bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Manicheans, Ancient and Modern
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

Under the title, The Inquisition, Mr. Hoffman Nickerson has written a book which has very little direct bearing on the Inquisition itself: it does something much more useful than a direct treatise could do : it describes the formation of the temper of mind that brought the Inquisition into being. Add to this that the book has a preface by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and you have a sufficiently good understanding of its tone and spirit. Indeed, it is almost uncanny to notice the many sympathies of idea, of style, and of phrase between the writer of the preface and the writer of the book. We feel convinced that it would be easy to quote passages from the book, so choice, so determined, so much in the grand manner as to deceive even devoted followers of Mr. Belloc into thinking him the author of what are only the charming creations of Mr. Nickerson.

Furthermore, you must know that Mr. Nickerson is an American. You think at once of the immense tomes of Henry C. Lea on the iniquities of the Inquisition and you wonder what there can be in so grim and venerable a tribunal to attract the attention of Americans. What has attracted Mr. Lea in the subject we can guess, but we are not left to guesswork to discover why Mr. Nickerson has devoted himself unremittingly to this particular task. In his dedicatory letter he tells us himself the genesis of the book
A Lyrical Drama
Authors: Essex Edwin
Published: July 2007

The publisher’s announcement of this work lays some stress on the fact that its author, Mr. M. J. Nicolson, is ‘the son of the well-known writer of the “Indian Love Lyrics,” “The Garden of Kama,” etc.,’ and that ‘if heredity counts for anything, (he) stands a chance of possessing literary gifts.’ Many critics will be inclined to hesitate before granting that the popularity of the ‘The Indian Love Lyrics’ is due to their literary merit. Their appeal is based to a minor extent upon their exotic flavour and Eastern fragrance. They appeal rather to sensuality than sense. It was only when a few of them were exalted into a song-cycle that they won popular esteem, and this, surely, for the charm of the musical setting, rather than for any literary quality of their own. So that on the grounds of heredity alone, Mr. Nicolson’s claim to ‘literary gifts’ would appear to be extremely doubtful. He certainly does possess these gifts. But they are not just those ascribed to the ‘Garden of Kama.’

The only cumbrous thing about his lyrical drama is its title. Presumably it would have been against the interests of the play to have called it simply ‘The Death of Prince Hassan.’ But that is what its title should have been, as it will be in the minds of those who have read it. The argument that it would have ‘given the show away’ is more commercial than artistic. It is often more interesting to see a man die than live. As a compromise, with ‘Julius Caesar’ in mind, ‘Prince Hassan’ might have been sufficient.

The outstanding anomaly of the lyrical drama is that the lyrics themselves are its weakest part.
A New Theory of the Eucharistic Sacrifice
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

The following statements of doctrine occur in the book Mysterium Fidei, by the Rev. Maurice de la Taille, S.J. (Paris: Gab. Beauchesne, 1921).

(1) Coena ig-itur et Crux inter se complent. Ini coena incoeptum est sacrificium illud quod in cruce erat consummandum.

(2) Reperitur immolationis realitas in passione mortis. At in symbolica immalatione coenae elucet potissimum oblationis liturgicae proprietas.

(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 Immolation is found in the suffering of Death. But in the symbolical immolation of the Last Supper is especially shown the quality of the liturgical Oblation.

(3) Unum proinde numero fuit sacrificium redemptionis in cruce et in coena.

Non computandum unum sacrificium preliminarium in coena ; alterum in cruce succidaneum.

Sed in coenaculo incruenta oblatio fiebat cruentae immolationis in Calvaria perpetiendae.

(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) Unitas ilia ex oblatione eucharistica et immolatione cruenta non est ... in genere rei; sed profecto est in genere signi.

Est unitas in genere sacrificii; et sacrificium ut tale est inter signa recensetur.

(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.
Sanctity and Servitude
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

Even in the ages of faith, servitude was never a congenial atmosphere for the growth of sanctity. Chattel slavery and serfdom bred an impoverished character, and rare is it to find in the calendar the name of a saint in the middle ages born or brought up in bondage to a master,—save in the case where freedom had been achieved or granted in early life.

Not that the miracle of the grace of God is withheld when social or economic conditions are unfavourable. The holy and humble of heart are discerned amongst rulers in high places, men and women of great estate, and are found in the most unlikely places. Many are the bishops, not a few are the kings and queens, and at least there is one emperor in the ranks of the saints. Even the Borgia family could produce a St. Francis. But the slave and the serf were, it seems plain, always hampered in the quest of holiness, badly handicapped in the struggle to bring the will into complete conformity with the Will of God. Compelled to subordinate the will to the devices of another or to the caprices of society the soul can hardly yield the fine fruits of sanctity.

