self-effacement of great students and great lives, is most demoralizing as regards the sense of truth-if he had but realized. this, he would have been the first to condemn this manifestation of amateurishness run riot. I have on another occasion contrasted the moral effect exercised by the life-work of Charles Darwin, with its noble, almost religious, thoroughness in forming an induction, with the ready dogmatism of Carlyle and Ruskin.

From all this we turn with unalloyed pleasure to Ruskin's descriptions of nature based upon thoroughly artistic observation of her manifold forms. I have called such study by a barbarous and pedantic term, the Phænomenology of Nature. Of this fruitful attitude toward nature, Ruskin may almost be said to be the founder. Whatever the fondness for natural scenery among the English-speaking peoples may have been at all times, those who have read Ruskin carefully and sympathetically have turned to the clouds, the mountains and plains, the rivers and lakes, the trees, flowers and shrubs with a new power of observation, a new sense for their specific qualities, a widened and deepened appreciation and love of their every form. He has made the observation of nature a new art. Here he marks a distinct step in literature and his work will live and grow.

Hitherto, we have judged Ruskin's personality by his published work, and his works again by the standards of excellence ruling such productions in themselves. There is another point of view. We may regard him, as it were, historically, as an expression of his own times, as one of the forces which make up the intellectual current of an age.'

It is here that he appears to me to be decidedly a representative figure in the intellectual movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century in England. The later Victorian era is in marked contrast-in some respects antagonism-to the earlier Victorian era. It may be called a kind of Renaissance, and it has analogies in many respects to the English Renaissance at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Like that age, it marks an effort on the side of intellectualism in its struggle with sterile and stereotyped convention and authority, coupled with effete scholasticism and low standards of living. As a reaction against the spirit of the French Revolution, and perhaps as a result of the victorious issues of the Napoleonic wars, the late Georgian and early Victorian periods developed a tone of stolid and self-satisfied conventional

ism-Philistinism in life, in thought and in art. The reaction to which this again led in our immediate past took the form of conscious intellectualism in science, æstheticism in art and philanthropy in morals.

All these movements came into antagonism with the existing order of things. They had to struggle against the general conventionalism and conservatism of the English mind, its hatred of "new things," of theory and thought, its sane mistrust of the doctrinaire, its deep-rooted and sincere aversion to cant and gush, with the predominance of the manly, though sometimes brutal, spirit of public-school athleticism, with the conformity of social tone in club-life, with the atmosphere of the country house and its field sports.

This spirit reigned supreme-its rule is far from having vanished in the present day—in Church and State, in the mart and in the drawing-room, nay, in the universities and the schools and museums of art.

Against this mental and moral brutality, this coarseness or stolidity, against this indifference to, or contempt of, things intellectual and artistic, there arose a phalanx of thinkers and reformers, some extreme, some moderate, reviving religion and thought, ennobling action, and proclaiming aloud the necessity to examine and to reform. They have all passed away-Stanley and Jowett, Emerson and Carlyle, Kingsley and Maurice, Darwin, Huxley, Clifford, Martineau, Matthew Arnold and Newman, George Eliot, Morris and Ruskin, the Præraphaelites, Browning and, fortunately still among us, Meredith.

In this phalanx Ruskin was a protagonist. Since the last few years, and in the immediate present, there is a lull, even a backwave. How long will it last? Is there an Elizabethan age to follow our own?

CHARLES WALDSTEIN.

VOL. CLXX. NO. 521.

86

ROMAN CONGREGATIONS AND MODERN

THOUGHT.

BY DR. ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S.

THAT marvellously learned and scrupulously impartial man, Professor Harnack, of Berlin, has shown us at how early a date the authority of the Bishop of Rome grew into importance in the nascent Catholic Church.

After all, it was very natural, as Gibbon in his wonderful history clearly pointed out, that he who occupied the Episcopal Chair of the capital of the world should grow to be regarded as the central ruler of Christendom and become inspired by that instinct and capacity for ruling and domination, which was the chief characteristic of ancient, imperial Rome.

The opportunity for aggrandizement and for the gradual transformation of a local "bishop" into a "Pope"-as we now understand that word-was amply supplied by a multitude of appeals from all sides with respect to matters of doctrine, discipline and ritual.

