The cartoon with which Punch expressed its bewildered opinion of the Irish settlement deserves to be remembered in history. After more than two centuries of deliberate exploitation of anti-Irish sentiment in the north-east of Ireland, the leader of the Ulster Unionists is represented in the most characteristic organ of British middle-class opinion, as uniting with the President of the Free State to pick the pocket of John Bull. In actual fact, the Ulster Government’s financial ‘benefits through the settlement would appear to consist in a grant for the Ulster Parliament buildings and the separate Ulster Law Courts—neither of which were ever asked for by the Ulster Unionists, but were, on the contrary, accepted by them in response to an urgent appeal by the Imperial Parliament. There is a further financial concession also in the continuation for one year of the annual grant in aid of the Ulster Special Constabulary, but on the clear understanding (never before insisted upon) that this latest grant of roughly a million pounds must be the last. No Irish Catholic is likely to sympathise with Sir James Craig’s lamentations at the fact that the ‘Specials’ must therefore be disbanded; but even the Ulster ‘Specials’ would never have come into existence except to defend the jurisdiction of the Ulster Parliament in the area for which the Orange Lodges agreed, under urgent appeals, to accept responsibility.

As far beyond Venice as Venice is beyond Verona lies the gentle ctiy of Udine, citàt zintil as they call it there, for all the common people and all the scholars and poets speak, or can speak, a language like that of the troubadours. The city lies on the level plain of Friuli like a town held by a patron saint on the palm of his hand; but in the midst of it rises an abrupt hill, and under the hill spreads a tree-planted hollow. This hill, say the Udinese, arose at the bidding of Attila the Hun. Every soldier of the Hunnish army contributed a helmetful of earth. And when the great mound was made, the king stood alone on the top to watch the burning of Aquileia.

Forty kilometres of country road lie between Aquileia and Udine to-day; and a vast, silent basilica, a vast silent museum, a scattering of poor farms among vast, silent fields of tall corn and small vines are all that is left of Aquileia when you reach it. The Guide Bleu gives the names of two inns. Personally I saw no sign of them, but then my visit was a short one. Yet when our Lord was born under Augustus in the middle of the great peace, Aquileia was the second town in Italy. It boasted two hundred thousand ‘Roman’ citizens, besides Roman legionaries and a unique con course of foreign merchants; it possessed enormous markets of wine and corn; its palaces, baths, circuses, temples, tombs and triumphal arches were like nothing outside Rome;

The purpose of this article is to call the attention of lovers of the Imitation to James Merlo Horstius’s edition of it, the Viator Christianus.

An old copy of this rare, and exceedingly interesting, book—to which a reference is made on page 745 of the lovely English translation (Burns and Oates, 1912) of the Paradisus Animae—came into the present writer’s possession a few years ago. It was published at Cologne in 1643. Its full title is ‘Viator Christianus recta ac regia in caelum via tendens, ductu Thomae de Kempis.’ It is a Latin edition of the Imitation, with quaint marginal notes and curious allegorical prints, and a picture representing Thomas a Kempis himself offering his book to Our Lady. At the top of the picture is the legend ‘In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angello cum libello,’ and at the foot ‘Thomas a Kempis canonicus regularis Obijt A° 1471, 25 Iulij. Ætat 92.’

James Merlo, called Horstius from the place of his birth, was born at Horst, a German village, in 1597, and died in 1644 at Cologne, where he was parish priest of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pasculo. He was the author, or compiler, of several devotional books besides that unrivalled collection, which every wise Catholic knows well, The Paradise of the Christian Soul. He tells us there that he has surveyed ‘the gardens and pleasure-grounds of every author,’ and culled thence ‘the most notable plants, flowers and shrubs,’ and planted with them ‘a new kind of Paradise.’

