The Catholic World Volume I Part 124

"Don't you see it, ma'am," he said, "growing against the wall? I think it is almost the gem of the whole garden."

"Oh, what a beauty!" she exclaimed; "and how well it has grown!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said; "it has always done well; it seemed to take to it kindly from the very first, and has never gone back at all. But I had a good deal of trouble with this one; perhaps you may remember my saying I thought it likely I should. It is that strong growing one you remarked at the same time when you told me to bud the Devoniensis. It won't make much show this year. It wasted so much energy in putting out side-shoots and suckers. But I think it has got out of its bad ways, and next year I hope it will make quite a grand tree."

"Oh!" she said, "and here is my old friend Madame Boll, I see. I am glad you put it here, it is well worth a good place."

"You hear," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, to her neighbor Gloire de Dijon, "what they say of us, and I hope you have become reconciled to the change, and will let the good that is in you show itself."

Whereupon there seemed to come rather a lachrymose murmur from the dwarfed shoot of Gloire de Dijon. "But am I not to flower at all this year?"

"Well, my dear," said Madame Boll, tenderly, "I do not wish to be severe or say anything to hurt your feelings, but you must know that your present disappointment is the natural result of your past conduct. You were so determined to indulge in perverse and self-willed suckers, and you never let the gardener touch you without trying to p.r.i.c.k his fingers or tear his clothes. And now all you want is a little patience. Who knows but you may be allowed to bloom in the autumn, and perhaps win the prize at the last flower show? But if not, why it will be all right next year. Do you think it was no mortification to me to be neglected and almost unnoticed last year, and that, as it appears, entirely owing to the carelessness of others, and not from any fault of mine? Well, you see, I have got over it; and very likely next year {855} you will have the gratification of hearing the lady praise you as she did me just now. Be thankful that experience with you has not come too late."

When Madame Boll ended, I could see on the edge of one of her delicate leaves a drop of dew, and I said to myself, "How very like a tear!"

From The Month.

LABORERS GONE TO THEIR REWARD.

In the days in which we live, more perhaps than at any other time, education, the school, and the college are made the positions of vital importance in the battle-field of contending principles. Services rendered and losses sustained on such points are, therefore, worthy of special notice, of particular grat.i.tude, or of sorrow. In the month of May of this year two souls went to their rest, both of whom had labored long, signally, and successfully in the cause of Catholic education--especially for the higher cla.s.ses; both of whom have left behind them inst.i.tutions in which their spirit is enshrined: destined, we trust, to continue through centuries yet to come the work, the beginnings of which were committed to those whose loss we are now lamenting. On the 14th of May Monsignor de Ram, the restorer of Catholic university education in the countries over which the French revolution had swept, died peacefully, but almost without warning; and a few days later, his decease was followed by that of the reverend mother Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress and first superioress-general of the congregation of the nuns of the Sacred Heart. Let us devote a few lines to each.

Monsignor de Ram was born at Louvain, of parents distinguished for piety and n.o.ble descent, September 2, 1804. He early devoted himself to the service of the Church; was ordained priest, March 19,1827; and became at once professor in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native diocese, Mechlin. He had no sooner grown up than he was struck by observing that his native language, the Flemish, which of all European tongues most nearly resembles our own, was almost wholly without books of a good tendency. The reason was evident. The population by which it is spoken is comparatively small, and is hemmed in by others which speak French, Dutch, or German. Hence it has almost sunk into a _patois_. Men who speak Flemish to their servants and laborers read and write in French. The first labors of Mons. de Ram were devoted to meet this want, by publis.h.i.+ng several very useful books in Flemish. He was only thirty when the bishops of Belgium resolved to erect a Catholic university. The attempt could never before have been made; for in Belgium, almost more than anywhere else, education had for two hundred years been seized by the state, and used to an irreligious purpose. The revolution of 1830, though not made by the Church nor in its interests, had given it a freedom which it never possessed before.

The first use made of this freedom by the bishops of Belgium was to erect a Catholic university, and the young and zealous priest de Ram was set over it by their deliberate choice. To its service he devoted the rest of his life. Beneath his care were trained during thirty years a continual succession of young men, who are at this day the strength of the Church in Belgium, and to a considerable degree in France. {856} England also has sent students there. Those who have had the happiness of attending the meetings of the Catholic congress in Belgium must, we think, have been struck by the high Catholic tone of a number of young men of the middle and higher cla.s.ses, and by their intelligence. For those men Belgium and the Church are indebted to the Catholic university of Louvain, and of that university Monsignor de Ram has, until his death, been the soul. On Friday, May 12, he returned from attending a meeting of the academy of Brussels. On the evening of Sunday, 14th, he had entered into the unseen world. His age was only sixty; and as he was willing, so it might have been expected that he would be able, to continue for years to come the labors in which his life had been spent. Such was not the will of his Lord, whose call he was at once ready to obey.

