The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

CHAPTER XXI.

CALUMNY.

The next morning, before any one was up, Albert went in search of Fanny, with whom he had the following conversation:

“You have caused me a useless journey,” said he. “Eugénie loves the engineer.”

“I do not believe it,” replied the servant, either because she did not, or because she wished to console Albert.

“It is of no use to contradict me. I have kept my eyes open, and drawn my own conclusions. I have a better opportunity than you for observation. I tell you she loves him! If you cannot devise some scheme for driving him from her mind, I shall set out to-morrow for the capital.”

“Here is what I call hitting the nail on the head.... I thought of something yesterday exactly to the point.”

It was Albert’s turn to be incredulous. He shrugged his shoulders as a sign of doubt.

“I tell you I can satisfy your demand,” repeated Fanny slowly. “Listen! In a manufactory, everything is talked about. The engineer has for some time frequented a house apparently through charity, but it is my opinion another motive takes him there. There is a young girl in the house—the prettiest, handsomest girl to be seen, they say, for ten leagues around. Besides, she is well behaved, intelligent, and even pious; only, she is pitifully poor.”

“Tell me how he became acquainted with the family.”

“The father is a drunkard; the mother an idle, malicious creature who is employed here. The engineer looks after her. This woman was probably the cause of his going to the house. They are extremely destitute.”

“And the girl: what does she do?”

“She has been very well brought up at an aunt’s in town. The aunt died recently, and so suddenly that she was unable to make her will, as she intended, in favor of her niece. The latter has therefore returned home, to find nothing but wretchedness. I must confess, however, that she has behaved admirably.... All these details are correct, I assure you.... What is no less true, Mlle. Eugénie knows all the poor families that the engineer visits except this one. It is my conviction that he loves this girl, and intends marrying her some day.... There is no need of making people out worse than they are. There are some good things in this M. Louis. All his family are very wealthy. He will not be poor long, and is at liberty to marry a woman who has nothing, if he pleases.”

“Well,” said Albert, “I will reflect on what you have told me. It seems to me, with this information, I can greatly modify my fair cousin’s feelings towards her protégé.”

Before another hour, Albert had gathered full particulars with regard to the subject, and matured his plans. That very afternoon, he asked Eugénie to allow him to accompany her in her rounds among the poor.

“Willingly,” said she. “I have not been to see them for some time. I was just thinking I ought to go to-day.”

They set out together. The day was delightful. Eugénie, lively and witty as usual, took most of the conversation upon herself. Albert had on a dignified air of offence which he wished his cousin to perceive; but she did not notice it, or pretended not. Twenty times he was on the point of alluding to what had taken place the evening before, and as often refrained. Conceited as he was, Albert could not help it—he was not at his ease in Eugénie’s society. Her unvarying frankness, her intelligence, and the vivacity that never forsook her, all these rare qualities rendered him continually diffident in her presence.

At some distance from the manufactory, the road divided. One part turned towards the highway that led to the village; the other followed a gentle declivity to the river half hidden among the willows, rushes, and flowers that make that part of the bank so delightful.

“What a charming view!” said Albert. “Let us go down this way a short distance. We can afterwards return to the highway.”

Eugénie allowed herself to be guided by his wish. When within a hundred steps from the shore, they came to a hut by the wayside, between two large trees, picturesque in appearance, but indicative of poverty. It looked like a forsaken nest in a thicket.

Albert had made particular inquiries, and knew the hut was inhabited by the Vinceneau family—the one, it will be recollected, that Louis took charge of unknown to Eugénie.

“Are there not some of your poor people here whom you ought to visit?” asked Albert, in the most innocent manner.

“No; I have no idea who lives in this cottage.”

“I saw M. Louis coming out of it the other day.”

“He probably came here on business. I know all the families he visits; none of them lives here.”

While thus talking, Albert approached the hut, and, before Eugénie could prevent him, entered. She followed.

Mère Vinceneau was at home that day, in one of her fits of idleness and ill-humor. She at once recognized Eugénie, whom she did not like. She had, as I have already remarked, a general antipathy against the rich.

“What have you come here for?” said she.

“We do not wish to disturb you in the least,” said Eugénie, whose curiosity was now roused. “My cousin and I merely wish to rest ourselves. Perhaps you could give us some milk.”

“I have none.”

Mère Vinceneau was a tall, spare woman, with a forbidding countenance, and covered with rags. Had it not been for her crabbed face, she would certainly have excited compassion. However, Eugénie’s sympathies were awakened at the sight of her wretched condition.

“You seem very destitute, my good woman,” said she. “Can I be of any service to you?”

La Vinceneau softened a little at this gracious offer. “Thank you,” she said. “It is true we are badly off, while some people have too much.... Nevertheless, I ought not to complain. We have one friend.... You know him well—M. Louis, the engineer of your mill. What a kind heart he has! There is one who loves the poor! If the rich only resembled him!...”

“Do you live here alone?”

“No; I have a husband employed at the tile-works, and a daughter who goes out as a seamstress in the village. She is coming now.”

A slight cloud came over Eugénie’s face. It became still darker when Madeleine Vinceneau entered. Madeleine was not merely beautiful: she was dazzling. Poorly but neatly clad, she came forward with a dignity and grace that inspired astonishment as well as respect. Her large black eyes, her pale, refined face, her smiling lips, and her whole appearance, had an air of aristocratic distinction.

“What a lovely creature!” was Eugénie’s first thought. Then another presented itself: “Perhaps Louis loves her.” She shuddered. A feeling of displeasure and sadness came over her: “I must be in love with him myself without being aware of it, to be so jealous,” she said to herself. This doubt was natural. Eugénie determined to solve it. Such is our nature. We can never see so clearly what is passing in the depths of our hearts as in a tempest.

Eugénie began to question the girl discreetly. She wished to ascertain if her nature was as angelic as her exterior. She was soon satisfied on this point. Madeleine was innocence itself, and as good as she was innocent. She confirmed all her mother had said, and in her turn praised Louis with an ingenuousness that assured Eugénie she did not love him. “But he—is he as indifferent to her?...” was Eugénie’s thought as she left the house. She could not get rid of the painful suspicion, consequently she was in rather a gloomy mood. Albert noticed it, but refrained from saying anything. One unguarded word would have counteracted the happy effect of his perfidious scheme. But he was triumphant when he returned to his room. “I have dealt my rival a severe blow,” said he to himself—“a blow he can hardly recover from; for he will not suspect its source, and Eugénie will never mention it to him. Even if she wished to, how could they have any explanation? They never meet except in the presence of others. Before such an explanation takes place, I must find other means of completing his ruin.... I have begun well, and must bring things to a crisis....”

All this occurred the day before Louis came to see us. Mère Vinceneau told him of the visit a short time after. He suspected there was some scheme of Albert’s at the bottom of it, and dwelt on the means he should use to defeat his calculations. Meanwhile, his enemy was contriving a new plot destined to cause him still greater embarrassment.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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[THE EMPIRE.]

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

The imperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. This régime is of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French, and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it. What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This rising en masse, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of 1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state, which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance and represent their ten millions of constituents.

Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation is extremely amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified. First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign, not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he was invested. The empire had its noblesse, but a noblesse of titles and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence was denied this noblesse. The army was likewise organized after the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.

Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence, for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar. What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite. His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West. The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself, a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism, literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English, American—he had something of them all. He spoke all languages as well as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign, he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them, and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian, American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws, public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness, Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in Italy and Germany.

The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar, and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government, with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies, despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it. The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the late régime, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now, by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed, vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did not M. de Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by the préfets, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.

The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable. It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar: he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors. This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as, at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered. Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.

Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions: Ne regibus parere nisi ex libidine soliti[169]—they obey their kings only according to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation. The people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government, a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion, lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent, but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking, the word libido might imply either consent or assent. The idea is somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race preceded the importation of despotism.

Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment, so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome? The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him. What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this the doctrine that is agitating France?

Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection of the imperial régime. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed, for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs, which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation. Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have been the same.

The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is influenced only by the hope of promotion.

But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the ancient régime, was careful not to do so where the independence of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his livelihood, and he belonged to his native place, where, regarded with universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people, fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace, being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony, had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average, the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs, and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office, practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace, having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises. Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.

This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization, which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the proconsuls, paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort, etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them. This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.

We have been sobered by this experience. The rôle, brilliant as it was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type. And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions, and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtains sway, gives glory, and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and incurable weakness.

Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East, by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because, already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Its esprit de famille, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality, superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation. The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to the imperial régime and modern institutions. We can no longer deny that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular side of this régime. No nation of Europe has experienced anything comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor and general constructor of all the public works.

The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds, and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789, the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth. This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building. This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement, constrained by the préfets and mayors. Corruption, promoted by books and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened, Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present. They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglected no opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall it be lost on France?

Our revolutions and various coups d’état within a century have transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy, the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure. Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That, in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained, the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the theatre and literature.

The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is the bête noire of Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man, separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and transported to another region where he is only accountable to the state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks about his morality, but the service he must render to the state. How many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the favor of the government!

France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge. Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared. What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only sought ex officio supporters. In a country like France, these are always to be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek anarchy.”

The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of principles that only find complete development under an autocratic form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy. Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system. The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship, the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it. He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not willing for France to escape the Revolution, the reins of which he held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press, the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that, apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and sister.

The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era. The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany, on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient times. She no longer emigrates en masse, but by the indirect ways of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible, more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished, and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools, a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France, plunged into Cæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed, allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which, by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar, rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of Christian society.

The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries, and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany. He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.

The development of Cæsarism in France as well as in Germany has followed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Holy See. But the German Empire will always retain an immense superiority over the French Empire. It is less revolutionary, less democratic, less at variance with its past history. It is not impossible that it may combine with the local and municipal institutions of the country. Prussia is far from our absolute centralization, and there is nothing to indicate that she is to be subjected to it. She remains the ally of the great powers of the Continent. She could easily have rallied all Europe against imperial and Byzantine France. Let us not deny it: no victory of Louis Napoleon’s could have secured the left bank of the Rhine. The German coalition would very soon have drawn the rest of Europe after it. This struggle of one against all is a necessity of Bonapartism. Nothing can check it. Softness of manners, a refined civilization, pretended condemnation of war, philanthropy bordering on religion, boundless industry and credit, the military incapacity of Louis Napoleon, nor anything else, could have prevented the war from breaking out. “Revolution is war and bankruptcy,” said Royer-Collard. It obeys its nature. It upheld the Bonapartes in spite of a kind of material order and discipline they forced on the people; it required of them an armed propaganda which they were more capable of managing successfully than the republic itself. Louis Napoleon, with his mildness of character, and talent as a writer, desired a peace that would enable him to continue his utopian experiments in journalism. But he was not his own master. He felt that a revolution at home constituted only one-half of his obligations; the other half—revolution abroad—he was also determined to effect, though to his regret. He regarded the bombs of Orsini as a salutary warning, and submitted to his destiny. He extended revolution to Italy and Mexico. He destroyed the influence of Austria. Prussia profited by these disturbances to unite Germany. But Louis Napoleon made a pitiful failure. He dashed against a wall with his eyes shut. The pretext of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne was ridiculous, and the legislative corps and senate that countenanced it showed the measure of their political knowledge and independence.

It is difficult to comprehend by virtue of what principle or interest he opposed the choice of a Hohenzollern. Had he not rejected the hereditary principle? Had he not aided in overthrowing all the princes of the House of Bourbon who still reigned through this principle? Was not his own power based on election? And what did it matter to France whether that pitiful Spanish crown was on one head rather than another? What gratitude could he expect from those revolutionary sovereigns whose patron or director he constituted himself? He took the petty Subalpine king by the hand, and led him to the Crimea, and to the Congress of Paris, and thence into all the capitals of Italy. His plans were unveiled when he forced the unhappy Victor Emanuel to give his daughter to the imperial cousin. Who then could cherish any illusion as to the result? It was unfolded. Did the revolutionary union of the south spring from it? This union could only be effected by the unity of despotism. Napoleon knew it: his nephew forgot it. Revolutionary nations are necessarily at war or distrustful of one another, as the revolutionary factions of a nation are always contending, unless some master—no matter whether it is an individual or a party—succeeds in suppressing the rivalry.

This was the state of the case in our Revolution. Is it not a matter of public notoriety that the name of Napoleon excites only horror and disgust in Spain and Italy?

