This year’s Academy was awaited with unusual interest. A new President is always something of an excitement, and Sir William Llewellyn’s frequent intercession for the expressionists and post-impressionists led some people to cherish expectations of a change in policy. But no epoch-making innovations are apparent, and, indeed, hopes of the sort indicated must inevitably remain chimerical, it seems. Once again we can rejoice in the high standard of technical achievement permeating the whole exhibition. But we shall find very little Art in the proper sense of the word. Academy artists are hopelessly provincial despite their undoubted talent and sensibility : and provincial art does not count. The real tradition on which art lives is ignored, and in losing touch with the European current we are weighed down by the slough of suburbanity. It is not as if an independent art was being worked out in a grand and isolated fashion. There can be no deus ex machina about art . . .; it grows—often up the wrong tree—but it must draw its life blood from ‘influences.’

There is a considerable improvement this year in organisation. Black-and-white drawings, etchings and engravings now have Gallery VI to themselves, and we are spared in some measure what has hitherto tended to mar previous exhibitions—namely, the somewhat indecent association of sculpture with mural paintings in a decorative ensemble—The Picnic of the Borejoisy—as an aesthetic butcher was once heard to describe the general effect produced. In any case, the combination was never really successful. In spite of this arrangement, however, certain discontented exhibits have strolled into the fields to frolic.

It was at the end of a pre-war summer holiday in and around Munich—on September 12th, 1910, to be precise—after the Oberammergau Passion Play and the customary feast of Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner, that I first heard a symphony by Gustav Mahler. The concert had not been included in our pre-arranged programme, for, although my companion had heard Mahler conduct Tristan in London many years before, his own music was quite unknown to us, and we did not realise how important an event in the musical life of Europe was the first performance, conducted by himself, of his Eighth Symphony. We were persuaded by a Bavarian acquaintance to prolong our stay for a few days in order to be present at what we were assured would be a memorable occasion, and we were rewarded by hearing a work and a performance (or rather two performances, for the Symphony was played on two successive evenings, and we seized the opportunity of hearing it a second time) which made an unforgettable impression. Performances such as those two were destined never to bq heard again, for Mahler died a few months later, and no other conductor’s interpretation could quite equal his own, but the work remains, and has aroused enthusiasm in many countries. Now at last it is finding its way to England, and is to be performed at the Queen’s Hall, London, on April 12th next. Mahler’s work has been so much neglected in this country that the occasion seems fitting for a slight account of his life and work, more especially as the Eighth Symphony gives final and triumphant expression to ideas that are gradually taking form and developing through his earlier works.

If a year ago anyone had ventured to predict that the name of Daniel O’Connell could have aroused real national enthusiasm in Ireland, and among the Irish population of Great Britain, even in connection with the centenary of Catholic Emancipation, he would almost certainly have been told with complete conviction that O’Connell’s popularity in Ireland was dead for all time. Yet the demonstrations during the past few months in Ireland especially have shown such a sudden and overwhelming revival of his fame and of the deep affection with which he will always be regarded as long as the Irish tradition endures, as has amazed everyone who has watched the progress of the centenary celebrations.

I can speak only of what I saw myself during the week of celebrations in Cork, which, coming after the immense celebrations in Dublin, could scarcely be expected to repeat the extraordinary enthusiasm that the Dublin celebrations had aroused. Yet the demonstrations in Cork were on a scale which it is not easy to imagine. The High Mass in a great open space surrounded by hills attracted a vast concourse of people, which not only overflowed the two great fields which had been thrown into one, but filled all the slopes of the heights that overlooked the scene. The whole city was decorated with flags and banners and religious emblems, to an extent scarcely ever seen even in towns on the Continent, with centuries old traditions of public decoration. The large theatre was taken for three nights during the week, and on each of the three evenings the house was packed with people who paid for their seats, since the gallery only was open to free admission. On each occasion the chief event was a lecture on some aspect of Daniel O’Connell’s life’s work.