(In this matter the middle ages of faith must not be confounded with the apostolic age and the immediately succeeding centuries. The slave of the Roman Empire won the freedom of the soul in a heathen world, and the gift of God made of small account the changes and chances of human fortune.
Sir Mark Sykes and Ireland
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

It has not been the least of the minor factors in the Anglo-Irish tragedy that the old Catholic families of England have almost all been strongly opposed by tradition to the claims of Irish nationalism. This constant divergence of views and sympathies between the Catholics of the two countries has in recent years produced incidents that will not easily be forgotten on either side. Irish Catholics can scarcely be expected ever to admit any excuse for the amazing action of the Duke of Norfolk when he played a conspicuous part in the mass meeting of the Unionist party at Blenheim on July nth, 1912, which gave its solemn benediction to Sir Edward Carson on the eve of his departure for Belfast to organise the Orange Volunteers. It may be thought probable indeed that, were he still alive, the Duke of Norfolk would even in his extreme old age have repudiated the deliberate campaign of political anarchy and religious hatred to which he then gave his approval, although he was the leading Catholic peer in England. His successors in the leadership of the English Catholic Unionists have generally accepted the subsequent verdict of the world’s opinion upon the Ulster campaign, and upon the savage outrages against the Catholic minority in East Ulster which it provoked. But his public support of the Ulster campaign was an incident that will live in history. Had the attitude of the Duke of Norfolk and of the large number of influential Catholic families in England who always thought much as he did, been less narrow in regard to Irish nationalist aspirations, it can scarcely be doubted that their influence could have at once checked the extreme violence of the Unionist campaign before the war, and simultaneously assisted towards a less bitter view of English Unionism on the part of Irish Catholics.
The Presentation
Authors: Moore E. Hamilton
Published: July 2007

To the Temple forth that may will fare,

And bring the Temple’s Master there.

Doves for an offering doth present,

Herself a dove most innocent,

Et iota fulchra.

Anna that waits the promised word,

With joy receives her little Lord;

Saint Simon saith, Nunc dimittis,

Now Lumen gentium risen is—

Ave, Lux vera!

E. Hamilton Moore.
Land, Sport and Life
Authors: Turnor Christopher , Rope H. E. G.
Published: July 2007

Among recent books, one of the most thoughtful and helpful, I venture to think, is Mr. Joseph Clayton’s Economics for Christians f wherein I find this striking passage : ‘F irst things must come first in a wise economy, and therefore the economist explains that the first thing to be done is to make use in the fullest way of the resources of land, that storehouse of wealth. Without access to the land, man is starved. Hence for example when there are thousands seeking employment on the land and vast areas are uncultivated, it is peculiarly wasteful to forbid labour from working on the land’ (p. 7). This, surely, is the A B C of economics and at the same time a brief and clear indication of England’s temporal problem. And yet if there is one point on which the political parties agree, it is in ignoring this fundamental truth. In very deed the land is desolate, and we look in vain among publicists for those who consider in their heart. It has happened before, and the warning was little regarded then as now. May we not say that it is a recurring phenomenon in the course of Empire? That of Rome is the best known example. ‘At the same period, the country places witnessed the gradual disappearance of the independent labourer, the very seed and stock of a sovereign people. Lands formerly divided into small holdings, fell finally into the hands of a few lords; the cultivated plains give place to the immense pasture-lands which still occupy the environs of Rome and exhaust its resources.’
The Law of Nations
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

To start with this title is to suggest perhaps wherein lies the cause of dispute in the long discussions that have ranged round the meaning and significance of the Jus Gentium; for it is a mistranslation to give law as the English equivalent of the Latin jus. The English translators of the Summa arey not always consistent in their equivalents for the phrase, for in ia.2ez, q. 95, art. 4, in the answer to the first objection (p. 62) the expression Taw of nations’ is given, while in 2a.2ce, q. 57, art. 3 (p. 108), it is ‘the right of nations.’ It is this last that is undoubtedly the truer rendering.

The origin of the phrase, however, will help us to understand what exactly jus gentium signifies and perhaps solve it. It seems to be beyond dispute that the term began to be in use in the latter days of the Republic of Rome when the city had begun its conquests of Italy and was holding under its sway peoples for whom it did not legislate, and yet whose quarrels it had to adjust. A special judge had to be given them, the Praetor Peregrinus, whose function it was to settle their disputes, as the Praetor Urbanus settled those of the citizens of Rome. It was found in practice that these foreigners had very many institutions in common, so that gradually a code was evolved which was based upon no positive legislation of any particular city or tribe, but was the mere putting into order of what was found already to have obtained amongst these non-Roman subject peoples.
The Baneful Balkans
Authors: Hurst Ben , Bateman May
Published: July 2007

Monitor Wyndup swore, he, at least, would avoid swift generalizations when he started on his combined honeymoon and political trip to the Continent. As writer of a remarkable letter on Road .Transport to the Limechester Gazette, he felt called upon to apply his insight to a wider field; and the conditions of South Eastern Europe clearly demanded what light he could throw on their problems. He was not one of those lightning tourists who confound Bucarest and Budapest, or Teschen with Wreschen (the latter being, of course, the Polish name for Warsaw); and he understood that the Balkan and Baltic Republics were to be kept quite distinct. Their fusion, he declared, would endanger the peace of Europe almost as much as the German Reich had done. Now, however, casting a discouraged look at the monotonous chairs and tables of the stereotyped, modern restaurant in the twenty-fourth town he had inspected, he found he was a little too early on the scene to guage things properly.

