The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870

by Various

THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER.

TRANSLATED FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES, HISTORIQUES ET LITTERAIRES.

While visiting, two or three months since, the Vatican Basilica, it seemed to me there was a certain correspondence, a kind of harmony, between this monument and the great event of which it is soon to be the theatre. Since that time new observations have strengthened this first impression; then reminiscences of a different kind, the perusal of various works, unfortunately too limited in numbers, and especially a more attentive examination of St. Peter's, have had the effect of defining more clearly what at first was only a vague and confused perception.

Before my pilgrimage to Rome, I was so fortunate as to visit one of the cities which had for a long time been the objects of my most ardent curiosity. I refer to the humble Tyrolean city where, more than three hundred years ago, was held the last and most glorious of the general councils. The city of Trent presents nothing extraordinary to the eye of the traveller except, perhaps, a kind of trident of mountains which gives it its name, and which forms around it a group of natural fortifications truly grand. Certain monuments, among others the cathedral of a Roman style, and somewhat interesting, appeared to merit some attention. But that which attracts and interests the Catholic heart in the most lively degree is the church where the holy Œcumenical Council held its immortal sessions. It bears the name of St. Mary Major, the same as the great Roman basilica so generally known and venerated. In truth, this renowned title is hardly appropriate, if the dimensions of the edifice and its architectural merits alone are considered. In these respects it more nearly resembles our modest Parisian church of Notre Dame des Victoires. This comparison, without being wholly just, may yet give a good idea of the sanctuary rendered illustrious by the Council of Trent.

As to the local traditions respecting this august assembly, a sojourn far too short prevented me from collecting them as fully as I could have wished. According to the information of a respectable priest with whom I conversed a short time, a great revival of faith, the effects of which are still visible, took place in the city on the third commemorative centenary in the month of June, 1863. This same ecclesiastic likewise informed me that the memory of our great Laynez has always been dear to the popular memory, and that the greatest eulogium that can be passed upon a man who devotes himself to works of charity is to compare him to that indefatigable apostle. Probably his learned discourses are nearly forgotten even in the places where they were delivered; his preaching is only remembered because of his deeds, a new proof, among so many others, in support of the divine word, "Wisdom passeth away, ... but charity shall never pass away."

Not far from the entrance of Santa Maria Maggiore is a monument, erected in 1855 for the first anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It bears a statue of her "who has destroyed all heresies throughout the world," and for whom the fathers of the Council of Trent formally stipulated an exception in the decrees respecting the doctrine of original sin. I noticed in the interior of the church a painting representing one of the reunions of the council, and especially the crucifix which stood on a table in the centre of the nave and presided, so to speak, at those solemn assemblies. This crucifix may now be seen above one of the side altars. It is regarded with extreme veneration by the faithful. I will not attempt to depict my emotion in celebrating the holy mysteries before this sacred image with the same chalice the cardinal legate had used, which was kindly loaned me by the venerable chaplain. You can easily imagine that the place, the circumstances, and those precious relics, without mentioning my own inclinations, imposed it on me as a duty to offer up the holy sacrifice for the success of the approaching council.

On the whole, the city of Trent and the sanctuary of the council do not fully correspond with the solemn grandeur of the event which took place therein. It is unnecessary to say that this kind of contrast does not shock in the least a mind at all familiar with objects connected with the faith. This want of correspondence is frequently to be noticed even in a more striking degree. The least supernatural eye soon forgets the whole edifice and these material objects only to behold the great Christian wonders once wrought within so small a space. We say to ourselves, with profound emotion, that this is the cenacle of modern times—a real cenacle, in truth, where the light of the Holy Ghost was diffused more abundantly than had ever taken place since the day of Pentecost.

Without any great effort of the imagination I could see a figure of the religious renovation produced by the holy Council of Trent in circumstances, wholly accidental, that occurred at the time of my journey. It was during the latter part of the month of October. On the way from Botzen the country had been ravaged by an inundation of the Adige. Everywhere was a scene of desolation sad to behold. The following morning, on the contrary, just as we were starting for Italy, a glorious sun rose over the city of Trent. The bold summits that surround it were crowned with such lights as are only seen in mountainous countries. Clouds of magic brilliancy hung here and there over the deep gorges and on the heights, the fields had resumed their joyous and smiling aspect, even the traces of the inundation were less sad to behold, and our eyes could linger with a pleasure almost without alloy on the magnificence of nature.

The council of the nineteenth century, for which preparations are now being made at Rome and throughout the civilized world, cannot be less fruitful than that of the sixteenth in the regeneration and salvation of souls. The gravest reasons on every hand appear to justify this hope, and perhaps it is allowable to find a significant sign of it in the happy choice of the place where this great court of Catholicity is to be held. At all events, the basilica of St. Peter is certainly the most suitable theatre in the whole world in which to assemble an œcumenical council. Every thing about it is marvellously adapted to this purpose; every thing seems to reveal a preconceived harmony that divine Providence is so often pleased to manifest in the accomplishment of his august designs. In speaking thus, I only express differently, if I am not mistaken, the idea of Sixtus III. in the fifth century. This pontiff, having convoked in the ancient basilica of St. Peter a certain number of bishops, wrote to Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, to announce this synod, and, among other things, wrote these remarkable words: "Ad beatum Petrum Apostolum universa fraternitas convenit. Ecce auditorium congruens auditoribus, conveniens audiendis."[72] "The whole brotherhood meets at the tomb of blessed Peter the Apostle. Behold a place befitting both the hearers and the things to be heard."

It cannot be doubted that this suitability, so well understood by Sixtus III., also occurred to Pius IX., when he designated the tomb of St. Peter as the rendezvous of his brethren in the episcopate. It seems to me desirable that an inscription in a conspicuous place should bear the fine expression of Sixtus III. Its meaning and adaptation with regard to the approaching council would be more strikingly apparent than they could have been at the particular synod of the fifth century.

Let us now enter this august temple and regard with admiration, as we pass, the colossal portico and the vast nave, whose length and height cannot at once be taken in by the unaccustomed eye. Almost at the extremity of the nave, at the right, is the bronze statue of St. Peter, which for more than fourteen centuries has received the homage of pilgrims. Let us not forget to prostrate ourselves after their example, and press our trembling lips to the feet of the apostle, literally worn by the pious kisses of so many generations. A few steps further on, and we stand before the Confession, that is, the glorious sepulchre of the first vicar of Jesus Christ, around which a hundred lights do not cease to burn night and day. After kneeling for a few moments, not without being penetrated by a powerful but sweet emotion which stirs the soul to its very depth, let us rise and look first at the superb baldaquin of gilded bronze which rises to the height of eighty-six feet over the grand altar and the tomb of St. Peter. Above bends over us "the Pantheon raised in the air" by the genius of Michael Angelo—the incomparable dome, measuring one hundred and thirty feet in diameter, and four hundred and twenty-six feet in height on the outside.

If, from this central point of the basilica, we look to the right, we see the northern transept extending more than one hundred and sixty feet from the Confession. The altar at the end is consecrated to the Saints Processus and Martinian—two Roman soldiers, at first jailers of the apostle St. Peter, and then his disciples, baptized by his own hand. "From that time," says the Abbé Gerbet, "the remembrance of these two saints has constantly clung to that of St. Peter, their master and their friend, as the shadow follows the body." Martyred the same year as he, they were buried near the Aurelian way, not far from the Vatican. The antique statue of St. Peter, now venerated in the basilica, was formerly in a monastery connected with the cemetery where these two martyrs reposed. It was afterward placed in the oratory which Pascal I. had erected in their honor in the ancient Vatican basilica, whither he had their relics transported. The ashes of these two jailers of St. Peter always in a manner gravitated around him, until, placed here at his side, they have become for ever his acolytes in this magnificent crypt, as they were his guardians in the dark dungeons of the capitol.[73]

Another glory is in reserve for Saints Processus and Martinian. Before their altar and in the spacious chapel which is dedicated to them are to be held the solemn sessions of the council. Let us hope with firm assurance that these faithful guardians of the first pope, and his immortal acolytes, will keep invisible guard around his successor, and around the bishops, his brethren, when they are reunited in this sanctuary to continue the work of the great Fisher of Souls.

Returning from the altar of Saints Processus and Martinian, before resuming our place by the Confession, let us notice at the left, at the end of the Gregorian chapel, the tomb of Gregory XVI. and the marble statue with his hands raised to bless. Connected with him many interesting thoughts came into my mind. He is the last of the popes who joined the church triumphant. His tomb and that of St. Peter, so near each other, bring before us the two extremities of the great chain of apostolical succession which extends back from our own age to the first Christian era. The intermediate links are known to us all through the authentic records of history, and they are represented here almost entire under our eyes. Look first at the tombs and statues of the greater number of popes since the commencement of the sixteenth century. It is sufficient to name a few of them. There is the funereal monument of Pius VI. at the foot of the staircase leading to the Confession. He merited this post of honor, as has been justly remarked, because he was "the first pope who died from the martyrdom of exile and captivity after the construction of the new basilica." Two other pontiffs, Benedict XIV. and Clement XIII., are entombed close by the transversal nave where the council is to be held. They will be there on each side of the august assembly—the double personification of clerical learning and pontifical firmness. The throne of Pius IX. will almost touch the tomb of Clement XIII. A little further on, in the southern nave, is the monument of one of the greatest pontiffs of the seventeenth century—that of Innocent XI., the firm antagonist of Louis XIV. At the end of the choir, or apsis, the sixteenth century is represented by Paul III. His tomb is at the right of the symbolic chair of St. Peter, which is supported by the four great doctors. He also was worthy of this privileged spot; for his name is indissolubly connected with what have been called "two of the greatest providential events of modern times," (and I can say that the expression is certainly true of the first of these:) he convoked the Council of Trent, and was the first to give his approval to the formation of the Society of Jesus. Among the tombs of the pontiffs of the fifteenth century we select at hazard those of Sixtus IV., Nicholas V., and Eugenius IV., all three rendered illustrious by the great events of their pontificates. The ashes of the two last are in the subterranean church of the Vatican. Only six or seven tombs represent the preceding ages in the upper church. They are those of St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, Sts. Leo II., III., IV., and IX. The crypts spread before us a much longer list. Conspicuous therein is Boniface VIII., the pontiff who declared the first jubilee of the fourteenth century; and then, going back into the preceding ages, Alexander III.; Calixtus II.; Urban II., the first organizer of the Crusades; St. Nicholas I., one of the men who merited by the most brilliant claims the title of great; Adrian I., the friend of Charlemagne, and celebrated by him in that immortal elegy so worthy of the great pope and of the great emperor, and still to be read in the portico of St. Peter's; St. Agatho, made glorious by the sixth œcumenical council, held at Constantinople; Honorius I., the beautiful inscription on whose tomb so eloquently avenges undeserved calumny; St. Boniface IV., who consecrated the Pantheon; and then a great number of other glorious pontiffs, till we come to St. Simplicius, the second successor of St. Leo the Great. Dating from the latter, there is an interruption of more than two centuries in the pontifical sepulchres of the Vatican. The popes of this time repose in the catacombs, particularly in that of St. Calixtus. But until the year 202 all the others, with the exception of St. Clement I. and of St. Alexander I. in going back from St. Victor to St. Linus, the immediate successor of St. Peter, have been deposited near the Prince of the Apostles in the place where St. Anacletus, even in the first century, constructed "the memorial of the blessed Peter called the Confession," according to the expression of an ancient inscription on the walls of this sacred crypt. When a portion of the pavement was removed in order to construct the monument of Pius VI., the bones of the first successors of the apostle were exposed. Their faces were found turned toward his tomb.

Altogether, the Vatican basilica and its crypts contain the tombs of about one hundred and forty popes. Let us not fail to remark that almost all the others are in the catacombs, or the neighboring churches; only a small number of popes have been buried out of Rome. We have then here, without going out of St. Peter's, the greater part of that dynasty which is the most ancient and the most glorious in the history of the world. I refer to the privilege it possesses—and it alone—of tracing a succession, uninterrupted and of incontestable legitimacy, back to him whom Jesus Christ established as head and foundation of the universal church. Some slight shadows, I know, seem to hover here and there over certain links in this descent of eighteen hundred years, but this cannot disturb an unprejudiced mind for a moment. The glory of the whole line diffuses too powerful and subduing a light for that! Where is the rival church that can show in its history, in its monuments, its temples, and even in its tombs, a succession, a connection, an antiquity, and a proof of catholicity, worthy, I will not say of equalling, but of being compared with this? Christian tradition, the liturgy, the frequent language of schismatical churches themselves, are agreed in giving the pope the name of Apostolic. This name, as well as that of Catholic, of which St. Augustine boasted with such good reason against the Donatists, would alone be a strong title in favor of Rome. At all events, it is the unique and incommunicable privilege of the Roman Church to have been built upon the foundation of the apostles—super fundamentum apostolorum. And this expression of St. Paul, which has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed, is verified at Rome with a fulness of evidence truly wonderful. It has, in truth, pleased Divine Providence to consecrate this church in the eyes of all with the special characteristic of apostolicity, to collect within its walls, if not the entire bodies of all the apostles of Jesus Christ, at least considerable portions of their relics. A part of the bones of St. Paul repose fraternally beside those of St. Peter in the Vatican, and, as if to attest more strongly the brotherhood of these two founders of Christian Rome, a part of the body of St. Peter has been transported to the basilica of St. Paul beyond the walls, and their skulls are placed together at St. John Lateran; both thus taking possession of the three great basilicas of Rome. The bodies of Sts. Simon and Jude are also at the Vatican. Those of St. James the Minor and St. Philip are in the Church of the Holy Apostles, that of St. Matthias at St. Mary Major, and that of St. Bartholomew in the basilica that bears his name. Different churches at Rome possess important relics of other members of the apostolic college, as well as of St. Mark and St. Luke. One apostle delayed longer than the rest joining this rendezvous of the glorious dead, and yet it was only proper, it would seem, that he should be near Simon Peter, for it was his brother in the flesh, his elder brother. But this vacancy was at last filled up by the agency of Him who directs all human events. Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, Thomas Paleologus, King of Peloponnesus, fearing that the head of St. Andrew, preserved until that time in Achaia, would fall into the hands of the Turks, wished to preserve it by confiding it to the Roman Church. At this news great was the joy of the magnanimous pontiff whose name, destined to cast such brilliancy over succeeding ages, was just becoming renowned. Pius II., in order to receive this precious relic, had a procession and ceremonies of extraordinary solemnity, an enthusiastic description of which has been handed down to us in the annals of that time. The sacred head, which the Saviour of the world "had more than once, without doubt, touched with his hands and with his divine lips," (these are the words of Pius II., in an admirable discourse on this occasion,) was placed not far from the tomb of St. Peter, where it remained till a sacrilegious hand dared to carry it away from its sanctuary for a time. But, as is known, Pius IX. had the joy of finding it some days after with the seals intact, and henceforth the homage of the faithful will not cease to offer reparation for the outrage committed.[74] To increase devotion toward St. Andrew, a unique privilege, which had its origin in the delicate inspirations of Christian sentiment, has long been granted to him; the colossal statue of the brother of the Prince of the Apostles stands before the altar of the Confession, and on a level with the three great statues which recall the precious relics of the Saviour's Passion.

