bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Victorian Optimist
Authors: James Stanley B.
Published: July 2007

In early non-Catholic days one of the men to whom I gave a boy’s devotion was George MacDonald, poet, novelist, preacher, the centenary of whose birth falls to be observed this year. Occasionally he was a guest at our house; at other times I heard him lecture in different parts of London or met him in the home of a neighbour whom he sometimes visited. His books were devoured with the uncritical voracity of the youthful hero-worshipper. It was with special interest, therefore, that I turned to the biography which his son has just published.

Mr. Chesterton, in the introduction which he supplies, contrasts George MacDonald with Carlyle. The latter, he says, never lost the Puritan mood even when he lost the whole of the Puritan theology. So far, however, in Mr. Chesterton’s estimation, did MacDonald escape the Calvinism of his early surroundings that he says of him ‘in his particular type of literary work he did indeed realise the apparent paradox of a St. Francis of Aberdeen, seeing the same sort of halo round every flower and bird. It is not the same thing (he continues) as any poet’s appreciation of the beauty of the flower or bird. A heathen can feel that and remain a heathen, or in other words, remain sad. It is a certain special sense of significance, which the tradition that most values it calls sacramental. To have got back to it or forward to it, at one bound of boyhood, out of the black Sabbath of a Calvinist town, was a miracle of imagination.’
Torquemada and Sabatini
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

A very portly volume on Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, by Rafael Sabatini, at the cost of twelve shillings and sixpence, has gone into its third edition. The publishers on the jacket of the book tell us that ‘it deals without bias and in a purely historical spirit with this phase of religious persecution.’ Certainly a book without bias dealing with the Inquisition must needs be written ‘in a purely historical spirit,’ and no doubt in time such a book will get written. But it is nonsense to speak of Mr, Rafael Sabatini as having already written it. You feel that he wants to be an historian, and that he is trying desperately hard to be without bias; but the result of his efforts is unhappy.

Of course, no one is biassed nowadays in favour of the Inquisition; so that Mr. Sabatini can be sure that he has it all his own way when he denounces its cruelty, its stupidity, its failure. Persecution has hardly ever been successful except to the persecuted, as we know in England in our own case: and Catholics who have suffered persecution at the hands of their countrymen in the past know enough of its folly to have little sympathy with the efforts of the Inquisition of Spain. Yet we have known also enough in our own time of the panic dread of German spies, of hostility to the Jews in many classes of society, of the American habit of applying torture to certain cases that fall under its police law, to be sure that the spirit that begat the Inquisition is alive, though normally very feebly alive, in all human nature.
Blessed Jordan of Saxony and England
Authors: Meagher Bonaventure
Published: July 2007

A town and Gown affray in these days is not usually regarded as serious. In fact such conflicts have almost ceased to be, the gown confining its attention to the annoying of college authorities rather than attacking town. In the Middle Ages, however, there occurred bitter and bloody fights between students and citizens. Anthony Wood tells of many killed and wounded in these affairs. After the battles, peace was secured, for the time being, by the paying of compensation by the town, because the gown, being well up in logic and law, could always prove that it was right and the town hopelessly wrong.

A great affray in Paris, early in the year 1229, led to disastrous results. The fight began in wine and ended in blood, which was the ordinary procedure; what was extraordinary about this particular riot was that when the citizens were tired of being knocked on the head, the civic authorities sent out the Civic Guard, and Queen Blanche ordered her archers to quell the tumult. These two bodies of disciplined soldiery shot down the students without mercy. They, badly beaten and resentful, clamoured for redress. The Masters— Paris University was a guild of Masters—took up the quarrel. The Queen refused them satisfaction, and in a short time a deadlock was reached; then the University had recourse to a very modern weapon of retaliation—they declared a strike. If they expected by this means to achieve their ends they were disappointed, since town and court stood firm.
Written from the Prison Cell
Authors: McQuilland Louis J.
Published: July 2007

Some of the finest literature in the world has been written in the shades of the prison-house. Ovid composed his Tristia as a convict in the Crimea, the reason for his marooning being that he had loved the Emperor Augustus’ daughter too deeply. Boethius penned his Consolations of Philosophy when under sentence of death. James the First of Scotland solaced his days of captivity at Windsor with the creation of that noble volume, The Queen's Quhair. A distinguished French prisoner in England, Charles D’Orleans, the contemporary of Villon, beguiled his dull leisure with the invention of beautiful poems.

