest amateurs by comparison. He who possesses that title in Germany stands enrolled in the only aristo- cracy which that democratic nation acknowledges — the aristocracy of talent. Learned men form an estate by themselves. They represent the intelligence of the Empire, and as such are returned to Parliament. There are no less than eighty Doctors in the German Beichstag. So far we have followed Pere Didon. But here we must notice some points on which he differs from per- haps the two greatest specialists, if we may use the word, in this matter of University Education — Cardinal New- man and Dr. Pusey. He differs from the former in his idea of the scope or object of University Education ; he differs from the latter in his idea of the system of education that ought to be pursued. The difference with the former, however, is infinitesimal ; with the latter, in his statement of principles and results, the 74 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES difference is wide and deep. In the meaning of the word University, as a term embracing all science, human and divine, in the absolute logical necessity of including theology amongst the sciences, and the grave detriment to society and rehgion which is done by excluding it from University teaching, and confining it to a special faculty in a high school, the French Dominican and the great Oratorian are one. The ideas of Cardinal New- man on this subject are so well known, through his admirable lectures delivered before the students of the Catholic University, Dublin, that we forbear quoting them here. But as Pere Didon's book is not quite so well known, we would ask our readers to look up Discourses I., II., III., IV., in Newman's Idea of a University, and compare them with the following ex- tracts which are rather long, but which perhaps will be read with interest. I. — The Scope of University Education. " Nothing shows better the progress of the culture of the mind than a simple comparative glance at higher education amongst ancient and modern nations. They both consider it as universal ; but what a difference in the universality of each ! With the ancients, education may be likened to a lake, the banks of which being limited are easily explored ; with us it is like a shoreless ocean — the farther yoM explore it, the vaster it appears. Genius is no longer a beacon on the shore ; it is a star, shining above the reefs, in the immensity of the skies ; it no longer shows the port — the port no longer exists. It only shows the way through the rolling and stormy waves. Knowledge is infinite ; man, who pursues it, dies in the midst of the immensity. What he explored is nothing, being easily measured. What remains to be discovered is unlimited ; in fathoming it, imagination and reason draw back confounded. Nevertheless, man- kind goes on without rest. Some irresistible attraction carries it towards truth. It lives only in order to learn, and learns only to rule over this world, the prey given THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 75 by God to its devouring and sublime curiosity. There are now among enlightened nations two kinds of public institutions for the diffusion, the culture, and the pro- gress of higher Education — the High Schools and the Universities. High Schools present everywhere a double character — they are special, that is, exclusively limited to certain branches of general knowledge ; utilitarian, that is, having in view some more or less im- mediate practical object. Their tendency is to obtain increasing influence in modern civilisation. From year to year their number increases as the province of know- ledge extends its limits, as men become more energetic- ally intent upon learning, as the utility of science becomes more obvious through the increase of wealth, security and comfort. Special schools are everywhere founded for training men capable of directing and managing the forces at work in the field open to their activity. Universities differ from High Schools pre- cisely in these two respects — instead of one branch of knowledge only, their aim is to reach all its branches, to constitute a synthesis thereof ; instead of giving to studies a professional direction, they aspire to pure science, and in cultivating the latter in view of some practical application, they cultivate it for itself. Know- ledge and ability : these two words explain the aim of human life. The one might be engi'aved on the frontis- piece of the Alma Mater, the other be written over the doors of all High Schools, hi Universities are trained great sioeoulative minds ; in High Schools great ivorhers. In the former discoveries are made ; in the latter they are use- fully aj^jMed. The first is the realm of enlightenment ; the second tliat of activity." II. — The Theological Faculty. " If Germany was wrong in not completing the old University organisation,^ other modern nations com- mitted a much more serious fault — they reduced it. ' By neglecting Leibnitz's last wish — the institution of a new faculty, called economic (J'aculte economique). 76 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES "In Kussia, as in America; in France, as in Italy; almost everywhere the faculties of Theology have been eliminated from the encyclopsedic organisation of knovs^- ledge. I am wrong ; Theology has not been suppressed ; it has been made, like the military art, a professional faculty ; it has not been destroyed ; it has been shut up and isolated in schools — closed to the life of the general public. Wherever the regime of the union of both powers exists — wherever the Church and the State, as subject or as mistress, remain united, in Austria, in Germany, in England — religious science continues to be an integral part of higher knowledge, and Theology occupies the first place in universal organisation. With nations, where the struggle has been more hardly fought, it tends to disappear. In Italy, Theology has been excluded from the twenty-one new Universities of the young kingdom, and has been obliged to seek refuge in large seminaries or in half-ruined cloisters. In France, official and pubhc opinion has but little re- gard for supernatural science, but men of talent there often reawaken the honour of faith by their eloquence and their culture. We still possess five faculties of Theology ; but these faculties, frequented only by ama- teurs, have no influence on the training of the Clergy ; they are but the ghost of a great name, the last threatened debris of an old regime that is fast falling to pieces. In Germany, however, the State does not pretend to teach its own theology, its own philosophy, its own science, its own politics. It authorises the teachings required by public opinion or by the wants of the population, with the welfare of which it is entrusted. Are the Catholics in a majority? they possess, as at Breslau, their own faculty of Theology. Are the Protestants in a majority? they, in turn, have their Protestant faculty. Are the numbers equal ? then, as at Tubingen, Protestants and Catholics alike have their own faculty. As regards scientific and philo- sophical liberty, it is seen at work in the faculty of Philosophy. All practical interests are thus taken into THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 77 account. Doctrines may, at will, battle against one another. Are we to deplore this? By no means, if men respect themselves. The discussion of philosophi- cal or religious truths has become, with us, a necessity ; and Universities are the fit arenas for such debates. The best, the sure means, to withdraw religion and religious questions from the discussion of the streets, is to give them the shelter of Universities. Must we therefore do away with seminaries in our own country ? I do not think so ; but, no doubt, valuable advantages would accrue from their being completed by regular faculties of Theology, wherein the future priests, sent there by their bishops, would come to study. Divine Science would once more find itself in vivifying contact with all human science. Like them, it mast live ; and to do this it must commingle with the progressive life of human things. Isolated, it remains unmoved in its rigid formulse — it crystalHses ; cast into the ground, the formula becomes a living germ ; it shoots, grows, trans- forms itself, assimilates. In passing through the ideas of Greek Philosophy, what did not these simple words, " Son of God," theologically commented upon, produce ; and what wealth did not Christian Philosophy heap up, solely by the contact with Oriental Metaphysics, and by the sole development of a cultivated reason, which knew how to draw logical conclusions from revealed principles ? This necessity the Germans have duly recognised. In it is to be seen one of the most active causes of the superiority with respect to erudition and science of the German clergy over the clergy of other nations ! " From the comparison thus instituted it will easily be seen how these two distinguished minds agree. The one point on which they differ is, that Pere Didon insists that in Universities science must be studied for itself, and its professional application left to the High Schools ; that therefore its province is to train great speculative minds, and to give the largest field and the best possible appliances for the experiments and research which are usefully ap- plied in the Higher Schools ; that therefore Universities 78 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES are places where knowledge must be pursued for its own sake, and the pursuit of it be disinterested, whereas in the High Schools the pursuit of knowledge is decidedly utilitarian. Now, whilst agreeing with most of these principles, Cardinal Newman, in his preface to the work already alluded to, is of opinion that philosophical inquiries belong rather to Academies, which sometimes are connected with Universities, sometimes subordinate to their rules, sometimes quite independent of them, such as the Eoyal Society which originated in Oxford — the Ashmolean and Architectural Societies — the British Association — the Antiquarian Society — the Royal Academy, etc. ; and his Eminence quotes Cardinal Gerdil : " Ce n'est pas qu'il y ait aucune veritable op- position entre I'esprit des Academies et celui des Univer- sites ; ce sont seulement des vues differentes. Les Universites sont etablies pour enseigner ^ les sciences aux dleves qui veulent s'y former ; les Academies se proposent de nouvelles reoherches a faire dans la carriere des Sciences. Les Universites d'ltalie ont fourni des sujets qui ont fait honneur aux Academies ; et celles-ci ont donne aux Universites des Professeurs, ^ This point appears to have attracted a good deal of attention. In a lengthy article in the Edinburgh Review, July, 1852, on the Oxford University Commission Report, the writer says: "By the decay of the Professoriate, one of the two primary functions of a University, the cultivafioii of lyrofovMd learning, has been almost entirely abandoned. Study, and self-improvement, and original investigation, are sacrificed to the educational office. The Univer- sity, accordingly, is stripped of literary greatness ; and, abandoned to hard-working schoolmasters or indolent dignitaries, is compelled to borrow its literature, its text-books, its authoritative commen- taries on the philosophy, history, poetry, and divinity which it studies, the fundamental principles of its criticism and of its in- tellectual life from without, from foreigners or non-residents ; whilst the nation loses that learning, so more than ever important in these days of commercial growth and material prosperity, which the University was specially designed to encourage and perpetuate." Almost precisely the same ideas are to be found in a treatise written by Mr. Mark Pattison, B.D., Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and entitled "Suggestions on Academical Organisation, with special reference to Oxford". Edinburgh, 1868. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 79 qui out rempli les chaires avec la plus grande dis- tinction." And the greatest thinkers of the world, his Eminence says, have shunned the lecture-room and the professor's chair ; and in silence and retirement origin- ated the ideas which have shaped the courses of men's thoughts. As a proof, the names of Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, Aristotle, Friar Bacon and Newton are quoted ; and Socrates and Lord Bacon admitted as exceptions. There cannot be a doubt that the marvellous progress which science has made since these lectures were de- hvered (1852), more than justify Dr. Newman's con- clusions. During these thirty years the men of "light and leading," almost in every department of human science, have been specialists, who having once taken their degrees, and sometimes without having passed through an academical course, devoted themselves, without being hampered by professional duties, to the development of that particular art or science to which a special attraction was felt. We need only mention Edison in Mechanical Science ; Tyndall and Huxley in Natural Philosophy and Biology ; Kuskin and Carlyle in Literature ; Pasteur and Koch in Anatomy and Physiology ; Secchi in Astronomy. We must also admit that the Germans have not had much success in scientific generalisations ; and have mastered and im- proved upon the theories and discoveries of other nations rather than originated any bold conception themselves. They cannot show scientists who for success in original research can be compared to Lin- naeus, Lyell, Darwin, Lavoisier, Lamark and Carnot. But for earnest unflagging energy in pursuing studies, such as Philology, where a talent for discovery rather than for speculation is required, for the indefatigable industry with which the physical sciences are pursued, in the multitude of students and professors who in every department of human and divine knowledge are working with passionate earnestness, in the intermin- able series of excellent books which are produced on every possible Bubject^ a^nd, above all, in the pursuit of 80 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Philosophy — the correlation of all arts and sciences towards each other, the Germans have no equals. Darwin, in his English laboratory, puts forth timidly an idea. It is taken up in Germany, developed, and made a prolific science, before he has assured himself even of its probability. Pasteur or Dumas gives to the world the latest secret Nature has told him. Whilst he is yet wondering at the revelation, scientfic treatises on that discovery, with all its bearings on human knowledge or happiness, are in the hands of his pupils. Every day translations of German scientific works are issued in France. The inspiration of science falls in England or France, but the germs are borne to their Teutonic neighbours, and there they fructify. But there are two departments — and these the highest — where the observa- tions of Cardinals Newman and Gerdil will hardly apply ; and to these particularly Pere Didon refers. The great masters in Theology were its professors ; and the same is true of its kindred science — Metaphysics. And we speak with all possible hesitation and reserve, when we say that we alwaj^s thought that the master-minds of antiquity, particularly Plato and Aristotle, whose in- fluence on human thought is, and must be, permanent, expounded to admiring pupils the systems of Philosophy which they had elaborated with slow, and perhaps painful, effort, in the silence of their chambers. That Socrates, the founder of all Greek Philosophy, spent very little time in retirement and solitude, and the larger portion of his waking hours in the portico, in the gymnasium, conversing with artists, men of science, rhetoricians, and practising what he called mental obstetrics, is an histori- cal fact. But was not Aristotle a pupil of Plato's ; and in turn did he not instruct pupils at the Lyceum, and form the mind of Alexander? Speaking of the four great Athenian schools, Professor Capes, of Oxford, says : " One of the first needs in each case was a sort of authorised version of their philosophic creed ; but the written word was not enough ; the writings of their founder, canonical as they might be, could not content THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 81 them ; they must have a Hving voice to expand and ilhistrate the truth, to stimulate by the contagious in- fluence of strong conviction, and meet objections from all quarters "} And although Epicurus v^^as the least popular teacher in Athens, so much so that he v^as com- pletely ignored by the heads of the Colleges when they recommended their pupils to attend the lectures of the other professors indiscriminately, yet that he taught a considerable number is evidenced by his will, in which he says: "I beg all who take their principles from me to do their best as a solemn trust to help Amynomachus and Timocrates (his executors) to maintain the school buildings in my garden, and their heirs after them, as also those who may be appointed to replace my own successors ". And perhaps it bears out the analogy which we instituted between Greece and Germany, when we find that the founders of the great German systems — the masters of thought, whose principles succeeding genera- tions have been solely occupied in developing, spent half their lives in thinking, and the other half in communi- cating their thoughts to their pupils and to each other. But there is another and very important reason why the German Universities might usurp the functions of Academies and Universities in other lands. It is that secondary education in Germany appears to be totally different from what we call Intermediate Education in these countries — and still more different from the corre- sponding grade of education in France. There are two kinds of High Schools in Germany — the practical schools (Bealschulen) and the gymnasia {gymnasien) ; and the curriculum in these embraces professional and scientific studies and literature to an extent that is unheard of in these countries, except in Universities. For though there appears to be a distinction between ■practical schools and gymnasia in Germany to this extent, that in the ' University Life in Ancient Athens, by W. W. Capes, Chapter II. 6 82 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES former, scientific pursuits are more encouraged, and in the latter, literary, it is a distinction that gradually shades off, until the only remaining difference is, that the pupils of the gymnasia, after completing their course, generally move on to the University, and the pupils of the x>'''^(^^'^(^^^ schools enter on that career in life for which they find themselves best adapted. But under the head of literary and scientific studies what usually is the extent of the knowledge that may be acquired ? The ancient languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The study of the two latter is compul- sory ; the study of Hebrew is optional ; but lectures are given in that language, and every student intending to embrace Holy Orders makes it his special study. The leading modern languages are taught — French, English, Italian, Spanish, French being compulsory. Equally liberal is the course of studies in the exact sciences ; yet it is understood and impressed upon the pupils that, no matter how high their proficiency may be in the dead or living languages, or what mastery they may have obtained over the sciences, their intermediate course of studies is merely preparatory — to what ? To the Univer- sity course, which is a severe training in abstract reason- ing, in the critical analysis of the studies through which they have already passed, and lastly in that synthesis of all the sciences which is called their philosophy. It is only, therefore, when the German student enters his University that he is free to criticise, analyse, compare the facts or principles he has already learned. Up to that time he has been acquiring in a submissive manner, whilst his mind is broadening and deepening, a know- ledge of the languages, beneath whose intricacies are enclosed all the treasures left to the world of the ancient civilisations which grew and throve amongst the Semi- tic race, and by the ^gean Sea, and on the banks of Tiber; a knowledge of the sciences, which reveal the harmony under which all creation is moving in obedience to laws that are inexorable, and Titanic energies, which never break their bounds ; but by attraction and repul- THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— I 83 sion, and sometimes with the swiftness of hghtning, and sometimes with the slowness of centuries maintain that balance of power which is the beauty and order of the universe ; a knowledge of the arts which contribute to man's comfort and enlightenment, and which minister to his innate sense of the Beautiful, which is but a reflex of his faith in the Divine. At last he is allowed to use his knowledge. The studious or acquisitive powers are set aside, and the creative or rather forma- tive powers of the intellect are thrown forward. Hence- forth, no fact in Science or History, no principle in Metaphysics or Theology, stands alone. The affinity of languages which, however changed by time, can be traced to a common stock ; the correlation of the sciences, by which it is seen that the highest laws of celestial mechanics in that noblest of all the sciences. As- tronomy, are the same as those which rule the angles and hnes of the black-board in the primary school ; the still more close and intimate union of the arts, which have all but one great principle underlying them ; still more, the hnks by which languages, arts and sciences are bound together, and form, as it were, the highly ornate vestibules, through which the mind of man, hushed and reverent, enters the vast temple where in silence the Godhead is enshrined — here is the grand ob- ject of study and veneration that lies before the German student, as with distinctive cap and scarf, and with his absolutoriwn from the Bealschule, he signs his name, and selects his studies and professor. Assuredly with such a course before him, there is ample room for investiga- tion, the only limit being the examination which comes at its end. And still more for the professors of whom especially the cardinals speak. For their work is no longer the dreary drudgery of teaching the meaning of accents and particles, and abstract signs, or mnemonic formulas, and even the more complex mechanism of enthymemes and sorites — but the more congenial and less laborious task of initiating vigorous and thirsty minds into the high philosophies of history and of art, 6 * 84 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES and the close affinities of the sciences. Now, either the professor in the first year of his academical duties writes out his lectures for his class, and delivers those identical lectures, year after year, to the different bodies of pupils who pass beneath him, or, what is far more likely, he strives, year by year, to keep up with the progress of science, to masifcer every new principle which has been established, every new fact which has been ascertained, and to develop, as far as his own abilities and oppor- tunities will allow, that science and art, in which he is interested, by personal conjectures, speculations or ex- periments. In the former case there is plenty of leisure, if the will is there, for those studies, which are sup- posed to belong to Academies in these countries. In the latter he is stimulated to original research by the rivalry which exists between Universities and professors in Germany ; for assuming, as we may, that all have reached the high levels of knowledge, and have been initiated into the sacred schools of philosophy, he alone will stand above his fellows who wrests some secret from Nature, or throws fresh hght on her mysterious work, or discovers some new connection between man's mind, and the marvels it is ever in pain to interpret, or finally makes the unerring revelations of the Creator less enigmatical to reverent minds, by proving that the hand- writing in the Sacred Books is the same as that which is abroad on the face of Nature, and that the spirit is brooding over the waters, where we behold as yet but darkness and chaos. THE GEEMAN UNIVEESITIES.— II.' In the last number of the Beoord we pointed out, in examination of Pere Didon's work, the one soHtary instance in which his opinions on University training differ from those of Cardinal Newman and the majority of English educational experts. In this paper it is our purpose to show some broader lines of divergence be- tween our author and Cardinal Newman's contempo- rary — the well-known Professor of Hebrew in Oxford University. We single out his evidence from a pile of literature on this important subject, because he ap- pears to be by far the ablest exponent of popular and generally received ideas about the condition of German religious thought ; and, singularly enough, the Anglican professor writes of it in tones of despair, and the French Dominican sees in it nothing alarming or disquieting, but everything yielding bright hopes and promises for the future of religion in that country. Within thirty years two distinct Commissions for the Universities both of England and Scotland have been held ; and according to the Reports submitted by these Commissions to Parliament, enactments have been made for the better ordering and governing of these State institutions. The first of these Commissions for Eng- land was held about the year 18.52 ; and a vast mass of evidence was accumulated from various and im- portant sources. A Report was duly drawn up and presented to Government, containing a great deal of thought, and an immense variety of suggestions from * Irish Ecclesiastical Record, July, 1886. 85 86 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES those whom pubhc and University opinion marked as leading men in their own departments, and best quahfied by experience and iutelhgence to notice defects in Uni- versity organisation, and suggest the remedies to be appHed. Amongst these experts Dr. Pusey was probably the one to whose opinions most deference was paid, partly owing to his personal eminence, but principally from his wide acquaintance with the history of Universities, both in his own country and on the Continent of Europe. His evidence, however, brought him into a sharp con- troversy with Professor Vaughan, the main issue being — the advisability of substituting, as far as possible, tutorial or catechetical teaching for the professorial, which partly obtained at Oxford, and was almost uni- versal in Scotland and Germany. By the professorial system Dr. Pusey meant, " that in which the professor is himself in fact the living book, and imparts know- ledge, original and instructive, but still wholly from without, to the mind of his pupil ". By the tutorial system is meant, " that by which the mind of the young man is brought into direct contact with the mind of his instructor, intellectually by the catechetical foiTQ of im- parting knowledge, wherein the mind of the young man, having been previously employed upon some solid text- book, has its thoughts corrected, expanded, developed, enlarged by one of raaturer mind and thought, who also brings to bear on the subject knowledge and reflection which the pupil cannot be supposed to have ", In other words, the professorial is the system of lectures orally delivered, whilst the students take notes, and the tutorial is the system of question and answer. The whole thesis of Dr. Pusey, as formulated by Professor Vaughan, and admitted with some very important modifications by his opponent, is summed up in five propositions, as follows : — 1st — Professorial lectures do not communicate know- ledge well. 2nd — Professorial lectures do not give a discipline to the faculties. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 87 3rd — Professors do not aid the advancement of truth, 4th — Theological professors are the causes of heresy and scepticism. 5th — Professors are the causes of immorality in the Universities to which they are attached.