Thus, it is evident, the apostolic college is in a manner assembled in the city of Rome. "The legend, according to which all the apostles assembled together to witness the last moments of the Blessed Virgin, has in a manner been verified as to their mortal remains around the tomb of St. Peter. The first council of Jerusalem seems to be held here permanently."[75]

This idea appears to me to give an admirably beautiful significance to one of the most solemn prayers of the liturgy which is chanted at the mass of the apostles and especially on the festivals of Sts. Peter and Paul. Imagine that we hear resounding the voice of Pius IX., of a compass and harmony equal to the basilica itself, which it fills with its powerful undulations. Listen to this prayer which he addresses the eternal Shepherd: Gregem tuum, Pastor æterne, non deseras, sed per beatos apostolos tuos continua protectione custodias; ut iisdem rectoribus gubernetur quos operis tui vicarios eidem contulisti præesse pastores. "Desert not, O eternal Shepherd, thy flock, but through the blessed apostles grant it thy unceasing protection; that it may be governed by those rulers whom thou hast appointed to continue thy work and to be the pastors of thy people." Does it not seem that the truly providential presence of the sacred relics of all the apostles at Rome is like a continual reply of Jesus Christ to the supplication of his high-priest? Or raise your eyes toward the radiant dome, as Pius IX. often loves to do while he is chanting, and while the sursum corda of his soul is manifested by his looks, do you not behold the mosaics gleaming there on high like celestial apparitions? See the eternal Shepherd who does not cease to watch over his flock, and around him his blessed apostles, his vicars on earth, who now from the highest heavens continue to protect and govern the lambs and sheep of the divine fold.

I have not yet had the great Christian joy of assisting at the festival of St. Peter in the basilica itself; but on another occasion I experienced in the same place, leaning against the balustrade of the Confession, a joy almost comparable. It was on Palm-Sunday, when the choristers of the Sistine chapel made the arches resound with the grand and solemn affirmations of the Catholic Credo. I shall never forget the quiver that passed through my frame when I heard resounding these simple words as they were taken up one after another: et unam—sanctam—Catholicam—et apostolicam—ecclesiam ... "and one—holy—Catholic—and apostolic—church." Then my eyes were irresistibly attracted toward the dome, and through the light which at that moment flooded it I had a sight of the glorious figures with which it is adorned, and which appeared to me like a reflection of the church triumphant in the heavens. Then I recalled the gorgeous procession I had just seen pass through the grand nave of the basilica—Pius IX. borne on his Sedia Gestatoria, and before him the imposing cortége of cardinals, bishops, and prelates, all bearing in their hands the triumphal palms—and it seemed to me that this immense inclosure expanded to a still larger size, or rather, its walls vanished and gave place to the church universal dispersed in the four quarters of the globe, but all bound to the tomb of St. Peter, in perpetual communion with him, receiving from him by a constant influence its divine characteristics of unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity, living by his faith and his love, ruled and governed by his authority, and always spiritually present where he is to be found, according to the words of St. Ambrose, the truth of which I had never comprehended so fully, Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia! "Where Peter is, there is the church."

But let us leave these retrospective ideas and evocations, and rather endeavor to discover in the basilica of St. Peter the visible signs of unity, sanctity, and catholicity, as well as of apostolicity, the authentic marks of which we have just noticed.

And first, let us read around the dome these words in colossal letters on a golden ground of mosaic, Tu es Petrus; et super hanc petram ædificabo ecclesiam mea; et tibi dabo claves regni cœlorum. "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." And a little lower on the frieze, above the two pillars of the choir, these words recently placed on a similar ground, Hinc una fides mundo refulget, "Hence one faith shines upon the world;" to correspond with which these other words are hereafter to be engraved above the opposite pillars, Hinc sacerdotii unitas exoritur, "Hence the unity of the priesthood arises." There is a symbolic commentary on this last inscription in the urn placed on the tomb of St. Peter. It contains the palliums which the pope sends to the metropolitans. They are kept in this place to signify that that is the origin and source of all jurisdiction and all ecclesiastical authority. This urn and these inscriptions are sufficient to make us understand the whole mystery of Catholic unity. This unity, indeed, is comprehended in the decisive words which established Peter as the foundation of the church and confided to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Peter thus became the true representative of Jesus Christ and the personification, so to speak, of the divine authority. And he himself in his turn transmitted this plenitude of power to the Roman pontiff, his successor, his inheritor, his universal legatee, thus living again, as it were, in his successor, investing him with his authority, and communicating to him by a continued operation the full and entire power of feeding, directing, and governing the universal church, according to the dogmatic definition of the Council of Florence. From this centre of power the apostolic authority extends through all ranks of the hierarchy, and by a wonderful ubiquity is diffused without being weakened to the lowest grades of the Catholic priesthood. Patriarchs, primates, metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops throughout the world are all armed with the plenitude of this authority; all derive from this source their jurisdiction and the legitimate exercise of their rights; all, as they love to acknowledge, govern their own churches "by the grace of God and of the apostolic see." And this is why throughout the church there is the same government, the same doctrine, the same administration of the sacraments and divine worship. There is but one rule of government; for, as Bossuet (who was always incomparable when the whole truth illumined his soul) has somewhere said, "There is such a sympathy in all parts of the body of the church, that what each bishop does according to the rule and spirit of Catholic unity, the whole church, the entire episcopate and the chief bishop, does with him." There is the same doctrine; for the Roman see teaches all others, and these again all the faithful, or, to express it better, the different grades of teachers (it is still Bossuet who speaks) "have only one doctrine, by reason of the necessary connection they have with the chair which Peter and his successors have always occupied."[76] Finally, the administration of the sacraments and the divine worship are the same; for the central authority of Peter intervenes in some manner in all the sacramental functions, whether to render them legitimate, or, as is seen in the ministry of the confessional, to make them efficacious and valid; and besides, it is only in communion with Peter that God accepts the offering of the divine sacrifice as well as all other acts of worship and prayer.

The perfect unity that reigns in the hierarchy and the government of the church engenders a not less perfect unity in the entire body of the faithful. Indeed, all the members of the church are reunited and bound together by means of the central authority of Peter, always present in the pope, and, through him, in all the representatives of the episcopal hierarchy. All the faithful recognize this peculiar authority as that of Jesus Christ. It is by submission and obedience to it that they rise when fallen. It is by faith in this authority and its depositaries of every degree that they receive the teachings of the true faith. It is to this they have recourse in order to be admitted to the participation of the sacraments and all the treasures of the church. And thus all, whoever they may be, remain attached to this authority by the intelligence that affirms the same truth, the will that observes the same law, and the heart that draws from the same sources of life; a unity of faith, of obedience, and of the sacraments—a triple unity realized by Jesus Christ and his vicar, to whom all hearts, all inclinations, and all minds adhere as luminous rays to their centre and source. It is true that this adhesion has not among all the same strength and efficacy; sometimes it is purely exterior, and yet it exists in a certain manner till the rupture is consummated either by excommunication or by manifest schism and heresy. But, thanks be to God, the number of the faithful is always immense in whom this union is full and entire. And they accomplish thereby a mystery of unity still more close and wonderful than that which we have just considered. It is given to the authority of Peter, who visibly unites the faithful, to bind them also together invisibly by the ineffable tie of the communion of saints—the crown and full consummation of unity. But no; the vicar of Christ has yet another privilege by virtue of the power that he has received of binding and loosing in heaven as well as on earth—he opens the entrance to the eternal mansions. The souls submissive till the end to his authority, and ruled by the power of his attraction, rise and mount to become living stones in the harmonious construction of the celestial temple:

Fabri polita malleo,
Hanc saxa molem construunt,
Aptisque juncta nexibus,
Locantur in fastigio.

"This vast edifice, even to the pediment, is composed of stones polished by the mallet of the workman and skilfully joined together."

It is thus that the gigantic edifice of the Vatican dome, after taking root around the tomb of the apostles, springs up from the soil on its four enormous supports, binding them together by the key-stone of its vast arches, and then, gathering itself together, rises more and more resplendent, more and more transfigured, till, at the moment of uniting all its ascending lines, it half opens to form a sublime sanctuary around the Ancient of Days, whose form beams forth from its very top.

It is grand to assist in the basilica of St. Peter at one of these solemnities which are like splendid foreshadowings of the future state of souls in their glorious union with God. Behold around the choir the inscriptions engraved on marble. They recall the dearest and most solemn festival that has yet been celebrated in our age—the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. That day witnessed under these arches the triumph of Catholic unity, as well as the triumph of the Virgin conceived without sin. The accounts of ocular witnesses, still remembered by all, have made us familiar with that great manifestation of the cor unum and the anima una, of the "one heart" and "one soul," when, at a word from Pius IX., the act of faith, full, absolute, and unanimous, burst forth in loving tones from the hearts of the two hundred prelates and bishops, and the multitudes of priests reunited in this basilica, then resounded with one accord from the souls of forty or fifty thousand of the faithful likewise assembled in the same church, and was prolonged in repeated echoes from the lips of the two hundred millions of Catholics scattered throughout the world. Since that time two or three manifestations almost as glorious have been made in this basilica, and in all cases the great episcopal hierarchy, represented by a vast deputation, have inclined before the word of their august chief, believing what he believes, approving what he approves, and condemning what he condemns; and in all cases also the universal voice of true Catholics, whether present at Rome bodily or only in spirit and in heart, has risen to hail with one acclamation the infallible decisions of the successor of Peter.

But how can we forget the last festival, so sweetly and deliciously touching, which has just been celebrated in this grand basilica? That also was a brilliant manifestation and triumph of unity; of that unity the sweetest and most beautiful of all others—that of brethren of the great Catholic family around their father and their pope, to celebrate with him the golden wedding of his old age so long and painfully tried, but ever courageous and serene, and always blessed by God. There were mingled people of all ages, of every condition, and, morally speaking, of every race and nation on the globe. And these representatives of all nations, divided among themselves not less by distance than by their interests, prejudices, and hereditary enmities, and perhaps—who knows?—on the point of renewing old fratricidal struggles, drawn in against their will by the calculations of human policy—they were all there, drawn together and united by mutual love for their common father! And doubtless there was among them another source of division. I refer to divergence of opinions—opinions more or less correct, more or less at variance with the truth. There are always such in the bosom of Catholic unity. But admire the strength of this unity, remaining still intact in the midst of these elements of discord. We know that every assent given to mere opinions is necessarily conditional in this sense—that every Catholic worthy of the name is always ready to yield them to the teachings of revealed truth. Adhesion to the faith, on the contrary, is absolute, without condition or reserve, and moreover, this adhesion extends not only to the truths that the church requires us directly and expressly to believe, but also to the whole order of truths contained in the depository of revelation. What takes place, then, when the soul of the believer finds himself clinging to an erroneous opinion? That which happens in the physical order when two forces are in opposition to one another—the more feeble is absorbed by the overruling force. By virtue of the same law of moral dynamics, faith, which is an absolute affirmation, neutralizes and absorbs an erroneous opinion, which is only a conditional affirmation; in other terms, the latter is disavowed—retracted by the very fact that he makes a genuine act of faith. And this is how, among Catholics, the unity of the faith bursts forth and triumphs even in the midst of the causes that would seem to destroy, or at least to modify, it.

You will not expect me to describe this sacerdotal festival in detail. It was at once solemn and grand, as well as simple, popular, and affecting. Besides, other accounts have made you as familiar with all this as it is possible to be with what is indescribable. I will only select from the wonderful whole one thing which perhaps escaped general attention. It was at the moment when the grandest Te Deum I ever heard was resounding beneath the arches of the basilica like the voice of the great deep. When this verse of the Ambrosian hymn was being chanted, Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur ecclesia!—"The holy church acknowledges thee throughout the whole earth"—Pius IX. raised his hands to his eyes as if to collect his thoughts. It was as if his mind wandered off from one hemisphere to the other—to every region where there is a Catholic church—and saw the entire world communing in thought with him, praying with him, and with him rendering glory and thanksgiving to God. And indeed, as you know, at that same hour, millions of souls scattered over the globe were united in a general concert of prayer in order to join themselves more completely to him who was more than ever the great Chief of Prayer, as the savages of the new world sublimely style the vicar of Jesus Christ.

I can boldly declare that in no time, no place, did any man, any king and father of a nation, any pontiff, perhaps any saint, have such an ovation, such a manifestation of universal love; and I say further that this was not merely a triumph, but a miracle of supernatural union in the church—a miracle doubtless presaging still greater to come.

I have said that this jubilee of Pius IX. drew representatives from the whole Catholic world to Rome. The city of unity was on that day also the city of Catholicity par excellence. This last characteristic, however, Rome does not manifest only on extraordinary occasions, but permanently by its physical and moral position. "If a nation possessed a cathedral surrounded by a portico to which each province had furnished an arcade or column which bore its name, this monument would be a harmonious emblem of the diversity to be found in the unity of this people. There is something analogous to this in the Christian world." In the shadow of the great basilica of the popes most nations have their church, their festivals, and their national tombs. Each one finds some sacred monument bearing on the history of his country. Every one breathes here, in the atmosphere of religion, his native air. National establishments, reunited in the same city by political or commercial interests, represent concord less than division. Counting-rooms are rivals, altars are brethren. This is one cause of the sentiment that almost every one experiences who lives for some time in Rome, far from his native country. "Nowhere does one feel so much at home as in this city."[77] If one comes from a remote province of Lower Brittany or from the extremities of Ireland, from the depths of Ethiopia, the Indies, or the two Americas, he finds everywhere sanctuaries, tombs, institutions, offerings ex-voto, and indeed all kinds of mementoes that recall the far-off country. The prelacy, the priesthood, and the religious orders have representatives from all countries. The army itself has a cosmopolitan character. You see there, under the noble garb of the Zouave, the dark skin of the African beside the white face of the Dutchman or Canadian. Whoever you may be, you are sure not to be wholly isolated or unknown. Soon a familiar accent or an unforeseen accident will reveal a compatriot or a friend. It is impossible to forget your country; it becomes dearer to you than ever. You appreciate it perhaps more fully, but the narrowness of your former attachment is destroyed by contact with the broad spirit of Catholicity which penetrates you.

He who has the leisure to examine certain statistics will find at Rome evidences of Catholicity even in examining the list of travellers, or the missives of the mails, or even the catalogues of gifts sent to the holy father, and especially that of the offerings he recently received for the jubilee of his priesthood. All this and many other things constantly verify a proverb now misinterpreted, and too trivial to be quoted, but which the ancients expressed very nobly, "All roads lead to Rome." There is this difference—the roads leading to the Rome of Sts. Peter and Paul are far more extended than those of the Rome of Romulus and Remus. What one only accomplished by force of arms, the other has effected by the universality of evangelical preaching.