The inhabitants had not yet acquired English in spite of the war; and the occasional waiter who could speak to him in his own tongue, was astray on international relations.

‘I wish to Heaven,’ he said to Alice, ‘you could remember the place where we had that nice omelet, and that other place where we were cheated! And I wonder where we had better go next, if we are to manage seven countries properly in three weeks. There doesn’t seem much use in going to Macedonia just now when the Letts are, so to speak, out of hand, and the Yugoslovaks and Czechoslavs at each other’s throats about the Iron Gates !
Changes and Chances in Yugoslavia
Authors: Christitch E.
Published: July 2007

The countries sometimes inaccurately styled ‘Succession States,’ in allusion to the late Hapsburg Empire, still suffer from the gangrene of a decaying system, as well as from their own inherent defects. A century ago Joseph de Maistre described the existence of Austria as ‘an insult to God and man’; and at a later date, Montalembert, called her the high priestess of oppression who managed to survive by pitting race against race. One is sorry to see the Irish name of Taafe among the prominent Austrian statesmen who upheld the view that this Empire ‘which, did it not exist, would have to be invented,’ could only live by fostering mutual hatreds.

The terse qualification of Austria as ‘the greatest foe of mankind’ was too convenient to be let drop. It is now being currently applied to Poland, on account of its land-bound frontier; to Czecho Slovakia because of its ‘ridiculous’ configuration; to Rumania, because of its absorption of Bessarabia and Transylvania so long held by Russia and Hungaria respectively; to Yugoslavia because of its political reunion of Slavs belonging to different creeds. There is no doubt that the self-styled ‘superior’ races are hard put to it for hewers of wood and drawers of water since the Slavs and Latins were withdrawn from their domination. Poland, however, was a political entity before Rudolf the Freebooter had laid the foundations of the mighty Austria of the future. The Czechs were already an independent community in the tenth century. The Southern Slavs, rampart of Austria-Hungary against the Turks, with dauntless little Serbia as standard-bearer, wrested independence from Turkey by several stages in spite of the ‘Christian Protectors’ who so often shook hands with the Sultan over her bleeding
The New Front
Authors: James Stanley B.
Published: July 2007

Anyone who is at all familiar with the propaganda of our public parks will have noticed a significant change during the lifetime of the present generation. There was a time when the largest crowds were drawn by speakers openly anti-religious who quoted Ingersoll, Bradlaugh, Huxley and Haeckel. That day has gone. The last popular attack on Christian dogma in this country is that for which Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion, was responsible. But Blatchford differed in one important respect from his atheistic or agnostic predecessors. He was concerned even more with social ideals than with theological iconoclasm. Instead of the hard, unsympathetic rationalism of the champions of ‘Science’ his weapon was humanitarian sentiment which often became maudlin sentimentality. Agnosticism, in the person of Nunquam (Blatchford’s nom de plume), indulged largely in what Americans called ‘sob-stuff.’ He stood as a champion of Humanity against the alleged inhumanity of the Church and its creeds. In this he marks a transition. In place of the definitely anti-religious propaganda of the past, speakers in the public parks to-day are generally engaged in pushing some reform, expressing some ethical ideal or urging a revolution that carries on its banner the magic word ‘Comradeship.’ The parks, in this respect, are symptomatic. The public to-day is not minded to discuss Biblical problems or the conflict of Religion with Science. It has left these matters on one side in order to attend, undistracted, to social ethics and economics. The argument against Christian dogmas is, not that thev are irrational, but, that they are irrelevant.
The Droitwich Basilica
Authors: Makepeace John Foster
Published: July 2007

The purpose of this brief article is simply to draw attention to the new church recently erected at Droitwich, and to suggest that its basilica form is more suitable than the Gothic for small village churches. For there can be no doubt that the great Catholic revival which this century is witnessing will lead to a large increase in their number, and that before the end of it there will be a Catholic church in nearly every village in England. And therefore the type of ecclesiastical architecture with which our Catholic descendants will be made familiar is an important question.

This new church, dedicated to the Sacred Heart and Saint Catharine of Alexandria, can be easily seen by all, for it stands by the side of the high road between Birmingham and Worcester. Its erection is due not only to the pious generosity of its founder, Mr.