Louis Napoleon’s aim was not to subdue Europe by war, but to effect an internal change of government by means of revolutionary principles. This resulted in exciting all the great powers against him. He thought there would be a revolution in Russia in consequence of the emancipation of the serfs which he recommended to the Czar Alexander. He overthrew the German Confederation though it was so powerful a guarantee for the safety of France. It was he who made William Emperor of Germany. The overthrow of the Confederation under the circumstances in which it took place necessarily led to the empire, as the overthrow of ancient France led to the imperial régime that has lasted till now. We need not be astonished at the efforts of the King of Prussia to re-establish Louis Napoleon. They were accomplices, though Louis Napoleon has been taken for the dupe. Not that he was not conscious of the situation, but he warded off the flashes of reason and common sense he had, and gave himself up to a hallucination. France imitated him, with the conscript fathers of the senate and the legislative corps at its head. Louis Napoleon contended for an idea, and he triumphed after his manner, after the manner of his uncle. Conquered and made prisoner, he was humiliated, not by defeat, which does not humiliate the brave, but by accepting his defeat. He yielded to the conqueror, he surrendered his sword. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but he was not really cast down till he found himself on board the Bellérophon. Then he realized who was victor. The lamentations of St. Helena reveal the liberal despot. Louis Napoleon also became an author and a journalist. He dreamed of returning to France. He published at Cassel under the name of his friend, M. de Grécourt, a brochure designed to influence Germany in his favor. He had no doubt of being as warmly welcomed by France as Napoleon was when he returned from the island of Elba.

There was no change in France. Our social institutions were still standing. The republicans had found nothing to modify in the wonderful machinery of despotism. There was nothing to prevent him from resuming his place. There was the invasion besides. Did the disasters of 1814 prevent Napoleon’s reascendancy in France in 1815? Was there any lack of senators and representatives to welcome Cæsar? Was not the popularity of the uncle the foundation of the nephew’s success? That was the sole cause of Louis Napoleon’s accession. This popularity was nothing more than the result of success. Power and success united and counted the votes, and proclaimed the result. The revolutionary power was not entirely destroyed by the events of 1814 and 1815; it became an organized system, having its regulations, its leaders, its journals, its secret societies, and its permanent committees variously disguised under the forms of beneficence, pleasure, science, etc. No regular government at variance with this many-sided, intangible power could be established. The regular government of France especially—the hereditary monarchy—could not take root again. Public opinion and enthusiasm are like stage machinery that rises and falls. We witnessed the workings of this machinery from 1848 to 1852. The inventors did not even give themselves the trouble to hide the workings from the eyes of the public. This reign of opinion has continued. The word of command from the emperor was echoed by the ministers, and from them by the préfets, sous-préfets, and mayors. The entire administration in all its gradations walked in the same footsteps. By the public works, loans, and illusory promises, the mass of electors were so fascinated that they could refuse nothing to a government that was promoting such benefits. Universal suffrage is the character in the comedy—the simple, good-natured Demos of Aristophanes. In reality, it is the emperor—he who has the imperium, individually or by a number of individuals, who votes at the general election. In the Cæsarean system, the emperor alone acts, but he acts in the name of the people, and as the representative of the people. He is the voice of the people. This must not be lost sight of when we judge the acts of Louis Napoleon.

In his brochure, he claims the good-will of the King of Prussia and Germany, because it was France alone that desired the war. He did not desire it; he was not responsible for it. This was pleading his own imbecility and the culpability of France. What! he did not set France against Germany? He did not break the treaties of 1815, or officially condemn them? He did not constantly propose the policy of his uncle as an example to France? He followed it without condemning an act or a principle. The Jacobinism of his later years was a mere imitation of the liberal ideas his uncle brought back from the island of Elba, and continued to cultivate at St. Helena—ideas that M. Thiers, in his voluminous compilation concerning the empire, regarded as serious! This was why Louis Napoleon declared him “the national historian,” and presided at the obsequies of Béranger, “the national poet.” This Bonapartism in verse and prose had only one practical aim—the conquest of the Rhine provinces. That was the favorite topic of old soldiers and the zealous members of the imperial entourage. People of more sense, who were not overscrupulous, resigned themselves to it as a necessity of the situation. Ever since 1852, it had been thought there would be a sudden blow aimed at Belgium or Germany. Was not Austria attacked in 1859 without any reason or pretext, and, it may be said, without a declaration of war, and in violation of all the laws of nations? When and where did universal suffrage countenance this? Where was it discussed by the ten million voters? What authority did they give their representatives? The imperialists and liberals have refused the electors the right which they enjoyed in 1789 to give directions to those they elected. The member represents, then, only himself, though individually he may have been acceptable to his constituents at the time of the election. The elector is not free in his vote, because he does not know his so-called deputy. And these representatives of Cæsarism have never been free. No sooner are they nominated, than they forget their orders and electors, and only aim at “the glory of obedience” to Cæsar, like the senators of Tiberius.

Louis Napoleon played to perfection the game of Cæsarism. Conqueror or conquered, he always kept a foothold. Victory immortalized him, and assured perhaps his son’s future career. And defeat was not to be imputed to him. As the representative of the people, he was only a passive agent. A docile instrument of the passions and sentiments of the people, he sacrificed himself. Did not this entitle him to the gratitude of his fellow-citizens? He regarded the republic as less popular than himself, and condemned by universal suffrage. Besides, he affected to personify in a supreme degree the republican element. It was not with respect to France he was anxious. He knew that the Cæsarean constitution of France left a sure way always open of regaining the throne. It was by foreigners he was overthrown. He preferred this fall to the necessity of presiding over new disasters. He was not sorry, either, to see the city of Paris, which of late had been constantly opposed to the empire, and whose enmity daily increased under its liberal laws, chastised by Prussia. King William thus effected a coup d’état which did not injure the emperor, and made a return to despotism easier than at the beginning of the empire. La Situation, the Bonaparte organ at London, insinuated that Prussia had an interest in allying itself with Louis Napoleon, in order to reconstruct the map of Europe. And it did not conceal that the neutral countries, Belgium and Holland, were to pay for this reconciliation. In this way, Bonapartism, though apparently crushed, showed signs of life, and fostered its hopes. This was a sign it was not morally subdued. It was overcome only to be restored. But the French republic was not in a condition to restore it, because it confounded itself with it. It must be ascertained if Europe feared Bonapartism or France. Bonapartism aside, France is now a really peaceful, honest, Christian nation. She has only been formidable since 1789 through the principles of dissolution she has carried within herself and diffused abroad by means of newspapers, secret societies, and armies.

The idea of giving Holland to Prussia, and Belgium to France, was worthy of Louis Napoleon. Would Europe allow it? Prussia already preponderates. France would gain nothing. She could not rise from the inferiority into which she has fallen through late events. The humiliation that Cæsarism has inflicted on our country is not a thing of yesterday. Napoleon stated the problem clearly: France must subject Europe to revolution, or disappear before a torrent of invasions. These two alternatives have been successively more or less realized. The Restoration gave peace once more to France and to Europe. France, regaining her rank, menaced no one, and sustained herself by her alliances. She fell again in the Revolution of 1830. Foreign sympathy was withdrawn from us. All the alliances were broken off. The various governments, stunned by the rebound of the Revolution, stood on their guard. The monarchy of July sought to favor revolution moderately abroad, and to direct it with skill at home. From that time, Europe formed a coalition against us. During the first ten years of the Revolution of July, the public mind was disturbed as to the possibility of a great war with Germany. The liberal party used every effort to bring it on, without any reason certainly, in order to fulfil one of the conditions of the revolutionary programme, which is an armed propaganda. It was with such views that the fortifications of Paris were conceived by M. Thiers. The equilibrium of Europe was destroyed, therefore, to our sole injury. The empire developed the seeds of revolution sown by the government of July. France descended lower than in 1830; she even lost all regard to decency, by giving herself up to the revolutionary current. The distinguished men of talent who devoted themselves to the service of Louis Philippe withdrew from the scene, and were replaced by a crowed of nobodies. Assemblies, ministers, and emperor entered on such a contradictory course that one might believe our country had fallen into its dotage.

The Mexican war made America aware of our political weakness; and, in the East, our diplomacy lost the last remnant of its influence by taking a stand apart from Catholicism. The war of 1859 set Italy against us—a country so lately governed by princes favorable to France. The Italian unity and German unity consigned France to a secondary rank. Finally, the commercial treaties have made us subservient to England. Thus, in renouncing all idea of conquest, Louis Napoleon did not give up disturbing Europe. France served as the instrument of this work, and ended by being the victim. The material disproportion of forces could only produce a catastrophe. Europe was arming its men, while France, under Louis Napoleon’s direction, was plunged in revolutionary metaphysics. It does not require any great sagacity, however, to perceive that a revolutionary nation could not be in a condition to sustain a conflict with a nation that has remained true to conservative principles. What could be effected by combining all these shattered elements? How could we depend on these bruised reeds?

So rapid a decadence under the influence of anti-social principles has permitted neighboring nations to renounce the traditions that bound them to us. The admiration they felt for the superiority of our civilization yielded to the fear of falling under a despotism as unprincipled as it was senseless. It was from the hotbed of Bonapartism, the inheritor of revolutionary traditions, that have sprung the various revolutions which from 1814 to 1830 ensanguined all Europe. The republic of 1848, exhausted in the course of ten months, consigned its stock of revolutionism to Louis Bonaparte. He made it yield with usury. Until 1859, he hesitated and felt his way, being fettered by public sentiment, which was more conservative and Christian than he could have wished. He skilfully got rid of the honest people around him, and, once started, he never stopped again. From that fatal period, he was no longer his own master: he was the ready tool of the Revolution. It is surprising that the Bonapartes are not satisfied with reigning over France; they think they have a right to all Europe—a right to substitute the sovereignty of the people and elective governments for all the hereditary monarchies. The mission they claim secures the complicity of all the malcontents. The rulers assuredly take note of all this danger. They understand that their enemy in France is not France itself, but the Revolution.

The German Empire rekindles the fears that Louis XIV. inspired and Napoleon made us realize. Owing to a remnant of feudalism, it is founded on a much more solid basis than the French Empire was. When it attains its utmost limit, there will really be only one power in Europe. Even now, no one would think of denying its preponderance. The balance of power can only be preserved by the alliance of the secondary powers—France, Russia, Austria, and England. No one disputes the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press, and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic Empire was one vast treason. It only allured France in order to deliver it up to foreigners. By giving her the choice between universal rule and annihilation, he placed her in an absurd position, and subjected her to certain ruin for the greater glory of Napoleon. It may here be remarked that no man ever made a more lavish use than Napoleon of the word “glory,” which the pagans so constantly had on their lips. It was comprehensible to people that lived to serve masters who, having all that could gratify pride and power in this world, aspired to glory as the supreme recompense. It was under similar circumstances that Napoleon and his nephew sought and obtained glory. Their names are imperishable. They are connected with catastrophes human memory will forever retain. They refused to reign peaceably by fulfilling their duties as sovereigns. Rejecting a divine authority, and recognizing no higher power, they made use of the people as the instrument of their passions. One had a passion for conquering Europe, the other for revolutionizing it. And France had to promote these designs, be drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.

The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute disorder. And the aim of the empire was not to substitute order for revolution, but to organize the Revolution by making it possible to the vulgar mind. It proved, therefore, wholly incompetent to the work of reorganizing society. Napoleon succeeded republican anarchy, and would have left us in it at his downfall, had it not been for the House of Bourbon, which saved us from foreigners and revolution. The nephew likewise succeeded his mother, the republic, whose death he hastened. And everybody knows that his natural death at the Tuileries would have been followed by a triumphant republican rising at Paris. He made every preparation for that. The republic of the 4th of September, 1870, was established almost as a matter of course, without violence, without noise. The régente had orders not to oppose anything. General Montauban declared to all who would listen to him that he should only offer moral resistance to the expected demonstration of the 4th of September. In fact, after Wissembourg, there was no imperial government. That government, then, was anarchical in essence and administrative by accident. It only rose momentarily above anarchy, and speedily sank into it again. It dreaded nothing more than a peace that would strengthen institutions, create new influences, and diminish Cæsar’s personality. Louis Napoleon was perpetually remodelling the different institutions, and without any apparent object. It was in this way he did away even with the traditions of the First Empire, and subjected the army to so many ridiculous experiences.

