authorities are necessarily monkish chronicles, eked out by legends and traditions as fabulous as those of the Round Table. But he puts implicit faith in all of them: rarely, if at all, applies the test of conflicting evidence or internal improbability: is never staggered by any amount of miracles; and is so ready to give his saints, male and female, credit for supernatural powers that it is fortunate the story of St. Dunstan's conflict with the Devil did not come within his range, for he would most assuredly have adopted it as a fact. His chapter on 'Les Religieuses anglo-saxonnes' is principally composed of the adventures of Saxon princesses who leave their fathers or husbands and their homes, to lead a kind of life which, without Divine interposition, would be dangerous in the extreme. Thus Frideswilda, founder and patroness of Oxford-'that is to say of one of the most celebrated seats of learning in the universe'-being out on the ramble, is pursued and on the point of being overtaken by a rude suitor, when she prays to St. Cæcilia, who saves her by striking the brute blind, but restores his sight at the subsequent intercession of the intended victim when she is safe. Feeling thirsty, she prays for water, and there instantly bubbles up a spring which continued during six centuries to attract crowds by the fame of its healing qualities: 'But of all the miracles collected after her death none touches us like that which, related during her life, especially contributed to aggrandise her reputation for sanctity. It chanced one day that an unhappy young man suffering from leprosy met her. As soon as he caught sight of her, he cried out: "I conjure you, Virgin Frideswilda, by the Almighty God, to give me a kiss in the name of Jesus Christ, His only Son." The maiden, subduing the horror inspired by this hideous malady, drew near to him, and after marking him with the sign of the cross, impressed a sisterly kiss on his lips. Very soon afterwards the scales of the leper's skin fell off, and his body became healthy and fresh as that of a child.' This is one specimen amongst a hundred. The admixture of legendary lore lends additional attraction to the biographical portions, which read like so many prose idylls, except where they are interspersed with sketches of customs or manners, descriptions of scenery, and elaborate dissertations to prove that the monks, through a long succession of ages, have done more for European civilisation than all the economists and calculators, reformers and scientific discoverers, put together. This, indeed, is the moral of the book, which can only be even plausibly deduced by confounding the monks congregated in richly endowed monasteries with the monks errant or missionary monks: these two classes having about as much to do with each other as the Templars settled on the banks of the Thames with the Knights Templar who fought for the Temple, or the modern knights of Malta or St. John with those who formed the bulwark of Christendom against the Turks. In illustration of the services rendered to agriculture, he says, 'Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that Religion has left her stamp by the hand of the monk.' Is not this very like saying that they managed to possess themselves of the finest parts of the country? They reclaimed a great deal of waste ground, but their agriculture does not appear to have been of an advanced description, and he commends one religious community for doing the work of oxen by harnessing themselves to the plough. In regard to learning, they kept the lamp burning with a feeble and flickering light; but it was beside the purpose of their institution to cultivate profane literature or to educate the laity; and the little they did in either direction may be inferred from the condition of literature prior to its revival and the want of education in the people. Till the end of the fifteenth century every one who could read-a mark (says Blackstone) of great learning in those days of ignorance and her sister superstition'-was allowed the benefit of clergy, it being taken for granted that every one who could read must be a clerk in holy orders.* This is quite decisive on the point. To establish the value of monastic establishments as inexhaustible reservoirs of prayer, Montalembert appeals again to legends and traditions: 'During a thousand years, and in all Catholic nations, princes were seen emulously recurring to the prayers of the monks, and taking pride in their confidence in them. At the apogee of the feudal epoch, when the fleet of Philip Augustus, sailing towards the Holy Land, is assailed in the sea of Sicily by a terrible tempest, the king reanimates the courage and confidence of the sailors by reminding them what intercessors they had left on their native soil. "It is midnight," he said; "it is the hour when the communists of Clairvaux rise to chant unctions. These holy monks never forget us. They are going to appease (sic) Christ: they are going to pray for us; and their prayers are going to rescue us from danger."'† *The distinction between laymen and clergymen as regards benefit of clergy was first drawn by 4 Hen. VII. c. 13: 'Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine, Douglas in Marmion. Gawain was a bishop. †The authority is a Latin poem, 'Guillelm. Bretonis Philippidos.' It proceeds:— 'Vix bene finierat, et jam fragor omnis et æstus, Ventorumque cadit rabies, pulsisque tenebris, Splendiflua radiant et luna et sidera luce.' Why did Montalembert break off at the miracle, which was quite in his way? After F After stating that an analogous trait is related of Charles V.who, it will be remembered, ordered prayers to be offered up for the release of his own prisoner, the Pope-the author proceeds, 'Like these chiefs, the whole Society of Christendom, during the whole of the middle age, showed itself penetrated with this confidence in the superior and invincible power of monastic prayer; and this is why they endowed to the best of their ability those who interceded the best for them.' The mercenary character of the intercession, therefore, in no respect deducted from its efficacy; and no king or emperor need fear shipwreck if he or some well-advised predecessor has retained a sufficient number of monks to get up in the middle of the night to pray for him. The fifth volume concludes with a touching and really beautiful allusion to a family incident, which is thus related by his friend, M. Cochin : "One day," says M. Cochin, "his charming and beloved child entered that library which all his friends know so well, and said to him, I am fond of everything around me. I love pleasure, wit, society and its amusements; I love my family, my studies, my companions, my youth, my life, my country: but I love God better than all, and I desire to give myself to him.' And when he said to her, My child, is there something that grieves you?' she went to the book-shelves and sought out one of the volumes in which he had narrated the history of the Monks of the West. 