exorcisms, because "that must be ugly which scares the devil." One will be devoted to the "thought-entangled descant" of Bach and the great contrapuntists; others to the Italian melodists, with their "strains that might create a soul under the ribs of death." The fact is, there is beauty in all schools. There is sublimity in Gregorian plain-chant as well as in other kinds of music; only plain-song is naturally so monotonous, that the ear can only bear a certain quantity of it; if we are compelled to listen beyond that limit, great is the bore thereof. The only remedy is distraction and inattention. Wonderful recommendation for music, that the condition of your being able to listen with pleasure is that you should not listen at all! Our advice, then, to persons about to exclude all music but Gregorian from their churches would be the same as Punch's advice to persons about to marry-Don't! Confine your plain-song to the Introit and Gradual at High Mass. You may have it throughout the Vespers, except perhaps the Magnificat. For Benediction it is well to return to a less monotonous and more lively kind of melody. The only way in which you can preserve plainchant, is by not giving people too much of it. If you use it exclusively, you may be sure that some day there will occur "one of those reactions by which the human mind is apt to avenge itself upon a despotism or an outrage."*

Reviews,

THE CHURCH AND YOUNG AMERICA.

Aspirations of Nature. By J. T. Hecker, author of “Questions of the Soul." New York: James Kirker.

SEVERAL late events have contributed to call the attention of the American people to the Catholic Church. The portentous rise of the Knownothings, followed by their disgraceful collapse, and the importance of the Catholic vote to the democratical party, have both been powerful auxiliaries to aid the Church in overcoming the old traditional policy of the Anglo-Saxon race in regard to her. This policy is, to muzzle her so that she cannot make herself heard. It was effected at first by seizing and burning all books and papers written by Catholics, and by fining, imprisoning, or hanging all persons who were found to possess such writings; while at the

* A Word to the Goths, p. 7.

same time all that could be said against them, truly or falsely, was said, and that in the most public way,-in proclamations, in sermons, in plays, in pamphlets, books, ballads, broadsides, speeches, and conversation. To abuse Popery, was the mark of a good subject and a patriotic Englishman. To have the slightest scruple about the justice of this proceeding, was to call in question the judgment pronounced by Church and State, by government, lawyers, and divines,-it was to abdicate both common sense and loyalty, and to prove oneself not only a fool, but also a traitor and a knave. The tradition grew and took root, till it became a truth as plain to the AngloSaxon intellect as the moon in the sky, that every old woman knew quite enough about Popery to refute it; that the cause was judged; that Rome had nothing to say; that the imposture was broken to bits; and now had but to be shovelled away. The great thing to see to, in order to continue this. tradition, was that Rome should not say any thing: this was at first effected by penal laws, as we have said; next, when these laws were relaxed by the contemptuous pity of those who thought us next to annihilated, by taking care that if we did speak, we should not be listened to. There was, and there is, a conspiracy of all the organs of opinion against us. We had no public to address; and those in possession of the public ear took good care to keep up its prejudice against us. We were not to be heard. In the first place, we were poor fools who had nothing to say. In the second place, we had so much to say, that if simple folks listened to us they would be sure to be carried away by our plausibilities. Our words, our arguments, should be put aside like temptations, or like shameful thoughts. We had a sort of serpent's power of fascination; inherited, of course, from the old serpent. Christians and Britons should keep clear of our influence.

The facts which we have alluded to in America have of themselves made a great breach in this traditional policy. The prying impertinence of the Knownothing "smelling committee" at Boston was the first signal of the fall of that faction. Their indecent investigations in the house of the Sisters of Nôtre Dame, their failure in finding the least thing that could justify their suspicions, the disgraceful exhibition which some of the members of that committee afterwards made of themselves, stirred up the indignation of the respectable classes in America. Then the democratical party, depending as it did so much on the Catholic vote, was compelled in self-defence to defend the Catholics against the attacks of the Knownothings in Congress. But what did honourable members know of Catholicity? Most of them

were Christians unattached; scarcely one had any system of faith and these men had to defend the Catholic faith with voice and pen against the enemies of the Church, and to defend it in such a manner that public opinion would go with them. There was nothing for it but to begin to study Catholicity; to read its history, to learn its doctrines, to understand its institutions. And this was done. Men, who up to that day had probably never opened a Catholic book, began to read our writers and our journals, and to enter into personal correspondence with Catholics. Strange it was to see the great democratical party suddenly studying Catholic controversy, in order to defend the Church; to hear from the lips of ministers of state and senators eloquent and well-reasoned apologies for the tenets and institutions of Catholics. Such an event gave an impulse to Catholicity, that the whole number of Bishops and priests in the country might have tried for a half-century to produce, and in vain. No Catholic could fail to recognise the hand of Providence in this change-hæc mutatio dexteræ Excelsi.