Without leaving the Vatican basilica we can discover, on all sides, authentic proofs of this universality. On the day of solemn functions, when the pope celebrates the holy sacrifice, a Greek deacon officiates beside a Latin deacon, and chants the Gospel in the language of St. Luke. A Greek archbishop also assists at it as well as one of the Armenian Church. The Syriac Church has also its ministers at the holy see. The presence of these bishops and these priests of different rites is not a mere spectacle unsustained by reality. They are representatives of churches scattered throughout the East.[78] We have many other reflections to make on this subject, but they must be reserved, with a thousand things, till a future time. See now, on the tablet that perpetuates the remembrance of the formal decision respecting the Immaculate Conception, the names of the bishops who were present. The titles of a great number of their churches would be vainly sought for in the ancient diptychs. They assert the presence of the Catholic hierarchy in regions unknown to the fathers of Nice or even of Trent. See, further on, the confessionals ranged around the southern transept; the inscriptions they bear notify you that there are penitentiaries and confessors who speak all the principal languages of Europe, including that of Greece. Behold also a bas-relief, peculiarly significant, under the statue of Gregory XVI. It is symbolical of the most glorious event of his reign—the institution of the work of the propagation of the faith. At the feet of the pontiff are the types of almost all races, who render him their tributes of veneration and gratitude. There is another idea under this symbol: it shows that the see of Peter is the source of the apostolic missions, the centre of a power which is expansive and subjugating, and the focus of that divine light which seeks to be diffused throughout the entire heart of humanity.

It is in truth from Rome that the great evangelizers of nations have set out. To mention here only a few, and not the most ancient, Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, wished, as is said in his Acts, "to repair to the see founded on a rock. He wished to comprehend more fully the canonical laws of the holy Roman Church, and obtain for his mission and his labors the strength derived from the apostolic authority." He came then to the tomb of the holy apostles, and set out again with the benediction of Pope St. Celestin I., as at a later date the monk Augustin departed, sent by St. Gregory I. to evangelize England. Another pope of the same name, St. Gregory II., had the glory of conferring his blessing on the monk Wilfrid, the great apostle of Germany. He summoned him to his presence in the church of St. Peter, and consecrated him bishop after having changed his name to Boniface. After his consecration, he placed in the Confession of St. Peter a writing that ended with these words:

"I, Boniface, an unworthy bishop, have written with my own hand this paper containing my oath of fidelity, and, in placing it on the sacred body of St. Peter, I promise to keep this vow before God, who is my witness and my judge."...

St. Corbinian, who was also one of the first preachers of Christianity in Germany; St. Amandus, who preached on the shores of the Garonne, the Escaut, and the Danube, and St. Kilian, who evangelized Franconia, came likewise to prostrate themselves at the Confession of St. Peter, whence set forth in other times Paul, Formosus, Donatus, Leo, and Marinus, sent by Pope Nicholas I. among the Bulgarians; Egidius, Bishop of Tusculum, sent to Poland by Pope John XIII.; and Willibald, Prochorius, etc., who received an apostolic mission to Vandalia.[79] Let us also mention St. Anscharius, who was sent by Gregory IV. as legate to the Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, and all the northern nations. Two other apostles who evangelized a great race, now, alas! almost entirely given over to schism, kindled their missionary ardor at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. After having commenced their apostolic labors among the Sclaves, St. Cyril and St. Methodius came to Rome to receive episcopal consecration, and celebrated here the first mass in the Sclavonic language.[80] Then, their second evangelical expedition being terminated, they both returned to Rome. One of them, Cyril, died here, and his tomb, placed beside that of Pope St. Clement, remains as a perpetual memorial of his attachment to the centre of unity and of Catholicity.

It would take too long to mention here the names of all the other apostles who set forth from Rome before or after the most illustrious of all—St. Francis Xavier. We will only remark that the numerous pupils that the Roman ecclesiastical seminaries have sent on a mission never fail to kindle their zeal at the Confession of the Prince of the Apostles.

One of these seminaries requires special notice, because it is in itself a proof of Catholicity and of the principle which engenders a Catholic spirit. I wish you could have been present, as I was, at the festival that the Propaganda celebrated on the Sunday in the octave of the Epiphany. You would have heard speak or chant in their own languages Greeks, Syrians, and I know not how many from other nations—even a negro from Senegambia, who was not applauded the least, for, though his wolof was understood by hardly any one, his powerful and pathetic voice made an extraordinary impression on the whole audience. A composition in verse, recited some years ago at one of these exhibitions, sets forth in a happy manner the peculiar character of this house. Here is an extract from it which you will not read without pleasure:

"Toute diversité vient ici se confondre;
Le Chinois parle au Turc surpris de lui répondre,
Gambier par l'Indoustan se laisse interroger,
Le nègre ouvre l'oreille aux doux chants de la Grèce,
Et dans ce chœur de voix, qui s'aggrandit sans cesse,
Dieu prépare une place au Bédouin d'Alger.

Rome! c'est dans ton sein que leur accord s'opère!
Dans ce chaos de mots qui divise la terre,
L'harmonie apparît des qu'on prie avec toi;
Ton hymne universel est le concert des âmes,
Le Dieu de l'unité, que seule tu proclames,
En nos accents divers entend la même foi.

Sur tout rivage ou peut aborder une voile,
Tes apôtres s'en vont, guidés par ton étoile,
Des peoples renouer l'antique parenté;
La vérité refait ce qu'a détruit le crime,
Et Rome, de Babel antipode sublime,
Du genre humain épars reconstruit l'unité."

All races are here mingled. The Chinaman converses with the surprised Turk, and Gambia is questioned by Hindostan. The negro listens to the sweet chants of Greece, and in this choir of voices, constantly increasing, Providence has prepared a place for the Bedouin of Algiers.

Rome, it is in thy bosom that this union is effected! In the confusion of tongues which divides the nations, harmony is restored by union with thee. All souls join in thy universal hymn. The God of unity, whom thou alone proclaimest, hears the same accent of faith in our different languages.

Thy apostles, guided by thy star, go forth to every shore where a vessel can land, to bind all nations to their venerable head. Truth repairs the devastations of sin, and Rome, sublime antipode of Babel, restores the unity of the scattered human race.

These verses quoted by the Abbé Gerbet, and which he had, I think, composed himself for that occasion, express with a rare felicity this unique character of Christian Rome, which is the harmonious fusion of Catholicity with unity. Besides, are not these two prerogatives one and the same thing under two different aspects? For what is Catholicity but a unity which expands and is diffusive? And what is unity but Catholicity drawn to its centre?

The name of Holy City, now synonymous with that of Rome, implies another characteristic, not less brilliant, not less peculiar of the church which is one and universal. The Vatican basilica—for it is this we are particularly studying—seems to have been constructed and arranged expressly to prove that the church is the mother of the saints. Remember, first, that this temple has been for a long time the only sanctuary used at the great festivals of beatification and canonization. It is useless to recall the ceremonies of this kind that have recently been celebrated here with so much solemnity; but what is not useless to remark is, that the public honors conferred on these heroes of sanctity have always been preceded by examinations so minute and scrupulously careful that the most distrustful critic could not, without the loss of human confidence, resist the light of evidence. Look up above the arches of the grand nave. There, on a level with the acanthus leaves of the pilasters, are the colossal representations and personifications of the Christian virtues, mingling like the flora of heaven with the vegetation of earth. Are there only mere symbols there? Look a little lower down, and you will discover something else. Ranged around the nave from the choir and the transepts to the porticoes are the statues of the founders of the religious orders, beginning with the patriarch St. Benedict and ending with St. Vincent de Paul and St. Theresa; and under the form of these great leaders, the eye of thought beholds an innumerable number of holy souls—monks or religious—who, following their footsteps, have acquired the palm of sanctity. This brilliant array of saints around the basilica does not end at the threshold of the temple. Go for a moment into the grand portico, and you will see the chain continued and prolonged on the immense colonnade of the square. There is a whole nation of martyrs, pontiffs, confessors, and virgins, ranged like a procession before the Saviour and his apostles, whose images look down from the façade of the basilica. And entering anew into the nave, you will find on the pillars of the three first balustrades at the right and left, the medallions of the first popes, almost all martyrs; and this is not a complete list of those who are honored as saints. There are more than eighty here who bear this title; and how many more are also worthy of being numbered with them! For, in spite of some stains that calumny has vainly magnified, the successors of Peter have brilliantly justified the title of Holy See conferred on the Roman chair, and have left in history the most luminous train in the annals of sanctity. You see also the fine mosaics on the projecting arches of the small domes—they are the doctors and the fathers of the church; and among them you will find these grand oriental figures: St. Flavian, St. Germanus of Constantinople, and St. John Damascene. Beneath the altars of the lateral chapels you will discover the bodies of these other incomparable glories of the ancient oriental church: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, and St. John Chrysostom. The whole church is in a manner paved with the tombs of the saints.[81] Do not forget that this is the place where Nero, the greatest of persecutors, had the Christians of Rome burned as torches before his atrocious eyes. Add to all these venerable relics, the numberless others that St. Peter's possesses in its treasury, without mentioning a second time the ashes of the holy apostles, and your faith will behold a thousand times more beauty and brilliancy in the august remains that adorn this grand basilica than in one of its great illuminations, though the finest in the world.

And what would we find if we could examine all the other sanctuaries of Rome and its immense cemeteries? The catacombs alone have furnished for the veneration of the faithful an incalculable number of bones of martyrs, and the richness of these mines, so fruitful in sanctity, has not yet been exhausted. Different circumstances have contributed to bring together at Rome relics from the entire Christian world. The most humble oratories and chapels display such treasures without number. "One would say that from almost every region where the gospel has been preached—from the mountains of Armenia to the forests of America, from the shores of England to the caves of Japan—the most of those who were martyrs by the shedding of their blood, or martyrs of charity, have been desirous that some part of themselves should join this great council of catacombs. The ancient Christians sometimes designated the cemeteries of the martyrs by the name of councils." A list has been drawn up of the countries and cities which were the birthplace, the residence, or the tombs of the saints whose relics are at Rome. This geographical selection is in a manner a funereal atlas of the Christian world.... What constellations of tombs are here! An antiquary has happily said they form the subterranean heaven of Rome.... If you connect in imagination with the different parts of this reliquary of the universe the virtues that each specially represents, and which altogether afford the least imperfect likeness of the God-man, you will see in the midst of this campo santo of the Christian world the most sublime image of the Saviour that can be found on earth; for it is not produced by colors, or composed of pieces of marble, but of the members of those who lived the life of Jesus Christ—a kind of mosaic doubly sacred by reason of what it represents and the materials of which it is composed, in which each part contributes to reproduce more grandly the image with which it is itself stamped. Every Christian era has contributed to this work, and Rome is the sepulchre where this mysterious form will repose till the last day.[82]...

This is not all. Relics much more sacred than those of the saints are also reunited in this great metropolis. Pious pilgrims may venerate considerable fragments of the wood of the manger and of the true cross, as well as the inscription in three languages that Pilate attached to it. They can climb the staircase of the pretorium which the Saviour must have ascended and descended several times, and on which may be still seen traces of his blood. Finally, (for I cannot tell all,) from the tribune of the Vatican basilica there is exposed, on certain solemn occasions, the holy face imprinted on the veil of Veronica, a part of the true cross, and the lance that pierced the heart of Jesus after his death. What was most precious at Jerusalem providence has transferred to Rome, to show that it is henceforth a new Jerusalem—the holy city and the treasury of the merits of Jesus Christ.

This accumulation of relics and sacred memorials gives to Rome a peculiar power of profoundly moving every Christian heart. It is well known that it is particularly in thus holy city that are wrought the wonders of divine grace—the most extraordinary conversions. When one has a soul reasonable and noble enough to rise above prejudice and common views, when one is capable of tasting the gift of God, it is impossible not to feel the sweet influence of this atmosphere all impregnated with supernatural odors. All the religious monuments, all the sanctuaries, every atom of dust, so to speak, of this soil impregnated with the blood of martyrs, cause in the worthy heart, an emotion more penetrating and powerful than any other on earth. And whatever frivolity or hatred—too often agreed—may say, these impressions are not weakened by observing the Roman people in general, or the majority of the pilgrims to the Holy City, or its adopted children; on the contrary, the sight of the crowds kneeling on the pavements of the churches or proceeding with grave thoughtfulness to the stations and religious festivals, has its share in affecting the very fibres of each Christian heart. All this I know does not move those who quench the light, according to the expression of Holy Writ: these can, if they choose, repeat the insolent proverb, Roma veduta, fede perduta—"To see Rome is to lose your faith;" and, after all, they are right; for when the eyes are diseased, nothing blinds them more easily than the rays of the sun.

Is there any need of adding that in this respect the Roman Church defies all comparison with schismatical or Protestant churches, wherever they may be? I confine myself to one question: where is the city in England, Germany, or Russia that, after attracting to it the noblest and most sincere souls in the world, imposes on them the irresistible desire of abjuring the religion of their fathers, as illustrious Protestants have often done at Rome? This strange phenomenon, this power of converting, peculiar to Rome, and to Rome alone, suffices to prove to those who can reason from cause to effect that the Roman Church is truly a holy and sanctifying church, as it is a church indivisible, catholic, and apostolic—unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesiam.

All these privileges, these characteristic signs of the true church are found, as we have seen, in the basilica of St. Peter. It is more than certain that no premeditated intention has produced this lapidary and monumental synthesis. All has been brought about in a spontaneous manner—effected only by a sense of the truth here set forth, and whose inspirations have been followed. The Vatican basilica has become an immense book, which shows on every leaf the authentic proofs and characteristics assigned by Christian antiquity as the means of recognizing the true institution founded by Jesus Christ.

It seems to me there is no need of prolonging these observations to show the correspondence I mentioned at first, between this basilica and the solemn reunion which is soon to take place under its arches.

When the Council of the Vatican holds there its grand sessions, the very stones of the edifice will cry aloud, lapides clamabunt, to attest that the church is indivisible—one in its faith, its government, its sacraments and worship, and united in all these by the unity of its priesthood to its central authority. The stones of the basilica will proclaim by their inscriptions, their statues, and all the sacred mementoes of which they are the witnesses and depositories, that this is the church alone Catholic, the only origin and source of Catholicity; alone holy, the only mother of the saints, and the only source of sanctity. They will unite their voice to that of the monuments and tombs in declaring that this is the church alone apostolic—the only inheritor of the see and privileges of Peter, and, consequently, the only foundation of all other churches.

The Vatican basilica possesses a particular memorial which I have not yet mentioned, and which is a material proof of the legitimate succession of Peter in the Roman Church. It is the chair once used by the Prince of the Apostles. This incomparable relic was exposed to the veneration of the faithful at the eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter. Since that day it has been religiously enclosed in the walls of the basilica; but if it is no longer visible to the eye, there is, at the end of the apsis, a symbolical representation which eloquently expresses the same idea. It is the apostolic chair supported by the four great doctors of the East and West, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom. In conferring on them the glory of supporting the chair of Peter the genius of art has only expressed the constant language of their deeds and their writings, condensed in an expression of St. Augustine, "The primacy of the apostolic see has always been confined to the Church of Rome." A similar testimony in favor of the Roman primacy has been given by other doctors and founders of churches whose forms adorn the basilica, or whose bodies repose under its altars. They all proclaim the rights of the apostolic see in union with St. Jerome, "It is on this rock that the church was founded; whoever eats of the lamb out of this house is defiled." They all proclaim with St. Irenæus that "all churches ought to rally around that of Rome on account of its preponderating preëminence," as the smaller domes of the basilica surround the great dome to render homage to its royal dignity, propter potiorem principalitatem. Finally, the same testimony is rendered to the supremacy of St. Peter's chair by the immense "council of catacombs," by all the saints whose relics repose in this campo santo, this "holy field" of the Christian world. Their remains are the glory of the Roman communion in which they professed to live and die, and, all dead as they are, they speak and prophesy that this church will be till the end the true tabernacle of God with man.