It doubtless seems singular—to accuse the uncle and the nephew of anarchy, when their putting down anarchy was precisely their title to govern France. But anarchy is not the only feature of the empire: there was despotism besides; and with these original principles there was an ingredient of political order which we do not deny. When this side of things became apparent, the people threw themselves into the emperor’s arms, and hailed him as the saviour of the country. When all was lost, they took hold of the first thing that presented itself. In our modern France, the empire and the Napoleons are the only memories capable of fixing every eye and directing every vote at a given moment. The salvage obtained, half the work remains to be accomplished. In the latter part of its task, the empire always fails. Its principles hinder it; they only favor order under conditions which prevent its solidity. Why this special hatred kept up by the Bonapartes against the House of Bourbon? The Bonapartes have nothing against the Bourbons; our kings had long lost their power when the Bonapartes seized it. There is no personal difference between them and the Bourbons. We must look beyond to find the connection between the cause and effect. The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are above all that is individual and personal. They represent two opposite causes. By the intrigues of Louis Napoleon, the offshoots of the House of Bourbon have disappeared from the thrones of southern Europe. They are a living protestation against revolutions. The Bourbons have in vain allied themselves with the revolutionary party, and ruined their own cause; they never succeeded in gaining the good-will of their adversaries, so effectually have their principles, which they cannot divest themselves of, protected the monarchical cause against themselves! The House of Bourbon, in its downfall at Naples and Madrid, was elevated by its fall. The dethroned Neapolitan king has shown himself more Christian, more kingly, than before he fell. The Spanish monarchy, by the mouth of Don Carlos, has expressed sentiments truly worthy of a king, and contrasts with the attitude of the elective and liberal king who has just left. The House of Bourbon has been purified by the crucible of revolutions, because, in spite of its failings and misfortunes, it represents the principle of right. The Bonapartes remain true to themselves. They do not vary in their rôle or in their pretensions, and remain attached to principles irreconcilable with the peace of France and all Europe. The recall of the Bourbons is an European necessity. It will be more easily effected when the wall of prejudice, which has barred the way, is wholly broken down. This European war had been foreseen from the beginning of the empire. Louis Napoleon, in throwing the responsibility of it on France, acknowledged that he yielded to the fatality of his position. What could be a more decisive proof, and what other could be wished, that the empire is war? No one in France desired war. Nothing was ready. The liberal party curtailed every year the budget of the army. Prussia gave us no excuse for aggression; all the chancelleries advised peace. It was then that, a prey to the evil genius of his family, to obsessions that deprived him of sense and foresight, Louis Napoleon made a sudden attack on Germany, without looking to see if he was followed, or how he was followed.

Our fault was in not being ready, say the Bonapartists. That is an illusion. At no price could the empire have been ready. The military organization, weakened by perpetual changes, the corruption and lack of discipline diffused among the soldiers and under-officers by means of the public journals and secret societies, the limited resources available under a system which affected a kind of communism in the civil order, and constantly encroached on future supplies, rendered reform impossible. Everything set aside the thought of attempting it. The budget paid 400,000 men, and our army did not really exceed 200,000! A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions. Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports. Leaders who are improvised remain necessarily without authority, unless they have been prepared for their rôle by their previous life. Our military organization corresponds to our social organization: and it is the empire, a military régime, but also a Saint-Simonian régime, that has co-operated actively in the military dissolution of France. It was by being mixed with Saint-Simonism that it returned to the extreme notions of 1789 and 1793. This socialism that was to sustain the empire against the clergy, the conservative party, and the republicans, did it weigh one ounce in his favor? At the first reverse, all the socialism in authority disappeared. And Louis Napoleon has had no adversaries more implacable than all these socialists whom he fed, and who are making up for their former servility by their present abuse.

We must not weary of meditating on these words: France fights for an idea. This idea, under various names, is the Revolution, socialism, and the principles of 1789. Louis Philippe, that emperor on a small scale, and that “best of republics,” pursued the same crooked way. He classed his wars and foreign intrigues under the mild term of “liberalism.” He propagated in his way, by the assistance of the Assemblies, the principles of the Revolution. He gradually but persistently violated the treaties of 1815, which had put an end to twenty-five years of social war in Europe. It was in violation of these treaties that he ascended the throne. He interfered in Belgium in the name of the Revolution; he aided greatly in the downfall of the Bourbons of Spain; he occupied Ancona, in spite of the Holy See, and indicated a course to Gregory XVI. that was identical with the terms of Louis Napoleon’s letter to Edgar Ney. Finally, less Catholic than M. Guizot, he applauded the ruin of the Sonderbund, and refused Prince von Metternich the support of France in protecting the interests of the smaller cantons, our friends and ancient allies. By his inaction, he favored the revolutionary cause when he did not serve it with his forces. The revolutionary triumph at Berne soon extended to Paris, and Louis Philippe had to withdraw more speedily than he came. He propagated revolutionism in Europe during the whole course of his reign, with less display than Louis Napoleon, but with as much perversity. Certainly, neither Prussia, nor Austria, nor Russia were deceived as to the cause and tendency of the Revolution of 1830. They protested in vain. England alone took sides with Louis Philippe: thence the subserviency of our policy to that of England. Louis Philippe made the most of that ally of the Revolution: through party spirit, he sacrificed even the interest and honor of France. We recognize there the soldier of 1789, the former usher of the Jacobin club. And Louis Napoleon, for the same cause, humiliated himself more profoundly. He put his ministers, his assemblies, his diplomacy, our commerce, and our industries at the feet of England. And he certainly was not ignorant that England would never send him a shilling or a man. But he knew that England protected revolution on the Continent. He bound her to the revolutionary cause by the Crimean war and the commercial treaty. England powerfully seconded it in Italy and Spain. It was Bonapartism that English policy has developed even while thinking it was making use of it. Coming events will tell whether England has not, by violating her traditions, hastened a decline already evident and even alarming.

It is possible that, by rejecting the pretended English alliance, which was never anything but a lure, France would have been forced to closer relations with the Continent, and to conform to the European law of nations, which would have saved Europe from great calamities. The sovereigns, then, have some interest in withdrawing France from English complicity. The Restoration alone understood the practice of French policy, and alone maintained a firm attitude with respect to England. Its whole policy, interior as well as exterior, was national and uninfluenced by England. The conquest of Algiers was the most brilliant result of that policy. The Restoration made successful wars, and wars Europe had no reason to complain of; for they were carried on with the consent of the powers, and to re-establish the law of nations settled by the treaties of 1815. Such was the character of the war with Spain in 1823. Peace reigned then among all the great powers of the Continent, and it was solely to the House of Bourbon it was owing; that house overthrown, a spirit of revolt broke out on all sides, and made thrones totter. What profit did France derive from it? Condemning herself by her institutions to perpetual war, France pronounced her own sentence of death. She conquered under Napoleon only by the ability of her leader, when she found herself contending with one or two nations. She successively defeated each of her enemies. At length her armies were made up of recruits from every country in Europe; she incorporated the vanquished through the same policy as ancient Rome. It was an army composed of soldiers from all parts of Europe that Napoleon led into Russia. The disaster of 1812 freed Germany. Then, for the first time, a serious coalition was arranged, and Napoleon was defeated by the combined forces in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Louis Napoleon attacked Russia and Austria separately. He isolated Prussia from the great powers, but his policy of nationality brought on German unity. And it was the whole of Germany that confronted him when he merely wished to confront the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia, had he been defeated, would have appealed to the Emperor of Austria and the czar, who would not have failed him. Our revolutionary tendencies will always draw a coalition upon us. The late events have weakened the revolutionary party in Europe to such a degree that the support it offered us, and on which we relied, will be of no more avail. Europe, surprised by the outburst of 1789, yielded to our arms for twenty years. She then united, and, imitating the imperial military policy, carried it to a degree of perfection that left us behind. What remains for France and all Europe but to agree in re-establishing peace by conformity of political principles? And in 1873, as in 1815, this peace depends solely on the recall of the House of Bourbon to France. It is to this work that Europe is invited if she does not wish to perpetuate a revolution which, after ruining France, will not leave one of the great powers standing.

The French Revolution has till now been the object of public attention. Princes and people have bestirred themselves for a century to oppose or sustain it. The inability of the principles of 1789 to establish anything, and the invasion of 1870, have opened the eyes of France, and better disposed it to make terms with Europe henceforth. But beside the French Revolution, now growing powerless, rises a political element that suddenly overawes and disturbs European equilibrium. A policy of defence and preservation ought to be directed against the Empire of Germany, not to destroy it, but to guarantee the safety of other governments by a general alliance and a new law of nations. France will never declare war against Europe again. Louis Napoleon is the last to make such a challenge. Personally, there was nothing warlike in him; but he represented a system that tends to war. To him this war was an amusement, a distraction. To divert himself by a general war, in order to escape for a moment from national affairs that perplexed him! The diversion was powerful; as well blow out one’s brains to drive away ennui. The mass of the French people did not participate in the madness of the Bonaparte system: they are victims as well as Europe. Only we have come to that phase of the system which is more particularly humiliating to France. The three great allied powers of the North have nothing more to fear from France. But this alliance of the North is no longer on terms of equality. We say great powers! There is now but one great power—Germany. And she necessarily threatens Austria and Russia by her military strength and by her expansive power, through her hardy and laborious race, that is filling the United States with swarms of colonizers, extending to the neighboring Sclave countries in Russia, and putting forth its shoots even on French soil. German preponderance will pursue its course. It is not universal rule, but a preponderance that will tend to it, unless a union of the secondary powers oppose it with a strong, resisting force. Germany herself will not be wanting in prudence. Her reign will last its time; it is sure of only a short triumph. In twenty-five years, Russia, in consequence of the progress of science and industry, will be able to subjugate Germany. Germany will then have need of France.

By a law of Providence, nations that rise from an uncertain beginning seem to attain their height suddenly, and almost as speedily begin to decline. We Frenchmen have had our day of power and glory in the middle ages. The age of Louis XIV. was our era of intellectual superiority and political preponderance. We have come down from that pinnacle; there is no denying it. Germany, by its material strength, is rising far above the point we attained. England, France, Russia, and Austria no longer have any influence, by their diplomacy and alliances, over the hundreds of petty princes and peoples that constituted the German Confederation. They are shut out of Germany. Any pretension to interference would make them a laughing-stock. All these powers, Russia excepted, have pursued a foolish policy, and are receiving the recompense due to their shrewdness. Inheritor of Richelieu, the French Revolution so disturbed Germany as to overthrow all its princes. The German nation has survived, and by the concentration of its unity has acquired a power of aggression and conquest it was incapable of under its former organization. The Revolution of 1789 resulted in the immediate elevation of England, which from the third rank rose almost to the first—a rank she would still have, had she not replaced the policy of Pitt and Burke by the policy of Lord Palmerston and his followers. Louis Napoleon created the Empire of Germany, but England applauded his course. All her statesmen have rejoiced in the humiliation of France that has resulted from it. Those debaters and merchants have advocated the establishment of an immense military empire in the heart of Europe, without perceiving that peaceful and industrious England would thereby lose its influence. She is destined to decline still further. Her influence on the Continent depended on the old balance of power, and preponderated through her alliance with Austria. In 1859, she betrayed Austria, and shamefully disavowed the treaties of 1815. Austria turned to Russia, or to Prussia, or to both at once.

The old kingdoms, the historic nations, are breaking in pieces. In reality, it is the Prussian Empire that has been founded, rather than the German Empire restored. Germany retains enough of Catholic life to give her a tone of moral and intellectual grandeur that render her superior to Russia and the United States. There is nothing to disturb her but the future, and a future not far distant, if the people of Southern Europe continue to abandon themselves to revolutionary principles. We are far from believing that France can never rise again. She rose after 1815: the same causes produce the same effects. What concerns Europe is that France will never resume her rôle of agitator. Bonapartism is still powerful. It prevails through the habits and necessities which concentrate and direct the whole political, moral, and mental activity of France. This storm over, the name of Napoleon will again disturb the public mind, and unite the suffrage. The republic of 1870 is dragging along in the old beaten track of imperialism. It has merely set up the men of 1848 or 1830—old, worn-out functionaries, whose incapacity has increased rather than diminished. It is time for a reaction against childish prejudices. The motto of the liberal school is: Revolution and Progress! It is well to know that a revolution is, etymologically speaking, a turn back. Our liberals cling to the days of 1789. In a few years, they will be a century behindhand. France rapidly rose from her helplessness of 1815 to the Spanish war of 1823, and the conquest of Algiers. Then a fatal revolution arrested its progress, and it fell back to a state bordering on that of ‘89. Louis Philippe kept us in subjection eighteen years. He was overthrown by the socialism which he restrained, but which with a bound returned to the theories of ‘93 in the name of progress! These sudden relapses disorganize and destroy the social machine. The Restoration alone was successful, because it was the regular government. The House of Bourbon is able to give interior peace to France. It is not the government of a party, for it does not derive its title from the popular vote. It appeals to the conscience and reason like a natural law and a national necessity. It has no other ambition but to make France once more a Christian kingdom by ensuring the general peace of Europe on the basis of a new public law. What great power will dare refuse her its aid, when so strongly interested in the same cause?

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[ENGLISH DOMESTIC FESTIVITIES.]

BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.