Villon, jail-bird and man of genius, was not as well housed by his captors and jailers as Charles, but his miserable condition was a sharp spur to his quick brain. In the Castle of Meung he was cast into a cell without light or air, dripping with water and swarming with rats, toads and snails. In such miserable conditions he wrote his Ballad of Debate of the Heart and Body of Villon and his Ballad of Villon in Prison, a most poignant appeal to help Francois living instead of saving up prayers for Francois dead. Here is a taste of its quality:

Clerks that go carolling the livelong day,

Scant-pursed, but glad and frank and full of glee, Wandering at will along the broad highway,

Hare-brained, perchance, but wit-whole too, perdie,

Lo ! now I die, whilst that you absent be, Song-singers when poor Villon’s days are told,

You will sing psalms for him and candles hold ;

Here light, nor air, nor levin enters not,

Where ramparts thick are round about him rolled—

Will you all leave poor Villon here to rot?
A Note on Moliere and his Religion
Authors: Smythe Barbara
Published: July 2007

The recent visit to London of a troupe of players from the Comédie Francaise gave us a welcome opportunity of studying a few of Moliere’s greatest works in the only completely satisfactory way in which they can be studied. For though we may read and re-read our Moliere with never-failing joy till we know every line by heart and every character as well as the members of our own family, it is not until those familiar figures are actually moving before us and revealing their characters in every word they utter that we can realise quite fully the greatness of their creator’s genius.

Surely no dramatist has ever equalled Moliere in his power of writing dialogue that is at the same time apparently so faithful a reproduction of real speech and so entirely characteristic of each individual speaker. The talk is all so natural, so spontaneous, that the fact that in many plays it is carried on in Alexandrine couplets never jars on our sense of reality in the least—it is not until afterwards, if at all, that we reflect that after all nobody ever did talk in Alexandrine couplets in real life. Moliere wrote his plays for the stage and not for the study, consequently this quality of naturalness in the dialogue strikes us even more forcibly when we hear it spoken than when we read it. In the same way we have to see the characters not merely with the mind’s eye, but as actual living beings, in order fully to appreciate them.
Spain
Authors: Belloc Hilaire
Published: July 2007

Spain presents a very interesting problem to the foreign observer, and especially to the English observer. The problem lies in the discovery of what factors have produced a result apparently at issue with itself; a result containing an apparent contradiction. The reason this problem is of special interest to Englishmen, is that many of the factors at work are those which have applied to England in the past or are beginning now to apply to her.

Let us sum up the main characteristics of the position :

(1) Spain was the product of an amalgamation between several distinct provinces, one of which, Catalonia, is still more or less hostile to the rest. Spain so amalgamated conquered, colonised and completely transformed in her own image a large tract of the earth’s surface, to wit, all South and Central America with the exception of the Amazon Basin, and spread her language and institutions over the earth.

(2) Spain, while so acting, became the undisputed mistress of the seas and planted her influence by sea throughout the world; Spanish architecture, language and even cooking are to be found in the depths of the Pacific and on the islands of the Atlantic, as well as upon the mainland of South America.

(3) At the same time the Spaniards were so powerful by land that they controlled a great part of the Mediterranean countries, furnished the best infantry for the German dominions (at one time united with their throne), fought magnificently with a handful of men a losing battle, half a lifetime long, in Holland, and were in general by far the first military power of their time.
A Confession of Anthony Tyrrell
Authors: Dupernex E.
Published: July 2007

The story of Anthony Tyrrell has been very fully dealt with by Father Morris in his Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers. The authority he followed was a contemporary unpublished MS. of the famous Father Persons, still preserved in the English College at Rome and bearing as its title, The Fall of Anthony Tyrrell. Persons gives his own version of the present confession and, though there is no material difference between the two, it is unfortunate that Father Morris did not go direct to Tyrrell’s own statement, especially considering the very controversial character of Father Persons’ writings, and that a contemporary text does exist in the Lansdowne MSS. of the British Museum.

A happy chance has brought into my possession what is apparently Tyrrell’s actual letter. It is here printed verbatim, in the original spelling and without any attempt to straighten its confused sentences.

It was found wrapped up with some other papers of the famous Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and must either have been sent to him for transmission or intercepted by one of his agents. Unfortunately, the covering letter is gone, but a schedule shows the whole packet to have been sent to Leicester by one Walter Bagot. I have no certainty who this Walter was, but I have found in my MSS. a document of the same date (1587) describing Walter Bagot as son to Richard Bagot of Blithefield, and their identity is very probable.

It is a pleasure to be able to print the Confession as written, without the alteration of one word or letter.
France's New Government and the Church
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

Writing some months ago in this review on the probable attitude of the new French Government towards the Catholic Church, I ventured to anticipate that the first action of the new government would be to declare its hostility to the Church at the outset by undertaking to abolish the recently re-established Embassy at the Vatican. The Embassy has not yet been withdrawn, but the new Government in fact lost no time in announcing its intention of abolishing it. Only the unexpected strength of the resistance by the Catholic forces in the Chambre des Deputes, and the critical situation created by the London Conference, have prevented the Government from pressing its attack to a successful issue. The Government has found itself confronted with a problem which it had not sufficiently appreciated in advance, through the resolute determination of the Catholic populations of Alsace and Lorraine to maintain the immunity from anti-clerical innovations which has been accorded to them since the lost provinces were restored after the defeat of Germany in the war.

