THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NO. CCCXXIV. APRIL, 1886. VOL. CLXII.

CONTENTS:

I. [Matthew Parish
]
II. [The Christian Brothers.—Religious Schools in France and England.]
III. [Archives of the Venetian Republic.]
IV. [Yeomen Farmers in Norway.]
V. [Oliver Cromwell: his character illustrated by himself.]
VI. [Travels in the British Empire.]
VII. [The Bishop of Durham on the Ignatian Epistles.]
VIII. [Books and Reading.]
IX. [Characteristics of Democracy.]
X. [The Gladstone-Morley Administration.]

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CONTENTS OF NO. 324.

Art. Page
I.—Matthæi Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora. Edited by Henry Richards Luard, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Registrary of the University, and Vicar of Great St. Mary's Cambridge. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 7 vols. 8vo. London, Vol I. 1872—Vol. VII. 1883. [293]
II.—1. The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work, with a sketch of the Life of their Founder, The Venerable Jean Baptiste de la Salle. By Mrs. R. F. Wilson. London, 1883.
2. La Première Année d'Instruction Morale et Civique: notions de droit et d'économie politique (Textes et Récits) pour répondre à la loi du 28 Mars 1882 sur l'enseignement primaire obligatoire: ouvrage accompagné de Résumé, de Questionnaires, de Devoirs, et d'un Lexique des mots difficiles. Par Pierre Laloi. Quatorzième Edition. Paris, 1885.
3. Report of the Committee of Council on Education (England and Wales). 1884-85.
4. Seventy-fourth Annual Report of the Incorporated National Society. 1885.[325]
III.—The State Papers of the Venetian Republic; namely, Cancelleria Inferiore, Cancelleria Ducale, Cancelleria Secreta, preserved in the Convent of the Frari, at Venice. [356]
IV.—1. Journal of a Residence in Norway during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836. By Samuel Laing, Esq. London, 1837.
2. Le Royaume de Norvège et le Peuple Norvégien. Par le Dr. O. I. Broch. Christiania, 1878.
3. Official Reports of Prefects on the Economic Condition of the Provinces of Norway in 1876-80. Christiania, 1884.
4. Publications of the Statistical Bureau Christiania. [384]
V.—A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.; Secretary, first to the Council of State, and afterwards to the Two Protectors, Oliver and Richard Cromwell. In Seven Volumes, containing authentic Memorials of the English affairs from the year 1638 to the Restoration of King Charles II. Vol. III. London, 1742. [414]
VI.—1. Oceana, or England and her Colonies. By James Anthony Froude. London, 1886.
2. Through the British Empire. By Baron von Hübner. 2. vols. London, 1886.
3. The Western Pacific and New Guinea. By Hugh Hastings Romilly, Deputy Commissioner of the Western Pacific. London, 1886. [443]
VII.—The Apostolic Fathers: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp. Revised Texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Bishop of Durham. London, 1885. 2 vols. [467]
VIII.—1. An Address delivered to the Students of Edinburgh University on Nov. 3, 1885. By the Earl of Iddesleigh, Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh.
2. Hearing, Reading and Thinking: an address to the Students attending the Lectures of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching. By the Rt. Hon. G. J. Goschen, M.P.
3. The Choice of Books and other Literary Pieces. By Frederic Harrison. London, 1886. [501]
IX.—1. Popular Government. Four Essays. By Sir Henry Sumner Maine. Second Edition. London, 1886.
2. Democracy in America. By Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Henry Reeve. New Edition. London, 1862.
3. On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789. Translated by Henry Reeve. Second Edition. London, 1873. [518]
And other Works.
X.—1. Fourth Midlothian Campaign. Political Speeches delivered, November, 1885, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. Edinburgh, 1886.
2. John Morley: The Irish Record of the New Chief Secretary, 1886.
3. Ireland: A Book of Light on the Irish Problem. Edited by Andrew Reid. London, 1886. [544]
And other Works.

ART. I.—Matthæi Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora. Edited by Henry Richards Luard, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Registrary of the University, and Vicar of Great St. Mary's, Cambridge. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 7 vols. 8vo. London, Vol. I. 1872—Vol. VII. 1883.

Some of our readers are not likely yet to have forgotten the remarkable essay which the late Professor Brewer contributed to our pages in 1871, and which has since been reprinted in the volume of 'English Studies,' published shortly after the author's death in 1879. English History owes a larger debt to few men of our time than it owes to Mr. Brewer. As a teacher whose pupils were always eager to listen to all that fell from his lips, and whose enthusiasm never failed to awake a kindred spark in the minds of those who looked to him for light in dark places and guidance along tortuous paths of research, Mr. Brewer has had few equals, and perhaps has left no successor who can compare with him. As a writer he was always brilliant, lucid, and vigorous, and his unrivalled 'Introductions' to the Calendars of Letters and Papers, concerned with the reign of Henry VIII., will long continue to be read by all students of our History, as necessary and indispensable interpreters of the vast storehouses of original documents which he did so much to rescue from the oblivion or obscurity to which they had previously been consigned. But it was as an organizer of research that Mr. Brewer earned his greatest fame and achieved his greatest success, and it was to him more than to any one man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the powers that be a more generous freedom of access to our Records, and to his prodigious powers of work in arranging and tabulating the enormous masses of documents of all kinds which constitute the Apparatus of English History, that this country stands indebted, and will remain indebted as long as our literature lasts.

In the Essay on 'New Sources of English History' the learned author has given us a startling account of the deplorable condition into which some of the most precious of our national manuscripts had been allowed to fall—of the utterly chaotic state of our depositories—of the hopelessness, the despair which must needs have come upon one student after another who might be fortunate enough to be turned loose into the various prison-houses of our muniments—and of the efforts made, and happily at last made with splendid success, to cleanse the Augean stable, and to let the world know something of the wealth it contained. With characteristic modesty Mr. Brewer said nothing of his own part in all that laborious and sagacious organization which resulted in our obtaining the magnificent Calendars, which have opened out to us all 'that new world which is the old' that had become almost forgotten or unknown. He was not the man to assert himself, he knew that posterity would give him his due, but with a simple desire to stimulate research, and to show how much remained to be done, and how much to be discovered and made known, he drew the attention of his readers chiefly and primarily to the value of the Calendars, and to the important results which those Calendars had already produced, and were destined to produce hereafter. He had quite enough to say upon this point, and if his life had been spared, it is probable that he would eventually have given us a more comprehensive account of the series of volumes which, though now issuing from the press pari passu with the Calendars, were originally undertaken a little later. Such an Essay by such a master would indeed have been an important aid to the student, but at the time of Mr. Brewer's lamented death the day had hardly come for such a résumé; and even now, though so much has been achieved, so much and so well, the hour has hardly arrived nor the man for taking a comprehensive survey, and giving to the public an intelligent and intelligible account of that other Library of Chronicles, and biographies, and letters, and cartularies, and those other memorials of the Middle Ages in England, which it is to be feared are hardly as well known as they ought to be, nor as widely studied as they deserve.

Meanwhile it is high time that attention should be drawn to that noble series of volumes now issuing from the press under the editorship of scholars whose reputation is assured, and whose work continues to enhance their reputation—high time that we should begin to do something like justice to the labourers, who have deserved so well at the hands of such Englishmen as have any sentiment of loyalty to the great thoughts, the great doings, and the noble lives of their forefathers. The philosopher, who 'holds the mirror up to nature,' has not of late, as a rule, missed his reward. The historian, who in his dogged, patient, toilsome fashion holds the mirror up to the life of bygone ages, has received among us scant recognition, and generally is rewarded with but barren honour. What has been done and still is doing will be best understood by briefly reviewing the progress of that movement, which has brought about the great revival of English Historical study, and under the influence of which the opinions and convictions of educated men have passed through a very decided change, one destined to produce still greater and more unlooked for changes of sentiment and belief before the present century shall have closed.

It is just fifty years since 'the Father of Record Reform,' as he has been justly called, received his patent creating him Master of the Rolls. Although as far back as the year 1800 a Commission was issued for the methodizing and digesting the National Records, and for printing such calendars and indexes as should be thought advisable; and though during the next twenty-seven years many works of supreme interest and importance were printed at the public expense, the enormous extent of our National Records were known to few, and the difficulty of consulting them, (dispersed as they were through a score of different depositories) was enough to deter all but the most resolute enquirers. It was Lord Langdale who first set himself to reduce the chaos of our archives into something like order. When the old Record Commission expired in 1837, it was by Lord Langdale's influence that the Public Record Act was passed on the 14th of August, 1838, whereby the Records named therein were placed under the custody of the Master of the Rolls for the time being, and hereupon a new era began. Nevertheless it was not till July 1850 that a vote was obtained from the Treasury for the erection of a national depository, wherein our vast archives should be assembled under a single roof, and not till 1855 that the magnificent Tabularium in Fetter Lane was opened for the reception of our muniments.

Lord Langdale died in April 1851;[1] he was succeeded in the Mastership of the Rolls by Lord Romilly, then Sir John. A happier choice could not have been made. To Lord Langdale belongs the credit of carrying out the grand scheme for consolidating the various collections of documents, which, as we have said, had up to this time been widely dispersed, and the very existence of the larger mass of which was known only to a few experts. To Lord Romilly we owe it that the great original sources of English History so assembled have been rendered accessible to any student who desires to consult them; and it is to him, too, that we are indebted for the issue of that unrivalled series of 'Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Invasion of the Romans to the Reign of Henry VIII.,' which has laid the foundation for a science of history firmer and deeper and wider than before was believed to be even attainable.

Great men are at once the leaders and the product of their age. When Lord Langdale set himself to his task he was only attempting that which had been talked of since the reign of Edward II. For five centuries the unification of our National Records had been recommended and advised by lawyers, statesmen, and scholars from generation to generation, but no practical scheme had ever been suggested, and the difficulties in the way of reform were supposed to be insuperable. It was a Herculean task, and one that grew ever more arduous the longer it was postponed. During the first quarter of the present century profound dissatisfaction had begun to be felt at the condition of our historical literature. The ordinary text-books were full of fables, more than suspected to be fables, and which yet it was extremely difficult to disprove satisfactorily. Theories which had long passed current were being rudely assailed, and yet—in the face of the obstacles that hindered research—stubbornly held their ground, or were repeated with peremptory dogmatism. A deep distrust of the old methods and the old assumptions had given rise to a widespread desire to drag forth from their hiding-places any documents, however dry or recondite, which might throw some clear light upon our national life and manners, and not only upon mere events of national importance during Medieval times. A desire to know the truth was in the air. The science of history had passed out of its infancy, and the stirrings of a new craving—the passion of Research—were making themselves felt in that mysterious restlessness which indicates that the old smooth-faced docility, the old childish submission to tutelage, the old unquestioning acceptance of authority, has gone for ever, and a new life has begun. The year before Lord Langdale received his appointment as Master of the Rolls, the Surtees Society had been founded for the printing of unedited MSS. illustrative of the history of the northern counties; and in the same year that the old Record Commission expired, the English Historical Society was started, a society which numbered amongst its promoters such men as the late Mr. Kemble, Mr. H. O. Coxe, Sir T. Duffus Hardy, and Mr. Stevenson—the leaders and teachers of that school of younger men who have so ably followed in the steps of their seniors, and who, mounting on the shoulders of the giants, have gained a wider view than it was given to those others to attain. The five years that followed saw the foundation of the Camden, the Percy, and the Chetham Societies, not to mention many another that has done useful work in its way. The labours of these pioneers soon made it quite apparent that the sources of our national history—social, ecclesiastical, and political—were quite too voluminous for private enterprise to deal with, and would demand the co-operation of a body of trained scholars and the resources of the public exchequer to make them available as apparatus for the teachers of the future.

On the 26th of January, 1857, Sir John Romilly submitted to the Treasury his memorable proposal for the publication of certain materials for the History of England;[2] and on the 9th of February a Treasury Minute was put forth approving of the plan that had been drawn up as one 'well calculated for the accomplishment of this important national object in an effectual and satisfactory manner within a reasonable time.' Forthwith arrangements were made for the issue of that series of works which is now known as the 'Rolls Series,' a collection which has already extended to upwards of 200 volumes.

The lines laid down by Sir John Romilly were almost exactly those which had been followed by the English Historical Society. Every editor was to 'give an account of the MSS. employed by him, of their age and their peculiarities;' he was to add 'a brief account of the life and times of the author, and any remarks necessary to explain the chronology; but no other note or comment was to be allowed, except what might be necessary to establish the correctness of the text.' The restriction was absolutely necessary if only for this, that when the 'Rolls Series' was first commenced even the most accomplished of its editors were mere learners. The time had not yet arrived for comments. The text was wanted first in its completeness and integrity.

Looking back to this period—little more than a quarter of a century ago—it is difficult for us to realize the deplorable condition into which our historical literature had been allowed to fall. Kemble's great work, the 'Codex Diplomaticus ævi Saxonici,' the first volume of which appeared in 1839, and his 'History of the Saxons in England,' published in 1849, came upon the great body of intelligent men as the revelation of new things. It is sufficient to turn to the chapter on the Constitutional History of England before the Conquest, in Hallam's 'History of the Middle Ages,' to be assured how meagre and superficial even Hallam's knowledge was of everything before the Norman invasion. It was no fault of his; he made good use of all such materials as were then accessible to the student—that is, all such as had been printed; for that incomparably larger apparatus which since Hallam's days has been published to the world, it was for all practical purposes as if it had never existed at all. Even men of culture and learning were persuaded that all that was ever likely to be known about the religious houses had been collected in the new edition of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.' It is hardly too much to say that of the history of English monasticism Hallam knew nothing. Dr. Lingard himself had very little more to say of the great Abbeys than his predecessors, and had a very inadequate conception of the part they played in the development of our institutions; and when Dr. Maitland wrote his brilliant 'Essays on the Dark Ages,' he hardly names St. Edmundsbury or St. Alban's, and though one of his most fascinating chapters is concerned with the early days of Croyland, his only authority for the beautiful story, which he has handled so skilfully, is a romantic narrative attributed to Ingulphus, which has been demonstrated to be a somewhat clumsy though a clever forgery. Of the Mendicant Orders—of the work they did, of the influence they exercised, and of the attitude adopted towards them in the 13th century by the parochial clergy on the one hand, and by the monks on the other—even less was known, if less were possible, than of their wealthier rivals.

Two years had scarcely elapsed since the issue of the Treasury Minute of February, 1857, before it began to be said that the history of England would have to be written anew. In the single year 1858 eleven works of the highest importance were printed, and it was evident that neither original materials nor scholarly editors would be wanting to make the 'Rolls Series' all that it was desired it should become. The 'Chronicles of the Monasteries of Abingdon and of St. Augustine at Canterbury,' the contemporary 'Life of Edward the Confessor,' and the priceless 'Monumenta Franciscana,' telling the wonderful story of the settlement of the Minorites among us, were printed from unique MSS. Next year the 'Chronicle of John of Oxnedes' was brought out by Sir Henry Ellis, and the 'Historia Anglicana' of Bartholomew Cotton, by Dr. Luard, neither work having ever before been printed. Volume followed volume in rapid succession, a steady improvement becoming observable in the style of editing, as the several editors became more familiar with the results of their predecessors' labours.

It was while working at Bartholomew Cotton that Dr. Luard was brought into intimate relations with the 13th century. Hitherto the composite character of such chronicles as had been published had indeed been perceived, but no attempt had been made to trace the original authority for statements repeated in the same words by one writer after another. Dr. Luard opened out a new line of enquiry, and in his edition of Cotton's Chronicle he endeavoured to distinguish in every instance the material which might fairly be called original from that which his author had borrowed from older writers and incorporated into his text. The borrowed matter was printed in smaller type, and the sources from which it had been derived were indicated by references given at the foot of the page. Cottons' own additions were printed in a bolder type, so as at once to catch the eye. While conducting the laborious researches necessitated by this new method of editing his text, it became clear to Dr. Luard that Cotton had borrowed largely from Matthew Paris—who had lived just a generation before him—and that he had also borrowed from a mysterious writer much read in the 14th and 15th centuries, who went by the name of Matthew of Westminster. As to this Matthew of Westminster, Dr. Luard postponed dealing with him till some future time. He might prove a mere mythic personage, and it was suspected he would; but Matthew Paris was certainly no shadow, but a very real man, whose greatness seemed to grow greater the more he was studied and the better he was known. Yet as Dr. Luard became more familiar with the text of Paris, he was soon convinced that in its printed form it was bristling with the grossest inaccuracies of all kinds. Originally it had been published under the authority of Archbishop Parker in 1571; and though other editions had appeared, in this country and on the Continent, several times since then, Paris's great work had remained exactly in the same state as Parker (or whoever his agent was) had left it three centuries ago. That is to say, that by far the most important work on English history during the 13th century—not to mention European affairs—and by far the most minute and trustworthy picture of English life and manners during the reign of Henry III.—a record, too, drawn up by a contemporary writer of rare genius and literary skill—was defaced by blunders, audacious tampering with the text and gross inaccuracies, to such an extent that no conscientious student could allow himself to quote the printed work without first referring to one of the very MSS. which the Archbishop professed to have used.