^ With one of these only have we to deal, because, in the attempt to maintain it, Dr. Pusey largely relies on his knowledge and experience of the German Universi- ties, and his evidence is almost in direct opposition to that of Pere Didon. It is the fourth proposition, that "Theological professors are the causes of heresy and scepticism ". In support of this. Dr. Pusey offers many examples to show that in Germany the Professors of Divinity have taught and produced Rationalistic theology. There cannot be a doubt that Dr. Pusey was very well quahfied to write upon such a subject. He had given to the study of it a great part of the best years of his life. In 1827, nearly half a century before the Cominission was held which elicited the evidence to which we have re- ferred, he had published a work entitled. An Enquiry into the Causes of German Rationalism, a fair liberal in- quisition into the state of religion in Germany, made by a pious and patient mind, which went beneath the surface into the depths of those mystic philosophies from which he thought Rationalism had taken its rise, and which was able to distinguish what was good and hope- ful from what was evil and pernicious in those trans- cendental theories which had taken such hold of the German mind. And whatever other value attaches to his evidence, it has at least the merit of consistency. His ideas in 1827 do not materially differ from those of 18.53, and they are the ideas that have gone abroad and filled the public mind for half a century, until religiously- minded people, when speaking of Germany, are always • Dr. Pusey's .statement is very different from this. He says, " Negatively, tlie professorial system is wholly destitute of any moral training ". 88 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES tempted to apply the Scriptural question: "Can any good come out of Nazareth ? " Dr. Pusey takes it as proved, then, that Rationalism has taken a firm hold of the mind of Germany ; and although in 1827 he concluded his inquiry with a hope that the nation would return to a belief in Eevelation, and its central doctrine of the Incarnation, he is forced to admit in 1854 that his hopes have not been realised. "It is true," he says, "that I have been disappointed. I watched with many a heart-ache over the struggles of the faith in Germany, and came to see how hard a thing it is for the intellectual mind of a country, which has once broken away from the faith, to be again won to it in its integrity." But if his hopes are disappointed, his opinions are unchanged as to the causes which have led up to such a sad condition of things. They are three : The traditional orthodoxy (1) which, transferred as to its objects from the ancient Church to the doc- trines of Luther, maintained a rigid conservatism, with- out history, philology, or Biblical criticism to sustain it. This gradually led to a system of Pietism (2), which furnished a " well-prepared soil for the seeds of unbelief, under whatever immediate circumstances it might be planted ". The sowers came, not, let it be remembered, from Germany, but from England. Rationalism was not the product of German soil. Nay, at the very time that the German Universities were seats of orthodoxy, so far as the great mysteries of the Christian faith were concerned, and the German households were pietistic and puritanical to a degree never reached in England, this latter country was the home of a school of Deistic philosophers (3), whose influence on the cultured minds of Germany was pernicious in the extreme. It was an age of metaphysical theories. From the highest sum- mits of Catholic thought down to the dismalest abysses of materialism, every shade of religious or psychological thought was represented. But by far the most potent, dissolving factor was that English Deism, of which Blount, Chubb, Collins, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 89 Hobbes, Morgan, Tindal, Toland, were, if not the originators,^ at least the abettors ; which was after- wards so successfully developed by the Encyclopas- dists of France ; and cloaked in light sarcasm, or panoplied in weighty argument, was introduced into the Universities of Germany, and fostered there into that natural religion which ushered in the bald atheism of our century. Yet Deism, though it took its rise in England, never got a firm foothold there. Why? Nowhere was scepticism so audacious. Compared with the timidity of the Scottish and German schools, the English was as positive and aggressive as the French. The disciples of Locke, who, like those of Descartes, pushed his theories to extremes from which he would have shrunk, either flatly denied that anything was immortal or immaterial, thus shadowing forth the ideas with which we are now so familiar, or preached a false spiritualism, which, directed in safer and narrower chan- nels, became the basis of the moral theories of the Scottish school. But Deism never took root in Eng- land, Dr. Pusey says, because of the independence of the English intellect, particularly in the Universities, where schools of philosophy formed on the teachings of indi- viduals never existed. He might, perhaps, have added, that there never has been much taste for such subjects in England — that the practical English mind is abso- lutely opposed to metaphysical speculations of any kind — that not only has there never been a school of philo- sophy in England, but even very few thinkers who could be ranked as great philosophers ; and with regard to the Universities, their faith, such as it is, has been preserved not by its absolute firmness, established by deep, pro- tracted and enlightened study, but by the very indiffer- ence to metaphysical speculations, which, if sometimes sublime in reach, and sweep, and magnitude, are not always safe in their subtleties. Deism, then, took no root in England, because the vast masses of the 1 Vide Kahnis' History of German Protestantism, p. 32. 90 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTUEES population neither knew nor cared for such things ; and the lordhngs of the two Universities thought more of the conflicts between town and gown, than of the dis- putes between the NominaHsts and the Eeahsts. And if Deism, taking its rise in England, had its reign in Germany, we must not forget that religious and meta- physical ideas were always subjects of supreme interest for the German people ; and that there were twenty Universities in Germany, thronged with students, poor, hke those of Scotland, and cultivating science tenui avend, but restless, speculative, inquiring, piling Pelion upon Ossa to enter the homes of the immortals. But we are anticipating. Deism, sprung from Orthodoxism and Pietism, and introduced from England, had its reign in Germany, because of the professorial system in the Universities. " Now, long before the times of Rationalism, the pro- fessorial system in Germany had exercised a power, enslaving the intellect. We are accustomed to think of the Germans as powerful, original thinkers. I my- self respect and love the Germans. Yet intellectual writers of their own, Lessing and Herder, upbraided them with their iniitativeness. It often showed itself in a strange submission to lawlessness of mind. We are of the same stock. Yet the English mind has been independent ; the German has been imitative. We have had no schools ; among the Germans from the E-eformation downwards, there have been successive schools. These schools existed in Philosophy, as well as Theology. Englishmen have been proud of Locke, but Locke left no school. Wolf, Kant, Fichte, ScheUing, Hegel, exercised by turns an almost undisputed sway. Everything for a time became Wolfian, Kantian, Hegel- ian. Theology, as well as Philosophy, became Wolfian. Sermons or catechisms bore the stamp of Wolfian Philosophy. I spoke, not of the value of that Philo- sophy, but of its transient autocracy. Why had it so extensive and absolute a sway, when yet, after a while, it was to resign its sceptre to another monarch over the THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 91 German intellect, as absolute and as transient? Sys- tems of philosophy were like fashions of dress ; first absolute, then obsolete. Like Jonah's gourd, ' the son of a night, perished in a night'." Is it not the irony of history, after all we have been listening to during all these years about Papal autocracy centring in itself not only supreme authority that must be obeyed, but supreme intelligence, which demands the fullest submission of the intellect, that an English Pro- testant should be found to complain that in Germany, the home of Protestantism, there has been such slavish subjection to individuals — such indiscriminate adhesion to fashions of thought that existed, but to pass away ? But if these bold Scriptural criticisms and consequent weakening of faith belonged only to the Universities, and never spread amongst the people, whose pastors clung tenaciously to ancient orthodoxies, it cannot be true that Eationalism obtained a firm foothold in Ger- many. And if it be true that the Universities showed such slavish submission to the professors whose theories were dominant in the schools, a simple remedy might have been found, — the appointment of orthodox profes- sors, whose righteous interpretations of Scripture, and such dogmas as Protestantism maintains, would be as blindly followed as the teachings of those who tried bolder flights in those speculations of which the Pro- testant faith does not wholly disapprove. In truth, Protestantism was put upon its trial in Germany and found wanting ; and the professors were not entirely to blame. The substitution of Luther for the Vicar of Christ, of the Bible for a living authority, of successive philosophers and their tenets for those who went before them, reduced Christian dogma to such a minimum in Germany, that the educated classes were forced to be sceptical ; and it is to the honour of that country that it has not completely drifted away from supernatural faith of every kind, when we consider how relentlessly the German mind pursues a course of reasoning, and does not shrink from its conclusions, at least specula- 92 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES tively, when it finds them. Rigid Lutheran orthodoxy, which commenced with the subversion of the cardinal principles of Christianity, was itself put on trial ; and the Scriptures, to which the Protestant mind has always attached a kind of talismanic effect upon the soul, were brought under the severe tests of Science, without an external authority to safeguard them by wholesome interpretations of their meanings and mysteries. What can be thought of a religion that, as Dr. Pusey says, fell to pieces before criticism ? Wolf made certain speculations about Homer. " This introduced two wrong principles — the disregard of traditional evidence, and the theory that a minute verbal criticism could suffice to dissect works, which had descended to us as wholes, into various compound parts." The criticism on Homer introduced criticism on the Old Testament, and Protestantism collapsed. Whilst, however, strongly maintaining the position he had assumed, Dr. Pusey makes a singular admission, which reflects a kind of quaHfied praise on the professors and philosophers of Germany, and at least attributes to them the singular merit of having preserved to their country some broad beliefs and general reverence for religion, at a time when the other countries of Europe were rapidly passing from timid scepticism into aggres- sive infidelit3^ " Professor Vaughan says of my former work : ' The transcendental professors, by demohshing the low popular philosophy to which England had given birth in earnest error, and which France soon cultivated in a spirit of satire and corrupt mockery, were then thought to have at least shown, on its promulgation, the necessity of faith, and to have assisted directly to restore the sway of those fundamental truths of con- science, which the mere understanding could never demonstrate '. I think the same now. Of Kant's philosophy I have lately said, ' it was on its positive side a gain, in that it awoke the conscience, and ex- posed the shallowness of a system more hopelessly irreligious and self-satisfied. But, on its negative side. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 93 it strengthened Eiationalism, and gave it its definite form.' ' The Kantian avrovo/xia of reason,' says Twisten, ' left room for the Deity, but not for a Revelation, in the sense of the Christian believer.' " ^ Looking back now, through the perspective of history, at these systems of philosophical thought which, con- sidering their ephemeral effect on contemporary religious beliefs, and the rapid pace at which modern ideas are travelling, seem to belong to a far remote period, we think there are very few leaders of Christian thought, in our own age, who will not acquit Germany of the sad reproach of having been mother and mistress of all modern infidelity. We have Dr. Pusey's admission that that country was saved from blank atheism by the action of its philosophers. We admit that it lapsed into temporary Rationalism through the action of its Scriptural professors. There has been a singular con- fusion of thought about the teachings and doctrinal consequences of the Transcendental philosophers on the one hand, and the Bibhcal expositors on the other, in Germany. It has been generally supposed that their teachings about Christianity were identical, or that their systems so dovetailed into each other, that the rejection of Revelation, which was openly professed by Biblical scholars, was the inevitable outcome of the metaphysical theories of the Transcendentalists. But their systems of thought, the objects they proposed to themselves, and ' Compare with this the following paragraph which appears in an article on " George Eliot," written by Lord Acton in the Nineteenth. Century for March, 1885. " For some years her mind travelled in search of rest, and like most students of German thought before the middle of the century she paid a passing tribute to Pantheism. But from Jonathan Edwards to Spinoza she went over at one step. The abrupt transition may be accounted for by the probable action of Kant, who had not then become a buttress of ('liristianitij. Out of ten Englishmen, if there were ten, who read him in 1841, nine got no farther than the Crilique aj Pure. Reason^ and knew him as the dreaded assailant of popular evidences. When George Eliot stood before his statue at Berlin, she was seized with a burst of gi'atitude, hut she hardly became familiar with his latest works." 94 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES the deductions at which they arrived, are as distinct as the philosophical teachings of Mill or Hamilton, and the Scriptural exegesis that is taught in a Protestant seminary. The work of the former was positive; of the latter, consciously or unconsciously, negative, and, if you will, destructive. The philosophers aimed at constructing a philosophy of Christianity. Utterly dis- satisfied with Christian doctrine, as it was taught in their churches, and unwilling to believe that the crude and uncouth form, in which its sublimest doctrines were submitted to their congregations by the pastors and theologians of the Lutheran Church, was the only presentation that could be made of a religion which, in the sublimity of its origin, and the perfect adaptation of its moral code to the wants of men, was manifestly Divine ; and not being able to realise the idea of a living Church, with a voice that interpreted unerringly the Revelation of God to the world, they attempted to create a system of philosophy, founded on pure reason, which eventually would embrace the fundamental doc- trines of Christianity. A similar attempt was made by Coleridge in England. In a work, on which he intended his fame should rest, but which he did not live to per- fect, he tried to prove that Christianity was not only not opposed to reason, but was its highest embodiment from a doctrinal and ethical point of view. His work, like that of the German philosophers, has come to naught — has failed as utterly as that of the Gnostics in the early days of Christianity. One after another, the greatest German thinkers developed their ideas as to the meaning of the universe and the destiny of the human soul, only to find that they were moving in a circle in the end. But let it be said that each com- menced with a perfect faith in the existence of God and of the soul, and the absolute necessity of religion. And if, by the exercise of pure reason, they did not reach these high truths which Eternal Wisdom alone could reveal, at least it must be said that the spirit in which they approached the consideration of such sacred prob- THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 95 lems was in no wise a spirit of hostility to Christianity, and that the conclusions at which they arrived may have fallen far short of our perfect Eevelation, but did not absolutely reject or deny it. We might safely put into their mouths the plaints of the ancient philosophers in the first circle of the Inferno : — Per tai difetti, non pei- altro rio, Semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi Che senza speme vivemo in disio. Nor would it be altogether unworthy of a Christian to feel as the great poet felt : — Gran duol mi prese al cuor, quando lo'ntesi : Perocche gente di molto valore Conobbi, che'n quel Limbo eran sospesi. The commentators, on the other hand, whilst coquet- ting with philosophy, and professing themselves disciples of one or other master or system, directed all their attention to the critical examination of the Sacred Books. Philology was the science they brought to the study of Eevelation, and, finally, into conflict with it, just as geology, in later times, and later still, biology, have been considered its antagonists. Nothing narrows the human mind so much as exclusive devotion to one science. Germany became hypercritical ; and, as usual, German savants, compressing their ideas within the limits of one faculty, grew cramped and illiberal in the pursuit of knowledge. " That sublime and devouring curiosity," man's first passion — the weakness on which the fatal temptation fell — even still leads men beyond their depth. And so, by the morbid development of the critical faculty, the Germans fell into this fatal, but, we are sure, transient error. " They somehow lost faith in the Bible as a supernatural product ; and it had become to them more a great and transcendent classic, than a living Revelation." And there is one fact of pregnant meaning which Dr. Pusey has not noticed, and which has had a most important bear- ing on the attitude of reverence which Germany has 96 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES always held towards religion. In Biblical criticisms, in controversies on religious dogmas, in all the heat and passion of polemical strife, there has ever been, with a few latter-day notorious exceptions, a total absence of that contempt and savage satire which the French and English philosophers and scientists have levelled against religion. Of the exalted tone which the German philosophers assumed, in dealing w^ith religious mysteries, we have already spoken. It must be also admitted that the German expositors set about the work of studying and interpreting the Sacred Books, not with an a priori belief in their inherent inconsistencies, but with a fully formed and acknowledged faith that their critical and conscientious searchings into the meaning of Holy AVrit would result in decided advantages to the cause of religion and truth. It was not with them, as with the French and English sceptics — a crusade against religion and against God. That contemptuous tone, with which modern materialists put completely out of the domain of logic and common sense metaphysical questions of any kind, as only fit for fetish worshippers, is conspicuously absent in philosophical or exegetical works produced by Germans. These works were, for the most part, written as a kind of unconscious protest against the Protestant doctrine that the Bible was the sole rule of faith ; and the analyses of texts and their meanings are what logicians would expect from too acute and too learned reasoning, unassisted by authori- tative interpretation, and losing the spirit of the Divine Word in too critical an examination of the letter. But the handhng of the Inspired Text was never irreverent. When Lessing pubhshed the famous Wolfeyihilttel Fragments, which had passed into his hands from the daughter of Eeimarus, their author, a storm of indigna- tion against him arose throughout Germany. He ex- plained : — " What has the Christian to do with the hypotheses, explanations and evidences of the theologian ? To him the Christianity he feels to be so true, and wherein he THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 97 feels himself so happy, is there once for all. If the palsied individual experiences the beneficent shock of the electric spark, what matters to him whether Nollet or Franklin, or neither, be right ? In short, the letter is not the spirit, and the Bible is not religion. Con- sequently, charges against the letter and the Bible do not also imply charges against the spirit and religion." A very inconsequential conclusion, and, from a Catho- lic standpoint, a heretical and condemnable opinion, inasmuch as it altogether denies the dogmatic factor in religion ; but who shall say it is a breach of Protestant orthodoxy? Such opinions are held to-day, without ban of Church or clamour of clergy, amongst the most highly favoured Protestant divines, who do not always express their opinions with the reverence of Lessing. And Bahrdt, one of the first of the representatives of Popular Eationalism in Germany, whilst unhappily re- jecting the whole doctrine of inan's redemption, can yet write of our Divine Saviour : — " O, Thou great Godhke Soul! no mortal can name Thy name without bending the knee ; and in reverence and admiration, feeling Thy unapproachable greatness ! AVhere is the people amongst whom a man of this stamp has ever been born *? How I envy you, ye descendants of Israel ! Alas ! that you do not feel the pride which we who call ourselves Christians, feel, on account of One so incomparable being sprung from your race ! That soul is most depraved that knows Jesus and does not love Him!"^ And what a contrast between that " progenies vipera- rum," the French Encyclopaedists, and the German Transcendental philosophers ! Voltaire's sneering ad- mission, " Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait I'inventer," and the more savage candour of " Ecrasez I'infame " ; Kousseau, advocating a return to primitive barbarism ; Diderot's profane apologue to the Deity, " Of Thee, Supreme Being, I demand nothing"; the sensual ' Bahrdt, Moralische Religion, vol. i., p. 71. 7 98 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES D'Alenibert, excusing the ambiguity of the Encyclo- pedie, " Time will make people distinguish what we have in our minds from what we have said " ; and, on the other hand, Leibnitz, straining his mighty know- ledge of mathematics, and declaring that, behind the rules of geometry and physics, he discerned the very nature and attributes of God, and that the source of all philosophy lay for him, not in his know- ledge of things, but in the Divine attributes ; Hegel, developing his mysterious philosophy of the spirit, until he finds that the apogee of all moral sentiment is Chris- tianity or absolute religion ; Kant, called by his admirers "the Christian philosopher of his century," drawing a most reverent picture of our Blessed Saviour, and de- claring, even in his earliest works, that the Bible is, in a certain and very high sense, a Revelation ; Bichter, in his Di\ane fancies, as of the soul that went wandering through the spheres, and that terrible " Dream," which, it is said, did more to preserve men's faith in God in Germany than the arguments of its countless theolo- gians — all these Transcendentalists have been, in the end, decided, if unconscious, allies of Christian faith in Germany, whose example and influence were all the more powerful, because they had lost themselves in the mazes of free-thought, and reached such light and truth as were vouchsafed them, not by the quick flight of faith, but by the laborious and circuitous route of patient investigation, and the steady advance from principle to principle, guided by the slender thread of inductive reasoning, and buoyed by the consciousness that, some- how or other, the God of Truth would not fail them in the end. They set out on their toilsome journey, de- clining the guidance of religion, only to find her majestic figure before them at the end. We might reverse the saying of Cicero about the Boman augurs, and say of them: " Verbis (inscii) tollunt, re ponunt Deos ". On what other theory can we explain the fact that to-day Positivist and Materialistic opinions have no fol- lowers in Germany ? That, although philosophy holds THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 99 as high a place in public esteem, and is considered quite as essential a branch of education as it was in the days of Kant or Hegel, infidelity is making no headway amongst any class in Germany ? That reverence for the illustrious dead, and even philosophic faith in the stupendous systems that were founded by them, are not considered at all incompatible with the fullest adhesion to what Protestants call the fundamental truths of Christi- anity? That, with the exception of four or five,^ not a single German professor has signed the broad schedules of scientific unbelief ? And that the most trusted leaders of German scientific thought have neither abandoned meta- physical and rehgious science for the more concrete studies of the museum and laboratory, nor believed that the mighty questions of the soul and its destinies can be resolved into problems which the chemist can solve, nor even sought to reconcile the established teachings of religion with the conjectural hypotheses of physical science; but, with decided predilections for the for- mer, have steadily aimed to keep the latter in its place as "the younger child" — babbling, hesitating, wilful, dreamy, and erratic, if not controlled by the calm wis- dom, and discipline, and experience of her sister, who, with the halo of sixty centuries around her, has yet the freshness of youth, because of her promise of immor- tality ? And if for a time Kationalism did take a hold of the German mind, its reign was transient and tem- porary. The very school which originated it, that of Tilbingen, was the very first to destroy it. But all this time we are forgetting Pore Didon, whose testimony, on these very disputed questions, is eminently interesting. He first, then, declares that although the professorial system still obtains in Germany its influence in deter- mining religious opinion by creating schools of thought has passed away. " The era of masters is over. None can now be said ^ BLichuor, Vogt, Moloschott, Fischer, Hauckol. n * 100 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES to have opened a new school ; none, as in the days of Kant, of Wolf, of Hegel, of Fichte, or of Schelling, exercise sway over a whole generation." The professorial system, therefore, for full fifty years (Schelling died in 1854) has not had that dominant and pernicious influence which has been ascribed to it. But is there still philosophical thought in Germany ? Yes:— " And it is still dominated, and its bearings directed by three great geniuses — Spinoza, Leibnitz and Kant. Pantheistic tendencies which seek results at all costs, and delight in erecting a system, belong to Spinoza. The prevalence of vast erudition and a conciliating eclecticism are inspired by Leibnitz. As for psychological and critical problems, they originated with Kant, whose mighty works ponderously weigh upon the intellects which they divide into two contrary schools — the ideal- ists, who, scorning experience, consider, like Hegel, their superb theories the absolute measure of things — the reahsts, who, subordinating the subjective to the objec- tive, borrow from reality the rule of their speculations. I fancy that to-day the University youth, which to- morrow will form the ruling opinion of this country, inclines to realism, to a certain unconscious pantheism, from which German minds scarcely ever liberate them- selves ; and above all to a certain eclecticism, based upon serious erudition." One unacquainted with the strange paradoxes which are to be met at every step in the history of this power- ful nation would now rush confidently to the conclusion that with such determined prochvities to realism, the whole bent of modern German thought would be directed in our age to the positivism of Comte, or the blank materialism of Blichner and Haeckel. Not at all. "These misguided intellects (Biichner, Vogt, Mole- schott, Fischer) have succeeded less in leading German youth than in providing learned French materialists^ ' For example, Ernest Renan, who was fond of tracing that esprit critique which led him into infidelity to the writings of Ewald and THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— II 101 with weapons at a time when it was fashionable with us to beheve in the infaUibility of German science. In high University chairs materialist or positive doctrines are left mirepresented. The rash speculations of thought are not nowadays viewed with high favour : philosophical tradition is, however, faithfully preserved." But at least this philosophical tradition must be un- favourable to religious science ? No. " Religious science holds a distinguished place in most Universities, not only because it occupies the leading place in programmes, hut also, and above all, be- cause binder the influence of esteemed and often famous teachers, it rallies a youth numerous and ardent. There are 4,000 theological students in Germany, scattered among the twenty-two Universities of the Empire, who in the mass of students form the most serious and dili- gent group." This statement, thus made by the most recent author- ity on the subject, is the direct negative, both as to causes and effects, of the ideas generally entertained on this subject. Gesenins, although his contemporary at St. Sulpice is of opinion that he was a free-thinker long before he had acquired a knowledge of German or Hebrew. " Or, a cette epoque (en recevant la ton- sure) il ne savait ni I'hebreu, ni I'allemand ; il n'avait traverse ni Gesenius, ni Ewald, ni I'exegese allemande ; sa critique historique etait a naitre." — M. lienan, hier et aujourd'hui, par M. L'Abbe Cognat. THE GEEMAN UNIVEKSITIES.