It is not only the Catholics of Alsace and Lorraine who are in revolt against the threat to bring them under the anti-clerical regime from which they have been spared under German rule. The Jews and the Protestants have joined forces with them in a vigorous and organised protest against interference. Not many weeks ago the Protestant organisations of Alsace simultaneously published in all their religious periodicals the following protest:
Pere de la Taille and the Last Supper
Authors: McNass Vincent
Published: July 2007

As Pere de la Taille has honoured me by giving in the American Ecclesiastical Review (July) an answer to my criticism of his theory of the Last Supper and the Mass, readers of Blackfriars may be interested in knowing what may be said in reply.

In Blackfriars of September, 1923, I ventured to cull the following passages from Père de la Taille’s now famous book, Mysterium Fidei. These passages shall be given in English :

(1) The Last Supper and the Cross are complementary. At the Last Supper was begun that sacrifice which was to be consummated on the Cross.

(2) The reality of the Immolation is found in the suffering of the Death. But in the symbolical immolation of the Last Supper is especially shown the quality of the liturgical oblation.

(3) Hence the sacrifice of redemption on the Cross and at the Supper was one.

Nor must it be reckoned a preliminary sacrifice at the Supper; and another subsequent on the Cross.

But in the Supper room there was made the unbloody Oblation of the Bloody Immolation to be made on Calvary.

(4) This unity from the Eucharistic Oblation and the bloody Immolation is not in the order of things but in the order of signs.

It is a unity in the order of Sacrifice, and Sacrifice as such is to be classed as a sign.

Even as in the Eucharistic Sacrament the form of consecration and the sacramental species are not one in the order of things but only in the order of signs or sacraments.
The Philosophy of Art
Authors: D'Arcy M. C.
Published: July 2007

The amateur, however much he may parade his amateurishness, has secretly always an envy of the professor. I am an amateur in art-criticism, and I have always wanted to be an Aristotle in judgment. Such awkward situations arise! The schoolboy bubbling over with enthusiasm consults me on Pre-Raphaelitism; the undergraduate asks me to admire Picasso or Wyndham Lewis; the pundit expects me to follow his monologue on the latest tendencies in painting and music, and always I struggle in the dark and conscience shakes its head at me for hypocrisy. How I long to be able to tick off on my fingers, after the manner of Aquinas in the picture, the good and bad points of this picture or that, and round off a classic treatment of the subject with some Olympian dictum!

In the days of credulous youth, I thought Ruskin was a Bible of Art. I learnt his definitions and went to art galleries a happy child certain of what I ought to like and dislike. But with the years disillusion came. Whistler found Ruskin wanting, and my friends, when I sang the song of Ruskin, laughed in my face and looked on me as a Victorian who had never grown old and wise. So I sought anew in great discontentment for a theory that would defy time and change. Books with alluring titles, What is Art? A New Theory of the Beautiful, The Relation of Art to Life, were tried, but instead of light I met fog, fog and ever thicker fog.
Babel
Authors: Huray C. P.
Published: July 2007

It is never wise, I think, to read two or three thought-provoking books simultaneously. Generally speaking, I never do; and that I did so in this instance was entirely due to unusual circumstances. For nearly ten days I was occupied in invigilating a Senior Local Examination. Invigilating is a tedious business. In oppressive silence a crowd of examinees vie with one another in covering sheet after sheet of paper with facts which the examiner may or may not have asked for, and if the silence is broken, it is only to make a request for further supplies of paper or for logarithmic tables. The invigilator cannot entertain himself for long with the daily newspaper. Its news’ columns and articles are soon exhausted and, for myself, I take very little interest in advertisements. Bearing these things in mind, I took with me into the examination room, besides my favourite daily, Benjamin Kidd’s The Science of Power and a text-book of Esperanto. The latter I found vastly entertaining, for, with a knowledge of three or more modern languages, Esperanto can be mastered with very little expenditure of time and effort.

Before the session was at an end, however, I found the two books inextricably interwoven in my own mind. That constantly recurring phrase of Benjamin Kidd’s, ‘the emotion of the ideal,’ I found myself applying to Esperanto. If, in a single generation, ‘the emotion of the ideal’ had created a unified Germany, strong enough to stand against the world, why should not this same ‘emotion,’ I asked myself, expressed through Esperanto, in one generation, create international goodwill and complete understanding, through the adoption of an auxiliary language?
The Sacrifice of Calvary and the Holy Mass
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

The ‘Faith that seeketh understanding’ is so laudably active at the present time that we offer our readers the following positive and summary statement on one of the most vital and discussed problems of our day.

‘Quia et Christus passus est pro nobis relinquens nobis exemplum ut sequamini vestigia Ejus . . . Eratis enim sicut oves errantes, sed conversi estis nunc ad pastorem et episcopum animarum vestrarum’ (I Pet. ii, 21, 25).