At Paris, on the morning of Monday, May 22, only seven whole days later, the superioress of the Society of the Sacred Heart had attended the ma.s.s of the community. She had completed in the preceding December her eighty-fifth year. Her day of labor was at last over. She was seized with apoplexy, and never recovered the power of speech. She gave, however, clear signs of intelligence, and received the viatic.u.m, as well as the last unction. On the 24th the blessing of the Holy Father reached her by a telegraphic message. On the 25th she slept the sleep of the just.

She was born in December, 1779. She had an elder brother, who before 1800 was a priest, and had joined himself to a society which was formed at Vienna in the latter part of the French revolution, under the t.i.tle of the "Fathers of the Sacred Heart." The first superior of this society, Father Tournely, had been a pupil of the ill.u.s.trious Father Emery at St. Sulpice. His object seems to have been to continue under another name the spirit and practices of the Society of Jesus, which had been swept away twenty years before by the insane union of the monarchs of Europe with the revolutionary infidels, until times should allow of its re-establishment. This, however, he did not live to see. His successor, Father Varin, joined it at its restoration. He relates that the great desire of Father Tournely was the foundation of a congregation of nuns devoted, under the protection of the Sacred Heart, to the education of young persons of their own s.e.x. At one time he had hoped to see this project carried into execution by the Princess Louisa of Bourbon-Conde, who actually came from Switzerland, where she was in exile, to Vienna, to confer with him on the subject.

But G.o.d called her to the contemplative life, and she became a Benedictine. Father Tournely, however, never doubted its execution.

Walking one day on the fortifications now destroyed, but then surrounding Vienna, he said to Father Varin, alluding to this disappointment, "Dear friend, I thought this had been the work of G.o.d, and if it is not, I confess I do not know how to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood." Then, after remaining silent awhile in recollection, he turned to his friend, with something of fire more than natural in his expression, and added: "It is the will of G.o.d. As to the occasion and the instrument, I may have been deceived; but, sooner or later, this society will be founded." His friend used to say that the impression left by these words, and the manner in which they were spoken, never faded from his mind. They impressed him with the same conviction; and he added, that when he repeated them to his brethren, it took possession of all their minds.

"In truth," said Fr. Varin, "G.o.d had not chosen for the commencement of this work instruments great in this world. That the glory might be his alone, he was pleased that the foundation of the building should be simplicity, littleness, nothingness."

Fr. Tournely died soon afterward, {857} in the flower of his age. Fr.

Varin succeeded him, and the conclusion of the revolution enabled him and his brethren to return to Paris. To Paris they went in the year 1800. It was exactly the moment when to human eyes the night seemed darkest, but when the morning was ready to spring. Pius VI. died a prisoner in the hands of the infidel French revolutionists, August 29, 1799. "At this moment," says Macaulay, "it is not strange that even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel power in the ascendant, the pope dying in captivity, the most ill.u.s.trious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the n.o.blest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting-houses for political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels; such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction had commenced, which after the lapse of [sixty-five] years appears to be still in progress." As yet, however, no human foresight would have observed the tokens of that reaction. Paris was no longer the city where the eldest son of the Church was enthroned, and where the great of this world were rejoiced to heap their wealth upon any new plan which promised to promote the glory of G.o.d. Still, Napoleon Bonaparte had just seized the reins as first consul, and there was at least toleration to priests. The community lived in a single mean room, which served them as dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and study. Here Fr. Varin was sitting upon the edge of a very shabby bed, and by his side sat one of his community, Fr. Barat. "I asked him what relations he had. He said, one _little sister_. The words made a strong impression upon me. I asked how old she was, and what were her powers.

He said she was eighteen or nineteen; that she had learned Latin and Greek, and translated Virgil and Homer with ease; that she had qualities to make a good teacher; but that for the present she had gone to pa.s.s some time in her family." Father Barat, good man as he was, was not above human infirmity, and like other elder brothers, however proud he might be of his younger sister, could never fancy that she was really grown up; for when he said she was about eighteen or nineteen, she was one-and-twenty. Two months later she came to Paris. "I went to see her, and found a young person of very delicate appearance, extremely retiring, and very timid. What a foundation-stone! said I to myself, in reply to the feeling I had had within me when her brother had mentioned her to me for the first time.

And yet it was upon her that it was the will of G.o.d to raise the building of the Society of His Divine Heart. This was the grain of mustard-seed which was to produce the tree whose branches have already spread so wide."

On November 21, 1800, she dedicated herself to the Sacred Heart, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, together with an intimate friend, Mlle. Octavia Bailly, who shared her aspirations. It was the first streak on the sky which told of the coming day. The day the society was formed, in 1802, she became superioress of the first house, which was at Amiens. In 1806, a second was founded at Gren.o.ble; that year the first general congregation elected her superioress-general. In 1826 there were seventeen houses, and the rules were approved by Leo XII. Before her death she had under her rule ninety-seven houses and 3,500 nuns. She had been superioress of the congregation for sixty-three years; and it is probable that the majority of the French ladies now living who have received a religious {858} education at all have received it at the hands of herself or of her children in religion.

