or later, one after the other, either through a process of internal exhaustion and decay, or by the pressure of external force; the Papacy alone seems to be exempt from this common law; it survives all vicissitudes, and is ever rising out of all its difficulties, living and triumphant. "The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday," says Mr. Macaulay, "when compared with the line of the supreme Pontiffs; the republic of Venice is modern when compared with the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains." Why is this, but because the temporal sovereignty of the Popes has its roots in something more stable, more lasting than any other sovereignty that ever existed? We know with certainty that the spiritual kingdom of which the Popes are at the head can never fail; and the fact that the temporal dominion which is connected with it has stood the brunt of thirteen or fourteen centuries, has displayed a degree of enduring existence and immutability such as is not to be found in the annals of any other kingdom in the world, surely warrants us in concluding that this union between the temporal and the spiritual is something more than accidental; that the temporal draws life and vigour from its connexion with the spiritual, and that they are in fact intimately and essentially knit up together.

Or let us look at it again from another point of view; let us see what results the bitterest enemies of the Christian faith have always promised themselves from any revolution which should effect a separation between the two, and the most timid and ignorant amongst us will learn to misdoubt perhaps the specious sophistry by which they may have been deceived into a momentary agreement with heretics and infidels upon this subject. "The abolition of the Pope's temporal power," says Mazzini (in a letter published in the Globe newspaper of August 30, 1849), " draws along with it in the minds of all those who understand the secret of the papal authority, the emancipation of the whole human race from his spiritual dominion also." "If only we can gain possession of the Papal States," wrote Frederick II. of Prussia to Voltaire, "the game is ours, and the contest is ended. All the potentates of Europe will refuse to recognise a Vicar of Christ in one who is the subject of another sovereign, and they will therefore create patriarchs each in his own state. In this way, all will withdraw by degrees from the unity of the Church, and will end by having each a separate religion, as they already have a separate language." No one can doubt but that this would be the natural result of the loss of temporal sovereignty by the Bishop of Rome; and although it is very conceivable that Almighty God might supernaturally overrule the course of

events, so as to bring good out of evil, and although it is of faith that no such result as the philosophers of the last century so confidently predicted could possibly come to pass, yet surely it is no reason why we should rob the Church of her temporal power and dignity, because we know that we are not thereby taking away her life. Indeed, the very fact that Frederick II. and Voltaire, and others of their school, have always hated the civil power of the Popes, and laboured to overthrow it, should of itself make us suspect its importance and true value. What such men as Wickliffe and Arnold of Brescia in olden times, and the Protestants, Jansenists, and deists of later date, and (though last, not least) the political demagogues and secret societies of our own days, denounce so bitterly, and are so anxious to overturn, must certainly be worth defending.

Moreover, we should remember that those who talk of the desirableness of restoring the Papacy to its primitive moderation and simplicity in this matter betray no anxiety (and have not the power, even if they had the will) to carry the rest of society back to the same primitive model. On this point they are ready to forget and to disown what is their favourite topic on every other subject, that most ambiguous yet perpetually recurring word, progress. They seem to overlook or to be unconscious of the natural harmony which should pervade the whole social system, and see no inconsistency in being clamorous advocates for the most liberal expansion in some elements of that system, whilst to others they would deny all liberty of growth whatever. Manual labour must give way to new inventions in machinery; railroads must supersede horses; fresh improvements may be introduced day after day into all the arts and sciences; nay, still more, the very science of government must receive fresh development; absolute monarchies must give way to constitutional ones; every vestige of feudalism must disappear before the triumphant march of parliaments and "the representative system :" but one thing alone amid this universal advance is destined to stand still, must never dare to put forth a new shoot and to grow and strengthen, to wit, the Papacy. The Bishops of Rome must remain what they were in the days of Nero and Diocletian; without endowments, without palaces, without officers, without temporal dignity and power. The changed conditions of civil and political life require no corresponding change in the ecclesiastical; what was right and sufficient when the Church was in her infancy, and slowly gathering souls into the true fold, first one and then another, is right and sufficient still, though" the place of her tent be enlarged and her cords lengthened," and she be in a position no longer

to make her impressions upon society through the medium of individuals, but rather, by an opposite process, upon individuals through society.

CATHOLIC NOVELISTS.

Lady Bird: a Tale. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. London, Moxon.

Bertha; or the Pope and the Emperor: an Historical Tale. By W. B. Maccabe, Esq. Dublin, Duffy.

WE had occasion a few months ago* to review the peculiar opportunities for good or evil enjoyed by the novelist. His easy access to impressible minds, in their least wary moods; his gay attire; the fascination of his manner or his subject, make him one of the most useful or the most dangerous companions of the idle hours of youth. He is powerful for good or evil, for heaven or hell, as he uses his rare and almost irresponsible influence; he may enervate, or he may strengthen and brace; he may sanctify or corrupt the young ingenuous mind; and all the while he is himself so remote from observation, so secluded from the operation of public opinion (within very wide limits indeed), that more than an ordinary love of truth and virtue seems requisite to secure him from adopting a false and unhealthy tone.