Because Christ also died for us leaving you an example that you should follow His steps ... For you were as sheep going astray; but you are now converted to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

‘Credo in unum Deum. Patrem Omnipotentem . . . Et in unum Dominum Jesus Christum. Filium Dei Unigenitum . . . Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis . . .

. . . Et homo factus est . . .

. . . Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est’ (Symb. Nic.).

‘Since under the former Testament—for such is the witness of the Apostle Paul—by reason of the weakness of the Levitical priesthood there was not perfection, the Father of Mercies so ordained that another Priest should arise, our Lord Jesus Christ, who should be able to consummate and lead to perfection them that are to be sanctified’ (Cone. Trid., Sess. xxii: de Sacrificio Missae : c. 1).
The Last Abbot of Evesham
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The inscription can still be made out. It is carved in stone over the porch of what was once the old grammar school, but is now the hall and institute of the local Labour Party. Orate pro anima Clementis Abbas. So all are bidden who pass this way in Evesham town, whether they belong to the Labour Party or have quite other political convictions, to remember the soul of the last Abbot of Evesham—Clement Lichfield.

He it was who built the Bell Tower, a campanile apart and independent, that the bells of the great abbey might have a house worthy of their message. And of all that vast monastery, that holy house of St. Egwin, its first abbot and bishop of Worcester, nothing remains save the Bell Tower and some crumbling stone foundations. Hardly was the Bell Tower finished when the crash came. To Henry VIII in the year 1539 the riches of Evesham were a temptation not to be missed. Usurped authority must needs buy support, and these abbey lands at Evesham, as elsewhere, judiciously bestowed could win many to approve the royal supremacy. Not only the good land, but the wealth and splendour of the abbey shrines and the very stones must be taken and distributed. The monks, too, must be dispersed, for Archbishop Cranmer discerned that while monasticism survived great would be the difficulty of introducing the new religion, of pouring the new wine of Luther and Zwingli into the old bottles of the Catholic Church in England.
The Film and Futility
Authors: Trent John
Published: July 2007

‘LET us go to the Pictures.’ They all say it, young I and old, rich and poor, wise and foolish. That is why the cinema is the third greatest industry in America, and almost an institution in family and individual life.

Probably no industry before it had such a rapid rise to fame and fortune. The animated pictures of twenty-five years ago, ousting the ‘stills’ of the magic lantern, came as a shock to the old and a delight to the young. Pictures that not only moved but were moving in themselves revealed the hitherto unsuspected powers of the camera. No longer would it be necessary to coax oneself into an attitude of expectant imbecility before it; no longer need baby be placated and pleased by the despairing photographer. A moving picture of family life in all its animated phases could be made by turning a handle, without fuss or warning.

The outstanding feature of the animated pictures in their infancy was, naturally enough, that they were intensely animated. They were more animated than pictures. In those days the animation was the thing. One expected it and got it. The picture was merely the necessary medium for showing how very animated the characters could be. Originally there were no ‘stars,’ merly men and women, and no picture was made to’ feature’ any particular individual. The screen was pleasantly free from constellations of any kind. But the animation was there in its most primitive human form, with almost incredible rough-and-tumble, and those delightful pursuits of villain or hero, in which the entire cast would assume enormous proportions and fling themselves off the screen into, as it seemed, the middle of the pit.
Catholike Questions to the Protestants
Authors: Martin M. Gregory
Published: July 2007

I pray thee Protestant beare with mee,

To aske thee questions two or three :

And if an answere thou canst make,

More of thy councaile I will take.

Many and sundry sects appeare now in the world far and near:

The Protestant, the Puritan, the Calvinist, the Zwinglian,

The Brownists and the Family of love

And many more which I can prove,

And the Roman Fayth truly, Which you do call Papistry.

All these in very deed,

Rehearse all Articles in the Creed,

And every one of them sayth, That theirs is the Catholike Fayth.

How should I among all these, Know the truth from fayned Lies?

For every one confesse Jesu,

Saying that their faith is true :

But this is it that I doe seeke, To know the Church Catholike :

The Communion of the company

Of holy men in unity.

CATHOLIKE.

In your Bibles I have read The Church must through the world be spread.

For Christ his Apostles sent, With power and eke commandment :

That to all nations they should go

To preach and to baptize also, Who hath done this to know I will

For that is sure the Church of Christ.

And for example let me know, And if thou canst I pray thee shew,

What company did take in hand

The first conversion of our land?

And all countries every where, Throughout the world farre and neare?