Nevertheless, the task of bringing out a critical edition of the 'Chronica Majora' did not appear less formidable as fresh sources of information cropped up; and Dr. Luard shrank from the immense labour that such an edition involved, it was because he had formed a correct notion of its magnitude. In 1861 he brought out in the same series the 'Letters of Robert Grosseteste,' the heroic and magnanimous Bishop of Lincoln; and while working at this volume, the England of the 13th century became more and more alive and present to the mind of the student.

But distinctly and grandly as one noble character after another revealed itself, there was a strange mist that required to be dispelled before even the importance of great events could be rightly estimated. The inner life of the monasteries, great and small, must be enquired into, so far as it was possible to get any information on so obscure a subject; and, above all, the paramount influence which so magnificent an institution as the Abbey of St. Alban's exercised upon the intellectual life of the country must be studied with patient impartiality. Before a scholar with so lofty an ideal of an editor's duty could venture upon his magnum opus, there was indeed an enormous mass of preliminary work to get through. The horizon seemed to widen everywhere as the years of historical discovery went on. It was left to Mr. Riley to attack that wonderful collection of documents to which he gave the title of 'Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani'—a series occupying twelve thick volumes, and which furnish us not only with a priceless apparatus, by the help of which a hundred problems perplexing the historian are furnished with a clue towards their solution—but which afford such an insight into the life of the greatest monastery in England during its best times as nobody expected could ever be forthcoming. While Mr. Riley was occupied with the Chronicles of St. Alban's and the lives of its Abbots, Dr. Luard was engaged in collecting all the Annals of the lesser monasteries which he could lay his hands on. Some of these had already been printed more or less carelessly; others had never seen the light since they were written. Such as were printed were extremely difficult to procure—scarce and costly. Dr. Luard took six years in bringing out his five volumes—volumes referring to the golden age of English Monasticism, which threw all sorts of side-light upon Mr. Riley's 'Chronicles,' while they were in turn continually being explained and illustrated by them.

While the 'Monastic Annals' were passing through the press, a very startling announcement was made by no less a person than Sir Frederick Madden, Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Sir Frederick declared that he had come upon a copy of what was commonly called the 'Historia Minor' of Matthew Paris, not only written by the author himself, but actually annotated, corrected, and illustrated with drawings by his own hand. Such an announcement made by an expert of European reputation, one who had been handling MSS. all his life, necessarily created a sensation in the literary world. If it were accepted and proved true, it was one of the most curious romances in the history of literature. But was it true? To most critics the antecedent improbability of the theory put forth by Sir Frederick was so great as to relegate it to the domain of extravagant paradox; but the name and fame of its supporter were too high to allow of its being dismissed without refutation. For two or three years no one ventured to enter the lists against so formidable a champion who had staked his reputation upon the issue. At last another great specialist, not a whit less competent than the other, came forward to controvert the opinions and theory which had been so confidently maintained by Sir Frederick. In 1871 Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy brought out the third volume of his Catalogue, and it was in the famous Introduction to this volume that the Madden Hypothesis was first assailed with damaging effect. Sir Thomas, it must be remembered, was Deputy Keeper of the Records. Sir Frederick was Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Each was the representative man in his own department, and a very pretty quarrel arose. Into the merits of that quarrel it is impossible to enter here; it is a matter for specialists, not for outsiders, to pronounce upon. This, however, may be said with confidence, that if we except that school of very able and accomplished experts which the British Museum has trained, experts whose range of diplomatic knowledge must needs be wider than that of any 'Record man,' the refutation of Sir Frederick Madden by Sir Thomas Duffus was generally regarded as unanswerable and triumphant. With the exception indicated—a very important exception indeed—the Madden Hypothesis was believed to be utterly demolished, in fact 'blown into the air.' Nevertheless there are those, from whom something may be expected some day in the way of rejoinder who are by no means sure that the last word on this question has been said that deserve to be said, and even so scrupulous and sagacious a critic as Dr. Luard seems to be less certain than he was that Madden was quite wrong in all he affirmed, and Hardy quite right in all he denied.

The attention which had been drawn to Matthew Paris by this remarkable controversy could not but have its effect in awakening a desire for that critical edition of the larger Chronicle which Dr. Luard had been so long preparing. The way was cleared for such an edition now; it was not likely that any more MSS. of the author would be discovered. Such as were deposited in the various libraries had been carefully scrutinized, or their homes were known, and the long years of preparatory study had been turned to good account—no pains had been spared nor any labour grudged. In 1872 the first volume of the 'Chronica Majora' appeared in the 'Rolls Series.' In 1884 the seventh and last volume was issued, containing the learned editor's last preface, glossary, and emendations, and an Index to the whole work, extending over nearly 600 pages. It is a long time since an English scholar has had the good fortune to carry to its completion so important a work as this, projected on so large a scale, executed with such conscientious care—characterized by so much critical skill and scrupulous accuracy—all this achieved single-handed in the midst of other duties, professional and academical, which would be quite sufficient to exhaust the energies of an ordinary man.

Now that the work has been done, and done so thoroughly that it may safely be asserted the standard edition of the 'Chronic Majora' has been published once for all, we are in a better position than we ever were heretofore for taking a survey of the life and labours of its author, and for answering the enquiries which of late have been made with increasing frequency, and made too among those who might have been expected to be able to answer them. Who and what was Matthew Paris? What did he do, and what did he write that the learned few should speak of him with so much reverence, though to the unlearned many he is little more than a famous and familiar name?

Perhaps before dealing with his personal history, or entering into any examination of his literary labours, it will be well first to answer the question—What was Matthew Paris? for it is simply impossible to estimate rightly the debt we owe to him, or to understand the brief account that could be drawn up of his career till we have learned to know something of the profession to which he belonged, and the great foundation of which he was so distinguished an ornament. By profession Matthew Paris was a monk. A monk 'professed' is a term indicating the higher grade to which not every brother in a monastery attained. The very term 'profession' may be traced to the cloister. In its usual acceptation it is modern.

To dilate upon the various monastic orders, which were almost as numerous in the 13th century as the different religious denominations are in the 19th, would be out of place here. Suffice it to say that the English monasteries in Henry III.'s time counted by hundreds. But there were monasteries and monasteries. Some the homes of the scholar, the devout and the high-minded, the seats of learning and the resting-places of the studious and the aged, who hated war and tumult, and only longed for repose. Some that were mere hiding holes for the lazy and the incompetent, the failures among the younger sons of the gentry, who had not the power of pushing their way in the world, or whose career had been a disappointment. Such men, where all else failed, could get themselves admitted into some smaller religious house by the interest of the patron; sometimes bringing in a trifling addition to the common property, sometimes simply 'pitchforked' into a vacancy, it is difficult to say how. Then they became 'brethren' of the monastery, and sharers in most of the good things that it could offer; they were almost exactly in the same position as Fellows of Colleges were twenty years ago, holding their preferment for life, with this difference, that a Fellowship at the smallest College in Oxford or Cambridge always implied some qualification for the post. A College Fellow, at the worst, must have had some claims to learning or culture; whereas in the smaller and more remote monasteries a man might be scandalously ignorant, and yet gain admittance as a brother of the house.

Between the highest and the lowest of that great army of monks, dispersed through the length and breadth of the land, when English monarchism had declined from its earlier ideal, there was as great a distance as there is at this moment between the Fellows of Balliol or Trinity, and the poor brethren of the Charterhouse, or the bedesmen in the cathedrals of the old foundation.

In the first half of the 13th century English monarchism was at its best; the 12th century was emphatically the reformation age of British monarchism. All the many schemes for starting new orders with improved Rules, and all the efforts to improve the discipline of the religious houses and fan the fire of devotion among their members, assumed that the monasteries were then living institutions with vast powers for good; and institutions which needed only to be reformed to make them all that the most earnest and ardent enthusiast claimed that they ought to be, and might become. In the fifty years preceding the accession of King John, more than 200 monasteries had been built and endowed—some of them munificently endowed, and the only purely English order (that of St. Gilbert of Sempringham) had been founded, and in little more than fifty years could count no less than fourteen considerable houses. Englishmen believed in the monastic system as they have never believed in anything else since then; never have such prodigious sacrifices been made, never has such lavish munificence been shown by the upper classes as during the century ending with the accession of Edward I. In the next hundred years they were chiefly the townsmen and traders, not the landed proprietors, who emptied their money-bags into the lap of the Begging friars. Certainly the great religious houses at the end of the 13th century had the entire confidence of the country, and it is impossible to understand the long reign of Henry III. unless we are fully awake to the fact that then, too, the monasteries were not only thriving and powerful, but were institutions on whose help and power the people leant with an assured confidence, because they were pre-eminently the people's friends. But between the old foundations which had a history and the new houses that were springing up in every shire, some feeling of jealousy and soreness was sure to arise. The old abbeys, with a history that looked back into a past all clouds and mist, but none the less glorious for that, affected a supercilious tone towards the mushrooms that had of late sprouted into vigorous life. A man need not be an old man who can remember when the Eton and Winchester boys at the Universities affected an air of contempt for all the 'modern' places of education, and disdained to number such institutions as Cheltenham or Clifton among the 'public schools.' These were all very well in their way, but where were their traditions? So with the older and grander Benedictine monasteries, with charters from Saxon kings, let alone anything else. Glastonbury, where men said two of the Apostles had built themselves a house of prayer, and where St. Patrick and St. Dunstan lay entombed; Canterbury, where Augustine, the English apostle, found a home; Malmesbury, where St. Aldhelm preached to the barbarous people, and when they tired of his sermon played to them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey, sang David's Psalms to the crowds that moved by him as they passed over the bridge of Avon. These venerable foundations, about whose origin a glamour of mystery had gathered, whose history had become strangely obscured by the body of myths that had grown up in the lapse of centuries—which had survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors of fire and sword, desolating, devastating—were there before men's eyes, testifying to the amazing vitality which a millennium of strange vicissitude had not only not destroyed, but not even impaired. Such a mighty pile of buildings, as had risen up to heaven there in the old Roman town of Verulam, appealed to the imagination of mankind—the very materials of the massive tower, ruddy in the blaze of the noon-day, must have been a wonder and astonishment to many an awe-struck pilgrim perplexed at the first sight of Roman bricks burnt on the spot a thousand years ago. There stood the mighty Roman rampart, vast, enormous—the ground beneath his feet teeming with the tangible memories of grisly conflict, or of an old civilization that had been blotted out long ago—the swords of Roman legionaries, the bones of British heroes, coins with legends that few could read turned up by the ploughman's share. Yonder, men said, away there at Redburn, the heathen pursuers had come upon England's proto-martyr and slain the saint of God, whose bones since then had been gathered up, and were now resting in their sumptuous shrine. When the Norman came, and the new order was set up in the land—not a day before it was needed—the thirteenth Abbot of St. Alban's was of the blood royal, and heir, they said, to Cnut, the Danish king, who had passed away. It was to him that the awful Conqueror made oath he would bind himself by the Confessor's laws, an oath which, if he ever meant to keep, he meant to interpret according to his mood. Even the very laxity and shortcomings of the abbots of generations back, which tradition, and something more to be trusted than tradition, declared to have been matters of scandal, proved no more than that the great Abbey could live through evil times, outride the storms which would wreck weaker vessels, and right itself, though overloaded with abuses which timid pilots would have shrunk from throwing overboard: and now that 400 years had passed since Offa, the Saxon king—(stirred thereto by Karl, the Emperor)—had founded the monastery in St. Alban's honour, and from generation to generation vast building operations had been going on almost without interruption, and the old Abbey still held up its head proudly, its Abbot taking precedence of every other in the land; any man might be excused for thinking that to become a monk of St. Alban's Abbey was to become a personage of no small consideration.

Verily it was a great abbey in the days of King John. There, in the eighth year of that King's reign, was held that memorable council which, if it had been let alone, would doubtless have issued its protest against the intolerable aggression of the Pope and his curia. There, six years afterwards, another assembly was convened; the first occasion on which we find any historical proof that representatives were summoned to a national council in England. Eight times during his reign the ruffian King was himself a guest at the Abbey. Once after John's death, when Louis was desperately struggling to hold his own against young Henry's friends and supporters, he too came to St. Alban's, and threatened to give it over to fire and sword: only money saved it from a sack. There was always something to take, and yet always wonderful state kept up. The magnates in Church and State were for ever going in and out; the mere domestic expenditure was enormous. Yet, even when the country was groaning under horrible anarchy, and grinding taxation, and war and poverty, the building went on as if men lived only to glorify the great house, and to raise its church tower, or beautify the west front, or fill the windows with stained glass, or erect the splendid pulpit in the nave—a miracle of art.

It would be a very great mistake to conclude that all this lavish expenditure implied the enjoyment of large rents from land. The revenue derived from the tenants of the Abbey and the profits of farming were no doubt considerable; but that revenue could never have sufficed alone to defray the cost of keeping up the establishment. In point of fact, when a monastery, great or small, depended wholly upon its landed property, it invariably got into debt; sometimes it got hopelessly into debt. It is clear that before the Dissolution a very large number of the religious houses were insolvent. The striking paucity in the number of 'religious' at the time of the suppression—for hardly one house in ten had its full complement of inmates—is by no means wholly to be attributed to the reluctance on the part of people in general to take upon themselves the monastic vows. Where a monastery was financially in a critical condition, the brotherhood resorted to the expedient which is at this moment being carried out at more than one College in Oxford and Cambridge. Now, when times are bad, we temporarily suppress a Fellowship; then, on the death of a brother of the house, they chose no monk into his place.

The income from landed estates at St. Alban's was probably at no time equal to what may be called the extraordinary income. The offerings at the shrines of SS. Alban and Amphibalus, the proceeds of the offertory at those magnificent and dramatic functions in which the multitude delighted, and the douceurs that were always expected and almost always given in return for hospitality, which only in theory was free,—these and many another source of profit, which the universal habit of giving money for 'pious uses' supplied, all made up a sum total, in comparison with which the proceeds of the rent-roll were insignificant. In the taxation of Pope Nicholas (a. d. 1291) the whole revenue of the Abbey from rent and dues in the liberty of St. Alban's is set down at 392l. 8s. 3-1/4d., a sum which in those days would go as far as 5000l. a-year now. Even granting that this was only half the net income derivable from the Abbey's estates, which were widely distributed, an expenditure of 10,000l. a year would go in our own time a very little way towards meeting the charges which such an enormous establishment involved. The mere keeping up the buildings at all times entailed a very heavy annual outlay. Already in the 13th century the precincts of the Abbey were overcrowded with palatial edifices, which were never pulled down except to make room for larger ones. There were acres of roofs within the Abbey walls.

And what return was being made to the nation, that every rank and every class were keeping up a rivalry in munificence in favour of such an institution as this? What had they done, what were they doing, these seventy men, with their Abbot at their head, who were in the enjoyment of an income larger than that of many a principality? How was it that no one in those days accused them of being indolent drones? Mere burdens upon the earth, as they were called frequently enough, and loudly enough, and angrily enough, three centuries later? It was the age for the expansion of the monastic system—none then wished to sweep the monks away. One of the reasons why the monasteries had retained their hold upon the affection of the people, and were regarded with reverence and pride and confidence, lay in this, that they had moved with the times, and that the monasticism of the 13th was very different indeed from the monasticism of the 9th century. The primitive asceticism had almost vanished; it had not, however, died, leaving nothing in its place. No one now expected to find the religious houses filled with religious people, everyone holy, devout, and fervent; the personal sanctity of the inmates was one thing, the sanctity of their churches and shrines was quite another. In the old days the monks were separate from the world, living to save their own souls at best; examples to such as trembled at the wrath of God, and longed for the life to come. As time went on they mixed more boldly with the sinful world, and gradually they became more and more the illuminators of the darkness round them. Now they were regarded as in great measure the salt of the earth, and if that salt should lose its savour, where was such virtue elsewhere to be found? Personally, the men might be worldly—vicious, as a rule, they certainly were not—they were, mutatis mutandis, what in our time would be called cultured gentlemen, courteous, highly educated and refined, as compared with the great mass of their contemporaries; a privileged class who were not abusing their privileges; a class from whence all the art and letters and accomplishments of the time emanated, allied in blood as much with the low as the high, the aristocracy of intellect, and the pioneers of scientific and material progress. The model farming of the 13th century would be regarded as barbaric by our modern theorists; but such as it was, it was only to be met with on the demesne lands of the larger monasteries, and was a prodigious advance upon the petite culture of the open fields. The Priory at Norwich made an income out of its garden in the days of Edward III., and probably much earlier; the pisciculture of the religious houses remains a mystery as yet unsolved; the skill exhibited in the management of the water-power of many a district round even the smaller houses, still awakes wonder in those who think it worth their while to study it. At St. Alban's, as at Glastonbury, St. Edmund's Abbey, and elsewhere, the culture of the vine was made profitable for generations. The monasteries were the first to give personal freedom to the villeins, and the first to commute for money payments the vexatious services which worried the best men and maddened the worst. The landlords in the 13th century were real lords of the land. They were, as a class, very poor, spite of the privileges they enjoyed and the power that they possessed of making themselves disagreeable; and though the constitution of a manor was a limited monarchy, and the limits were very many, yet the lord could exercise a great deal of petty tyranny in his little kingdom if he were so disposed. In the manors which were in the possession of the religious houses the lord was necessarily non-resident, and the tenants were left to manage their own affairs with very little interference. The tenants of the monasteries were in a far more favoured condition than the tenants of some small lord, needy and greedy, who extorted his dues literally to the last farthing, and who knew exactly what the best beast was, on the land that owed him a heriot; and, when the tenant was in extremis, kept a sharp look-out that a fat bullock or a promising young horse should not be driven off before the owner died.