The general election (conducted with a solemnity and decorum unknown to our forefathers of Eatanswill, the high spirits of age kept in check by the gravity of youth, now for the first time invited to decide the fate of parties and the choice of rulers), having brought the Labour Party into power and given us its leader, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for prime minister, we are assured, with sorrowful shaking of head or with open rejoicing—it all depends on the point of view—that Socialism has triumphed at the polls, and that with a Socialist government responsible for England, the Empire, and things in general, we may expect the worst, or the best, to happen.

So far the ballots cast on Corpus Christi day have neither disturbed the money-changers of the world nor shaken the confidence of the multitude that went to Epsom the following week. The prime minister has chosen his cabinet and formed his government— a ministry of many talents. Socialists of the left, and of the right, veterans of the Fabian Society and the old S.D.F. and I.L.P.; responsible trade union leaders; distinguished university graduates; converts from Liberalism—all are included. Socialists are in office and hold the destinies of Empire in their hands.

But what is this Socialism, which, for better or worse, is the avowed belief, political and economic, of our Labour Government? What in these days does it signify to be called a Socialist? Happily, we may find an answer to these conundrums in the new edition of Mr. Beer’s History of British Socialism, with its complementary chapter bringing the story down to 1928. For the author, an Austrian, long resident in England and an old pupil of the London School of Economics under Professor Hewins, pursued his quest of this illusive British Socialism with conspicuous thoroughness, and his book is of the very greatest value in its interpretation of the facts so carefully set out.

Kienthal? Kiénthal? Does the name recall anything to mind or have we already forgotten that Bolshevism was hatched in that nest?

I spent last year at Kiénthal, merely as a tourist, however, for I had entirely forgotten that it has an historical interest attached to it. This fact was brought to my remembrance through a long paradoxical discussion with my travelling companion on the question as to whether or not we have a right to put an end to life. We all know the problem by which medical men are sometimes faced, that is—is it permissible for a doctor, whose patient is suffering from an incurable disease and whose end is inevitable, to spare him further atrocious sufferings by hastening that end? But is it necessary to encourage doctors in such a dangerous practice, do they not, of course without evil intent, kill off enough people as it is? Or would it be a duty to hold out a saving hand to a dangerous bandit who, when climbing the mountains, lost his footing on the edge of a chasm? Would it not be easy to turn aside and become absorbed in the scenery, very beautiful by the way, and well worth looking at? A little incident told us casually by our guide—not that we needed a guide to cross so easy a pass, but we wanted our bags carried—just missed setting the discussion ablaze.

I went to this valley, one of the most peaceful and least known in Switzerland, in search of rest. Starting from the Lake of Spiez you quit the line of Loetchberg at Reichenbach and follow the length of a torrent by a winding way impracticable for cars.

The sixtieth anniversary of the breach of Porta Pia through which the Italian army, under Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, entered Rome on September 20th, 1870, sees at long last some fulfilment of the prayer with which the noble President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, terminated the official protest of his government and himself at this final outrage to the Holy See. The whole Catholic world had seen with consternation and amazement the invasion of the last strip of Papal territory by the King of Piedmont and Sardinia in spite of his protestations of loyalty to the Sovereign Pontiff, in spite of his formal assurance to the French Emperor who, involved in the conflict with Prussia, had been obliged a month previously to withdraw his garrison from Rome. But even then Christendom was hardly prepared for the climax; the seizure of the Capital itself, and the virtual incarceration in the Vatican of the saintly and beloved Pontiff, Pius IX. The Chancelleries of Europe, indeed of the entire world, had nevertheless remained dumb in face of this flagrant injustice, contenting themselves with filing in their archives the formal remonstrances of the Holy See. Earlier in 1848 the voice of Pius IX in exile at Gaeta had evoked the assistance of Austria, of France, of Spain, but now Isabella Segunda was dethroned and in exile, Napoleon about to surrender to Prussia, Austria still quivering under the recent defeat of its armies and no other Power able, or at any rate willing, to defy the ‘Brigand of Savoy.’