If this were not the Church of Rome

Then will I be converted soone. St. Paul in his Epistle sayth: The Romans had the Catholike fayth :

Saying, it was renowned, Spoken of, and published Through the world over all,, Catholike, Universall If yours were ever so,
The Cheapness of a Cheap Edition of ‘The Paston Letters’
Authors: Reeves John Baptist
Published: July 2007

On every wrapper of every volume, Everyman’s Library engages itself to supply its readers, for a few pounds, with a whole bookshelf of the immortals; and for a comparatively small expenditure to make a man intellectually rich for life. This promise is strangely fulfilled in two of its latest volumes—752 and 753. They are thus described on the title-page :

HISTORY.

The; Paston Letters.

Edited by John Fenn and Re-Edited by Mrs. Archer-Hind, M.A.

They are immortal in the same sense that a mutilated mummy is immortal. They will make their readers intellectually rich for life by obliging them to incur the comparatively small expenditure necessary for the purchase of James Gairdner’s edition of the Paston Letters. For there alone, and not here at all, can the average reader hope to form any adequate notion of what the Paston Letters are, and what is their title to immortal fame.

At first sight it appears that, except for a quotation from the Catalogue of the British Museum, Mrs. Archer-Hind ignores James Gairdner and his work altogether. But on closer inspection this proves to be too charitable a supposition. Mrs. Archer-Hind has used Gairdner’s work, but she has misread it superficially and clumsily, and ineptly travestied it.

To justify this very serious charge, I must set down here much that is common knowledge amongst all to whom the Paston Letters are more than a name. I do so as nearly as possible in Gairdner’s own words.
The De-Christianising of Asia Minor
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: July 2007

We imagine that few besides those specially interested in the fate of Christianity in the East paid much attention to a tiny paragraph which appeared among the obiter dicta of the newspapers some weeks ago. The news was not considered worthy of prominence; even an important Catholic paper placed it at the foot of the column. Those who discovered the paragraph learned that two Christians had been murdered at Smyrna and a Catholic priest stoned; that was all.

But in the days when European Christendom was still a reality such items of news have stirred up whole countries, and have gone far towards the promotion of a new crusade. Times and sentiments have changed. Perhaps some excuse may be found for our apathy in the fact that the events of the past ten years have so accustomed us to the thought of death, murder and the massacre of thousands, that the slaughter of two individuals even on account of their Christian faith can hardly be expected to stir up interest, not to speak of indignation. Besides, did not this happen in Asia Minor? And how can we be expected to be moved with righteous indignation over two wretched Asiatics, when we have watched the slow massacre of a Christian people, the Armenians, in the same country?

Further, the general ignorance of the course of events in Asia Minor during the past three years conceals from our minds the tragedy that lies behind this announcement of the massacre of those two fellow-Christians of ours.
Men into Gods
Authors: Carpenter Hilary
Published: July 2007

Humanitarianism, in its modern form began with Auguste Comte ninety years ago, and has, since then, been ably expounded by such positivists as Stuart Mill, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, as well as by James Cotter Morison and H. G. Wells. But man’s worship of Man—for Humanitarianism is nothing else—is as old almost as history. Only its name has changed. To-day, however, possibly more than in any other age, the revivifying of this error is a terrible menace, rapidly taking root and spreading like some noxious weed in our very midst.

Amongst those who have become acutely conscious of this danger and who have set themselves to expose and resist it, Father Dudley has wielded his pen to good effect in the cause of Christianity and human happiness. In a recent work (from the excellence of which even the dreadful colour chosen for the cover must not be allowed to detract) he has exposed the worthlessness and folly of this pretended road to happiness. As Mr. Chesterton says so justly, in his Introduction, this ‘book is concerned with a highly practical and even topical point in the controversies of the day.’

‘Positivistic Humanitarianism’ is a big title for a petty system. It clings to sense knowledge to the detriment and exclusion of intelligence. Nothing must be believed which does not come under the direct dominion of the senses. The logical conclusion of such a doctrine—it is the one glimmer of logic—is the exclusion of God. And, since man must have something to adore, it offers him himself as a deity.
On the Darkling Winter Wayfare of the Ihfant Lord
Authors: Crashaw Richard , O'Connor John
Published: July 2007

Out in the night (Those tender travellers,

The Mother and the Child,

The whom not any day deserves to light?

Those lips of His, those cheeks of hers Indeed what should they do with kisses wild From winter or the night?

Lilies were well and roses not unmeet,

Nor zephyr’s mouth made sweet With crooning over endless violets;

These had the right which know not night Or more than our days bright.

But night and winter leaguer these poor buds,

And who can say what either broods?

Nay, let not winter think To rave in stormy rain,

Nor darkling terrors slink In blackness’ evil train !

Woe ! should her car at least Inyoke the rigorous East.

Or should the swirling South Ope an unruly mouth

And then, ah me ! i’ the murk What real perils lurk :

What manifold dim shapes of ugliness Court night, their procuress :

What murderous eyeballs glare

Beneath black wings of hell that choke the air!

