IT

MR. GLADSTONE AND MARYLAND TOLERATION.

T would hardly be fair to disguise by any change of name a paper that merely proposes to give the substance of a long and very valuable article bearing the above title in the December number of the Catholic World-a New York magazine which, especially since the recent cessation of the Last Series of Brownson's Review, is at the head of the Catholic Press of America. It was the duty of such an organ to encounter Mr. Gladstone boldly on the latest of those polemical raids which have beguiled the tedium of his too abundant leisure since he was relieved of the cares of office. The point attacked by him at present has a peculiar interest for American Catholics. In reprinting with his two other tracts the notorious Quarterly Review article on the "Discourses of Pius IX.," which people thought had been attributed to him by calumny, it seemed so unworthy of him at his worst-Mr. Gladstone takes occasion in his preface "todeny to the Catholic founders of Maryland the honorable renown accorded to them heretofore by historians with singular unanimity, of having, when in power, practised toleration towards all Christian sects, not only by their unwavering action and practice but also by giving it the stability and sanction of statute law." The American periodical proceeds to establish very fully and clearly from the highest Protestant authorities the points denied by Mr. Gladstone, who contends that the toleration practised and enacted in the Maryland. State had no nobler motive than self-interest, and that it was, in any case, not the work of Catholics. These two assertions are easily shown to contradict one another, but Mr. Gladstone's critic consents to deal with them separately. As regards the first, he cites the emphatic eulogiums pronounced by Bancroft, Chalmers, Bozman, Story, Chancellor Kent, and other Protestant writers of the highest character. On the other side there is no one but the Rev. Ethan Allen and the Rev. Edward Neile, Dissenting Ministers, who have published sectarian pamphlets of a few pages, reprinted from obscure American newspapers-Mr. Gladstone's only predecessors in the daring attempt to prove that Maryland was not a Catholic colony. Probably their new ally would never have heard of these insignificant pamphleteers if some zealous anti-Romanist across the Atlantic had not bethought himself of supplying grist to his mill. He indeed cites Bancroft also, yet he ignores the conclusion of that historian's account of this interesting passage in the history of the States: "The asylum of Papists was the spot where, in a remote corner of the world, on the banks of rivers which as yet had hardly been explored, the mild forbearance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the State."

Of the thousands who have read the pages in which Mr. Gladstone strives to deprive Catholics of the credit attaching to the early history of the colony planted by the Catholic convert Lord Baltimore, how very few will read the careful and moderate refutation of this

American writer who discusses thoroughly every detail of the subject. He shows that the tolerant legislation was the work of the Catholics, and that the toleration Act of 1649 only confirmed what had been practised for years. He shows also that that Act was framed and enacted by Catholics, one item of his proof telling very pointedly against the Author of Vaticanism. Unhappily Mr. Gladstone has said that "the dogma which exempts the Virgin Mary from sin and guilt perverts Christianism into Marianism, and virtually substitutes the worship of a woman for the worship of Christ." No doubt the Protestants of Cromwell's day thought no better of the Blessed Virgin than Mr. Gladstone does. Therefore, not Protestants but Catholics passed this Maryland law, which decreed penalties against "whosoever should use or utter any reproachful words or speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour." Is this like the language of a Protestant, of that day especially? For, since then, Protestants have learned to speak very differently from Mr. Gladstone, who would no doubt censure Wordsworth for addressing the Blessed Virgin as "our tainted nature's solitary boast."

