Of Truth—with more that erst deck’d Pagan shame.
Not now the mother of vain gods[[37]] we pray,
But Her, the God-Man’s Mother, ever a maid:
And still to her this fairest month of May
Assign—our hearts upon her altar laid,
That her chaste love, descending with its fire,
May purge them from the dross of base desire
B. D. H.
THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.
The war of 1870 between France and Germany has taken the place, in the minds of the French, of those other, not more glorious, but more successful, wars with which the very word “war” was formerly associated. They were used to think of nothing but triumphs; individual losses were swallowed up in national exultation; and they connected with the memories of the two Napoleons the peculiarly French axiom that there existed no such word in their language as “impossible.” That is still true to-day, notwithstanding the reverses through which they have passed; for moral heroism stands upright on a lost battle-field as well as on a triumphant one, and the nation can say with its chivalrous monarch of old: “All is lost, save honor.” If the discipline was faulty, if the management was indiscreet, if the government was weak, if circumstances were contrary, there was still individual courage, and not only among the soldiers, but among all classes. The very misfortunes of the country roused the spirit of women, priests, students, exiles, of the weak and the poor, the secluded and the helpless; never was there such spontaneous truce to all differences, such generous sacrifice of personal comforts and, what is more, of personal antipathies; all good men and true shook hands across the barriers of politics, religion, and caste, and, with one mind and heart, did each his best in his own way for his suffering country. Of course there were cowards, time-servers, and place-seekers, making profit out of their fatherland’s necessities, getting into safe, so-called official, berths, and generally skulking; but they were not the majority, and it is superfluous to ask here if every nation has not its scum.