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.

Thomas Hood, ‘true poet and true humorist,’ was born in The Poultry, London, in the tail-end of the eighteenth century. He died at Devonshire Lodge, Finchley Road, in the middle of the nineteenth. He lived, to be precise, from May 23rd, 1799, to May 3rd, 1845. I was a shortish, sickly life, and had to be beaten out, as it were, very thin to last for forty-six years.

On Hood’s birthday George III, aged sixty-one, and for the time being in his sober senses, rested after the levee of the day before. Queen Charlotte held a Drawing-room. News came that our noble allies, the Russians and Austrians, under Marshall Suwarrow and General Hohenzollern, had taken the best part of the Milanese from the French; that General Buonaparte had met with a check near Acre in consequence of which the Sultan had ordered a solemn thanksgiving in the seraglio; and that the Success frigate had fallen in with the French fleet passing the rock of Lisbon, and an engagement was hourly expected. On Hood’s birthday the second reading of a bill to restrict slavery was fiercely opposed by the Liverpool merchants in the Commons. Mr. Castlereagh and Mr. Ponsonby fought a duel near Dublin. Carriages waited at the Bull, Bishopsgate, to take the friends of Mr. J. Frere to the Norwich election to vote on the whole policy or impolicy of the war. A highwayman with crape on his face, mounted on a bay mare, stopped a post-chaise on Uxbridge Common.

Years ago it was my good fortune to visit a high ecclesiastical dignitary of one of the strange sects of the Middle East, who received us after the ancient fashion and even provided water for us to wash our feet, although the distance between his house and the Residency where I was staying was a matter of a few hundred yards. After a formal conversation we began to discuss interesting matters, and he told me a good deal of the life of the Bedouins of the desert east of the mountains of Moab. After some talk he suddenly stopped, and said : ‘Why should I describe all this to you? You will find it in much better perspective in Genesis; for, after all, the richer Sheikhs live a life which is exactly like that of Abraham.’

Until recently I had forgotten the old man’s talk, but last winter fortune took me to Jerusalem, and then from Amman, the ancient Philadelphia, to Baghdad. From there we went to Kish, and helped in the excavations which are being carried on jointly by the University of Oxford and the Field Museum of Chicago. Unfortunately, we did not get to Mosul, so we were not able to see the city of Nineveh, which lies on the other side of the Tigris from the modern town.

The infallible dogmas of the Holy Roman Church have always attracted so much attention that the world as a whole has remained in ignorance of the vast terrain on which the Church not only permits but encourages what we may call agnosticism. Just as she has been uncompromising in maintaining the revelation entrusted to her and the definitions she has once reached, so she has always insisted that there are immense tracts of investigation with which she has no direct concern, and which she leaves to the human intellect; regions regarding which she has no enlightenment to convey and which in many cases are beyond the reach of reason.

Take, for example, her attitude towards Science as defined in that same Council of 1870 which defined the Infallibility of the Pope. She leaves ‘to each of the Sciences to make use of its own principles and its own method in its own sphere.’ She wishes to preserve them from error, certainly, by warning them that, if in conflict with the truth, there must be some mistake : and she wishes also to prevent their encroaching magisterially on the realm of faith. But she does not dictate the movements of the stars to the astronomers, nor the composition of substances to the chemists. She urges rather that the rightly-ordered reason not only produces fruit of itself, but leads on to a truth better than its own.’ So far, therefore, is the Church from opposing the cultivation of the human arts and sciences, that she in many ways helps and promotes it;

II.