— III.^ We closed the last paper on this subject in the Becord'^ by the statement, that the German people had maintained the main principles of Christian tradition and belief against all adverse influences. It must have occurred to any one, particularly to a French priest, who had seen very serious and terrible consequences in his own land arising from much simpler and less potent causes, that there must be something in the genius of this nation that thus preserved faith and a passion for theological science amongst them. Our author, from a careful study of the German people, soon discovered a curious trait in their character, which we have not seen attributed to any other race. He considers the Germans to be what he calls a bicephalic nation — thinking, dream- ing, speculating with one mind, but always acting with another. It is the combination of pure reason and practical reason on which Kant built up his mighty philosophy ; and the principles which he applied to re- ligion, as deduced from the operations of pure reason on the one hand, and practical reason on the other, are the same principles with which educated German thinkers theorise and speculate, and then abandon in real life those creations of fancy for the more positive wisdom of practical good sense. For just as Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason taught nothing of absolute reality, but a purely ideal speculative world, and in his later treatises laid down laws subordinating man's mind and conscience to God, and the Divine and natural laws, so the ordinary ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Record, August, 1886. "" Ibid., July, 1886, p. 631. 102 THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 103 German loves to wander in the broad fields of metaphysi- cal thought, creating, conjecturing and poetising ; but in everyday life he is as shrewd and practical a thinker as the ancient Greek or the modern American. This dual- ism of the mind enters into every department of thought and life. It is the prevailing national idiosyncrasy in education, religion and political science ; and the con- trast between ancient and well-preserved tradition, and the fullest acknowledgment and acceptance of new and everchanging ideas and systems is very striking. Up here in the cloudland is some mediceval city, grey and battlemented, the ivy wreathed around its fortifications long since disused, and stretching its tendrils across the mouths of cannon long since antiquated and useless ; and strolling through its streets in undress cap and jacket are dreamy, metaphysical Teutons, pondering weighty mysteries of time and space, and, in the contemplation of the infinitude around and above them, seemingly ob- livious of the petty concerns that agitate the multitude beneath them in the white villages and towns that dot the landscape from the Weser to the Rhine. Below in the valley is a row of buildings, granite-hewn, square-cut, uniform and stern, and the quadrangles are bristling with black guns, the latest invention of German military science ; and through the barrack squares march grim bands of warriors, as grey and stiff as the granite of the walls, and many of them a few months ago were, and many a few months hence will be, gay, rollicking students, talking high science over pipe and glass away up in the cloudland. It is a type of the education — military and academical— through which the Fatherland insists that all its children shall pass, and of the liberty and disciphne which prevail side by side in all State institutions. Absolute freedom in speculation — obedience as absolute as that of a Carthusian in practical life ; toleration of the wildest vagaries in academical halls — unceasing vigilance over act or word that might be inimical to the Fatherland; freedom as glorious as that of Rousseau's barbarian in the University, discipline as unbending as 104 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES that of Sparta's soldiers in the barrack — such is life in Germany to the young. Hence there is no restriction on books, or programmes, or studies. Every field of thought is opened up to the student, and he is en- couraged to explore it. Every invention of modern science is put before him to stimulate his ambition to improve it, and — make it obsolete. Whatever the genius of other lands has effected he is at perfect liberty to study and turn to practical uses. But never is his cold sluggish blood stirred into enthusiasm by victories of science achieved by other nations ; nor will his home and college prejudices yield for a moment to admiration of talents which, with sublime pride and exclusiveness, he believes to have been specially created for the benefit of his race. If French scientific class-books are care- fully noted and studied in Germany no one is very much the wiser. The French, with the interest and curiosity pecuhar to their race, study the habits of the English and Germans, and candidly acknowledge their virtues and excellences whilst politely laughing at their eccen- tricities. But no German is ever troubled about his neighbours, except to draw maps of their fortresses and sketches of their ironclads. No De Stael or Didon will ever come from the German land. Wrapt in sublime security, which in any other nation would be sublime conceit, they believe that the world was made for the Fatherland. Never a whisper of admiration passes German lips for Milton, or Dante, or Eacine — for Locke, or Descartes, or Mill. Goethe and Schiller are the greatest poets that have yet appeared on this planet ; and Kant and Spinoza are the intellectual giants of the modern world, as Plato and Aristotle were in times of old. The same national peculiarity is observable in the religious beliefs of the people. " Protesting strongly and repeatedly against authoritative teaching, they are the slaves of synods and consistories." In theory, the free-thinkers of the world, they are really as dogmatic and exclusive as Puritans. For ever soaring in the high empyrean of abstract thought, they never lose touch of THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 105 the solid earth. And, on the other hand, however logical in thought and accurate in scholarship they may be, they cannot descend into the abysses of that realism where less dreamy and imaginative races fall and abide. The strong tendency to idealism, which is such a peculiar characteristic of the people, saves them from lapsing into abject error. It was a noticeable feature in their philosophers ; and even the masses of the people are so imbued with it, that it seems a kind of impossibility that they should ever adopt that crude, hard materialism which comes so easy to the genius of other nations. The Frenchman concentrates all thought and feeling within one faculty — the reason, and the senses as its ministers ; and whatever refuses to come within its domain is instantly rejected. Strangely en- thusiastic and impulsive, he has not a particle of imagina- tion. His poetry is little more than rhymed prose — his fiction is never successful until it becomes realistic and morbid. Two and two make four ; therefore, he argues, there is no God. Here is the surgeon's scalpel— find the soul if it exists. But the faculties of the German mind are so well balanced that there is a perpetual protest between the two extremes of thought — excessive fancy and excessive logic — idealism and materialism, and the mind is kept in that happy mean where each faculty has its full sweep of exercise without the peril of losing itself in the abysses above, or the darker abysses of vulgar materialism beneath. Hence, the free-thought of Germany is ridiculed by the more ro- bust atheism of other countries as yielding and puerile. " Quand un Allemand," says Renan, " se vante d'etre impie, il ne faut jamais le croire sur parole. L'AUemand n'est pas capable d'etre irreligieux. La religion, c'est a dire, I'aspiration du monde ideal, est le fond meme da sa nature. Quand il veut etre athee, il Test devotement, et avec une sorte d'onction." ^ This taste for metaphysical studies is the safety valve ^ Etudes d'histoire religieuse, p. 417. 106 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES of free-thought in Germany. No nation can long remain either rationahstic or infidel so long as this fancy for abstract thought is a national characteristic. And whatever value may be set by this too prosaic age on the works of positivists, the lasting verdict of the world will be given in favour of the authors to whom great ideas were more important than the greatest facts or deeds accomplished in the history of our little race. Nay, even those who spurned metaphysics as a delusion have been forced either by the want of material machin- ery, or by the free working of the intellect, into realms of thought, to which they wished to remain for ever strangers. Goethe, a sensualist and realist in a moral and hteraiy sense, could say of Jacobi, that " God afflicted him with metaphysics as with a thorn in the flesh". Yet, what is the second part of "Faust," and the greater portion of the first part, but an admission that without supernatural elements even that strange jumble of thought could not, with all the efforts of his own unquestionable genius, cohere in legitimate dramatic unity ? Whatever philosophic system, therefore, pre- vails in the halls of German Universities, the religious creed of the students is as definite and dogmatic as Protestantism can permit. It could not be otherwise if we consider the programmes that are issued by the Minister of Public Instruction in Germany, and which are obligatory on teachers and pupils alike. Here is the programme for High Schools, issued 17th March, 1882 :— "Keligious instruction shall comprise — 1st, The His- tory of the Bible, but chiefly of the New Testament. 2nd-, The Catechism, with the Scriptural passages and traditions which explain it. 3rd, The Ecclesiastical Year-Book, and complete knowledge of the principal hymns. 4th, Knowledge of the main facts contained in the Scriptures, chiefly in the New Testament (reading of various passages selected from the original text). 5th, Fundamental points of dogma and morahty. 6th, Knowledge of the most important dates of the history THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 107 of the Church, of eminent personages, and of the Hves of the principal saints." And in the diploma which each student in the Gym- nasia receives, when he has passed his final examination, are found the words : — " We hereby testify that the pupil of the Catholic — or Evangehc faith — is efficient in religious knowledge ". But it is in the Universities that chief prominence is given to rehgious science, and that it occupies the foremost place in the activity of trained and matured intellects. " The activity of theological science cannot be denied. Every professor treats at least two different subjects. And as the smallest faculty of theology does not possess fewer than six professors, there are thus at least twelve lectures. At Leipzig, where the faculty of theology numbered fourteen professors, twenty-five subjects were being treated in the same half-year. These are the titles of the various subjects studied during the summer vacation of 1882 : — History of the Church. Epistle to the Hebrews. Moral Theology. Epistle of St. James. Compared Symbolics. The Psalms. The Messianic Prophecies. Epistle to the Romans. Life and doctrine of Schleir- macher. Introduction to the Old Testa- ment. System of Practical Theology. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Messianic prophecies of the Old, and their fulfilment in the New Testament. The Prophet Isaiah. The idea of the Covenant in the New Testament. The minor prophets before the exile. Hebrew Poetry. History of worship among the Hebrews, and its bearings upon the criticism of the Pen- tateuch. History of Christian archi- tecture compared with the requirements of the present time. Gospel of St. John. " Add to this the practical labours accomplished in the various associations of theological students, and 108 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES some idea may be formed of the prodigious intellectual movement of which in Germany every faculty of theo- logy is a centre. The encyclopoedia of religious science is thus approached from all sides ; and the students who are excited by an ardent wish for study, live under the cross fire of the thousand rays of the same science." Lastly, in political science in Germany similar effect of the dualism of the national character are observable. The most strenuous liberal and democrat in France or America, whose life is one passionate dream of a uni- versal brotherhood of nations, "in the parliament of man — the federation of the world," is not so enthusiastic as the German student, who is prepared to clasp hands in cosmopohtan friendship with every other nationaHty. So say their poets — their philosophers. Yet we know that they love their mountains and rivers and forests with a partiality that seems narrow and illiberal, that the glory of the Fatherland is the ever-present dream of every German, no matter what his rehgion may be, and that Germany is a huge barrack where every adult must pass through the ordeal of a severe and rigid dis- cipline to form part eventually of a colossal and ir- resistible force that may crush the French on the one hand, and the Slav on the other. This is all the more wonderful, because there is no nation in the world composed of such heterogeneous elements in origin, race, and religion. Though for the most part descended from the Gothic tribes that swept Europe at the dismemberment of the Koman Empire, the Germans occupy such a central position that a large Latin element from the South has entered into the composition of their nationhood, and the Slavs from the East and the Tartars from the North have added their distinctive characteristics to the race. It is cut up also into principahties and kingdoms as different in size and configuration as if the poles were between them. And though the Cathohc and Lutheran religions predominate, there is a large variety of small THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 109 sects differing from one another on some point of re- ligion which is only made important by controversy. Yet, notwithstanding these elements of disruption, the fact remains that the German Empire is to-day con- solidated into a whole more concrete and unified than empires whose people kneel at the same altar, and whose flag floats over one race claiming the same origin and birthright. Still more strange is it that politics, in the sense of differences of opinion in re- ference to the common welfare, is an unknown science in Germany. The great central idea of German unity pervades all classes ; and to that idea everything must be sacrificed. And the German Universities are un- doubtedly the places where that dominant idea is en- gendered and developed. " In closely studying German youth I soon came to the conclusion that the love of the mother country, the consciousness of its doctrines, and the ambition of its future glories have been chiefly developed in its Universities." This national feehng is promoted by the patriotic clubs of the Universities, and, let us add, by the spirit of the professors themselves. " This lecture," said Fichte during the Napoleonic invasion, " will be deferred until the issue of the cam- paign. We shall resume it when our country has re- covered its liberty or — we shall have fallen dead for the defence of her freedom." So far, then, as we can see, in two great departments of huma,n thought, academical education and pohtical science, the German Universities exercise the most wholesome influences ; and even in religious science the spirit of these valuable institutions is a main sup- port of Christianity. What conclusions, therefore, shall we draw, or how shall we apply the practical lessons of this book of Pere Didon's to our own country '? We may, perhaps, state that the peculiarities of the Teutonic and Celtic races are so utterly dissimilar that it would be impossible to create or maintain a University system in Ireland after the model which we have studied. We have neither the traditions that consecrate to the minds 110 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES of German youth the ancient seats of learning in their land, nor great names to whose memory is attached that national reverence which is so freely given to those who have marked some intellectual epoch in the history of their country, nor governmental patronage such as that bestowed on Berlin, nor even the universal homage to learning, which is the sweetest guerdon of the protracted vigil, and the laborious task of unearthing dead centuries for their treasures. Neither have we as yet that peculiar virtue of pursuing knowledge for its own sake, which is the soul and inspiration of a Uni- versity. It is in this matter that the book we have studied is specially valuable. With a firm hand our Dominican draws a decidedly unfavourable contrast between his own country and Germany, points out distinctly the faults of the French educational system, and suggests a total reconstruction of that system on German principles, adapted, of course, to French ideas and temperament. And there is such an affinity be- tween the French and Irish nations that we may safely apply all his strictures and suggestions to ourselves. To understand them, we must take his standpoint, for it is not too much to say that his own nation and Germany are half a century ahead of us in this matter of education ; and with them the whole system is not feebly tentative as with us, but has been tried by the fullest tests of time and experience. The great central idea of the book is that Universities are the brains of a nation, that whatever excellence has to be obtained must be obtained through them, and that any kind of prosperity, intellectual or other, that does not proceed from them, is hollow and unstable, and must eventually collapse. A favourite idea in the Church is, that men of prayer are more powerful agents for good than men of action ; that the cowled Carthusian whose earthly vision is bounded by the white wall of his cell on the one hand, and the white wall of his garden on the other, has more influence on the Church's des- tinies than the girded apostle who goes forth in fines THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 111 orbis terrcB. Now, it is the creed of our author that it is by great ideas a nation is created and strengthened, and that Universities are the homes of such ideas. He thinks, therefore, the increase in the number and effici- ency of Universities a healthy proof of the vitaHty and energy of a people ; the decline of Universities and the increase of High Schools for special subjects, a certain sign of a nation's degeneracy. Yet, he says, this is the universal tendency of the world at the present time : " The fashion to-day is professional and High Schools. All nations, Germany excepted, seem to obey that fashion. Every- where in England, in America, in Italy, in France, in Eussia, High Schools are founded and multiplied." What is the result? "If we observe this intellectual impulse of contemporary society, we shall soon come to the conclusion that it will eventually and fatally result in the breaking up of the vast unity of general know- ledge ; and that in fostering too energetically the prac- tical application of science, it will gradually dry up the inspiration of genius, to which theoretical science alone can give wings and flight." What he condemns, there- fore, is the undue and forced exaltation of High Schools at the expense of Universities. In Germany the former are never suffered to lose their preparatory character ; in France they are permitted to encroach too much on the domain of Universities, with the result that Univer- sity teaching in France is only the shadow of a great name, and the High Schools are "hotbeds of irreligion, positivism and eighteen-year-old philosophers ". These latter are formed by the undue development of the critical faculty. The natural powers of the mind re- quire the following sequence in the course of education : gradual strengthening of the memory hy filling but not overburtheyng it with facts or principles — gradual developmenr of the intellect by the collation of such facts and the apphcation of such principles, as we sec in the study of mathematics — finally, the training in just criticism, when the judgment is matured, and the memory and intellect combine to help it in forming 112 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES correct ideas and practical principles of action. Now, in France, this last branch of education is usurped by the Lycees or public schools, where the young pedant is instructed to sit in judgment on the universe, like Browning's diner-out : — Who wants a doctrine for a chopping-block To try the edge of his faculty upon, Prove how much commonsense he'll hack and hew, In the critical minute 'twixt the soup and fish. With that prematurely developed critical faculty he roams through the realms of thought, and nothing is too high or sacred to escape him. Setting aside rever- ence of every kind as a kind of exploded superstition, he flings the full searching light of this wonderful faculty into every corner and cranny of the universe of science, flashing it from the inaccessible heights of heaven to the lowest depths of animal or vegetable physiology. Whatever escapes this white light, or is unrevealed to it, is to him non-existent ; and the bud- ding philosopher through the medium of his language, which, if useless as a vehicle of high thought or poetry, is splendidly adapted for the more servile purposes of satire, annihilates to his own fancy creeds as old as the world, and hopes that are stronger than death. So it was with ancient Greece. The philosophers were fol- lowed by rhetoricians and sophists, who inducted the youth committed to their charge into all the secrets of science, yet made eloquence of language and rhetorical display their highest ambition in the end. But their appearance marked the decline of Grecian learning. From that time we date the transference to the Latin races of the wand of intellectual superiority. And it is not altogether beyond our own experience to find youth of our own age who can sing the litany of the kings and queens of England, and mark the dates of battles with the mechanical uniformity of a chronometer, deem- ing themselves qualified to sit in high places, and stare and wonder at teachings which are too simple or too sublime for forced and weakened intellects. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 113 For the same reason, our second conclusion shall be, that the crown of all teaching in a Catholic University should be the perfect grounding of the students in a system of mental philosophy, strictly in accordance with the teachings of the Church, but neither too re- stricted in its scope nor too ihiberal in its applications. Theology is justly the queen of sciences to the inmates of a Catholic Ecclesiastical College. Its place in a Uni- versity would be justly filled by Philosophy. The whole course of modern literature, varied and complex as it is, is for ever touching the fringe of this latter science. The finest poem of modern times, the "In Memoriam " of Tennyson, is purely philosophical from beginning to end ; and if the perfect hope of the Christian's belief is clearly professed in its splendid prologue, the doubts and difficulties that beset it are indicated in minor keys throughout the poem, and are silenced, but do not entirely vanish, in the " Higher Pantheism ". And through the brilliant warp and woof of George Eliot's works, is there not discernible the dark thread of her negative and melancholy philosophy ? So with science. Whether looking for a universe of worlds through the telescope, or through a microscope for a universe of atoms, the mind of man is for ever tormented by meta- physical questionings. There is no use in trying to silence them. Positivism may lay down peremptorily its dogmas, and warn its disciples to waste no more time in futile searches after that which can never be known. But the ceaseless curiosity of the mind cannot be stilled till the stars are quenched, and the mechanism of the universe loses its obedience to the Divine Mind that controls it. To bring vigorous and active intellects under a mental discipline so perfect, that the chafing and irritation of such doubts and questionings are soothed by a science to which the highest intellects have been consecrated, and which is as perfect and flawless in its workings as the most scrupulous me- chanic could desire — this ought to be the ultimate aim of a University. And for the same reason, the study of 8 114 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES philosophy ought to be deferred to the end of the Uni- versity course, when the mind is trained to understand its intricacies, and pass freely from problem to problem, which would appear to it in a less matured condition barren and empty formulEe. " Eighteen-year-old " clas- sical scholars are intelligible; "eighteen-year-old" mathe- maticians are not forced and unnatural creations ; but " eighteen-year-old " philosophers imply a deordination in the process of education which is irrational and absurd. We hasten from this point to say that it is evident that in a University this science should be taught in the ver- nacular, and that its history, as well as its doctrines, should be made familiar.^ For, after all, it is the his- tory of human thought. Physical science was practi- cally unknown up to our own time. What occupied the minds of men for twenty centuries ? The mighty issues of the human soul, its capabilities, its destiny. In porches and gardens under Grecian skies, in halls of rhetoric in the days of Ambrose and Augustine, in academies and Universities in mediaeval times, and in our own days in that great arena of modern thought — the press — the same vital questions are discussed. The advocates of free-thought in every shape and in every age sit under the bust of Plato ; and the statue of Aristotle is enshrined in Christian schools near that of the great apostle of intellect, Aquinas. Yet we do not speak of the former with horror, nay, many of our best Christian scholars have thought it in no wise heterodox to quote him. And surely Kantism does not mean un- utterable things : nor is Spinoza quite a synonym for Satan. Thirdly, the professorial system should be maintained in the most conservative manner in an Irish Univer- sity, partly, because no other provision can be made by us for great specialists ; principally, because, under any 1 Not to burthen our pages with quotations, we refer the reader to Pere Didon's work, page 174, for the progi'amme in the faculty of philosophy for 1882. THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.