So the monasteries at the time we are now concerned with were regarded at once with pride and affection by the great bulk of the people; they were places of refuge where, in a turbulent time, men and women who had been stricken, bereaved or wronged, might find a quiet refuge and hide their heads and be forgotten and fall asleep, with the prayers of other sufferers to console and support them in their passage through the valley of the shadow of death. The gentlest spirits here could taste the bliss of a holy tranquillity; the ascetic could indulge his most fantastic self-immolation; the morbid visionary could dream at his will and give his imagination full play, none hindering him; evil demons might chatter and gibe and twit him at his prayers; choirs of angels might calm his despair with celestial lullabies; awful forms might rise from clouds of incense as the gorgeous procession moved along the vast church aisles, or stopped before some glittering shrine. What then? Who would question the reality of a miracle, or doubt that sublime revelations might be made to any holy monk as he wrestled in prayer with a rapture of the soul, and found himself lifted to the seventh heaven in ecstasy unutterable?

What has been said applies mainly to the older houses, those which were under what may be called the primitive Benedictine rule. If men were moved to rigid asceticism, however, and had a taste for bald simplicity; if art, and music, and ornate architecture, had no charm for them, and they dreamt that God could only be sought and found in the wilderness, the Cistercian houses offered such a congenial asylum. The Cistercians were the Puritans of the monasteries, and appealed to that mysterious sentiment which makes some minds shrink with fear from the touch of luxury, and regard culture as antagonistic to personal holiness. The sentiment was strong in the reign of Henry II., when nineteen Cistercian houses were founded; but it is not improbable that other motives, beside mere taste for a stricter discipline, led to the foundation of eight more in the reign of King John. Meanwhile the Benedictines had become by far the most learned and most educating body in the land, and pre-eminent above them all was the great Abbey of St. Alban's. If it was not at this time the centre of intellectual life in England, it was because at this time centralization was unknown. Eadmer, Florence of Worcester, Gervase of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham, were all 12th-century Benedictines. They were all students and writers of history, and history meant literature till Peter Lombard arose at the end of the 12th century and revolutionized the world of thought—at any rate the domain of logic. John of Salisbury fiercely assails the intellectual innovators of his time on the ground that the new lights of the 12th century disdained to be students of history and affected contempt for the past. It was the old story; literary culture found itself in antagonism with scientific culture, and the vigorous childhood of scientific research was aggressive, insolent, and noisily insubordinate. The old seminaries, whose homes were in the Benedictine monasteries, refused to welcome the new learning. Its teachers settled themselves elsewhere; at Paris, on the other side of the water, they had a hard fight of it. Once in 1209 the Synod of Paris actually prohibited the reading of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics.' At Oxford they seem to have met with a more generous reception. Perhaps it was because that reception was too enthusiastic that King Stephen at the close of his miserable reign expelled Vacarius, the first teacher of scientific law in England. Whereupon young men of parts and ambition crossed the Channel, seeking and finding at Pavia and Bologna what was not to be had at home. The monastic schools held their own, and went on in the old groove; the intellectual revolution which soon came about by the agency of the Mendicant Orders was not yet dreamt of. St. Alban's, Malmesbury, and other such mighty foundations, stuck to the old studies, just as Eton and Winchester stuck to Latin Verse as the one thing needful, and reluctantly gave into the newfangled notion of having a 'modern side.'

Outside the Abbey precincts, a hundred yards from the great gate, and separated from it by the Rome land, which may possibly have served the boys as a playground, stood the Grammar School. Whether it offered a different training from that which was usually supplied to the scholars who were under training in the cloister, it is difficult to say. Within the precincts, when the 13th century began, there stood the great church—enriched by the accumulated offerings of centuries, and glowing with dazzling splendour of jewels and cloth of gold, and glass that glorified the very sunshine, and wonders of sculpture and colour and needlework filling the heart to overflowing with inexplicable hopes and longings for an ideal that seemed possible of realization, if only the Church in heaven should be as far removed above the actual of the Church on earth, as the glories of the Church on earth were removed above the squalid life of the common workday world. All this in witness that the great Abbey was, first and foremost, a religious foundation, raised in the first instance to the glory of God, and meant to help forward the worship of God, and make the worship worthy of the Most High.

But besides being primarily and emphatically a religious foundation, the Abbey in the 13th century had grown into something else, and had become the home of a corporation of scholars and students, who were the leaders of art and culture in an age when art and culture were to be met with nowhere outside the walls of a great monastery. There, in what might be called the museum of the Abbey, you might see no mean collection of antique gems that had once been the pride of Roman magistrates. Mysterious specimens of barbaric goldwork, fashioned by unknown craftsmen for the necks of nameless chieftains who had drawn the sword and perished, none knew when. Engraved gems that had been dug up in mysterious sepulchres, about which even imagination despaired of telling any story; relics of saints and martyrs, charters of Saxon kings, granted centuries before the Normans came to ring out the old and ring in the new. The wealth of mere archæological specimens at St. Alban's made it such a museum of antiquities as provokes wonder and bitterness, as we read the catalogue of what was once there, and has perished utterly and for ever.[3]

The range of buildings to the south of the church covered a far larger area than that which the church itself occupied. Uncertain though the exact site may be and is, there had already been added in Brother Matthew's time what we should now call an Art school, a Library, and, almost more famous than all, the Scriptorium. By-and-bye, too, came the printing-press which John Herford set up in 1480. Wynkyn de Worde was sometime schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and Lady Juliana Berners' famous volume issued from the Abbey Press, while Caxton was still pursuing his craft in the almonry of another monastery at Westminster.

In the days of King John, however, people had so little idea of the possibility of the printing-press, that they were almost equally ignorant of such a material as paper for literary purposes. Yet it is a huge mistake which has not yet been exploded, as it ought to be, that reading and writing were rare accomplishments in the 13th century. Knowledge of a certain kind was disseminated far more effectively and far more universally than is generally believed. The country parson was expected to be the schoolmaster of his parish, and generally was so, and there was hardly a village in England during the reign of Henry III, in which there were not one or more persons who could write a clerkly hand, draw up accounts in Latin, and keep the records of the various petty courts and gatherings that were continually being held, sometimes to the annoyance and grievous vexation of the rural population. The professional writers were so numerous, and their training so severe, that they had got for themselves privileges of a very exceptional kind; the clerk took rank with the clergyman, and the writer of a book was almost as much esteemed as its author.

The scriptorium of a great monastery was at once the printing-press and the publishing office. It was the place where books were written, and whence they issued to the world. With the traditional exclusiveness of the older monasteries there was less desire, no doubt, to diffuse and disperse than to accumulate books, but the composing and the multiplication of books was always going on. The scriptorium was a great writing school too, and the rules of the art of writing which were laid down there were so rigidly and severely adhered to, that to this day it is difficult to decide at a glance whether a book was written in St. Alban's or St. Edmund's Abbey. Sometimes as many as twenty writers were employed at once, and besides these there were occasionally supernumeraries, who were professional scribes, and who were paid for their services; but nothing short of perfect penmanship, such trained skill, for instance, as would now be required for an engraver, would qualify a copyist to take part in the finished work, which the copying of important books required.

One of the conclusions which Sir Thomas Hardy arrived at during the course of his minute examination of Sir Frederick Madden's theory is so curious, and opens out such an unexpected view of the way in which our monasteries may have been brought under the influence of foreign literature, that it is worth while in this connection to quote the great critic's own words:

'After minutely examining every page of the manuscripts in question, as well as others, which were undoubtedly written in the monastery of St. Alban's, and comparing them with others executed in various parts of England and on the Continent, I can come to no other conclusion than that during the latter half of the 13th century, and perhaps a little earlier, there prevailed among the scribes in the Scriptorium of St. Alban's, a peculiar character of writing which is not recognizable in any other religious house in England during that period; but which is traceable in some foreign manuscripts, and even in private deeds executed in England in the neighbourhood of St. Alban's during the 12th and 13th centuries. These facts lead me to the inference, that the schoolmaster who taught the art of writing to Matthew Paris and the other members and scholars of the establishment at St. Alban's was a foreigner; that his pupils not only imitated their instructor in the formation of his letters, but also in his exceptional orthography.'

What questions suggest themselves as we accept the conclusion arrived at! Who was he, this 'foreigner,' who had come from across the sea to bring in his outlandish novelties into the great scriptorium? Was he some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Bruslé, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought in a taste for light literature as well as for a new fashion in penmanship, and made known to his pupils such alluring novelties as the 'Roman d'Alexandre, soon to be eclipsed by the 'Roman de la Rose.'

The scriptorium at St. Alban's was founded by Abbot Paul, a kinsman of Archbishop Lanfrance, when the great Abbey had already existed for three centuries. Paul became Abbot eleven years after the Conquest, and he showed himself an able and earnest administrator. From this time learning and a love of books became a tradition of the house. Abbot after abbot continued to add to the collection of MSS., and to increase the value of the library. But St. Alban's had never had a great historian of its own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west and north and south, all over the land, there were great writers holding up their proud heads. Out in the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries—aye, and written in the vernacular too. The lonely monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had its historian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William; and Worcester, which St. Wulstan had raised from the dust, as it were, only the other day, had already her Florence. In the great houses of the Northern Province there had been no lack of writers to whom the past was an open book. Even Westminster had long ago had her chronographer, and far away in furthest Wales, Geoffrey, the Monmouth man, was making men open their eyes very wide indeed with tales—idle tales they might be, but they were well worth the reading—and there was talk too of another young Welshman, Giraldus, who was on the way towards outdoing the other by-and-bye. What are we coming to? Holy St. Alban, shalt thou and thy house be put to shame?—that be far from us!

Thus it came to pass that about a century after the foundation of the scriptorium, and when the library had grown to an imposing size, Abbot Simon bestirred himself, and a new office was created in the Abbey, to wit, that of Historiographer. In our time we should have given this functionary a grander title, and called him Professor of History; but in the 12th century, they called him what he was, a writer of history, and from this time, in fact, the writing of history, after a certain authorized method, began, and what had been called, and deserves to be called, the St. Alban's School of History took its rise.

It is evident that before the 13th century had well begun, an historical compendium of great value had already been drawn up, which must have been compiled by careful students with a command of books such as during this age was rare.

'The compilation,' says Dr. Luard, 'whenever and by whomsoever it was written must be regarded as a very curious and remarkable one. The very large number of sources consulted, the miscellaneous character of many of the extracts, the mixture of history and legend, the giving fixed years to stories which even writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth had left undated, the care at one time and the carelessness at another, the slavishness with which one authority is followed, and the recklessness with which another is altered, the frequent confusion of dates, their ignorance and want of care, the blunders displayed in many instances from the compiler not understanding the author whom he is copying, as is especially the case in the extracts from the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;" all these characteristics may well earn for the author the title that Lappenberg has given to him, though under the name of "Matthew of Westminster," namely, that of the "Verwirrer der Geschichte." At the same time there is no doubt that he had access to some materials which we no longer possess: and my object has been to trace all his statements, where possible, to their source, and to distinguish any additions that the compiler has made when they are merely rhetorical amplifications of his own, or when they are really from some source not now extant.'—Pref. to vol. i., p. xxxiii.

After all that can be said, the work surprises us by the erudition it displays. Nor is that surprise lessened when we have gone through the masterly analysis of its contents, which Dr. Luard has given us in the Preface to his first vol. Such as it was, it became the great text-book on which Roger of Wendover founded his own labours when he incorporated it into the chronicle which he left behind him. Roger of Wendover did good work, and laboriously epitomized, supplemented and improved, but he was a mere literary monk after all; a student, a bookworm, simple, conscientious, and truthful; a trustworthy reporter, 'a picker-up of learning's crumbs,' a monkish historiographer, in short; but by no means a historian of large views and of original mind. Roger of Wendover died in 1236, and Matthew Paris succeeded to his office and work.

From what has been said, the reader may be presumed to have gained something like an answer to our first question: What was Brother Matthew? Briefly, he was a representative monk of the most powerful monastery in England during the 13th century, when that monastery was at its best, and doing the work which in after times the Universities and great schools of the country took out of the hands of the religious houses; work, too, which since those days has been done by the printing-press, and by many other institutions better fitted to deal with the requirements of an immensely larger population, and to be the instruments of diffusing culture and refinement through the nation after it had outgrown the older machinery.

When we come to look into the personal history of Brother Matthew, the details of his biography need not detain us long. Sir Henry Taylor's famous line is only half true, after all;

'The world knows nothing of its greatest men'

really means that the world knows less about them than it would like to know. And yet the world knows almost as much about them as is good for it. The leading facts of a man's career are all that concern most of us—the main lines—not the details. Of Matthew Paris we know enough, because he has himself given us so faithful a picture of his times, and so charming an insight into the daily life which he led.

Unnecessary doubt has been suggested as to his parentage, and whether his extraction was or was not from a stock that could boast of gentle blood. For our part we incline strongly to the belief, that Brother Matthew was called Paris because that was his name, and had been his father's name before him. A family of that name held lands in Bedfordshire in Henry III.'s time; others of the same stock were settled in Lincolnshire earlier still; and the Cambridgeshire family (one of whom was among the visitors of the monasteries under Henry VIII.) boasted of a long line of ancestors, and retained their estates in the Eastern Counties till late in the 17th century. Young Matthew probably received his education in the school at St. Alban's, and soon showed a decided taste for learning and the student's life, and that in the 13th century meant an inclination for the life of the cloister. Many a precocious lad is even now taught from his childhood to look forward to the glories of a College Fellowship, and the career which such an academic success may open to him; and in the 13th century a schoolboy's ambition was directed to the goal of admission to a great monastery—that step on the ladder which whosoever could reach, there was no knowing how high he might climb—how high above the common sons of earth or, if he preferred it, how high towards the heaven that is above the earth.

Matthew was probably born about the year 1200, and in January 1217 he became a monk at St. Alban's, i. e., he became a novice. At this time a lad could commence his noviciate at 15; but the age was subsequently advanced to 19, the younger limit having been found, as a rule, too early even for the preliminary discipline required. On the day after the lad was admitted, a frightful scene took place in the monastery. A band of Fawkes de Breauté's cut-throats had stormed the town of St. Alban's, burst into the Abbey, and slaughtered at the door of the church one Robert Mai, a servant of the Abbot. William de Trumpington was Abbot at this time, a vigorous and resolute personage, who ruled the convent with a firm hand. Like all really able men, he was ably seconded, for he knew how to choose his subordinates. At first the monks had repented of their choice, and there were quarrels and litigation and appeals to the Pope, and many serious 'unpleasantnesses;' but as time went on, Abbot William had won the allegiance of all the convent, and they were proud of him. He was a man of books, among his other virtues, and had an eye for bookish men; and when he deposed Roger de Wendover from being Prior of Belvoir with a somewhat high hand, and brought him back to St. Alban's, he doubtless did so because he knew that at Belvoir he was a square man in a round hole, while in the scriptorium of the Abbey he would be in his right place. Certainly the event proved that the Abbot was right, and it was to this judicious removal of a student and man of letters to his proper home that we owe so much of our knowledge of those interesting minutiæ of English history which the writer has revealed. It was under the eye of Robert de Wendover that Matthew Paris grew up, rendering him every year more and more substantial assistance in the library and in the scriptorium.

