The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-22 00:00:00

J UNE 22) 1847.

no religious antagonism, no bigoted sectarianism.
Both articles in this pamphlet bear evidence that
their writer is one, who, as a Catholic, is zealous for
the welfare of his church, and as a citizen, is anxious
for the amelioration of all his countrymen. The
paper on " Catholicity in the Dark Ages" commences
with the following very felicitous comparison, which
fully evidences the tender affection which the author
bears for his spiritual mother :
" Jean Paul Richter—romancist as he was, poet as he
waslphilosopher as he was—loved one little book of memc-
rat da be' ter than the libraries of Alexandria or the Vatican.
Dirty, dog's-eared, blotched with ink, and filled with
crabbed writing—that miserable volume was more pre-
cious to him than the most golden manuscript. He
prized his treasure more than did Alexander, when he
enclosed the Iliad in a casket encrusted with jewels :
Richter enshrined his Iliad in the recesses of his loving
memory. And was it not, so to speak, an Iliad, an epic
of a human heart—that book ? that book in which were
enumerated the vigils of his dead mother, when she
toiled, secretly, night by night, at her spinning-wheel,
to earn home and bread for him ; that book in whose
blurred characters he heard, as it were, the beatings of
that dead mother's heart. Yes, Jean Paul Richter loved
that little book with a filial tenderness that was sancti-
fied by death. In all his after greatness, when the glory
of his song was carolled in the garden-crofts of Ger-
many ; when his name had become a household world in
his fatherland ; when in the palace, in the homestead, in
the city, in tho wold, in the dell, in the mountain, in
every crevice and corner of that great country, he was
recognised as one of the royal children of nature, the
thoughts of Richter would revert with a supreme pen-
siveness to the records of that volume ; be would muse
over the endurance of those lonely labours in the mid-
night ; over that unrepiuing self sacrifice ; over that
bygone poverty ; and, alas ! that bygone parent. And,
thinking of these things, he would weep ; earnestly,
ardently, gratefully, passionately, he would weep.
" Such a memory, and such a book as Jean Paul
Richter had, I have. But the book I speak of is History,
and the mother I speak of is our holy church.
" What the mother of Richter suffered during the
nights of a few winters, our spiritual mother suffered
throughout the nights of many toilsome centuries.
What the mother of Richter did for one man—her son,
our spiritual mother did for generations ; and not merely
for generations of her own children, but for generations
of aliens, and heretics, and infidels."
As we have already said, this article is of a most
interesting character ; the style is not only remark-
able for the impassioned fervour with which it is
animated, it displays also, and in no mean
degree, the varied beauties of composition,
and the evidences of erudition. It is not enough to
have said that the author evidently speaks from the
fulness of his heart, his ideas are not only genuine,
but are always clothed in beautiful and appropriate
language. His writings combine the lavish embel-
lishments and high finish of the most elaborate style,
with the fervour and freshness of a most natural and
unstudied one—a combination not very frequently to
be met, but which, in this instance, imparts to a
written essay somewhat of the forcefulness and vigour
of oratorical eloquence. After showing how, when
the incursions of the barbarians had overrun the whole
of civilised Europe, and "all the landmarks of learn-
ing were sent adrift on the ocean of ignorance," the
chefs d'oeuvres of the classic writers were sacredly
preserved in the monasteries—and not only preserved,
but perpetuated; for many of the denizens of the
cloisters were wont, it appears, " each day to tran-
scribe, with extreme care and extraordinary beauty
of penmanship, from the Greek and Latin manuscripts
treasured up in their libraries"—our author proceeds
to tell us why they were so treasured, and in so doing
he gives in a few brief but emphatic syllables, an ad-
mirable synopsis of the different peculiarities in the
various styles of the classic writers, followed by an
earnest panegyric of the most celebrated monastic
writers. This passage possesses such general interest
that we subjoin it for the benefit of our readers.
" The plenary sympathies of Catholicity extended
even to the profane achievements of an idolatrous race.
Virgil and Homer were treasured up by the priesthood
of the One God, although .2Eneas and Achilles were the
worshippers cf the demons of mythology, and they were
treasured up because of the genius by which this now
innocuous pantheism was there encompassed. Horatius
Flaccus and Anacreon, despite their panegyrics upon
drunkenness, were preserved, because of the music of
their bacchanalian verse. Catullus and Ovid, although
marred by the wantonness of their imaginations, were
rescued from oblivion because of the dainty intonations
of their metre. Terence and Aristophanes were che-
rished because of their matchless drolleries and sar-
casms ; Juvenal and Persius, for their satires upon
depravity ; Sappho and Pindar for the pathetic ardour
of their inspirations ; Demosthenes and Tully, for their
impassioned eloquence ; lEschylus and Hesiod, for the
sublimity of their conceptions ; Propertius and Tibullus,
for the sweetness of their elegiac strains ; Plautus and
Martial, for the incidental refinement of their wit ; Eu-