W. L. Hodgkinson, but also to his wisdom and ‘vision,’ for the architect, Mr. Barry Peacock, of Birmingham, was instructed by him to embody the idea of ‘the early Christian basilicas as they may be seen at Rome and Ravenna’ ; and this not through any mere artistic preference, but because they are most suitable for a country congregation and provide scope for the mural decoration—the ‘illuminated Missal,’ as Ruskin called it—which is a feature in an Italian basilica. ‘The Mosaics,’ said that great art-critic,

‘were its illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their Scripture history by means of them.’

There is an interesting passage in one of Cardinal Newman’s letters from Milan, quoted by Mr. Wilfrid Ward :
Some Recent New Testament Works
Authors: Walker Luke
Published: July 2007

‘MEDIAEVAL theology allowed itself, by the misuse of dogmatic authority, to obscure the real meaning of our Lord’s humanity. The truth came to us in such a book as Ecce Homo, and from countless other teachers, with a fresh thrill of delight. The Gospels and the New Testament have come to live again. One of the most vital districts of Christian truth has been restored to us. But it has been restored to us wholly, or almost wholly, by writers alien to the Roman Church, and often alien to the Christian Creed.’ These foolish words of Bishop Gore (Catholicism and, Roman Catholicism, p. 35) proclaim his ignorance both of mediaeval theology and of Catholic exegesis. It seems incredible that anyone should consider himself entitled to pass judgment on mediaeval theology without having read the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas : yet that Bishop Gore has not read the Tertia Pars, at least intelligently, is patent; no one who had done so could have brought the above charge against that theology of which it is the finest fruit. From the Tertia Pars, not from the often false sentimentalism of Ecce Homo, comes to us the truth about the human nature of Jesus Christ; how poignantly sometimes, a reading, say, of the eighteenth question on the two wills will show. It was not perhaps St. Thomas’s primary concern to bring into relief what we might call certain particular accidental realities which accompanied that humanity in its earthly life. Therein lies one of the differences between the theologian and an evangelist such as St. Mark, a difference well expressed by Pere Lagrange several of whose recent works have, unfortunately, as yet received no notice in these pages.
Dante in the Earthly Paradise
Authors: Makepeace John Foster
Published: July 2007

In the last six cantos of the Purgatorio, Dante describes the Earthly Paradise upon the summit of the Mountain of Purgatory. It is the most allegorical, and therefore the most difficult and fascinating, part of the Commedia. A. F. Ozanam called it the ‘apex’ of the Commedia.

Six times in the course of it the poet tells us that this was the ancient Garden of Eden, the ‘nest’ of the human race. And the emphasis he thus lays upon this identity of place must give us the right key to the interpretation of the wonderful scenes he there witnesses and takes part in. We propose, therefore, to follow the example of the older commentators who saw their theological and spiritual, rather than their political, signification. Here as elsewhere it is necessary to remember that the poet was, primarily, not a politician but a theologian.

In the closing lines of the twenty-seventh canto, Virgil has addressed to Dante his famous last words, ‘Now is thy will free, upright and whole; therefore with crown and mitre I make thee sovereign over thyself.’ And the twenty-eighth canto opens with that most bewitching description of the loveliness of the ‘divine forest,’ its foliage and its birds, which Ruskin quotes in Modern Painters, where he points out the significance of the contrast between its freedom and joyousness and the ‘wild and gloomy wood’ of the Inferno, which even in remembrance, said the poet, still dismayed him.
Carmel and Versailles
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Acertain man of the world lately astonished his friends by making a pilgrimage to Lisieux. When he was asked what possible interest he had in the ‘Little Flower/ he replied with a quotation from Scripture :’ If I find but ten just souls, surely I will spare the wicked for their sake/

The thought that lies behind these words was a singularly familiar one in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The world and the cloister were then strangely linked together. In reading the memoirs and biographies of pre-Revolution France, one is struck by the fact that almost everyone, courtier, statesman, financier, soldier, man of letters, man of fashion, had some relation or friend in ‘Religion/ with whom he corresponded, whom he very occasionally visited, and on whose prayers and penances and vicarious satisfactions he constantly and confidently relied. Those who prayed little for themselves were unaffectedly rejoiced at the thought that there were those who would pray (and suffer) for them, and in their stead. They had little or no religious heroism of their own, but they knew others were heroically offering their lives that they themselves might be saved. And because of this, they hoped to make a good end and climb up into heaven after all. There was not a little presumption in their attitude, and yet somehow it was generally justified by the result. In the brilliant, luxurious, pleasure-loving, inexpressibly-dissolute circles of Versailles, how very worldly and irreligious were often the lives, but how edifying and devout almost always the death-beds! And if this was true of the courtiers, it was pre-eminently true of the sovereigns round whom they revolved. The explanation thereof was perhaps to be found within the walls of Carmel.
The Duplicity of Monsignor Scalabrin
Authors: Eden Helen Parry
Published: July 2007

