through the Satires. We are decidedly of the opinion that sturdy English common-sense can best enter into the spirit of Juvenal and understand him; and we think also that English appreciation of humor would have saved many a foolish note on the part of commentators. There are times when he uses an expression simply for the sake of giving a ridiculous turn to what he is saying, when he sets the mind of the reader on a certain path, and then obliges him to turn around suddenly and face in another direction. The dry commentator cannot appreciate this dлроσдóxητov, and so is not prepared expect something quite unexpected" at every turn. But the reader will never understand Juvenal until he knows that he sometimes talks nonsense, and does it intentionally too; that he can use bathos with great effect; and that he can indulge in well-affected raillery. How he urges Hannibal to pursue his journey over the Alps

to 66

"To please the rhetoricians, and become

A declamation for the boys of Rome!"1

2

How he puts as the worst of the terrors of the cruel city "poets reciting in the month of August!" How he badgers his poor friend who has a design of marriage, and asks him if there is no rope to be had, no window open, no bridge to be found! How he suggests that the waiter at Virro's table is not a man whom you I would like to meet in the burying-ground in the middle of the night! How he pities the sadness of Pollio who offered to pay triple interest, but could find no fools! 5 How he speaks of Claudius swallowing Agrippina's mushroom and descending to heaven!" How he has set the scholiasts and commentators at work guessing who was the nurse of Anchises and the step-mother of somebody whose name varies in the manuscripts! 7

But it must suffice that we have given a few examples out of the many which lie at our hand. And we can but suggest the idea that

the fact that Juvenal abounds in sentences which are of the nature of proverbs and which are easily fixed in the memory goes far to account for his popularity. We shall only add, that we cannot believe that men, especially Englishmen, will ever cease to read the works of the greatest of Roman Satirists, until the time comes when what he wrote will cease to be applicable to the men who are met and the things which are seen in the daily occupations and business of life. While our cities are as dangerous as the Rome of Nero's day; while parasites crouch for food at the tables of the rich;'

1x. 166, iii. 9. vi. 28. v. 54. ix. 7. vi. 620. vii. 234. iii. v.

9

while divorces are granted with frightful frequency;1 while men live to make money and affirm that gold smells sweet no matter whence it comes; while trusts are violated and widows and orphans are robbed; while police courts are held from morning till night;1 while boys are taught vices by example and avarice by precept; while men pray for what can only harm them; while "conscience doth make cowards of us all;" in short, while our poor human nature is what it is, Juvenal will be read. And as he gives us much instruction concerning the Romans of his own day, he will also preach us many solemn sermons and portray us in such faithful representation that we shall at least acknowledge that the work of reformation in us must be begun by some Power above ourselves; nay, we venture to say that oftentimes the wrath of God will be so "revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," that we shall better appreciate that way of escape which is pointed out to us in the revelation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

1vi. 146. xii. 50; xiv. 204. xiii. 'xiii. 157. xiv. "x. * Romans, i. 18.

' xiii.

CATHOLICISM AND THE VATICAN; with a narrative of the Old Catholic By J. Lowry Whittle, A.M. London: Henry

Congress at Munich.

S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill.

10 look at the Old Catholics from a Protestant stand-point has now become quite a common affair-so common, indeed, that if this book contained matter which Protestants generally are familiar with, we should never have touched it. But it is the work of a veritable Romanist, or, as he prefers to style himself, "a Catholic;" a name, by the way, which we are perfectly willing to accord him and his friends, if we may be permitted to share it with them. But to call a man by the worst ecclesiastical name you can fling at him-the name of heretic-and then expect him to recompense the insult by bestowing upon its perpetrator one of the best ecclesiastical names possible, is requiring of poor halting human nature a generosity which borders on the miraculous. And it was always one of our sorest puzzles, that the votaries of a Pope should throw the outrageous epithet "heretic " broadcast, and then indulge a groan, parallel to a Puritan whine, because they were not repaid with the honorable, the glorious appellation, "Catholic." But the difficulty is a chronic one, and we no more expect to have it put an end to, than we expect the final departure of rheumatism and the influenza.