In addition to singing and dancing, one other species A of music is introduced in Dante’s Heaven, though less is said of it than might, perhaps, be expected. This is the music of the spheres. The idea that the movement of the planetary spheres caused them to emit sound was first scientifically expounded by Pythagoras, but the myth of sphere-music is of earlier origin, for the seven strings of the lyre and seven pipes of the syrinx are said to have been made to correspond with the seven notes of the spheres. The Pythagorean doctrine, though rejected by Aristotle, was accepted by many philosophers, and becoming widely known through the teaching of the neo-pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa (second century A.D.) had a considerable influence on the musical theories of the Middle Ages. The comparatively small use which Dante makes of it may be accounted for by the fact that the ‘master of those who know’ (Inf. iv, 131) declared it to be false. It is natural to think that the idea of sphere-harmony, based as it is on numerical proportion, would have attracted Dante, with his love of the symbolism of numbers, and the mere fact that he introduced it at all, in defiance of the authority both of Aristotle and of St. Thomas, shows that it made indeed a strong appeal to him.

What of this or that, as you move through a county or two, which has appeared to modify the face of the land for the good of those who live upon it; the new bridge, as perhaps at Witney, with curves and gradient indicated by all laws, or nearly all, and not unworthy balustraded parapets; a new expression of stateliness in what should now be called motor-gates, abolished railings and screens, treeless drives and cunning choice of building site; house-shortage houses; long-legged concrete water-tanks; circus-like pump colonies; or what time has consecrated : the built mass, intricate in unity, upon its green plinth, the close such service ennobles; structures, age on age agglomerate, heterogeneous, like the glorious tangle of Winchester; an agricultural tessellation, if you wish the fields by thousands, seen from the precipitous foreground of Lord Hereford’s Knob, lying north and south between Radnor Forest and the dim heights of Brecon; man’s motive in changing his natural surrounding by adaptation and addition, that is the question ever present to the meditative, seldom answered conclusively.

Or the mind rests willingly from irritated criticism, as of a man’s own house, be it ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ or neither; or that in which he gives thanks to God. Its consecrated purpose is assumed to release any usual building from the thraldom of time; that it exists and is for the present indispensable answers sufficiently all but impertinent questions. It need be neither cowardice nor languor which admits that the church is pleasing in which indeed there is nothing to please.

A Century ago, a violent controversy raged upon the subject of the limitation of the families of the poor; the two chief protagonists in this contest were the Rev. T. Malthus and William Cobbett. As the dispute has been revived during the present age, it is not without interest to re-trace the arguments of the debate.

In those days the fight centred upon the economic question; Malthus based his position upon the theory that population had a tendency to increase faster than subsistence; whilst Cobbett pointed out that under natural conditions there was ample means of providing for an increase in numbers in this country.

To-day, the question still remains of vast and vital importance, inasmuch as both advocates and opponents of Birth Control admit that married couples nowadays are compelled by reason of economic conditions to consider whether they can afford to maintain a family or not. Both Malthus and Cobbett agreed that modern industrial conditions were unsatisfactory in the extreme; Malthus desired to remedy social conditions by demanding that the proletariat should restrict the number of their children by means of ‘moral restraint’ and by this means increase the amount of food-supply available; Cobbett on the other hand regarded this demand as an outrage upon human liberty and saw in a return to natural conditions the only way out of the ‘impasse’ into which Industrialism had plunged the people of this country.

How is it that Dr. Coulton, with all his learning and his vast stores of information, his years of historical study and patient accumulation of facts, cannot be accepted as a serious historian? The question crops up with every fresh book that Dr. Coulton issues; and it won’t do to say that the fault lies with Catholics. It is the author who is responsible for the verdict; not his critics. Dr. Coulton is one of the most devoted of investigators. His sincerity cannot be questioned, his earnest desire to establish the truth is as patent as his anxiety to think well of mankind. Not for an instant would we suspect Dr. Coulton of deliberate suppression of fact, of wilful tampering with texts, of carelessness in the verifying of references.

And yet with all that may justly be said in acknowledgement of Dr. Coulton’s industry and in praise of his zeal for truth, the question still remains: How is it that Dr. Coulton, Editor of Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, cannot be accepted as a serious historian, and cannot be trusted as a responsible guide to the history of the Middle Ages?