But the young man was not only a bookworm and a copyist, he soon got to be looked upon as a prodigy. He was a universal genius; he could do whatever he set his hand to, and better than any one else. He could draw, and paint, and illuminate, and work in metals. Some said he could even construct maps; he was versed in everything, and noticed everything from 'the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall;' he was an expert in heraldry; he could tell you about whales, and camels, and buffaloes, and elephants—he could even draw an elephant—illustrate his history, in fact, with the elephant's portrait, the first elephant, he says, that had ever been seen in our northern climes. It was centuries before men had dreamt of what the science of geology would one day reveal. Then, too, he had vast capacity for work, and was a courtly person, and he had the gift of tongues, and had been a great traveller; he had early been sent by the convent to study at the University of Paris, and wherever he went, he was the man to make friends. When the Benedictines in Norway had convinced themselves that there was sore need of a reform of their rule and discipline, they applied to Pope Innocent IV. to send them a Visitor furnished with the necessary authority for carrying out so delicate and difficult a mission, and they made choice of Matthew Paris as the fittest possible person for such a work. Reluctantly Brother Matthew was compelled to undertake the task; he started on his northern voyage in 1248, and was absent about a year. In Norway he soon grew into high favour with King Hacon, who peradventure would have kept him at his side if he could. This seems to have been the most important episode in his otherwise uneventful life. But the advantages and opportunities which were at the command of any ambitious and studious young monk at St. Alban's were in themselves extraordinary. We have said that building was always going on. It was going on on a very large scale indeed in Abbot William's time. That means that there were the plans and sections and working drawings to be copied for the architect, and measurements and calculations by the thousand to be made—a school of architecture, in short: and besides that, what Roger de Wendover was in the scriptorium, that Walter of Colchester, pictor et sculptor incomparabilis, was in the painting room. Walter was a sculptor; indeed he wrought at his marvellous pulpit which the Abbot set up in the middle of the church: and he carved the story of St. Alban upon the great beam over the high altar, and did many another thing of which we have only too brief descriptions. Then, too, there was Richard, the monk who decorated the grand new guests' hall deliciose, as we are told, and who painted pictures and carried out other works of embellishment at a pace which none could have kept up, but that he had his father to help him with his brush, and another artist, John of Wallingford, to carry out his great designs, and many more skilled limners whose names have gone down into silence.

When Abbot William's reign came to an end, the monks were unanimous in choosing John of Hertford as his successor, and the new Abbot lost no time in showing favour to Matthew Paris. Next year Roger de Wendover died, and who could there be so worthy to succeed him as historiographer as the versatile and accomplished brother, who by this time was the boast of the great house? And historiographer accordingly Matthew became—mutatis mutandis, a sort of 13th-century editor of the 'Times;' his business was to gather from all points of the compass, if not the latest news, yet the best and most trustworthy reports upon whatever was worth recording. He had his correspondents all over Europe, and that he sifted the evidence as it came to him we know.

Wherever there was any great event that deserved a place in the Abbey Chronicle, some splendid pageant to describe, some battle, or treaty, or pestilence, or flood, or famine, straightway tidings came to the vigilant historiographer; and there was a comparison of the evidence brought in, and some testing of witnesses, and finally the narrative was drawn up and incorporated into Matthew's history. Again and again it happened that a great personage who, while himself making history, was anxious that his own part in a transaction should be represented favourably, would try and get the right side of the famous chronicler, and would furnish him with private information. Even the King himself thought it no scorn to communicate facts and documents to Brother Matthew. Once when Henry saw him in a crowd on a memorable occasion, he picked him out, and bade him take his seat by his side, and see to it that he made a true and faithful report of what was going on; and it is evident that the royal favour which he enjoyed through life must have extended to furnishing him with many a story and many a detail which none but the King could have supplied. The minute account of the attempt to assassinate Henry in 1238; the curious State paper giving a narrative of the dispute between the King and his nobles in 1242; the strange scene at the tomb of William Marshall in 1245, and scores of other incidents in the career of Bishop Grossteste and Richard of Cornwall, were evidently 'inspired,' and can only have come from eye-witnesses of the events recorded. Nevertheless Matthew, though he was willing enough to receive information, and to utilise facts and documents, was by no means the man to reproduce them exactly in the form in which they came to him. More than once he ventured to remonstrate with the King, and very much oftener than once he expresses his opinion of him in no measured terms. Some of the severest censures he had marked for omission, and some expressions he modified considerably, for we have the good fortune to possess his chronicle both in an earlier and in a later form; but even though the fuller and more outspoken record had perished, we should still have had enough proof to make it clear that we have in Matthew Paris an instance of a born historian, one who never consented to be a mere advocate, taking a side and seeing only half the truth of anything; but a man gifted with the judicial faculty, that precious gift without which a man may be anything you please—a rhetorician, a special pleader, a picturesque writer, a laborious collector of facts; but an historian never. And yet Matthew Paris was a magnificent hater, with a fund of indignant scorn and righteous anger which never fails him upon occasion. Friend of King and nobles as he was, he will not spare his words of wrathful censure upon the tyrant, or upon any that he held deserving of rebuke for cruelty, oppression and avarice. When he has to lay the lash on such as had proved themselves enemies to his much-loved Abbey, or who had wronged and defrauded it, he is well-nigh as fierce as Dante. He singles them out—the doomed wretches—and holds them, as it were, over the fire of hell before he drops them down into the burning flame.

Did Ralph Cheinduit, that blustering, burly knight, cry aloud 'A fig for St. Alban and his monks! Since they excommunicated me—look you! I have only increased in girth, behold me fat and jolly, in faith almost too big for my saddle. A fig for them all!' Did he say so, the impious wretch? Be it known that from that very day Sir Knight began to shrink and waste and pine, and if he had not repented and been absolved in time, he had gone down to the bottomless pit with never a hope of deliverance.

Did not Sir Adam Fitz William show the evil spirit that was in him when he sided against us time and again? And now, look to his awful end! Gorged with meat and drink one night, he sprawled upon his bed, indigestus, as you may say, and he never woke more. Aye! and he died intestate too. And as though that was not bad enough, his wife too died, straightway, like another Sapphira slain by the shock of the tidings. And then there was Alan de Beccles, too, always notorious for setting himself against us and our house, he too perished as the other did, for he loved choice dainties overmuch, and he dined late and he ate as none should eat, and when he could eat no more, suddenly his speech failed him and his veins burst, smitten with an apoplexy. And many another, whom it would take too long to name, following his evil course, and being prosecutors of Holy Alban's Church, perished for ever by God's vengeance.

It is no longer the fashion now to denounce the Pope and his myrmidons, but if the rage of Exeter Hall should ever recur, and the orators of the old platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agitation, they might find in Matthew Paris as rich a repertory of testimonials against Roman aggression and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could desire. 'O thou Pope,' he bursts out once, 'thou the father of all the fathers in Christ, how it is that thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be fouled by such creatures as are thine?' The 'creatures' were the papal legates and nuncios and all their belongings, who were plundering England without shame. 'Harpies they were and blood-suckers,' says Matthew, 'mere plunderers, skinning the sheep, not shearing them only.' Then there were the King's Justiciars—'Justice'—nay, with that they had nothing to do. Why tell of their unrighteous deeds? he asks. 'Better forbear from vainly writing about the wrongers, and return to the story of the wronged.'

Of course the friars come in for their share of strong words—chiefly because the Pope made use of them so vilely, and not less because they set themselves above their betters—us, to wit—monks of the old houses.

'They started with such fair professions, they were going to be so very poor, and so very unworldly, and were going to supplement our work and interfere with nobody, and give us all a helping hand. Look at them now!' says Matthew; 'they march through the streets in pompous array with banners flaunting in the sun and waxen tapers, and rich burghers in holiday garments joining in the long train, and if they have no land they have money, good store, and as for their churches, they are eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our territory is a dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at all other religious men and women and they flout the parish priests and call them humdrums, and schism is at work horribly, and the people are running away from the old guides, and there is no end to them. Actually in the year of grace 1257,' he says, 'a new order of these fellows turned up in London. Friars of the sack, forsooth, because they were clothed in sackcloth! Of course they came armed with a papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance—not they! We too are not as the monks of old were; they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-denying, saintly! What are we in comparison with them?

'Did not we find the bones of our brethren there, hard by the High Altar, when we were beautifying the same? O ye degenerate sons of this degenerate age! Two centuries ago and our monks were men of faith and prayer. In the year of grace one thousand two hundred and fifty-one, we found more than thirty of them buried together, and their bones were lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odor of sanctity every one; each man had been buried as he died, in his monastic habit, and his shoes upon his feet too. Aye, and such shoes—shoes made for wear and not for wantonness. The soles of these shoes were sound and strong, they might have served the purpose for poor men's naked feet even now, after centuries of lying in the grave. Blush ye! ye with your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug up were as round at the toe as at the heel, and the latchets were all of one piece with the uppers. No rosettes in those days, if you please! They fastened their shoes with a thong, and they wound that thong around their blessed ankles, and they cared not in those holy days whether their shoes were a pair. Left foot and right foot each was as the other: and we, when we gazed at the holy relics—we bowed our heads at the edifying sight, and we were dumbfounded, even to awe, as we swung our censers over the sacred graves of the ages past!'

The anecdotes and out-of-the-way pieces of information in the 'Chronica Majora,' which may be said to represent the paragraphs of modern journalism, are countless. Brother Matthew enlivens his history with these cross-lights at every page, and what gives to these scraps an added charm is that Matthew himself seems to be always with us when he prattles on. Not even Herodotus has succeeded more entirely in impressing his quaint personality upon his narrative. It is always something which he has seen, or heard from some living man who saw it with his own eyes.

'There was my friend John of Basingstoke, had studied at Paris, and a wonder of learning he was, but he told me himself that his best teacher by far was the young lady Constantina, daughter of an archbishop she. Archbishop of Athens, too—archbishops may marry out there! Before she was twenty she knew all that men may know; she was worth two universities of Paris any day; she foretold the coming of plagues and storms, and eclipses—and—more wonderful still—the coming of earthquakes too: and John of Basingstoke was her scholar, and whatever he knew that was deep and rare, he learnt it of the lady Constantina, the Archbishop's daughter.'

Matthew is very great when he has to tell of omens and portents:

'We were scurvily treated by Pope Innocent III.,' he says, 'in the days of Abbot John. Spite of all our privileges and indulgences, the Pope would have him come to Rome every third year; a sore burden and harm to us all. Forthwith evil omens came. Thrice in three years was our tower struck by lightning. After that wrong of his Holiness it was no wonder that the impression of the papal seal in wax, which we had taken good care to fix on the top of the steeple, availed not to keep off the thunderbolt—small good you see in that kind of thing.'

Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are periodical reports of the weather, and the storms, and the droughts, and the harvests. Moreover, there are what answer to our police reports, and details of criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile, and births and deaths and marriages, and now and then brief notes upon the state of the markets, and sometimes hints and reflections upon the desirability of certain reforms in Church and State; and all this not in the spirit of modern journalism, which at its best too often bears the marks of haste, and betrays the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at so much a column, but genuine, hearty, throbbing with a certain passionate loyalty to a tradition, or an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque, or fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest men and devout ones lived by and lived for, and were trying in their own way to carry out into action.

But now that we have got this precious 'Chronicle,' not to mention other works in the composition of which Brother Matthew had at least a large share—though our space forbids us dwelling upon them or their contents, and we must refer our readers to Dr. Luard's elaborate prefaces if they would desire to know all about them—another question suggests itself, which sooner or later will become a pressing question—What are we going to do with such a national work of which this country has great reason to be proud?

The days are gone by when a man was supposed to be educated in proportion as he was familiar with the literature of Greece and Rome and ignorant of everything else. Already at Oxford candidates for the highest honours in the final schools think it no shame to read their Plato or their Aristotle in English translations, and in half the time that was needed under the old plan they get a mastery of their Thucydides or Herodotus, devoting themselves to the subject-matter after they have proved at 'Moderations' that they have a respectable acquaintance with the language of the authors.

May the day be far off when Homer and Æschylus shall cease to be read in the original! The great writers of Hellas and Italy were poets or orators, great teachers or great thinkers; but they were something more. They were perfect instrumentalities too. Their thoughts, their lessons, their aspirations, their regrets, you may interpret and transfer into the speech and the idioms of the moderns; but the music of their language, the subtleties of melody and rhythm, and harmony and tone, can no more be translated than a symphony for the strings can be adequately represented upon the organ. You may persuade yourself that you have got the substance; you have missed the perfection of the form. Yet who but a narrow pedant will insist that the study of any literature, ancient or modern, is valuable chiefly for familiarizing us with the language, not for enriching our minds with the subject matter? Do we desire to understand the past and so to be better able to estimate the importance of great movements that are going on in the present or, by the help of the experience of bygone ages, to forecast the future? Then it behoves us to see that our induction shall be made from as wide a view as may be, and to avail ourselves of any light that may be gained. But it is mere waste of time to be for ever staring at the lamp which may be pretty to look at in itself, but is then most precious when it serves as a means to an end. If we are ever to construct a Science of History, the old methods must give place to something which may approximate to philosophic enquiry. When we come to think of it, how very small an area of time or space is covered by the historians of Greece and Rome: how small an area and how superficially dealt with! Even Thucydides hardly ventures to lift the veil which separates the civilization of his own age from that of an earlier period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops the curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of our race could ever become. We never seem to be in touch with Egypt or Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of the feudalism and the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was so much before his age that his voluminous and ambitious work has come down to us little more than a fragment. Because he was something better than a compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into the schools?

It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain—the Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in the Politics, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness—grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus stands alone—unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give for such a monograph upon the Britain which Cæsar attempted to conquer, or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's famous missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether they had become weak and enervated by social deterioration or moral corruption. Enough that they were Barbarians.

The science of history can be but little advanced by writers such as these, who pass from battlefield to battlefield—

'Crimson-footed, like the stork,
Through great ruts of slaughter,'

and to whom the silent growth of institutions and the evolution of ethical sentiments and the development of the arts of peace were matters which never presented themselves as worthy of their attention. You may call this history if you will, in truth it is little better than Empiricism. The world is a larger world than Rome or Athens dreamt of, and students of history are beginning to realize that not quite the last thing they have to do is 'to look at home.' Such a work as the 'Chronica Majora' of Matthew Paris is a national heritage which it is shameful to allow much longer to be known only by the curious and erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our neglect, is it too much to hope that the day may not be far distant when the name of this great Englishman may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of Sallust or Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Cæsar—his name as familiar, and his writings better known and more loved?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lord Langdale resigned three weeks before his death.

[2] The proposal to print and publish the Calendars had been approved by authority of the new Record Commissioners as early as January 1840. See preface to Mr. Lemons' 'Calendar' (Domestic, 1547-1580), p. viii.

[3] In Luard's sixth volume there are two facsimiles of certain coloured drawings of the more precious gems at St. Alban's, with careful descriptions of them, these and the illustrations being most probably executed by Mathew Paris himself.

Art. II. 1.—The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work, with a sketch of the Life of their Founder, The Venerable Jean Baptiste de la Salle. By Mrs. R. F. Wilson, London, 1883.

2. La Première Année d'Instruction Morale et Civique: notions de droit et d'économie politique (Textes et Récits) pour répondre à la loi du 28 Mars 1882 sur l'enseignement primaire obligatoire: ouvrage accompagné de Résumé, de Questionnaires, de Devoirs, et d'un Lexique des mots difficiles. Par Pierre Laloi. Quatorzième Edition. Paris, 1885.

3. Report of the Committee of Council on Education (England and Wales). 1884-85.

4. Seventy-fourth Annual Report of the Incorporated National Society. 1885.

Most travellers in France will have met occasionally in Paris and in the provincial towns a school of boys walking two and two, and followed by a serious-looking superintendent of very solemn deportment. The boys are in no marked respect different from other boys, but they are orderly and well conducted. They are probably on their way to a church; and if you watch them, you will see them march in with much propriety. The superintendent is evidently not an ordinary schoolmaster; you would suppose that he is an ecclesiastic of some kind. He wears a loose black cloak, a hat with a low crown and a portentous brim, and bands such as were much worn by English clergymen till late years, and which, when strongly developed, were supposed to indicate a sympathy with Calvanistic theology. Nevertheless, the solemn-featured young man is not an ecclesiastic, neither is he a Protestant minister. He is one of the Frères Chrétiens, or Christian Brothers; and the boys whom he has under his charge are pupils in one of the Écoles Chrétiennes, or Christian Schools.

We will venture to assume, that some of our readers are not well acquainted with the story and the principles of the remarkable institution known as the Schools of the Christian Brothers, or with the life of their remarkable founder. We propose in this article to supply some information upon the subject, not only because we think that such information will be interesting in itself, but also because we believe that from the story of the work and principles of the French schools of the Christian Brothers, we may proceed without difficulty, and almost by necessary consequence, to some useful considerations with respect to English schools as now established and conducted amongst ourselves.

Jean Baptiste de la Salle was born in Rheims, April 30, 1651. The house in which he was born is still standing, and is regarded with reverence. He came of a noble family, which was originally of Bearn. His grandfather settled at Rheims, of which he became an honoured citizen, but was apparently in no way himself remarkable. His second son, Louis, was the father of a child, who received the name of Jean Baptiste on the same day as that upon which he was born.

