One of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is that we can keep centenaries. And judging by the yearly crop of these celebrations, it is an advantage we seem to make the most of. St. Dominic, St. Francis, St. Ignatius, St. Jerome, Dante, Napoleon, Shakespeare, Columbus, Cervantes, Shelley and Pascal have all of late been in the thoughts of those who glory in greatness and set store by antiquity. When we are wearied by our present woeful strifes or anxious about the ill-foreboding future, we can look back and take comfort in the past. It is natural that we, who are made for an eternal destiny, should find the thought of never-ending time entrancing; and length of days seems to us a symbol and a suggestion of eternity—a hint of immortality. A man who lives a hundred years is an object of praise and wonder, but the centenarian who preserved all the grace and sprightliness of youth would be an object of envy too. It is precisely this combination that attracts us in a centenary. We are not simply revering immemorial age : we are honouring someone who has been proof against time’s decay, who is ever ancient yet ever new, as old as the hills yet as fresh as the dawn.

This month we keep the six hundredth anniversary of the canonization of St. Thomas Aquinas. The occasion seems appropriate to indulge a few reflections upon the enthusiastic interest his name still evokes, and to remind ourselves that the influence of his genius is as strong upon the minds of men of all schools of thought to-day as it was when the Church set her seal upon his greatness six hundred years ago.

Of the three Canticas of the Commedia the hardest for a non-Catholic to understand is the Purga-torio; because the entire conception of purgatory is foreign to his mind. Hence we find even devout men like H. F. Cary, who has general sympathy with Dante’s teaching, misunderstand him here. For example, upon the well-known lines (x. 106-in, which shall be quoted from his own translation):

‘Reader! I would not that amazed thou miss Of thy good purpose, hearing how just God Decrees our debts be cancel’d. Pander not The form of suffering. Think on what succeeds :

Think that, at worst, beyond the mighty doom It cannot pass.’

Cary’s comment is : ‘This is, in truth, an unanswerable objection to the doctrine of Purgatory. It is difficult to conceive how the best can meet death without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and intense suffering.’ And Leigh Hunt, in his Italian Poets, refers to this comment with approval, after his own manner, that is to say, in less refined language.

‘The purpose of this article is to show how Dante himself, on the contrary, represents the attitude of the Holy Souls towards their own sufferings in Purgatory.

There are thirty-three cantos in the Purgatorio. The first nine of these are occupied with the Ante-purgatory, the middle cantos with Purgatory itself, and the last six with the ‘Earthly Paradise.’ It is very important to bear this fact in mind because the main interest of the drama of the ‘Second Kingdom’ lies in the Ante-purgatory, and the key to its interpretation may be found there.

Every reader of Dante will remember its lovely opening verse : ‘I will sing of that second Kingdom where the human spirit is purified and becomes worthy to ascend to heaven.’

‘I am waiting “for the evening”,’ said the Bride,

‘When the reaping shall be done and the sheaves every one, Stacked apart and harvested from the Acres of the Dead, When im sweet and starred array I go on my way,

On my way to meet my Lover,’ said the Bride.

‘Shall it be that He comes,’ asked the Bride,

‘In His living diadem, with the moon as a gem,

Robed with the sunlight and cloaked with the rain,

With His glorious gold Head, and His Hands torn and red, And His Side wounded wide? ‘said the Bride.

‘With) the treasure of my wheat and white pearls for my feet— And wine-stones and opals for my crown,

How fleet my heart shall beat as I hasten forth to meet

My Lord and my Lover who steps down

From; His Everlasting Throne, and claims me His own,

In His Kingdom to rest and to abide ....

For at moonrise shall I come and mine enemies be dumb That He stands me at His side,’ said the Bride.

‘I have praise of harp and pen but my home is not with men, I have trod where my God was denied—

Red lilies of the martyrs and the prophets of my days,

Moon; of guidance in the night—these my children! gave me praise;

My lands they are wide—where my Love lived and died, Slept within His Sepulchre, veiled in shrouds and wrapped with myrrh,

And then rose to the Height, spanned with splendour, throned in light,

From our sight, and enskied—

O then, come to me soon—Lord and King, Sun and Moon! ‘cried the Bride.

Vivienne, M. Dayrell.

The resurrection of a language and the revival of a whole literature, which took place in the middle of the last century, are among the most curious events in the history of letters. After a sleep of six centuries the dead plant put out leaves, and in the course of twenty years shot up to its full growth. This statement must not be taken too literally. During the six hundred years there were doubtless connecting

Putting aside the revival at King Rene’s court, there can be no question but that various forms of the langue cCoc were continuously in use for common speech amongst the people of the South; but as a language, with grammar and fixity of form, Provencal had ceased to exist. Provencal is mysterious throughout : there is no known connecting link between the idiom of the Troubadours and the last semi-classical writers of Southern Gaul.

It would seem that at all times the literary form of Provengal differs rather widely from the spoken tongue. A charge of artificiality is sometimes brought against the writers of the revival. Certainly the language of Mistral and others is not identical with the Provencal of the Bouches du Rhone, such as may be heard in the markets or on the quays; but it is no more artificial than the style of an eminent English or French writer, who does not make use of the language and grammar of a London or Paris porter.