The Papacy soon grew to be an enviable post, if only on account of the power, wealth and luxury it conferred on the holder of that office.

Even in the days of Pope Damasus, not a few lives were lost in struggles to attain the Papal Chair, and the amiable Pagan Symmachus banteringly remarked to that bishop: "I would consent to become a Christian, if I could thereby become a Pope."

It was manifestly impossible for any man by himself to carry on more than a small portion of affairs so multitudinous.

Thus, an increasing number of trained assistants became organized, and their organization became more and more complicated (as the matters requiring attention became not only more

and more multitudinous, but also more varied in character) till they attained the condition in which they exist to-day.

At first, the parish priests and deacons of Rome, to whom were afterward added a few suburban bishops, served this function, as they do now when they have become transformed into the College of Cardinals. Each Cardinal takes his title from one such urban or suburban post-Cardinal priests, Cardinal deacons and Cardinal bishops, respectively. Thus a Cardinal need not be a priest. The well-known and much-detested Cardinal Antonelli, of Pius the Ninth's time, was not a priest.

As above implied, the whole mass of Papal assistants soon required to be divided into sets-each set devoting itself to a special kind of business. Each such set was termed a "Congregation." And the Roman Congregations now existing are, briefly, as follows:

The first and highest Congregation is that of the Holy Office, commonly known as the Inquisition. It is highest because its president, or prefect, is the Pope himself, and, at its principal sittings, he, unless it happens to be impossible, actually takes the chair. This Congregation was erected by Paul III. in 1542. There was, indeed, a so-called Inquisition and also Inquisitors, mainly Dominicans, at a much earlier date; but the organization of the present Holy Office is a Congregation of Cardinals erected as just stated, and further organized by Sixtus V.

It consists of twelve Cardinals, a judge, a counsellor and consultors selected by the Pope, who give their opinions on points submitted to them, an advocate for the defense of accused persons, and other subordinate officials.

It is a tribunal which relates only to matters of faith and morals, and it is supposed to act for the spiritual good of the accused and of the community.

The Roman Inquisition, though severe, was not intentionally cruel, though its modes of procedure naturally seem to us appalling.

Any one denounced to this tribunal was speedily arrested, but he was not told what he was accused of, nor who his accusers were, though pains were taken to find out whether an accusation might not be due to private enmity. The accused was asked to confess, and he was elaborately examined in order to elicit an avowal, or some confirmation, of the charge made against him. He could be examined under threat of torture and under torture itself—not

any fancy torments, but only two or three traditional kinds of torture carried to a fixed extent and no further. Witnesses could be arrested and examined without being told against whom they were called to testify or what the accusation was; and, if thought needful, they also could be examined under torture. The accused was provided with an advocate, but he had no power to cross-examine. If found guilty, the condemned might be sentenced to protracted or even perpetual imprisonment and to heavy fines.

Such a procedure was by no means confined to centuries long past. It remained in full force and activity at Rome down to the great French Revolution, and it was, for a time, restored after Napoleon's defeat. But in earlier ages death sentences, though infrequent, were by no means rare, as in the case of Giordano Bruno and various other obstinate or "relapsed" heretics. Any man who denied that Mary was a perfect virgin after having given birth to Christ, was reckoned a "relapsed heretic," and, as such, he could not save his life by any recantation or profession of faith. All that he could gain thereby was the privilege of being strangled before he was burnt.

In those days the Inquisition claimed the power to compel all magistrates to carry out the regulations against heretics and to swear so to act.

The second Congregation, and that concerning which the present writer has some personal experience, is called The Sacred Congregation of the Index. It was instituted by Pius V. in the latter part of the sixteenth century, with a Dominican friar for its secretary. It consists of such a number of Cardinals as the Pope may appoint, the head of them being termed "Prefect." There are also a number of consultors, whereof the Master of the Apostolic Palace is the chief.

The object of the Congregation was, and is, to compile as complete a list as possible of publications judged, by Church authority, to be unfit for the perusal of Catholics.

In 1616 works teaching Copernicanism, or heliocentric astronomy, were placed on the Index as being heretical.

Among other Roman Congregations is that of Sacred Rites, instituted by Sixtus V., toward the end of the sixteenth century, to regulate all ceremonies of worship, the veneration of relics and images, and it has to do with processes of beatification and canonization.