It seems strange that the work of so remarkable a poet as M. André de Lujan, who is, moreover, a great force in the Catholic world, should be comparatively little known in England. Though his last work, Le Miroir Diving has attracted the notice of some of our best reviewers, it has not by any means received the close study it deserves. The Miroir, like the rest of Lujan’s poetry, commends itself to the critic by the fact, only too rare in works of the imagination, that its thoughts and the way in which they are expressed are so harmoniously fused that the reader cannot dissociate the music of the verse from the spiritual life which it reveals. The following short notes, offered by one who has no claim to criticize poetry, are solely meant to draw attention to the philosophical and religious value of the book. The trend of the thought is already familiar from the poetry previously published by M. André de Lujan, a pseudonym borrowed from one of the famous pilgrimage shrines of South America to conceal the real name of a distinguished diplomat. Yet, however great the beauty of his earlier verse, however lofty its intuition, it is now surpassed in the Miroir Divin, where the poetry strikes a note that is quite original in modern literature. Indeed, were we to seek for parallels to André de Lujan among contemporary English or French poets, we should discover them with difficulty. In point of fact, this book of French verse brings to the mind of the English reader the religious poets of the seventeenth century, the mystics Donne and Crashaw, the pious Herbert.

During the reign of Alexander I the position of the Catholic Church in Russia was a peculiar one. Not only did the Government consider itself called to rule the Church, but also to safeguard the purity of her faith from any alien influence, including the Pope’s. Thus, in 1822, the Emperor decreed the expulsion from Russia of Fr. Lindl, Rector of the Church in Odessa, for ‘preaching a creed which was not in accordance with the dogmas of the Latin faith,’ but at the same time the Russian Ambassador Italinsky was admonished for accepting from the Vatican a confidential note, demanding Lindl’s expulsion.

The Russian Dominicans figured in another example of this solicitude of the Government for the Catholic Church. As we have seen previously, the Monastic Orders were compelled to participate in the cost of primary and higher education and other useful institutions, having, however, little to do with religious life. A Conference of representatives of the Catholic Church was convened by Chatzky, visitor of the schools of Volhynia, Podolia and Kiev, in Luck, on October 20th, 1803, at which the expenses of maintaining the schools in these provinces were divided amongst the Orders. The Dominicans had to support (a) one district school in Staro-Constantinov; (b) twenty primary schools; (c) three scholarships in the Vilna University for preparing teachers; (d) pay 1,000 zloty for the maintenance of the botanical garden; (e) maintain two metereological stations; (f) hand over to the Ministry of Public Education the foundation for the education of pupils in Rome; (g) print in their printing office in Luck a hundred books for the Volhynia secondary school, also give to the same school four copies of every book which had been published there.

II

The two centuries of Tartar domination brought on radical changes in Russia. Whilst the South or Ukraine, temporarily occupied by Lithuania and Poland, remained open to Western influence, a new Power was gradually and steadily growing and strengthening in the densely wooded territories of Central Russia. In the early fourteenth century the thrifty and hardy rulers of Moscow, an insignificant and poor principality, began slowly and laboriously to extend their domain at the expense of other impoverished principalities, to ‘gather the lands,’ according to old Russian chronicles, until towards the middle of the fifteenth century, Muscovy became an important State under Ivan III, who shook off the last vestige of the Tartar yoke. For centuries cut off from Western influence, Moscow was strongly conservative in every way, and considered herself the natural heir of By-zance, a belief which Ivan Ill’s marriage with Sophia Paleologue, descendant of the last Emperors, only strengthened. Moscow claimed to be the ‘Third Rome,’ and the depository of the sole true faith. Her attitude towards Catholicism and everything coming from Rome was uncompromisingly hostile. The Union of Florence was rejected by Vassili II, Ivan’s father, and the Metropolitan Issidore, who was charged by the Pope with the mission of obtaining Russia’s adherence, was imprisoned, but eventually succeeded in escaping and leaving Russia. This anti-Catholic hostility was actively fostered by the Greek clergy. Despite such a seemingly hopeless outlook the Popes repeatedly tried to enter into cordial relations with the Great Princes and Tsars of Muscovy, though all their efforts remained fruitless.