'It is you,' she answered, 'who have taught me that withered hearts and weary souls are not the things which we ought to offer to God." After describing the agony inflicted on both mother and father by this event, Montalembert exclaims, How many others have undergone this agony, and gazed with a look of distraction on the last worldly appearance of a dearly beloved daughter or sister.' Yet it never once occurs to this warmheaded, noble-minded man that a system which inflicts such agony on so many innocent sufferers, which condemns to the chill gloom of a cloister what is meant for love and lightwhich runs counter to the whole course of nature-may be wrong. During the last eight or ten years of his life he was suffering from the malady of which he died; and on February 10, 1869, he writes to one of his most valued English friends, Mr. Monsell: My unfortunate state is just the same as it has been for the last three years. I have no chance, no hope, and I think I may sincerely say, no wish to recover.' His capacity for intellectual exertion was necessarily impaired, but his conversation was never more brilliant than during the afternoons when his health permitted him to hold a sort of reception round his sofa. The The only difference was that it had a shade of sadness, and turned by preference on questions in which grave and high interests were involved. In earlier days and happier times, it was sparkling with fancy and humour, as well as replete with thought; he could talk equally well like an Englishman with elliptical breaks, or like a Frenchman with continuity and flow; he told an anecdote with inimitable apropos, and although not a word or gesture belied the inborn courtesy of his race, he would occasionally throw in a dash of irony, which scarce suspected, like the onion atoms in Sydney Smith's salad,* imparted a delicate flavour to his style. There are two contrasted occasions, respectively illustrative of both manners, which vividly recall his image; a dinner at 16, Upper Brook Street, in 1854, when he was gay, glancing, animated, varied, and satirical: an afternoon in his own library in the Rue du Bac in 1867, when, discussing with General Changarnier and an English friend the political situation and the errors which led to it, he said, ‘I formed a wrong estimate of our imperial master's honesty; you, Thiers, Berryer, and other leaders of the party of order, of his capacity.' It is painful to reflect that his spirit was not suffered to pass away in peace: that his dying hours were troubled by an imperative call to choose his side in a wantonly provoked schism. He died on the 15th March, 1870, and his memorable letter on Papal infallibility is dated February 28th, just sixteen days before his death. That letter was declared unsatisfactory at Rome; but, in reply to a visitor, who ventured to catechise him on his death-bed, he is reported to have given in his unconditional adhesion to what confessedly he did not understand. 'And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.' Even this was not enough. The highest tribute of ecclesiastical respect which the Church accords to a faithful son was denied to his memory: to the memory of him who had devoted his whole life to her cause, who had dared impossibilities for her sake, who had given up to her what was meant for mankind, and thereby abdicated that place amongst practical statesmen and legislators which, apart from her blighting influence, his birth, his personal gifts, his high and rare quality of intellect, his eloquence, his elevation of purpose, his nobility of mind and character, must have won for him. 'Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, ART. VI.-1, 2, 3. The Oxford, Cambridge, and London University Calendars for the year 1873. 4. The Oxford University Gazette. 5. The Cambridge University Calendar. 6, 7. University of London: Minutes of the Senate, and Proceedings of Convocation. 8. On a proposed Amendment of the Scheme for Pass Examinations. By Rev. Henry Latham, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 1873. 9. A Letter to the Members of the Senate of the University of Cambridge.' By Robert Potts, Trinity College. 1873. THE HE war of the Greeks and Trojans, which raged three centuries and a half ago on the banks, not of Scamander, but of Isis, has broken out anew through the length and breadth of our land. The Greek learning, which was finally established in our Universities and Schools by such men as Grocyn and Linacre, More, Erasmus, and Dean Colet,* is attacked-strange to say-in the name of that 'modern_progress' to which its revival gave the chief impulse. The modern Trojans, like the Brute of our own mythical history, have returned as invaders; and threaten either to storm the citadels of learning by the force of popular ignorance, or to filch away the image of Pallas in the disguise of zeal for knowledge. They have reaped their first success at the latest founded seat of liberal education, which was manfully held by the main body of its defenders, only to be surrendered by its official keepers. The recent decision of the Senate of the University of London, no longer to require Greek as an obligatory subject at the Matriculation Examination, forms the crisis in a controversy, on which we feel it time to speak out with all earnestness in the interests alike of our Universities and of the whole cause of liberal education, as affecting the future character of our people. For this first infraction of the high standard, which has won for the London degrees a reputation second to none, has been made expressly as a concession to a demand for opening the path to Academical Degrees to the pupils of schools in which so-called modern subjects have been preferred to classical culture. The same demand has been formally addressed to the older Universities. Oxford has not yet given a decisive The Senate of Cambridge rejected a similar proposal answer. * Colet is memorable in the history of Greek learning for his own attempts to learn the language in his old age, as well as for the direction in his statutes of St. Paul's School-'I wolde they (the scolers) were taught always in good literature, bothe Laten and Greeke.' on |