The Anglican episcopate in the House of Lords cut a sorry figure in the debates on Catholic Emancipation. To the last the bishops of the established Church resisted by vote and speech every proposal that would, as the Bishop of Bangor put it in 1808, place Catholics ‘on an equal footing with Protestants’; or, as the Bishop of Lincoln declared in 1828, ‘endanger the Protestant Establishment.’ Nor was the high churchmanship of the ancient university of Oxford more favourable to the civil rights of Catholics. John Henry Newman himself signed the petition against Catholic Emancipation—there were many of these petitions—and the university unseated Peel when he appealed to the electorate in 1829 as a supporter of Catholic claims.

But one distinguished clergyman of the Church of England, Sydney Smith, Canon of St. Paul’s, did most consistently and whole-heartedly champion the Catholic cause. With wit and humour, with knowledge and, above all, with a sincerity that lifted the argument above mere advocacy, Sydney Smith strove year after year for the accomplishment of justice. And he wrote so well that The Letters of Peter Plymley and the articles in The Edinburgh Review are capital reading to-day. A forceful writer, thoroughly well informed of his subject, sure of his ground and equally sure of the mentality of the people he addressed, Sydney Smith struck as skilfully and as fearlessly as Cobbett did at iniquity.

He is the spoilt boy at home, the only child. Nearly always he has his own way, although he is often deprived of little necessities and many innocuous superfluities through his parents’ lack of thought, or laziness.

He is adored, and never rebuked for interesting himself in affairs that do not concern him; indeed, all subjects, private and public, are discussed before him without reticence, and he is permitted, often encouraged, to take a disproportionate share in conversations that once would have been reserved until the younger generation were absent. His parents desire to keep him with them in and out of season, so that when friends pay visits he seems parasitic and entirely unattractive. Being so much in company with grown-ups, his early outlook on life is perverted, for a precocious child must of necessity be unbalanced, since he has neither the experience, the judgement, nor the reason required for a studied point of view; but he early discovers the way to inspire his parents with admiration; he has little else to do; and presently he is elevated to a pedestal which, he becomes aware, is sometimes pleasantly secure, but occasionally very precarious, and he is so hard put to it to retain his place that he welcomes the aid of lying when he is in difficulties and the aid of ‘showing off’ when he is quite at ease; for he is quick to sense the disappointment of his parents when he falls below the standard they have arbitrarily set him, and he is fearful to lose grown-ups’ privileges.

In view of the General Election, promised for the early summer, political organisations of every colour are girding their loins for the contest and striving to stir up enthusiasm in the electorate. So far, however, it would seem that enthusiasm and even bare interest are lacking among the people in general. Even the possibilities of the increased feminine vote—that uncertain factor which may play such a decisive part in turning the political scales—fail to arouse interest. Nobody seems to care very much what will happen.

Is it possible that this is due, even here in England, to the growth of that contempt of modern parliamentary government which has led several of our Latin neighbours to throw parliaments aside and to set up temporary dictatorships? A very dangerous experiment, fraught with great risks! For, as St. Thomas says, ‘monarchic government is the best form of government; but on account of the great power entrusted to the monarch (whatever he may be called), monarchy easily degenerates into tyranny, unless the one to whom such power is entrusted be a man of perfect virtue.’ However, this is not to say that it is an unjustifiable experiment. Dangerous diseases, whether in the individual or in the body politic, call for drastic remedies; and it is a Gospel principle that ‘if thine eye scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.’ We are of the opinion that, of the two, a military dictatorship is less dangerous than the financial dictatorship with which we are threatened.

In other words, was St. Paul the first Pope after St. Peter?

The arguments for thinking that St. Paul succeeded St. Peter as Pope are manifold and cumulative. The arguments against are almost entirely the later lists of Roman Bishops, which do not mention St. Paul.

1. It is significant that every writer before the third century who mentions St. Peter as related to the Church of Rome invariably couples the two names ‘Peter and Paul.’