Thus, when Pius IX. takes his seat to preside at the august council, he will be surrounded by all the proofs that assert the plenitude of his apostolic authority—the testimony of the martyrs and holy confessors, of the doctors and founders of churches, of the popes his predecessors and all the traditions they represent; finally, the testimony of Jesus Christ himself, whose words the Vatican basilica expresses in various ways: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.... And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.... Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs." Surrounded by so many proofs of his power, of which no other place in the world can give a recapitulation more solemnly eloquent, the successor of Peter can here claim, with more reason than anywhere else, the prerogatives of the Prince of the Apostles; he can apply to himself the words graven on the pedestal of the bronze statue of St. Peter, "Behold in my person the Divine Word, the rock beautifully wrought with gold, upon which I now stand immovable."

The bishops also will find in the basilica more monuments than in any other place in the world that attest the divine right they have received to govern the church with the successor of St. Peter, and under his supreme authority. The expressive statues of Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Flavian, and Germanus of Constantinople, the bodies of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Chrysostom will be there to proclaim the glory, the privileges, and the inalienable rights of the episcopacy. But especially the united relics of the apostolic college of whom the bishops are collectively the successors, the constant presence of this "council of Jerusalem" will be a proof that it belongs to them to judge in all matters of faith and discipline, and to appropriate the august formula, "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us"—Visum est Spiritui Sancto et nobis.

The Son of God himself will give to the council of the Vatican very special pledges of his protection and love. I have already mentioned the precious relics of the Passion, the imprint of the divine face, his cross which redeemed the world, and the lance that brought forth blood and water from his heart—symbols of baptism and all the treasures of grace. The Catholic faith has the assurance of the divine assistance promised to œcumenical councils. It cannot receive from the presence of these venerable objects any substantial augmentation; but they may produce a sensible excitation, and will be a very special pledge of reasonable hope; and besides, if it is true that certain privileged places have the power of profoundly moving the soul, how can it be denied that this virtue evidently belongs to the basilica of St. Peter? Yes, it is right that the greatest event of our age should take place in this temple—the largest in the world—under these arches which astonish us the more the longer we regard them, because they give us an ever new sensation of immensity and majesty. It is right that the representatives of the universal church should be face to face with the immortal monuments of apostolicity, unity, catholicity, and sanctity; in presence of these tombs of the sovereign pontiffs and great bishops; in contact, so to speak, with the corner-stone on which whoever falls shall be broken. It is right that in looking down into the glorious tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul they should behold the very origin of Christianity; and this at a time when there is a question of the renovation and modification of Christian society. Finally, it is right that, in laboring upon this superhuman work, they should have before them the eloquent examples of their glorious predecessors in the same work, and likewise the visible signs and authentic proofs of the assistance, protection, and blessing of Heaven. All these mementoes and holy objects will inspire the fathers of the council with a more profound sentiment of the greatness of their task and a deeper consciousness of their strength; and when they behold on the dome the representation of the Father of light, from whom cometh every perfect gift, that of the eternal Shepherd surrounded by his apostles and the Queen of saints, and that of the Spirit of truth hovering over the tomb of St. Peter and over his symbolic chair, they will feel more fully that they are not vain representations; they will hear and comprehend with a more profound and intense emotion the words of the divine promises, Behold I am with you.... As the Father hath sent me, so have I sent you.... I will send you the Paraclete, who shall teach you all truth.... He who heareth you heareth me: he who despiseth you despiseth me. He who believeth shall be saved: he who believeth not shall be condemned.

I have endeavored to present some of the reflections suggested by the Vatican basilica by reason of the coming council. From the same point of view we might find many other perspectives not less interesting, by taking new positions near the tombs of the holy apostles.

For the present, however, it is time to close. Let us leave these sacred walls after having kissed anew the revered foot of Peter. In traversing the great square, let us read the celebrated inscription graven by Sixtus V. on the obelisk, and which, it is to be hoped, will have, by means of the council, its entire verification, Christus vincit—Christus regnat—Christus imperat. Christus ab omni malo plebem suam defendat. "Christ overcomes—Christ reigns—Christ rules. May Christ defend his people from every evil."

And now, before separating, let us ascend for a moment one of the hills of Rome to contemplate this great basilica from a distance, at the hour preferred by visitors, when the sun is about to set behind the dome. Here listen to the lines of a poet whose name is dear to us by so many titles:

"Dall' altezza del Pincio contemplando
Il disceso all' occaso Astro primiero,
Ammiravam siccome egli, toccando
La divina Basilica di Piero,
Arricchisca di luce i suoi tesori
E con celeste amor si fermi a cingerla
Di rubini, zaffiri et fulgid' ori;
Io quindi ammutolia.
Ma intesi una più fervida, più pia
Alma esclamar: 'Son quelle
Le due dell' universo opre più belle
Onde materia sublimata adornisi:
Dio per l'uom quella Lampa in ciel ponea,
Al suo Signor l'uomo quel tempio ergea.'"

"Contemplating afar from Pincio's height
The monarch orb slow sinking in the west,
Enrapt we stood to see him touch the shrine
Of Peter, the Basilica divine—
Enriching all its treasures with his light:
And how his love its grandeur did invest
With robe of rubies, sapphires, and bright gold.
And I withal grew voiceless at the sight;
But one, a soul of purer beat than mine,
Made utterance at my side, 'In these behold
Two works, of all which matter can unfold
Of ornament, creation's loveliest.
God set for man that lamp in yonder sky:
Man to his Lord this temple raised on high.'"

Yes, Silvio Pellico is right: there are before us two of the finest creations in the universe. The light that God has suspended in the firmament to shine on man, and this temple that man has erected to honor his God. But if the divine basilica of Peter appears so beautiful and radiant when the sun surrounds it with an aureola of rubies and sapphires, what will it be when the look of faith, which discovers things invisible, sees it surrounded by the rays, a thousand times more brilliant, of divine and incorruptible truth? Such, nevertheless, will be the spectacle Catholic souls will enjoy when is accomplished what the bishops in a celebrated address have styled the great work of light—grande opus illuminationis.

Rome, April 19, 1869.

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BEECHER'S NORWOOD.[83]

[Our delay in noticing this book by a distinguished author till the reading public have probably forgotten it, has been purely unintentional. We placed it, soon after its publication, in the hands of one of our collaborateurs, a genuine New Englander by birth, education, and association, to prepare a notice or a review of it, as he might judge proper. He read it, no inconsiderable feat, but was taken very ill, and lay for many months with faint hopes of recovery. During his illness and for some time after his recovery the book was forgotten. He now, at this late day, sends us his judgment, and we hasten to pay our respects to the author, and our debt to the publishers.—Ed. Cath. World.]

The Beecher family is certainly a remarkably gifted family, though we think the father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was the best of them all. Yet his two daughters, Miss Catharine Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, are women of rare abilities, and have made their mark on the times and sad havoc with New England theology. Dr. Edward Beecher has written several notable books, among which may be mentioned The Papal Conspiracy and the Conflict of the Ages, which prove him almost equally hostile to Rome and to Geneva. Henry Ward Beecher is the most distinguished of the sons, and probably ranks as the most popular, certainly the most striking, pulpit orator in the country. But none of the family are remarkable for purity of taste, refined culture, or classical grace and polish as writers. They would seem to owe their success partly to their audacity, but principally to a certain rough vigor and energy of character, and to their sympathy with the popular tendencies of their country. They rarely take, never knowingly take, the unpopular side of a question, or attempt to stem the current of popular opinion. They are of the world, and the world loves them. They never disturb its conscience by condemning its moral ideal, or calling upon it to strive after a higher and purer ideal. They have in an eminent degree the genius of commonplace. There are in Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Ministers Wooing passages of rare force and vigor, but they are not very original, nor very recondite. The Beecher genius is not lyrical or dramatic, but essentially militant and prosaic. It can display itself only against an antagonist, and an antagonist at least about to fall under the ban of public opinion. They have some imitative ability, but little creative power, and rarely present us with a living character. We remember only two living characters in all Mrs. Stowe's writings, Dred and the Widow Scudder; and we are not certain that these are not copies of originals.

The author of Norwood is less of an artist than his sister, Mrs. Stowe, and under the relation of art his novel is below criticism. It contains many just observations on various topics, but by no means original or profound; it seizes some few of the traits of New England village life; but its characters, with the exception of Judge Bacon, Agate Bissell, and Hiram Beers, are the abstractions or impersonations of the author's theories. The author has little dramatic power, and not much wit or humor. The persons or personages of his book are only so many points in the argument which he is carrying on against Calvinistic orthodoxy for pure naturalism. The substance of his volume seems to be made up of the fag-ends of his sermons and lectures. He preaches and lectures all through it, and rather prosily into the bargain. His Dr. Wentworth is a bore, and his daughter Rose, the heroine of the story, is a species of bluestocking, and neither lovely nor lovable. As a type of the New England cultivated and accomplished lady she is a failure, and is hardly up to the level of the New England school-ma'am. The sensational incidents of the story are old and worn out, and the speculations on love indicate very little depth of feeling or knowledge of life, or of the human heart. The author proceeds on a theory, and so far shows his New England birth and breeding, but he seldom touches reality.

As a picture of New England village life it is singularly unfortunate, and still more so as a picture of village life in the valley of the Connecticut, some twenty miles above Springfield, in Massachusetts, where the scene is laid, and where the tone and manners of society in a village of five thousand inhabitants, the number Norwood is said to contain, hardly differ in refinement and polish from the tone and manners of the better classes in Boston and its vicinity. There are no better families, better educated, better bred, more intellectual in the State, than are to be found in no stinted numbers in the towns of the Connecticut valley, the garden of Massachusetts. The book is full of anachronisms. The peculiar New England traits given existed to a certain extent, in our boyhood, in back settlements or towns not lying near any of the great thoroughfares; but they have very generally disappeared through the influence of education, the railroads, which run in all directions through the State, and the almost constant intercourse with the society of the capital.

The turnpikes did much to destroy the rustic manners and language of the population of the interior villages, and the railroads have completed what they left undone. Save in a few localities, there is no longer a rustic population in Massachusetts, and very little distinction between the countryman and the citizen. In small country villages you may find Hiram Beers still, but Tommy Taft, Polly Marble, and Agate Bissell are of a past generation, and even in the past belonged to Connecticut rather than to the Old Bay State. Strangers suppose the people of the several New England States have all the same characteristics, and are cut out and made up after the same pattern; but in reality, except in the valley of the Connecticut, where there is a blending of the characteristics of the adjoining States, the differences between the people of one State and those of another are so strongly marked that a careful observer can easily tell, on seeing a stranger, to which of the six New England States he belongs, without hearing him speak a word, and not unfrequently the section of his State from which he comes. There is no mistaking a Berkshire countryman for a Cape Codder, or a Vermonter for a true son of the Old Bay State, or a Rhode Islander. The gait, the air, the manners, the physiognomy even, tell at once the man's native State. The Vermonter is the Kentuckian of the East, as the Georgian is the Yankee of the South, and we have found no two cities in the Union, and there are few east of the Rocky Mountains that we have not visited, where the citizens of the one have so many points of resemblance with those of the other, as Boston, the metropolis of New England, and Charleston, the real capital of South Carolina. Accidental differences of course there are, but the type of character is the same, and the purest and best American type we have met with. And we are very disinterested in our judgment, for we are natives of neither city nor State. In both we have the true English type with its proper American modifications. No two cities stood firmer, shoulder to shoulder, during the American war of independence, "the times that tried men's souls," than Boston and Charleston. They became opposed not till, under the lead of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania and Kentucky politicians, Congress had fastened on the country the so-called American system, which struck a severe blow at the commerce of New England, and compelled its capitalists to seek investment for their capital in manufactures. It is a little singular that New England, which up to 1842 had voted against every protective tariff that had been adopted, should have the credit or discredit of originating and securing the adoption of the protective system. The ablest speech ever made against the system in Congress was made in 1824 by Mr. Webster, then a member of the House of Representatives from Boston. We express no opinion on the question between free-trade and so-called protection; we only say that Pennsylvania and Kentucky, not the New England States, are chiefly responsible for the protective system; the very remote cause, at least, of the late terrible civil war between the North and South, in which, if the victory was for the Union, the South are likely to be the gainers in the long run, and the North the losers.

But we are wandering. Mr. Beecher speaks truly of the diversity and originality of individual character in New England, which you discover when you have once broken through the thin crust of conventionalism; but he seems not to have observed equally the marked differences of character between the people of the several States. The wit of a Massachusetts man is classical and refined; of the Connecticut man sly, and not incapable of being coarse; of the Vermonter it is broad farce, and nobody better than he can keep a company of good fellows in a roar till morning. The Bay State man has a strong attachment to tradition and to old manners and customs, and his innovating tendency is superinduced, and is as repugnant to his nature as Protestantism is to the perfervidum ingenium Scottorum. He is naturally a conservative, as the Scotch are, if we may so speak, naturally Catholic; and it was only a terrible wrench of the Scottish nature that induced the loyal Scots to adopt the Reformation. The Connecticut man excels the Bay State man in ingenuity, in inventive genius, in doing much with little; is less conservative by nature, and more enterprising and adventurous, and in his exterior conduct more under the influence of public opinion. Each is proud of his State, and the Connecticut man especially, who has acquired wealth elsewhere, is fond of returning to his early home to display it; but attachment to the soil is not very strong in either, and neither will make heavy sacrifices for simple love of country. The Bay State man is more influenced by his principles, his convictions, like the South Carolinian, and the Connecticut man more by his interests.

The Vermonter has no conservative tendency by nature; he cares not the snap of his finger for what his father believed or did; is personally independent, generally free from snobbishness, no slave to public opinion, and for the most part has the courage of his convictions; but he loves his State, loves her green hills and fertile valleys, and when abroad holds a fellow-Vermonter dear as his brother. A Georgian and a Connecticut man are fighting in Georgia; the Connecticut man looking on will wish his countryman to get the better of his Georgian opponent, but will not interpose till he has inquired into the cause of the dispute, and ascertained on which side is the law. A Georgian and a Vermonter are fighting under the same circumstances; the Vermonter comes up, looks, knocks the Georgian down, rescues his countryman, and investigates the cause and the law afterward. The Vermonter pays no attention to the personal responsibility he may incur; the Connecticut man tries to keep always clear of the law; and if he makes up his mind to do a great wrong to some one, he takes care to do it under cover of law, so that no hold can be got of him. The Bay State man is much the same; and the Connecticut man has less of patriotism than the Vermonter. We speak of what was the case in our own youth and early manhood; yet the character of the whole American people has so changed during the last forty years that we can hardly any longer recognize them, and in the judgment of an old man they have changed not for the better.