And whether the horrors stay

Or go their shifty way

Equally abides the Mother-maid’s dismay.

Ergo veni; totoque veni resonantior arcu,

(Cynthia) praegnantem clange procul pharetram. Monstra vel ista, vel ilia, tuis sint meta sagittis : Nec fratris jaculum certior aura vehat.

Ergo veni totoque veni, flagrantior ore,

Dignaque Apollineas sustinuisse vices.

Scis bene quid deceat Phoebi lucere sororem :

Ex his, si nescis (Cynthia), disce genis.

O tua, in his, quanto lampas formosior iret!

Nox suam, ab his, quanto malit habere diem ! Quantum ageret tacitos haec luna modestior ignes !

Atque verecundis sobria staret equis !

Luna, tuae non est rosa tarn pudibunda diei:

Nec tarn Virgineo fax tua flore tremit.

Ergo veni; sed et astra, tuas age (Cynthia) turmas : Ilia oculos pueri, quos imitentur, habent.
The First Newsletter on the Death of B. Thomas More
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice
Published: July 2007

‘iE XT’ XPOSITXO fidelis de morte D. Thomae Mori et quorundam aliorum insignium virorum in Anglia Anno mdxxxv.’

This small Latin book, printed in Paris during the very month following their deaths, is interesting from the fact, besides other points, that it is the most contemporary account at any length which we possess of the death of the victims of Henry’s cruelty. It is not exactly a rare book, but is certainly not a popular one, and in any case the story which it gives is worth making more widely known.

The author shows a considerable local knowledge of London, as well as being fairly acquainted with the English judicial system, English titles, habits and so forth. We will leave the question of the authorship of this and one or two related accounts until the end of this paper.

After the usual introduction the author goes on : ‘You will receive, therefore, my dearest Sir, from your far from cheerful friend an account of the death of certain very eminent Englishmen, but especially that of Thomas More, who was during his life a famous baron and supreme judge of the kingdom whom those people call the Chancellor.

‘In the far east (of London) there is a citadel strongly fortified, which in past time the kings inhabited. It is commonly known as the Tower: but now in that building it is the custom to confine noblemen and others of mark who are regarded as guilty of high treason.’ The palace and Benedictine monastery of Westminster are next described:’ both buildings
Winter Walking
Authors: Gray John
Published: July 2007

Good will be found in the man whose recreation is walking. The moralist means certainly subathletic walking, a true exercise of this form of progress, a test which hopes to be marked high. Results of it can only be compared in their productivity of good. While you experience the pleasant muscular soreness for which you have waited only after the twelfth mile, your mother may be satisfied for the day when she has reached the eighth. A walk in the sense indicated seems to connote for a lady twelve, for a man twenty, flat miles in Great Britain.

Restorative exercise, nay, prophylactic, for fatigues must needs be dispersed and ease insured, cannot, when there is hardly an acceptable substitute to propose, suffer seasonal restriction, accept hyemation. Why should they? On the contrary.

External dispositions fit you rather for winter walking. You are becomingly shod by the very circumstance; and even legal clothing may seem too much in summer. Winter allays; and the walker is not without persecutors. ‘No heat, no dust, no flies’ you will hear your hobnails sing upon the frost-resilient road. And the eyes find more than variety in the winter scene; they learn to choose dead-bracken-clothed steeps and pronounce their food ‘incomparable’ when the blue of the mist deepens to the desired concord.

The Things Required by the walker are two; if the plurality of boots be admitted. These are loose, heavy, best reached-me-down; they are hard and uncouth until copiously anointed with neatsfoot oil. If for the tread be desired pure leather, as the phrase is, let them be fitted with a clump sole; yet who but the exquisite so desire?
Psychology and Education
Authors: Elrington G.A.
Published: July 2007

It is not the purpose of this article to ventilate any particular theory, or to criticise any particular system of educational practice, this not being in any way within the competence of the writer to discuss. Psychology, however, looms large on the intellectual horizon at the present day, and whatever the views one may hold as to the efficacy of psychological study with regard to the problems of education, one will be ready to admit that between the two, psychology and education, there exists an important relation, though it may not be easy to state this relation in precise terms.

Then, again, we have to reckon with the fact that empirical and experimental psychology has to be taught in some at least of our training colleges, in order to meet the demands of educational authorities, who expect prospective teachers to receive some instruction in psychology in its bearing on educational practice. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether without this external compulsion, much attention would be paid to modern psychology; it becomes, therefore, all the more necessary to enquire whether after all there is not some justification for insisting on this subject having a place in the curriculum of the training college, and whether teachers and educators in general may not benefit to some extent thereby.