‘ONE must never lie, of course,’ said Padre Innocento in English, ‘but there are an amount of people here in Italy we allow to deceive themselves. The gentry on the frontier, for instance, when it is a question of tobacco.; and the dazieri who sit at the receipt of custom over there,’ and he waved lavishly at the toy roofs and towers of Borgo Sant’ Ignoto, five kilometres off in the valley. ‘There is a story of old Monsignor Scalabrin and how he outwitted the customs of his own town and took in duty-free the sausage of the Countess Villani. He had no bad intention, the good Monsignor. There was no sin. It was almost, you might say, the act of Providence. Besides, the Monsignor is in Venice and the Countess at Treviso; and the dazieri, though they are still at the same barrier, do not understand English. So if you like to write the story down, there will be no harm done; and it will be a page or two more for your book.’ I hastened to assure the good Father—who had frequently enjoyed the sweets of vicarious authorship through the inadequate medium of my pen and was, between ourselves, longing to see himself at one remove in print again—that I would make it my business to write out and publish the story of Monsignor Scalabrin as soon as I got back to England. So as we swung down the vine-screened cart-track that led from the mountain where he had said and I had heard Mass at the chapel of a mutual friend, he recounted the legend in the raciest English he could muster.
The Sixteenth Century Idea of National Churches
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

Heresy and schism are not a novelty of the sixteenth century, they exist from the beginning,, and always in the East. The national Church, selfgoverning, refusing all obedience to Rome, abiding in its own decrees of faith and morals, and owning na allegiance to any power without its borders, can still be seen and studied in Armenia and in the Mono-physite Coptic Church of Egypt. Plainly they are not Catholic, but national or racial these separated brethren. So too the Donatists in Africa sought to set up a national non-Catholic Church. And political nationalism, it would seem, was chiefly responsible for the schism that rent the Orthodox Church of the East from the Catholic communion of Rome; as it is responsible in our own times for the independent national Churches of the Balkans.

Before the Reformation Western Christendom, with all its troubles, was free from these things. Only with the great revolt of the sixteenth century (’ not a revolt, a revolution!’ ) does the national and territorial Church, with its disdain of the doctrine of unity, its hatred of obedience to Rome, its refusal to admit any authority in the See of Peter, come into being; to remain till our own times a witness of man’s capacity for losing the Catholic faith.

Nationality has its place subordinate to Catholicity. Nationality in opposition to Catholicity ceases, ipso facto, to be Catholic. The doctrine and discipline of the various non-Catholic Churches of the West born at the Reformation may, to-day, present a remarkable unlikeness to the forms of sixteenth century Protestantism.
The Passing of Talleyrand
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

In looking through some old papers, the present writer one day unearthed a contemporary account of the Coronation of William IV in 1831, and in it occurred the following rather striking passage:—

‘Two men only were received by those present with marked attention. One was the Duke of Wellington, the other was that living wonder Prince Talleyrand, a man whose equal had not appeared for centuries. The exBishop of Autun, bending beneath the load of four-score years, his long snowy locks floating thickly over his cheeks,, was led slowly up the platform between two of his suite. No sooner had he appeared, than a universal hush took place, all eyes were turned upon him, and every peer and officer seemed to move forward, as if by resistless impulse,, to gaze on and welcome him.’

Talleyrand, at this time nearly eighty years of age,, was French Ambassador in London. No name, save that of Napoleon, had for a generation been more familiar to the ‘man in the street’ than his. None could excite a more vivid and perhaps fearful interest. His. ability was held to be almost diabolical. His alleged wickedness had become a legend. To the religious-minded he seemed like Voltaire risen from the grave.. That enigmatic figure stood for perhaps the most important personage in Europe, the Intellect behind the successive Governments of France; it stood for vast wealth said to be unscrupulously made; for the boundless ambition of one who had pulled the strings of inter-national diplomacy for a generation; for a man who had made and unmade Kings. Talleyrand was. esteemed an aristocrat who had been false to his order,, an apostate and excommunicate priest who had been the founder of a great schism and the despoiler of the Church, a Bishop whose Chapter had pronounced him deserving of infamy in this world and damnation in the next, a notorious and licentious profligate, an habitual gambler for colossal stakes, a treacherous.
Dr. Johnson's First Book
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

The present writer’s earliest recollections are of an old-fashioned square of solid, red-brick, Georgian houses, all long since ‘improved’ off the face of the earth. From the windows of his home, he could see on the front of an adjoining dwelling a stone tablet which bore the legend :

Here Edmund Hector was the Host and

Samuel Johnson the Guest.