The question is settled, however, by the lists preserved of those who voted for this Act of Toleration. The writer who seems to have gone most minutely into the case is Mr. Davis, the Protestant author of "The Day-star of American Freedom." As he proves that Maryland was a Catholic colony from the records of courts, lawcases, wills, rent-rolls, and from the naming of the districts-five out of six being called after Saints-so on this second point, raised by Mr. Gladstone, he with the most laborious conscientiousness analyses the composition of the legislative assembly by which this famous Act of Toleration was passed, gives even a personal sketch of each member, and proves from their public acts, their deeds of conveyance, their land patents, their last wills and testaments, &c., that the majority were incontestably Catholics. This candid Protestant proves also that after many years the Protestants were only one-fourth of the colony; which fact again establishes the character of the assembly that represented them. Yet Mr. Gladstone ventures to write: "Of the small legislative body which passed it [the Maryland Act of Toleration], two-thirds of them were Protestant, the recorded numbers being sixteen and eight respectively." He has almost reversed the real numbers as given by all impartial authorities like Mr. Davis. who furthermore urges that the privy councillors were the special representatives of the Roman Catholic proprietary; and according to this arrangement we have eleven Roman Catholic against three Protestant votes. Moreover, without the authority of the lord proprietary no law could be passed; and thus again the credit of Maryland Toleration is due to this co-ordinate Catholic authority.

The historians of Maryland have been almost exclusively Protestants; and they and all writers who have treated the question have always unanimously accorded to the Catholic founders of the State the chief credit of this enlightened toleration which was so much in advance of the time. Mr. Gladstone and the two ministers whom he copies so readily are the sole dissentients. This triple alliance is

chiefly remarkable as a further revelation of the ex-Premier's unhappy pertinacity in the rôle of anti-Catholic champion. There is a story of a parson for whom the curing of corporal ailments had more interest than the cure of souls. Calling on a patient to whom he had administered a very potent dose, he found him dead; but, noticing in the room a basin which bore testimony to the efficacy of his last prescription, he consoled himself and the mourners with the remark: "Well, at any rate, it is no harm for him to have all that off his stomach, poor man! alive or dead." Some think that, since these are his real sentiments, it is well that Mr. Gladstone, whether in or out of office, should "free his soul of this perilous stuff," and show himself in this new character instead of taking the place in our history which would have been his if he had died after the passing of the Church Act and the Land Act. But for his own sake, and for the sake of the many souls whom his writings and example must influence, it is intensely to be deplored that a man so variously gifted and swayed by religious principles should have chosen such a time to league with the assailants of that venerable Church which even such men as Professor Huxley and Mr. Frederick Harrison recognise as the only formidable obstacle to the triumph of Unbelief.

THE

TOO LATE !

MATT. XXV. 10-12.

HE shades of night with murky cloud
The hush'd and sleeping city shroud;
Upon the ground the snow-flakes lie,
And shines faint light from leaden sky.
The hour is strange, and strange the place,
For maid to speed, with fair, young face,
In winter's cold, through fallen snow,
To where the river's black waves flow.
Her looks are wild, her lips compress'd,
One hand is clasp'd upon her breast,
A lamp she bears: 'tis void of oil,
And gives no light to cheer her toil.
The struggling moon in heaven's rack,

Where loose clouds fly, dispers'd and black,
Emits at times a fitful ray

To help her on her lonely way.

She sees the moonbeams coldly gleam,

Where rapid flows the tossing stream.

Her cheek is blanch'd, as through the street
Lonely and dark, with quivering feet
She hurries on; her slender form
Can scarce resist the midnight storm,
That, sweeping fierce, with biting blast,
Chills through the robe around her cast.
The robe, though light, is rich and gay,
As if 'twere donned for bridal day.

She quits the street, the bridge she finds
Beneath, the river darkly winds.

Her eager gaze the broad tide spans,
The farther side she quickly scans;
With wild and startled air she sees

Red lights that flash through waving trees,
Where palace casements softly glow
Close by the river's ceaseless flow
And streams a flood of light

Through open door, on wide-spread snow-
Lamps gleam where broods the night,
As bridal party enters in.