Surveying the literature of the subject, it would appear that the demand for psychology comes in part from educators themselves, who have come to appreciate the need thereof; in part from the fact that in the growth of psychology as a science, educational, problems began to acquire a fresh significance, resulting in extensive investigations conducted on strictly experimental lines, and having as their main purpose the analysis of the psychological factors involved in both learning and teaching.
The Psychology of Emotion
Authors: Elrington G. A.
Published: July 2007

A navigator in charge of the steering of aship, in addition to the compass and other aids, has to keep a constant look-out for rocks, some of which are visible, others submerged. The locality of these submerged rocks is as a rule well known and is marked on the chart, but from time to time we read that a ship has Struck on some uncharted rock or reef and has gone down, or at least has suffered some damage.

There is something analogous to this in the life of a human being. He has a course to steer, a goal to reach; he has rocks to encounter and keep clear of. As long as these are visible—as long as he is conscious, that is to say, of these rocks—it is an easier matter; but from time to time he strikes something which, so to speak, is not on his chart and yet profoundly influences his life. Disturbance of an emotional character may ensue, the root of which lies in the uncharted rocks of the sub-conscious mind.

This is merely a simile introduced by way of illustration to show the fundamental thought which runs through this treatise on the psychology of emotion.

The part which emotion—or, as older writers would say, passion—plays in human life is so obvious that the fact is barely worth mentioning. Without emotion life would resemble the existence of an oyster, fixed on its bed, immovable, impervious to any stimulation other than that which procures for it its daily diet of animalculae. It is in the quality of the emotional life that we find those oscillations of the personality which are familiar to us all.
Not Many Wise
Authors: Cowell Edith
Published: July 2007

A friend of mine, an Anglican clergyman, has written to tell me that he has just returned from his first visit to a Catholic country, thanking God that this experience has been enough to put an end, once and for all, to certain doubts and fears once entertained by him, that it might be his duty to ‘go over to Rome.’ What has caused the recoil is no part of Catholic dogma, with practically all of which (save for some academic difficulties concerning the Primacy of the Pope) he is in almost complete agreement. What has offended him is not Catholic theory, but Catholic practice. In other words, he has found himself for the first time in a Catholic atmosphere, and has discovered that it is little to his liking.

As examples of the sort of thing which has alienated his sympathies he relates how he went into the Santo at Padua, and found the Tabernacle (after some difficulty) in a deserted side-chapel, while the first thing that attracted his eye when he entered the vast church was the shrine of S. Anthony, which was thronged with worshippers. Now my friend has, in theory, a good deal of sympathy with the cultus of the saints. What disedified one who had fought so valiantly for the reserved sacrament in his own Church was the fact that the shrine of S. Anthony was so full, and the side-chapel so neglected. And this was not the worst of his experiences. Proceeding south by slow stages, punctuated by duty visits to churches containing a bewildering number of pictures alleged to be miraculous, which seemed to absorb practically the whole devotion of the people, he came to Rome.
Asent to the Decress of the Biblical Commission
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

For us Anglicans it is, of course, open to question whether the latest Papal exposition of the doctrine of inspiration has not imposed restrictions on exegesis which embarrass rather than assist the modern Catholic expositor.’

I.

Since the Reformation the Church has been told that she does not encourage people to read the Bible, that she is opposed to its translation, that she is obscurantist, traditionalist, ultra conservative, etc. Sometimes ‘our erring sister’ is gently chided, but there is always a hardly-veiled air of superiority in rebukes thus delicately administered. Nearly thirty years have elapsed since Leo XIII published his Encyclical, Providenlissimus Deus,on the study of Scripture, and it is nearly three-and-twenty years since he established the Biblical Commission, which published its first decision, that on the Pentateuch, in 1906. Of the writers in the various Biblical reviews during the subsequent years some ‘accord us the praise at least of their silence’ ; others are hostile; many contemptuous: few show any conception of the meaning and value of such Papal pronouncements. The disheartening feature is the fact that hostile and ignorant criticisms are not confined to effusions of the daily Press or irresponsible writers in magazines; they emanate from scholars who should know better. Such criticism continues to this day. Dr. Gore can even now speak of ‘this amazing Encyclical’ and add a hope that ‘this assertion of verbal inspiration in its most stringent sense as the doctrine of the Church’ may not be infallible.
Ronsard–Poet and Militant Catholic
Authors: O'Donoghue T. D.
Published: July 2007

It is often asked why the Catholic Church, for some centuries past, has apparently ceased to be the Mother of Poets—why, in Francis Thompson’s phrase, whilst retaining the palm of Sanctity, she has foregone the laurel of Song? The fact is scarcely in dispute,: one could easily count upon the fingers of a hand the outstanding Catholic poets of the last three hundred years. All the greatest names are either pagan or heretic. Is there an explanation of this lamenable condition? For it was not always so. Time was when the courts of the Temple outsang the groves of Parnassus, and all the sons of God made joyful melody like birds in the woods of a spring morning.