This Edmund Hector was a Lichfield man who practised in Birmingham as a surgeon from about the year 1731, and whose praises in graceful Latinity may yet be read on a monument in the church of St.. Philip in that city. His sister was Dr. Johnson’s first love; Boswell saw her fifty years later,’ a clergyman’s widow, advanced in age, a genteel woman, very agreeable and well-bred.’ Hector had been the Doctor’s school-mate in the early Lichfield days, and almost all we know of that period of Johnson’s life we learn from the good surgeon’s reminiscences. He it is who has told us of Johnson’s predominance over the other boys, the submission and deference with which they treated him, how he would help his favourites in their lessons, how he seemed to learn by intuition, how he never forgot anything he either heard or read.

When, as a youth of twenty-three, Johnson drifted to Birmingham, it was by Hector’s invitation. Johnson was then poor, unknown, very forlorn. His sole employment so far had been that of usher in a boys’ school, a life to him of most painful and irksome drudgery, ‘as unvaried (he said)’ as the note of the cuckoo.’
An Irish Nativity Play
Authors: Dease Charlotte
Published: July 2007

It is strange how the wheel of things turns and brings back the world to what it had left behind and thought to have outgrown as too primitive. But the child mind cannot be destroyed in man, and it will always return to those truths that are so simple because they are so profound.

Thus after several centuries we have again the Mystery Play—scenes taken from the World’s Great Drama—constructed on mediaeval traditions regardless of modern criticism and acted in the early spirit of Faith.

The latest edition in this revival of the Mediaeval Mystery is the Irish Nativity Play that took place every Saturday and Sunday during the month of December in the Town Hall, Dalkey, County Dublin. Written specially by Katherine Tynan, the play was acted by seventy children from the Killiney and Dalkey National Schools, under the clever management of Lady O’Connell. For three months they had studied, practised and lived in the atmosphere of the play, bringing into this Irish village something of the spirit of Oberammergau. For one month they acted the piece to audiences ever growing larger. Now the curtain has dropped, and the seventy little actors have gone into obscurity until next Christmastide, when they will again call the crowds to listen to the Mystery.

The play begins by a prologue, Lionel Johnson’s Christmas in Ireland, set to an old Irish melody and sung by representatives of the five provinces—Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connacht, Meath.
Citizenship
Authors: Worts F. R.
Published: July 2007

In this book is published the series of Lectures delivered by Sir W. H. Hadow on the Stevenson Foundation, in the University and City of Glasgow, 1922. The Lectures are remarkable for their extraordinary treatment of this important subject. If they seek to define Citizenship finally, or, at least, fully— if they aim at giving the average, intelligent citizen of to-day an understanding of his citizenship as something real and worth the having, something which is at once a complexity of rights and a complexity of duties—if their object is to give a clear practical instruction rather than to contribute to an academic controversy concerning civic values—then, most regretfully, they must be marked down as a failure. Indeed, these Lectures are wrongly entitled. They do not deal directly with Citizenship: they discuss Political Theory in its wider reaches. In the main, they present a restatement of the old problem of the Nature of the State; and, reduced to a subordinate part of this thesis, is the abstract relation of the member of the State to the State itself.

Citizenship can be viewed from at least two standpoints : one, a study in political speculation—interesting in its review of historic arguments and philosophic conclusions; two, a study in practical politics—a detailed consideration of the realities constituting the fact called citizenship which (let us remember) is possessed by more than twenty millions of the members of our State, which is used by them, and which to be used rightly must be understood in its practical values, immediate and ultimate, by each single possessor.
Variety
Authors: Downing Eleanor
Published: July 2007

Variety is a great deal more than the spice of life : it is one of its necessary ingredients. We might conceive of, we might even—under certain pressing circumstances—eat a rice pudding without nutmeg; but who can conceive of a world without variety!

Picture to yourself, suggests a recent writer, an afternoon tea at which all the ladies were attired exactly alike. I think the guest unwittingly introduced to such a function would invent a swift excuse for exit. Imagine, then, a world in which all the trees rose at precisely the same angle, like telegraph poles; in which all the leaves were of uniform shape and colour; in which all the hills were like the hills in a child’s geography; in which the stars punctured heaven at painfully precise intervals; a world in which all men thought in the same way about the same things, and did the same things under the same circumstances at the same time. I think that, as we found a way of absenting ourselves from that hideous tea-party, we should also find a way (laws of gravitation notwithstanding) of slipping off the edge of this uninteresting planet.

Monotony—as mediaeval and Chinese torturers have discovered but too well—is the nightmare par excellence of the human mind. Man’s nature craves variety, and God has supplied its need. Consider the infinite variety of bird and star and leaf—no two alike, since time began, on any tree, earthly or celestial.
Saint Joan
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

The first night of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play, Saint Joan, at the New Theatre in London was an event of consequence not only in society circles, but in artistic circles as well. Not for many years had Mr. Shaw produced a new play in London. Since his last, the war had fallen, altering in varied ways his audience, altering no less Mr. Shaw himself. How would its effects be seen in his attitude to Saint Joan? Of course he would remain Shavian, but how? Would he approve or disapprove? At what angle would he cut across popular conceptions and show the world upside down?