— Ill 115 other system, learning shall never become honourable amongst us. However efficient a tutorial system may be in preparing youth for professional examinations, it can never be successful in the higher object of making them thoroughly educated men. The instrument may ansvi^er its purpose v^ell, but it never becomes more than an instrument, to be cast aside when used. It is clear that reverence for knowledge in the persons of its possessors can never have for its cause or object those who use it as a means to an end less noble than itself. These only command respect for learning who are con- secrated to its service, and who win worship for their goddess by their exclusive devotion to her service. Finally, with all our indebtedness to Pere Didon, we borrow from him one last idea: "No national life is possible for a people, if, at the same time, it be not taken up with the pursuit of some grand ideal ". What ideal should be put before a University of Irish students who hold their country's destinies in their hands ? We pass by pohtical aphorisms too menacing, too flattering, or too enthusiastic, and say that the only true ideal for Ireland is to be once more, what it was of old, a nation of saintly scholars. " To the English," it was said, "was given the empire of the sea; to the French, the empire of the land ; to the Germans, the empire of the air." What a sublime destiny it would be, if, with these latter, we could share the dominion over human thought ; if, utilising to the utmost the varied and inexhaustible treasures of talent that lie hidden around us, we could explore unknown fields of science, and garner intellectual wealth till the nations of the world cried out with envy ; if we could open up our sanctuaries of learning to strangers, and send apostles of intellect, as we send to-day apostles of faith, to nations that hail the rising, or sadden under the setting sun ! And all this intellectual glory should be ours, whilst the deposit of faith remains intact, the past and eternal glory of Ireland's fidelity to rehgion undimraed ; whilst her science is not the litter of dead philosophies dug from the past like the members of 8* 116 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES a mutilated statue, but the perfection of the fair and Hving figure that woke to music and immortality when the sunhght of faith had dawned upon it. Let us hope that this is not the dream of a sleeper before the dawn, but a fair forecast of what may and shall be. THE GEEMAN AND GALLIC MUSES.^ A FEW months ago we had to hsten with all patience and seeming unconcern to the apotheosis from press and platform of one who had passed more than the years usually allotted to the span of human life ; and who, after various vicissitudes of pain and strife, terror and triumph, had come to be regarded as the great national poet of France, and the prophet of that recent develop- ment of man's eccentricity — the religion of humanity. Poet and essayist, novelist and historian, he left no de- partment of letters untried ; and the praises of him were so persistent, and his personality of such influence in these latter days, that even those who were not of his house- hold or country came to join in the universal chorus of unstinted worship and unconditional admiration. " Foremost man of this our century," " Apostle of Free- dom and Humanity," the "latest seer vouchsafed to us ; " and in lower tones, "the greatest lyric poet of France and the world," "the best dramatic novelist of our century " — this is the chime that has been swinging its adulations in our ears, and whose music is rather marred by its monotony. But even when the glory of the man had reached its height, when his mortal elements were carried in funeral procession, and the steps of the sacred temple which was to be his mausoleum were piled with floral tributes from France and the world, a question would force itself upon us. Outside the ranks of newspaper critics, a few dreamy enthusiasts in his own country, and an exceed- ingly limited number of poetasters and litterateurs in ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Record, January, 1887. 117 118 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES these islands, how many are there who have read Victor Hugo's poems ? to how many are his verses famihar ? who can quote one single line from them? who can even tell the titles of his works? In the whole wide realm of English literature, he appears to have had but one admirer and advocate, an eccentric but strong genius whose rapturous enthusiasm, however, would scarcely have compensated the vain dead poet for the studied in- difference of the English literary world. Master of the English language as he undoubtedly is, Swinburne can scarcely find words to express his admiration of Victor Hugo. He calls him — ■ The mightiest soul That came forth singing ever in men's ears, Of aU souls with us, and thro' all these years. Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong. And again. That one, whose name gives glory, One man, whose life makes light. Our lord, our light, our master, Whose word sums up all song. And so on through the whole litany of adulation. But what do the masses of the people think ? Is Hugo even in his own France as familiar to educated people, as Tennyson is in these islands ? Will literary men in his own country form learned societies to explain and apply the meaning of his verses, like the Shaksperean societies that are numberless amongst ourselves ? Will there be a club in Paris, half a century after his death, to meet every year in worship of him, as the admirers of Words- worth do in London ? Will his sentences be quoted in books and speeches, to strengthen them by apposite illustration, or adorn them, so that they shall not easily slip from the memories of men ? But the question takes a wider range. It must have occurred to many readers that French poetry is abso- lutely unknown beyond the geographical boundaries of THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 119 the Republic. Since the time of Frederick the Great who patronised Voltaire, and made French literature, manners, language, fashionable amongst the Teutons, there has been a steady decline in the popularity of French poetry amongst educated foreigners ; and on the other hand, there has been a steady increase of admiration for that wonderful galaxy of thinkers and singers which the Fatherland, to make up for past apathy, has produced. In England every educated person has acquired, or thinks it necessary to affect, a taste for foreign literature. The wild poet, who saw the fiery snow fall upon the backs of the tormented, who felt the breath of the hurricane that swept round in fierce gusts the sad souls of Paolo and Francesca, who lingered amongst the sealed tombs that held lost souls, and tore bleeding limbs when he touched the branches of the gloomy trees, must be as familiar as Shakspeare or Byron to the cultured Enghsh intellect. Calderon, too, and Lope de Vega must be recognised ; and even the far-off poets of the East, with their strange mythical philosophies, have found honourable places in our magazines, and more than one learned commen- tator; and above all, German philosophy, German romance, and German poetry must be known, if one desires not to be classed amongst those who sit in exterior darkness, and have no place in the circles, where familiarity with the works of genius is the only passport of admission. But it is no literary crime to be quite ignorant of French poetry. You may know that Eacine and Moliere existed, and wrote certain tragedies and comedies, but no one is expected to spend much time on these poets of the past, or to waste midnight oil in seeking to discover or remember their beauties. And so, for one who has heard the names of Alain Chartier or Villon, a hundred have by heart the songs of Schiller and Biirger ; for one who cares about the Napoleonic songs of Beranger, a hundred admire the glaive-song of Korner. The study of the causes which have made French 120 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES poetry a drug iii the market, whilst French literature in every other department holds a foremost place amongst its contemporaries in every country in Europe, is a very curious, and, perhaps, instructive one. It has been said that the French language is not well adapted to the higher forms of poetry. With its fondness for light dental syllables,^ the almost total absence of strong guttural sounds, and its numberless particles, whose tenuity is not relieved, as in Greek and German, with deep sonorous syllables, it remains for ever the language of the drawing-room or cabinet, of pastoral loves and sweet simplicities, but can never be made the vehicle of the stormy outpourings of love or terror, of the stern passion and solemn feeling which the tragic muse demands ; nor in Ijrric poetry can it ever convey the pathos and the tenderness and the sublimity, that be- long to the subjects, which in our times poetic geniuses have almost universally adopted. French writers ad- mit this inferiority of their language to those of the ancient classics, and seek every pretext for maintaining that, notwithstanding this weakness, French dramatic poetry deserves to take a place on the high level of the immortal works which Greek genius has left to human- ity. They hold that the rhythm of their language can never be understood by foreigners ; and that, owing to the peculiar possession by French artists of an organic power over the sounds and syllables in poetry, which they call the tonic accent, the full meaning of their great dramatists can be interpreted to an audience in strong, but harmonious rhetoric — melodious, yet as passionate and striking as the harshest threnodies of iEschylus ; and that the weakness of the perpetual rhjrming, which is so painful to readers of French tragedy, is altogether removed, when by attention to ^ " With what delight did I hear the woman who conducted us to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa speak the clear and complete language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the French." — Shelley's Letters from Italy. THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 121 meaning and by gesture, every passionate speech is uttered, accentuated by oratorical inflexion. This, they say, was the secret of the power of Talma, the greatest of French tragedians. However correct this strong defence may be, the fact remains that for the majority of readers, who are entertained by their poets, not in the auditorium of a theatre, but in the silence of their studies, the French language is absolutely effeminate — we might almost say exasperating — in its inadequacy to express what are often great and splendid ideas. And, unfortunately, the three great tragic poets of France, Corneille, Voltaire and Eacine, have challenged comparison with the master- pieces of antiquity by selecting for treatment, charac- ters, scenes, and episodes that belong to the mythology of Greece and Eome. To any one famihar with Greek tragedy, whose ears have been accustomed to the long rich roll of the Epic hexameter, to the iambics of the Attic stage, and to the high heroic style of the chief actors in the immortal dramas of Greece, nothing can appear more paltry and weak than the mock heroics of their modern French imitators. Here, for example, is a part of a dialogue between Agamemnon and Achilles, on an occasion of unusual solemnity, when the former had determined to sacrifice his daughter Tphigenia, and Achilles, her betrothed, has just heard the terrible report. ACHILLB. Un bruit assez etrange est venu jusqu'a moi Seigneur ; je I'ai juge trop peu digne de foi. On dit, et sans horreur, je ne puis le redire, Qu'aujourd'hui, par votrc ordre Iphigenie expire. Agamemnon. Seigneur, je ne rends point compte de nies desseins, Ma fiUe ignore encore ines ordres souverains, Et, quand il sera temps (juelle en soit informce, Vous apprendrez son sort, j'en instruirai I'armee. 122 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ACHILLE. Ah I je sais trop le sort, que vous lui reservez. Agamemnon. Pourquoi le demander, puisque vous le savez. ^ Instead of an excited prologue to a tragedy, this reads like a cautious and diplomatic exchange of question and retort between the clever plenipotentiaries of two rival States. But turn to the l2)higenias of Euripides, or the Iphigenia in Tauris of Goethe, and the vast inferiority of the Gallic to the Greek and German dialects will be apparent. Or take any part of the Iliad, or a single page of Paradise Lost, and then hear Voltaire in the only epic poem which France has produced — the Heuriade. Here is the opening description of the mass- acre of St. Bartholomew : — Cependant tout s'apprete, et I'heure est arrivee Qu'au fatal denoument la reine a reservee. Le signal est doune sans tumulte et sans bruit ; C'etait a la faveur des ombres de la nuit. De ce mois malheureux I'in^gale courriere Semblait cacher d'eflfroi sa tremblante lumiere. Coligny languLssait dans les bras du repos, Et le sommeil trompem* lui versait ses pavots. Soudain de mille cris le bruit epouvantable Yient arracher ses sens a ce calme agreable. It is as " moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine ". But the German language, so broad, and deep, and resonant, lends itself easily to metrical romance, historical epic, or the stately drama. Very strong, rough elements went to compose it — the dialects of the East Goths who occupied the low alluvial lands of the Danube and the Elbe ; and whilst still crude and un- formed, Ovid, the earUest poet who wrote in German, discovered its adaptabihty to Greek and Eoman rhythm, and invented the German hexameter, the same metre in which Wieland and Klopstock wrote their immortal epics. And there cannot be a doubt but that this lan- ^ Racine, Iphigenie. THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 123 guage is peculiarly fitted for heroic and dramatic poetry. The long compound words, each of which is a metaphor, like the compound Greek adjectives ; the preponderance of consonants, sometimes linked and riveted together as if to reduplicate their strength ; and the distinct pro- nunciation of every letter, give a tone of masculine vigour to the language, which makes it pecuHarly the language of the tragedian. But even in softer lyric verses the words fit in, when used with skill, as easily as the hquid ItaHan. We quote two stanzas from Uhland's Das Schloss am Meere : — Sahest du oben gehen Den Konig und sein Gemahl ? Der rothen Mantel Wehen ? Der goldnen Kronen Sfcrahl ? Fllhrten sie nicht mit Wonne » Eine scheme Jungfrau dar, Herrlich wie eine Sonne, Strahlend in goldnen Haar ? and these few lines of Mignon's song, which are familiar : — Kennst du das Land ? wo die Oitronen bliihn, Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen gllilin. Bin sanfter Wind voin blaueu Himmel weht. Die Myrte still und lioch der Lorbeer steht ; Kennst du es wohl ? Daliin ! dahin ! MiJcht' ich mit dir, o niein Geliebter, ziehn. But the distinct inferiority of French to German poetry is rather to be sought in two yet more powerful causes — the configuration of the countries, and their histories, legendary or otherwise. It may seem a bold assertion that the poetry of a country takes its tone from its scenery, and that the divine dreams of bards and singers are coloured by associations of mountains and rivers, the level beauties or rich undulations of a landscape, or the many wonders of the sea. Yet, if a poet is above all things a child of Nature — if she is his 124 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES mother, his mistress, his teacher, who keeps her secrets for him alone, and shows him pictures to which other men are bhnd, and whispers music which the unfavoured shall not hear — assuredly his writings must bear some strong impress of his fancies, and, according to Nature's teachings, be rich or poor, tame or spirited, the rapt utterance of an oracle that is inspired, or the stammer- ing of a voice which has never been lifted above the low levels of human knowledge and utterance. Hence, Mount Parnassus was the home of the Muses in the Greek mythology, and from the mystic fountain their clients drew their inspiration ; and every poet that has sung since these distant times has walked with Nature first, and then with man, to learn the myriad moods in which she strives to captivate and educate her wayward child. True to her teachings was the Irish bard, who returned from the ends of the earth to see once more the " purple mountains of Innisfail ; " and if there be any special charm in the works of an artist who is always delightful, it is the sombre tone in which he envelops the mournful chant of In Memoriam, or the twilight atmosphere in which he exhibits the spectral forms of Arthur and his knights. Now, Nature has been particularly unkind to France. She has given her splendid facilities for commerce and agriculture ; but her dowry of broad, tame, fertile plains, unbroken by the barrenness of shaggy mountains, and unreHeved by the desolation of moorland or mere, has never qualified her to be " meet nurse for a poetic child ". Smooth, bare levels, dotted with poplars, ar- ranged with the mathematical precision which Nature detests, and shallow rivers flowing by dull towns, yield not a spot which Melpomene could haunt, and lift the soul of native child or gifted stranger to that mood of inspiration when the spirit of man breaks forth in song. But in Germany everything favours the poetic and philosophic spirit. Its broad majestic rivers, castle- crowned and jewelled with green islets ; its giant forests, dark and gloomy, as if still haunted by the spirit of THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 125 Druidical worship ; its mountains, with their Brocken- spectres and witches ; its historic cities, that were swept by the storms of pohtical strife, and rent with the rage of battles ; all combine to give a tinge of the weird and supernatural to German poetry, and to eliminate what- ever is merely formal, prosaic, or utilitarian. Every mountain has its legend, every forest its grim history, every river its associations ; and brooding over all, and colouring legend, history and association, is the dark spirit of Scandinavian mythology. Across the dawn of French poetry, we see a gay procession of jongleurs and troubadours daintly dressed, swinging their guitars, and singing of love and flowers and perfumes, " Vous estes belle en bonne foye," and " Si jamais fust un Paradis en terre ". Across the dawn of German poetry are the dark figures of the scalds, who sang of Thor and Odin, and the mad Beresarks, and the Valkyres, who, forgetting their sex, went out on the battlefield by night, and slew the wounded. The former sang in quaint old Breton, or the half-Spanish French of the South ; and the eternal subject in lay, virelay and rondelay, is the silly nonsense that for ever attaches to purely erotic poetry. The latter sang in rough gutturals ^ of war, and the gods, and the fountains of being, and the origin of men, and the three sisters Urda, Verandi and Skulda, of the twi- light, and the windswells, and the old man of the mountain and the old man of the sea. The earliest monuments of Gothic intellect are these rough old rhymes on subjects which, though clothed in uncouth language and darkened in the twilight of mythology, must still be considered the beginnings of those modern schools of poetry which have produced masterpieces which will bear to be read or represented by the side of ' " Sunt illis hsec (juoque cannina, quorum relatu, quein Barditum vocant, accendunt animos, futursuque pugiue foitunain ipso cantu augurantur : terrent enim trepidantve prout sonuit acies. Nee tam voces illft) quain virtutis concentus videntur : adfecfcatur pra3cipue asperitas soni, et fractum murmur, oy)jectis ad os scutis quo pleuior ac gravior vox repercussu intumescat." — Tacitus. 126 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES the masterpieces which Greece produced in the zenith of its intellectual power. But the love songs of the trouveres and troubadours are the beginnings of an effeminate school which never in its earlier days thought of the philosophy of Nature as a subject for poetry, and never in its later days touched that great subject without reducing it to ridicule. And so even to this day we have rondeaux, triolets and huitains with " les parfums," " les fleurs," " les oiseaux " and " leprintemps " well sprinkled through them ; but not a word that is worth remember- ing of a past that may be lingered over with regret, of a present rich in fruitful philosophy, or a future that is fraught with buoyant hopes and cheerful presages for humanity. But did not the Germans actually adopt not only the versification, but even the subjects of French poetry ? True ; after the conquests of Charlemagne a strong imitative spirit grew up in Germany for everything French ; and the romances of chivahy which took their rise in Brittany, which celebrated the glories of the Bound Table, and the bravery of Charlemagne, and the exploits of Amadis of Gaul, became the ruling subjects of literature not only in Germany, but all over Europe. The Italians had no vernacular poetry prior to the four- teenth century. The earliest of their poems which have come down to us are simply imitations, both in dialect and subject, of the ancient Provencal poets. The Spaniards invited their singers from beyond the Pyre- nees. All the early English romances are avowedly taken from Norman sources, and the German romances are simply translations of the fame of Sir Percivale, or the loves of Lancelot of the Lake, or the fate of Sir Tristram. But we cannot say that any works of native Germans, written in this humble, imitative style, deserve to be remembered now. Just as the ItaHan copyists have passed away, and are forgotten, whilst the figure of Dante, huge, colossal, original, stands enshrined in the Temple of Immortahty ; and as the Spanish copyists have passed away, and leave Calderon and Lope de Vega, the sole re- THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 127 presentatives of Spanish and Portuguese art; so the servile imitators of Breton or Proven9al romance in Germany have barely recorded of them in musty indices of the Vati- can or elsev^^here that they wrote such and such a work in " merrie rime," but that is ah the hold they have on the attention of our age to be rescued from absolute obli- vion. Even during this dull period, the only works of any importance that have challenged the notice of posterity are the original metrical romances, that have for subject some national or mythological legend derived from purely Gothic sources — such as the expedition of the Ecken, or the Lay of the Nibelungs. In truth, Prank- ish influence appears to have paralysed every effort of native Germans to establish and consecrate to national purposes a truly original school of poetry. The tradi- tionary ballads of the trouv^res had a host of servile imitators, who, when tired of extravaganzas in amatory verse, introduced the same silly sentimentality, the same profane and far-fetched imagery, the same indeli- cacy and coarseness into the miracle plays, which, during this period, were tolerated over the whole continent of Europe. In fact, Germany had ceased to be a nation, and had become merely a collection of principalities, and German poetry had come to be represented by a few ballad writers, who were welcome in the halls of the feudal barons, but who neither caught inspiration from the people, their history and their traditions, nor, in turn, communicated those passionate feelings to the masses, which in later times stirred them to the deepest depths of their being, and created the high ambition which has placed Germany foremost amongst the nations in all kinds of intellectual culture. In fact, in Germany, as in all other nations, nationality and litera- ture acted and reacted on each other. So long as Ger- many remained under Prankish influence, political or literary, so long it remained in a condition of intellec- tual debility. When emancipated from foreign influ- ence, it at once produced masters in every branch of intellectual enterprise. When again it passed under 128 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES the dominance of Frankish customs, it relapsed into sluggish barrenness. It has been said that it was the Reformation which quickened the intellectual pulse of Germany, and by introducing freedom of opinion, philan- thropic liberality, etc., stimulated the minds of men to those contests on religion, science and the humanities, by which the intellect is always invigorated, and the imagination has scope for broad and liberal speculations in every department of human knowledge. But that this is not so is evidenced by the facts that for 150 years after the Reformation, the countries of Europe, which em- braced Protestantism, sank back into a condition of almost primitive barbarism ; and that long before the Reformation, and in the very centre of Catholicism, a revival of taste for all the arts that can elevate and re- fine humanity, for the sciences which contribute to man's comfort, and for the literature which broadens and beautifies his mind, had already taken place. " If the 300 years," says an Enghsh wa-iter, ^ "which elapsed between 1500 and 1800, be divided into equal parts, the spirit of the Reformation will be allowed to have been most operative during the first 150 years. But the diffusion of general welfare and illumination will be found most conspicuous during the last 150 years. This progress, both of populousness and re- finement, resulted chiefly from the increase of wealth ; and the increase of w^ealth resulted chiefly from the extension of commerce, which grew out of the con- quest of Hindostan and the colonisation of America — events independent of the Reformation. If the European territories shaken by this revolution be distinguished into Protestant and Catholic countries, and the respective masses be compared with each other, the Protestant will uniformly be found the more barbarous during the three first half centuries of the Reformation ; as if the victory of the new opinions had occasioned a retrogression of civihty. The Catholic ^ W. Taylor, Survey of German Poetry. THE GERMAJ^ AND GALLIC MUSES 129 provinces seem barely to have retained their anterior refinement ; but the Protestant provinces to have re- ceded towards rudeness ; and these only began to recover their natural rank, in the competition of na- tional culture, v^hen the religious zeal of their ruling classes began to abate. Valuing thus in gross the effects of the Eeformation, it is surely not easy to perceive its merits." We quote another sentence from the same Protestant author, just to shov^ that the opinion of Carlyle and others, that modern civilisation is directly traceable to the Eeformation, is not shared by all thinkers. "When it is considered that, of the evil, which for 150 years accompanied the Reformation along its progress, much inheres in the very nature and essence of the change ; that, of the good, which for 150 years has been enjoyed in the seats of the Reformation, much might equally have been expected without any alteration at all ; and that a purer reformation from the bosom of Italy itself, was probably intercepted by the premature violence of Luther and his followers — surely they may not hastily, or decidedly, be classed among the bene- factors of the human race. The Northern Reformers made tempests and bloody showers ; and now that the sunshine is restored to their fields, they boast of the storm as the cause of the fertility." We see therefore that the change in the religious opinions of Germany was not the prelude to the golden epoch of its poetry and literature. That the spirit of independence of foreign influences, and the popularisa- tion of German manners, language, etc., had an im- mediate and vivifying effect on German genius is evidenced by the fact that it was in the year 1748 the first German grammar was pu})lished by Gottsched,^ and writing in German became popular ; and from that year, for a long century, Germany developed, with a rapidity which astonished herself and the world, a galaxy of poetic and other geniuses, more numerous, and of ' Up to that date the learned wrote in Latin. 