‘Poetry,’ says Thompson, ‘sinned, Poetry fell: and instead of reclaiming her, Catholicism cast her forth from the door, to follow the feet of her pagan seducer.’ This is true : Poetry became the instrument of evil—the very lovely and effective instrument of a worldly and sensuous philosophy. She lost her good name, and her very beauty only made her the more an object of suspicion.

But how came it that poetry fell from grace? The Protestant Reformation has been rightly blamed for many evils: it must take the blame for this too. Previously, Christendom had been one—not only in faith, but in life also, and in genius. The same warm, vital stream flowed freely through every part of her. But, in an evil hour, the poison of heresy got into that life-stream, causing atrophy here, paralysis there, and everywhere inducing fever and delirium.
The Missionary Exhibition at the Vatican
Authors: Bowen F.J.
Published: July 2007

It was a happy thought of the Holy F ather to associate the present Jubilee Year with a Missionary Exhibition in the Vatican grounds, for among the modem activities of the Church the foreign missionary movement undoubtedly holds a conspicuous place. The initiative of the Holy Father, however, in convoking the Vatican Exhibition, was not the mere official action of the Holy See rightly guaging, with true statesmanlike instinct, the pulse of the times; it was something of a much more personal nature : the natural prompting of an intense personal interest, which has already gained for him in some measure the reputation of being the ‘Missionary Pope.’

Apart from the general scheme of the Exhibition, it was the Holy Father’s express desire that the picturesque element should not be excluded, in order to make it no mere ‘dry as dust’ statement of statistics, but rather a stirring and pictorial record of missionary enterprise that would attract and arrest the interest of the ordinary visitor. So well have the various Congregations concerned in the work—whose response to his appeal far exceeded all anticipation—succeeded in carrying out his wishes that the attractiveness of the exhibition admits of no gainsaying. It has indeed achieved in no small degree the desirable result of conveying matter of high educational value in a manner so attractive that it can scarcely fail to impress even the least intellectual visitor. Especially is this the case with regard to the realistic oil paintings, statuary of remarkable beauty, and particularly the numerous groups of life-size wax figures which illustrate the national habits, costumes and characteristic surroundings of the many races of the globe, from the frozen north to the torrid zone.
Cobbett
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

I saw great Cobbett riding The horseman of the shires ;

And his face was red with judgment And a light of Luddite fires . . .

G. K. Chesterton.

Neither the Luddite fires kindled by starving operatives nor the fires that blazed in southern England twenty years later were of Cobbett’s making. He understood the provocation and cried aloud against the wickedness that drove the English labourer to violence ; but always was Cobbett for constitutional reform. Were his writings inflammatory? His enemies said so; and Cobbett, for his part, hoped and believed they ‘really were inflammatory; for they inflamed the people against the corruption, bribery, fraud, and perjury, which had been the great cause of all their miseries.’

But no revolutionary was William Cobbett. Always he took his stand on the old things, which he loved, and railed fiercely against the new, which he detested. Never till his death could he be persuaded to turn republican, though no man assailed more sharply the occupant of the throne. It was enough for Cobbett that monarchy belonged to the old England of the ages of faith. The Commonwealth, with its prohibition of mince pies, its puritanism and its cant of ‘godliness,’ was the only republic England had known, and to Cobbett the reign of Cromwell was a nightmare.

‘I knew my countrymen well,’ Cobbett wrote; and his boast was justified. He knew them well. His very prejudices were theirs. He is as English as Dickens m his hatred of charity schools and all that pertained to the new commerce.
Lord Balfour and Palestine
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: July 2007

It was a cruel fate that drove Lord Balfour from the well-guarded security of the Holy Land, where the public expression of popular opinion has long been smothered by means of armoured cars and effective military supervision, to the freer atmosphere of Syria where he had such a rude awakening from his idealistic dreams. If we know anything of the sentiment of our continental neighbours with regard to the Zionist experiment (as it is euphemistically called) now being carried on in Palestine under the armed protection of the British Government, we can imagine how Europe must have rocked with laughter at the sight of that philosophical statesman flying for dear life from Damascus and the wrath of the Arabs. We cannot resist the temptation to remark that he missed a great opportunity. If only he had had the presence of mind to be let down from the walls of Damascus in a basket! But after all there is something of a parable in the fact that Paul, the friend of the Gentiles, escaped from his Jewish enemies in a basket, while Balfour, the friend of the Jews, escaped in a motor. Saint Paul fled from the Jews and took refuge in Arabia; but Lord Balfour would find the whole country of the Arabs too narrow after his recent experience of Arab opinion in Damascus.

Such a ludicrous ending to his pilgrimage has changed indignation into pity, not unmingled with amusement. For a week we read patiently of his triumphal progress through the Jewish settlements as he was shepherded from one to the other, and listened with resignation to the much-repeated assertion that the supposed antagonism of Jews and Arabs was a myth; then came the anti-climax of'his exodus from Damascus, which gave the lie to this assertion once and for all.