We have no space to remark on the characteristic differences of the three remaining New England States. These States have still less resemblance to each other. The people of Maine differ widely from the people of New Hampshire, and the people of Rhode Island have very few traits in common with the people of any of the other New England States. The author of Norwood has lost no little of his own original New England character or overlaid it with his Westernism. He is not in sympathy with the true New England character, as found in any of the New England States, and is more disposed to exaggerate, in his descriptions, its few eccentricities than to bring out its higher and nobler qualities. No doubt the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut set out with the intention of founding what they regarded as a Christian commonwealth, in which the evangelical counsels should be recognized and enforced as laws. They would have organized and maintained society, except in not enjoining celibacy, after the mode of a Catholic monastery. They attempted by constant vigilance and the strict enforcement of very rigorous laws to shut out all vice and immorality from their community. They were rigorists in morals, somewhat rigid and stern in their personal character, and have been generally supposed to be much more so than they really were. Their experiment of a Christian commonwealth as it existed in their own ideal failed, partly through their defective faith and the absence of supernatural grace, and partly through their exacting too much of human nature, or even of men in the flesh, except an elect few. But they, nevertheless, succeeded in laying the foundation of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan republic, or in founding the state, the first in history, on truly Christian principles; that is, on the rights of God, and which better than any other known state has protected the rights of man.

The Puritan did not separate from the Church of England on the principle of liberty of dissent, or because he wished to establish what liberals now understand by religious liberty. The principle of his separation was the Catholic principle, that the magistrate has no authority in spirituals, and no right to prescribe any forms or ceremonies to be used in worship. It was a solemn protest not against the doctrines of the Anglican Church, but against the authority it conceded in spiritual matters to the civil power—or the civil magistrate, as they said then. The Puritan was logical; he had a good major, and his conclusion would have been just, if his minor had only been true; and we are, in our opinion, indebted to him far more than to Lord Baltimore or to Governor Dongan of New York for the freedom of conscience secured by our institutions. Lord Baltimore and Governor Dongan sought the free exercise of their own religion for their co-religionists, and asserted, and in their situation could assert, only toleration. Neither could assert the principle of true religious liberty, the incompetency of the state in spirituals, holding, as they did, their power from the king of England and head of the Anglican Church. The Puritan abominated toleration, called it the devil's doctrine, and proved himself little disposed to practise it; but in asserting the absolute independence of the church or religion before the civil magistrate, he asserted the true principle of religious liberty, which the Catholic Church always and everywhere asserts, and laid in the American mind the foundation of that religious freedom of which our religion, which they hated, now enjoys the benefit.

We have nothing to say of the virtues of the Puritans in relation to the world to come; but they certainly had great and rare civil virtues, and they have had the leading share in founding and shaping the American state. They were grave, earnest—too much so, if you will; but however short they fell in practice, they always asserted the independence and supremacy of the moral order in relation to civil government, and the obligation of every man to obey God rather than men, and to live always in reference to the end for which God makes him. Their moral standard was high, and they set an example of as moral a people as can be looked for outside of the church. They had only a faulty religion, and perhaps were Stoics rather than Christians in their temper; but they always put religion in its right place, and gave the precedence to its ministers. They placed education under charge of the church, and the system of common schools which they originated or adopted was really a system of parochial schools, under the supervision of the pastor, and supported by a tax on the parish, imposed by the parishioners, in public meetings, on themselves. The centralized system of godless schools, borrowed from the Convention that decreed the death of Louis XVI., generally adopted by the Middle and Western States, is hardly yet fully adopted in Massachusetts, though since 1835 it has been gradually gaining the ascendency; and Cambridge University, founded for God and the church, has only this very year thrown off its religious character, dispensed with morning prayers,[84] and become a purely secular institution—an inevitable but a lamentable change.

The Puritans not only adopted a high moral standard, but they lived as nearly up to it as is possible for human nature alone since the fall, and few examples of a more rigidly moral people can be found than were the New England people for a century and a half after the landing of the Pilgrims, and to them, in no small measure, the whole Union is indebted for its moral character as well as for the greater part of its higher institutions of learning. There have been as learned, as gifted, as great men, found in other States, and perhaps even more learned, gifted, and greater; but there is no part of the Union where the intellectual tone of society is so high, or intellectual culture so general as in New England, especially in the States founded by the Puritans, as were Massachusetts and Connecticut. New York leads in trade and commerce; Pennsylvania latterly, Virginia formerly, in politics; but the New England mind has led in law, jurisprudence, literature, art, science, and philosophy; though since Puritanism has been lapsing into liberalism its preëminence is passing away. We speak of New England as it was thirty or forty years ago, or a little earlier, when the majority of the supreme judges, and two thirds of the members of the legislature of New York were Connecticut or, at least, New England men. New England, we fear, is no longer what she was when we were young, and she appears only the shadow of her former self. She is attempting to do, from sheer calculation, and purely secular motives, what even in the heyday of Puritanism was more than she could effect, aided by strong religious convictions and motives. Still, if the substance is wanting, she keeps up the appearance of her old moral character, and in no part of the Union will you hear finer moral sentences, or better reasoned orations on the beauty of virtue and the necessity of religion to the commonwealth. Even New England infidelity is obliged to assume a moral garb, to express itself in Christian phrases, and affect to be more Christian than Christianity itself.

The author of Norwood does not do justice to the intellectual character of New England life, to the thought, the reflection, and movements of a New England village of five thousand inhabitants. His village philosopher, Dr. Wentworth, is very shallow, being very narrow and very prosy. We could easily find any number of farmers in the valley of the Connecticut able to see through his paganism at a glance, and refute it with a word. Especially is the author unjust to New England women. No doubt such women as Polly Marble, Rachel Cathcart, Agate Bissell, and Mother Taft can be found in a New England village, but they are not representative characters. New England Puritanism was never so stiff, or so annoying to one's self or to others, as it appears in these exceptional characters. The women of New England are in general remarkable for their intellectual culture, their gentleness, their refinement, their grace and dignity of manners, the elevation and breadth of their minds, and the extent and variety of their information, no less than for their domestic tastes and habits, or superior faculty as housekeepers. There are, no doubt, blue stockings in Yankeeland which their wearers' skirts are too short to conceal; no doubt, also, there are women there who encroach on the rights and prerogatives of the other sex, and aspire to be men; but your leading woman's rights women and men are not New Englanders. Our old friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is a New Yorker, and Susan B. Anthony, if born in Nantucket, is a Quakeress, and the Quakers are of no country, or simply are their own country.

Many movements are accredited to New England which originated elsewhere, and are simply taken up by a certain class of New Englanders in easy circumstances, as a diversion or a dissipation, instead of whist, balls, routs, and plays. Yet they are only a class. The Massachusetts legislature voted down, by a large majority, the proposition to give the elective franchise to women, and the legislation of the Old Bay State continues far more masculine and conservative than that of the State of New York.

Norwood leaves the impression on the reader that the Puritans were a set of gloomy fanatics, austere and unbending, harsh and cruel, minding every body's business but their own, and seeking, in season and out of season, to cram their horrible doctrines down every neighbor's throat, and that the only sociable and agreeable people to be found among them were precisely those who had broken away from the Puritan thraldom, and returned to the cultivation and worship of nature. The wish is father to the thought. More social, neighborly, genial, kind-hearted, hospitable people it would be difficult to find in the Union than were the great body of these New England Puritans, than perhaps they are still; though they have by no means improved since they have abolished the dinner-table, as they suppose in the interest of temperance, and substituted opium for Santa Cruz rum and old Jamaica spirits, as they have philanthropy for devotion. Intellect, morals, and sociality seem to us to have sadly deteriorated under the misdirected efforts to advance them.

But Henry Ward Beecher has had a far other purpose in Norwood than to produce a work of art, to construct a story, or to sketch New England village life. He is willing enough to correct some of the misapprehensions which Southerners have, or had, of New England character; but his book, after all, has a serious purpose, and is intended to be a death-blow to New England theological and moral doctrines.

The author, though nominally a Christian, and professedly a Congregational preacher, is really a pagan, and wishes to abolish Puritanism for the worship of nature. But it is less the Puritan than the Christian he wars against; and if he understands himself, which is doubtful, his thought is, that a child, taken as born, without baptism or regeneration, may be trained up by the influence of flowers and close communion with nature, beasts, birds, and fishes, reptiles and insects, to be a Christian of the first water. Dr. Wentworth represents this theory, and reduces it to practice in the training of his daughter Rose, whose chief educator is the half-idiot negro, Pete, "no great things in the intellects, but with a heart as big as that of an ox." The theory recognizes Christ only in nature, and really identifies him with nature, and resolves the Christian law of perfection into the natural laws of the physicists. The author holds, if any thing, that heaven, the crown of life, is in the order of generation, and is attainable as the result of natural development.

The theory, of course, rejects the very fundamental principle of Christianity, which declares that "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." The author, indeed, does not deny in words the new birth; nay, asserts it, but resolves it into a natural operation, a sort of mental and physical crisis, and recognizes nothing supernatural, or any infusion of grace in it; which is in reality to deny it. We have as hearty a dislike of Calvinism as any one can have, and we know it passably well by our own early experience; but we confess that we have no wish to see old-fashioned Puritanism exchanged for pure rationalism or mere naturalism, and as against Henry Ward Beecher, we are strongly tempted to defend it. Any one who knows New England at all, knows that its morals have deteriorated just in proportion as its old Puritanism has declined, or been liberalized. The fact, whatever the explanation, is undeniable. In our judgment, it is the natural result of loosening the restraints which Puritanism undoubtedly imposed on the passions and conduct, and leaving people to their natural passions, instincts, and propensities, without any restraint at all. Despotism is bad enough; but it is better than no government, better than anarchy. As it affects the question of conversion to the church, we see no gain in the change. We think a sincere, earnest-minded Puritan a less hopeless subject than a liberal, like an Emerson, a John Weis, a John Stuart Mill, a Mr. Lecky, a Herbert Spencer, or such men as were the late Mr. Buckle and the late Sir William Hamilton, who despise Christianity too much to offer any direct opposition to it. The honest Puritan is prejudiced indeed, and unwilling to hear a word in favor of the church; yet he believes in Christian morals, and has some conception of the Christian plan of salvation, and therefore really something for the missionary to work on; but men who have resolved Christianity into naturalism, and measure reality or even the knowable by their own narrow and superficial understandings, are beyond his reach. Their case is hopeless.

Puritanism keeps alive in the community a certain Christian habit of thought, a belief in the necessity of grace, and more or less of a Christian conscience. The greater part of the common people gathered into the sects in seasons of revivals, if our missionaries were present, could just as easily be gathered into the church, and be saved. We suffer terribly in this country for the want of missionary priests, who can go wherever their services are needed by those who know not yet "the faith once delivered to the saints." Our priests are too few for the wants even of our old Catholic population, and what with hearing confessions, and attending sick calls, building churches and school-houses, and providing for the most pressing wants of a Catholic people, are over-worked, and soon exhausted. The great majority of our priests die young, from excessive labor. There is with us a vast missionary field, not indeed among the sects, but among the so-called Nothingarians, who comprise the majority of the American people, and who, though without any specific belief, are yet far from being confirmed unbelievers. But let the Beechers and their associates succeed in reducing Christianity to naturalism, and you soon make this whole class downright infidels. We can have, therefore, no sympathy with Beecherism, or pleasure in seeing its success against even old-fashioned New England Puritanism.

We should say as much of the Presbyterianism of the Middle, Western, and Southern States. We believe any of the older Protestant sects that retain a belief in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and future rewards and punishments, and that practise infant baptism, are preferable by far to any form of modern liberalism, which discards dogma for sentiment and reason for the soul, and are really nature-worshippers, and as much idolaters as were the old pagans, whose rivers and ponds, whose gardens and orchards were overrun with gods. Even a Methodist is upon the whole better than a Liberal, however puffed up he may be by the successful worship of mammon by his sect, and its growing respectability in the eyes of the world.

We have bestowed, perhaps, more attention on Mr. Beecher and his novel than they deserve, but we have made them the text for a desultory discourse, partly in defence of New England against her denigration attempted by one of her prominent sons, and partly in protest against the revival of heathen nature-worship favored by the author. We have not aimed at exalting New England above other sections of the Union. Each section of our common country has its peculiar merits, which are essential to the welfare and development of the whole. New England has hers, which, in some respects, excel those of other sections, and in other respects fall short of them. It is not for us to strike the balance, and to decide which upon the whole preponderate. We have wished to give New England her due, without detracting any thing from what is due to any other section of the Union. We should be sorry to see the effort now making to New Englandize the South succeed. There are some things in the New England character that could be corrected with advantage; and there is much in the Southern character, its openness, its frankness, its personal independence, its manliness, its aristocratic tone and manner, that we should be sorry to lose. But we do not like to find any man decrying his own native land or insensible to its merits.

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CHURCH MUSIC
I.

"The Prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers." While we have been perusing the various works on church music that have come before us in the shape of book, pamphlet, tract, and magazine article, we could not keep the words we have quoted above from the celebrated Dom Gueranger out of our mind. In Europe, both in England and on the continent, it is evident, from the numerous publications pertinent to the subject which have been lately issued, that the due celebration of the divine offices of the Church is becoming more and more the object of no little anxiety on the part of the hierarchy, and that the clergy are everywhere making strenuous efforts to get rid of the abuses which since the Protestant reformation, the straitness of the times has tolerated. One of the most notorious of these abuses, fully naturalized amongst us, is the profane character of church music. Several writers, among whom stand preëminent two English priests—the Rev. Canon Oakeley and the Rev. James Nary—have crossed swords on the subject of reform, and we have thus been enabled not only to get at the merits of the particular dispute between these two amicable combatants, but have been led as well to reflect upon the primary object of music in the divine offices, the intention of the Church, and the means she has ordained for realizing it; although we must confess that, with Dom Gueranger's words ringing in our ears, we have not heard from the pages of the publications in question quite so clear an echo to their truth as we would have wished.

The ritual service of the Church is her prayer, and melody is the almost universal form of expression employed in its celebration. Whatever music is sung or performed at her solemn rites is supposed to be sung and performed by her not as a musical performance, but as a prayer. These are the points more or less ignored in all the discussions on what is or may be made suitable music for the Church. The different sentences, anthems, psalms, etc., appointed to be sung by the choir, are all so many prayers offered by the Church. Therefore it is plain that what is proper as music at her offices must as a first principle be a worthy expression of the voice of the Church lifted in prayer. When the priest, robed in his garments of sacrifice, intones the Gloria at the altar, he does so in the name of the Church, not as the Rev. Mr. —— performing a short, effective, and fine tenor solo; and when the choir continues the same angelical anthem, they do so—or rather, are supposed to do so—as his assistants in the divine action. The priest takes his seat to await its conclusion, not to make one of an audience who for the time being are to be relieved from the more engrossing thoughts of prayer by criticising the Gratias as rendered by Mr. A., enjoying the Qui tollis by Miss B., or the telling chorus of the Cum Sancto.

That the musical portions of the church offices are in a true sense prayer, and are based upon that idea alone, namely, the union of the soul with God; that such is the chief intention of the Church, and should be the only object sought in the choice of music and the execution of it, to the absolute subserviency, even if not to the completely ignoring, of every other sentiment, is therefore beyond question; but who will not be able to count upon his ten fingers the churches in the United States where the music would be likely to leave any such impression upon the minds of the worshippers?