This child, whose career we purpose briefly to follow as that of the founder of the Christian Brothers, exhibited early signs of a devotional spirit; he learned to recite the Breviary from his grandfather, and continued to do so even before being bound to the practice by his ordination vows; and he soon made it clear to himself and to others that his vocation was that of the priestly office. His conduct as a student in the University of Rheims, which he entered at eight years old, was marked by diligence in study and gentle docility.

Before he had reached the age of sixteen he was made a canon of the cathedral; such were the strange ecclesiastical possibilities of those times. An aged relative resigned in his favour, and died the following year. The preferment, however, did not spoil him; he looked upon it as a call to duty. He was diligent in attendance upon the offices of the Church, diligent in private prayer, diligent in study—in every way a remarkable boy-canon!

In October 1670 he entered the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, where, amongst other fellow-students, was Fénelon, subsequently the great Archbishop of Cambrai. Little is recorded of his seminary life, except that it was gentle, modest, blameless. In 1672 he lost his father, and in the same year returned to Rheims to take charge of his younger brothers and sisters. The responsible position in which he was thus placed seems to have shaken for a time his persuasion that he had a true vocation for the priesthood; but after consultation with a friend who knew him well, his doubts vanished, and on the eve of Trinity Sunday in this same year he was admitted to the subdiaconate.

Then follow six years of quiet home work and retirement. During this time he attended the theological course of the University, provided for the education of his brothers and sisters, and gave himself very earnestly to prayer and good works. In the year 1678, on Easter Eve, he was ordained Priest.

During all this time De la Salle's attention does not seem to have been turned to that which ultimately became the great work of his life. As not unfrequently happens, the real bent was given to his energies by what might be described as accidental circumstances. The friend whom he consulted when in doubt concerning holy orders was one Canon Roland. This good man had interested himself much about an orphanage for girls at Rheims, which had fallen under bad management, and urgently needed reform. Canon Roland was taken ill just before De la Salle's ordination, and, dying not long after, left the young priest his executor, commending to his special care the orphanage just mentioned. De la Salle could not refuse the charge; it was not much to his taste, but it was the bequest of his friend; it was the leading of God; and he girded himself to the task. He applied through the Archbishop to the King for letters patent recognizing the institution, and thus put it upon a lasting foundation; he bore the expense of the whole transaction; then he supplemented the funds out of his own means; and having thus satisfied his obligations to his deceased friend, he returned to his quiet devotional life. The thought that this orphanage for girls would constitute a valuable training school for schoolmistresses seems already to have crossed his mind.

Now comes the turning-point of De la Salle's life, and it comes in a curious way. There was a certain rich, fashionable, and extravagant married lady living in Rouen, who, like the rich man in the parable, was clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, while Lazarus lay at the gate. One day a poor beggar, who had been harshly repulsed from the door, touched the heart of a servant by his manifest misery, and was received into the stables, where he died the same night. The dead man must needs be buried; so the servant went to the mistress, confessed his fault, received some violent language and notice of dismissal, but at the same time procured a sheet to serve as a shroud for the corpse. At dinner-time the lady perceived the very sheet, which she had given for the burial, folded up and lying in her own chair; some mysterious hand had brought back the ungracious present, as though the deceased beggar would not receive a favour in death from one who had been so cruel to him in life.

This strange and apparently not very important occurrence changed the whole course of the lady's life. She gave up all her old habits of magnificence and extravagance, lived the life of a devotee, and soon succeeded in separating from herself all her old companions and friends, who, in fact, deemed her mad. After her husband's death she became still more strict in her habits, and devoted to the service of the poor a large part of her fortune.

Amongst other charities which she assisted was the female orphanage, of which we have already spoken as having been cared for by Canon Roland, and after his death by M. de la Salle. She conceived the idea of establishing something of the same kind for boys in her native town of Rheims, and she consulted Canon Roland on the subject. Ultimately she engaged a devout layman, named Adrien Nyel, who had experience of poor schools in Rouen, promised him maintenance for himself and a young assistant, gave him a letter of introduction to her relative M. de la Salle, and sent him to Rheims to open a school there for poor boys.

This school, which was commenced in 1679, was the germ of the great system of Écoles Chrétiennes. Its success led a pious lady in Rheims to wish to establish another of the same kind in a different part of the town. She consulted M. de la Salle, who had become patron of the first school, on the subject; and thus he became, without any special wish or intention of his own, drawn into the work of the education of poor boys. His own account of the matter is worth quoting:—

'It was,' he wrote, 'by the chance meeting with M. Nyel, and by hearing of the proposal made by that lady [to whom reference has been made], that I was led to begin to interest myself about boys' schools. I had no thought of it before. It was not that the subject had not been suggested to me. Many of M. Roland's friends had tried to interest me about it, but it took no hold of my mind, and I had not the least intention of occupying myself with it. If I had ever thought that the care which out of pure charity I was taking of schoolmasters would have brought me to feel it a duty to live with them, I should have given it up at once; for as I naturally felt myself very much above those whom I was obliged to employ as schoolmasters, especially at first, the bare idea of being obliged to live with such persons would have been insupportable to me. In fact, it was a great trouble to me when first I took them into my house, and the dislike of it lasted for two years. It was apparently for this reason that God, who orders all things with wisdom and gentleness, and who does not force the inclinations of men, when He willed to employ me entirely in the care of schools, wrought imperceptibly and during a long space of time, so that one engagement led to another in an unforeseen way.'

This passage somewhat anticipates events; but it is convenient for the condensed character of this narrative that it should be so. We will therefore briefly fill up the gap left by M. de la Salle's own statement by saying, that he found the work of directing schools for the poor increase upon his hands in a wonderful manner. The success of those which he visited and superintended led to the establishment of others. Soon the masters themselves formed a small body which required superintendence and guidance. He took a house in which he placed them; the home of course needed rules for its orderly and efficient working; these M. de la Salle supplied. But still all was not quite as it should be. Cathedral duties took up much of the Canon's time; these duties were of primary obligation, and left comparatively little of the day to be given to the superintendence of schoolmasters. But more than this, the difference of station and comfort and habits between a well-endowed Canon of a Cathedral, enjoying in addition a private fortune of his own, and poor schoolmasters taken from the humblest ranks, and living in the most humble manner, was quite immeasurable. It was comparatively easy to have the whole company to dine with him, and so to meet them half way down the social hill; but this was not enough. M. de la Salle began gradually to realize the fact, that his great undertaking of supplying schools and schoolmasters for the gratuitous education of the poor, could only be crowned with complete success on the condition of his own adoption of poverty in all its thoroughness. Accordingly he determined to resign his canonry and spend his fortune upon the poor. Not altogether so easy a thing as might at first sight appear. Great opposition was made by his friends: the Archbishop was unwilling to accept his resignation: nothing but persevering determination on the part of De la Salle could have carried the business through; but he was full of perseverance and full of determination, and in 1683 he at last succeeded in divesting himself of his Cathedral preferment. The sale of his property, and spending the money upon the poor, was an easier matter, especially as the year 1684 was one of dearth; in the course of that year and the following he managed to get rid of all.

This parting with his money, instead of spending it upon his great work, may well seem to be a conduct of doubtful wisdom; especially as at a later period much difficulty was encountered for want of funds. But it is hard, and perhaps not justifiable, to find fault with a man, who adopts the course of selling all that he has and giving to the poor, after using devoutly such a prayer as the following:—

'My God, I do not know whether to endow or not. It is not for me to found communities, or to know how they should be founded. It, is for Thee, Oh my God. Thou knowest how, and canst do it in the way which is pleasing to Thee. If Thou foundest them, they will be well founded. If Thou foundest them not, they will be without foundation. I beseech Thee, my God, make me know Thy will.'

Soon after the last livre was spent, De la Salle had occasion to make a journey in connection with his work. He went on foot, as needs he must, and begged his way. An old woman gave him a piece of black bread; he ate it with joy, feeling that now he was indeed a poor man. He had at this time reached the age of thirty-three years.

Behold the Society of the Christian Brothers, and the Christian Schools, taking form at last with De la Salle at the head! Let us examine that work and see how matters stand.

In the first place, so far as the founder was himself concerned, his life was one of asceticism, but still more of prayer:—

'He prayed by day and by night—his life was one incessant communion with God. He would fain have avoided even the interruption caused by sleep, and he grudged every moment given to it, because it shortened his time of prayer. He slept on the ground, or sometimes in his chair, and was the first to rise at the sound of the morning bell. While at Rheims he regularly spent Friday night in the Church of Saint Rémi; he made the sacristan lock him in, and there poured out his soul in prayer for help, and guidance, and success in his work.'

The Superior and the Brothers of course lived a common life. The great principle of bringing himself exactly to the level of those who worked under him, which had led to his resignation of his stall and the sale of his property, made it quite certain that he would not call upon the Brothers to do or to bear anything which he was not willing to do and to bear himself. But the burden was heavier to him than to them. They were poor men originally, accustomed to hard work and rough fare; while he had been brought up in ease and plenty, and had never known what want and poverty were. Consequently it cost De la Salle much effort and self-denial to enter upon his new life; but he was satisfied with no half measures; the sacrifice was to be absolute and complete; he fought the battle and gained it,—yet not he, but the grace of God that was in him. At the first starting of the Society there was no distinct rule, but the following arrangements were made:—

The food was to be substantial but frugal, fit for labourers engaged in hard toil; nothing costly, nothing but what was necessary; on the other hand no special rigour of abstinence, beyond that demanded of other Christians.

For dress was adopted a capote, such as was common in the country, made of coarse material, and black; together with a black cassock, thick shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat.

For a name they chose that of 'Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes,' or, as commonly abbreviated, 'Frères Chrétiens.'

With regard to vows, De la Salle decided that they should take the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but for three years only. They might make them perpetual the following year.

As to the Superior himself, he had little difficulty with regard to the first two points, for his only possessions were a New Testament, a copy of the 'Initiation,' a Crucifix and a Rosary; and to celibacy he was already committed. With regard to obedience, the fulfilment of the vow was not easy to a man in his position; but he endeavoured to find a way to make this vow also a practical one, by the method of resigning his post and putting one of the Brothers in his place; this he ultimately succeeded in doing, though only for a short time.

We must leave to the reader's imagination the manner in which the work grew under such remarkable auspices, the growth of M. de la Salle's reputation as a saint, and the constantly increasing load of responsibilities of all kinds which rested upon his shoulders.

In the year 1688 the work extended to Paris. When De la Salle arrived there he left behind him in Rheims a principal house containing sixteen Brothers, and a training college for country schoolmasters, containing thirty men, besides fifteen lads in their noviciate. For the purpose of his work in Paris he hired a house in the village of Vaugirard; this he occupied for seven years, collecting the Brothers about him in their vacations, and making it a home for the sick and weary, and a place where postulants might make proof of their profession. We shall not follow his footsteps during this time, except to say that the work flourished wonderfully well under his hand, as it always did, notwithstanding all kinds of difficulties. We may produce, however, a striking document of self-dedication which belongs to this period. The Brothers seem to have been strongly moved by the desire of making their vows perpetual, instead of only for three years; the Superior opposed the innovation, but finding them resolute, he at length gave way, and commenced the new system by a formal dedication of himself, expressed in the following remarkable words:—

'Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, prostrate in deepest reverence before Thine infinite and adorable Majesty, I consecrate myself wholly to Thee, to seek Thy glory in all ways possible to me, or to which Thou shalt call me. And to this end I, Jean Baptiste de la Salle, Priest, promise and vow to unite myself to, and abide in society with, the Brothers [here follow twelve names], and in union and association with them to hold free schools in any place whatsoever (even though, in order to do so, I should have to beg for alms, and live on dry bread), or to do in the said Society any work which may be appointed for me, whether by the Community or by the Superior who shall have the direction of it. For which reason I promise and vow obedience as well to the Society itself as to the Superior of it. And these vows of association with, and steadfastness in, the said Community, and of obedience, I promise to keep inviolable during my whole life; in witness whereof I have signed. Done at Vaugirard, this sixth day of June, being the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, in the year 1694.

'(Signed) De la Salle.'

Having taken this step, De la Salle made a great effort to divest himself of his post as Superior, but in vain. He argued, but the Brothers were not convinced. He insisted upon an election, and every single vote was given for him. He begged for a second voting, but the result was the same. The Brothers said it would be time enough for them to elect his successor, when death had deprived them of him. So in his post of Superior he remained; and doubtless the Brothers were right, and he was wrong, as to the point in dispute between them.

Let us now look for a moment at the rule of the Christian Brothers in the complete form which it ultimately assumed.

The first article sets forth the purpose of the Society as follows:—

'The Institute of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes is a Society, the profession of whose members is to hold schools gratuitously. The object of this Institute is to give a Christian education to children, and it is for this purpose that schools are held, in order that the masters, who have charge of the children from morning to night, may bring them up to lead good lives, by instructing them in the mysteries of our Holy Religion and filling their minds with Christian maxims, while they give them such an education as is fitting for them.'

Thus the schools were to be free, and they were to be essentially and fundamentally Christian; but there was no intention of making them exclusively religious and banishing secular studies. On the other hand, the greater part of the time given to the children was devoted, as in reason it must be, to secular teaching; and only a small portion retained for teaching of a more solemn kind. No doubt De la Salle depended for the religious results of schooling more upon the men who taught and the general atmosphere of his schools, than upon amount of religious lessons actually taught and learnt: this is indicated by the following article of the Rule:—

'The Brothers of the Society will have a very deep reverence for the Holy Scriptures, and in token of it they will always carry about them a copy of the New Testament, and will pass no day without reading a portion of it, in faith, respect, and veneration for the Divine Words which it contains. They will look upon it as their prime and principal Rule.'

Again:—

'The spirit of the Institute consists in a burning zeal for the instruction of children, that they may be brought up in the fear and love of God, and led to preserve their innocence, where they have not already lost it; to keep them from sin, and to instil into their minds a great horror of evil, and of everything that might rob them of purity.'

The great purpose of De la Salle was to form men suitable for the work of education as thus conceived; and one notable feature of his scheme was that they should be laymen; even with regard to the Superior of the Society, De la Salle, though himself a Priest, bound the Brethren down to a pledge that they would not, when he was gone, elect a Priest into his room. It is needless to say that he had no prejudice against the priestly office as such; but he was genuinely persuaded that the work which he wished to have done could best be performed by laymen; partly because they could give themselves up to it more completely, partly because they could be had more cheaply, and partly because poor men such as he enlisted, and intended to enlist, were more thoroughly on a level with the poor, whose children he desired to educate. It was in the same spirit that he forbade to the Brothers the knowledge of Latin.

There are five vows in the Society. Brothers who have not attained the age of twenty-five years can take them for only three years. No one may take them even for three years, until he has been at least two years in the Society, and has had one year's experience of the Noviciate, and one year's teaching in the schools. The vows are as follows:—

1. Poverty.
2. Chastity.
3. Obedience.
4. Steadfastness.
5. Giving gratuitous instruction to children.

By this last vow they also bind themselves to take all possible pains to teach them well and to bring them up Christianly; and they promise neither to ask nor to accept, from the scholars, or from their parents, anything, be it what it may, either as a gift, or in any other form of remuneration whatsoever.

The rule of daily life is given by the following table:—

4.30 a.m. Hour of rising.

5. Prayer and meditation.

6. Attend Mass, reading, &c.

7.15. Breakfast; prayer and preparation for school.

8 till 11. School, and children taken to Church.

11.30. Particular examination of conscience; dinner and recreation.

1 p.m. Prayer in oratory, and depart to various schools.

1.30 till 5. School; half an-hour given to catechism.

5.30. Spiritual reading and mental prayer. The reading begins with a portion of the New Testament, read upon the knees.

6. Mental prayer, and confession of faults one to another.

6.30. Supper; reading at all meals; recreation.

8. Study of catechism.

8.30. Prayers in oratory.

9. Retire to dormitory; in bed by 9.15.

So much for the Rule of the Christian Brothers. It is sufficiently strict; but, as before remarked, not intensified by any special austerities. The general order prescribed is, however, strengthened by injunctions against unnecessary communications with persons outside the Brotherhood, unnecessary possessions, unnecessary exercise of the will: the devotion to the rule is absolute, the poverty complete, the submission of the will unbounded. Very wonderful all this, but quite true.

In connection with the rule, it may be well to say a few words concerning the manuals which De la Salle composed for the guidance of the Brothers. The principal was a book entitled, 'Conduite à l'usage des Écoles Chrétiennes;' this was circulated in manuscript, and a copy given to each Brother in charge of a school, but was not printed during the author's lifetime. He revised it in 1717, when he had retired from his post as Superior, and it was printed in 1720, a year after his death. It has been the guide of the Brothers ever since, and is read through twice a year in every one of their houses. The book shows great insight and good sense. Here is an instruction for a lesson in arithemetic:—

'After the children have done their sums on the paper, instead of correcting them himself the master will make the children find out their mistakes for themselves, by rational explanation of the processes. He will ask them, for instance, why in addition of money they begin with the lowest coin, and other questions of the same sort, so as to make sure that they have an intelligent understanding of what they do.'