2. According to competent critics, such as Professor C. H. Turner, the tradition of coupling the names of St. Peter and St. Paul begins with St. John the Evangelist. The eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse contains a detailed description of the ‘two witnesses’ (μάρτνσíν = martyrs) and the ‘two olive-branches and two candlesticks that stand before the Lord of the earth.’ The allusion to the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul under Nero is almost irrefutable.

3. In the first letter of Pope St. Clement to the Church of Corinth the coupled names of St. Peter and St. Paul are used to hearten the somewhat cowed Corinthians.

4. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing a little later to the Romans, speaks of St. Peter and St. Paul laying commands on them. The Church of Rome could be commanded only by a Bishop of Rome.

Pierre Francois Le Courager, Augustinian Canon and Librarian of Ste. Genevieve, was the forerunner of many Frenchmen of distinction who have shown a kindly interest in the Anglican position and who have regarded ‘reunion’ as a not impossible dream. The Père Le Courager was a product of the Gallicanism of his day, the result of the long and uncertain contest between the Holy Father and the Kings of France, in which success seemed to incline first to one side and then to the other; but the odd trick, as Maitland would have said, fell to the Most Christian King. Louis XIV at his death left the crown virtually supreme in the Church and State. Apart from his Gallicanism, it is improbable that the Canon would ever have manifested much interest in the Anglican body.

Le Courager reproduced all the arguments of the Caroline Divines in favour of validity and of himself he added nothing fresh to the dispute. In fact, like all Frenchmen who have taken up ‘reunion,’ he knew little or nothing of England and her peculiarities. When he came here to reside and was given the Oxford D.D., a most unprecedented step, and one which aroused the wrath of at least one good Protestant, he no doubt learned more, but he was never really familiar with the psychology of the English.

The ‘Validité des Ordinations des Anglois,’ published at Brussels but purporting to emanate from Paris, soon caused a mild excitement similar to that with which we at intervals are familiar.

Father Ronald Knox thinks, but is not sure, that modern humour is degenerate satire. However uncertain he may be in his theories in his practice of both humour and satire he has the certainty of a very great master. Success in satire is readily proved by the way those who are ridiculed sit up and take notice. In the case of Father Knox there are still more eloquent witnesses to success; namely, those who are accustomed to satire, yet find themselves omitted by a master as too easy or venerable a prey. Witness, indeed, the rage against this book by our venerable friend The Tablet.

Every line of Father Knox’s introductory Essay is richly suggestive. I select the only two of his remarks that provoke me to a difference of opinion.

He thinks that St. Thomas has omitted from the Summa Theologica the question of humour before the Fall; and that, for lack of space. The Summa is an encyclopedia, but not the modern sort. It classifies its subject-matter according to place in the universe, not according to place of first letter in the local alphabet. Therefore, you will not find a special paragraph beginning Humour before the Fall, with elsewhere, Fall, Humour before the. You will not; even find a special section on Humming Birds.

With the signing of the Lateran Treaty, the two parties of the ‘Blacks’ and the ‘Whites’ have disappeared from the Roman aristocracy. When, in 1870, the temporal power of the Popes over Rome ceased to exist, the Roman aristocracy could not forget its origin, and maintained with dignity an attitude of fidelity and respect towards the Papacy. The princely families of that time—and nearly all of them still exist—owed, with very rare exceptions, their own rise to the Papacy. It is certain that already in the seventeenth century the feudal nobility of the Middle Ages had disappeared. The few families which descended from them, such as Colonna, Caffarelli, Orsini, Conti, Massimo, Savelli, Publicola-Santacroce, while unable to consider themselves created by the Popes, had received from them in later times so many benefits that they were much on a level with those who owed their greatness exclusively to the circumstance of having seen one of their own blood on the Throne of St. Peter. Such was the case of the greater number: Borghese, Barberini, Aldobrandini, Odescalchi, Ottoboni, Altieri, Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Rospigliosi, Chigi, and Braschi. There were Papal families who did not live in Rome, such as the Corsini, returned to Florence, the Carafa, and the Pignatelli, re-established at Naples. In the list of the Roman Princes one also found the Ruspoli, Antici-Mattei, Lante, Cenci-Bolognetti, Sforza-Cesarini, Giusiniani-Bandini, Doria-Pamphili, and Del Drago, promoted from the marquisate to the principality on the occa-sion of a conspicuous marriage, and finally the Torlonia, the last-comers, who had gained the coat-of-arms and the closed coronet by services rendered to the Pontifical State.