Mediæval England was the home of merriment and the scene of all manner of family festivals and athletic rejoicings. Heir to the old Norse traditions of Yule-tide, she preserved the spirit of innocent and manly sport better perhaps than those less hardy and more polished lands of the Mediterranean whose pleasures were mostly such as could be enjoyed from the vantage-point of a balcony, and the soft resting-place of a gilded ottoman. In England, the national pleasures are pleasures of action as well as of sight; and, even in those specially destined to commemorate the glories of an ancient feudal family, the members of the family do not recline in luxurious ease, patronizingly looking on at the feasts provided to do them honor, but mingle with the people, share in their games, and compete for prizes with the rest. This it is that distinguishes English festivities from any other, and stamps them with an individuality which in the sequel has no little political significance. The sister countries share in this attribute of hearty good-fellowship among classes, and indeed what is here said of England may be said interchangeably of Scotland and Ireland.

Still, things are not done in our day in precisely the same lavish and baronial way that was common in Tudor times, and a revival of this generous style of entertainment, though not infrequent, cannot be called other than a rarity. This certainly enhances the interest attaching to one of these social relics of the past; and the great pageant two years ago at S. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in thanksgiving for the recovery of the heir to the throne, was perhaps the most brilliant and successful modern attempt to revive the glories of England’s “golden age”; but yet, in some measure, more individuality attaches to country fêtes than even to such a national event as the “Thanksgiving Procession.”

Then, too, they are so little known beyond the rural neighborhood in which they occur that to us across the ocean they come as fresh revelations of the inner structure—social, political, and domestic—of the great mother country, whose language is now that of the greater half of the civilized world. Such a festival is also rendered still more interesting in our eyes when it takes place in a Catholic family, under Catholic auspices, and is pervaded with the broad spirit of Catholic generosity. The best days of “merrie” were those of “Catholic” England, and the national character, now universally known as the British—i.e., moroseness and gloom of disposition—is wholly a graft of the unhappy Lutheran Rebellion. Unquestionably, the most English domestic festival, the most characteristic, and the aptest to exhibit Englishmen of all ranks and stations in their best aspect, is a “Coming of Age.” This is celebrated on the twenty-first anniversary of the birth of the heir to a large property, and is essentially an outgrowth of the institution of primogeniture.

In the instance of which we speak, the festival took place in a Catholic house, on the estate of the largest land-owner of one of the midland counties of England. There was a large family gathering bidden from all parts of the country; relatives of all denominations met in perfect peace and friendship round the board of the Catholic head of their house; there were clergymen and government clerks, married sisters with large families, old aunts in sufficiently quaint costume, young lawyers, parliamentary men, soldiers and sailors, some with years of service behind them, some with their spurs yet to win; in fact, each generation, from that of “powder and patches” down to that of the nursery of to-day, was impartially and favorably represented. The house, a large, roomy Tudor building, was still too small to accommodate all the guests, and the lodges and even the inns of the neighborhood, had to be put into requisition. When we drove through the park on Tuesday evening, 10th of October, 18—, the first thing that struck us was seeing moving lights in front of the house; and, our carriage being suddenly stopped, we found that the lights were carried by E—— and the servants to prevent our being shipwrecked upon tent-ropes and poles! By that dim light, we discerned the outline of the immense tent run out from the end window of the drawing-room; and, as we looked at the preparations, the work really seemed as if carried on by fairies, so quickly and perfectly was it accomplished. The place was looking lovely; some of the beautiful trees were just touched with the first tints of scarlet and gold, others still fresh and green. At the east end of the Terrace Garden is a very handsome stone balustrade, between the flower-garden and the straight walk leading to the old Hall (a ruined house, once the family mansion, and now standing in the grounds as a picturesque ornament, and also a convenient place for school entertainments, servants’ dances, etc.) “To any prosaic mind,” said a friend of ours, “there is always great amusement in watching work of any kind; and the object for which all was going on gave me such a real interest in it that I do not think any one entered more fully than I did into even the minutest details of preparation.” Lord G——, the owner of the house, and the father of the young recipient of these patriarchal honors, gave Captain W—— carte blanche about many little things, and was so kindly pleased with every endeavor: all the people worked with such eagerness and good-will. Old Philip (a garrulous old carpenter who knows the family history far better than the family itself!) and Captain W—— made fast friends in no time. The entrance tent became in a few days very pretty—lined with scarlet and white, the floor covered with red, marble tables at the sides; and at one end on a table was placed Lord G——’s bust, and a pier-glass behind it, the two corners of the tent at each side being filled with plants of variegated foliage. Just opposite the entrance was hung the large picture of the fête at Fort Henry when Lord G—— came of age (thirty or more years ago); and very quaint indeed are the costumes and most charming the “bonnets” of the “period”; but we were assured by Philip they were all perfect likenesses! There were light chandeliers suspended from the roof, which had a fine effect even in daytime, and sofas were placed round the walls, so that one only felt what a pity it would be when such a pretty entrance hall would be demolished! At one end was the entrance, and the passage to the front door, all filled with flowers. Much fun went on whilst all these things were being placed, and some even said the preparations would be the best part of all.

The hero of the festivities himself arrived a day or two after us. Being in the army, as are most young men of good prospects in England, he had hitherto been away with his regiment, and only obtained leave of absence for this occasion. He seemed delightfully happy, but most naturally, not excitedly; and throughout the whole no one could be more unaffected or unspoilt by being the one object of all these rejoicings. Where many a young man might have shown himself over-elated, he was exactly himself, happy and cheerful, but quiet, calm, and always self-possessed. When all the preparations were finished, nothing could be more beautiful. It is not too much to say that they were princely, yet all was in perfect taste and keeping—nothing of vain show and ostentation, thoroughly refined, and so truly represented by the word which to our mind conveys the highest praise, gentlemanly; above all, everything was arranged for the happiness and rejoicing of others, of high and low, of rich and poor, and nothing overlooked which could gratify the feelings of participants. On each of the different approaches to the house, the banners, placed at different distances on each side of the drives, had a beautiful effect, as well as the larger flags on the house, on the old Hall, on the church-tower; and these brilliant colors were set off by the more varied and almost equally rich tints of the trees. On Monday (the 16th October), the festivities began in earnest. The first act was our all going directly after breakfast up to the old Hall to see the gigantic cask of 21-years-old ale opened, and, as in duty bound, to taste the ale to Charlie’s health. The universal custom in England of brewing a large quantity of the very best ale the year an heir is born, and keeping it untouched until the day he comes of age, when the cask is broached and distributed in prudently moderate quantities to the guests and tenants, is of very ancient origin, and is most religiously adhered to. Another custom is that of planting an oak-tree near the house the year of the heir’s birth, to commemorate the event, and the sapling is always called after its human foster-brother. This tapping the ale was like reading a page out of some memoir of former times, and reminded us of the stories of Sir Walter Scott.

The cavernous cellar in which stand the mysterious casks, the ivy-grown ruin overhead, the brawny men opening the family treasures, and serving as rustic cup-bearers to the guests, all made a thorough old-time picture. Some of the party, after this ceremony was over, left us to go to the first village feast, the prototype—a description of which will equally fit all the others. There are seven villages on the estates, and each felt itself entitled to a separate local entertainment. Ridlington, which supplies the family with one of its many titles, was the first to experience its lord’s hospitality.

The feast consisted of an abundant supply of meat, ale, and cakes for men, women, and children alike, with games on the village green, races for simple prizes, such as articles of useful clothing, etc. The greased pole formed the chief attraction for the men and boys, and of course was productive of the greatest merriment, through the harmless accidents to which it inevitably exposes the candidates for the honors of successful climbing. During the repast, speeches were freely made and healths proposed, every one much alike, but all interesting, through the hearty reciprocity of feeling evinced between landlord and tenant. Returning home, the host and his daughters prepared to receive their unexpected guests, the greater number of whom were to assemble that evening. Our “prosaic-minded” friend here interposed a characteristic comment, in these words: “When the influx of guests took place about six o’clock that same evening, you may conceive the feelings of the ‘family aunt’ descending the stairs before dinner, as if one of the pictures had stepped out of its frame to mix in such a crowd of strangers, for such are almost all to me!” As the drawing-rooms were dismantled in preparation for the ball, there was only the oak corridor to sit in, and it must be confessed it required some tact to find seats; whilst, of course, all the men crowded together, English fashion, under the staircase! Capt. W—— acquired the name of “master of the ceremonies,” as he and E—— (one of our young hostesses) drew up the order of march to dinner, and he was deputed to tell every one who to take—rather puzzling in an assemblage scarcely one of whom he had ever seen before. The “weighty” matter of English precedence in such a company is more important than any one would suppose; and we cannot wonder that such social punctiliousness should raise a smile among people of simpler though not less generous habits.

The dinner was a most elaborate affair; indeed, in England, it is always the crowning portion of any entertainment, and the test of a genuine social success. The table looked beautiful with the massive silver plate: the épergne representing a herd of stags (the white stag is Lord G——’s crest) feeding under a spreading oak; the vases of classical shape, formerly wine-coolers, but now, more congenially to modern refinement, filled with ferns or plants of colored foliage, contrasting with the frosted silver; flowers and fruit in utopian abundance, and every vase or dish raised on a stand of crimson velvet, in artistic relief against the delicate white damask of the table-cloth—and this, of course, every day the same. Among the guests we may pause a moment to mention a lady of whom a stranger to her gave this characteristic description: saying that she was nicely but quietly dressed, had large, soft eyes, an intelligent expression, and a thoughtful look. She was certainly the most interesting and the cleverest person of the company, if the inward history of a mind is to count more than its outward covering. Suffice it to say that a few of those present knew how to appreciate her, especially a clergyman of the neighborhood noted for his historical researches and antiquarian learning—the Rev. G. H. Hill. Among those whom social reticence does not forbid us to distinguish by name was also an architect of rare merit, under whose supervision part of the building had been erected—a man whose mind is thoroughly artistic, and whose name, already the property of the public, we need therefore not hesitate to give—Mr. C. Buckler. His testimony, characteristic as it must be, will not be inappropriate in this sketch; of the whole festival he could say with truth, as he did in a charming letter to his patron and host, that it was thoroughly mediæval in spirit. This is high praise in the mouth of an Englishman and an artist; for our national pride is inseparably woven with feudal and ancestral feelings, an admiration for the open-handed generosity and lavish display of baronial times—for everything, in a word, that made England a fit nurse for Shakespeare, and an ideal for Washington Irving.

If our readers are not weary of pen-portraits, here is one—that of the daughter of the lady we have just spoken of, which our dear old friend, the “often-quoted,” thus incisively draws: “She is a pretty little thing, with a very white skin, delicate wild-rose color, and very bright and large eyes, and as much as possible keeping close to her mother’s side, but evidently fond of dancing, and enjoying everything with perfect freshness.” We are pleased to notice here that this type of the English girl is not so defunct as some pessimists would have us believe, and that, despite paint and fastness, and the clumsy imitation of Parisian vice, there is yet in store for the future a generation of homeloving wives and mothers. Of another of the near relations of the host, our friend says: “It suffices to mention Lady L——’s name to express all that is bright, and kind, and good; her presence was a charm, but she was obliged to go away after two days, and it was a blank not to see her.”

This woman, whose social charm is so irresistible, is none the less a generous and devoted attendant on a husband whose mind had given way, and whose health was more than precarious; it was his comfort, indeed, which was the cause of her short stay in the house of rejoicing.

The great charm of this thoroughly pleasant gathering was that there were no “grand people,” no “fashionable people,” no “fast people”; that all were natural and real, and everybody seemed pleased and happy. But our “prosaic” friend actually was not satisfied, and complained gently of the disappointment, among so many young people, of not being able to idealize any incipient romance; for, she queried, “would it not have thrown a charm of poetry over the whole thing?”

No, truly, although the thought is touching and pretty; for, after all, the fairest ideal of love could not live in a crowd, and the love we read of in Elizabethan records was more courtly than deep, more gallant than true. Love is an angel, not a Cupid.

One evening, there was a ball for the county families, many of whose houses were filled with their own circle of friends, all of whom were included in the invitations. The rooms looked gay and brilliant; toilets were resplendent, and the family pictures, with which the walls were literally covered, gazed down on an assemblage almost as bright as their own. In the hall was a white stuffed stag, with hoofs and antlers gilt, representing in life-size the family crest. The next morning, breakfast began at the usual hour (ten), but few appeared; but, by two o’clock, they gradually stole down, when tea and coffee had given place to luncheon. Wednesday evening, there was the servants’ ball. Every one went into the large tent, which made a splendid ball-room. The dancing was rather amusing to watch, for it was not the forte of the assemblage; but they all looked very happy, and the dignity of their manners to each other was quite edifying! Still, we thought it a great shame to criticise. Thursday, there was the feast for other and nearer villages, Exton, Barrow, and Cottesmore, with games before the people sat down. And it was a goodly sight when all the tables were peopled; all the men at dinner, and all the women and children at tea. Lord G——’s health was drunk first. It was the first occasion on which he had to speak, and it utterly overcame him; for he alluded to the former time when they had all been thus assembled to welcome him to E—— on his accession to the title. But the warmth and heartiness with which his few words were received must surely have pleased him. Then they drank his son’s health, to which toast the young man responded modestly and well. Later on in the evening, there were beautiful fireworks, which lit up the whole place most gorgeously.