When the subject is religious teaching, the tone of the book rises to the occasion:—

'The masters will take such great care in the instruction of all their scholars, that not one shall be left in ignorance, at least of the things which a Christian ought to believe and do. And to the end they may not neglect a thing of such great importance, they will often meditate earnestly on the account which they will have to give to God, and that they will be guilty in his sight of the ignorance of the children who shall have been under their care, and also of the sins into which their ignorance may have caused them to fall.'

The faults which De la Salle regards as worthy of being treated with most severity are these: untruthfulness, quarrelling, theft, impurity, misbehaviour in church. It is notable that idleness and inattention to lessons, sauciness, and other boyish faults, which have brought much trouble upon many thousands of urchins, are not here enumerated at all; probably the wise Superior of the Christian Brothers thought that these and the like infirmities could be more successfully treated by other means than by severe punishment. We incline to believe that he was right. Certainly we shall have no difficulty in assenting to the wisdom of the rules laid down as to the conditions of punishment being useful: it must be (1) disinterested, that is, free from all feeling of revenge; (2) charitable, that is, inflicted from a real love to the child; (3) just; (4) proportioned to the fault; (5) moderate; (6) free from anger; (7) prudent; (8) voluntary on the part of the scholar, that is, understood and accepted by him; (9) received with respectful submission; (10) in silence on both sides.

These samples must suffice to indicate M. de la Salle's practical and simple wisdom.

The thought of all that we wish to say before concluding this article compels us once more to appeal to the reader's imagination with regard to the success of De la Salle's work. His fame went through France and beyond it; he became the recognized apostle of elementary education; when he made an expedition to Calais and the north in the latter part of his career, it was almost a triumphal progress; nothing, however, could spoil the sweet simplicity of his character, or interfere with his utter devotion to his work, and his humble desire to shift the burden upon what he believed to be stronger shoulders than his own. This desire was at length accomplished, and on the 8th of May, 1717, after much earnest consideration and religious observance, a second Superior of their Society was unanimously elected by the Christian Brothers.

And now this remarkable man had nothing more to do in this world but to await his call and to depart in peace. At the earnest entreaty of the Brethren he took up his abode with them in their house at Rouen; and there, in the midst of increasing infirmities, and in the exercise (so far as was possible) of his priestly office, he tarried the Lord's leisure. We give the closing scene in the words of the interesting volume, the title of which heads this article, and from which we have been drawing the materials of our sketch.

'The Festival of St. Joseph, March 19, was approaching. He had always had a special veneration for that great Saint, whom he had chosen for patron of his Society, and he had a great wish to celebrate once more on that Festival. He could hardly have hoped to do so, for he had now for some time been quite unable to leave his bed; but in the evening of the 18th, about ten o'clock, his pain was unexpectedly relieved, and he was conscious of some return of strength. The night was quiet, and on the morning of the Festival he was able to crawl to the Altar, and to celebrate the Holy Mysteries in the presence of all the Brothers, who could scarcely believe their eyes. All that day he continued better, was able to converse with the Brothers, listened for the last time to their confidential talk, and gave them some last counsels. But the pain came on again, and he was obliged to go to bed.

'The Curé of the parish, hearing that he was worse, hastened to visit him, and thinking from the bright cheerfulness of his face that the dying man was not aware of his own condition, said to him, "Do you know that you are dying, and must soon appear before the presence of God?" "I know it," was the answer, "and I wait His commands; my lot is in His hands, His will be done." In truth, his soul dwelt continually in unbroken communion with God, and he only waited with longing for the moment when the last ties that bound him to earth should be severed. Several days passed thus. Feeling that he was getting worse, he asked for the Viaticum, and it was arranged that he should receive it on the following day, which was Wednesday in Holy Week. He spent the whole night in preparation, and his little cell was decorated as well as the poverty of the house allowed. When the time came, he insisted on being taken out of bed, and dressed, and placed in a chair, vested in a surplice and stole. At the sound of the bell announcing the approach of the Priest, he threw himself on his knees, and received his last Communion with the same wonderful devotion which had often formerly struck those who assisted at his Mass, only with even more of the fire of love in his face. It was the last gleam of a dying light, which was being extinguished on earth, to shine with undiminished brightness "as the stars for ever and ever."

'The next day he received Extreme Unction. His mind was still quite clear, and the Superior asked him to give his blessing to the Brothers who were kneeling round him, as well as to all the rest of the Community. He raised his eyes to heaven, stretched out his hands, and said, "The Lord bless you all."

'Later in the day he became unconscious, and the prayers for the dying were said; but again he revived. About midnight the death agony came on: it was the night of the Agony in Gethsemane. It lasted till after two: then there was another interval of comparative ease, and he was able to speak. The Superior asked him whether he accepted willingly all his sufferings. "Yes," he replied, "I adore in all things the dealings of God with me." These were his last words; at three o'clock the agony returned, but only for a short hour. At four o'clock in the morning of Good Friday, the 7th of April, 1719, he fell asleep.

'As soon as the news of his death was spread abroad, the house was beset by crowds desiring to see him. All revered him as a Saint, and wanted to look once more on the venerable face, and to carry away something in remembrance of him. He had nothing belonging to him but a Crucifix, a New Testament, and a copy of the Imitation; but his poor garments were cut up, and distributed in little bits to satisfy the people.'

The Christian Brothers since the death of their great founder have steadily continued their charitable self-denying work. They have received much encouragement from high authorities in Church and State, much also from the good opinion which their work has gained for them wherever it has been known. Their history, however, records reverses: the chief of them connected with the catastrophe of the great Revolution. With regard to this, it might have been expected on general grounds, that in a social upheaval, which was essentially a rising of the poor and oppressed against the rich and the privileged, a society which had poverty as its foundation principle, and the free education of the children of the poor as its only reason of existence, must have been spared by general consent in the midst of the social ruin by which so much was overwhelmed. At first it seemed that this might have been so; when the Religious Orders were suppressed by decree of the National Assembly in 1790, exception was made in favour of those engaged in public instruction and the care of the sick; but in 1792 all corporations, specially including the Christian Brothers, were abolished, on the ground that their existence was incompatible with the conditions of a really free State. During the Reign of Terror the Institute was broken up, the Brothers scattered, and many suffered. There was a revival under Napoleon, which lasted till the Revolution of 1830. At this time the Institute was shaken, as was almost everything else in France; but the recognized merits of the Christian Brothers carried them safely through the storm, and one of the most telling and triumphant facts in their history is the confidence reposed in them by M. Guizot, when Minister of Public instruction under Louis Philippe. More than once M. Guizot endeavoured, but in vain, to persuade the Superior to accept the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

The work of the Christian Brothers in France at the present time is of special value; but also carried on under much chilling discouragement. A systematic attempt is being made to secularize education, and to drive every indication of religious faith from the primary schools. It remains to be seen what will be the result of the fanatical opposition to all that is dear to the minds of many French men and almost all French women, which is carried on so persistently by the Legislature and the Government. Already there are signs of reaction; the result of the late elections, which has substantially changed the proportion of parties in the representative Chamber, is probably not a little connected with the enforcement of an utterly godless education.[4] Meanwhile it would seem, as a matter of fact, that the number of children under the teaching of the Christian Brothers has increased instead of diminishing: there are still some French people left who have not bowed the knee to Secularism, and Materialism, and Atheism: even those who tremble at Priestcraft can accept the ministration of the Christian Brothers, who cannot (as we have seen) be Priests, according to their fundamental rule: and so, although the secularist flood is just now frightfully high, there is a gleam of hope to be found in the work of the Christian Schools, and the light which shines in them and from them may serve as a witness for God till the tyranny be overpast, and then may perhaps serve as a light at which the torch of religious teaching will be lighted again once more.

We have placed at the head of this article the title of one of the manuals in use in the primary schools of France. It is worth studying in connection with the work of the Christian Brothers, and on other grounds as well. The entire absence of all reference to God or to any kind of religious knowledge or religious principle in connection with duty is startling, and gives the book a complexion somewhat strange to an English mind; and there are portions which can scarcely fail to strike an Englishman as droll; but is full of French ingenuity. It contains a vast amount of compressed information, and the dry instruction of the text is enforced, or rather sweetened and made palatable, by a series of stories in the form of a running commentary or collection of foot-notes, in which the heroes of the stories illustrate the lessons which the scholars have to learn.

We take two or three specimens from the manual, which we will present in a free translation:—

Our Duties Towards Ourselves

'As you grow older, you become more serious. Consider what your duties are.

'You have duties towards yourselves, that is, towards your bodies and towards your souls.

'Sound health must be taken care of; weak health must be strengthened by a good hygiene.

'Hygiene demands cleanliness; wash your whole body carefully and frequently.

'Keep nothing dirty upon you, nor in your house, nor near your house.

'Hygiene demands good air: air your bed, your chamber, and all places in which you live and work.

'Hygiene forbids all excess, and the use of injurious things, as alcohol and tobacco. It prescribes temperance and sobriety.

'Hygiene requires you to avoid a sudden change from heat to cold. When you are in a perspiration, do not lie down upon the ground, do not expose yourself to draughts, and do not drink cold water.

'Hygiene requires gymnastic exercises, which make the body supple, healthy, and strong.

'Attention to health gives a chance of long life.

'In order to fulfil your duties towards your soul, you must continue to cultivate your intelligence and to educate yourself.

'Do not forget that you can educate yourself at any age.

'You must fight against sensuality, which would make you gluttons, drunkards, and debauchees; against idleness, which would make you useless to others and a burden to them; against selfishness and vanity, which would make others detest you; envy, which would render you unhappy and hateful; anger and hatred, which might lead you to all kinds of evil deeds.'

These lessons are enforced by an extract from the French Law, which informs scholar that the persons found in a condition of manifest intoxication in the street or a public-house are punished by a fine of from 1 to 15 francs; that for a second offence the punishment is imprisonment for three days; and that for a third breach of the law the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment for from six days to a month, and to a fine of from 16 to 300 francs. In addition to this, the offenders will be declared incapable of exercising their political rights for two years.

This is a very practical teaching; but the duties which little boys owe to their bodies and souls are rendered more attractive, than either the dicta concerning hygiene or the threatened results of evil ways are likely to make them, by the history of a certain Dr. John Burnett, a physician, who made an immense fortune in New York. This is found as a feuilleton at the foot of the page, under the title 'Un Bon Charlatan.'

The pith of the teaching under the head of Morals, is contained in the following summary:—

'1. I will fulfil my duties towards myself. My duties towards my body are, cleanliness, sobriety, temperance, precaution against the inclemency of the seasons, exercise.

'2. I will fulfil my duties towards my soul by continuing to educate myself, and by combating all bad passions.

'3. I will not do to another that which I would not that he should do to me.

'4. I will not do him wrong, either by striking him, or robbing him, or deceiving him, or lying to him, or by breaking my promise, or by speaking evil of him, or by calumniating him.

'5. I will do to another that which I should wish him to do to me.

'6. I will love him, I will be grateful, exact, discreet, charitable.'

Very good resolutions these, but one cannot avoid the thought that the little scholar might estimate 3 and 5 not the less, perhaps the more, if informed of the life and character of Him who first spoke these apparent simple rules in such a manner as to impress them upon the heart of the world. Would not all the resolutions gain strength from the belief that duty towards God is the true spring of duty towards our neighbours and ourselves, and that the grace of God is necessary to make the best resolutions practically operative in the life?

We will now give our readers a specimen of the tales by which the lessons of the manual are illustrated and enforced. It shall be taken from the section entitled Society, the second subsection of which is as follows:—

'Freedom of Labour.

'In France; labour is free; every one employs, as he pleases, his intelligence and his arms.

'You may choose any profession you please; but everybody else has the same right as yourself.

'Competition is therefore permitted; never complain of competition.

'If you hinder your neighbour from working as he pleases, you may yourself be hindered in like manner.

'Competition excites the workman to do his best and at the cheapest rate.

'Thus competition is advantageous to all. Never ask Society to interfere with the freedom of labour, but work hard yourself.'

These wholesome lessons on competition are illustrated by the following tale:—

Gregory's Views on Competition.

'Our friend Gregory is a good husband; but he sometimes has little arguments with his wife.

'The other day, Mrs. Gregory was angry, because she had found out that a shoemaker was going to establish himself in the village. "What do we want another shoemaker for," said she "when you and I are here already? The Government ought to prevent such things."

'Gregory, who was at his work, lifted his head and said: "The Government ought to prevent women from talking nonsense. Suppose that I was the shoemaker who had just established himself in the village; what would you say if any one interfered with my carrying on my trade? You would not be very well pleased, I fancy."

'He then explained to his wife the necessity of competition.

'"There is plenty of work for everybody," said he. "If there had been already two or three shoemakers in the place, this new fellow would not have come to settle here. He would have seen that there was nothing for him to do. I am surprised that no competing shoemaker has come here before. You know very well that we have sometimes to refuse work, and that there are people in the village who have to go to the town to get their shoes. Beyond doubt the newcomer will take some of our custom; but it is our business to look after that. We must work better than we have done hitherto; and that's all about it."

'Mrs. Gregory was not convinced, but she said nothing.

'"You see," continued Gregory, "you must look a little beyond the end of your nose. You wish that there should be only one shoemaker in the place. The linendraper wishes that there should be only one linendraper; the grocer only one grocer; and so on through all the trades. Very well; don't you remember when we had only one linendraper how dear shirts used to be? And don't you remember some twenty years ago, when there was only one smith? You could never get hold of him; and when you did, his charges were tremendous. I recollect him putting a bell to our front door. When he gave me the bill, and I had seen the amount, I said to him, 'my good fellow, I didn't order a silver bell.' 'And I have not put up a silver bell,' was the reply. 'Oh! I thought from the price it must have been silver,' said I. This vexed him, and he answered, 'If you are not satisfied, go elsewhere.' That was well enough; he was the only smith in the neighbourhood. I could not send for a man from Pekin: he would have been sure to be lost on the road, and I should have been obliged to provide for his family."

'Gregory made some other good remarks to show that if competition prevents a shopkeeper from selling his goods at a high price, it enables him to buy from others at a cheap rate. "So on the whole," concluded he, "do not let us fuss and make ourselves ill. I would much rather have some coffee, than be compelled to take medicine."'

Gregory must have had some of the saintly qualities of his great namesakes to enable him to take so calm a view of the invasion of his shoemaking monopoly. We trust that Mrs. Gregory was eventually convinced by his wise and philosophical arguments, and still more, that the generation of Frenchmen who enjoy such teaching from their early years may emulate so bright an example.

We cannot refrain from making one more extract from our little manual. The thirteenth section deals with 'The Rights and Duties of the Citizen' and the third subsection treats as follows of:—

'Political Duties.

'The French people ought more than any other people, to respect the law made by its own deputies.

'It ought without murmuring to pay the taxes voted by the Chambers, and to fulfil its military duties.

'It ought to respect the authority of all the agents of the Government, from the lowest to the highest, from the garde champêtre to the Ministers and the President of the Republic, for the agents of authority are the servants of the law, and all are chosen directly or indirectly, by the deputies of the people.

'The greater the rights of citizens, the greater their duties.

'It used to be said, Noblesse oblige. This meant: a nobleman ought to behave himself better than another, to be worthy of his nobility.

'It should now be said, Liberté oblige. This means that a free citizen ought to behave himself better than another, in order to be worthy of liberty.

'You have the duty of putting your name upon the electoral roll at the Mairie of the Commune in which you reside.

'You have the duty of voting, and you must vote according to your conscience.

'You have not the right of being indifferent to public affairs, and of saying that they do not concern you.

'You have an interest in securing to your Commune good Municipal Councillors, who will look well after the finances, will take care of the schools, and of the roads, and attend to all wants.

'You have an interest in securing to your Department good General Councillors, who will do for the Department what the Municipal Councillors do for the Commune.

'You have an interest in nominating good Deputies and good Senators, who may make useful and just laws, choose a President of the Republic worthy of that supreme honour, and keep the Government in good ways.

'You ought to make a good choice, not merely for your own interest, but for the love of your country.

'Love those republican institutions which France has provided for herself.

'Endeavour to make them loved, respecting the while your neighbour's opinions, and restraining yourself from all hatred and from all violence.

'The future of the Republic depends upon each of you. If each of you does his duty, it will be strong: strong enough to make our lives happy, and to restore to us one day the brothers whom we have lost—the Brothers of Alsace and Lorraine.'

This is the conclusion of the manual. All works up to Alsace and Lorraine. (The capital letters are in the original.) Is it not delightful? Is it not most truly French?

We should be sorry to see a parody or parallel to this French manual introduced into our schools. At the same time we think there is something to be learnt from studying it. Our neighbours seem to have in some respect learnt better than ourselves the maxim of Horace:—

'pueris dant crustula blandi
Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.'