The skill and artistry, the imagination and fine historical and dramatic sense of Mr. Charles Ricketts had been invoked to give due and proper setting to this Chronicle Play. Playgoers were enchanted with the result. To some the feast of colour and design, the humour and imagination shown in it, the delicacy, the effectiveness of scenery and dress, were the most impressive and haunting part of the performance. We cannot touch on these, however; we must leave their praise to those who have been happy enough to have seen them.

But the play? Well, Bernard Shaw has shown himself a thorough John Bull. Not that he is really an Englishman, for he hails from across the Irish Channel; but he is, if he will forgive us for saying so not so much an Irishman as a native of ‘John Bull’s other island.’ Of course he has his usual gibes at England and the English.
Christ is Risen
Authors: Soloviev V. S.
Published: July 2007

It is the first decisive victory of Life over Death. In the truceless war between these two—living Spirit and dead Matter—we read the whole story of Creation. Many victories had been claimed for the spirit before the Resurrection of Christ, but none that was not indecisive and incomplete: half-victories, all of them, and after each the enemy succeeded in consolidating his advantage, through the very new types which Death created and in which Life seemed to triumph. What a triumph for life it seemed when, amidst the inert mass of inorganic matter, myriads of living things began to stir and swarm—the rudimentary forms of the vegetable and the animal world ! The spirit of life had made the dead elements its own, had used them as material for types of its own creating, had pressed the mechanical into the service of the organic process. What a wealth of types, countless yet continually multiplying! How subtle, how bold, how carefully adapted were its works, from the infinitesimal zoophytes to the gigantic flora and fauna of the tropics. But Death only laughed at all this splendour: Death is a realist, not to be hoodwinked by beautiful images and symbols, not to be deterred by premonitions and presentiments. Death knows that the beauty of nature is only a glittering pall, hiding a corpse that is for ever falling into decay.

What! (you say)—is not Nature immortal? No, that is a lie—often repeated, but a lie.
George Psalmanazar, Imposter and Penitent
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Should we enter some old-established library of size and respectability, we shall be pretty sure to notice on its topmost shelves the sixty volumes, seldom dusted and never opened, of the Universal History, a vast compilation which appeared between the years 1760 and 1790, and which, though perhaps of no critical value, contains an infinity of matter never brought together before or since. Bishop Warburton, the one-time dictator and tyrant of the world of literature, used to speak with contempt of this work as ‘miserable trash’ and ‘infamous rhapsody’ ; but Gibbon, a very much better judge, says that the excellence of a great part of it is ‘universally admired/ and that some portions of it in particular are’ executed with erudition, taste, and judgment/ Now by far the greater number of the volumes in this series that deal with Ancient History were written by the subject of the present sketch, one of the most extraordinary characters the eighteenth or indeed any century ever produced—George Psalmanazar.

What Psalmanazar’s real name was has never been discovered, any more than his parentage and the country and place of his birth. The name he fashioned for himself was taken from that of the Assyrian king mentioned in IV Kings xvii, 3, while the intimate friends of his later years believed him to be a Frenchman born in some part of Languedoc. He appeared in London in 1703, being then about twenty-four years old. His amazing story at once rivetted public attention.
Catholicism and Economics
Authors: Dawson Christopher
Published: July 2007

Never in the world’s history have economic problems played such a large part in human life or had such a direct influence on human thought as at present. Economics have come to overshadow politics, to absorb into their sphere the entire social question. Even the man in the street has learnt that his personal welfare is intimately bound up with an economic system. He may be indifferent towards politics, Sceptical of the value of philosophy and science, hostile towards religion, but in economic matters his interest and prejudices are keen. Hence the rise of Socialism—the success of an economic gospel and an economic interpretation of life. Hence too a new spirit of criticism towards religion, which is felt to be indifferent towards the things which are so vitally important—it is ‘the opium of the poor’ which drugs them into contentment with their lot, and indifference towards their true interests.

This excessive preoccupation with economic problems is, however, abnormal and temporary. A healthy society is no more troubled about its economic organisation than a healthy man is troubled about his digestion. The present unrest is a symptom of disease, as well as a symptom of necessary change. Modern society is traversing that critical period of its existence, which the Ancient World also went through during the century that preceded the Augustan Peace. In both cases the material resources of society have outstripped its moral control. It is the crucial moment in the life of a civilisation—a time when societies and individuals are beset by temptations to violent remedies and excessive hopes, alternating with apathy and despair.
The Medical Aspect of Lourlies
Authors: Counsell H. E.
Published: July 2007

The author of this work, The Facts of Lourdes, has held his position since 1917, and had previously worked at Lourdes under Dr. Boissarie. The book is one of intense interest not only to Catholics, but to those of all creeds, because no one could get Up from reading it without being certain that cures of a kind outside the ordinary laws of cure do take place at Lourdes.