We say this not in any cynical spirit. We know the "straitness of the times," and we ourselves have been straitened, and are still, as well as our neighbors; but the general uneasiness and discontent felt among all classes because of the wretched performances of sacred music to which we have been subjected, utterly at variance as they are with the spirit of the sublime and solemn functions of religion, is beginning to find a voice to make audible complaint, and exciting some laudable efforts to rid the holy place of harmonies which savor more of the world, the flesh, and the devil than they do of divine prayer. So common is the ignorance of what the true music of the Church is, that it is a rare thing to find even a Catholic who has any idea that the Mass has not yet been fully sung when he has heard the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and not a note of the Introit, Gradual, Prose, Offertory, or Communion. And as for the Vespers, we think the fingers of one hand might suffice to count the churches where any attempt is made to perform them entire. Of the compositions executed in every style of musical art at Mass, will not the first person to whom you may address yourself, be he a devout Catholic well instructed in other matters, or a music-loving Protestant who is fond of "attending service" in our churches on account of the "glorious music of the Catholic Church," which he thinks he hears there—will they not both tell you, if you are at the pains to interrogate them, that Mozart and Haydn hold the place of angelic doctors of music in the Catholic Church, and Webbe, Farmer, Concone and Co. have equally honorable titles for small churches and country choirs?

Would not either of them return you a stare of incredulity if you told them that not one composition of any of these authors has ever been recognized by any authority in the Church, and that the singing of them has, in point of fact, been only barely tolerated; that the great mass of these musical morceaux are wholly unfit for the purpose for which they were written, and that, ten chances to one, neither of these good friends have ever heard, save the chanting of the priest, one single note of the music sanctioned by the Church in all their lives? Yet all this is true to the very letter. Lamentably true; for religion, in the grandeur, power, and spiritual beauty of its sacred offices, is the loser by it, and the devout and prayerful spirit which such offices are calculated to excite in the souls of the faithful is to a great extent hindered, and replaced by a spirit of sensuousness and worldly amusement.

The fact beyond dispute is, that the faithful are deprived of the true expression of the divine prayer of the Church, both on account of the profane character of the music performed and the entire omission of those portions of the Mass and Vespers which give a distinctive color, tone, and meaning to the seasons and festivals, such as the Introit, the Gradual, Prose, Offertory, Communion, and Antiphons.

Not to speak of the wholly inexcusable practice of reproducing well-known arias from different operas to which the words of some devout hymn are adapted in the most shockingly garbled manner, without regard to grammar or sense, a cursory examination of "the masses" popular among us, and sung, without distinction, at any season and on any festival, would be sufficient to condemn them as totally unfit as vehicles of expression for the words set to them, or the occasion of their performance. Let us quote some true words from the Rev. Mr. Nary:

"Would any one contend that the rollicking tunes of many a modern Kyrie express the meaning of the supplicatory ejaculation, Lord, have mercy on us?... It may fairly be questioned whether any one unaccustomed to our florid church-music, upon hearing one of the jigs which render the sweet prayer, O Lord, give us peace, dona nobis pacem, in some of our modern masses, would be able to tell, not only that it aptly describes the words, but even that it expresses any religious feeling at all. That in numerous instances, modern church music, instead of being descriptive of the holy words to which it is joined, rather expresses the sensuous languor of the stage, or the airy joy of the ball-room, could not well be disputed.

"Indeed, it is exceedingly remarkable that what Haydn, Mozart, Weber, and others would have been ashamed to do for the stage, they have, seemingly without a qualm of conscience, done for the house of God. They knew that they must have been accused of folly, had they in one of their operatic works given to earnestness the tones of jesting, to prayer those of mirth; but this is precisely what they have done for the services of the Church. The most touching supplications of the liturgy are often clothed by them in strains of mockery.... It is not implied here that there are not in the works of the great modern composers beautiful passages full of genuine religious feeling; but will any impartial judge contend that there are many masses in which there is no blundering at all between the words and the music?... Nay, is it not true that certain masses by those composers, if separated from the sacred words and applied to some libretto of the late Eugène Scribe, would only gain in naturalness and meaning by the change? What, then, it may be asked, is there no other music for the Almighty than that of the theatre?... It can hardly be disputed that some of our own churches have too often, in their musical efforts, exhibited scenes bordering very closely upon downright desecration of the house of God.... There is no need to describe the sad feelings which arise in the heart of a Catholic who finds the adorable sacrifice of the Mass turned into a Sunday morning amusement.

"Some people, who allow that the music of some of our churches is thoroughly profane, still justify its use on the plea that it allures strangers, who may be favorably impressed with other and more religious portions of the service. But this is a poor justification of practices which annoy the real congregation, and hinder devotion. No doubt a priest should seek to draw strangers to his church, but all means are not equally legitimate toward attaining this laudable end. Besides, the writer though entirely unable to form any judgment which he could commend to the belief of others, much doubts whether any priest could trace more than a few conversions, if any at all, not to his church music, which may partly be very ecclesiastical, but to his florid or orchestral music, as to their origin."

We need to add little to this. The impressions left upon the mind after being subjected to any one of such performances is well known to all who have suffered. What religious feelings might one reasonably expect to have pervaded (may we not say the audience?) or what devotion could possibly be excited in the hearts of any unfortunate worshippers present on the occasion of which the following is a report:

"Haydn's Mass No. 16 was the great selection. The Kyrie was coldly given, the alto and bass, in the soli parts, being hardly strung up to tune. In the Gloria, however, both chorus and soloists warmed to their work, and several of the finest choral passages were given with great power and precision. The Credo was not taken up firmly, but every praise is due to the manner in which the choir acquitted themselves at the finish, and in the exquisite Et Incarnatus and succeeding quartette the four principal voices blended beautifully together, and the alto (Miss ——) told well in the delivery of the leading and interwoven subject, the Sub Pontio. The most critical would have been satisfied with the evenness with which the principal voices were balanced in this and the subsequent soli passages. The Sanctus and Hosanna were very fairly given, the Benedictus being perhaps the most telling effort of all. The opening of the Agnus was not delivered sufficiently staccato, as the chorus did not hang well together. The Dona Nobis made up for all, and throughout the principals acquitted themselves in unexceptionable style, being well supported at the finish by the chorus."

We are aware that some, while agreeing with us, as they cannot help but do, that "masses" in figured music, and "figured vespers," are in the style of their composition essentially profane, yet choose them, and cause them to be performed, on the plea that the sacredness of the place and the occasion of the divine office is a sufficient corrective of their innate profanity, or that, being "magnificent," "sublime," "classic," etc., such music may justly be employed to adorn the grand functions of religion, and that the theatre ought not to boast of better music than the house of God; that—as one such admirer of classic music said to us—we ought to "spoil the Egyptians;" or again, that Protestants are attracted to churches where such music is given, and may be led by the charm of the music to inquire into the truths of our religion; and finally, that there is nothing else to take its place; the antiquated Gregorian chant being wholly unfit for the cultivated musical ears of the nineteenth century, and to banish this music from Catholic churches would be to do an irreparable injury to high art. But all these pleas fail absolutely in producing any influence upon our judgment, the words of Dom Gueranger sounding so loudly in our ears as they do, and our own experience to the contrary. In point of fact, the sacredness of the place where this kind of music is sung is no corrective of the unworthy nature of the music itself. Doubtless the cantatrice is denied the clapping of hands and the encore which her splendid singing calls for, and the primo basso retires from the front of the organ-gallery without a bow to his fashionable auditory—nevertheless interiorly disgusted, we warrant, by the lack of some visible appreciation of one of his best efforts—and a well-behaved congregation will quietly resume their attitude of prayer at the close of some crashing finale; but are these sufficient evidences of the very opposite impression being produced upon the worshippers to that which the music from its character, aside from the similar manner of its rendering, is not only calculated but is expected to produce? "I hold it for certain," said good old Saint Alphonsus, "that vanity and the devil usually get more by it than God."

What those who defend the use of figured music in our solemn offices must show is, that it not only edifies the faithful, but that it edifies equally with, or more than, the authorized chant. That it is the source of no little disedification; that it distracts the soul from the great object upon which all its powers ought to be concentrated; that it is always more or less an imperfect performance, and, in most cases, a mere makeshift; and that where the organist and singers are in power the sacred ministers play but a subordinate part in a scene in which, as it has been well said, the music from the choir gallery is the magnet which attracts the gold and silver, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.

But this is not all. Is figured music in conformity as to its style with the spirit of the other portions of the divine office? Will its most strenuous adherents claim for it the title of being a fair and true expression of the Church's prayer? Does it harmonize with those other parts of the office performed in the sanctuary? Here we can speak feelingly. How often have we not been tempted to smile at our own voice intoning the per omnia sæcula sæculorum, as the echoes of that galloping finale of an interminable "offertory piece" or Benedictus were yet resounding in the aisles of the church! What feelings of vexation have not arisen in our breast as the response came back to our ears in slovenly haste, as if our inharmonious cadence had too quickly disturbed the well-merited repose of our choir after, we must confess, their too successful effort to captivate the attention of the congregation, and put the priest in the very pillory of singularity and discord! Why must our mind at such times suffer the painful distraction of remembering the well-known sarcastic remark, that "the Rev. Mr. —— then put up a supplication which was one of the most eloquent prayers ever offered to a Boston audience!"

The second plea, that these classic harmonies, so rich, so melodious, so sublime, etc., etc., should not be denied to the greater glory of God, is of equally small weight, since there are many other things in nature and art extremely beautiful in themselves, truly classic in their conception and execution, which, it must be confessed, would hardly bear transporting to the house of prayer, and which it would take the heroic virtue of a saint to refer to the greater glory of God if exhibited in any place. We do not object to the offering of these harmonies to God, but the question is, Do these harmonies, by their religious tone and devout style, offer themselves to God? Does the Church judge them to be suitable for her divine offices? Let these questions be answered in the affirmative, and our own personal judgment and sentiments shall go to the wall.

The plea that the music as now commonly heard in our churches allures Protestants, and thus brings them within sight and hearing of Catholic truth, has been already well answered in our quotation from Mr. Nary. For ourselves, judging from the behavior of the mass of these visitors, we are forced to the conclusion that they frequent our churches where fine music is given because they can get it at a cheaper rate than they would have to pay for it elsewhere.

That there is nothing else to take its place, and that the antiquated Gregorian chant is unfit for our ears of modern cultivation, is simply the plea of ignorance. The established chant of the Church not only can take its place, as we shall attempt to show further on, but as a fact it has never ceded its right to any other style of music; and those who know any thing of the Gregorian chant scientifically, know that it is our modern ears that are at fault, perverted as they have been in their sense and appreciation of true religious melody by the sensuous and effeminate spirit which pervades all modern art.

It is strongly urged that the reintroduction of the Gregorian chant in our churches, now wholly committed to the use of modern music, is impossible, for the hired singers will have nothing to do with it. To which we answer that, as the execution of the Gregorian chant necessarily excludes female vocalists from the choir in accordance with the sacred canons, the prima donna will undoubtedly have to look elsewhere for an engagement, and very likely the tenore and basso who sing in the Mass on Sunday in our church, and perform in the opera buffa all the rest of the week, may refuse to employ their highly cultivated voices in singing music that affords them so little opportunity of exhibiting their artistic powers; but, we may ask, are these the only favored beings whom God has endowed with good voices and the ability to use them? We propose to enter more fully into this question of difficulty, and think we shall be able to show that in this as well as in other matters, "where there's the will, there's a way."

In the interests of art, it is asked, ought not the composition, and by consequence the reproduction of sacred music be encouraged? Will not its banishment from our churches be a species of vandalism in art greatly to be deplored? Let us look at this fairly. What is this so-called "sacred" music? Is it more or less than the adaptation of the words of prayer uttered by the church to concerted harmony composed as an artistic expression of the sentiment conveyed by the sacred words? Surely nothing more. But what is concerted harmony, as a rule, "sacred" or "consecrated" to? To the words of the offices of the church? By no means. There is but one kind of music consecrated to that—the Gregorian chant. And, with our hands upon our hearts, can we say that modern music has received such an aid in its development through the composition and execution of Masses, Magnificats, Offertories, Tantum Ergos, and the like, that its present state of advancement is as much indebted to them as is popularly supposed, or that their withdrawal from the service of the Church would prove any very serious detriment to it? As pieces of musical art, the operas and oratorios of composers are far superior to the masses they have written, and we who may choose would much rather listen to them. We must not be understood to decry the composition of so-called sacred music, or the singing of it. On the contrary, we would do all in our power to encourage it; but we object to its usurping the place of music better fitted for the divine offices of the Church, and vastly surpassing it for such use in every particular. There is plenty of time, outside of the hour or two in which we are present at Mass or Vespers, to hear all the sacred music we desire or can bear. All we ask is, let the Church pray her own prayers and sing her own divine song without hinderance, or the intrusion of harmonies as ill-suited to her voice as they are powerless to express the emotions of her more than human soul.

This leads us to the utterance of a grave complaint against modern sacred music, namely, the absurd settings of words by which the divine offices are not only prolonged to a tedious extent, but the Holy Church is made to stammer, repeat, hesitate in her speech, and fall at last into an inextricable confusion of tongues. Did our pious congregation below stairs know what their singers are singing up aloft, they would not unfrequently be reminded of certain warnings against "vain repetitions." The Masses of composers who wrote in the seventeenth and eighteenth century are not only open to the charge of being replete with these vain repetitions, but are full of the most ridiculous blunders.

We subjoin a specimen. The words given are those sung by the leading soprano; the lines (—) show where the text is broken up by instrumental interludes:

"Glory to God in the highest——in the highest——to God glory——to God glory——to God glory, glory to God in the highest, to God in the highest, to God in the highest, to God in the highest——to God in the highest——and on earth peace——peace——peace to men, and on earth peace——peace——peace to men——of good, good——will——will——of good, good will, of good, good, good will——of good, good will, of good, good, good will——of good will——of good will——of good will——We praise, we bless——we adore——we glorify——we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, for thy great glory, for thy great glory, for thy great glory——thy glory——thy glory——O Lord God, God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty——O God the Son——only begotten——Jesus Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father——Son of the Father——Son of the Father——Son of the Father——O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father——O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Son, Son of the Father——who takest, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy on us——who takest away, who takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer, our prayer, our prayer, our prayer, our prayer——who sittest, who sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy, have mercy on us——have mercy, have mercy on us——For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord——only art the highest, Jesus Christ——For thou only art holy——thou only, thou only art the highest——thou only, thou only art the highest, Jesus Christ——Jesus Christ——For thou only——thou only art holy, thou only art highest——Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ——For thou only, thou only art highest, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ——For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord——thou only art highest, Jesus Christ——For thou only art holy, thou only, only art holy, thou only, only, art the Lord.——For thou only art holy——thou only art the Lord——thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord, only, art highest. For thou only, thou only art holy——thou art the Lord——only art highest, thou only art highest, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ——For thou only——thou only art highest——Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ——For thou only, thou only art highest——Jesus Christ——Jesus, Jesus Christ——Jesus, Jesus Christ——Jesus——Christ——With the Holy Ghost——in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen——Amen, amen——With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, in the glory of God the Father——Amen——Amen——Amen——Amen, amen, amen, amen.——With the Holy Ghost——in the glory of God the Father. Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen.——With the Holy Ghost——With the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen——With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen——in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen——of God the Father, Amen; in the glory of God the Father, Amen; in the glory of God the Father, Amen——of God the Father, Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen——of God the Father, Amen——of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen."