Her body was taken to Conflans, where is the novitiate in the neighborhood of Paris. During three days her cell was visited by all whom the rules of the community permitted to enter--the nuns of the different houses in Paris, pupils present and former of all ages. Not only these, but many priests were so desirous to have medals, chaplets, etc., touched by her remains, that two sisters, who were continually employed, were hardly able to satisfy the general desire.

At the beginning of this short notice we spoke of sorrow and a sense of loss as feelings natural in those interested in the great works undertaken by such laborers as Mons. de Ram and Madame Barat on the occasion of their removal from the scene of action. We need hardly do more than allude to the other feelings which must at the same time blend with and qualify these; to the joy and exultation that must always hail the close of a n.o.ble career long persevered in, from the thought of the rest and the crown that have been so faithfully won; and to the confidence that the works which those who have been removed from us have been allowed, while in the flesh, so happily to found, promote, and guide, will certainly not suffer by the Providence that has now, as we trust, placed them where they are enabled to see, without any intervening shadow, the value of the great end for which these works were undertaken, and where their power to help them on is to be measured, not by the feeble and inconstant energies of a will still subject to failure and perversion, but by the mighty intensity of the intercession of those who are at rest with G.o.d.

MISCELLANY.

_Mont Cenis Railway_.--Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis tunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along the present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its portion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism, to produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary rails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which will wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed cable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be put in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the base of the incline.

_Homes without Hands_.--A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above t.i.tle, gives an account of the habitations, "which are never marred by incompetence or improved by practice," constructed by various animals, cla.s.sed according to their principles of construction, and ill.u.s.trated by some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the work. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia, and then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole appears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. "This extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit at the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean dwelling-place, with chambers, pa.s.sages, and other arrangements of wonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding grounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of a modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean network of metropolitan sewers." ... "How it manages to form its burrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem, because it is always in {859} black darkness, and we know of nothing which can act as a guide to the animal." The real abode of the mole is most extraordinary. "The central apartment is a nearly spherical chamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around the hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the apex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular pa.s.sages, or galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some height above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five short descending pa.s.sages connect the galleries with each other, but the only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of which three pa.s.sages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore, when the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first to get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery, and so descend into the keep." The mole appears unequalled in ferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or even the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter, the cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only having to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a pa.s.sage through solid earth.

Of the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious excavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and gra.s.s. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the soft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set forth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such to human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the act of laying eggs.

_The Wealth of Mexico_.--M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French government to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has already published several reports in the _Moniteur_, has completed his task. These reports, according to a paragraph in the _Moniteur Belge_, are shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact situation, extent, and richness of the princ.i.p.al mineral veins of that country. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old workings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that they will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the early days of the Spanish occupation.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DIE HEILIGE ELIZABETH. Ein Buch fur Christen, von Alben Stolz.

Freiburg im Breisgau. 1865. 8vo, pp. 315.

The Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. A book for Christians, by Alben Stolz.

The author of this new life of Saint Elizabeth is one of the popular Catholic writers of Germany, if not the foremost. He is the Abraham of Sancta Clara of this century.

The princ.i.p.al events of the saint's life are narrated in simple and familiar language. The point treated of in each chapter is concluded with a practical instruction. These are far from being dry. We would suggest the translation of this book into English, were it not that it is, like all this author writes, thoroughly German, and exclusively adapted to the circ.u.mstances and difficulties of the Catholics of Germany. What our Catholic English reading public needs, is that some of our writers should take a lesson from this agreeable as well as edifying writer, and do for them what he is doing with so much zeal for the good of his countrymen.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 32mo, pp. 64.

Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

This is an American edition of the lecture of the late Cardinal Wiseman on William Shakespeare, which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for July. It contains, in addition to the lecture, an appendix, in which the eminent author makes suggestions for, and observations on, "a tercentenary memorial of Shakespeare." {860} The cardinal suggested a splendid edition of the great poet's works, ill.u.s.trated, and printed in the best and most elaborate style possible. His eminence went into the most minute details in regard to the manner in which such an edition should be ill.u.s.trated, printed, bound, etc. The binding and paper of this little volume are excellent; but the type from which it is printed is too small. We are sorry Mr. Donahoe did not get it out in larger type. Were it not for this slight defect, the book would be faultless.

NATIONAL LYRICS. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Ill.u.s.trated. 32mo, pp.

104. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This is another of the cheap volumes of poetry issued by Ticknor & Fields. It contains several of Mr. Whittier's earlier pieces, as well as many of his late poems. Among the latter are "Barbara Frietchie,"

and "The Poor Voter on Election Day."

SYBIL: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By John Savage. 12mo, pp. 105. New York: J. B. Kirker.

This tragedy was written by Mr. Savage--well known in the literary world as the author of several excellent poems, and now editor of the New Orleans _Times_--some years ago, and met with a good reception in the cities in which it was played. It contains many good pa.s.sages of high poetical merit, and is, we should think, well adapted for the stage. The scene is laid in Kentucky, in the beginning of the present century, and describes society as it is supposed to have existed at that time.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.

By M. l'Abbe J. E. Darras. With an Introduction and Notes. By the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: P.

O'Shea.

We have received numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this excellent history.