We will not mourn too greatly, lest tears blur The silver vision of a parting sail Bound for New Lands, unfaltering. To hail The passing of God’s sweet Adventurer The bells rang in the harbour and pealed to welcome her.

How little of the Best the best among us knows!

Our faith, far less than hers, how faint and dim . . . Else would we never grudge a flower to Him Who enters, unawares, our garden-close;

. . . For June is for our taking, and He has picked a rose.

Vivienne Dayrell.

The Blisful Mother:of Heaven’s high King By Dominic giveth ye fair greeting,

That for love of Our Lord and the Trinity, Ferlies hath showed him five times three, Which wonders hight The Rosary.

Three fair shoots on one fair stem Shall weave our dear Lady’s diadem,

One of mirth and one of teen,

The third right glorious to be seen,

And fifteen roses them between.

Credo shall thou devoutly say,

Thereafter Paternoster pray,

Gloria-Patri et Filio,

And the rest in order as I shall show,

With Ave thridded thro’ and thro’.

This happy wonder, wot ye well,

Showeth how the Archangel Gabriel Came where Our Lady sat in bower,

This is of maids the first and flower:

Ave Maria! ,

He meekly her saluteth thus,

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

Of whom, immaculate, shall be born Salvatox mundi on Christmas morn :

O gratia plena!

E . Hamilton Moore

It is a little disconcerting that Catholic apologetics and Biblical exegesis, on the whole, have not yet grasped the full value of the organic treatment of the Gospels; especially in the matter of the Petrine privilege. Apologists and Biblical exegetes still largely appraise the gospel data by what may almost be called ‘a show of hands.’ We have no wish to discourage this method of valuation; which, indeed, is often demanded by the literary character of the exegesis. But if there is a higher and truer method it will be found that ‘the best is the foe of the good.’

Let us exemplify this by studying some of the lesser ways in which the Gospel of St. Luke witnesses to the primacy of St. Peter. We will pass over the classical passage (Lk. xxii, 25-32) with its clear assertion of St. Peter’s power over the other apostles. To the present writer this passage has always seemed to be of even greater importance than St. Matthew’s witness ‘Thou art Peter, etc.’ (Mt. xvi, 18-19).

In order to appreciate St. Luke’s witness to St. Peter it should be borne in mind and used as an exegetical principle that roughly speaking what St. Mark was to St. Peter—that was St. Luke to St. Paul. His devotion to a master who made many demands on his tact and patience seems never to have flagged. It is seen in many details of his two great works, his Gospel of Jesus Christ and his Acts of the Apostles. Even in such a supreme matter as the institution of the Blessed Sacrament he left the tradition of St. Matthew and St. Mark for the tradition of St. Paul.

Critics are not agreed about the exact date of the publication of his gospel.

What traveller abroad does not know the Central Station at Milan? All the railroads of Europe would seem to lead there. And what a journey back it is to France over the Simplon route—even in its beginnings ! At Arona we come to the first hills rising on the northern limits of the plain of Lombardy. We skirt the shores of Lago Maggiore past Stresa, past Baveno. Isola Bella and her sister isles are sleeping in all their magical loveliness on the blue waters of the lake. There beyond them is Pallanza! At Feriolo we pass from the lake into the Toce valley and into the mountains. At Vogogna we are not a dozen miles from Domodossola and the tunnel beyond. But as we are pilgrims and not tourists we climb down from our train and set out on foot across the valley, that is to say, across a mile and more of the turbulent Toce’s wide-strewn debris to Pie di Mulera. Here the Anza flows in adding its tribute of glacier waters to the main stream. It is up the Val Anzasca we walk the ten miles to Vanzone, where we spend our first night among the Italian Alps.

Before dawn on July 29th, 1889, two young Milanese priests who had also spent the night at Van-zone, set off up the same valley on a great adventure. The scene of it rose majestically before their eyes as they approached Prequatero four miles on. It was Monte Rosa—’ a spectacle of incomparable beauty.’ Around us was the fresh green of the meadows and the woods; above us the canopy of heaven, fringed with the most beautiful blue that was ever seen . . . and in front towered the Alpine giant, inviting or defying—I hardly know which—with the immense extent of its snow and ice, with the mighty crown of its ten peaks . . . sparkling and flaming in the rosy rays of the rising sun.

’ The pageant of the ages I behold,

The high ennobling struggle of mankind, Heart-stirring as a trumpet is unroll’d Before my eyes, to quicken will and mind.’

‘Record of crimes and follies, age by age,

The shame of fallen man repeated still,

His vain presumption; here and there a page Of glory in a library of ill.’

Thus youth and eld have bandied to and fro Age after age their still unspent debate.

But wisdom God-inspir’d said long ago :

While knowledge groweth sorrows aggravate.

Youth’s ardour, sadness of experience,

Man fallen, and God’s judgments manifold, Life’s landscape, human history now dense And murk, now sunlight-gladden’d, I behold.

Interpret well the lesson, see it whole;

Lose not thyself amid the forest maze,

Roam not at random; see and mark, my soul, And thou shalt firmlier tread the appointed ways.

H. E. G. Rope.