And this from Doctor Mozart's renowned Mass No. 12, which we have heard so often, and enjoyed so much! But he is not alone. We quote from an able paper from the Dublin Review on "Church Music and Church Choirs:"

"Thus we have a 'Credo' beginning with the four phrases, Credo in unum Deum—Genitum non factum—Qui propter nos—and Et ex Patre natum—all sung simultaneously by the four voices. Again, we have a 'Gloria' beginning with the four phrases, Gratias agimus (for the soprano)—Domine Fili (alto)—Domine Deus (tenor)—Et in terra pax (bass)—the whole being dispatched in two short pages of music!

"As for instances of garblings by the omission of words and clauses in much of the popular mass music, they are too numerous to be mentioned.

"One of the most grotesquely absurd settings, perhaps, is that of the 'Alma Redemptoris' of Webbe. The words are divided into three parts, the first ending with 'cadenti,' the second with 'genitorem,' the same music being used for each, and a repeat and musical interlude coming between. The consequence is that the adjective 'cadenti' is entirely cut off from its substantive 'populo;' and the whole, as sung, is of course sheer nonsense. The reason is plain. Webbe found an air which, by a threefold repetition, could be applied to the words of the antiphon, and for this every thing, even to the grammar of the piece, was sacrificed. No doubt this is the history of many of the absurd adaptations we meet with.

"Nothing can go beyond the examples we have quoted, except, perhaps, the instance of a composer of the 'light Italian school,' who by way of producing an original and striking musical effect in the 'Credo,' made one voice sing 'Genitum non factum,' and another respond 'Factum non genitum!' It will be said that these are extreme cases, and that many of the pieces are not likely to be used in our churches. Be it so; still they show what it was the fashion of certain composers to provide for the use of the Church, and what is apt to come of the theory that it does not matter what is sung by the choir, provided the people do not hear it. But whether heard or not, the rules of the Church (and we see how strict they are on these points) remain the same. Besides, do we sing merely to satisfy the ears of an audience? Rather, is not this the true principle—In conspectu Angelorum psallam tibi, Domine?"

To the ignorance, alas! so general, of what the Church is actually saying in her holy offices, and what the choir is singing in her name, as well as of what they are omitting to sing as in duty bound, may be attributed in great measure the apparent indifference with which the people of our congregations listen to any musical production from the choir, be it in harmony with the season or the festival, as the case may be, or not, provided only that the voices are in harmony with each other. Did they know better, they would say with Pope Benedict XIV., who, it seems, had some of our own abuses to contend with and reform in Rome itself, as other popes have had since his time. Speaking of St. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the singing (be it well understood, not of such music as we possess) in the churches, he says that "the music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for, although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words."

Let us hear something more of the opinions of the same holy pope about figured "sacred music." "The Gregorian chant is that song which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. The titillation of figured music is held very cheaply by men of religious mind in comparison with the sweetness of the Church chant, and hence it is that the people flock to the churches of the monks, who, taking piety for their guide in singing the praises of God, after the counsel of the prince of psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as Lord, and serve God as God with the utmost reverence."

Did we add no more, we think we have said enough to show that the employment of figured music for the divine offices is an abuse. It does not answer its purpose, and its permission is nothing better than a winking at our weakness, (the wisdom of which, considering all things, we by no means presume to condemn for the past,) while the prevailing sensuousness and libertinism of the times has debased and emasculated our taste in true religious art.

But it is a comfort to know that such music has never received from the supreme pastors and rulers of the church any thing more than a reluctant permission, that the concessions they have made in its favor have always been exacted by the force of circumstances, and that they have constantly raised their voice in opposition to it as an abuse, and urged in the strongest terms of command and persuasion its abolition, and a return to the authorized chant, the universal song of the Church, ever ancient and ever new.

Dilettanti talk, with an air of superior knowledge, of the Gregorian chant as if it were something obsolete, the uncouth production of a barbarous and unartistic age. We think there are not a few other fashions and modes of religious expression besides her chant, that the Church has persistently adhered to, which modern ideas might with equal justice denounce as obsolete and of unartistic origin. As has been well remarked,

"This conservatism, if we may so call it, of the Church, is not confined to plain chant. The same may be said of the language and the style of her offices, the dresses of her clergy and religious orders, and many of her rites, ceremonies, and customs. The chant is, therefore, no stranger than any part of the Church system; and that system being what it is, the antique character of the music seems in every way suitable."

To be sure. What would we think of an archbishop to-day standing before the altar dressed in a frock-coat with a stove-pipe hat on his head, and a pair of patent leather boots on his feet, giving his solemn benediction en roulade?

What we have said in regard to the wishes and commands of the Church, as expressed by the papal bulls and decrees of councils in regard to this matter, we propose to prove by referring the reader to several of these authorities.

Alexander VII., in his Constitution 36, Piæ sollicitudinis, 23d April, 1657, excludes all singing of pieces not contained in the liturgy or approved by the Congregation of Rites, and all profane styles of music. (Bullar. t. 6.)

The Congregation of the Apostolical Visitation, July 30th, 1665, enforced and explained more fully the constitution of Alexander VII. The character of the music at Mass and Office is to be ecclesiastical, grave, and devotional. Only what is prescribed for the day or season is to be sung. It prohibits prolonged solos. It prescribes that the words are to be sung as they were written, without any inversion, addition, or other change.

The popes, Innocent XI., 1678, and Innocent XII., 1692, renewed and enforced similar rules, imposing, as their predecessors had done, heavy penalties on choir-masters for disobedience. (V. Bullar. t. 7.)

In the Council of Rome, 1725, Benedict XIII. insists upon the ecclesiastical character of the music to be used in church. (Tit. 15, cap. 6.)

Benedict XIV., in a circular letter, enters at large into the subject of church music, and, while he does not wholly condemn the use of figured music, yet deplores the bad taste of those who employ it, as well as the great neglect of religion which he attributes to the careless performance of the divine offices of the church. As we have seen already, he distinctly prefers the Gregorian chant, and refers in this letter to the decree of the Council of Trent in regard to it.

Clement XIII., Sept. 17th, 1760, issued an edict against the abuse of prolonging the music in church "to the detriment of devotion and of the approved rites, and in violation of the canons and rubrics."

The cardinal vicar of Gregory XVI., 1842, inveighs against tiresome repetition and arbitrary inversion of words.

Pius IX., June 28th, 1853, showed his great wish for the thoroughly religious character of church music; for in his letters establishing the Seminario Pio, in connection with the Roman Seminary, he ordered that the students should be taught the Gregorian chant, and no other. "Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur." (Tit. 5, de studior. ratione.)

The latest instruction issued by the cardinal vicar, Nov. 18th, 1856, denounces the scandals caused by the introduction of profane theatrical music in the churches, and the interminable length of their execution, and, "by express command of his holiness," lays down a set of rules which are to be observed in future. At the same time the cardinal issued a series of instructions to composers, from which it is evident very little encouragement is given them to write for the Church, and they are so restricted that we very much doubt if they care to put their Pegasus in such a cumbrous harness as the good cardinal prescribes.

The late Plenary Council of Baltimore confirms a decree made in the former one, which reads as follows:

"That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn rites of the Church be preserved in their integrity, we admonish pastors of churches to earnestly labor in removing those abuses which, in our country, have crept into the church chant. Let them, therefore, provide that the music be subservient to the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and other offices, and not the divine offices to the music. Let them also bear in mind that, according to the ritual of the Church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the vernacular language at High Mass nor at solemn Vespers."[85]

The wishes of the fathers of the Council in regard to the Gregorian chant may be seen in the decree De Vesperis:

"Moreover, we judge it to be most desirable that the rudiments of the Gregorian chant be taught and practised in parochial schools, and thus, the number of those who can chant the psalms well increasing more and more, gradually the greater part, at least, of the people, according to the usage of the primitive church yet preserved in many places, may be able to join with the sacred ministers and choir in singing Vespers and other similar offices; which will be the source of edification to all, according to that saying of St. Paul, 'Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles.'"[86]

In the same strain many bishops in Europe have raised their voices against the profane music which has crept insidiously into the holy place, and urged a speedy return to the use of the ancient chant.

From the authorities we have adduced we get at the mind of the Church, and see that it is plainly adverse to the introduction of the modern style of music in our sacred offices, and we have not been able to find one instance where its use has been officially permitted in any particular diocese but with the utmost reluctance, and not without expressing at the same time an earnest wish that the old chant of the Church might be restored to its primitive universal use.

There is also a significant fact not unworthy our notice. Looking at the Protestant churches around us, we see that it is only in those which are fast losing their former hold upon some form of ritual in their religious meetings, that elaborate figured music is finding a home, and garbled portions of "the masses" of Mozart, Haydn, and other Catholic composers are being sung to a nauseating adaptation of English words: while, on the other hand, those which are with equally rapid advances returning to the bosom of unity with the Catholic Church are cultivating the Gregorian chant to a degree which ought to put us to the blush, and imitating, as best they may, the ecclesiastical and devout order of Catholic worship, and hold our figured and florid music in deserved contempt. Straws show which way the wind blows.

Sudden revolutions, however, are not to our mind; and we know something of the difficulties in the way of such a reform in the matter of church music as the Church evidently desires, and a general movement toward the ancient discipline which she would encourage and bless. Because we cannot do all in a day is no reason why we cannot do something in a week. In England, the clergy have taken the whole subject to heart, and have already accomplished wonders. There are many churches where the whole services are given entire. All that is prescribed de rigueur to be sung at Mass is sung. Vespers and Compline strictly according to the breviary are chanted in more than one church by the whole congregation. They have not entirely eliminated figured music, but are reducing it to its lowest terms.[87] Few churches are without their boy choirs, trained to sing the devout song of the sanctuary. The zealous Archbishop of Westminster has issued an order that no new church be opened in his diocese unless provision be made for a sanctuary choir. He has not thought it right, as he says, to enforce the orders of the former vicars apostolic, "Fœminæ voces ne audiantur in choro," yet he adds, "All that I can effect by the strongest expression of desire and by persuasion, I shall endeavor to effect."

Surely we can also do something toward aiding the Church in liberating herself from this captivity to an expression of her majestic offices so foreign to the true sound of her own voice. Looking back upon the days when the untiring voice of prayer was ascending to heaven from the holy sanctuaries of religion, when the festival days were kept and the faith was strong and the people devout, a faith and devotion due in a great measure to the sacredness of liturgical worship and the inspiration of the holy chants, may we not justly mourn the loss of this ancient fervor, and earnestly strive to awaken an interest in what, for so many good reasons, appears to hold more than an accidental relation to it?

We have no doubt that the coming Œcumenical Council will speak in yet stronger terms in favor of a reform so vital to the interests of religion in the whole world.

In subsequent articles we propose to consider some propositions made to ameliorate the present state of things, the characteristics of the Gregorian chant as the true song of the Church, and offer some hints as to the manner of its execution, and the means of obtaining and holding a permanent chorus of singers who shall make the divine praises resound in our consecrated Houses of Prayer in a manner more edifying to the faithful, and more becoming the Divine Majesty.

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THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW YORK.[88]
THE COLONIAL DAYS.

The appearance of a new edition of the brief but valuable and attractive work which the present Bishop of Newark issued in 1853, is a matter of congratulation. The Catholics of New York City have a history in this land, and it is too little known. Bishop Bayley was the first to supply the want; he wrote, as the title-page shows, while still connected with the diocese of New York as secretary to the late distinguished archbishop; and of course with singular advantages for correctness of details and for a just view of his subject. We may here ask our readers to pause and look back with us at the early history of Catholicity in this busy metropolis, and trace the progress of the church from its small beginning toward its present development, when we behold it with its archbishop, its zealous and active secular clergy, its regular clergy, embracing Franciscans of the Observance and Capucins, Dominicans, Jesuits, Redemptorists, Priests of Mercy, Paulists; its various orders and congregations devoted to the instruction of youth, the care of the orphan, the foundling, the wayward and the erring, whom it shelters in its asylums, hospitals, and protectorates, with a Catholic Publication Society, and several publishing houses and journals.

This progress the Brief Sketch of Bishop Bayley enables us to trace down to the year 1853, his duties as bishop depriving him of the leisure needed to collect and arrange materials to continue it to the present time, by including an account of the progress since the work originally appeared. But even then, as the title shows, it professed to treat rather of the earlier history than of that which is almost contemporaneous.

The early history of the Catholic Church on the island of New York is indeed an attractive and interesting theme. It opens with the romantic story of the early Jesuit missions; for of the visits of the Catholic navigators, Verazzani and Sebastian Gomez, we have too little detail to know whether a priest actually said mass on our island.

The first priest who is known to have set his foot on the island of Manhattan was an illustrious missionary, who, while on his way from Quebec to his mission ground on the upper lakes, was in 1643 taken by the Mohawks, tortured almost beyond the power of human endurance, spared to become the slave of savages, bearing their burdens in their winter hunts, in their fishing trips to Saratoga Lake and the Hudson, on their trading visits to the Dutch Fort Orange, where Albany now stands, bearing all, enduring all, with a soul ever wrapt in prayer and union with God, till at last the Dutch overcame his reluctance and saved him from the hands of his savage captors, as they were about to put him to death. Covered with wounds and bruises, mutilated, extenuated, scarce human in dress or outward form, such was Isaac Jogues, the first Catholic priest to enter our great city, then in its infancy, to meet with respect and kindness from the Dutch, with the reverence due to a martyr from the two Catholics, sole children of the ancient faith then in New Amsterdam.

The stay of this illustrious missionary was brief, and his ministry was limited to the confessional, his chapel and vestments having fallen into the hands of the Indians, and greedily seized as trophies.

Governor Kieft displayed great humanity in his care of the missionary, and seized the first opportunity to enable him to return to Europe. Panting for martyrdom, Father Jogues remained in his native land only to obtain needed dispensations and permission to return to his labors. On reaching Canada, he found peace almost made with the Mohawks, and, proceeding as envoy to their territory, concluded a treaty. He was invited to plant a mission among them, as his associates had done among their kindred, the Hurons. But when he returned to do so, prejudices had sprung up, a hatred of Christianity as something baneful had seized them, the missionary was arrested, treated as a prisoner, and in a few days put to death on the banks of Caughnawaga Creek, on the 18th of October, 1646.

The next priest known to have visited New York was the Italian Father Bressani, who underwent a similar course of suffering, was captured, tortured, enslaved, and ransomed by the kindly Dutch; and by them sent to France. Although he subsequently published a short account of the Huron missions, he is entirely silent as to New Amsterdam, and we know nothing in regard to any exercise of the ministry during his stay on our island.

The first priest who came here actually to extend his ministry to any Catholics in the place was the Jesuit Father Simon Le Moyne, the discoverer of the salt springs at Syracuse, and the successful founder of the Mohawk and Onondaga missions. His visit was repeated, and there would seem to be a probability that he may have actually offered the holy sacrifice. The real field of his labors, and those of his associates, was, however, the castles of the Five Nations of Iroquois, in which, for many years, regular Catholic chapels subsisted, winning many to the faith, and saving many by baptism in infancy or in fatal illness. The converts at last began to emigrate to Canada, where three villages of Catholic Iroquois still attest the power of the gospel as preached by the early missionaries. Political jealousies, infused by the English, gradually intensified the innate dislike of the pagans to Catholicity, and prejudice, debauchery, and penal laws at last drove the Catholic missionaries from a field in which they had labored with such courageous and unremitting zeal.