Odarkness-Frighted one Let faith thy fears outrun.

Within thy Father’s arms Peace be to death’s alarms.

And on God’s mothering breast Take, child, untroubled rest.

Vincent McNabb, O.P.

It will be very regrettable if, in this centenary year of Catholic Emancipation, some one competent does not undertake to write a Life of Charles Butler. The full story of his work for the advancement of the English Catholics should illuminate the whole condition of the Church in England in the last critical years of the penal laws, when an increasing number of Catholic families had abandoned the Faith, and when the prevailing philosophical tendencies brought new dangers to the small remnant that still remained steadfast. In Ireland, the persecution of the Church had been so thorough and vindictive that the Catholic population had been deprived of almost everything, and had practically nothing left to lose. But in England, the fact that the few Catholic families were mostly of the propertied class was a continual source of temptation to surrender.

Almost every year, as the second half of the eighteenth century wore on, some new case of apostasy would reduce still further the small number of devoted Catholic families, who still kept the faith alive and had gathered round them groups of dependents and retainers who attended Mass in the private chapels of the great houses. ‘In this year alone,’ wrote the Rev. Charles Berington in 1780, when Charles Butler had just reached his thirtieth year, ‘we have lost more by the defection of the two mentioned gentlemen (the heirs of the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Teynham) than we have gained by Proselytes since the Revolution.’

There are some places, so it seems to me, which have in them the quality of eternity. They are, as it were, little plots from the garden of Heaven to be reinclosed when the fitful breeze of time has blown itself out, and the universe is left undisturbed again with God.

One of such places is known to me, and there may be others; for I cannot think that one spot alone in the world can be thus singled out for eternity to the exclusion of all others, though for my part I know only one. For convenience I will call it Knights-at-Rest, since there are indeed knights at rest in one at least of its quiet fields; and to give it its true name savours of sacrilege, as if one were to speak intimately of a dear friend in public. For to me it is truly a dear friend and—which is a far greater thing—it is holy ground. And if it be said that this holiness, is a figment of my mind and not inherent in the place itself, but induced by long sojourning there and happy associations; I answer that, though I have often visited it, and never unhappily, I have passed no more than a few nights there in all; that the very first evening I saw it there fell upon me in some measure at any rate a sense of the presence of eternal things; and that one other human being at least, who has even less close associations with it than I have, has known the same sensation and holds it true.

As in the soul that is near to God there exist a wide calm and a silence that pervades the jangling noises of life, so, whenever I come to Knights-at-Rest, I am caught up as on to a mountain top, where even the loudest sounds beat harmlessly upon the protecting silence, and the voices of the village come to my ears muted and full of peace.

There is only one way of making supernatural truths manifest, only one way of showing such truths to be truths, and that is by showing them to be vouched for, and therefore revealed, by God. If they are really truths, before they were revealed, they were, as being supernatural, known to the Divine Wisdom alone, and we can come to the knowledge of them only by getting His word for them and taking them on His authority. Before, then, we can accept such truths as truths, the assertion of them must come to us clothed in some way with the light of His divine authority.

By adequate signs the Divine Wisdom showed His presence in the Christian Faith, showed that what was asserted in the preaching of that Faith originated from Him; from Him, too, the inspiration of those who preached it. These teachers of the Christian Faith taught, not only by the spoken, but also by the written word. This written word was later gathered together to form what we know as the New Testament. Hence what is taught in the New Testament comes to us invested with divine authority.