: The object of the book is, however, to show the general public what is the work of the medical bureau, and to demonstrate that the blind acceptance of all cures’ as miraculous is very far from the truth, and that a very thorough investigation of all those who claim to be cured is made by expert physicians and surgeons of all nationalities and creeds.

1 The Bureau is hampered in its work by at least two things, one of which it should be at once the care of medical men sending cases to Lourdes to remove, viz. insufficient certification. Doctors will send cases with the bare statement that the patient is ‘very ill,’ has ‘agraphia,’ ‘constant cough.’ On many a page Dr. Marchand implores doctors to co-operate with him and send full reports, with laboratory reports and X-ray photographs where necessary. The object of the Bureau is not to add haphazard to the list of miracles, but to investigate and demonstrate inexplicable cures. The second difficulty is of course much greater, because it arises from the attitude of mind of the patients themselves.
Jean Baptiste Labat
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

It is not a little curious that, with the exception of a chapter in one of Lafcadio Hearn’s most delightful books, nothing seems to have been written in English about Père Labat. Although one of the greatest of the old travellers, and often quoted or alluded to, we never recollect meeting with one single article concerning him in any other book or periodical: and of our encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries, very few notice him or his labours. However, out of his own interesting and voluminous works, and with the help of some French books of reference, it is not difficult to reconstruct his life. Perhaps the fullest of all accounts of him is that given by Dr. Rufz, the historian of the Island of Martinique.

Jean Baptiste Labat was born in Paris in the year 1663. When nineteen, he received the Dominican habit in the Convent of the Annunciation in the Rue

S. Honor?. The succeeding eleven years, he spent partly in Paris, partly in Provence, where he preached a little, and taught philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. He had already felt attracted towards the foreign missions of the Order, when one day he read a Letter from the Dominican Superiors in the French West Indies, appealing for volunteers, the greater part of their missionaries having recently fallen victims to the yellow fever. His mind was quickly made up, he sent in his name, obtained the necessary permissions, and betook himself to La Rochelle to await the sailing of a ship for Martinique, and to furnish himself with passports, credentials, books, outfit, and mathematical instruments.
The Fruit and the Seed
Authors: Belloc H.
Published: July 2007

Historically, by far the most interesting thing in the process of the Catholic Church is the embryonic character of every Catholic institution at its origin. In this the Catholic process is exactly consonant with creation.

Most moderns would say that this was true of all human institutions: it is the fashionable tag of the day based on a vague materialism, or Pantheism, and it is entirely wrong. In almost all human institutions except Catholic institutions, the work of man is deliberate, planned, and fails. It does not develop consonantly to its origins: you do not see in its growth the unfolding of a germ. Institutions very often grow up unconsciously from origins which have no sort of resemblance to or communion with their final form: but then their origins are exactly not embryonic. Such developments are but examples of the truth that the human will cannot impose itself upon the world. What is remarkable about Catholic institutions from the smallest to the greatest (until it is at last found to be true of the Church itself) is that the origins are (1) of one essence with the final thing, and yet are (2) simple, i.e. undifferentiated, and (3) apparently insignificant : and in those three lies the true meaning of the word embryonic.

On this account the mind of a wise man will discover in particular Catholic developments, and in that of the whole Church, the same mysterious action of a superior Will as is to be discovered in the development of natural growths in the material creation around us.
L'Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: July 2007

Hardly more than a stone’s throw outside the northern or Damascus Gate of the Holy City stands a white block of buildings which glare in the brilliance of the Oriental sun. The whiteness is enhanced by the dark green of the pines, olives and fig trees from the midst of which the buildings rise. Altogether the place with its garden is a landmark of the district, bare for the most part of vegetation. Indeed there are few such gardens near Jerusalem, and this owes its existence solely to the energy and enthusiasm of a group of men whose aim in the Holy Land is by no means that of gardeners. Forty years ago and less, the place was as barren and desolate as the sun-scorched surroundings are to-day. That garden seems to me symbolic.

As you look out over the trees from a window or from a terrace of the house, a glorious sight meets the gaze. Jerusalem lies spread at your feet. You are looking almost due south. On your right you see the great black dome of the church of the Holy Sepulchre ; over on the left is a similar dome, the Dome of the Rock, covering the site of the ancient altar of holocausts ; in the distance rises the pyramidal church of the Dormition of Our Lady, with its accompanying tower marking the scene of the Last Supper; further on the left stands the Mount of Olives crowned by the tower of the Ascension, and at its feet snuggles the little Garden of Gethsemane.