Fireworks are not a specialty with Englishmen, but on this occasion they really went off to the credit of all concerned. The host has had long experience in such things in Italy, where the merest village can shame London itself on this head. The clusters of Chinese lanterns among the trees bordering the drives, the Bengal lights shooting up in fitful illuminations across the broken front of the church tower and the old Hall, the steadier lamps along the lines of the house itself, and the reflection of all in the many little lakes within the grounds, made the display peculiarly attractive. Every one enjoyed it to the uttermost.

Friday, the 20th of October, the heir’s birthday, was the day, par excellence. And here we are reminded that we are among those who have returned to the faith of old England, and have brought back to the original giver of the great free institutions of the country—the Catholic Church—all the gifts of intellect, education, culture, and learning drawn from her alienated universities and the polished influence of her errant sons. A solemn High Mass, with appropriate ecclesiastical music, was the first interest that gathered the guests together. Many not of our faith were there, joining reverently, and as far as they could, in the beautiful service; the domestic chapel, almost in size a church, looked very fair in the pale morning light that streamed through its pointed windows; the shadows of the beech-leaves, turning to brown and gold, were thrown fitfully across the Lady Chapel, against whose outside walls the great tree almost leans; bars of dusky golden light lay on the stone floor of the memorial chapel, where the foundress sleeps; and, as the white-robed choristers and acolytes moved softly to and fro in the deep choir, the beautiful contrast seemed to force itself upon one’s imagination between them and the worshippers in the nave, clad in dark, quiet draperies, and massed together in shadowy corners—typifying so delicately the restful life of the future, and the toiling watch still to be kept in the present. From this, the most congenial and appropriate scene we had yet witnessed, we turned regretfully to the new pleasures of the day. The first event was very momentous, and was marked by great state, being no less than the presentation of a silver inkstand to the young hero of the fête, Lord C——, from the servants. All the household was drawn up at one end of the entrance-tent. Poor good Mrs. H——, the housekeeper, whom nearly twenty years’ service had made a mother to the host’s children, was quite unable to restrain her tears, while behind the large round table, with the inkstand on it, stood J——, the butler, pale with the responsibility of his coming speech. Lord C—— stood opposite, with the family and guests behind him. This was the most touching scene of all, but none the less the most formidable ceremony. The presentation was very creditably made, and as gracefully acknowledged, to the equal satisfaction of all parties; and, among the birthday gifts, none was so valued by the recipient. He had grown up among these old friends; the few who had not known him as a boy had heard the tales of his childhood, and experienced the kindness of his manner. All felt as if he belonged to them, and as though his interests were theirs. This feeling, too, is one of the relics of the past fast disappearing from the heartless fabric of modern society; and it is pleasant to see traces of it yet left here and there in the ancient baronial households of England.

The concluding festivity was on a gigantic scale, and proved the most characteristic of any. This was the grand ball and supper to the tenants, which furnished the local newspapers with materials for rapturous descriptions and complimentary “leaders” for at least a week afterwards. The entrance tent was lined with the officers of the yeomanry in full uniform (scarlet), to the number of eighteen or twenty; the band of their regiment was also in attendance, and the land-steward, to whose management much had been entrusted, introduced each party of the tenants as they arrived. Nearly five hundred of these characteristic guests were soon assembled, Lord G——, his daughters, and two sons dancing in turn with all the most prominent of them. The ball opened with a country-dance; not the formal quadrille, but the hearty, old-fashioned performance, in which the elderly and heavy are as comfortably at home as the young and the supple. The ball, however, brilliant as it was, was but secondary to the supper, which was the crowning-point of the week’s doings—the occasion, long looked forward to, of pleasant and witty speeches, of hearty good-will, and of manifestations of real and substantial friendship. To borrow the words of a weekly of the neighborhood, the Lincolnshire Chronicle: “At one o’clock, supper was served in the marquee, which, tastefully decorated, brilliantly lighted, and filled with the gaily attired company, presented a scene which will not soon be forgotten by those who had the pleasure of witnessing it. The yeomanry band played ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’ as the party glided into the tent, and, when all had taken their places, grace was said. With the exception of a buck roasted whole and sent to table with gilt antlers, the whole of the viands were cold, the pièce de résistance being a splendid baron of beef. The birthday cake occupied a prominent position at a centre table, and among other novelties was a fine peacock in full plumage. Just before the toast of the evening was given, the beautiful present of plate purchased by the tenantry was carried in and placed in front of the young Lord C——, on the principal table.” “When all were seated,” says another local paper, “the coup d’œil, from the entrance of the tent, was very striking; the gay uniforms of the yeomanry, and the dresses of the ladies, combined with the colored lining of the tent, the numerous flags and banners, and the innumerable chandeliers filled with wax candles, presenting a very brilliant effect. The Earl of G—— and his distinguished visitors were seated at a long raised table facing the guests of the evening, and immediately in front of him were two other raised tables, upon one of which was a baron of beef weighing between 30 and 40 stone, and a whole roasted buck. There were also 21 joints of roast beef, 15 of pressed beef, 17 galantines of veal, 24 game pies, 14 large hams, 28 tongues, 15 turkeys, 8 boars’ heads, 15 rounds of beef, 10 legs and 14 shoulders of mutton, 72 roast fowls, 54 pheasants, 62 partridges, 20 plum-puddings, etc. etc., making a total of 1,000 dishes.”

The speeches being the great characteristic incident of the feast, we will quote some parts of them, showing in their simple energy how close the ties of friendship still are between the owner and the tiller of the soil. Some of the speakers were farmers, most of them prosperous and pushing men. We take our quotations from the Lincolnshire Chronicle: “Mr. Berridge proposed the health of the Earl of G—— as a nobleman, a neighbor, and a friend.... The noble earl had inherited from his ancestors that military blood which always ran through the veins of the N——ls [the family name of Lord G——]. If they looked round these halls, they would see the portrait of many an old warrior.... He understood Lord C—— now belonged to the army, and he would express a wish that that young nobleman might one day be commander-in-chief of England (cheers). Speaking of the family, he was reminded of an anecdote. A friend of his was taking a drive through the lanes in the neighborhood of this house, when he came in view of the mansion, and said to an old laborer he met on the road: ‘Who lives here, my man?’ ‘Lord G——,’ was the reply. ‘Is it an old family?’ was the next inquiry. ‘They came here, sir, before the Flood,’ was the response (laughter and cheers).”

This naïveté of the old man reminds one of the proud boast of some old French family, that they had an ark of their own at the time of the Flood, and were quite independent of Noe and his ship of refuge!

Lord G——, in his earnest reply, gracefully alluded in the following words to the long tenure of land by the farmers’ ancestors: “There can be nothing more gratifying than the existence of cordial good feeling between the occupiers of land and their landlords; and there can be no better evidence of this happy state of things than to find, upon reference to records of the past, numbers of families living upon the same estate for generations—for a longer time, perhaps, than the owners of the estate themselves (hear, hear). I believe there are many people here whose ancestors have been for centuries upon this property; and one can only hope that the same families, from father to son, may continue here for centuries hereafter, and that what has happened in years past will be repeated in years to come, so that, by your descendants and the descendants of my son a long time hence, the same mutual good feeling may be evinced and similar occurrences be witnessed as these we celebrate this evening.”

Lord D——, an early friend of the host, proposed the health of the young recipient of the day’s honors. His speech, quite the best of all, is worthy of notice. After a very apt and graceful beginning, he said: “I am speaking to tenant-farmers and breeders of stock, and you know that, when you look upon a young animal, you always inquire after his sire—what he came from (laughter and cheers); and you judge, from what has been, what will be (renewed cheering). But you know what the N——s are—what their stock is (great cheering). They have lived in this country among you and before your eyes for generations. You know they are a family who love to live among their own. They prefer spending their money among their own people, and sharing their interests, to going abroad, as so many others do, and spending their money away. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon, in speaking of a man, to say how few vices he has, and not how many virtues; and many a time I have heard it said, when there were no virtues to speak of, ‘Well, he is a good-natured fellow.’” He then warmly eulogized his young friend, whom he had known “ever since he could crawl,” and ended by wishing that he might be a worthy “chip off the old block.” Then, with well-deserved praise, he spoke thus of the father:

“For I will say this of the father, whom I have known most intimately for the last twenty years: that he is one of whom it may be truly said, in the full meaning of the word, he is a ‘just man’ (hear, hear), and I hope his son will walk in his footsteps. May all health and happiness accompany him through life, and, when his time is up, and he is called away from this world, may he leave a memory behind him as of one who lived blessing and blessed, and may he be handed down to posterity as one who did his duty to God and man!”

Mr. Wortley—another principal tenant, and the orator of his neighborhood, a man whose kind heart is father to his innocent pride of speech—then stood forward on behalf of the committee who had managed the subscriptions for the birthday gift, and spoke as follows:

“My Lord C——: I have now the great pleasure and the distinguished honor to ask your acceptance of this plate, which is contributed by tenants and friends of the Earl of G—— on the occasion of your coming of age, as a substantial evidence from us of the cordial manner in which we share the general joy of this day, and of the great respect we entertain towards your noble father and the family of the N——s.... It is given to you, my lord, just stepping, as it were, on the threshold of active and responsible life, with the earnest wish that you may be largely blest with those talents for which so many of your family have been celebrated, and may, like them, enjoy the high blessing of a disposition to use them, as they have used theirs, for the greater benefit and advantage of their fellow-creatures.” Then making his favorite quotation, one largely used on these occasions as strikingly appropriate, he repeated sonorously the well-known lines:

“Kind words are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”

“And still,” he went on, “we, the living, have what past generations could point to—the bright coronet of old N——l blood to boast of, and their natural crest of real and crowning charity to be thankful for (cheers).”

The presentation plate was a beautiful silver épergne, also convertible into candelabra, thirty-nine inches high, and a pair of flower-stands with finely modelled figures of a stag and a doe standing beneath an oak. According to the universal custom in country neighborhoods, these costly articles were not procured from London, but from some local silversmith of good standing; for in England everything like centralization is instinctively avoided. How much the prosperity of every part of the kingdom is thereby increased may be seen at a glance. Mr. Wortley concluded with these words: “It is not presented with the power of words, but it comes with the far stronger power of hearts within and without this gorgeous assemblage—warm, devoted, and glowing hearts—hearts joining with yours, my Lord C——, in wishing that you may long remain the heir to the title and estate; while we join most sincerely with each other in the fervent hope and humble prayer that through life, in whatever clime or condition, God’s blessing may be your unfailing portion (cheers).”

Lord C—— made a modest and graceful acknowledgment in a few well-chosen words, telling his guests “what a value he should always set on the testimonial as a remembrance of the happy hours he and they had been permitted to enjoy together” and begging them “to take what he had said for what it was worth.” “I do not say this by way of any excuse for what I am certain must be my shortcomings, but I say it lest you should think I am expressing myself in any way too feebly, or with too little warmth of feeling.”

Mr. Thompson (another tenant) proposed the brother and sisters of Lord C——, and the younger branches of the family. He said facetiously enough: “Experience has probably taught all of us that it is rather a misfortune that there should be an only child in a family, and that there is very apt to be in this case a spoiled urchin on one side, and not at all unlikely two silly parents on the other.” Of course, this produced laughter, and the speaker went on in the same strain, till he remarked finally that he sincerely hoped “not only that there would always be an heir to the N——l family, but younger branches also.”

Lord C——’s younger brother answered quite as well as he had been addressed: “I was not prepared to speak to you on the present occasion. I was flattering myself I should get through the whole of these proceedings without having to pass through this ordeal.... As younger branches, we grow out further and further from the parent stem, until we are at length lost among the other trees of the forest, while the other and older branch continues to tower upwards.”

A speaker, whom we cannot resist designating by a synonyme which is no longer a disguise, “Lothair,” and who shared these festivities, proposed “the ladies” in a humorous speech, beyond which we must make no further quotations. “Somebody,” he remarked, “in speaking of these festivities, has said that this entertainment had some peculiar features distinguishing it from other entertainments of its kind; as, for instance, it is now half-past three in the morning, instead of about five or six in the afternoon (laughter). It has also this peculiar feature, ... that it is not confined to a lugubrious class of men in black, talking nonsense about the army, navy, militia, and volunteers (renewed laughter). Here we have a few toasts brought in as an interlude in the middle of an entertainment of which it may be said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone,’ whatever Mr. Spurgeon may have observed to the contrary.”