On wings of fear, the porch to win,
The virgin flies, with heart that thrills-
Her starting eye a strange light fills;
In gasping haste, with figure bow'd,
She speeds to join the joyous crowd.
The bridge is pass'd, the gate is won!
Swifter she flies, lest all be gone.
Through leafless trees now greets her sight
From open door the hall's rich light;
Bridegroom and bride are ent'ring last.
She cannot cry, but rushes fast
As hart on which the hunters gain.
Her wingéd speed is all in vain-
The door is shut, the bridegroom gone!
Her hour is past, she stands alone.
Sinking to earth, she bows her head,
And moans as one whose hope is dead.
Then up she starts and gains the door,
And loudly knocks, while fall once more
The snow-flakes cold, and, whistling shrill,
Beats on her frame the night-wind chill.
The bridegroom's name, her frenzied call,
Is heard within the festive hall:
A voice replies in tone severe,

That fills the heart with deadly fear-
"Let outer darkness be thy lot,

Thou foolish one! I know thee not."

MELBOURNENSIS.

LECTURES BY A CERTAIN PROFESSOR.

XII. ABOUT Knowledge of the World.

THERE is no kind of knowledge held in such universal estimation as knowledge of the world. Like most general phrases it has more than one meaning in the mouths of those who use it. I wish it to be understood in this paper in a wide, if not in its very widest sense, as signifying knowledge of men and of human nature. A man may have arrived at what he himself, giving a personal application to a general principle, considers to be the "years of discretion," and he will admit without any sense of shame that there are many branches of knowledge, useful and ornamental, to the possession of which he can make no sort of pretension, but he will be mortally ashamed to be thought to have failed in graduating in the university of the street and the

market-place. Whatever else he knows or does not know, he claims, on the mere and often fallacious ground of having lived so long, to be a judge of men, a critic of human conduct, a subtle discerner of human spirits, an accurate reader in that book of which we hear so much-the book of the human heart.

And, in truth, the heart of a man is a book; nay, it is an encyclopedia of everything that has ever come within the range of its personal experience. It preserves an eternal record of all the stories in which it has played a part. It is strange what sad things may be hidden in its depths without giving any token of their existence. The heart may be gay, and may send the smile mantling to the face, but all the while you see only the topmost stratum. If the graves beneath were to give up their dead, the smiles would seem strangely out of place. It is just like this green earth of ours that renews itself year after year, and has not on its surface any token to tell what is the simple truth, that it has given graves to two hundred generations of human beings.

The heart, taking it in its widest sense, as the noblest part of man, holds fast everything with which it has come in contact. Nothing perishes. The most utterly forgotten things are only sleeping. casual touch of anyday circumstance may wake up memories of things which, so far as consciousness was concerned, were so long dead that coming upon us now they seem like ghosts and startle us like ghosts. It is not only strange, it is even awful to think, that not a solitary experience, mental or physical; not a passing feeling that for a moment touched the heart-strings and died even as it uttered itself; not a sensation that lived in nerve or sinew or muscle; not a thought that ruffled, however lightly, the placid lake of consciousness, but are, each and all, hoarded up, readable, and to be read on some day to come. So there is more justification than ordinarily accumulates around figures of speech, for the figure that calls the heart of a man a book—nay, as I have called it, an encyclopedia of personal experience-nay, as I proceed to call it, a whole library of the strangest and most varied character; so varied that no one but ourselves could imagine that one personal identity had presided over the collecting of the volumes.

However, there are books and books. General terms are admirable packing cases for a multitude of ideas, but not everyone who possesses such a packing case has ever examined it so as to be accurately cognisant of what it contains in detail. These general terms (to vary the figure) are corks to enable drowsy human intellects, clogged with fleshly encumbrances, to swim in the vast ocean of knowledge. Some day, perhaps, we shall, in the long aftertime to be, fling them aside as useless. Hearts are books; but, I repeat, there are books and books. There are books worth reading, and books which it is a loss of time to read, and books the reading of which mark an epoch in our intellectual history, and books which leave an evil taste upon the mental palate, and leave us worse than they found us.

So, too, is it in the matter of heart-books. Some, however voluminous, are mere pamphlets devoted to the petty interests of passing