The pages of our manual are full of literary crustula; and we imagine that most boys would find themselves sufficiently amused to read and study the book, whether they were desirous of profiting by the contents or not. And after all it is a great thing to get hold of a boy, whether it be by the loving and evidently self-sacrificing efforts of the Christian Brothers, or by the ingenious mental food provided by the Minister of Public Instruction. Notwithstanding such ingenuity, we do not, however, believe that the present system of French teaching can answer: it is hollow and unsound: it ignores the deepest of motives, and disregards the most potent of influences: it may breed a desire to fight with Germany for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, but it can scarcely produce the highest class of citizens and heroes, because it does not acknowledge the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom, and the love of God as the best foundation of the love of man. The principles of duty inculcated in the manual from which we have been exhibiting a few elegant extracts will never rear such a character as De la Salle, nor supply the foundation of such an institution as that of the Christian Brothers.

But we must come nearer home—

'Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.'

We have not yet arrived in England at the complete secularization of our elementary schools; but we are, in the opinion of some and in the wish of others, within measurable distance of the Paradisiacal terminus of secularism and secular reform; and therefore, with the thought of what has been going on and is still going on in France, we may do well to look for a few moments to our own country, and examine what has been going on and is going on there.

Let us beware, however, of exaggeration or alarmism. We do not at all desire to imply that there is anything approaching to parallelism in the conditions and possibilities of the two countries. Had it been proposed to do in England what has been done in France, the opposition would have been indignant and overwhelming. There is no such desire for emancipation from Priests and Priestcraft in England as has long existed and still exists in France. To be sure we hear something on this side of the Channel of sacerdotal pretensions and unwarrantable clerical claims; but the men by whom the offence comes are few in number, and, at the worst, they and their conduct are but as a drop in the great bucket of the English Church and its influence upon the nation. In France matters are painfully different. While the women are largely dévotes, the men are very sparingly dévots. Unfortunately the admission of superstitious practices, the practical hiding of Holy Scripture, the adoption under the patronage of the Church of foolish tales of miracles, and the absence of effectual protest against the unwarrantable assumptions of the Vatican, have combined to offer to the intellect of France an unnecessary obstacle, which in too many instances causes shipwreck to faith; and so, while in England the men, who make the laws, are, speaking broadly, Christian believers, in France the men, who equally make the laws, are as broadly unbelievers. This difference is not likely to disappear. France has reached a point at which the disease of unbelief may be said to have become chronic; England, on the other hand, although there have been of late, and are still, symptoms of infidel proclivities, appears nevertheless, so far as her condition can be tested to be sound at heart, and in some respects in a more healthy state of religious conviction and activity than has been manifested hitherto.

The question of the comparative conditions of France and England is one with which we have no desire to enter at length; and indeed a native of one of the countries is very unlikely to be in a condition to take a quite just and fair view of the other. We only desire to guard ourselves from appearing to assume the probability of the secularization of our English schools on the ground of the step having been already taken in France. And having premised this caution, we will ask our readers to accompany us in the consideration of some details, suggested by the Report of the National Society, and by that of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education. Afterwards we will submit a few general reflections, and so close our article.

It was feared by some and hoped by others fifteen years ago, when the law of compulsory education and School Boards was enacted in this country, that Voluntary Schools would undergo what was described at the time as a 'process of painless extinction,' and that Board Schools would reign supreme. These fears and hopes have been curiously falsified; the Voluntary Schools have not been extinguished either painlessly or otherwise; on the other hand, they have increased, both in work done and in support given, to an extent which could never have been anticipated. It will be observed that the question is not purely and simply between Board and Voluntary Schools; it may be so in some parishes, where with unanimity on the part of the parishioners, one Parish School can be made to supply the wants of all; but generally the question is that of supporting Voluntary Schools and paying towards Board Schools as well; the support of one does not exclude the legal claim of the other, as it has been frequently argued that it ought in equity to do; consequently Voluntary Schools are heavily handicapped, and nothing but a deep sense of the advantage of freedom in religious teaching, and an utter dread of secularism, can account for the remarkable results exhibited by the progress of Voluntary Schools under such manifest difficulties.

The following Tables are so exceedingly instructive, that we make no apology for introducing them:—

Accommodation.

Number on the Registers.

Average Attendance.

Voluntary Contributions.

From these Tables it appears that in spite of the surrender of some Church Schools to Boards, a process which is always to some extent going on, and which causes an increase in the number of Board Schools beyond that produced by actual building, the accommodation in Church Schools rose in 1884 by 41,112, and the average attendance by 45,316. The Church was also educating about half as many again as were being educated in Board Schools, and the amount voluntarily contributed during the year was more than 585,000l., in addition to a large sum expended on buildings and improvements.

This does not look much like speedy extinction, and we sincerely trust that that event is still far distant. It is not so much that we are opposed to Board schools on principle, still less that we disapprove of the national determination that every child shall be educated, which logically leads to some national machinery involving the principle of Board Schools in some form or other,—not so much this, as that we are persuaded that the existence of Voluntary Schools is an unspeakable benefit even to the Board Schools themselves. We hold that a definite system of religious teaching, according to which the religious studies of the school and the secular are co-ordinate and equally regarded, and the religious atmosphere which such consideration implies, are of the very essence of a rightly ordered school; the ideal may be reached in a Voluntary School, it is impossible that it should be reached in a Board School; nevertheless, there may be Board schools and Board Schools; in some there may be simple secularism, and in others there may be a good religious spirit and fair religious teaching; and the degree in which the average quality of Board Schools will approximate to the latter limit rather than the former, will depend very much upon the standard set up by the Voluntary Schools. A reference to the Report of the Committee of Council on Education proves that Voluntary Schools are worked more cheaply, and, so far as can be judged by the results of examination, are secularly not less successful than schools upon the Board system; and therefore even with reference to economy there is some advantage in keeping the two classes of school going side by side. But all questions of comparative economy, and of advantages arising from an honourable competition, are as nothing compared with the reflected influence in the direction of bringing up the average religious character of Board Schools to the highest point which the shackles of legislation allow.

In addition to the work of voluntary elementary schools, there are two other departments in which voluntary efforts are doing much in support of the religious and Christian character of English Education.

There are no less than thirty Training Colleges in connection with the Church. The pupils trained in these Colleges are not in general bound by any rule to accept posts only in Church schools; as a matter of fact, many are drafted into Board Schools; but it is impossible to exaggerate the importance to the subsequent influence for good, in a school of whatever kind, of a thorough religious training in youth upon definite religious principles. So far as an opinion can be formed, it would seem that these Training Colleges must always rest upon a voluntary foundation; it is difficult to conceive of their being carried on upon State principles; you may make religious teaching optional in an elementary day school, and the evil results may be not easily perceptable; but when eighty or a hundred young men or young women are brought together into one home, to lead a common family life with common purposes and prospects, the religious equality principle breaks down; you must have common religious teaching and common worship, and these must be utterly vapid and miserable, unless there be a hearty agreement upon the grounds and articles of faith, such as is only possible for those who are of one Church, or at all events of one denomination. Doubtless on this very account efforts have been made, and efforts will be made, to break down the Church Training College system, or to erect something on broader principles which shall gradually extinguish it; but on all grounds we trust that these efforts may fail, and that at all events no change may be introduced which shall be successful in rendering impossible the carrying on of institutions, to which we are convinced that the education of the poor children of England is indebted more than to almost any other. We have but been working out under new conditions the great problem which De la Salle perceived to lie at the root of elementary education: the forming of the instrument wherewith to do the work was, as he clearly perceived, the great thing to be accomplished; and for that purpose personal influence was needed; it was necessary to stir up in each young aspirant to the office of a teacher something of the enthusiasm of teaching, to breed a high conception of the value and responsibilities of the office, to make it felt that self-denial and self-devotion were essential conditions of any lasting success. English Training Colleges differ very widely from that community which De la Salle established, and over which he presided; in our opinion, they, at least their managers, might profit by studying his work and emulating his spirit; but after all, they will still be widely different, and any attempt at exact imitation amongst ourselves would perhaps produce a parody rather than an adequate copy. Any one who can remember the early work of Derwent Coleridge at St. Mark's, Chelsea, and the vast change which was brought about in the training of the schoolmaster, the estimate of his qualifications, and his general status, by the admirable and laborious efforts of that good and able man, will be conscious that a work has been done amongst us in these latter days, upon which De la Salle himself would have looked with a kindly smile of approval, though in some respects he might have imagined, and perhaps with justice, that it was not so thorough as his own.

The other department of voluntary action to which we proposed to refer, is that which is known as Diocesan Inspection.

This system of inspection is carried on by Clergymen, who are appointed with the approval and in connection with the Bishops, and whose stipends are provided by voluntary contribution. The action is not uniform throughout the Dioceses, but there is scarcely a Diocese in which the work is not carried on with great energy. These Inspectors visit the schools, in some Dioceses and Board Schools as well as those in connection with the Church; they examine the children, confer with the masters and mistresses, give advice and encouragement as may seem to be necessary and fitting, and make a report upon the general condition of the school with reference to religious knowledge. In most Dioceses there is in addition some kind of prize scheme, by means of which children are encouraged to give special attention to the religious side of their education.

We think it worth while to call attention to this system of Diocesan Inspection, because it is well that Englishmen, and especially English Churchmen, should be awake to the religious needs of our times, and the efforts which are being made to meet them. We are aware that all such machinery as that which we have described must be ineffectual in implanting in the minds of children that 'fear of the Lord,' which is 'the beginning of wisdom.' No system of inspection and examination, and no careful grinding of certain lessons, whether they be taken from Holy Scripture or from any other book, into the minds of little children, can be a substitute for the true influence of heart upon heart; the teacher who would generate religious life in the soul of a child must imitate the Prophet, who put his mouth to the child's mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and prayed that the child might awake to new life; nevertheless on the supposition that no pains are spared in obtaining suitable masters and mistresses, much may be done to encourage them in their difficult work by making it manifest that the heart of England and of England's Church is with them. And indeed it is a difficult work: the education of children will never be a simple and easy thing as long as the world lasts: the value of the finished article may generally be taken as some measure of the labour and care necessary to produce it: and the value of a pure, simple-hearted, well-taught Christian child is so immeasurably and indescribably great, that we may safely conclude that the workmen and workwomen employed in producing the result must have spent upon their work an incredible amount of honest self-denying toil: a perfunctory discharge of the office of schoolmaster,—so many hours a week, and so much pay,—will never do: the master of the Elementary School must ever be a Christian Brother in reality, if not in name.

Passing for a moment from the religious side of the educational question, the reader may be interested by looking at a few statistics, indicating the general position of England, or rather England and Wales, with reference to elementary education.

In the year ending August 31, 1884, Her Majesty's Inspectors visited 18,761 day schools, having on their registers the names of 4,337,321 children. Of these, 3,273,134 were, on an average, in daily attendance throughout the year. The amount of income arising from school-pence, it may be worth while noting, was 1,734,115l., or nearly two millions. The Government grants reached 2,722,351l., or nearly three millions.

Besides the day schools, 847 night schools were examined. In many parts of the country these night schools were very important: they afford big boys the only opportunity of keeping up their knowledge, or intellectually improving themselves. Nearly twenty-five thousand scholars over twelve years of age are, on an average, in attendance each night.

There are nearly forty thousand certificated teachers at work; and 3214 students are being prepared in forty-one Training Colleges.

The expense of education at different places varies remarkably, and apparently without any intelligible principle. Thus the income per scholar from voluntary contributions in Voluntary Schools, and from rates in Board Schools, is in certain selected towns as follows:—

We submit the above figures and facts to the reader's consideration, and we are compelled to confess that we do not find ourselves in a condition to offer a satisfactory solution of the difficulties which they suggest. We should probably have expected that London would be in an exceptional position with regard to this as to many other matters; but the magnificent manner in which its Board contributions exceed those of any other town quite baffles us; it will be observed that the odd shillings and pence of London more than pay the whole expense at Sheffield. Possibly the practical difficulty of understanding this economical anomaly may have had something to do with the results of the late Board election in London.

On the whole, we English people seem to be solving the national education question more nostro. We have got a system not quite symmetrical, not quite logical, not the perfect exponent of the crotchets of any particular school, but nevertheless one which has on the whole produced remarkable results, and seems to have in it sufficient powers of adaptation and development. Of late a new question has been opened—and an important one—namely, that of making elementary education entirely gratuitous. There is something to be said in favour of the proposal, and it is a pity that the merits of the question should have been somewhat obscured by the intolerable, but to some persons perhaps attractive, suggestion that the additional expenditure necessary for making education gratuitous should be supplied by the robbery of the Church, or (in politer phrase) by the appropriation to the purposes of education of the national property hitherto supplied to the support of religion. This cat can scarcely be said to have been let out of the bag, for her head was no sooner seen peeping out than the alarm created was dangerously great, and Puss was concealed again in a twinkling; but she is inside the bag still. A much less objectionable proposal was speedily made, namely, that the deficiency created by the remission of school-pence should be supplied by a Parliamentary grant. And this proposal, we presume, may be regarded as at present before the country.

Looking upon the matter from a Chancellor of the Exchequer point of view, it is a serious thing to think of having to make an addition of about two millions to the annual national expenditure; and it may be observed that leading statesmen on both sides of politics may be found who are at present unconvinced. Doubtless an expenditure of two millions would not be grudged by the nation for any necessary purpose; but when the proposal is to substitute a payment of two millions by the Exchequer for the two millions paid in driblets by the persons most interested, for the most part gladly and with special provisions for preventing the payment pressing hardly upon the exceptionally poor, it may well be that many sensible persons will ask the question, Cui bono?

Independently, however, of any fiscal considerations, it seems to us that there are weighty arguments against the proposal of a gratuitous education.

It may be observed, and we think it an important observation, that the proposal of free education is in the teeth of all our recent policy; and some pressing reasons ought to be given for a complete and sudden reversal of all that we have hitherto been doing. There are many free schools in the country, endowed by 'pious founders,' and established for the special purpose of giving free education to the children of particular parishes. Some of these schools have had to pass through the hands of the School Commissioners and to receive new schemes. It has been, we believe, the invariable practice to insert into these new schemes the condition of school-pence; the portion of the endowment so saved has been applied to the foundation of exhibitions and other methods of assisting deserving children. The inhabitants of the parishes in which this innovation has been introduced have grumbled and submitted; it has in some cases been a bitter pill, but the law-abiding character of the Englishman has caused it to be swallowed without noisy remonstrance. We cannot, without raising a suspicion of having practised educational quackery, retreat from the position which we have thus taken up.

What is the argument for the position? It is sometimes stated thus, that people value a thing more when it costs them something to get it. The argument is not to be despised; but we think that it yields in importance to the consideration, that the payment of the school fees is almost the only indication left of the great truth, that the parent is responsible for his children's education. We have sometimes trembled when we have seen in Board Schools directions concerning the doings of the children, which would seem to have had a right to come from parents, but which do in fact come 'by order of the Board.' We have almost feared lest in the Fifth Commandment our boys and girls of the rising generation should be tempted to substitute 'Board' for 'father and mother.' Certainly there is great danger in virtue of modern social arrangements lest parents should forget their highest duties to their children, and children cease to honour their parents in the good old-fashioned way. We confess, therefore, that we are jealous of the proposal to take away from the father the proud privilege of paying for his children's schooling, even though it may sometimes cost him an effort to do so.

It may be said, of course, that every man does pay indirectly, because he pays according to his means to the taxes of the country, and that therefore the proposal only gives him of his own. The argument is defective, because it ignores the fact that whatever a man may pay indirectly in taxes, there is a conscious effort in finding the pence for the children's schooling, which morally is of great importance. But the argument fails also on other grounds: it assumes that all men have children equally; it asserts that the married man with his five children has no more responsibility than the elderly spinster who lives next door; it supposes that the parents have not a special interest in their children, distinct from that which can be felt by any other person whatever. It may be further urged, that if a man pays for his children while they are in process of education, the pressure comes upon him when he is in full vigour, and most able to bear it; whereas if the payment of pence be commuted for a perpetual tax, the pressure becomes one of a lifelong character, and is not relieved when the powers of earning begin to diminish.

We do not deny that painful cases have occurred, and are likely to still occur, in which parents are summoned before the magistrates for the non-attendance of children at school. But free education will not get rid of these painful cases. Already arrangements are made by law for the payment of fees for very poor parents who make the proper application; and if there be any obstacle in the way of the smooth working of the law, the matter should be looked into and the law amended; but the great difficulty in the way of good attendance on the part of very poor children lies, as we apprehend, not more with school-pence, than with school-clothes, and school-dinners. Attendance cannot be enforced completely all round, unless free education comprise in its idea free food and clothing, as well as free books and lessons.