9 130 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES more transcendent ability than all the modern nations of Europe have together produced. We do not say that she therefore bears the palm of intellectual superiority, or that she is the cradle of the world's greatest men. We do not say that Goethe is a greater poet than Shak- speare or Dante, or that Klopstock is equal to Milton. But we do say that in the short space of a single century, and that century bounding the only national life which Germany has enjoyed, it has given to the world a school of poets and philosophers of more unique, original and varied talent, of higher and more transcendent aims and ideas, and of greater perfection of artistic workmanship, than can be found on the rolls of honour of any other nation. Here are names, every one of which is mentioned with enthusiasm, not only at home, but in every academy and university in Europe, — Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Werner, Heine, Novahs, Burger, FreiHgrath, Klopstock, Korner, Lessing, Tieck, Uhland, Wieland, Hoffmann, etc., of whom Carlyle says : " We have no hesitation in stating that we see in certain of the best German poets, and those, too, of our own time, something which associates them, remotely or nearly we say not, but which does associate them with the Masters of Art, the Saints of Poetry, long since departed, and as we thought, without successors, from the earth, but canon- ised in the hearts of all generations, and yet living to all by the memory of what they did and were. Glances we do seem to find of that ethereal glory which looks upon us in its full brightness from the Transfiguration of Eaffaelle, from the Tempest of Shakespeare; and in broken, but still purest and heart-piercing beams, strugghng through the gloom of long ages, from the tragedies of Sophocles, and the weather-worn sculpture of the Parthenon. This is that heavenly spirit which, best seen in the aerial embodiment of poetry, but spread- ing likewise over all the thoughts and actions of an age, has given us Surreys, Sidneys, Ealeighs in court and camp, Cecils in pohcy. Hookers in divinity, Bacons in philosophy, and Shakespeares and Spensers in song. THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 131 In affirming that any vestige, however feeble, of this Divine spirit is discernible in German poetry, we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other nation." We might say in conclusion, that the whole spirit of Germany is in alliance with the lofty ideas and emotions which find their embodiment in poetry; the whole spirit of France is in direct opposition and anti- pathy. There are two very exquisite passages from two of our most eminent English poets, which clearly exemplify this statement. Robert Browning, speaking of subjective poets, and taking Shelley as a type, says : " Not what man sees, but what God sees — the ideas of Plato — seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand — it is towards these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do ; and he digs where he stands — preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intentions of which he desires to perceive and speak." To the spiritual, introspective character of German genius, these remarks would admirably apply, and although there appears to have been no correspondence either of imitation or praise between Shelley and his German contemporaries, he derived his undoubted inspirations from sources to which they had access and recourse, and his poetry, which has long since passed into the region of the deathless classics, has an indisputable affinity with the legendary and lyrical poetry of the Fatherland. For if the German poets were metaphysi- cians before they broke through forms and sang in clear resonant rhythm emotions and ideas that were un- intelligible in mere prose, Shelley, too, had his mind formed on the teachings of Plato,^ and his immortal verse is but the disburthcning of a great philosophical mind, which laboured under the doubts and difficulties of existence to the end. And his vain ineffectual strain- ^ Introductory note to E.isays and Letters by Ernest Rhys. • 9 * 132 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ing after an excellence and beauty, which he ended by- declaring it to be visionary and ideal, what is it but that perpetual balancing of reason and fancy, which is so remarkable amongst the German poets, and which is un- known to French versifiers? For these latter, unable to maintain an equipoise between the two great powers of the intellect, decided to dethrone imagination, and deify reason. Whence it is easy to understand that saying of Shelley's : " Rousseau was essentially a poet — the others (meaning Voltaire and his school of sceptics) were mere reasoners ". The other sentence we take from Shelley himself : "Poetry is indeed something Divine, it is at once the centre and circumference of all knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is the perfect and con- summate surface and bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and colour of the rose to the texture of the ele- ments which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and cor- ruption." It is the brilliant surface then of men and things, and not the hidden mechanism of nature, that comes under the domain of poetry ; or if the Divine art will penetrate beneath the surface and seek to under- stand secret operations that issue in such splendours of form and colour, it is with a view to understand their mystery and meaning, and not to reduce them to the commonplaces of science. Here the analyst and theorist have no place. The subtle essence of poetic thought can no more be sifted and solved than the scent of a rose in summer, or the odours that are wafted from the sea. Its secret charm, which appeals to our highest senses, and gives us some idea of pre-existence as it certainly gives a hope of immortality, is undefin- able ; and human speech, that is wrought into such mysterious and beautiful texture under its influence, has no power to declare the nature of the spell that enfolds it. And as in the sister art of masic, the ethereal harmonies which sway human emotions are THE GERMAN AND GALLIC MUSES 133 altogether beyond the grasp of the geometer, who can tell the exact value of notes and intervals, or of the surgeon who knows exactly the physiology of the vocal chords ; so poetry in its highest forms is far beyond the reach of critical or analytical intellects, who understand the science of the skeleton, but are blind to the beauty and perfection of the living form. Yet France has always had a dread of the ideal ; and her painters and novelists, her sculptors and poets, have driven realism to extremes. Battle-scenes and historical episodes cover their canvases ; the Morgue and the Salpetriere furnish the heroes and heroines of romance, and their poets have either taken the classic "legends, and deprived them of the life and charm they possessed for the ancients, or affected those historical subjects, which even in the hands of Shakspeare are only redeemed from dulness by the highest efforts of genius and art. The result is this. The spirit of our age is totally opposed to dry verse, which the soul of poetry never animated. A solitary poet, like Austin Dobson, may try to revive in our magazines some taste for French forms of versi- fication, with comparatively little success, but the un- erring instincts of great geniuses like Coleridge and Carlyle force them to direct the full searching light of intellect and taste on German poems and German mysticism, with the result that a radiance is reflected upon themselves which will keep bright their names and memories so long as the world retains its appre- ciation for thoughts that are imperishable and art that is immortal. KECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITEEATUKE.^ It is quite taken for granted by the unbelievers of the day that the world has so completely rejected the great doctrines of Christianity, that controversies on religious, or, as they V70uld call them, sectarian topics, are utterly unknown ; for that nowadays no one is in the least degree interested in the subtleties of theological dis- cussions, which at one time set empire against empire, and engaged the best faculties of the ablest thinkers throughout Europe. The contempt so freely lavished on the metaphysical discussions that were held through- out the universities of Europe in the Middle Ages has broadened into a disdain for the supporters of doctrines, which to mediaeval theologians, and, indeed, to all Christian believers, were absolutely incontrovertible ; and it is supposed that outside the walls of Catholic colleges, which with rigid conservatism still cling to scholastic forms, no one feels the least interest in the ghosts of past and buried controversies. Thus in the September number of the Nineteenth Century Mr. Justice Stephen says : — " The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, has ceased to interest the great mass of mankind, and it is difficult to imagine in these days a controversy about original sin or the sacraments attracting much attention ". In flat contradiction to this theory comes the fact, that within the last year no less than seven publica- tions have issued from the British and American press, dealing with the life and doctrines of St. Augustine ; and following this series comes review after review, ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Record, December, 1887. 134 RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 135 treating exhaustively of these pubhcations and the many most interesting questions they deal with and suggest. Nor are these questions altogether of that purely meta- physical nature that would be tolerated, and even wel- comed by the free-thinking spirit of the age. For it admits there is one subject it has not yet quite tired of, that is, the existence of a Supreme Being, and the abstruse questions that cluster around the great central mystery of the universe. These it is always prepared to discuss, especially as they lead out from the company of musty Christians, and into the society of glorious Greek heathens, and the mystics of the majestic East. But the main subjects discussed in recent Augustinian litera- ture are such antiquated and commonplace controversies as those which agitated the world in St. Augustine's time — controversies with Manicheans and Pelagians about Divine predestination and human freewill, between necessarians and supporters of liberty ; and, alas ! there is not a word about the dialogues of the divine Plato, but a great deal about the Institutes of half-forgotten Calvin. Still more singular is it that three of these publications have come to us from America, and that, as a writer in the Church Quarterly Bevieiv for July tells us, "while the price to which the Parker Society's series has sunk appears to prove that the Keformers are but a drug in the market, and the Hbrary of Anglo-Catholic Theology stands, we fear, at a figure not much higher, the Fathers afford material for repeated publishing speculations ". It is quite clear the world is not so en- lightened after all. The scorn of Pascal, ' and the sarcasm of Renan- have not been quite so deadly as was supposed. Or, perhaps there is something in these old Fathers and their despised controversies not quite so obsolete and worthless as the wits of France and the pamphleteers of England would have us suppose. ' Lettres Provinciales, II. ^ New Studies of Religious History. Art., " The Congregations de Auxiliis". 13G EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES The most ambitious of these works on St. Augustine are the Hulsean Lectures for 1885, embodied by the writer, W. Cunningham, B.D., Trinity College, Cam- bridge, in a work which bears the title, St. Austin, and His Place in the History of Beligious Thought. The most useful and interesting to us is the Historical Study of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor, written by a Vincentian Father, and already favourably noticed in the Record. The former has been subjected to a good deal of un- flattering criticism. The latter has passed through the Keviews, not only unscathed, but frequently and warmly recommended, and, we hope, will soon be issued in a second edition. Perhaps the learned author will pardon us if we call his attention to a remarkable exemplifica- tion of the truths conveyed in that chapter of his book in which he lays down certain rules which must be observed by professional or other readers of the works of St. Augustine. It has passed into the ordinary canons of criticism that the works of any great author, ancient or modern, must be studied in their entirety, with such light as contemporary publications throw upon them, and with a fair amount of deference for the opinions of those commentators who, from one motive or another, have made these works the study of their lives. The viola- tion of any of these canons is apt to lead to singular mistakes ; and it will be found that nearly half the books of the world are written to support arguments in favour of certain views which are supposed to be con- tained in the great works of the world's literature. The subjectivity, to use a hackneyed word, of our minds is so strong, that we are continually projecting our own ideas on the page we are supposed to be studying with illumination independent of that which is cast by other minds ; and language is so very flexible, particularly when it embraces abstract and indefinite ideas, that we can derive from almost any author texts to support doc- trines which we know very well would be most repug- nant to that author's mind. We know that Bacon in RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 137 the English school, Beid in the Scottish school, and Descartes in the French school of philosophy, have been the originators of ideas which have been pushed to con- clusions which they would have decidedly condemned ; and to ascend higher, it is well known that St. Paul has been cited in support of most contradictory doctrines — to-day he is a Calvinist, to-morrow an idealist, and the chmax has been reached by proving him a pantheist from the words, in ipso enim vivimus, movemur et sumus. Now there never was an author that required to be studied with keener discrimination than St. Augus- tine. His mind was so subtle, and he analysed ideas in such a manner that none but the strongest and best trained intellects can follow him ; and then he was essentially a dialectician, and possessed such a pheno- menal power over the Latin tongue that he uses phrases and expressions that actually bewilder in their apparent contradictions. Even that little work, his Confessions, which apparently was thrown off without premeditation, and, therefore, should be marked by all the directness and simplicity of a plain categorical statement, is in reality a philosophical treatise contain- ing the pith and marrow of all he had thought and read, and full of those transcendental ideas which have been the despair of those who have attempted to analyse and explain them. The neglect of these primary rules, and, let us add, the absence of real theological training, which is common to all Protestants, have led the Hul- sean lecturer into many serious errors. Some of these have already been noticed in the Tablet for February, 1887, particularly the assertion, which probably will astonish some readers, that the Church of England fully represents, and has always represented, St. Augustine's teaching. But any one who has had the least acquaint- ance with contemporary history in England will know that one of the most exasperating features of liitualism in England is, that in the face of history, in defiance of contemporary declarations on the part of the Anglican bishops, and contemporary decisions of the Ecclesiastical 138 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Law Courts, it proclaims the identity of the English Church of to-day with the Apostolic Church and the pre-Keformation Church in England, and maintains doc- trines which are reprobated by the bishops and three- fourths of the Anglican Communion, and uses ceremonies which are condemned by its formularies, and prayers which are declared blasphemous, and rites which are de- clared idolatrous. But long before the Enghsh Church had advanced so far in apostasy from itself, and irre- concilability with Eome (for the nearer it approaches us in externals, the farther is it removed in spirit), the appeal to the Fathers was a favourite one. It was made by all the great High Churchmen of the past, it was made by the Oxford men in the time of the great revival, with the result that they passed directlj'' into union with the Catholic Church. But until some one can define what the English Church is, and declare authoritatively its teaching, the assumption of its identity with any other community can neither be contradicted nor refuted. It is not a concrete body about which anything can be affirmed or denied. One section of its members proclaims its dogmatic adhesion to every doc- trine and ceremony of the Catholic Church, if we except that of Papal Supremacy. Another, representing a good deal of the best thought and feeling of the com- munion, is quite content to exercise a civilising influence on the masses by the example of irreproachable lives, and the preaching of a secular ethical system, without committing itself to any dogma whatsoever, leaving even the personality of God open to the choice of its followers, " If some very distinguished members of the Church of England," says Mr. Justice Stephen, quoted above, " living or lately dead, could be, or could have been, put into a witness box, and closely cross- examined as to their real deliberate opinions, it would be probably found that they not only acknowledged the truth of principles advocated by Mr. Mivart, which, indeed, most of them notoriously and even ostenta- tiously did and do, but were well aware that they in- RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 139 volved all the practical consequences which are pointed out above ; yet some of them held, and others still hold, an honoured place in the Church of England, and, with- out giving any particular scandal, discharge in it duties of the highest importance, and give advice, and make exhortations which are highly appreciated by a large number of important persons." To say, therefore, that the English Church represents the teaching of St. Augustine is to make the latter responsible for "wide divergencies" of belief, a devout CathoHc to-day, to- morrow a Socinian or Agnostic. But when the lecturer takes the other side, and, instead of telling us what the Church of England teaches, declares the actual opinions which he supposes St. Augustine held ; declares, for ex- ample, that St. Augustine considered unity no essential mark of the Church, and knew absolutely nothing of the Sacrifice of the Mass, he comes boldly out into the open, and it must be admitted that he is very brave. And when he says that the libertas indifferentice is a Pelagian doctrine, and that man has no such liberty, and that this is the teaching of St. Augustine, we can bring him down, even in this abstruse and most difficult matter, to the words of the great Doctor himself, and to the exposition of these words which was made by his followers and commentators. To select a few sentences out of thousands, in his dialogue with Evodius about free-will, he uses the following words : "Si natura vel necessitate iste motus existit, culpabilis esse nullo pacto potest " (Lib. iii., cap. 1) ; and in the following chapter, comparing the motion of the will to that of a stone which is cast, he says : — " Verumtamen in eo dissimilis est, quod in potestate non habet lapis cohibere motum, quo fertur inferius ; animus vero, dum non vult non ita movetur, ut superi- oribus desertis, inferiora diligat : et ideo lapidi naturaHs est ille motus, animo vero iste voluntarius ". And again : — " Audi ergo primo ipsum Dominmn ubi duas arbores commemorat, quarum mentionem ipse fccisti ; audi di- 140 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES centem, aut facite arborem bonam, et fructum ejus bonum, aut facite arborem malam, et fructum ejus malum. Cum ergo elicit, aut hoc facite, aut illud facite, potestatem indicat, non naturam. Nemo enim nisi Deus facere arborem potest ; sed habet unusquisque in voluntate aut eligere quae bona sunt, et esse arbor bona ; aut eligere quse mala sunt, et esse arbor mala. Hoc ergo Dominus dicens, aut facite illud, aut facite illud, ostendit esse in potestate quid facerent." — In Actis cum Felice, Manichao, Lib. ii., cap. 4.^ We pass here from the lecturer to the Church Quar- terly reviewer, who is inclined to differ from Mr. Cun- ningham in his opinion of St. Augustine's Eule of Faith, for he states that the latter took the Sacred Scriptures for the recorded and established representatives of Di- vine Truth on earth, adding that, " although Church authority is to him the immediate practical medium by which he obtains access to Scripture, and is led to be- lieve it, yet every element and constituent of Church authority, M'hether the individual teaching of Fathers, or the united voice of Councils, is to him capable of mistake. It is Scripture alone in which he has decided to find no error." This is rather a strange assertion about the saint, who declared that he accepted the Scriptures only from the hands of the Church ; and it is more strangely supported by the quotation given in the note from the saint's letters to St. Jerome. This note is simply a distinction which St. Augustine draws between the Canonical books of Scripture and those which were considered doubtful or apocryphal, or were the works of individual writers — " Fateor charitati tuse sobs eis Scripturarum libris qui jam Canonici appellan- tur, didici hunc timorem honoremque deferre, ut nullum eorum auctorem scribendo aliquid errasse firmissime credam. Et si aliquid in eis offendero hteris quod videatur contrarium veritati, nihil aliud quam vel men- ^St. Hilary (in Psalm ii.), St Optatus (Lib. adv. Parmen. vii.), St. Bernard {de Gratia et lib. arb.) agree with St. Augustine. RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 141 dosum esse codicem, vel interpretem non assecutum esse quod dictum est, vel me minime intellexisse, non am- bigam. Alios autem ita lego ut quantalibet sanctitate doctrinaque preepolleant, non ideo verum puto quia ipsi ita senserunt ; sed quia mihi vel per illos auctores Canonicos, vel probabili ratione, quod a vero non ab- horreant persuadere potuerunt." ^ It is quite clear that here there is no distinction made between Scripture and Church authority, but between the Canonical books and the works, however learned, of individuals ; and it would rather appear that St. Augustine favoured the absolute authority of the Church in these matters when he acknowledges two classes of books, those called Canonical, which are presented to the faithful with the supreme imprimatur of the Church, and in which the saint says " firmissime credam " ; and those whose contents can only be accepted when there is proof of their consonance with the teaching of the Canonical books, " quia mihi vel per illos auctores Canonicos, vel probabili ratione, quod a vero non abhorreant per- suadere potuerunt". But let us hear St. Augustine himself in that very book which the reviewer has cited, but not quoted {Lih. contra Faustum, xi.) : "Si non de aliqua particula, sed de toto audies contradicentem et clamantem, falsus est ; quid ages ? quo te convertes ? quam libri a te prolati originem, quam vetustatem, quam seriem successionis testem citabis? Nam si hoc facere conaberis, et nihil valebis ; et vides in hac re quid Ecclesise Catholicse valeat auctoritas, qusB ab ipsis 1 The quotation, as given by the Church Qaarterhj reviewer, and quoted accurately in the text, is, however, truncated. For St. Augustine adds : " Nee te, mi frater, sentire aliud cxistimo ; prorsus, inquam, non te arbitror sic logi tuos libros velle, tanquaui Prophetarum vel Apostolorum," which bears out still more fully our contention, that no contrast was intended between Scriptural and Church teachings, between which no discrepancy can exist, but between the writings of individuals, even those to whose learn- ing and sanctity St. Augustine bea)\s such warm testimony, as in his Opws fmperfectum, iv., 112, and the inspired teachings of Scripture and the teachings of the infallible Church. 142 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES fundatissimis sedibus Apostolorum usque ad hodiernam diem succedentium sibimet Episcoporum serie et tot populorum consensione firmatur." And again, " Quis- quis falli metuit obscuritate qufestionis, Ecclesiam de illo Gonsulat, quam sine ulla ambiguitate Sacra Scriptura demonstrat " (Lib. i., contra Cresconium, cap. 33) ; and that well-known expression, "Ego vero Evangelic non cre- derem, nisi me Ecclesise Catholicae commoveret auc- toritas " (cap. 8, contra Eimtolam Fimdamenti) . We shall not dwell on the statement that St. Augustine's behef in the Sacred Scriptures arose from his determination to recognise some authority, and in the " circumstances of inability to criticise which existed for him in the ignor- ance of the original languages, and the possibility of error in the particular MSS. to which he had access ". But it is in just these particular cases that St. Augus- tine recognises the necessity of a living and infallible authority, and, therefore, reposes his final faith in the magistermm of the Chm'ch. And as to the superior advantages we possess in the facilities for studying Scripture critically by aid of philological and exegetical research, they have resulted in an issue which was very far from the lofty faith and sublime hope of St. Augustine — the rationahsm of modern Europe. In the same way the reviewer, whilst doubting about Mr. Cunningham's success in proving logically that the Calvinistic doctrines are quite different from the Augus- tinian, lapses into some mistakes. He cannot under- stand, for example, in what the Augustinian doctrine of man's inability to work out his own salvation differs from the Calvinistic doctrine of man's total depravity, forgetting that inability to perform supernatural acts without the efficacious help of the Most High is very different from the incapacity to receive such help owing to the total depravity of nature. He ignores the distinc- tion made by Catholic theologians between positive and negative reprobation — the former abstracting altogether from the malice of the sinner, and insisting that the reprobate were created with a view to eternal punish- RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 143 ment ; the latter, meaning the prescience of God foreseeing the commission of sin, and the necessary subsequent pmiishment. " Providentia summi Dei, non fortuita temeritate, regitur mundus," says St. Augus- tine, " et ideo nunquam esset istorum geterna miseria, nisi esset magna mahtia ; " and again in another place, " omnis poena, si justa est, peccati poena est, et suppli- cium nominatur" (Lib. iii., de lib. arb., cap. 18). As to the case of Pharaoh, and the words of St. Augustine, of which the Calvinists have made so much, " Operari Deum in cordibus hominum ad inclinandas eorum volun- tates, quocunque voluerit, sive ad bona pro sua miseri- cordia, sive ad mala pro meritis eorum," a sufficient explanation is found in the words of St. Thomas, when speaking of this passage he says : " Nam ad bonum inclinat hominum voluntates directe et per se, tanquam auctor bonorum ; ad malum autem dicitur inclinare, vel suscitare homines occasionaliter ; in quantum scilicet Deus homini proponit vel interius, vel exterius, quod quantum est ex se, est inductivum ad bonum ; sed homo propter suam malitiam perverse utitur ad malum " {Epist. adBom., c. ix., 17). And again, " Deus instigat hominem ad bonum, puta regem ad defendendum jura regni sui, vel ad puniendum rebelles ; sed hoc instinctu bono malus homo abutitur secundum malitiam cordis sui. Et hoc modo circa Pharaonem accidit ; qui cum a Deo excitaretur ad regni sui tutelam, abusus est hac excitatione ad crudelitatem." With the conclusions, however, of the reviewer, we can almost entirely agree. The principal conviction which the study of Augustinian doctrines has brought home to him is, that where the doctrine of predestina- tion is too exclusively regarded, without any application of external sacramental aids, it can only result in a morbid Pharisaism, which placidly condemns the larger portion of mankind to eternal punishment, or a still more morbid despair, which ends in a total disregard of duties which even the natural law imposes. For it is clear that the recourse to the Sacraments ought to 144 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES implj^ a belief that there is a necessity for spiritual assistance derivable from external sources, and a cor- responding belief that such sources can adequately supply what is wanting to the weakness of Nature. And though prayer must always have a very large place in any scheme of spiritual economy, as being one of the easiest and readiest means of approaching our Maker, still we require some facilities of access to channels of Divine Mercy, whence grace will infallibly flow to us, if no obstacle is raised by the perversity of Nature. We will not stop here to ask the reviewer what spiritual assistance a merely commemorative ceremony such as the "Lord's Supper" can impart; and what other Sacrament is provided for adults in ordinary Protestant- ism? But when he traces the infideHty which un- happily does exist in Catholic countries to a multipHcity of sacramental forms, that is, to too many visible means of approaching the Unseen, we cannot quite follow him. The same odd fancy has struck the mind of another writer, whose latest work. Natural Law in the Sjnritual World, has attracted considerable attention in this country and in America. In two chapters of this work entitled "Semi-parasitism" and "Parasitism," Pro- fessor Drummond traces the apostasy of Catholics to the fact that "the Catholic Church ministers falsely to the deepest needs of man, reduces the end of religion to selfishness, and offers safety without spirituality. . . . No one who has studied the religion of the continent upon the spot has failed to be impressed with the appal- ling spectacle of tens of thousands of unregenerate men sheltering themselves, as they conceive it, for eternity, behind the Sacraments of Eome."