The speaker has since been the subject of an ovation fully as demonstrative as that in which he took a secondary part last October, and we may hope that, in years to come, Cardiff may rival Rutland in the mediæval character of its princely entertainments.

The birthday cake was home-made, and a chef-d’œuvre of the family housekeeper. Its weight was 120 lbs., and its structure four tiers of confectionery, displaying medallions of the arms and crest of the family; the silk banner (besides many smaller flags) surmounting it bearing the name and date of birth of Lord C——. Never, indeed, could there have been more gratifying feelings manifested, and never could a series of the kindest hospitalities have passed off with more perfect satisfaction. Throughout the whole week there was nothing but good feeling, every one vying with each other to do the utmost to make all succeed. Not a contretemps occurred—all as Lord G—— could have wished, and so well deserves it should be. There were most regretful faces the next day, when, after breakfast, the time of parting came; all, we believe, heartily wishing it could begin again.

This sketch, which to us has all the personal attraction of a family record, may perhaps not be uninteresting to some descendants of those old English families, who are as worthily represented on this side of the Atlantic as they are in the mother country.

The poetry of the olden times has not yet quite departed from the feudal soil of England; and, in these meetings of true friendship between two of the most powerful classes of the country, we may read a promise of a common cause being made by their united influence against the sickening aggression of insensate communism, and the spread of licentious ideas. In this all good men and true, whether of Old or New England, are heartily agreed. But what strikes us even more is the beautiful picture here displayed of the revived spirit of the olden faith, quickening the pulses, guiding the lives, and hallowing the pleasures of a new generation of Englishmen. Here are the senators, the lawgivers, the soldiers of the future, assembled under the auspices of the old church, putting into generous practice her ideas of ample hospitality and unquestioning charity; here are England’s best men bowing like happy children to the customs and the influence of the faith brought to them by Augustine and Wilfrid; here is the church represented by the best blood and the most chivalrous class of England’s sons, who take their place and raise their voice to-day in society, in the courts, and in the senate, with a fearlessness and a freedom which a hundred years ago would have cost them their heads! The Catholic Church stands now in a proud and high position, a social conqueror on the same soil which she conquered once already by the splendor of her learning, and the resources of her material energy. The lands her monks reclaimed from barrenness, the universities her friars adorned with their matchless genius, after having been torn from her by violence, are virtually holding out their arms to her again, and the Gothic chapels that crown the abbey demesnes of new and wealthy converts are but the practical translation of that better wealth poured back into her bosom by the converts of the schools and universities. In England, more than in any other land, the Christian may exclaim in triumph: Christus regnat, Christus imperat, and, for the encouragement of the future, may confidently point to the records of the past, and say with Constantine: In hoc signo vinces.

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[MORE ABOUT DARWINISM.][170]

The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals is the title of the latest work written by Charles Darwin. This author has already gained a pretty widespread name by his two volumes on the Descent of Man, and on The Origin of Species. In all these, he advocates the theory of only one parent and progenitor, common both to man and to the animal.

Man is the offspring of the brute. The only distinction between them is that of a more perfect development. Man is a monkey perfectly developed. This developing process is no other than habit transmitted, imitation, and practice.

This theory is supposed in the volume before us—The Expressions, etc. It is, indeed, taken for granted, and Mr. Darwin merely seeks confirmatory proofs in this work. How he does so we shall see.

The reasoning of the entire volume may be summed up in the following syllogism: The expressions of the emotions in man and animals are, for the most part, similar, nay, alike. Now, this could not be so, did man not descend from the animal; therefore, man is the offspring of the brute.

Of course, he will have to admit some accidental differences in the expressions of each. But these he easily gets over by saying that in man those external expressions of the emotions are already perfected, matured, and developed, while in animals they are as yet budding, developing, and perfecting.

The principle of evolution would seem to account for all differences. The animal, by evolving its faculties in a long series of years, rises gradually to a higher species, and finally, having walked on all fours, comes to the conclusion it would be better and more sensible to use only two feet. Having looked downward for a long time, it begins to think it would be more honorable and decent to assume an upright posture. And then, grunting and howling are by no means as becoming as speaking French, or Italian, or Chinese; hence, Mr. Orang comes to the conclusion that he has been silent long enough, and that it is time that he, too, should have his say about matters.

We do not say that this is all expressed in so many words in the volume before us. Oh! no; Mr. Darwin is too adroit to do that. Like the devil, he sometimes assumes the garment of light, and puts on an appearance of virtue. His words are characterized by a tone of modesty and humility and even diffidence which is not common to that class of writers. He does not directly affirm anything; but he asks questions that contain a negative answer. He insinuates. He does not tell us man is a monkey, but he affirms that man expresses his feelings in the same manner as do these animals. Hence how explain this similarity, if they be not brothers?

We call attention to this fact. It alone can render his work dangerous to youthful or unguarded minds. We think there is little to fear that its frivolous arguments will excite anything but laughter and ridicule among men of solid erudition.

Unfortunately, the ideas embodied in this book are the creed of many enlightened persons, even, of this “progressive” age. This alone accounts for the favor and widespread circulation Darwin’s writings have acquired. Protestantism has done its work only too well. Casting off all authority in matters of faith, it has paved the way to all errors, and its theory has merely been developed by our modern materialists.

We are not disposed to deny the great labor and varied research employed in the work before us; but, we must say, seldom has it been our lot to witness such shallowness of argument, such loose connection between premises and conclusions. It will astonish the intelligent reader that so earnest a student as Mr. Darwin evidently is, could make use of logic in a manner discreditable to any tyro.

But we must not wonder at this. The drunkard sees things turning topsy-turvy, when in reality they stand still. One who wears green spectacles will behold objects in a green or pale color. We are apt to judge things according to preconceived ideas or a certain state of mind. So Mr. Darwin: his great hobby is to make man a monkey, and vice versa. Hence, he takes slight resemblances between the two as certain proof of his theory. Thus, he says: “With mankind, some expressions, such as the bristling of the hair under the influence of extreme terror, can hardly be understood except on the belief that man once existed in a much lower and animal-like condition. The community of certain expressions in distinct though allied species, as in the movements of the same facial muscles during laughter by man and by various monkeys, is rendered somewhat more intelligible if we believe in their common progenitor. He who admits on general principles that the structure and habits of all animals have been gradually evolved, will look at the whole subject of expressions in a new and interesting light.”[171]

This language is clear and unmistakable, though its meaning be artfully disguised. The logic of his conclusions, however, is not equally satisfactory. Why trace man’s origin to the monkey, because, forsooth, his hair bristles when angry? Or is it really so necessary to make man a brute because the same facial muscles move during laughter? We had always thought that these accidental resemblances were more than sufficiently explained by the simple fact that man, besides his immortal soul, is possessed of a body also, which, being material, is subject in many respects to the laws of other animals. We say, in fact, man is a rational animal. He is composed of matter and spirit. As regards his body, he is subject to the same laws as those which regulate animals.

Mr. Darwin has in his conclusions what is not contained in his premises, and hence he falls into a grave error in regard to the first principles of logic and sound reasoning. It is quite logical and perfectly true to say man has some exterior or bodily motions and expressions similar to those of other animals, and therefore that his bodily organs have some relation and similarity with those of the lower animals; nay, we may even infer the same essence to be common to the bodily organs of both. Thus much strict logic will allow. Thus much sound philosophy has always admitted. But then, we may ask, How far does this resemblance extend? Does it merely exist in the bodily organs, or does it perhaps show itself in all external actions, even those of the intellect and the will? Does it extend to all the essential elements in both, or is it merely accidental, relating simply to minor actions? The answer cannot be doubtful even to the most superficial observer. We ask, therefore, Is this resemblance of an essential, or rather an accidental, character? We can only admit that the latter is the case. There is, it is true, a manifold similarity; but after all, even where this is most striking, is there not a vast discrepancy? With the lower animal, all is routine—machine-like, habitual, ever the same under similar circumstances, nor can it combine means with the end. In man, these same external actions are regulated by the will, and can be omitted or done at pleasure.

Now, will Mr. Darwin say this is merely a trifle—that this, too, can be acquired by the brute after a long experience and a lapse of years? Reason and sound philosophy teach that the sensations of brutes are essentially distinct from, and in nowise contain, reason or intelligence. How, then, could reason be the product of evolution? How, then, can that be evolved which does not at all exist?

We repeat it: Darwin’s conclusion is similar to this: “A dog is a cat, because, forsooth, both sleep.” He finds in man and brutes some partial similarities in mere external actions, and straightway he concludes that they are both of the same essence and parentage. As well might he say burning lamps are emanations from the sun, because they, too, give light.

Instinct is almost entirely left out of account, and all expressions and external actions are attributed solely to habit and exercise repeated.[172] We by no means doubt that habit and exercise have a great deal to do with external actions. But can they all be accounted for in such a manner? When we ask, How do children, from the very first day of their birth, make use of their hands and feet, and employ their mouths in the proper way for imbibing nourishment? Mr. Darwin may answer: “This habit, too, was transmitted from parent to offspring, and indicates a long series of generations” (p. 39).

But we cannot very well see how this answer will satisfy even the most credulous reader. Habits may be to a certain extent transmitted by parents to their children; but generally it is, in an imperfect state, the “tendency” or inclination, rather than the act, that is transmitted. An intemperate parent may transmit to his offspring a “tendency” to that vice; but we have not yet heard of a born drunkard.

Moreover, is this principle applicable in a general manner even in regard to merely accidental habits? Experience tells us quite the contrary.

Weak-minded parents often give birth to most gifted children. On the contrary, many most cultivated and intelligent parents have children who are dull and slow of understanding.

But even granting that habits may be transmitted from parent to offspring, we ask, What is the nature of such habits? Are they essential elements of nature, or merely minor and trifling motions? Mr. Darwin’s own example on the point will confirm our assertion that they are of the latter sort: “A gentleman of considerable position was found by his wife to have the curious trick, when he lay fast asleep on his back in bed, of raising his right arm slowly in front of his face up to his forehead, and then dropping it with a jerk, so that the wrist fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The trick did not occur every night, but occasionally, and was independent of any ascertained cause. Sometimes it was repeated incessantly for an hour or more. The gentleman’s nose was prominent, and its bridge often became sore from the blows which it received” (p. 34). His son, too, inherited this trick. The only difference, however, consisted in the son’s nose not being quite so prominent, and therefore less exposed to the tricky and mysterious blows.

Now, what does a fact of this sort prove? Simply that slight, bodily actions, such as the one alleged, can be transmitted.

“Language,” he tells us, “has been invented by man in a slow and tedious process, completed by innumerable steps half consciously made” (p. 60). It is somewhat amusing to listen to his description of this process of inventing language. “The sexes,” he says, “of many animals call for each other during the breeding season, etc. This, indeed, seems to have been the primordial use and means of development of voice” (p. 84).

As an example, he alleges the cow calling for her calf, the ewes bleating for their lambs (p. 85). This theory is at least amusing, if not clear and convincing. It only adds another specimen of Mr. Darwin’s loose logic. His argument can be thus presented: There is a resemblance between the sound of a cow calling for her calf and the voice of man; therefore, the latter is derived from the former, being merely its development—they are both identical in germ. The one is perfected by the principle of evolution, which has the wonderful capacity of transforming all sorts of things.

This is truly making light of that noble gift bestowed upon man by his Creator—language. But, ingenious as Mr. Darwin strives to be in assigning the origin of language, he overlooks two little points. Language he confounds, first, with mere inarticulate sounds. Secondly, he forgets that there may be a distinction between the sound or voice as a sign of an idea or of a mere sensation. To confound the two would be like comparing the tones of a piano, as produced by the hands of an artist, to the same sounds brought forth by some monkey trying his paws on the instrument.

We do not know whether Mr. Darwin has much of a musical ear. If he has, even in a very slight degree, we think he would soon find a very great and specific distinction between the production of the musician and the jargon of the monkey. He would tell us, in the one case, the sounds are expressive of the musical combination and ideas of the artist, while, in the other, they are mere unmeaning sounds. So it is with language. Words express ideas. We can use them as we choose, nay, even wilfully change or disguise their true meaning. What similarity exists, then, between language and the sounds of animals? If any, it is in the sound. Does this justify the conclusion that they are both identical in germ; that the one is a development of the other? As well might we say the whistling of the wind among the leaves of trees, and the howling of the storm, are identical with the voice of man. All these sounds of nature are no less sounds than those of man and the brute; but will any man of sound mind identify them?

Still, Mr. Darwin goes on with an air of perfect self-complacency: “From this fact, and from the analogy of other animals, I have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones before they had acquired the power of articulate speech” (p. 87).