ripides and Sophocles, for the graces of their diction
and the grandeur of their declamatory rhythm ; Pliny,
for the amplitude of his investigations ; Democritus, for
the beauties that sparkled oat in the very ghastliness of
his merriment ; and even the dismal but bewitching Lu-
cretius, for the natural flowers of poetry that sprouted
through the chinks of his sterile creed, and bloomed in
the wastes of his desolate materialism. Beyond all these
imaginative classics there were the voluminous creations
of the so-called historians ; there were Tacitus, and
Livy, and Herodotus, and Curtius, and Sallust ; there
were the profound and picturesque narratives of Poly-
bius and Thucydides ; there were the descriptive com-
mentaries of the accomplished conqueror, the great Ju-
lius; there were the fabulous chapters of the Argonautic
expedition by Apollonius Rhodius, and the kindred me-
mories of Ammianus Marcellinus, Diodorus, and Dio-
nysius of Haliearnassus ; and all these did the discern-
ing ecclesiastics garner up at a period when, but, for
their interference, the manuscript originals would have
been fuel, for the baking of a kid or the kindling of a
casual bonfire, ,For ..the 'riches of Atlialqtte literature,
therefore, mankind is indebted to the reviled wearers of
the cowl and of the girdle.
" But the intellectual assiduity of the monastic orders
was by no means restricted to the multiplication of the
copies of compositions that had already been produced
—wonderful as such a manual undertaking was in itself.
The clerical scholars were originators as well as perpe-
tuators.
" From the solitudes of an eremitical life, from the
womb of the wilderness, a Great Voice vibrated over
the world, crying out to the nations as with the reson-
ance of an angelic trumpet, singing as to the sympho-
nies of celestrial timbrels the glories of an atoning God.
At the sound of that Great Voice the voluptuaries
started up from their orgies ; the patrician revellers
rose from the marble benches of the amphitheatre ;
the feats of the athletes, and the prowess of the
gladiators were forgotten ; the pampered citizens
of Rome were flying from their barbaric assailants—the
desert was no longer unpeopled—the Princes of Italy,
bereft of their riches, hurried for solace into the womb
of the wilderness, to the home of the Great Voice. The
voice was St. Jerome. And St. Jerome was a religious !
In the court of the Emperor Charlemagne, in the midst
of the paladins of that heroic conqueror, whilst Joyeuse
clanked in the imperial scabbard and Durandel glittered
on the thigh of Orlando—one man engrossed the admi-
ration of the Franks, for his worth, his simplicity, and
his wisdom. That man was Alcuin. And Alcuin was
a religious ! Upon the banks of the Tyne, in the plea-
sant seclusion of Jarrow, lived of old, and wrote
of old, and prayed and toiled of old, the most
reverent of our native historians. That historian was
Bede. And the Venerable Bede was a monk ! Tones
of exquisite melody thrilled through the hearts of Eu-
rope and Asia, and afterwards into the furthermost
depths of America. Those tones were the utterances of
Saint John Chrysostom. And Saint John Chrysostom
was an ascetic, and—what is more—Archbishop of Con-
stantinople. Tertullian and Origen, and all the primi-
tive fathers in like manner spoke literally like the
oriental princess, those precious stones of eloquence and
logic, which shine for ever in their books, and emblaz3n
their names among the immortal. And all these were
nurtured in the monastic establishments 1"
This article is very appropriately prefixed to the re-
marks upon education, it being thus designed, "To
afford a testimony that Catholicism has been the
guardian of earthly as well as Divine knowledge,
and that her children are therefore entitled, in a
articular manner, to the blessings of secular
tuition." Of the remarks upon education it is unne-
cessary to speak further; they are especially ad-
dressed to the Catholics themselves, and to the
attention of Catholics we most cordially. commend,.)
them, feeling assured that they must derive, if not
some benefit, at least much pleasure from their
perusal. Heartily do we respond to the desire of
their author " to behold the indigent and the ignorant
of all classes, without any invidious distinctions what-
soever, elevated by the humanising sentiments of
religion, and reclaimed by the potent influences of
education." We will hope that such a happy result
is not far distant, and we will hope also that these
little works we have just noticed may tend to the con-
.mmation of our wishes.

LOLA MONTES AGAIN.—A case came on yesterday
before the Tribunal of Commerce, in which the far-
famed Lola Mentes is concerned. She had, it appears,
purchased some shawls from M. Cerf Levy, and given
him in payment bills to the amount of 2,117 f. When
the bills became due, the lady had ta'::en flight to Bavaria,
and M. Cerf Levy obtained from the Tribunal of Com-
merce a judgment by default against her, by virtue of
which he seized on a quantity of furniture left by Lola
Mentes in her apartment in the Rue do Provence. M.
the lady's counsel, yesterday entered an opposi-
tion against this judgment, on the ground that the Court
was incomptent, his client not being in business. On
the other side it was contended that she had purchased
the shawls to sell again at the Court of Munich, and
consequently that she had in that way acted as a trader.
The Court adjourned the case for afortnight.—Galignani.
Dispatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-
office, from the Governors of the West India Colonies.