We cannot but fear also lest the remission of school-pence should be another step towards the destruction of Voluntary Schools. It is evident that the proposal is so regarded; and though it may not be difficult to find arguments to show, that if the loss from school-pence be made up from the Exchequer, the compensation will work equally and fairly with respect to all schools, whether Voluntary or Board, still there can be little doubt that the additional grant will give a handle for proposing to introduce some more direct interference with the management of Voluntary Schools than has existed hitherto: and it is probably a true instinct which leads many friends of Voluntary Schools to look upon the free system with sincere apprehension. Certainly the indirect abolition of Voluntary Schools would be a great calamity; and if the views already expressed be correct, the abolition would leave a legacy of weakness, and a permanent injury to the Board Schools, when they found themselves 'monarchs of all they survey,' and without the wholesome rivalry of Voluntary Schools.

There was no such objection to the free education offered to his poor brethren by the hero of this article, the sainted De la Salle. He made himself poor and bound all his disciples to a life of poverty, in order that they might have fullest sympathy with the poor, and might teach their children for no other payment or purpose but the love of God. The atmosphere of a school conducted upon such principles would be so saturated with the spirit of holiness and godly love, that there would be no danger of duty to parents, or indeed of any duty either to God or man, being left out of sight. It would never be forgotten in such schools that the formation of character is the chief aim of education: manners makyth man—as William of Wickham, our great English father of liberal education, has taught us: and manners, taken in the broadest and best sense, even more than the three Rs and all the extra subjects of all the standards, is what we want in our elementary schools, and what we shall never get, except upon the condition of a religious tone and a pure atmosphere, and teachers whose hearts are animated by the love of little children and by the love of God.

We gladly turn once more, before laying down our pen, to the volume which we have already introduced to the reader, and out of which we have told the tale of De la Salle, and the Christian Brothers. We do so for the purpose of showing what kind of men these good Brothers are, when put to the test in a severe and unexampled manner.

'After the disasters of the Prussian invasion in 1871,' says our author, 'the City of Boston, in America, placed at the disposal of the French Academy a special prize of two thousand francs to be given to whoever should be judged most worthy of the honour, on account of services rendered during the siege and in presence of the enemy. The Academy could find no more fitting recipient of this distinction than the Community, which during the whole time of the war had sent five hundred infirmarians into the battlefields, one of whom had fallen under the fire of the Prussians, among the wounded at Bourget. Public opinion fully endorsed the decision, when the first literary body in the world adjudged this reward to the humble and despised corps of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. At the same time the National Defence Government insisted on decorating their venerable Superior with a cross of honour. He would have refused it, as he and his predecessors had already done many times, and he only yielded when he was told that there was nothing personal in the honour; that it belonged to his Institute; and that it was only as the representative of the Society that he was asked to wear it. The eminent Dr. Ricord, who had been an eyewitness of the devotion of the Brothers, was charged with the office of fastening the cross on the cassock of Frère Philippe, in the great hall of the mother-house. This was the most embarrassing moment in the life of that man of God. He could not bear to wear the cross of honour, and in fact he never did wear it. When he returned after conducting the Doctor to the door at the end of the ceremony, he somehow managed that no one should perceive his decoration. The cross was not to be seen; and it has remained ever since as a kind of myth, or mysterious souvenir; it was never found.'

Thus in France Ministers of Public Instruction and Superiors of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes agree in removing the cross from elementary schools: but how marvellous the distance between the religious principles which lead to the two kinds of removal!

And now, in these days of payment by results, let us look for one moment to the Écoles Chrétiennes from this point of view; and then we will bid the Brothers a respectful farewell.

'For the last forty years a certain number of exhibitions or scholarships (bourses) have been offered by the City of Paris for competition amongst the scholars of elementary or primary schools, which give to the successful candidates a right of free education in the higher class schools. The number of scholarships which are offered varies. In 1848 there were twenty-nine; in 1871, fifty; in 1874, eighty; and in 1877 the number was raised to a hundred. Competition is open to all elementary schools, whether taught by the Christian Brothers, or by lay teachers of no religious order or society.

'The result, taking the thirty years from 1847 to 1877, has been that of 1445 exhibitions gained by scholars, 1148 have been won by boys from the Christian schools, and 297 by those from other schools. Or to take the last seven years of that period, during which every effort has been made by the Government, at a lavish outlay, to promote the efficiency of the secular schools, the results, though the numbers are not quite so disproportioned, yet show a marked superiority in the schools of the Christian Brothers. Out of 490 exhibitions, 364 have been adjudged to their pupils, and 126 to those of the secular schools.'

Well done, Christian Brothers! You have preached an admirable sermon to all those who take an interest in the education of children upon those comprehensive and deep-reaching words of Christ, 'Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.'

FOOTNOTES:

[4] 'The policy of the late Chamber with regard to religion, education, and the army had very much greater weight with the electors.... The persistent threat held out by certain Republicans to destroy the Church, either by a hypocritical fulfillment of the Concordat or by the forcible separation of Church and State, has been skilfully used by their adversaries amongst the peasantry, who dread nothing so much as having to pay their curé themselves. The Government was so well aware of this fact, that in some of the departments the Catechism was ordered to be recited in the schools during the last week before the elections, though only two months earlier the teachers had been strictly forbidden to use it. This childish stratagem had, as might have been expected, no great success.'—Gabriel Monod, in 'Contemporary Review,' of December, 1885.

Art. III.—The State Papers of the Venetian Republic; namely, Cancelleria Inferiore, Cancelleria Ducale, Cancelleria Secreta, preserved in the Convent of the Frari, at Venice.

In recent years a new tendency has been given to historical studies by the avidity with which scholars have investigated the masses of State documents accumulated through centuries, almost untouched, in the Record Offices of various nations. This tendency has been in the direction of minuteness and accuracy of detail. The finer shades of policy, the subtler turns in the game of nations, have been revealed by this intimate study of the documents which record them. Among the archives of Europe there is none superior, in historical value and richness of minutiæ, to the Archives of the Venetian Republic, preserved now in the convent of the Frari at Venice. The importance of these archives is due to three causes: the position of the Republic in the history of Europe, the fullness of the archives themselves, and the remarkable preservation and order which distinguishes them, in spite of the many dangers and vicissitudes through which they have passed. Venice enjoyed a position, unique among the States of Europe, for two reasons. Until the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, she was the mart of Europe in all commercial dealings with the East—a position secured to her by her supremacy in the Levant, and by the strength of her fleet; and, in the second place, the Republic was the bulwark of Europe against the Turk. These are the two dominant features of Venice in general history; and under both aspects she came into perpetual contact with every European Power. The universal importance of her position is faithfully reflected in the diplomatic documents contained in her archives. The Republic maintained ambassadors and residents at every Court. These men were among the most subtle and accomplished diplomatists of their time, and the government they served was exacting and critical to the highest degree. The result is that the dispatches, newsletters and reports of the Venetian diplomatic agents, form the most varied, brilliant, and singular gallery of portraits, whether of persons or of peoples, that exists. There is hardly a nation in Europe that will not find its history illustrated by the papers which belong to the Venetian department for foreign affairs. Nor are the papers which relate to the home government of the Republic less copious and valuable. Each magistracy has its own series of documents, the daily record of its proceedings: in this we find the whole of that elaborate machinery of State laid bare before us in all its intricacy of detail; and we are enabled to study the construction, the origin, development, and ossification, of one of the most rigid and enduring constitutions that the world has ever seen; a constitution so strong in its component parts, so compact in its rib-work, that it sufficed to preserve a semblance of life in the body of the Republic long after the heart and brain had ceased to beat.

Admirable as are the preservation and order of these masses of State papers, it is not to be expected that each series, each magisterial archive, should be complete. There are many broad lacunæ, especially in the earlier period, which must ever be a cause for regret: for Venice growing is a more attractive and profitable subject than Venice dying. During the nine hundred and eighty-seven years that the Government of the Republic held its seat in Venice, the State papers passed through many dangers from fire, revolution, neglect, or carelessness. When we recal the fires of 1230, 1479, 1574, and 1577, it is rather matter for congratulation that so much has escaped, than for surprise that so much has been destroyed. The losses would, undoubtedly, have been much more severe had all the papers and documents been preserved in one place, as they are now. But the Venetians stored the archives of the various magistracies either at the offices of those magistrates, or in some public building especially set apart for the purpose. The Secret Chancellery, which was always an object of great solicitude, containing as it did all the more private papers of the State, was deposited in a room on the second floor of the Ducal Palace. Many of the criminal records belonging to the Council of Ten were stored in the Piombi under the roof of the Palace; and the famous adventurer Casanova relates how he beguiled some of his prison hours by reading the trial of a Venetian nobleman, which he found among other papers piled at the end of the corridor where he was allowed to take exercise. Soon after the fall of the Republic, the following disposition of the papers was made. The political archive was stored at the Scuola di S. Teodoro; the judicial, at the convent of S. Giovanni Laterano; the financial, at S. Procolo. In the year 1815, the Austrian Government resolved to collect and arrange all State papers in one place. The building chosen was the convent of the Frari; and the work was entrusted to Jacopo Chiodo, the first director of the archives. The scheme suggested by Chiodo has served as a basis for the arrangement that has been already carried out, or is still in hand.

Under the Republic it was natural that access to important diplomatic papers and to secrets of State should be granted with reserve, and only to persons especially authorized to make research. The directors appointed by the Austrian Government showed a disposition to maintain that precedent; and M. Baschet relates that it was only by a personal appeal to the Emperor that he obtained access to the archives of the Ten. The Italian Government allow nearly absolute liberty; and nothing can exceed the courtesy of the officials under their distinguished director, the Commendatore Cecchetti.

Any attempt to explain the archives of Venice and to display their contents, must be preceded by a statement of the main features of the constitution of the Republic upon which the order and the arrangement of the archives is based. The constitution of Venice has frequently been likened to a pyramid, with the Great Council for its base and the Doge for apex. The figure is more or less correct; but it is a pyramid that has been broken at its edges by time and by necessity. The legislative and political body was originally constructed in four groups, or tiers—if we are to preserve the pyramidal simile—one rising above the other. These four tiers were the Maggior Consiglio or Great Council, the Lower House; the Pregadi or Senate, the Upper House; the Collegio, or the Cabinet; and the Doge. The famous Council of Ten and its equally famous Commission, the Three Inquisitors of State, did not enter into the original scheme; they are an appendix to the State, an intrusion, a break in the symmetry of the pyramid. Later on we shall explain their construction and relation to the main body of government. For the present we leave them aside, and confine our attention to the four departments of the Venetian constitution above mentioned.

The Great Council, as is well known, did not assume its permanent form and place in the Venetian constitution till the year 1296. At that date the famous revolution, known as the closing of the Great Council, took place. By that act, which was only the final step in a revolution that had been for long in process, those citizens who were excluded from the Great Council remained for ever outside the constitution; all functions of government were concentrated in the hands of those nobles who were included by the Council; the constitution of the Republic was stereotyped as a rigid oligarchy. Previous to the year 1296, a great council had existed, created first in the reign of Pietro Ziani (1172); but this council was really democratic in character, not oligarchic; it was elected each September, and its members were chosen from the whole body of the citizens. Earlier still than the reign of Ziani, the population used to meet tumultuously and express their opinion upon matters of public interest, such as the election of a Doge or a declaration of war, first in the Concione under their tribunes, while Venetia was still a confederation of lagoon-islands; and then in the Arengo under their Doge, when the confederation was centralized at Rialto. But of these assemblies the latter was disorderly and irregular, and the former was of doubtful authority. It is from the closing of the Great Council that we must date the positive establishment of the Venetian oligarchy, and the completion of that constitution which endured for five hundred years, from 1296 till the fall of the Republic in 1797.

The age at which the young nobles might take their seats in the Council, that is to say, might enter upon public life, was fixed at twenty-five, except in the cases of the Barbarelli, or thirty nobles between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, who were elected by ballot on the fourth of each December, St. Barbara's day; and in the case of those who, in return for money advanced to the State, obtained a special grace to take their seats before their twenty-fifth year.

The chief functions of the Great Council were the passing of laws, and the election of magistrates. But in process of time the legislative duties of the Council were almost entirely absorbed by the Senate; and the Maggior Consiglio only retained its great and distinguished function, the election of almost every officer of State, from the Doge downwards. The large number of these magistracies, and the various seasons of the year at which they fell vacant, engaged the Great Council in a perpetual series of elections. It is not our intention to explain in detail the elaborate process by which the Venetians carried out their political elections; such an explanation would carry us beyond our scope, which is to state the position and functions of each member in the constitution of the Republic. But, briefly, the process was this. The law required either two or four competitors for every vacant magistracy, and the election to that magistracy was said to take place a due or a quattro mani, respectively. If the office to be filled required quattro mani, the whole body of the Great Council balloted for four groups of nine members each, who were chosen by drawing a golden ball from among the silver ones in the balloting urn. Each of these groups retired to a separate room, and there each group elected one candidate to go to the poll for the vacant office. The names of the four candidates were then presented to the Council and balloted. The candidate who secured the largest number of votes, above the half of those present, was elected to the vacant office. Thus the election to the magistracy was a triple process; first, the election of the nominators, then the election of the candidates, and finally the election to the office.

The Great Council, as representing the whole Republic, possessed certain judicial functions, which were used on rare occasions only, when the State believed itself placed in grave danger through the fault of its commanders. The famous case of Vettor Pisani, after his defeat at Pola, in 1379, and the case of Antonio Grimani, in the year 1499, were both sent to the Grand Council, who passed sentence on those generals. But, broadly speaking, the judicial functions of the Maggior Consiglio hardly existed, its legislative functions dwindled away, and were absorbed by the Senate, and its chief duty and prerogative lay in the election of almost every State official.

Coming now to the second tier in the pyramid of the constitution, the Senate, or Pregadi,—the invited, we find that the Senate proper was composed of sixty members, elected in the Great Council, six at a time. The elections took place once a week, and were so arranged that they should be complete by the first of October in each year. In addition to the Senate proper, another body of sixty, called the Zonta or addition, was elected by the outgoing Senate at the close of its year of office; but it was necessary that the names of the Zonta should be approved by the Great Council before their election was valid. The Senate and the Zonta together formed one hundred and twenty members; and besides these, the Doge, his six councillors, the Council of Ten, the Supreme Court of Appeal, and many special magistrates, who presided over departments of Finance, Customs, and Justice, belonged ex officio to the Senate, and brought the number of votes up to two hundred and forty-six. Further, fifty-one magistrates of minor departments also sat, with the right to debate, but without the right to vote.

The Senate was the real core of the Administration. The presence, ex officio, of so many and such various officers of State sufficiently indicates the wide field which was covered by the authority of the Pregadi. The large number of the Senatorial body, and the diversity of subjects with which it dealt, required that business should be carried on with parsimony of time and precision of method; and therefore private members were restricted to the right of debate. Only the Doge, his councillors, the Savii Grandi and the Savii di Terra ferma had the right to move the Senate; and their propositions related to peace, war, foreign affairs, instructions to ambassadors, and representatives of foreign Courts, to commercial treaties, finance, and home legislation. The various measures were spoken to by their proposers, and by the magistrates whose offices they affected. As in the case of the Great Council, the Senate also on rare occasions exercised judicial functions. It was in the discretion of the College to send a faulty commander for trial either to the Great Council or to the Senate; but in that case the charge must be one of negligence or misjudgment; if the charge implied treason, it was taken before the Council of Ten. A few of the higher officers of State were elected in the Senate, among them the Savii Grandi and the Savii di Terra ferma, and the Admiral of the Fleet. The functions of the Senate were legislative, judicial, and elective. But just as the Great Council was pre-eminently the elective body, so the Senate was pre-eminently the legislative body in the constitution of Venice.

The Collegio or Cabinet of Ministers, formed the third tier in the pyramid. The College was composed of the following members: The Doge, his six councillors, and the three chiefs of the Court of Appeal; these ten persons formed the Collegio minore, or Serenissima Signoria; in addition to these there were the six Savii Grandi; the five Savii di Terra ferma, and the five Savii da mar; a body of twenty-six persons in all, forming the College. Beginning with the lowest in rank, the Savii agli ordini, or da mar, were, as their name implies, a Board of Admiralty; but they acted in that capacity under the orders of the Savii Grandi upon whom the naval affairs of the Republic immediately depended. The Savii agli ordini had a vote but no voice in the College; this post was given, for the most part, to young and promising politicians; it was a training school for statesmen: 'Officio loro,' says Giannotti, 'è tacere ed ascoltare.' The office lasted for six months only; and so there was a constant stream of young men passing through the political school, and becoming intimately acquainted with the affairs of the Republic and the methods of government. How excellent that school must have been will become apparent as we proceed to note the functions of the College of which the Savii agli ordini formed a silent part.

Next in order above the Savii agli ordini came the Savii di Terra ferma. This Board was composed of five members; the Savio alia Scrittura, or Minister for War; the Savio Cassier, or Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Savio alle ordinanze, or minister for the native militia in the cities on the mainland; the Savio ai da mò, or minister for the execution of all measures voted urgent; the Savio ai Ceremoniali, or Minister for Ceremonies of State. These Savii di Terra ferma, like the Savii agli ordini, held office for six months only.