Of course, our progenitors here are none other than monkeys. It is quite apparent that Darwin’s notion of language is extremely inadequate and confused. He must allow us to refresh his memory a little on the subject. A word is an external sign whereby an internal thought or idea is made known to others, just as smoke is a sign of fire. Still, words are not expressive of ideas by any natural aptitude. In fact words are naturally so little adapted to express any particular concept of the mind that they may be distorted from their meaning. They are conventional signs: and except so far as they were given to our first parents by God, they have been adopted and used by positive authority, custom, or agreement to serve as a medium of thought.

Herein lies one of the specific differences of human speech from the sound of animals. These give forth sounds naturally adapted to express some feeling. Moreover, their utterances are not chosen by themselves, but dictated by nature. They cannot change them; while man selects, varies, and changes his words at will. Hence, language is defined: “The articulate voice of man, having signification by the agreement of men.” Words are parts of a sentence, which is defined: “An assemblage of words intended to mean something.”

We here waive the question whether language was invented by man at all. Our doctrine is that it was not invented, but was communicated directly by God to our first parents, Adam and Eve. But this is of no importance at present; for, whether invented by man, or directly communicated by God, Mr. Darwin’s theory is equally untenable.

We sum up the differences of sound or language in man and in animals as follows:

1. In man, language is the expression of thought and judgment, while the sounds of animals are merely spontaneous and natural utterances.

2. Language in man is the product of reasoning; it presupposes a perception of the relation of the subject and the predicate. For instance, when I say, Man is immortal, I must perceive the relation of the attribute immortality to man. Now, the sound of the animal is merely expressive of some solitary feeling.

3. Man directs his words, while the brute’s sound is ever the same.

Another instance of Darwin’s logic is found in tracing the origin of the expression of sulkiness in man, especially in children. This feeling, he says, is expressed by a protrusion of the lips, or, as it is called, “making a snout.” Now, he continues, “young orangs and chimpanzees protrude their lips to an extraordinary degree, when they are discontented, somewhat angry, or sulky” (p. 234).

But, lo! what is his conclusion? Therefore, he infers, this habit of man was a primordial habit in his “semi-human progenitors,” who are, of course, no less than the aforesaid honorable monkeys. Let us hear his words: “If, then, our semi-human progenitors [i.e. Messrs. Orang and Chimpanzee] protruded their lips when sulky or a little angered in the same manner as do the existing anthropoid apes, it is not an anomalous though a curious fact that our children should exhibit, when similarly affected, a trace of the same expression” (p. 234). Mr. Darwin is cunning. He wishes tacitly to infer that man comes from the animal, because both can make “snouts.” Of course, even he must concede that the monkey can make a better or at least a longer “snout” than man. And hence the principles of evolution in this case at least would imply retrogression, not progress. His mode of reasoning is strange indeed. When he finds an expression in man, he searches whether there is anything like it among the monkeys or other animals; and, when he has discovered even a slight trace, he triumphantly exclaims, Behold the progenitors of man! He does not yet call them genitors; they are not the immediate parents, but simply grandfathers and grandmothers. Nor are these progenitors quite human; they are as yet semi-human, being about half-way between the monkey phase and that of man. Speaking of man, he says: “The lips are sometimes protruded during rage in a manner the meaning of which I do not understand, unless it depends on our descent from some ape-like animal” (p. 243). Mr. Darwin manifests a strange partiality for the ape-like animals.

But it is no wonder he cannot understand the plainest facts, which every Catholic child can tell him. He sets aside all revealed truths. He knows nothing about the simple but sublime narrative in the first chapter of Genesis. He ignores the creative act bringing forth, not one kind, but “the living creature in its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”[173] To him, this is of no meaning. True, the Scripture records the solemn creation of man as entirely distinct from that of animals. “Let us make man,” God said, “to our image, and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air,” etc. “And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”[174] True, Darwin will say, according to the Scripture, “God breathed into his [man’s] face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”[175]

But what care I for the Scriptures, when my own private and infallible reason leads me to think that God did not directly breathe into man an intelligent soul—made after God’s own image and likeness—but rather that man received it from the animal? Such is, indeed, the result of the revolt of reason against God. Like Satan, who was cast from heaven in a moment, when desirous of elevating his throne to a level with that of God, so man falls and degrades himself when he becomes too proud to listen to God’s Word, making reason the supreme and sole criterion of truth and certitude.

Mr. Darwin seems to admit a Creator of the universe, but holds that only one, or at most four, species were created. Now, we must not forget, as he certainly does, that the Creator was an infinitely intelligent being, and therefore had some object in view in creation. Every intelligent being must act for some end. We call him a fool who knows not what he is doing, and therefore is foolish. Hence, in creation, God destined each creature for some end, to accomplish a certain task. The Creator must, however, give to each creature the necessary means to attain its end. It would be unintelligible that God should destine me to walk, without giving me feet; or create me to earn my livelihood by the labor of my hands, without giving me hands to work with.

Now, this principle, so universally exhibited in nature, will easily and satisfactorily explain all expressions in animals as well as in man, without obliging us to have recourse to the monkey theory so fondly adhered to by Darwin.

We come now to another proof adduced by Darwin to establish his beloved ape-descending theory. It is taken from the state of an insane person (p. 245). We will allow him to speak for himself: “Its symptoms are the reappearance of primitive instincts, a faint echo from a far distant past, testifying to a kinship which man has almost outgrown” (p. 245). These are the words of Dr. Maudsley, cited and approved by him. The state of insanity in man is compared to the normal state of the animal. Again, he asks, “Why should a human being, deprived of his reason, ever become so brutal in character as some do, unless he has the brutal nature within him?” (p. 246).

A more silly or childish mode of reasoning could scarcely be thought of. As well might he say the sun returns to its primitive state when in an eclipse, or an engine is working properly when the boilers explode and spread death and consternation all around.

We say of the idiot, He has lost his mind. Not that it really is entirely extinct: it is merely out of working order. Its clearness is darkened by some disorder. The idiot is in a state repugnant to his natural condition. How, then, infer from such a condition a former kinship? A machine or clock out of order will, when left to itself, work indeed; not, however, returning to its normal state, but destroying itself. So it is with the idiot. It was, therefore, perhaps rather superfluous for Mr. Darwin to spend so much time and labor, and give his readers so much trouble, for the sake of finding out in how many ways idiots resemble his dear monkeys, chimpanzees, and orangs.

We wonder why the case of Nabuchodonosor did not occur to him. It would have so well illustrated his theory. For he, without becoming permanently an idiot, was seized with an irresistible propensity to return, as Mr. Darwin would say, to his own brethren, and renew his old friendships and acquaintances. And so well was that gentleman pleased with his company that he remained in it not less than seven years, until it pleased God to restore him to his more intelligent and polite brothers.

We would suggest to Mr. Darwin a similar experiment. He ought to be sociable, and from time to time imitate Nabuchodonosor: let his hair and beard grow until they become long feathers; his ears, too, could be extended somewhat, and the nails of his hands and feet might very well become claws; he ought also to eat grass for a while. Thus he would be fulfilling a duty to his rustic brethren, and he could at the same time enlighten them a little on bipedal civilization, especially as they will one day get to be men themselves, and therefore should try to do honor to their future relatives.

Darwin may tenderly call monkeys “our nearest allies” (p. 253), or say: “The playful sneer or ferocious snarl in man reveals his animal descent” (p. 253); or again: “We may readily believe, from our affinity to the anthropomorphous apes, that our male semi-human progenitors possessed great canine teeth” (p. 253)—he may say all this, and still, we fear, he would not like to have himself introduced at the court of London as the brother of the long-tailed and widely known orang-outang. And why? Because his whole moral nature would revolt at such an indignity, and thus furnish the strongest proof, perhaps, that all his talk about ape-affinity and descent is nonsense. Human nature rebels at such a degradation. It protests instinctively against such an alliance. It is unconscious of such a relationship.

Now, how is it, otherwise, that our nature is so tender with regard to all kindred? How is it that brothers and sisters and relatives love each other so much and without effort; that in all men there is a feeling of affinity toward their fellows? How, we ask, does our nature, otherwise so tenderly inclined to all relatives, even the most distant, forget in this one instance alone a relationship at once the most sacred and tender—that of a child to its parent? For we, says Mr. Darwin, are the grandchildren at least of the animal.

All the materialistic cavils and speculations of so-called philosophers will suffer shipwreck on this rock—the moral feeling of the dignity and specific difference of man. But we will explain the symptoms of lunacy to Darwin in a direct manner.

We grant that man has the brutish “nature within him.” We do not concede, however, that he has only the brutish nature and no other. Man has a soul as well as a body. As regards the nature of the body, we cheerfully grant all that Mr. Darwin could desire. It is of the same substance as that of his dear orang. It has, moreover, the same violent passions and downward tendencies; nay, it can—as experience teaches in fact it has—outdo the brute in violent bursts of passion. It is, moreover, regulated by the same laws of climate, food, life, etc.

But this is all we concede. It has not the same origin, being directly created by God in its natural state. Much less do we admit that man is endowed with no higher nature, entirely and specifically distinct from his body. He has a soul that thinks—a soul that is entirely spiritual and intelligent, not merely sensible.

We therefore answer that the state of idiots shows, indeed, that man has the brutish nature within him, but by no means that he has no other nature. Only a little logic would have shown Darwin that his conclusions embody far more than his premises will allow. It seems plain enough that this simple truth is the key to the fullest explanations of human nature itself, and its similarities with the nature of mere animals. Man was defined by the ancients as “a rational animal.” S. Thomas and the scholastics took up and perpetuated this definition. Man is an animal, because he has a body like all animals, and a soul which is created to be the form of that body. Man is, moreover, a rational being, because, unlike all the other animals, he has a soul which has a separate existence of its own, is created immediately by God, and is essentially spiritual.

This distinction, if only borne in mind by our monkey theorists, would have aided them not a little, we opine, in their brain-cracking researches; nor would they have found so many mysteries where everything is plain and intelligible.

We now proceed to another principle advanced in the book before us. Darwin says: “That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man and by the lower animals are innate or inherited—that is, have not been learnt by the individual—is now admitted by every one” (p. 351).

He must allow us to say that such a proposition is, in our estimation, not admitted by every one. With the exception of the author and a few monkeyists, we know of no one who ever advocated any such principle. It is indeed conceded that a “tendency” to most of our expressive actions may be innate or inherited; but, as to the actions and expressions themselves, it is commonly taught by all the schools that they are performed by instinct and reason, and perfected by imitation and experience. What Mr. Darwin means when he calls expressions innate and inherited is not the former—the tendency—but the action itself as transmitted from the father to the son. He illustrates his meaning by an example, not quite suitable for our pages, which may be found by the curious on p. 44 of his work. If anything, this example shows that dogs, and wolves, and jackals are guided by no reason, and do not apply the proper means to attain an end. But does it follow that man, too, has inherited his external movements from such progenitors as monkeys? Does not man direct even all his external actions by reason? It is true, he may be led away by passion; but that is an exception, and only proves the rule.

But we go further. The Catholic Church teaches that the human race is descended from one common pair—Adam and Eve. From them the whole human race was propagated. Darwin, too, teaches the unity of mankind. But his is quite a different unity. Not only do all men descend from a common human parent, according to him, but both animals and men have a common parent; so that originally there existed one animal, from which all the rest, men included, derive their origin.

Now, we should naturally expect that so grave an inference would be based upon a no less weighty proof. But herein we are sadly mistaken. His whole argument rests upon a resemblance of some external actions common to mankind: “I have endeavored to show in considerable detail that all the chief expressions in man are the same throughout the world. This fact is interesting, as it affords a new argument in favor of the several races being descended from a single parent stock, which must have been almost completely human in structure, and to a large extent in mind, before the period at which races diverged from each other” (p. 361).

This argument may do very well to confirm the doctrine of the church; but we do not see how it will establish the ape theory, any more than it would to infer that the sun and moon are alike because they both shine. It is really amusing to hear our author so innocently say: “We may confidently believe that laughter, as a sign of pleasure or enjoyment, was practised by our progenitors long before they deserved to be called human” (p. 362).

From all this it is at least evident that our poor progenitors had to undergo a long novitiate to become invested with the habits proper to man. Theirs, indeed, must have been a tedious process before attaining human activity. One thing, however, he forgets to tell us. It is the period when such a change of the species occurred. Theory may sound very well; but we know of no fact of the kind. How is it that, as long as the world can remember, no monkey ever became a man, or a tree a pig? We cannot exactly agree with Darwin, therefore, when he calls the “anthropomorphous apes our nearest allies and our early progenitors” (p. 363). We are quite aware of the answer he gives to this objection in his book, on The Origin of Species. But it may well be compared to the method of those romance writers who take good care to place the scene of the heroic exploits of their heroes in far distant lands as yet unknown and unexplored. Thus they may write volume after volume, without any danger of being convicted of telling stories and building castles in the air. So Darwin. In his Origin of Species, he pretends that the change from one species to another is so long and gradual that it may comprise even millions of years. As a conjecture, this may pass; but as an argument in support of a most elaborate system, we fail to see its efficacy.