^ The professor draws a parallel from Nature, in which he compares ordinary Catholics to those parasitical animals which, deriving strength and safety from superior organ- isms, rarely develop into healthy conditions of life, and ^ Natural Laiv in the Spiritual World, p. 329. London : Hodder & Stoughton, RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 145 never put forth those organs which belong to their nature, and which are provided by necessary laws as a means of sustenance or defence. And although he is careful to state that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not promise safety or moral perfection except to those who correspond with the graces of which she is the depositary, yet he breaks out constantly into angry invective against the system, and places in the same category of contempt the Evangelical, who believes in his unconditional salvation through the merits of the atonement, and the CathoHc who trusts for his salva- tion to the efficacy of prayer and the Sacraments. But a more acute thinker would perceive that there is this wide distinction, that the Evangelicals trust implicitly in the merits of redemption to the positive exclusion of all merit and of all effort on our part, these latter being to them but " filthy rags," whereas the Church most positively insists that in most of the Sacraments the grace received is proportioned to the state of the soul which receives it. It is the obvious distinction of grace received ex opere operantis and ex opere operato which is so familiar to Catholic students, but quite unknown to the Protestant professor. But the parallel between organic and spiritual life is in these chapters carried a little too far. For either the professor admits the supernatural, and then he must of necessity admit the operation of grace either in the Catholic or Evangelical sense, and thus he admits external assistance apart from internal effort and uncontrolled by it ; or, what is more likely, he denies the supernatural element alto- gether in the spiritual life, and speaks of ordinary natural laws in the development of moral and mental energies. In this latter case, the analogy between the lower organisms and the human mind does not hold, because the contention is that organs and powers are developed by a principle of natural law which adapts organisms to their necessities. This supposes a struggle for existence, and a contest of the weaker with the stronger powers of Nature. But abstracting from the 10 146 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES supernatural, what contest goes on in man that can develop and strengthen his moral powers ? No doubt his mental energies are developed in his struggle against Nature, and he puts forth strength that will save him against the uncontrolled forces which seek his destruc- tion. Thus he ascends from the flint fire and the friction fire of the forest to the patent stove and electric lamp of civilisation, and from the coracle or canoe to the steamboat. But morally speaking, there being no danger, there is neither struggle nor contest, therefore no development, and therefore he must remain the primitive barbarian, rather enervated, but not at all exalted, by his sense of safety in civihsation. The appli- cation of natural law to the spiritual world is here, therefore, entirely at fault, and, indeed, we might say that the whole work is fanciful rather than logical. But writers of this kind must always break a lance with the Catholic Church ; it adds to their honour to be defeated. Apart, therefore, from the perversities of individuals for which no system can be held responsible, it would be difficult to conceive a more perfect supernatural sys- tem, and one better accommodated to spiritual necessi- ties and spiritual growth than that which is presented by the Church. It holds the golden mean between the extremes of Evangehcahsm and Kationahsm. It neither promises salvation without effort, nor salvation without assistance. It neither preaches vicarious sanctification nor human perfectibility. But after declaring the high moral precepts that are contained in the absolute commandments of the Most High, and the counsels of perfection in the Gospels, it leads its mem- bers by individual effort on their part, and by the strength supplied by the Sacraments, to such possibilities of perfection as are compatible with the limits of a fallen nature. It allows grace and free-will to work harmoni- ously. They are the centripetal and centrifugal forces that keep the soul in its perfect orbit round the central sun of its existence. It does not encourage pride or overweening consciousness in our own powers ; neither RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 147 does it paralyse effort by promising absolute security through the merits of the Eedemption. To say, there- fore, that " Roman Catholicism opens to the masses a molluscan shell. They have simply to shelter them- selves within its pale, and they are safe," is palpably absurd. And so is the typical case which the professor gives of the Catholic convert who said: "I used to be concerned about rehgion, but religion is a great subject. I was very busy. A Protestant, my attention was called to the Eoman Catholic religion. It suited my case. And instead of dabbling in religion for myself, I put myself into its hands. Once a year I go to Mass." This is not serious reasoning at all. It is houffonnerie. To whatever causes, therefore, the infidehty of Cathohc countries is attributable, it certainly cannot be traced to the sacramental system in the Church. A system that has been adopted by such minds as St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and which has produced those marvels of sanctity, who have been raised by the veneration of the people or by the voice of the Church in thousands upon her altars, cannot be so enervating as our Protest- ant friends would have us suppose. It is the only system which is in strict accord with the words of Holy Scripture — the only one that can adapt itself with ease to those difficult passages that seem to be irreconcilable in Holy Writ, the only system that meets the wants of men when pride is weakened — • And the helpless feet stretch out To find in the depths of the darkness No footing more solid than doubt. And there are only two classes that can possibly re- ject it. The religious fanatic who believes he has got "rehgion," and attributes a play of emotions to the breathing of the Spirit of God ; and the Rationalist who rejects all supernatural agencies, and thinks that man can raise himself by unaided effort to the full stature of moral perfection. The emotional and exciting religion of the former, however repulsive to refined minds, will 10* 148 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES always find adherents amongst the classes, who prefer a play of feelings to that elevation of mind and heart towards God which is taught by the Catholic Church ; the latter will command the assent of that large and evergrowing class, which with intolerant pride strives to match its puny strength against " principaHties and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places ". We have been tempted into this rather discursive paper by the pleasing fact that Augustinian doctrines are to-day commanding the attention and reverence of so many thoughtful men throughout the world. And it is a satisfaction to know that the Church Quarterly reviewer adds an unbiassed testimony to the excellence of the Catholic work {A Historical Stiidy), and its superiority in all biographical respects to the other publications we have mentioned. This book, therefore, must become the standard work on St. Augustine, and we have thrown out the above hints in the hope that they may catch the eye of the learned author, and per- haps elicit from him an explanatory chapter in the shape of an " Appendix". Nor should we be surprised to find that in time a good deal of Augustinian literature will cluster around this work which has come to us so modestly, and has been received in so welcome a manner. For the subject is practically inexhaustible. The writings of St. Augustine touch on all those problems that will ever have a lasting influence on the human mind. Mr. Cunningham skimmed in one sentence a subject that could be easily built into a treatise, when he said : " Just as it is true that he may well be compared to Descartes in regard to the problems of the certainty of knowledge, so it is true that he seems to have anticipated Kant in proclaiming the true free- dom of the will " ; and a whole library might be con- structed out of his suggestions, just as devastating heresies arose from the misinterpretation of his words. If it were true that he anticipated Descartes and Kant, the philosophy of the present would possess very httle RECENT AUGUSTINIAN LITERATURE 149 that would be original, and the philosophy of the future would have but a limited field for research. This is but saying that the best intellects of the world have been employed, consciously or otherwise, in seeking to make clear those mysteries that would never have dawned on the human mind but through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. THE POETKY OF MATTHEW AKNOLD.i It has been remarked by a very profound critic that England owes her supremacy in hterature almost entirely to her poets. It is needless to repeat here the parallels he has drawn between her literary celebrities in other departments, and those of foreign countries, past and present. It is quietly acknowledged that in all sciences requiring depth and profundity of thought, combined with the cognate talent for dogged and per- sistent labour, England will not bear a moment's com- parison with Germany ; and that in the lighter and more graceful arts, such as essays and critiques, she has never had a Montaigne or Sainte-Beuve. But in the divinest art of all — that of wedding the loftiest thoughts to the sweetest language — she stands pre- eminent, without rival, without equal, at least since the time that Apollo honoured Pindar with half the fruit- offerings of his altars, and the face of Sappho was engraved on the current coinage of Mitylene. It is, therefore, no measured praise to say, as most of our critics have said of Matthew Arnold, that in a country, rendered illustrious by its poets, and in an age, which boasts of its distinction in their number and uniform excellence, a great litterateur claims the chief notice of the present, and the more matured admiration of future generations, solely because of his supreme endowments as a singer. Yet it must be said, that if the recognition of Arnold's gifts as a poet is neither very qualified nor un- ^ Irish Ecclesiastical Record, June, 1888. 150 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 161 certain, it was made tardily, and with some apparent reluctance. The fame of Tennyson has so completely overshadowed that of all his contemporaries, that it was difficult to wake the public ear to melodies almost as sweet as those of its favourite. And even yet we are told that Arnold's poetry is. a sealed book to the multi- tude, for the reason that it is so excessively polished and refined, that the practical genius of the English people, which detests the semblance of affectation, will not brook its Attic perfection ; and that for the same reason, the verdict of posterity is rather doubtful, un- less, indeed, it grows cultured beyond present possi- bilities of belief. The truth appears to be that if Arnold does not rank with the highest divinities, he may well take a place among the demigods of his art ; and that, if he can never become popular in the sense that he will be read in every household, and his poems used as a minor gospel of life, at least he will always have a place on the shelves of those who possess or affect the taste for appreciating noble thinking, and language that is polished and artistic. Matthew Arnold's poetic genius is imitative rather than creative. No distinctive character, thought, or teaching can be attributed to him ; and, with the exception of one or two remarkable poems, he exhibits no originality of style. His longer and more ambitious efforts, such as Tristram and IseuU, Solirah and Bustum, are quite unique in design, worked out with infinite care, ex- ceedingly tender and pathetic, yet lacking that freshness which would make them unfamiliar, and entitle them to be called the peculiar creations of their author. Amongst his shorter productions, a Memory- Pic kire might have been written by one of the early lyrists who immediately preceded Shakspeare and Ben Jonson ; Stagirius miglit fit in admirably with The Drea^n of Gerontius ; and we can characterise only one as abso- lutely original in thought, metre and rhythm, that is, The Forsaken Merman, redolent in every line of the sea, 152 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES the peculiar object of Arnold's nature-worship. But two influences can be distinctly, almost too easily, traced in these poems — that of the ancient dramatists of Greece, and that of him who appears to have moulded and modelled all modern poetic thought — William Wordsworth. The influence of the former is detected in the structure, that of the latter in the spirit, of his poems. Arnold has had the courage of fram- ing one or two of his longer poems on the models of the Hellenic masterpieces ; and they were welcomed by the pubhc, not so much, we venture to say, for their intrinsic merit, as because they were accepted as a seasonable protest against the tradition that poetry was to be locked up, line after line, in the trammels of rhyme. Yet it has long since been laid down as an absolute impossibility — this attempt to construct a modern drama, or dramatic poem, that would exhibit the passion and pathos that filled the easy, natural lives of the ancients, and this, too, with the short rapid action of the Greek dramas. Mr. Swinburne has attempted it in Phcedra and Atalcmta in Calydon ; but although he possesses an extraordinary power over the language, and the latter tragedy is unique for its beauty and originality, it is not Greek in any sense. Neither can the Strayed Reveller of Matthew Arnold be called " the subtly interwoven harmony of a poem," as some have designated it ; for though the author evidently desired to keep it strictly within the lines of Greek models, and writes of thyrsi and " fawnskins wet with dew," as if he had seen the raging Bacchanals of Euripides, it is ancient poetry without the light and perfume of Greece, and modern poetry without its music. But where Arnold has achieved his most conspicuous success is in his creation of a metrical rhythm adapted from the ancient choruses, and consisting of irregular, but well- accented lines unrhymed, and devoted principally to elegiacs ; and hence, if for no other reason, it is most probable that of all his poems Rugby Chajjel and Heine's Grave will be those for which he will be best re- THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 153 membered, and which will be regarded as his character- istic creations. Although in general the structure of his lines is very perfect, it cannot be said that it ever attains to the marvellous music of Tennyson, with whom alone he can be compared. His verses are more transparent, but less melodious ; and it is rather difficult to under- stand how the charge of super-refinement or affectation could be brought against him. In truth, here and there, in lyrics and sonnets, which demand perfect smoothness, his lines are neither soft nor regular ; and he slips into solecisms, such as Tennyson would have lost his right hand rather than write. That unpleasant Americanism "say" recurs more than once; and the expression "let be " in the sense of not troubling nor molesting, is used at least in two lyrics— that called Beqiiiescat — Her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be ; and in Meeting — Ah I warn some more ambitious heart, And let the peaceful be I On the other hand, we catch ghmpses of expressions, such as "some wet bird-haunted English lawn," and "the soft, ash-coloured hair," which claim for Matthew Arnold one of Tennyson's chief est charms — his power of noting and using dexterously the most commonplace accidents or appearances of Nature. It is, however, in his cast of thought that the in- fluence of Wordsworth is so distinctly observable. We have here the same passionate love of Nature that characterises the latter, the same interpretation of its thousand moods, the same coercing of sounds and sights into the service of human joy or sorrow, and invariably the same distinct moral at the end, occurring as regu- larly as the envoi of a French ballade. But we miss the serenity that lifted Wordsworth's poetry high above 154 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ordinary levels, and makes it rank as a kind of philo- sophical system, with definite credences and promises, and glorifying the meanest things by the perception that they serve some wise and fruitful end in the great economy of Creation. And we miss the high tone of faith that lends to such poetry its calm cheerfulness ; and find another dreary example of how impotent art is to preserve the strains of the loftiest verse from sink- ing into a low, weary monody of despair and gloom. It is this defect which makes Arnold's poetry so unhke his master's. He has apparently imitated him so far as to select the very subjects that Wordsworth treated. We have in his two sonnets to "A Eepubhcan Friend," a repetition of the enthusiasm of the latter for freedom, and his subsequent change of opinion owing to the ex- cesses of the French Revolution ; and there is a start- ling similarity of tone and thought between the lines : — The hush among the shining stars, The calm upon the moonlit sea, {Switzerland, 3. A Farewell.) and the well-known lines : — The silence that is in the starry sky. The sleep that is among the lonely hills. Yet no one rises from a study of AVordsworth without a feeling of hopeful calm and a renewed vigour in doing what is right ; and few will close Arnold's poems without a dreary sensation that somehow everything is wrong — that there is some initial mistake that vitiates the beauty and utility of Creation, and the sooner this universe of ours comes to an end the better. He has a morbid idea of the restlessness and pain of humanity. In the picture-gallery of Nature he sees everywhere but Dantean circles of irredeemable and hopeless misery, nor will he hear any music other than that of the eternal sobbing of humanity, chorused by the infinite sea : — For most men in a brazen prison live. Where, in the sun's hot eye, THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 155 With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall. And as, year after year. Fresh products of their barren labour fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near. Gloom settles slowly down over their breast. And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. And if one escape, perchance, it is to meet a more dreadful fate from The freshening wind and blackening sea. And then the tempest strikes him ; and between The lightning bursts is seen Only a di-iving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and iiying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port, he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, And he too disappears, and comes no more. Is there no life, but tliese alone ? Madman or slave, must man be one ? Yet his remedy for this weariness of Hfe is that of AVordsworth. Lay thine ear close to the heart of Mother Nature, and try to hear her teachings and apply her lessons! In the "untroubled and unpas- sionate heavens " observe A world above man's head to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be, How vast, yet of what clear transjjarency ! (A Summer Night.) The sea, " bringing its eternal note of sadn(3HS in," re- minds him, as it did Sophocles of old, of The turbid ebb and flow Of human misery ; 156 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES but here he falters, for the abandonment of beliefs that could strengthen and solace has taken from the world the hope of a final solution of the mystery of pain — The sea of faith, Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Yet once again does he lean on the teachings of natural religion, and from the mechanical, unconscious workings of stars and seas derive the lesson — • Resolve to be thyself ; and know that he Who finds himself loses his misery ! (Self-dependence.) There are none of these alternations of faith and un- faith, hope and despair, in AVordsworth. Passionately fond of Nature, to the extent that he has been accused of Pantheistic teachings, he never obtrudes revealed hopes and consolations on his readers. For the most part he is content to seek some exposition of the riddle of the world in the workings and revealings of Nature ; yet the very fact that we know he was a believer in all those sublime dogmas that alone make the sunshine of the earth, colours and brightens all his poetry, and raises a purely natural religion into something holier and more determinate, and gives its lessons a meaning and a force they would not otherwise possess. Unfortunately for themselves his two most distinguished followers have forgotten the keynote of faith ; and if Mr. Tennyson's blunt paradox — There lives more faith in honest doubt Believe me than in half the creeds, THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 157 destroys the sublimity of the prologue to In Memoriam, so does Mr. Arnold's agnosticism lessen the force and beauty of teachings that practically have no meaning without religion. And this naturally brings about the question, how far Mr. Arnold can be regarded as a teacher of his genera- tion, for it is now generally accepted that all poets are teachers, and no longer write to please but to instruct. We are far, indeed, from thinking that this is primarily the object of the poets themselves, who probably write because they must, or throw their poetical goods into the literary market to be appraised at their real value. Yet it is not difficult to understand how a writer, con- scious of possessing the great gift of harmony, might desire to pour into the hearts of men through the music of language, those summaries of human hfe and passion which it is so easy to make and formulate. And this age has become so morbidly introspective, that we are assured that every great work of every great author is simply a manifestation of his own feelings and experi- ences, sometimes put as broadly as by Eousseau and Goethe, sometimes to be read only by those who under- stand how far the symbolism of language can reach. If, therefore, it appears to be a cramped and narrow proceeding to criticise the arts by subjecting them to rehgious and dogmatic tests, instead of judging them by the ordinary canons of taste, it must be remembered that in this age of free-thought and scientific unbelief there is not a single author of distinction that does not court criticism of the kind, by making religion, natural or revealed, the subject-matter of his teachings. In the ages of faith, Chaucer and Shakspeare could sing lightly of legendary and historical subjects, and leave the deeper chaunts to cloister and choir ; but in our age the litera- ture of every country is weighted with ponderous con- jectures on issues that we are assured are not of the slightest moment to humanity, inasmuch as they must ever remain outside the domain of certitude. And Mr. Arnold himself assures us that as "all roads lead to Kome, 158 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES so one finds in like manner that all questions raise the question of religion ". ^ Now, it may be fairly asserted that there is no author of modern times who so plainly assumes to be didactic as Matthew Arnold ; and none whose teachings are less liable to be misunderstood. Putting aside his poems, such as Tristram and Iseitlt, Sohrab and Bustum, we find in all his shorter lyrics and sonnets some estimate of human life, and in many cases some ethical instructions where- with to meet its many evils. As we have already said, his estimate of this world is as poor as that of Plotinus, but for different reasons ; and his poetry may be de- scribed as one long threnody for lost faiths and desires. Progress has overleaped itself ; science has proved too much ; educational methods, in which he was an ac- knowledged expert, have strained human knowledge too nicely ; analysis has been carried too far ; with the result of " that strange disease of modern times," whose symp- toms are impatience of life, and the mournful belief that we have ideals in mind and conscience which mock us with the impossibility of ever attaining them. Some- thing of the sadness of this unbelief was foreseen by Wordsworth, who in preference to its sordid dulness would accept as his faith the childish mythologies of the past : — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; So might I, standing on this jileasant lea. Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. But a denial of dogma under any form, and a shroud- ing of the Divine Personality under the veil of moral abstractions — these two negative principles break on us from every page of Matthew Arnold : — Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth wliole. Yet we, her memory, as she prayed, will keep. {Monica^s Last Prayer.) * Mixed Essays, p. 98. THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 169 God's n'isdom and God's goodness ! Ah, but fools Misdefine these till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness, thei/ are God ! — what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore ? {The Divinity.) And following these slippery doctrines, as we have said, he has glided into that cheerless despondency whose low melancholy finds voice through all his verses and becomes articulate in that curious blending of Pagan philosophy and Christian ethics which he hopes will meet that despair which every day becomes more pronounced and acute. " Find thyself, and lose thy misery," is his lesson in that brief gospel of his called Self-dependence, forgetting Carlyle's contemptuous remark on that same Pagan precept : " Too long has that poor self of thine tormented thee". Then listen to the great ones who have gone — the "voices and sages" who are ever with us, Radiant with ardour divine, Beacons of hope ye appear, Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow ! In other words, put aside the theology of the churches, and accept a theology of literature. Consult the hierophants of the past, live in spirit with Homer and ^schylus, with Shakspeare and Milton ! They too suffered, but became strong, strengthened by the im- mortal thoughts within them, and the ambition to hand down to weak-kneed, languishing posterity, words potent as fire to strengthen and inspire. Then reduce your Bible to a mere literature of Hebrews, and the central figure of the world's history to a teacher and a sufferer, and lose thyself like Him in labouring for a common good, and thou shalt find rest — the rest Of toil, unsevered from tranrjuillity. Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. 160 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES And this is Mr. Arnold's last word. This is his em- bodiment of the religion of culture. As a true under- standing of the mystery of human hfe, and a final solution of its perplexities, it bears its refutation on the surface. But having said so much, we can now come down from the higher levels, and admit that Arnold has advanced one of the highest concepts yet formed of a purely natural rehgion. This intellectual cultus, whose secret shrine is the mind of man, whose divinities are ideas, whose worship is poetry and the arts, whose saints are the " kings of men " in the world's history — is unspeakably attractive to minds which have reached a certain level and will not admit a higher range of possibilities of perfection. And even to those whose faith would lift them to more exalted regions, this minor worship of intellect may be not only attractive but use- ful. For there is some gain, unquestionably, in finding, amidst the ever-increasing grossness into which the materialism of our century is descending, a renascence of that idealism, which has made in every generation poets and philosophers, and which, if vague and in- determinate, contains at least no doctrine incompatible with human dignity, and admits of no pursuits whose utility would suppose degradation. But it is for this very reason that Matthew Arnold can never be a popular poet. His verses are too laden with thought ever to reach the superficial culture of the vast masses of men. He is the singer of a chosen few. He had more varied powers had he chosen to exercise them. His lines to Marguerite, and the four poems marked Meeting, Part- ituj, A Farewell, Isolation, prove that he could touch light subjects daintily, as well as high subjects with skilful reverence. But he has chosen for his themes thoughts and subjects that do not stir the feelings of the multi- tude ; and so he must be content v^th the bookshelves of the student, and to be banished from the hands of the frivolous. But he has told the agony of his age more clearly than any other poet of the century ; and the melancholy which pervades his verses will be ac- THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 161 cepted as a reverential regret for faiths that refused to blossom in his own soul. And we owe him the high praise that not a word has he written that could in the smallest degree be censured for irreverence towards faith or purity. Tender but subtle, keen but gentle, trenchant against all irregularities, yet always with a gloved, never with a mailed hand, he has taken a higher and truer view of the interests of humanity and the interests of letters than any man of his generation. For with reference to the latter, that is, the dignity of literature, not the least conspicuous of his merits was that he held his own art in such reverence. If his poetry can be regarded as an index of his mind, we should say that he set out with the determination of saying nothing that would not benefit his race — of writing not one word that could be regarded as a blemish on his art. To his mind the vocation of a poet was one that was placed on "a hidden ground of thought and austerity," and the Muse of Poetry was a Pythian priestess who never departed from the solitude of her temple to mix amongst the pleasures and passions of men. Hence, if " light and sweetness " are his ideas of what is most valuable in life, " thought and austerity " are the characteristics of his poetry. He makes no attempt at using any of the vulgar artifices which are so common amongst poets on lower levels ; nor does he ever seek to rivet the attention of purposeless minds by involutions of ideas that make half our modern poetry as difhcult to read as the Greek of ^schylus. His verses are clear and limpid, and, if thought-laden, the thoughts are neither mysterious nor occult. They do not hint and suggest, and leave the reader to conjecture and doubt as to their meaning. If passionless, they are tender, no lurid lights of heat and sin, but the calm, lambent play of gentle motions that never break into violence and rage. If not exactly dramatic, there yet is a deep charm in the scenes of his longer poems. There are few dialogues so skilfully constructed as that be- tween Tristram and Iseult of Ireland — so much tender- 11 162 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES ness, so little passion. The slumbering mind of the dying king wakes up : — I forgot, thou comest from thy voyage, Yes, the spray is on thy ch)ak aud hair ; But thy dark eyes are not dimmed, proud Iseult ! And thy beauty never was more fair. And the stately queen grown humble by the bed of death is content to say of herself : — I, a faded watcher by thy pillow, I, a statue on thy chapel floor, Poured a prayer before the Virgin Mother, Rouse no anger, make no rivals more. And in the story told by the abandoned Queen, Iseult of Brittany, she puts the legend of MerHn and Vivien in a far more attractive and less suggestive manner than Lord Tennyson. This high conception of his art is most clearly mani- fested in his Memorial Verses. Three poets he laments — Byron, Goethe and Wordsworth. Of the first he saj^s : — With shivering hearts the strife we saw, Of passion with Eternal Law. Of the cynical Goethe, to whom the human heart was but a subject of analysis : — He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear, And struck his finger on the place, And said. Thou ailest here and here. But of Wordsworth — He laid us as we lay at birth, On the cool, flowery lap of earth, Smiles broke from us, and we had ease. The liills were round us, and the breeze AVent o'er the sunlit fields again. Time may restore us in his course, Goethe's sage mind, and Byron's force. But when will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing jwwer ? THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 103 This is a correct estimate of these poets, two of whom have been more widely talked of and praised than the third. The fierce rhetoric of Byron, and the easy cynicism of the old German sensualist, have pleased the world more than the calm, prayerful, reverential attitude of Wordsworth. For the same reason the glitter of some of his own contemporaries, and the artificial perfection of others, have more or less hidden the " fugitive and gracious light, shy to illumine," of Matthew Arnold ; but the highest praise we can give him is to say, that, wanting his master's faith, he had inherited his master's spirit ; and that if Wordsworth could live again, he would probably preach his own Divine doctrines, but in the music of his disciple. Hence, hostile criticism is almost hushed in the universal sorrow that has been felt at his death, and it is thought that the future, which will certainly shatter many of our idols, will spare him, as well because he had a high ideal before him of his race and of his art, as that he died in despair of its attainment. For now is it asked for the hundredth time, when will the poet arise who will not only in- terpret, but lull into effectual silence, "the still sad music of humanity " ; who will not only lay his finger on its wounds, but pour balm into its bruises and bind them, and set it forward once more with hope upon its eternal journey ? Certainly no modern poet has this high calling. For the most part " mere idle singers of an empty day," from one and all we have to listen to the eternal plaint about lost loves and beliefs. Nor does the immediate future give much promise that it keeps enfolded a Shakspeare or a Milton. The civil- isation of the day is perfecting itself in unbelief, and the shadow of dissolution is already upon it. Huma?iity is shifting uneasily to shape itself under new conditions. Men tangle themselves into huge ganglions of life in the cities, and then when society begins to fester and decompose, its elements stream forth (piesting new conditions of existence under fresher skies and closer to the Eternal Mother. 11 * 164 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES The world moves restlessly, feverishly onv^ard, carry- ing with it its curse ; and the voices of its poets, to borrow the metaphor of our author, are as the voices of mariners in a storm, or of guides in an avalanche of the Alps. Yet we must listen and be patient, and thank those poets for that most melancholy music in which one and all have framed their own beliefs, and sought, in sad sincerity, to make light the burden of life for many. KECENT WOKKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE.^ 1. St. Austin, and His Place in the History of Religious Thought. By W. Cunningham, B.D. (The Hulsean Lectures, 1885.) Loudon : C. J. Clay & Sons. 1886. 2. " r/ie Fathers for English Readers": St. Augustine. By Edwabd L. Cutts, B.A. London and New York : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 3. St. Augustine, Melancthon, and Neander. By Philip Schaff, D.D. London : James Nisbet & Co. 1886. 4. The Teaching and Influence of St. Augustine. By James Field Spalding, Rector of Christ Church, Massachusetts. New York. 1886. 5. Vindicise Augustinianse. By Cardinal Noris. Paris. 1877. 6. Veritable clef des otivrages de St. AugiLStin, etc. Par P. Merlin, S.J. Paris. 1874. 7. St. Augustine : A Historical Study. By a Priest of the Con- gregation of the Mission. Second Edition. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1888. If we were seeking an example of the strength of pre- judice, innate or acquired, against the force of rigid reason, combined with an overwhelming mass of clear, incontrovertible evidence, it would be found in the manner in which Protestant divines approach the study of Catholic history and theology. Whether the new awakening to the importance of these subjects proceeds from a Catholic instinct, that has been quickened from its dormant state by the interest attaching to modern controversies, or whether it is the result of that latitu- dinarian spirit which is so characteristic of Protes- tantism at present, it cannot be denied that the most ' Dublin Review, July, 1888. 165 166 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES thoughtful minds in the Protestant communion, rising above the petty and ephemeral works of local and transitory literatures, are concentrating reflection and research on the master-minds of the Church, and seek- ing with fear and hope to reconcile the doctrines found in their writings with the traditional beliefs which a thousand circumstances have made very dear to them- selves. This movement unquestionably argues three things: (1) a spirit of liberalism in religion, which is eminently praiseworthy, inasmuch as it seeks informa- tion on subjects which, in past years, the Protestant mind could not rest on without grave scruple ; ('2) an utter dissatisfaction with the semi-religious, pseudo- philosophical conjectures that have been deluging the book-market these past few years ; (3) a craving for some well-defined authority on vexed and perplexing questions, which no living voice, either in the Church of England or kindred communions, either affects or assumes to possess ; and which their members will not yet acknowledge to be the peculiar and divinely con- ferred prerogative, which belongs exclusively to the Catholic Church. It would be well if we could end here ; but alas ! we must attribute to these timid seekers after truth either a most profound ignorance of the sources whence might be derived a clear, com- prehensive view of the authors whose teachings they would reverence, or a disingenuousness in their studies, as if they dreaded the light that is thrown on the great authors by CathoHc commentators, and would seize eagerly on any authority, no matter how weak or ob- scure, that might lend the least sanction to their errors. This is especially true of the study of St. Augustine by Protestant divines. It is notorious that Canon Mozley, one of the ablest teachers of the Church of England in our century, has derived most of the opinions embodied in his work,^ which was criticised in this Eevieiv, March, 1856, from the condemned work of Jansenius ; ^ The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. Murray. 1865. RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 167 and although later writers, as we shall see, have ad- vanced by "leaps and bounds" from the Calvinistic interpretations of thirty years ago, they still remain in profound ignorance of the vast labours expended by Catholic theologians during fourteen centuries, to make plain the meaning of that wonderful saint and doctor, who, knowing but Httle of the Greek language, was en- dowed with more than Grecian keenness and subtlety ; and whose scrupulous precision about every word and phrase, which made him in his last years the unsparing censor of his own works, has yet not been able to save him from being coerced into the service of sects whose doctrines he would have anathematised. We shall hmit this article to a review of the Protes- tant works which have lately appeared on this subject ; and, after showing how closely they approach to the teachings of Catholic commentators, we will trace their divergence from Catholic traditions to causes which, on the supposition of good faith, can easily be removed. It is not necessary to dwell at all on Mr. Cunning- ham's Hulsean Lectures, as they have already been fully noticed in the Dublin Review, January, 1887, and other Catholic organs ; but, though he examines the Protestant tradition from a rationalistic point of view, we cannot regard his opinions otherwise than as a clear indication of advance towards a right appreciation of St. Augustine. He completely ignores Dr. Mozley, whose works, although written by a professed High Church- man, have been generally regarded as the text-books of the Calvinistic element in the Church of England ; and for this he, Mr. Cunningham, is severely taken to task by a writer, apparently of the Low Church School, in the Church Quarterly Bevieio, July, 1887. The little volume, issued from the pen of Mr. Cutts, and under the auspices of the Society for Promoting Chris- tian Knowledge, would be very admirable were it not for the two chapters which treat of doctrinal subjects under the headings "The Augustinian Theology" and " The Appeal to Kome ". The former is snuply a series 168 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES of quotations from Canon Mozley's work, The Augus- tinian Doctrine of Predestination. In one of the few sen- tences in which the author ventures on an original remark, he has included within the small compass of four lines as many doctrinal and historical errors as were ever compressed in so limited a space : — " The Augustinian theology," he says, " excited little attention in the Eastern Church, which continued to hold the traditional belief.^ In the Western Church, though never authoritatively sanctioned, it had a deep and widespread influence, and in the theology of the schoolmen, e.g., of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages. Calvin, with his logical and systematising French mind, revived it, with certain exaggerations, at the Eeformation." In Chapter XXL, page 201, he falls into a mistake similar to that already made by Milman, and refuted in the Dublin Bevieio of December, 1854 (pp.433, 434,435). Dean Milman had asserted that Pope Zosimus had made " a rash concession to Pelagianism," and that " he had annulled at one blow all the judgments of his predecessor, Innocent ". The reviewer proves that : — (1) Pope Innocent's condemnation of the doctrine taught by Pelagius and Celestius was final. (2) His personal sentence on themselves was made dependent on their contumacious maintenance of these doctrines. (3) That a full retractation of these doctrines was made on the part of both, conveyed in writing by Pelagius, and in his own person by Celestius, who repaired to Rome for this purpose. ' If Mr. Cutis would consult St. Augustine contra Julianum, lib. i., Nos. 6, 15, 16, 19, 22, 25, 30; lib. ii.. No. 7 ; lib. vi., No. 70, he would see that there was no difference of belief between the Eastern and Western Churches. Under No. 19 St. Augustine quotes sixteen Greek writers to show how fully he was in union, not only with the West, about which there could be no question, but with the East as well. This was quite conformable to his doctrine (Opus Imp., iv., 112) that the uniform teaching of the Fathers was final. RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 169 (4) Therefore, if Zosimus had absolved them, which, as we shall see, St. Augustine's words dis- prove. Pope Zosimus did merely what In- nocent had fully determined to do. We take up the controversy where the reviewer has left it, and give Mr. Cutts' own words : — " Zosimus, the Bishop of Kome, was won over to believe in the orthodoxy of Celestius, and after having held a Council, at which Celestius disavowed all doc- trines which the Roman See had condemned, he wrote a letter of reproof to the Africans, blaming them for listening too readily to charges against good men. The African prelates, assembled in synod at Carthage, as- serted their independence of Rome ; declared that their con- demnation of Celestius must stand till he had clearly retracted his errors ; and passed nine canons, which were afterwards generally accepted throughout the Church. . . . The civil power now intervened, probably at the solicitation of the Africans." It is quite clear that Mr. Cutts has not seen the cor- respondence that passed between Eome and Africa dur- ing the year March, 417-May, 418, for which period of time the controversy, at the request of the Africans, was left open. Neither has he read the very remark- able words of St. Augustine on this subject {contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum, No. 5 ; De peccato originali, Nos. 7, 8). We give the last reference in which St. Augustine commends the firmness and gentleness of the Pope : — " The venerable Pope, Zosimus, in possession of this declaration (of Celestius), treated with this man, who was puffed up with the pride of false doctrine, as with a madman, who, being gently soothed, might be calmed down ; but who was not as yet thought worthy to be absolved from the bonds of excommunication ". ^ ' " Hanc ejus prtelocutionem, venerabilLs Papa, Zosimus, tenens, egit, cum homino (|uem falstw doctrina; vontu.s intlaverat . . . atque ita velut phrencticus, ut requiescoret, tanquam leniter fotus — a vinculia tamori excuiamunicationi.s nondum eat creditus esse absolvendus." 170 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES These words prove that the Africans had no idea whatever that Zosimus had revoked the condemnation of his predecessor Innocent on Pelagins and Celestius. And certainly it was not at their dictation that he re- newed that condemnation. For during the whole year in which the question was left undecided, correspon- dence was passing from Kome, not only with Africa, but also with Jerusalem, Antioch, and the other churches of the East ; and in the Encyclical in which Zosimus pronounced the final condemnation of the heresiarchs, he quotes not only the African Synods, but also St. John Chrysostom, Paulinus, and others. More- over, that EnGyclical was issued j^^ior to the Council of Carthage, whose nine canons, Mr. Cutts thinks, gave the deathblow to Pelagianism ; for that Council did not commence its sittings until the 1st of May, 418 ; and the Rescript of Honorius (which was issued, not at the solicitation of the Africans, but in consequence of, and sub- sequent to, the Papal condemnation) is dated 30th April, 418. The words of Possidius are final on this subject : — " But these bishops (Innocent and Zosimus) of so great a See, having, each in his own time, pointed out those men, and having issued letters to the African Churches of the West, and to the Oriental Churches also, came to the conclusion that these (Pelagian here- tics) should be anathematised and avoided by all Catho- lics. And this judgment of the Catholic Church of God, having been heard and followed by the most pious emperor, Honorius, he ordained that by his own laws as well they should be condemned and regarded as here- tics." 1 This writer, also, ignoring all that has been written on ^"At illi tautfe sedis antistites (Innoceutius et Zosimus) suis diversis temporibus eosdem notantes, datis literLs et ad Africanas occidentis, et ad orientis parbis Ecclesias, eos (Pelagianos) anathe- maudos et devitandos ab omnibus Catholicis censuerunt. Et tale de illis Ecclesiie Dei Catholicfe prolatum judicium, etiam piissimus imperator Honorius, audieus et sequens, suis eos legibus damnatos inter hereticos haberi debere constituit " (Ch. XVLLI.). RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 171 the subject of the appeal of Apiarius to Pope Zosimiis, repeats the assertion : " That the affair of Apiarius gave occasion to a solemn reassertion of the independence of the African Church, and placed the great name of St. Augustine beside that of Cyprian, as the defender of the independence of individual churches against the usurpa- tions of the See of Eome ". In trying to prove this assertion, the writer falls into errors of date and of the sequence of events ; and he suppresses collateral cir- cumstances, which go far to show the obedience of the African Church to Eome, and the perfect union that existed between St. Augustine and the Koman See, as the following facts will show : — (1) At the Synod of Carthage, opened 1st of May, 418, a canon (the seventeenth) was enacted, forbidding jjriests or any of the inferior clergy from appealing to any tribunal beyond the sea. (2) St. Augustine went straight from this Synod, accompanied by Alipius and Possidius, to Csesarea, "whither necessity led us, arising from an ecclesiastical injunction from the venerable Pope, Zosi- mus, Bishop of the ApostoHc See ".^ (3) This same year, Apiarius, a priest of Sicca, suspended by his bishop, Urbanus, a disciple of St. Augustine, appealed to Eome, and was absolved by Zosimus. (4) This offended the African bishops, although their new canon was a proof (if instances were wanting, but they are not) that such appeals were usual in Africa. (5) On hearing this, Zosimus sent a legate, Faustinus, to Africa, and Aurelius summoned a Council of his province to meet the legate this same year, 418. (6) P'austinus set forth the claims of Eome to hear such appeals, citing the general canons of Nicaea, but relying principally on two of Sardica, which were quoted as of Nicrea, as Sardica was the complement of Nicaea. (7) Out of respect for Eome, the assem])Ied prelates wrote to Zosi- mus to say these canons sliould l)e observed, pending ' "Quonos, injuncta nol)is a venor;il)ili Papa, Zosiino, Apostolicse sedis epi.scopo, ecclosiastica necessitas tvaxovai" (Ep. JOO, No. 1, written in the same year). 172 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES an investigation into their authenticity. Meanwhile Zosimus died, '26th December, 418, and was succeeded by Boniface, who immediately wrote to the Africans through his legate, 26th April, 419. (8) On 25th May of the same year, a Synod of 217 bishops met at Carthage, and again an appeal was made by the legate to the same two canons. The first of these, not being found in the archives of Carthage, Alipius proposed that it be observed, pending further inquiry at Kome, Alexandria, etc. Faustinus objected to any inquiry in the East, as it might give rise to a suspicion that there was disunion amongst the Western Churches. The second canon was then read, and Augustine proposed that this, too, be observed, pending an inquiry ; the whole Synod approved of this. A Synodal letter communicated the proceed- ings of the Council to Pope Boniface, and also informed him that Urbanus had obeyed the injunction of Pope Zosimus regarding Apiarius. We have here, then, the acceptance of a Papal legate, the acceptance of the decrees of Nicaea and Sardica, the acceptance of the Papal decision by Urbanus, and two Synodal letters to Eome, informing the Pope of the proceedings of the Council. As a further proof that there was not a shadow of disunion between Eome and the African Church, we find Alipius at Rome towards the close of this year, lodged in the Pope's palace, treated most affectionately, and returning to Africa with two Pelagian letters, sent by the Pope to Augustine to be refuted. Augustine wrote the refutation in his Foiir Books to Boniface, in which he says: "I have addressed these books to your Holiness, not with a view to teach j^our Holiness anything, but to have them examined, and, if you should see fit, corrected ". Finally, in 424, a few bishops (fifteen), out of a province which contained 160, addressed an expostulation to the Pope against the action of Faustinus, who imprudently insisted on the restoration of Apiarius after a second suspension and a second appeal ; but this expostulation in no wise questioned the right of Eome to hear appeals — it was RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 173 couched in respectful language, and concluded with the words: "May the Lord God long protect the Pope, and may the Pope pray for the Africans ". The sub- sequent history of the African Church proves that the right of Eome remained unquestioned.^ Dr. Schaff's work affords a remarkable proof of the decline and almost utter disappearance of the Protestant tradition. He is silent on St. Augustine's teaching on the Church, the Sacraments, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, Miracles, Papal Supremacy, Vows, Fast and Abstinence, Lent, Confession, Confirmation, Exor- cisms, Traditions, and almost every distinctive doctrine of the Catholic Church. He is an Evangelical, and seems to have written with the fixed intention of con- veying to his readers the impression that St. Augustine was a co-religionist of his. He makes the singular admission that — " St. Augustine is responsible for many grievous errors of the Eoman Church ; he anticipated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and his ominous words, Roma locuta est, causa finita est, might almost be quoted in favour of the Vatican decree of Papal Infallibihty " (p. 98). Yet he is gently reminded by the Church Quarterly Beview (July, 1887, p. 260) that his projected edition of the Fathers " would look down upon him from their shelves with a certain reproach so long as he continued a member of a sect ". Nothing daunted, however, Dr. Schaff tacitly assumes that the Church is the aggregate of all Christian communities, and thus, like so many other teachers, as we shall see, he claims St. Augustine as a co-religionist, and ignores the custom that univer- sally obtained in St. Augustine's time of marking as heretics those who did not belong to the unity of the Church. Dr. Schaff proposes to bring out in America an Eng- lish edition of St. Augustine's works. We shall point ^ See Hefele's Councils, vol. ii. ; Hist. Study, pp. 193-267. 174 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES out a few inconsistencies in his estimate of St. Augus- tine's teachings later on. Might we ask him to translate afresh a passage which he has misinterpreted,^ and to correct this misstatement about the convent presided over by St. Augustine's sister ? — " On one occasion he (St. Augustine) assured his congregation that he could not easily find better, but had also nowhere found worse, people than in these cloisters " (p. 83). For St. Augustine did not refer to the nuns, but used the w^ords (Epist. 