The works at the head of our present article suggest an analogous view of the duties and the temptations, the advantages and the perils of the Catholic writer of fiction. Such is the altered position of the Catholic body in England, that, emerging from its long and dignified privacy, it now aspires to the possession of a literature of its own; and sometimes not unsuccessfully. It has its weekly newspapers, and its periodicals, monthly and quarterly; its clubs and guilds and literary institutes; its publishers are men of established reputation even in the fastidious quarters of metropolitan fashion; poetry and fiction, learning and clever writing, are ranked among its newly-recovered ornaments and means of success. We are well aware, indeed, that there are some unamiable critics who believe that the printing-press is destined never to become an assistance, but always to remain, as at first, a trial and an obstruction to Catholic principles. We confess, however, that we are more sanguine, as well as more grateful for what has been already accomplished for us by the press. And anticipating a still wider field for our literary efforts, as new and untried opportunities are presented, we deem it of the last *Rambler, June 1852.

importance that our literary labourers, particularly in the department of fiction, should understand what is expected of them, and what may come amiss from them; so that, with full consciousness of their position in all its circumstances, they may be qualified to render good service to the illustration and the defence of religion.

Controversy we should be inclined absolutely to exclude from the province of legitimate fiction. The incongruity is too apparent to require insisting on between the scholastic syllogism applied to the doctrines of faith and the conversation of modern drawing-rooms; between the decrees of a general council and the walks and talks of lovers. A novel must of necessity be principally concerned with society on its secular side; and above all, it seems to be an established law in such compositions that their interest must needs be made to turn chiefly on the mutual influence of the sexes on each other. In either respect the introduction of general controversy is incongruous and unsuitable; lowering the dignity of its own character, without any return but the deterioration of the portrait of manners; spoiling the story, as it is popularly expressed, without any substantial gain to the cause of truth.

But while we should be inclined to prohibit the Catholic writer of fiction from entering upon the domain of controverted doctrine, we would not therefore terminate the relations of his art to religion and sound morality. He undertakes to portray human nature in many various phases: joy, sorrow, love, rivalry, jealousy, disappointment, and innumerable other states and circumstances of human character, are the materials of his composition. He depicts men and women either as he actually finds them behaving themselves in the battle of life, or as he conceives that they ought to behave; their springs of action, their principles of conduct, must be brought out by their deportment and language in every possible variety of incident that may befal them. Here a rare and noble opportunity is offered for representing the true bearing of Catholic faith and teaching on the necessities of human nature; for exhibiting its adaptation to human infirmity; its strengthening, correcting, reforming, consoling, and elevating influences. Its pure and stainless morality; its lofty self-denial; its philosophical basis, as a means of mental education, in the widest sense of the word; its many-sided and tender charity,-all are capable of illustration in the course of an ordinary tale of fiction. And, without an obtrusive or constrained manner of drawing attention to them, or forcing them into notice, they may be made to seem no more than the spontaneous suggestions of the writer's own accomplished mind; the source from which he derives

them will occur only to those who are as familiar as himself with the same origin of generous and elevated sentiments. Thus a healthy and sound tone will be communicated to the minds of his readers through the medium of their amusement; to minds which perhaps would be closed at once to the approach of Christian instruction in any less unpretending or less attractive form.

And here two classes of readers seem to present themselves to the influence of the Catholic author of fiction. There is the youth of his own religion, inexperienced, susceptible of delicate and lasting impressions, as youth alone is. It is surely a great and responsible duty to season the pastime of such youth with the maxims of the Gospel; to make the fanciful creations of his own mind a channel of generous influence to the future generations of his countrymen. He supplements, while he may not intrude on the office of the pastor; he popularises the lessons of the pulpit and the confessional; he is the teacher of manners, the master of instruction, without the recognised authority or the formality of the minister of Christ.

Nor would it be easy to overrate the importance of his relation to another class of readers, consisting of persons who, though alien to his own religious belief, yet partly from motives of idle curiosity, partly perhaps with a laudable desire of learning something of its real nature, are attracted by the name of a Catholic author appearing in the garb of a novelist, to give his opinions a trial. Here is a golden opportunity, possessed by few controversialists, of gaining a fair hearing for his own side of the question; an opportunity which, as we observed before, is not to be taken advantage of by opening a formal attack on the doctrinal position of his opponents, but by so arranging his narrative and the exposition of his own principles, as to bring into clear relief the true state of the case on many subjects, in regard to which all but Catholics labour under a total misapprehension. Prejudices may thus be cleared away at small cost; valuable and new information given to many impartial minds; clouds of error dispelled, by no effort of words, but by simple and honest description; by attributing correct motives to actions otherwise perhaps indifferent; in a word, by portraying Catholic subjects and Catholic agents as they really are. Viewed in relation to this second and more numerous class of readers, an essential qualification to be desired in a Catholic author of fiction is the disposition and the ability to represent his subject fairly; neither exaggerating nor diminishing the Catholic peculiarities in it; not obtruding his religion needlessly on the notice of his readers, but scrupulously abstaining, on the other hand,