Our author is an "Old Catholic," and, in his own estimation,

quite a sturdy one. He is also an Irishman. He is, as his academical degree assures us, a man of liberal education. He is a layman, and, as we are informed, a barrister. To look through such a man's spectacles at the new ecclesiastical wonder, Old Catholicism, is "an indulgence" which we never expected to have accorded those spiritual unfortunates whom Mr. Orestes Brownson dubs "non-Catholics." But this book furnishes us the happy opportunity; and we hope to have, for awhile, the company of sympathetic readers, while we examine the unique curiosity, and expatiate upon the phases of affairs ecclesiastical, which it arrays for our review.

Mr. Whittle, lawyer-like, has no appetency for hearsay testimony. He has not squatted in his office in Erin, and gathered up the reports which have floated over from Continental Europe on the wings of a newspaper. By no means. By no manner of means. He would judge of Old Catholicism as an embodied and practical affair, and at the fountain-head of its influences; or, as its foes would say, its devices. He formed an acquaintance with the venerable Von Döllinger, and hied himself away to Munich, to see with his own eyes and hear with his own earstaking jottings accordingly.

And none the less of an Irishman was he when breathing German air and listening to German arguments and oratory. The essence of Erindom is so concocted in him that you can see it dripping and crystallizing on every page; and his very last words are a burst of patriotism, as earnest and devoted and con fident as that which glowed in the bosom of Robert Emmett. "This school of cultured Catholicism, which Germany now promises the Church, may enable Ireland at last to attain that end she has sought, through so many centuries of misery and suffering, and is still seeking the enjoyment of Christian communion in peace from the intrigues of politicians, or the fanaticism of theologians" (p. 110).

Mr. Whittle is anxious (as doubtless he does well to be), before he gives us a picture of Old Catholicism, its apprehensions, designs, and issues, to show what that shape of Romanism, or Vaticanism, or Italianism is, against which it has uprisen, and with which it means not to contend only, but to do, if necessary, valorous and exhaustive battle. If Romanism has always been the same; if its pretended "Catholicism" has always, and everywhere, and by all competent judges, been esteemed the same, i. e., genuinely and unmistakably Catholic; then Old Catholicism, if a dissenter from

it, has made a prodigious chronological mistake, and should subside into silence and oblivion. If, however, Romanism is one thing, and genuine Catholicism is quite another thing, then the position of Old Catholicism is a very clear one, and one logically definable and defensible. It can show (be Romanism what it now is or assumes to be) that it is a parallel to Catholicism, when Catholicism was palpable, yet uncontaminated. And really-people should understand it exactly and beyond all possible mistake-this is what Old Catholicism professes to aim at, and designs to achieve. Its claim is that Rome has changed her own professed ground, has swung loose from primitive moorings, has transcended established law, has contradicted history, has thrust in novelties, and then demanded for them a homage which she has no more right to require than Nebuchadnezzar had a right to require prostration before his gorgeous image, erected on the plain of Dura.

Well, if this be actually so, then one never need tell a lawyer, pressing a claim for a client, founded on ancient and well-established precedents, that he must offset the claim of an opponent, appealing to the same precedents, by showing that his opponent has mistaken or perverted his authorities. The Italian or Vatican Catholic makes the same appeal which is made by the Old Catholic. And on that. appeal the Old Catholic joins issue with him, most confidently and staidly. The Italian Catholic, or Vaticanist, interprets the constitution of The Primitive Church as if it were an imperial monarchy, and not a republic, or a society of republics. As if so runs the decree of July 18, 1870-as if "definitions of the Roman Pontiff are final in themselves, and not from the consent of the Church" (p. 2). Whereas, nothing can well be plainer, from the very Acts of The Apostles themselves, than that the College of The Apostles— and still less the head of that College, if self-consequential-never acted as if holding supremacy in their own hands, but as if sharing. it with deliberative bodies. A new apostle, though his commission come from Heaven and not from earth, is not inaugurated without the formal summoning of an assembly to designate and recommend him. Not so much as a deacon is installed in his humble office, till a deliberative body has made selection of him. A grand question of discipline is not settled but in an ecclesiastical legislature, where apostles appear as debaters and not dictators, and where the canon agreed upon goes with-whatever emphasis it has besides-with the voice of "the whole Church" resounding it (Acts, xv. 22).

So patent is all this, that even Gibbon, with all his rank and rankling toryism, and hatred of, the democratic proclivities of our