But the interest excited was something deeper than curiosity to know the doctrines and institutions of the Church; there was also a strong sympathy in favour of the Catholics in consequence of the indignities and persecutions which they had suffered; and upon examination their conduct came out in strong contrast with that of their enemies. The Americans are exceedingly jealous of the interference of the clergy with politics. Now the Protestant ministers had been the life and soul of the Knownothing movement, and many had left their pulpits to enter Congress; while the Catholic clergy had remained quietly at their proper posts. The Americans abhor religious questions being made questions of politics; and the Knownothings wished to make the Catholic religion a ground for political disfranchisement; while Catholics upheld the constitutional principle of the separation of religion from politics, and their priests preached peace and concord. The genius of the American institutions requires that all, without distinction of birth, station, wealth, or religion, should have the same common rights and political privileges. But the Knownothings and their preachers aimed at upsetting this principle, and at restricting universal suffrage by introducing distinctions of birth, and by proscribing certain opinions in religion; while the Catholics, with the democratical party, remained faithful to the primitive traditions of the Republic, and defended the universal equality of rights, without distinction of birth or creed. Again, the character on which Americans pride themselves is frankness, free discussion, and manly in

dependence. The Knownothings were a secret society, sworn to obey an unknown hand, doing their deeds in darkness, and -possessing their own private signals and cipher. All this was most contrary to the genius of the country, and to the express advice of the Farewell Address of Washington; for whom the Knownothings professed the highest reverence. On the other side, the Catholics courted publicity, and did not fear the light. The Protestant faction proved itself to be anti-American, while the Catholics worked in perfect accord with the constitution; which, on the other hand, was in its principles found to be as favourable to them, as if it had been founded expressly by the Church to secure her own independence.

Besides this favourable attitude of the political world of America, Mr. Hecker finds in the social state of the people of the United States many grounds of hope for their conversion. Though they have for the most part cast off all religion, it is not from want of religious aspirations, but because the popular Protestantism shocks their reason and their moral principles; because the state of so-called Christianity in America is such, that it is an insult to a respectable and moral man to ask him to be converted. And though they plunge wildly and madly into every movement of the day, from "table-tipping" to ruinous speculations, it is rather to fill up the void within them, or in hopes of obtaining some solution to the dark enigmas of life, than from any positive or sovereign attachment to the wretched phantoms which they pursue. Among these men some have tried to put into practice a kind of Christian communism, which, however absurd, required of them the endurance of severe privations and habitual self-denial. Many of them have been rewarded by the usual crown of sincere inquirers-a knowledge of the truth. These converts are merely specimens and samples of the lot. They prove that the field of Transcendentalists and Rationalists is not so barren as one might think. Here in England perhaps, at any rate for the educated classes, our conversions have been from persons whose religion made the nearest approach to the Catholic system. The Free-thinkers and Broad Churchmen have not yielded any great harvest. But perhaps things are different here. Our traders pursue their calling from pure love of gain, not to fill up any void in their being, nor to extract out of cotton or iron an answer to the enigmas of life.

But as things are in America, where the political and the personal movements tending alike to a juster appreciation of the Church, the question arises,-Is advantage to be taken of these movements; or are they to be left to expend themselves -without a responsive heaving in the bosom of the Church?

Up to this time the Church in the United States has only been able to occupy herself with her own children. To keep - alive the faith in the Catholic adults who were crowding to her shores from all the countries of Europe, and to educate their children in this faith, was her work; a work that required all the resources of an infant Church, and which, considering her scanty means, she has wonderfully well performed. Churches, schools, seminaries, colleges, religious communities, bishoprics and archbishoprics, are rising as if by enchantment in all parts of the Republic. But the Catholic Church is essentially apostolic; she cannot content herself with keeping her own, when she sees around her millions of souls perishing because they are not hers. She is an imperial power; her strength is in fresh conquests,-to stop is to go back. She is an organised whole, where the neglect of any one function weakens and disarranges the rest. Her mission is like her name, Catholic, universal, embracing every individual of the human race. She cannot, then, do otherwise than use every means of drawing those without into her fold, especially where hope is so fair as in America. Why should she not spend on these men some of the same devotion and toil which she devotes to the idolaters in the missions of China and Oceania? When savages and heathens have all this care, we may expect something to be done for a civilised and nominally Christian community like that of the United States.

If the work of conversion is to be carried on at all, it requires all a man's heart and all his brains. It is not a function which the Church can commit to her inferior spirits. When the Protestants in France had to be converted, it was no common man that was sent to preach to them; it was Bossuet, or Bourdaloue, or Fenelon,-names which are the glory of the Church, the very first-fruits of France, not to say of the world. So in the letter of the Pope to the Bishops of the province of New York, in 1855, he asks for the devotion of their best to this service. "Leave no means untried to make our most holy religion and its holy doctrine ever receive greater increase in those regions, and to make the unhappy wanderers return to the way of salvation. Spare no care, no consideration, no labour, in shedding the light of the gospel, and gaining to Christ all, even to the last, of the unbelievers to be found in your dioceses sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death."

And now, again, in this jubilee, he directs the intention of the Church especially to the conversion of schismatics, heretics, and heathens. No work can be greater in itself, or more according to the heart of the Church at this present time, than