SAINT CECILIA.
HER INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.
While the great men who have dreamed of distinguishing their names die and are forgotten, or at least, as Juvenal said of Alexander, become the idle theme of a rhetorical recitation, those who in this world have lived and suffered for God leave behind them, through all ages, an immortal memory.
The work for which each of us has been sent into the world has been conspicuously accomplished by the saints. This makes them our rightful masters; and, while we rarely imitate them, we can at least understand that such heroism must elevate the soul, and we admire them all the more that we feel ourselves unable to follow in their steps. Nor is such a recognition a useless sentiment. From the mansion of glory whence they see all things, the saints never cease to interest themselves in the affairs of the world, and among the dogmas of the Catholic Church which our estranged brethren have rejected, the communion of saints is one of the most touching and sublime.
There is indeed between the two worlds, visible and invisible, a strange but undeniable communication. Each of us, in investigating his own soul, will find there certain phenomena which have their origin neither in ourselves nor in the outer world: sadness from no apparent cause, inexplicable sensations of internal happiness, bursts of enthusiasm or sudden inspirations which Plato attributed to superior intelligences. Many of us, recalling some miraculously escaped danger, and profoundly touched by this heavenly protection, will bear willing witness, unless checked by dread of worldly criticism, to this influence of the saints and angels on our human career. "The people," with the good sense which so happily inspires them (at least, where the sophists have not succeeded in corrupting them)—"the people" believe in it; and when the peasant or the poor working-woman gives a name in baptism to the child just entering on the struggles of life, she believes, in her simple, lucid faith, that she is securing a patron for it. It is not in vain, they say, that a young girl is called Mary; surely she will the more readily share in the sweetness, the self-denial, the incomparable purity, of the Queen of Virgins; the name of Agnes will be a pledge of innocence; that of Theresa promises a heart of fire; that of Cecilia, a soul gentle yet strong, eager for harmony; while the name of Francis recalls heroic isolation; those of Paul and of John, indefatigable zeal and perfect charity. If it is not always thus, it is because the human soul is free to resist grace; but these occasional rebellions do not prevent a harmony between heaven and earth as mysterious as it is sure.
These thoughts have frequently passed through our mind; but one day last October, while visiting the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, they monopolized it.
In such moments, we persuade ourselves very easily that we can express them in writing. Undoubtedly, they are not new; but, if the life of this great saint, one of the glories of Rome, is well known, it is a story which will bear repetition: really fine old melodies never lose their charm, and, if they thrill one human soul with a divine emotion, who will complain of hearing them again?
HISTORY OF SAINT CECILIA.
In the year 250 after Christ, in the reign of Septimus Severus, at a time when the Roman Empire was still the most formidable power of the world, there lived in Rome a young girl who will be famous when the imperial glories shall be forgotten.