For years the only Catholic missionary in their territory was Father Milet, held at Oneida as a prisoner. Flying visits alone after this kept up the faith, and in 1709, Father Peter Mareuil, on the outbreak of war, retired to Albany, and the mission in the Iroquois country virtually closed. The later and tardy Protestant efforts were in a measure built on these early Catholic labors, and from Dellius to Zeisberger they gladly availed themselves of the pupils of the Jesuits to form their own instructions.

This Iroquois church has its martyr missionary Jogues; its martyred neophytes, who died at the hands of their countrymen rather than renounce Jesus to bow the knee to Aireskoi; and its holy virgin in Catharine Tehgahkwita, the Genevieve of New France. Then came the growth of mustard-seed in the Dutch colony. We hear of the freedom of worship achieved and established by the founders of the Dutch republic. It is indeed a favorite theme. Catholic and Protestant alike battled with Spain, and the blood of both won the liberty of the Seven United Provinces. Then as now Catholics formed nearly half the population of Holland. But as soon as freedom was obtained, the Protestants turned on the Catholics, who had fought by their sides, deprived them of civil rights, put their religion under a ban, expelled them from their ancient churches. In fact, they halted in their course of tyranny and oppression, only when fear dictated a little prudence.

The very church given to the English Puritans under Robinson, by the Dutch authorities, was the church of the Catholic Beguines, whose residences encircled the chapel of which Dutch laws deprived them, in order to give it to foreigners who reviled the creed that erected it and the worship of the Most High so long offered within its walls.

When New Netherland was colonized, this fierce intolerance of the dominant party in Holland excluded Catholics from the new settlement as rigorously as Puritan fanaticism banished them from the shores of New England. The Catholic Hollander could not emigrate to the new land. No worship was permitted but that of the Protestant church of Holland. It is well to talk of Dutch toleration, but it is the veriest myth ever concocted; and in New Netherland, though men were received who had denied Christ and been pirates on Salee rovers, Catholicity was excluded.

Gradually a few Catholics did creep into the colony. Father Jogues on his visit in 1643 found an Irishman and a Portuguese woman, forerunners of the four hundred thousand now on Manhattan Island. Le Moyne, as we have stated, subsequently visited the island, and a Dutch domine avers that he did so in order to give the consolations of religion to some Catholic sailors and residents; but the fanaticism of Holland was here, and as an illustration of the freedom of worship supposed to exist, we find that in 1658 a Catholic in Brooklyn was punished for objecting to support a Reformed minister.

By the reduction of New York, in 1664, to the English sway, restrictions were really if not explicitly removed. James, Duke of York, was a Catholic, and his province of New York was for a time governed by Colonel Thomas Dongan, also a Catholic. His character and career are known to our readers. Under his administration Catholic priests for the first time took up their residence on the island. Unfortunately, we have little more than the names of three clergymen and some indication of the period of their stay; though hostile notices tell us of one terrible crime they perpetrated—they actually did erect a "Jesuit colledge," and taught boys Latin. The King's Farm was assigned as the place for this institution of learning; but before Catholicity could take an enduring form, James II. was hurled from his throne for trying to make the Anglican bishops speak a little toleration. As has often happened, intolerance, with the banner-cry of "Liberty," became the order of the day. New York soon enjoyed the benefit of a governor of a true bigot stamp, grandson of one of the bloodiest butchers in the blood-stained annals of Ireland, Coote, Earl of Bellomont. He disgraced the colonial legislation with penal laws against Catholics, and characteristically lied in the preamble of his act. But he was a stanch Protestant, and had some curious dealings with Captain Kidd. The result of this change in New York affairs was that the King's Farm slipped into the hands of the Episcopalians, and they built Trinity Church on it. There is some squabbling now about this property; why not settle the matter amicably by devoting it to the object originally intended—"a Jesuit colledge"?

Under the harrying that began with Leisler's usurpation of authority in the province on the fall of James, and his mad brain full of plots and "diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists," such Catholics as had settled in New York seem gradually to have removed elsewhere; or, if they remained, reared families who were strangers to the faith.

Thus far Catholicity in New York had a strange history. Is it a dream? Fact first: Enlightened Dutch Protestants, champions of liberty of conscience, exclude Catholics, and when they creep in, tax them to support a church against the dictates of their conscience. Fact second: Enlightened English Protestants, after a great and glorious revolution, and of course full of toleration, passed penal laws subjecting Catholic priests to imprisonment for life with murderers and criminals. Fact third: Catholics during the brief period of their influence gave the colony a legislature, a bill of rights, freedom of worship to all Christians, and a college, and first attempted to elevate and christianize the negro slave. Bishop Bayley thus narrates one of these glorious works:

"The first act of the first assembly of New York convened by Colonel Dongan was the 'Charter of Liberty,' passed October 30th, 1683, which, among other things, declares that 'no person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ shall, at any time, be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion, or matter of religious concernment, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the province; but that all and every such person or persons may, from time to time and at all times, freely have, and fully enjoy, his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religion, throughout all the province—they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of others.' By another enactment, all denominations then in the province were secured in their liberty and discipline, and the like privilege was granted to others who might come into it."

For fifty years the history of Catholicity on New York island is a blank. A priest was occasionally brought in as a prisoner on some Spanish ship taken by a privateer; that is all. Catholics are scarcely alluded to. But an awakening came in 1741 in one of the wildest excitements in our annals. Catholics had, indeed, nothing to do with it, and for a long time no breath implicated the few Catholics with the supposed dangers, till a silly letter of General Oglethorpe put the idea into the heads of the New York authorities. Then the negro question and the Catholic question, which have so long alternately afforded a topic for sensation, and have at times been so oddly combined, met for the first time in New York annals.

Bishop Bayley thus describes the negro plot:

"The year 1741 was made memorable by one of those popular excitements which shows that whole communities as well as individuals are sometimes liable to lose their wits. Upon a rumor of a plot made by the negroes to burn the city and massacre the inhabitants, the whole body of the people were carried away by a sudden excitement. The lieutenant-governor offered a reward of one hundred pounds and full pardon to any free white person who would make known the author or authors of certain attempts to set fire to houses in various parts of the city. A servant-girl, named Mary Burton, living with a man named Hughson, who had been previously condemned for receiving stolen goods, came forward to claim the reward, declaring that certain negroes who frequented her master's house (he kept a small tavern) had made a plot; one of the accused, named Cuffee, she declared had said that 'a great many people had too much, and others too little,' and that such an unequal state of things should not continue long.[89] The pretended disclosures increased the excitement, and the lawyers of the city, to the number of seven, with the attorney-general, were called together to take council in regard to the matter. They certainly manifested very little coolness or judgment, and may be said to have led on the unfair and unjust trials which followed. The accused had no counsel allowed them; the attorney-general and the whole bar were on the side of the prosecution; the evidence was loose and inconclusive, and came without exception from the mouths of interested persons of bad character. Yet, upon such evidence as this, four white persons were hanged, eleven negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, and fifty were transported and sold, principally in the West Indies.[90] Among those hung was the unfortunate Mr. John Ury. Whether he was really a Catholic priest or not, he was certainly condemned and hung as such. We have no other evidence upon the matter than Horsmanden's account, and from this it does not clearly appear whether he was really a priest or a nonjuring clergyman of the Church of England.[91] The most conclusive fact in favor of his being a priest is founded upon the circumstance that, when arraigned as a priest, tried as a priest, and condemned as a priest, he never formally denied it, nor exhibited any evidence of his being ordained in the Church of England.[92]

"The persons most to blame were the judges and lawyers. The speech of the attorney-general on the trial of Ury, the sentence given by Horsmanden upon certain of the negroes, and that by the chief-justice on others, are so harsh, cruel, and abusive that we could hardly believe it possible that they had uttered them, if they were not published with the authority of Horsmanden himself. It is evident, however, that their 'holy horror of Popery' had as much to do with the whole matter as their fear of insurrection among the blacks."

Of course after this attack of insanity New York was scarcely a place for a Catholic to reside. There must have been a few; but evidently they avoided attracting attention. The next Catholic sensation was that of a poor creature whose life had been a sad defiance of all religion and morality, but who, at her death, sent some money to the Rev. Mr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, with a request that she should be buried in the church. She was indeed interred there, till a clamor rose fierce and loud. She was not only a public sinner but a Catholic; the latter, too terrible a sin to forgive, so she was taken up; but Mr. Inglis never recovered from the stigma.

Not long before the Revolution, the few Catholics in New York were again the object of the zeal of the Jesuit fathers, with whom so much of our history is connected. The mission of the sons of St. Ignatius, which in Maryland was coeval with the settlement of that colony, gradually extended to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, aided chiefly by the bequest of Sir John James. The mission was one involving some danger, and hence required great caution; but finally a Catholic priest stood in New York to begin to gather the faithful, and administer the sacraments of which they had been so long deprived. The priest who formed this first congregation, the nucleus of St. Peter's, and thus of all the Catholic institutions on the Island of Manhattan, was a German Jesuit, Father Ferdinand Steinmeyr, known on the American mission as Father Farmer. A man of extensive learning, not only in the theological studies of his church, but in the natural sciences, the Royal Society of London had been glad to add his name to their list of members. Here he would have been a fit associate for Colden, Franklin, and Barton, but the gratification of this taste would have made him too conspicuous in a prejudiced and hostile community; and the man of science submitted to be passed by without notice, anxious only to do his duty as a missionary, and gather the lost sheep of Israel. The reticence required unfortunately leaves us without any direct information as to his visits, and we do not positively know when or where this man, whose learning would have adorned the colony of New York, first offered the holy sacrifice for the pioneer congregation of Catholics in this city. Bishop Bayley has collected the various early notes and hints on this interesting point, but it is after all involved in great obscurity. Yet this founder of Catholicity in New York City lived so recently, that the writer, who can claim neither gray hairs nor advanced years, remembers several who had received the sacraments of the church at his hands.

Father Farmer came undoubtedly with the address of some German Catholic, and his visit would thus be less likely to attract attention, as German clergymen of various denominations often passed through the city. Mr. Idley, a German of the early day, claimed that mass was first said in his house in Wall street, and the claim may not be unfounded.

Father Farmer continued these occasional visits until the breaking out of hostilities with England. The defeat of Washington on Long Island threw New York into the hands of the English, and for the next seven years his pastoral visits became impossible.

So long as the colonial dependence prevailed, the British government stimulated anti-Catholic fanaticism, because while this spirit was fanned the colonies readily gave men and money to aid in the reduction of Canada. That French colony, after many fruitless attempts, at last fell under the combined efforts of the mother country and the colonies; but Canada, once reduced, became the object of sounder and more dispassionate statesmanship. By the surrender, the Canadians were guaranteed certain rights, as the Irish were by the treaty of Limerick. Protestant governments have never been over-scrupulous on such points, and it was as easy to break faith with the Canadians as with the Irish, but this time England was honest. The Catholic Church was left almost intact in Canada; nay, its clergy continued under British rule to gather tithes and receive certain traditional honors.

This was too much for the people of the older colonies to brook. They had not lavished blood and treasure for this. The very bigotry nurtured by English rule now turned against it. And what wonder, then, that the first standard of revolt reared in New York expressed this long-cherished feeling, this hatred of Catholics so long encouraged by government, what wonder that the flag of American freedom that first floated to the breeze in New York bore the motto, "No Popery"!

How little we can fathom the designs of the Almighty! Who looking on that flag could see in it the germ of a freedom of the church which she then nowhere out of the patrimony of St. Peter really possessed? Yet it was there. Down to the French alliance, this anti-Catholic feeling nerved the Whigs and discouraged the friends of British rule. Then it changed, and the Tory papers caught up every occasion to show how zealously Protestant the British party was. While the selectmen of Boston followed a Catholic procession through the streets, and Congress went to mass, the British authorities in New York are pointed out by a pamphleteer of the day as beyond reproach. They showed their anti-Catholic zeal in this way:

"In 1778, in the month of February, a large French ship was taken by the British, near the Chesapeake, and sent for condemnation into New York, at that time still in possession of the English. Among her officers was a priest, of the name of De la Motte, of the order of St. Augustine, who was chaplain of the vessel. Being permitted to go at large in the city, he was solicited by his countrymen, and by those of his own faith, to celebrate mass. Being advised of the existence of a prohibitory law, he applied to the commanding officer for permission, which was refused; but M. de la Motte, not knowing the language very well, mistook what was intended for a refusal as a permission, and accordingly celebrated mass. For this he was arrested, and kept in close confinement until exchanged. This was under Governor Tryon's administration."

Benedict Arnold—for even this precious worthy may come in as an illustration—when he sat down in New York in his uniform of a British brigadier, to write his address to his countrymen justifying the step which he had taken, and which we are accustomed to characterize by the ugly name of treason, made his strong anti-Catholic feeling justify his course. He had entered the movement as a thorough Protestant; but when Congress began to favor popery, he foresaw the ruin of his country, and as a true Protestant made his peace with England. Strong as the anti-Catholic feeling had been in the hearts of the colonists, we do not find that this appeal of Arnold to their prejudices induced a single man to desert the American ranks; it is far more likely that it may have sent some Irish soldiers from the British ranks to swell Washington's regiments.

We are apt to associate our republic with the idea of unbounded religious toleration. As we have shown, hostility to Catholics was a potent element in arousing the people to declare against Great Britain, and the State governments as originally framed bear deeply impressed the traces of that common feeling which once, in Lyons, proclaimed in one line free toleration in matters of religion, and in the next prohibited the mass under terrible penalties. If freedom was dreamed of, it was to be one which we were not to enjoy.

The anti-Catholic feeling that characterized the first national movement was displayed in the convention which in 1777 formed a constitution for the State of New York. There no less a personage than John Jay, subsequently minister to England and chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was the ardent, fiery advocate of intolerance. Catholics of New York owe a debt of gratitude to Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston for the manliness with which in that convention they fought the battle of human freedom and sought to check the onslaught of intolerance. But they failed. Under that constitution no Catholic could be naturalized, and the liberty of worship granted was couched in such terms as to justify the legislature at any time in crushing Catholicity, and in point of fact they at once adopted an iron-clad oath that effectually prevented any Catholic from holding office.

The Brief Sketch gives the debates on the interesting questions before the convention; and it notes how, in that curious system of language so common with our public speakers and writers, this constitution found an advocate in the late polished Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, who praised it in an address before the New York Historical Society for its liberality in containing no provision repugnant to civil and religious toleration, as though laws excluding Catholics from citizenship and office were not slightly repugnant.

In point of fact, however, the hostile feeling of the earlier days was soon neutralized, and at the close of the war New York was virtually free to receive a Catholic Church.

How, then, Catholicity took root and grew under the protecting work of men who

"Builded better than they knew,"

how it has spread and done its work of struggle and triumph under the federal government, will be the matter of another article.

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