North Berwick is justly esteemed. The sea there is what water is supposed to be, transparent. There are skerries ghostly enough in certain lights to be worth journeying to see, in the wide proportions of nature at the opening of the firth acceptable in all lights. And the villas, with their Scotch comfort and dignified rents! a place, too, where you meet the more discerning of your southern acquaintance ; and in the social atmosphere there are particulars to which visitors rightly attach value: the incidence of immovables to feu a division of time often overlooked, the forenoon, separated between two ticks of the clock from the afternoon. Many accuracies of speech besides assert indeed no grammatical superiority, but hint with politeness that historical English has more than one arbiter; and, above all, for holiday purposes, give a zest to trivial conversation; and— many things are to be said in favour of North Berwick.

But there is a solid background to that ephemeral watering-place all praise. No doubt villages easily reached meet the approval of the visitor and survive comparison with those of Oxfordshire: Dirleton, Whitekirk, Athelstanford; and winding, shady roads lead to desirable spots like Tyninghame Bay, where the river which crosses the county from Fala direction discharges reluctantly in flats dense with sea buckthorn; but better lies closer along the northern wreckage of the moor, Spott, Garvald, Gifford, and many a hamlet. The general aspect of the land, precarious farming, hesitating lines of communication, secure varieties of view to satisfy the exacting.

Saint Francis studying Holy Scripture : no, it must be confessed, few people ever picture him bent over a book or, with pen in hand, busy over his writing, pausing awhile to pray and ponder, and then taking up his work once more. I should like to see an artist produce a picture of Francis writing, for it would serve to remind us that, though his writings may be all gathered together into the compass of a single slender volume, they contain, nevertheless, passages of unsurpassed beauty. And this was the result not merely of prayer, but of study. Intrinsic evidence makes this plain, even if we had no further proof; but, as a matter of fact, we have the express testimony of Saint Bonaventure, who tells us that, though, prior to the foundation of the Order, he had never devoted much time to study—his early education was slightly above the average, since he knew French, and was well read in romance literature— afterwards he made considerable progress in learning, not merely by prayer, but by study, non solum orando sed etiam legendo.

Now, in these writings of Saint Francis, there is a certain subject to which is given an unmistakable prominence. It is not poverty, not the abstract love of God, not preaching, but devotion to the Person of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and as a consequence great reverence for priests and churches. It is the purpose of this paper to illustrate this point and, as a preliminary, it is well to bear in mind that this attitude of Francis was a conscious protest against a widespread neglect of and irreverence towards the Blessed Sacrament,

There are light effects in Skye not seen elsewhere; forms of the cloud in relation to the mountain beyond desire. The Cuillin Hills and the clouds have much reciprocally to say; for the island, shaped as it is laterally and vertically, jammed as it is between the sun and the sea, is a place of conflicting temperatures. Look at a contour map, and you will see to the south-west what might be the fragment of a honeycomb cosmically vast. The corries formed in admirable number by means of this geological conformation are so many matrices for the gestation of clouds. These formed are slow to float, and cling reluctantly to the rocky summits.

Skye is of all the most mountainous of islands; only Tasmania may be mentioned in the same sentence. Island supposes sea; the configuration of this island is erratic, as if long fingers had played with dough. In any case, then, you would have incomparable scenery; but add to what is exceptional this : that the hills as hills are of the highest class, with every quality hills should have. Scale, if there be any need to repeat it, is an abstract thing of relation, having absolutely little value. The properties of hills are mass, outline, colour: these possess them with emphasis; colour and outline varied in so much beauty that comparisons taunt the mind in vain. There is no bracken in the black and red hills: which is to say that the glorious pest has only just roothold in the island : but what robust compensations : and the glory of the land the barren gabbro pinnacles. Vegetation has a meagre part assigned it in places where if lichen can cling to a stone it is lucky. Why, here you may speak of a scree as vertical and provoke no exclamation.