We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the constitution of our country as originally understood and intended, not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because it is the best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail—to lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military despotism—and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow. Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued, lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor authority from running into despotism.
If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly, and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians, but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders, and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning; and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St. Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is under the protection of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving world. Dead she is not, but living.
Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes, and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty, and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her, spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will, Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant Reformation.
GENZANO AND FRASCATI.
What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy, is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar, neighborhoods.
The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor, plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn; sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far from St. John Lateran, and whose enclosure does not necessitate a grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the inner house-door, while their visitor stands without the line, yet face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the De Profundis. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices, they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the "Sepolte-Vive," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves, and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing. When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has been preserved for about fifty years—a strange image, which seems instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you, fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately chiselled masterpieces.
To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage; and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she teaches than this apparently incredible fact—this anachronism in the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary, and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church, by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital, where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women, chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped, travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food, of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation, I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle, and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall, with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins, with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy Week programme, and, being mostly curious and carping critics of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till when, O Lord, till when?"
On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian, between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate; a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly illuminated altar in San Luigi de Francesi, where the lighted tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too, from the artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at Sant' Andrea della Valle, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery, somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore" (though that has been for many years discontinued, on account of the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement, and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all? Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation. God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools; his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals, domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences still.
The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.