Obvious pitfalls are in the way of one who writes about a member of his family. Friends and foes alike are ready to raise objections, to discount the value of praise on the score of personal bias, to resent criticism on the grounds that, as Jane Find-later says, £ so often there is something between people of the same family like a pane of glass. You mayn’t know it’s there until you try to touch one another, but it divides.’ Relations with whom we are thrown too intimately, in too frequent contact, never see us, according to this view, in perspective.

None of this applies to the different authors of the Benson Saga. The Bensons must have come together as friends even if the ties of blood had not linked them. Frankly aware of each other’s foibles, not one of which escaped the sense of humour which they had in common, they responded just as impulsively to individual fineness. Passionately interested in each other, indefatigable talkers with an avid flair for argument, no subject, no dogma, however controversial, was taboo. At times, Mr. E. F. Benson explains in the latest volume of the Saga, Mother they metaphorically fell upon each other tooth and nail. As a rule, play was fair. But ‘to argue with Hugh on religious topics,’ according to his brother, ‘was like playing Rugby football under rules framed by himself ! . . .’ When things ‘got too hot,’ however, an onlooker would break up the game.

Any statement as to the relations of men to one another or of men to their work must be based upon a clear understanding as to the nature of man. Agreement as to the nature of man is the first necessity —what sort of a thing is man? Without this agreement, expressed or implied, a statement of relationships is futile, and action, whether personal or political, undertaken without this proper basis in religion (for religion is precisely an answer to questions of ‘what’ and ‘why’ ) only results in confusion—confusion leading inevitably to dissipation and disintegration.

Now as Catholics we are agreed as to the nature of man—even though we do not always base our propositions upon that fact—but non-Catholics, even when they recognize the necessity of such an agreement, are under the painful necessity of beginning at the beginning, each for himself, and of building up piece by piece a philosophical system which shall form a foundation upon which to place their political structure.

It is necessary to agree as to the nature of man for obvious reasons. It is not possible, for any length of time, to keep canaries in hen-coops or lions in monkey-houses. Unless man’s affairs are organized upon lines suitable to his nature he must sooner or later react against the false system.

Las Casas was a Churchman whose activities in the cause of humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the Indians by the Spanish colonial adventurers are well known and appreciated by many, and due credit has ever been rendered him by Protestant historians : but it is well to realise that he was not a brilliant and solitary exception. The Spanish Churchmen were ever famous for their uncompromising morality. Many of his own order—Pedro de Cordoba, Antonio Monterino and others whom we shall meet, as well as many of the Spanish clergy of every rank—made a no less determined stand for justice against immorality. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, unequivocally stated the doctrine of the Church.

Nor were the secular authorities remiss. The Audience of the Indies, Charles V, and Philip II issued order after order and edict after edict against the enslavement of the natives, the theft of their property, and the outrages against their persons. Yet a terrible state of things existed. The trouble arose from the impossibility of controlling at that great distance greedy and cruel adventurers who, sure of the support of their fellows in the remote lands of New Spain, were able to a great extent to ignore all orders and ordinances on the matter. The clergy had more success; for they could and did wield the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and the Spanish adventurers, if in their hearts they did not agree with the humanity of the Church, did for the most part fear her censure.

Father Vincent McNabb prefaces his article in the October number of BLACKFRIARS with the statement that he has neither the wish nor the capability to offer a criticism of ‘the astronomies and mathematics’ of Prof. Einstein. And the present writer feels impelled to make a similar disclaimer as regards the scholastic philosophy of Father McNabb, whom he is proud to number amongst the most revered of his personal friends and spiritual advisers. But, as one whose technical education involved a good deal of ‘astronomies and mathematics’ and whose tastes have even leaned towards the study of physical science, it appears to him that the body of Father McNabb’s article does not fulfill the promise of sticking to his philosophic last which he makes at the outset. Before the close, he is dealing with questions of the purest mechanics, which cannot be divorced from astronomy, even if they can from pure mathematics.

Father McNabb opens his attack by quoting the following passage from Einstein’s book on Relativity :