78, No. 9) in reference to a scandal which had taken place in his own house. And might we ask him further to re-examine the statement he makes in page 93 : " They (St. Augustine's Manichaean writings) defend the freedom of the will against fatal- ism ; afterwards he changed his opinion on that sub- ject ; " and his repetition of the statement in page 103, where he discusses the " Augustinian system " without coming to any definite conclusion ; for if there be any point in the saint's teaching better established than another, it is that he never changed his opinion on that particular point ? - The evidence, however, afforded by Mr. Spalding's work in support of our contention is the most valuable, inasmuch as the volume purports to be not a biography, but a critical examination of the writings and influence of St. Augustine. We may fairly presume, therefore, that the author has carefully digested the evidence which has led him to traverse and reject the Protestant ^ " Nam neque in iis precibus quas tibi fudimus, cum offerretur pro ea sacriticium pretii nostri, jam juxtasepulcrum posito cadavere, priusquam depoueretur, sicut illic fieri solet " (p. 73). "For, neither in those prayers which we poured forth unto thee, when the Sacrifice of our ransom was offered for her, when now the corpse was by the grave's side, as the manner there is, previous to its being laid therein," etc. The loose paraphrase of Dr. Schafi' runs thus: "After the corpse had been buried, and the holy Supper celebrated on the grave, according to the custom of the age," etc. - See Dublin Review, March, 1856. RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 175 tradition. He is of opinion that on all points, except that alone of Papal Supremacy, the Aiigustinian doc- trines are incorporated in the teaching of the Church. He is most candid in his interpretations of St. Augus- tine's very remarkable sayings on faith and authority, and the canons of Scriptural exegesis ; and is almost indignant at the attempted identification of St. Augus- tine's teaching with those of Luther and Calvin : — "Others again," he says, referring to the claims of the sectaries, both in the Church and in the dissenting bodies, "have a more or less mistaken conception of this great Saint and Father — they almost take away his individuality, and identify him in their minds with Luther or Calvin or Jansen ; while they think of his teaching as some dreadful notions of predestination, original sin and eternal punishment. Both these classes need to gain a knowledge of St. Augustine (p. 8) .... The modern world should never be suffered to forget that what is Lutheran or Calvinistic is not neces- sarily Augustinian (p. 103). ... In the reaction of our day from the mischief of so-called Calvinism, we may observe with trained vision both a recoil from a narrowing and base bondage, which God never appointed, and also a desire for a freedom, which is lawlessness and licence." And alluding to those who think it necessary to reject St. Augustine with Luther and Calvin, he says : — " Nor can we consider the rejection of his teaching anything less than perilous to the best interests of Chris- tianity " (p. 106). These admissions are so novel and important, that we can almost forgive Mr. Spalding for cherishing that pet assumption of the High Churchmen, that the Catholic Church is the aggregate of the Greek Church, the Anglican, and what they are pleased to call the Roman. We have seen how I)r. Schali" makes a similar claim to Catholicity, but is reminded by the ClmrGh Quarterly that he is a sectary ; and Mr. Spalding, as an Episcopalian, speaks of the " Church and the dissenting bodies around us" (p. 8), and again of "the historic 176 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES Church of Christ, and the outside world of sect and dissent " (p. 105). He apparently forgets that St. Augus- tine regarded the Donatist Ejjiscopal Church as a sect cut off from Catholic union ; and whilst he admits that St. Augustine always held the necessity of external organic union with the Church, and not a mere invisible and spiritual connection, and that he also taught the primacy of St. Peter, he seems to think that the saint regarded unity with Jerusalem and Carthage as indis- pensable as union with Eome (p. 44). Mr. Spalding gives two references in support of this contention, De Baptismo, ii., 2, and Con. Lit. Petil., ii., 118. The first makes no allusion whatever to the subject. The second runs as follows : — " But even if all Cathohcs throughout the entire world were such as you most foolishly represent, what has the Chair of the Koman Church done to you, in- which Peter sat, and Anastasius now sits ; or the See of Jerusalem, which James filled, and John now fills ; with whom we are linked in Catholic unity, and from whom you, in wicked fury, have separated yourselves ? Why do you call the Apostolic See a chair of pestilence ? If it be on account of the men whom you think preachers, and not doers of the law, did our Lord Jesus Christ, on account of the Pharisees of whom He said, ' they speak and do not,' offer any injury to the chair in which they sat ? . . . If you would consider these things, you would not, on account of the men whom you defame, blaspheme the Apostolic See, with which you do not communicate." ^ ' * ' Verumtamen, si omnes per totum orbem tales assent, quales vanissime criminaris. Cathedra tibi quid fecit Ecclesias Romanee, in qua Petrus sedit, et in qua hodie Anastasius sedet ; vel EcclesiiB Jerosolymitanse, in qua Jacobus sedit, et in qua hodie Joannes sedet ; quibus nos in Catholica unitate connectimur, et a quibus vos nefario furore separastis ? Quare appellas Cathedram pestil- entiiB Cathedram Apostolicam ? Si propter homines quos putas legem loqui et non facere, numquid Dominus noster Jesus Christus propter Pharisteos de quibus ait, dicunt enim, et non faciunt, Cathedrfe in qua sedebant ullam fecit injuriam ? . . . Hsbc, si cogitaretis, non propter homines quos infamatis, blasphemaretis Cathedrani Apostolicam, cui nou communicatis ? " RECENT WORKS ON ST. AQGUSTINE 177 This is an arg^cmentum ad hominem, addressed to the Donatists, the force of which will be seen when we mention that, like the sectaries of to-day, they ixiaintained that they were not cut off from Catholic unity, merely because they denied certain truths held by the universal Church ; and also objected that no sacrament could be validly administered, nor sacred dignity inherited, by an unworthy minister. They contended, therefore, that the Popes were traditors, and therefore not legitimate successors of Peter, since Pope Melchiades had admitted Csecihan to his communion. St. Augustine answered by asking them to name a single church in Christendom that would acknowledge the orthodoxy of their doctrines, or the justice of their revolt ; just as to-day we challenge English Ritaalists to show the validity of their position by an acknowledgment from the churches of France or Germany that they are in visible union with them. And against the second argument that the unworthiness of a minister invalidates the acts of his ministry, he quotes continually the text (Jer. xvii.), " cursed be the man that trusteth in man," and reminds the faithful that they must rely upon their pastors, not as "men but as minis- ters of Christ ". There is therefore in this passage no equalisation of the claims of Jerusalem and Rome as Apostolic Churches. To prove this fanciful theory, Mr. Spalding should show that St. Augustine proved the legi- timacy of bishops by a list of the Bishops of Jerusalem, similar to that which he gives of the Roman Pontiffs ; and should also prove that St. Augustine ever demanded union with a church not united to Rome, as a proof of its incorporation with the mystical body.^ We see, then, that in the latest Protestant writers, the venerated Protestant traditions have been reduced to two points — viz., that St. Augustine was anti-Papal, and that he did not hold the Catholic doctrine of free- will. Dr. Schaff practically abandons the first (p. 98) ; Mr. Spalding reduces the second to a mere doubt 1 Historical Study, pp. 126, 410. 12 178 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES (pp. 28, 29, 68); Mr. Cunningham asserts both, not, how- ever, in the dogmatic style of Milman and Mozley, but in a hesitating and rationaHstic fashion. Whilst, how- ever, we cannot but feel pleased at this wonderful change, it is impossible to close our eyes to the fact that in one and all of these books, and in the whole pile of literature which has issued from the Protestant press on this and cognate subjects, the same faults of style and spirit are equally discernible. We think we shall be doing a ser- vice to these writers, and, indeed, to Christian literature in general, when we state our reasons for considering these volumes superficial and uncritical. Protestant writers seem to regard St. Augustine's works as written without purpose or unity, a mere magazine of haphazard opinions, capriciously assumed, and quite as capriciously rejected, without the least consideration for consistency of thought, for preserving harmony v^th the teachings of the Universal Church, or for the consequences that might result to weak intellects from the facile accept- ance, and equally facile rejection, of most important articles of faith. From the storehouses of thought which the genius of these great teachers has accumulated, every succeeding generation is quite at liberty to select what- ever doctrinal opinions may suit the prevailing religious feehng ; for it is supposed that there is neither unity of purpose nor homogeneous thought in St. Augustine, and what is agreeable may be accepted, and what is un- pleasant may be rejected, without the loss of veneration for the august character of the saint, or for his marvel- lous intellectual powers, and without being committed to the rest of his philosophical or religious opinions, which may not suit present propensities or the temper of the times. This mode of action may be liberal, but it is not logical ; and it proceeds from the groundless assumption, which more than once St. Augustine indignantly repudi- ated, that the living Church of Christ is an invisible ab- stract body, consisting only of the just or the elect, without any external indications of its concrete visibility, without any "links of union in the bond of peace " amongst its RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 179 members, without a visible teacher to direct, or a visible authority to govern, and with no dogmatic definitions to test its Hving and united from its dead and dissevered members. It may be very well for Protestant students and divines, who apparently take but a literary interest in these matters, and who study the Fathers just to fill up a course of lectures or sermons, to exercise this elective privilege, and to use this mighty sun to light their tiny lamps of learning ; but it implies in our saint a facility for change, or a dulness of perception, or a fatal eclecticism in these questions of supreme moment, which we would much prefer to attribute to themselves. No one knew better than St. Augustine that there is no room in the Catholic Church for Socratic licence of dis- cussion, or for an Academia independent of her councils ; that the body of defined doctrine, the deposit of faith, committed by Christ to His Apostles, and left by them to the Church, can know no change or diminution ; that within the rigid lines of these doctrines there may be freedom and elasticity enough for controverted opinions and purely scholastic disquisitions ; but that no one from the beginning has tampered with its de- finite teachings and remained its member. His con- stant and nervous appeals to tradition and authority, his inflexibility in supporting the unity of the Church against schismatics, and his wonderful clear-sighted- ness, which, with a kind of natural infallibility, sepa- rated the true from the false both in persons and opinions, are sufficient proof of this. Yet writers such as we have quoted see no disrespect whatever to St. Augustine in imputing to him doctrines which they re- ject as narrow and reactionary ; and they ridicule, whilst they admit, his teaching on subjects so exclu- sively Catholic as the veneration of relics and the invo- cation of saints, and triumphantly deny his adhesion to articles of faith, the rejection of which, at any period of the Church's history, would have placed him at once outside her pale. They write of the " Augustinian system " as they write of Platonism or Zenoism, discuss 12 * 180 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES and debate it as a purely literary or philosophical ques- tion, reject what they consider untenable, and adopt whatever is concordant with their own views, without the least reflection of the awful bearings of such ques- tions on general Christianity, and the interests of im- mortal souls. Could anything be farther from the mind of St. Augustine than this ? With all his enthusiasm about the Church, his reverence for her august insti- tutions, his perfect repose in her simple and Divine doctrines after his subhme discontent with Platonism, his love for the distinctively Christian teachings, his "ominous" words about the authority of Rome, his tenderness, his mysticism, his ecstasies about God — is there not something irreverent in making him the mere precursor of a sect, in representing him as fallible and in- consistent because they make him independent of Church authority, ignoring and suppressing him on those points, where beyond all controversy he is at one with the Church, and ignobly lauding him whenever an ambiguous expres- sion in the hands of loose and illogical thinkers seems to place him in antagonism to her teachings ? The few examples already quoted will go far to prove this ; but these works abound with such conceits and irreverences. We have already cited Dr. Schaff's very candid admis- sions about the saint ; we now quote him with a dif- ferent purpose. In page 67 he writes : " The solemnity of the festival was still further heightened by two cir- cumstances — one connected with superstition and relic- worship, the other with the effect of hymns upon the heart". That is, St. Augustine was superstitious, and yielded to the "current belief of that credulous age" ; for Dr. Schaff gives the saint's own words in a note, from Conf., ix., 7, in which the saint plainly announces his belief (1) in a vision to St. Ambrose, by which (2) the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, martyrs, were dis- covered incorrupt, through which (3) the fury of a woman w^as repressed, demoniacs were healed, and sight restored to a blind man ; and to put it beyond doubt, St. Augustine refers to the miracle again {De Civ. Dei, K RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 181 xxii., 8), as having occurred in the presence of an immense multitude. Yet with this declaration from so great an authority, Dr. Schaff says sublimely : — " The subject of post-apostolic miracles is involved in inextricable difficulties. Augustine himself is not con- sistent on this matter." But see Schaff 's Church History. Again, in quoting the words of St. Monica (p. 71), Dr. Schaff in his text translates them : — " Once there was a reason why I should wish to live longer, that I might see you a believing Christian before I die ; [but he subjoins in a note] Or more strictly, after the original, Go7if., ix., 10, ' Christianum Catholicum,' a Catholic (or orthodox Christian), in distinction not merely from a Paganus, but also, and particularly, from a Christianus hereticus and schismatmis, which Augustine had been ". The translation in the text is not quite ingenuous ; but what will Dr. Schaff say to the ChurcJi Quarterly, which calls him a schismatic or heretic ? and what exactly made a sectary then, when noio, according to the most recent Protestant theory, the Church consists of the aggregate of those who call themselves by the name of Christ ? And again, whilst translating correctly the touching valediction of St. Monica : Tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei ubi fueritis ; ^ and immediately subjoins : — " This Thanksgiving and prayer for the dead can be traced in its innocent form as far back as the second century, and became the fruitful source of the doctrine of Purgatory. Neither Monica nor Augustine grasped the full meaning of St. Paul's assurance that ' it is very far better to be with Christ'." But *t is tiresome to follow out these presumptuous comments. Dr. Schaff is so exceedingly candid, that on every page we meet historical truths and contradictory '"This only I request, that you would icincmbor mc at the Altar of tht! Lord, wherever vou be." J 182 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES and gratuitous assumptions side by side — e.g., St. Augus- tine was vigorous and masterful, then superstitious and reactionary ; he was a thorough ascetic, yet opposed to the narrow bigotry of monks ; his system is not Cal- vinistic, but gave birth to the strongest thinkers amongst Jansenists, Huguenots, Calvinists, Puritan Covenanters, and Pilgrim Fathers ; he is responsible for many grievous errors in the Church of Rome, yet has also an Evan- gehcal Protestant significance ; he was so scrupulously exact and conscientious that he revised during his last years every line he wrote, but then he became illiberal ; he is the father of scholasticism and mysticism, but is free from the Pharisaical self-righteousness and bigotry which connect themselves so readily with monastic piety ; and Dr. Schaft" finally quotes Dr. Bindemann, " one of the best Protestant biographers of St. Augus- tine," as saying : " The first place amongst the Fathers is due to St. Augustine, and at the time of the Re- formers only a Luther was worthy to stand by his side. He forms the mightiest pillar of Roman Catholicism, and the leaders of the Reformation derived from his writings, next to the study of the Holy Scriptures, those principles which gave birth to a new era." And, as if to emphasise the importance of this testimony, Dr. Schaff gives a page of notes containing the most profane and scurrilous passages from Luther's writings against the Fathers, and very disparaging remarks about St. Augustine himself. And this is not a mere popular work, where loose and incorrect reasoning might be overlooked ; it is a work written for theological students and dedicated to them, and Dr. Schaff is Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. From this illogical and arbitrary treatment of so great a teacher as St. Augustine, it will be easily concluded that these writers' study of St. Augustine is unscientific in method and opposed to the best canons of criticism. The first fault proceeds from the shifting, unstable and ill-defined tenets of Protestantism ; the latter from the absence of scientific theological training in their colleges RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 183 and universities. It has been the fashion for modern hberals to decry and ridicule the old scholastic system of syllogistic reasoning, and the gradual process of thought from definition to proposition. The rejection of the Aristotelian logic, brought about by Bacon and Descartes, has admirably suited the development of those vague and unsubstantial systems which we are asked to accept in room of those religious and philoso- phical principles which have stood the most rigid tests of twenty centuries ; and its most fatal effect is discern- ible in the loose and unconnected habits of thought it has generated amongst men who have enjoyed a liberal education. Now the scholastic system cannot be set aside or neglected without grave detriment to habits of exact thought ; and even admitting that it sometimes gave rise to puerile subtleties and distinctions, it cannot be superseded, because absolutely there is no substitute for it. It is necessary in the study of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose system of reasoning is mathematically exact. It is still more necessary in the study of St. Augustine, who wrote when theological subjects were debated in intermittent controversies and had not yet been incorporated into a science. Victorinus, a con- temporary of St. Augustine's, traces the obscurity of writers to either of three causes : Vel rei macjnitudini, vel doctoris imperitire, vel audientis duritm} St. Augustine himself admits that some of the subjects he treated were involved in darkness and mystery. In that difficult question of Divine prescience and human free-will, where the Stoic philosophers had to fall back upon Fate, and Cicero denied the foreknowledge of God, the great Christian teacher recognised an apparent anti- nomy whore human reason might confess itself at fault. In his Epist. (214, No. 6) ad Valentinum he calls the question of efficacious grace dlfficillimam et panels iii- telligibilem ; and (cap. 47, de gratia Ghristi) ad dis- ' " The greatness of the subject, the inexperieuce of the teacher, or the indocility of the pupil." 184 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES cerncndum difficilem ; and in his fifth sermon, " De Verbis Apostoli," when he was preaching on grace, he said : Habeo propter obscuritateni rermn difficilem dls- putationcm. Yet non-Catholic writers, instead of ad- mitting this difiiculty and their own inexperience, attribute their imperfect knowledge, and sometimes very singular misconstructions, of St. Augustine's writings, to the traditional explanations of Protestant historians and commentators. They declare that he was so im- bued with Platonic modes of thought that he was essen- tially a Christian mystic and transcendentalist, to whom the ordinary language of men was quite inadequate to convey the lofty thoughts which filled his mind ; that if he had abandoned Platonism as a religion, he was yet unconsciously influenced by it ; that therefore there is mystery, and prefiguring, and foreshadowing every- where to his mind ; that even the simplicity of the Gospels concealed for him meanings which never could have occurred to an ordinary mind. Singularly enough, he is accused of excessive subtlety side by side with this idealism, and that he often attenuates his argu- ments by distinctions, until they become almost unin- telligible. This supposition applies to a very small portion of St. Augustine's writings, viz., the Confessions, the Sixth Book on Music, the work on the Trinity, portions of The City of God, and some homilies and enarrations. It does not apply at all to his contro- versial works, than which, in language and reasoning, nothing can be more clear to an experienced student. We have no hesitation in admitting of St. Augustine, as of all the early writers, that there are involu- tions in thought and term in his works, which can only be unravelled by scientific methods of criticism. With his wonderful enthusiasm, he was in the habit of throwing himself, heart and soul, into those contro- versies in which from time to time he was involved ; and in the heat of battle his terminology, which was clear enough to his contemporaries, but was not limited bv such scientific distinctions as were afterwards made RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 185 by the schoolmen, became enigmatic to those, in after times, who would not trouble themselves to discover his real thoughts by following the simple method of context and parallelism. Thus he drew a distinction between certainty and knowledge {De Utilitate Creel, xi. ; Retract., i., 14), saying of notorious facts, he was certain of them, but did not hioio them, meaning the knowledge of in- trinsic evidence, apart from the certitude that comes from human evidence or otherwise. Yet it is clear that this distinction might lead in after times to much mis- interpretation. Again (Enchir., cap. 30), he says : " By a bad use of free-will, man has lost himself and it". By free-will, he there means that of our first parents before the Fall — not that of fallen man. In fact, in his whole controversy with the Manichseans, he appears to have used the term indiscriminately of the freedom before and after the Fall, because he had to contend against their assumption that sin arose from a principle of evil and from natural necessity. He was also fond of using that mode of reasoning called the argumentum ad hominem, and his favourite method of instruction was that of his master, Plato, by dialogue. It will be easily understood how errors have been attributed to him in this form of argument, which he merely recapitulated in order to refute. And, finally, he spoke under the " Disciphne of the Secret," which prevented a full, com- prehensive statement of doctrines and practices, and the complete forgetfulness of which has misled Protestants in their attempts to reconcile the practices of their creeds with the customs of the early Church. There was no expression so familiar to the people of Hippo as that used by St. Augustine, "The faithful will under- stand ". We have stated those difficulties, to which Protestant writers never even advert, as the chief causes of the misinterpretation of the mind of St. Augustine. It is needless to say that they are never brought under the notice of the students of patristic literature in non- Catholic colleges, nor is there the least attempt at 186 EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES scientitic examination of Church authorities, whose writings, after all the changes of fourteen centuries, might be fairly presumed to be more involved and in- tricate in thought and language than the theological writings of to-day. Yet there can be nothing half so certain as that St. Augustine himself had no fear whatever of the absolute conformity of his writings to the general teaching of the Catholic Church. After a most scrupulous and searching examination, made two years before his death — so severe that he characterises as "declamation and levity" a simple statement^ in his Fourth Book of Confessions — in his controversial writ- ings against the Pelagians he found but two errors to be corrected : (1) that in lib. v., contra Jul, he gave as certain the name of a physician, which he afterwards discovered to be doubtful ; and (2) that in his work, De Natura et Gratia, following a quotation from Pelagius, he ascribed to Pope Sixtus a book that was edited by Sixtus the Philosopher. And with very clear insight into the future, he makes an almost pathetic appeal against being misunderstood : — " But let those who think that I am in error reflect again and again, lest perchance they themselves might be led astray. But I acknowledge God to be most merciful to me, inasmuch as I become not only better informed, but more accurate, through the services of those who read my works ; and this I always expect, especially through the Doctors of the Church, if my writings should reach their hands, and they should deign to consider what I have written." - On which very humble appeal Cardinal Baronius remarks: "The dignified modesty of St. Augustine, ^ " I said that our souls, being in some sort one, I feared per- haps to die myself." ^ "Qui vero errare me existimant, etiam atque etiara qure sunt dicta considerent, ne fortassis ipsi errent. Ego autem, cum per eos qui meos labores legunt, non solum doctior, verum etiam emeuda- tior fio, propitium mihi Deum agnosco, et hoc per Ecclesise doctores maxime expecto, si et in ipsoruin manus venit, dignenturque nosse quod scribo." RECENT WORKS ON ST. AUGUSTINE 187 and his humility of soul, combined with such admirable submission, show plainly, even if it could not otherwise be understood, that he wrote under the influence of the Divine Spirit ; since God Himself hath testified by His prophet, that on no other than on the humble, gentle, and trembling word, does the Divine influence descend ". Hence it is that we consider that the most valuable chapter in the only Catholic work ^ we can notice in this article, is that where the learned author lays down and exemplifies the rules of criticism which readers of St. Augustine ought to follow, and every one of which the Protestant writers we have mentioned have violated. After laying down the ordinary canons of judging by parallelism and context as internal rules of interpreta- tion, and contemporary circumstances and history as external rules, and having shown by two glaring in- stances the bad faith of Calvin and Gibbon, the author proceeds to the application : — " Suppose we wish to ascertain what was St. Augus- tine's doctrine or opinion on some point, how are we to proceed ? If the subject was controverted in his time, and he was engaged in the controversy, we must ob- viously turn to his controversial writings. If he had no controversy, but wrote a special work on the subject, we must, of course, read that work. If the subject be one of the great fundamental truths, such as the end of man, etc., or, again, some vice to be denounced, or some virtue to be encouraged, we must turn to his conferences and sermons. If we want to know his explanation of some text of Scripture, we must consult his Scripture Com- mentaries. So far there is little need of rule or compass. . . . But if our subject be one that was neither con- troverted in his time, nor specially treated in his works, we must only consult his occasional references to it in his books, sermons, or letters. It is chiefly here that ' A71 Historical Study. Dul>liii : Gill & Son. This little work has been commended as an excellcint l)i(>