We will now pass to another argument. Speaking of frowning as shading the eyes, he says: “It seems probable that this shading action would not have become habitual until man had assumed a completely upright position; for monkeys do not frown when exposed to a glaring light” (p. 363). This phrase can be made plainer when paraphrased as follows: It is a theory, established by me beyond any doubt, that man is the offspring of the monkey. Now, the monkey does not frown or shade his eyes, even when exposed to the most glaring light of the sun. Hence, it follows that frowning is an action peculiarly adapted only to an upright position. And hence, too, no wonder that the orang did not make use of it as long as he was walking on all fours and bent downwards. Hence, we must infer that frowning became a habit, then, only when the ape, thinking that he had walked long enough on all fours, and that he might, without any particular inconvenience to himself, dispense with two feet, stood upright, and became a man. This is the meaning of his words. On the same principle the following conjecture is based: “Our early progenitors, when indignant, would not hold their heads erect until they had acquired the ordinary carriage and upright attitude of man” (p. 363). Its sense is: As our first parents were brutes, and as we find that in no instance they held their heads erect when angry or indignant, it follows, of course, that this action was acquired only after they made use of their hind feet to walk, and when the fore paws became hands.

Blushing is considered by Darwin an expression that requires attention to one’s personal defects. Now, as it has not been observed in any monkey or other animal, he of course infers that it became habitual only when, having emerged from the monkey phase of existence, we became semi-human.

“But it does not seem possible”—these are his words—“that any animal, until its mental powers had been developed to an equal or nearly equal degree with those of man, would have closely considered and been sensitive about its own personal appearance” (p. 364).

Thus far we perfectly agree with him. Blushing is an act predicable only of an intelligent being. Hence, it is quite logical to say that animals could not possess it, unless almost as perfect as man. But we by no means so readily coincide with his conclusion, namely: “Therefore, we may conclude that blushing originated at a very late period in the long line of our descent” (p. 364).

If this were true, it would likewise follow that man ought to become more prone to blushing as he advances in years. This, however, it will be confessed, is not the case. Quite the reverse frequently happens. Youth and innocence blush, while age and vice grow daily more barefaced and unblushing. Now, if blushing were a mere habit acquired and developed by physical evolution, how does it come to pass that full-grown men who are given to immorality lose that blush which rose to their cheeks when young and innocent? Daily experience only too well tells the tale how the maiden blush becomes dimmer and fades entirely when the career of sin and shame has been once entered upon. Where, then, is the philosophy of Darwin’s principle?

It is quite true, he tells us, that “we cannot cause a blush by any physical means. It is the mind which must be affected” (p. 310); “that the causes of blushing are shyness, shame, and modesty; the essential element in all being self-attention” (p. 326). Again, he continues: “Many reasons can be assigned [as causes of blushing] for believing that originally self-attention directed to personal appearance in relation to the opinion of others was the exciting cause. Moral causes are only secondary; the same effect being subsequently produced through the force of association by self-attention in relation to moral conduct” (p. 326).

This shows that, with Darwin, morality is a mere matter of etiquette. “But modesty,” he continues, “frequently relates to acts of indelicacy; and indelicacy is an affair of etiquette, as we clearly see with the nations that go altogether or nearly naked. He who is modest, and blushes easily at acts of this nature, does so because they are breaches of a firmly and wisely established etiquette” (p. 335).

From this, then, it is clear that morality, chastity, and every species of virtue are nothing more than the external code of regulations which society has agreed upon in its social intercourse. In other words, all virtue and morality consist in what we call good breeding. We blush, not because we break the law of God, but because we violate the precept of man. Darwin’s ten commandments, we think, might well be summed up as follows: First commandment: Society is the Lord God of man; thou shalt adore it alone, by minutely observing all its external regulations, called etiquette. 2d. Thou shalt not take its name in vain by saying that man and society can commit any wrong, or be anything but perfect. 3d. Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath; that is, go to church on Sunday, because others do so, and etiquette demands it. 4th. Honor thy father and thy mother, because it is customary to do so. 5th. Thou shalt not be so common a criminal as to kill a man by direct physical means; but remember that thou must hold every man to be a rogue and a knave until he proves the contrary. Thou mayest even, especially when thou art a congressman, take an oath, without being particular as to the truth of thy statement. 6th and 9th. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Now, as marriage is merely an ordinary contract, that can of course be dissolved when the parties mutually agree, go to court, obtain a divorce, and thou canst marry the wife of another. As to thoughts against the sixth commandment, thou must not trouble thy head too much about them. They are nature’s legitimate ebullitions. 7th. Thou shalt not steal in open daylight, but get as much as thou canst without being detected. This would constitute the moral code of Darwin. If morality is reduced to etiquette, it is evident that its obligation is merely external.

Finally, we come to another point in the book on The Expressions, etc. It is a curious instance of our former propensities in a primeval state. At some time or other, we are told, we were possessed of long ears, and movable at that, such as we see in the mule and dog. The elephant, also, would afford a pretty good specimen, its ears being long and quite flexible.

But let us hear him: “If our ears had remained movable, their movements would have been highly expressive, as is the case with all the animals which fight with their teeth; and we may infer that our early progenitors thus fought” (p. 365). Well, we do not by any means doubt that these movables would be highly expressive in man. Just imagine, for instance, Mr. Darwin going through the streets of New York with a pair of long ears, moving and flapping to his heart’s content! Why, the New York papers would hail it as a godsend, and the urchins on Broadway would go in ecstasies over it.

Our interesting author winds up his somewhat lengthy dissertations with the inference that his reasonings on the “expression of emotions” afford another confirmatory proof of his theory that man is the offspring of the monkey. His two volumes on the Descent of Man were intended as the corner-stone of his building. This later work was to finish it. The great pity is that he is building a castle in the air. He gives no proof. Similarities in man and animals may afford ground for suppositions, but can never cause conviction.

“We have seen,” he says, “that the study of the theory of ‘expression’ confirms, to a certain limited extent, the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or sub-specific unity of the several races” (p. 367).

We are now done with Darwin. In perusing the volume, we confess it was not without a feeling of deep sadness at so much blindness combined with no ordinary degree of learning and research. Darwin is a student of no mean class. His research shows that no pains were spared. His numerous examples demonstrate that he is perfectly at home in natural sciences. Mixed up with error, there is in his book a great deal both interesting and highly instructive. His conclusions might perhaps be correct if there existed no God, no revelation, and no eternity. He is a striking example of men who set aside the revealed Word of God, and take reason as their sole guide and standard in the search after wisdom.

It may not be amiss to subjoin a few general principles that will refute even more fully the sophisms of the author.

We lay it down as a certain proposition that sensation is essentially distinct from intelligence. Sensation is defined: “A certain impression present to the mind, caused by an external agent on an animated body.”[176]

This external impression is received by five sensible organs, viz.: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. These are evidently material organs, having size, weight, figure, extension, distance, number, motion, and rest. The same is the case with the object causing the impressions.

Now, is there any specific difference between sensation and intelligence? Is the understanding of man entirely different from the sensation of the brute? Or is it merely a development of the latter? If we believe Darwin, there is no real difference, except that the one is more perfect than the other. In the monkey, there exists the same faculty of intelligence as in man. In the former, however, it is in its incipient stage; in the latter, it is matured and developed. Can such a theory be reconciled with philosophy? We believe not. In fact, the difference between sensation and intelligence can be given as follows: 1. Sensations are external impressions which are not produced by the mind, but merely received; hence they are passive; whilst the understanding of man is essentially the actor, and not merely the recipient. 2. Again, “Sensations are particular facts which never leave their own sphere.”[177] Intelligence forms ideas that are universal and absolute, being applicable to all individuals.

Moreover, sensation does not distinguish one object from the other, neither does it compare them. The illustrious Spaniard whom we have already quoted illustrates this by saying: “The sensation of the pink is only that of the pink, and that of the rose only that of the rose. The instant you attempt to compare them you suppose in the mind an act by which it perceives the difference; and, if you attribute to it anything more than pure sensation, you add a faculty distinct from sensation, namely, that of comparing sensations, and appreciating their similarities and differences.”[178]

This, indeed, is evident. Sensation is simply the external impression received. As such, it is an isolated act. It does not compare or judge.

The idea, for instance, of the triangle is one, and is common to all triangles of every size and kind; the representation or sensation is multiple, and varies in size and kind.

Again, the idea or thought of the mind is fixed and necessary; the representation changeable.

The idea, e.g., of the triangle is “the same to the man born blind, and to him who has sight; and the proof of this is that both, in their arguments and geometrical uses, develop it in the same manner.”[179]

From what has been thus far said, it is evident that there exists a dividing line between the intellect and sensation; that the one is in no sense contained in the other, and cannot by any process be derived from it. Darwin is a mere sensist. He understands little of the nature and faculties of the human soul. He ignores any essential distinction between the intellect and sensation.

There is, indeed, it may be observed, a close connection between the two. Sensation is the condition of the exercise of the intellect while we are in this life. It supplies food for the intelligence. It always precedes and accompanies the intellectual act. Thus, when we think of God’s mercy, we easily imagine God as a kind father, etc.

But such is the case only in human intelligence. We have a spirit in a material and sensible body. Our intellect, by its substantial union with the body, is bound to adapt its exercises to the conditions imposed by this union. But unless we deny all revelation, we must admit the existence of celestial spirits who are not possessed of and encumbered by any body. These, then, need no visible organs, no external sensation, no sensible representation, to arouse and excite their intellect to action. Hence, it follows that the connection existing between sensation and intelligence is not essential.

We shall now examine some other acts of the intellect, to confirm what we have said. Judgment is one of the principal acts of the mind. It is defined: “The perception and affirmation of the identity or diversity of two ideas or propositions obtained by comparing them.”[180] Thus, in the proposition, “Man is mortal,” the mind compares the ideas man and “mortal,” and affirms their identity. The sensation, however, is an isolated impression on the mind, a single fact. Another feature of human actions is the purpose or end for which a thing is done. The dog may do things that have great similarity to human actions; but close observation will easily convince one that the brute does so in a uniform manner, and consequently is impelled by natural instinct. Man, however, sits down and deliberates. He proposes some object to be accomplished, and carefully selects the means best calculated to attain that end. He changes his means at will, according to the circumstances of the case. Does any animal, even be it Darwin’s darling monkey, do anything of the kind? Moreover, the end or purpose may be inherent in the act itself; thus, the sun gives heat and light. An end, however, may not arise essentially out of the nature of things, but may be freely intended; thus, man chooses different objects, while animals necessarily perform them. Again, man observes order in his actions. Order is defined: “A proper disposition of things, giving to each its place”;[181] or, “A composition, and arranging things according to their proper place.”[182] This arrangement may be made either in relation to the matter, or time, or the object. Now, do we ever behold animals displaying order in their actions? Has even Darwin ever seen a monkey arranging books in a library in such a manner as to place alongside each other those relating to one subject? We doubt it. We conclude this review by summing up, in Darwin’s words, the principles by which he contends that all our ideas are acquired. The first is the principle of serviceable associated habits. According to it, we gradually acquire all those habits, ideas, and expressions that conduce to our interest or gratification. The second is that of antithesis—that is, when something offered to our interest occurs, we adopt contrary actions and ideas. The third is styled by Darwin the principle of actions due to the constitution of the nervous system, independently, from the first, of the will, and independently, to a certain extent, of habit. This last principle is simply what is commonly called instinct. No one denies that it causes many actions pertaining to our welfare; but no man of sound mind will derive from it intelligence. The first and second principles can be reduced to that of utilitarianism. In plain language, it amounts to this: if all the actions, thoughts, and desires of man are regulated merely in accordance with each one’s private gratification, there would be no such thing as being concerned about the welfare of others. We finish by recalling the fundamental idea underlying this work. There are, Darwin tells us, striking similarities between the external expressions exhibited by man and the animal. These cannot be explained except on the supposition that the former descends by a long and slow process of generation from the latter. This is styled natural evolution.

There is, we admit, a germ of truth in the theory of evolution. The mistake is in applying it without limit. The Catholic Church teaches, 1. that the soul of man is immediately created by God. 2. That the human body also was created in like manner. This latter, however, is not so explicitly defined as the former. 3. It is a commonly received opinion of theologians that all the principal species of the animal were created directly by God. 4. That, however, imperfect species, such as hybrids and those generated by corruption, perspiration—e.g., fleas—were created only in germ, or potentiali modo.

From this, it is not difficult to see how far a Catholic may accept the theory of evolution. Scientists should not forget that reason is the handmaid of revelation.

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[GRAPES AND THORNS.]

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE “HOUSE OF YORKE.”