in realizing the purpose for which it was founded. Affection for the Irish people, however, was not the inspiration of the increased grant. The wily statesman, Sir Robert Peel, was about establishing a new system of education in Ireland. History and his own experience convinced him that Irish Catholics would never embrace Protestantism. He resolved to make the sons of Catholic parents infidels by providing them with a system of education from which religion would be carefully excluded. To divert the attention of priests and people from his gigantic scheme of godless education, he increased the Maynooth grant. Three infidel colleges were to be established in Ireland, but it was first necessary to delude the Catholics into the belief that he was their generous friend, and that the increased endowment of Maynooth College was a conclusive proof of his new-born friendship. If I err in taking this view of Sir Robert Peel's policy, I err with the most venerated prelate of the Irish race, the great Archbishop MacHale. From a letter addressed to Sir Robert Peel, on the 7th of June, 1845, by Archbishop MacHale, I quote the following two sentences: "It is from your miscalculation of the just standard of Irish feeling regarding the Maynooth grant, that you have, in an evil hour, been betrayed into the adoption of the scheme of infidel education. You fancied that under the shadow of the Maynooth endowment you could steal on the country a disastrous and demoralizing measure, which would have neutralized all the advantages of the other." Though Peel's scheme of godless education was carried into execution, he could never overreach the great Archbishop of the West, whose vigilance always detected the stealthy approach of every enemy of his country. If the Maynooth grant has not realized the worst anticipations of Edmund Burke, let Irish Catholics be grateful to Archbishop MacHale, and his faithful and patriotic brother prelates. The descriptions of Maynooth College with which English tourists. sometimes favor the public ought to be read with caution by Americans. Over forty years ago Thackeray visited the institution, and gave a description of it in his Irish Sketchbook. The Sketch-book is widely circulated in America, and from personal experience I can say that many persons accept his picture of the place as genuine. Our readers, however, may be assured that his description of Maynooth and its inmates is a malicious libel, unredeemed by wit or humor. True, the magnificent buildings which at present excite the wonder and compel the admiration of the stranger, were not erected in 1830, but even then St. Patrick's College was famous as the nursery of the majority of the Irish clergy; the hallowed retreat in which the most celebrated scholars of the age had received their education. The architecture was not superb, but the sons of fathers who were accustomed to attend the hedge-school and the midnight mass in the wooded glen, the wild rath, or mountain cave, were happy to enjoy the opportunity of preparing themselves for the arduous and onerous duties of the priesthood in houses of study which, though not as magnificent as those of Oxford, were substantial proof of real progress. Thackeray was a satirist in everything he wrote; in his sketches, in his lectures, in his novels; and the man who could sneer at the classic glories of Athens might be excused on the ground of invincible ignorance for his vain. effort to caricature the Catholic glories of Maynooth. He hated the Catholic faith and despised Greek literature. How unlike his famous countryman, Lord Byron, who, though he knew little Greek, owed his noblest inspirations to the study' of the history of Greece, and who, though an infidel, gave a new celeb rity to St. Peter's in the City of the Seven Hills! Farewell, Thackeray; Maynooth has survived your ridicule, your culpable ignorance, and your anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice. If you confined yourself to such subjects as George the Fourth (of pious memory!), and kept at a distance from Maynooth, you might be praised by your admirers as a great social reformer. But when you make no distinction between vice and virtue, you destroy the value of your praise and censure. The students of Maynooth College number six hundred. This was the number before the withdrawal of the annual endowment. Sometimes the number did not exceed five hundred. The full course of instruction usually occupies eight years, three of which are spent in the junior house, and five in the senior house. During the academic year the junior have no intercourse with the senior students. Students who are successful in winning high honors can, after completing the usual course, remain three years on the Dunboyne establishment. Those three years are devoted to the study of an extended course of theology, canon law, .ecclesiastical history, the Hebrew language, and "the composition of dissertations on important ecclesiastical subjects." The Dunboyne establishment is called after Lord Dunboyne, who, before his lamentable fall, was the Catholic Bishop of Cork. He renounced the faith of his fathers to gain possession of his family estate. After thirteen years of apostasy a severe illness convinced him that his end was approaching, and that it was necessary to prepare himself for the next world. He wished to die in the faith which he had abjured for perishable wealth, which he did not long enjoy, and to atone for the scandal he had brought upon the Catholic name. He begged Archbishop Troy, in two letters, to receive him into the Catholic Church. In one of these communications he inclosed a letter to the Pope, which was forwarded to Rome by Dr. Troy, who, upon learning that Lord Dunboyne was sinking rapidly, sent Dr. Gahan to Dunboyne Castle to receive the penitent prelate into the Church. Dr. Gahan blessed him with the consolations of that religion to which (it is to be hoped) he had returned with an humble and contrite heart. In his last will he bequeathed his estate in the county of Meath to the trustees of Maynooth College. Efforts were immediately made to invalidate the will, on the plea that Lord Dunboyne had died a Catholic. The penal code, notwithstanding the establishment of Maynooth College by the British Government, still sanctioned and encouraged this atrocious injustice. The details of the legal proceedings which followed the publication of the will possess no special interest for the reader. Suffice it to say that the noblest victim of the litigation was Dr. Gahan, who was subjected to a persecution worthy of the evil spirit which dictated the statute of Kilkenny, and inspired the penal code. Even the mild and gentle Lord Kilwarden, who presided at the trial, sentenced him to a week's imprisonment in the gaol of Trim, because he refused to reveal the secrets of the confessional. "I submit with resignation to your sentence," said the venerable old priest, "but I assure your lordship that, like Eleazar of old, I would sooner lay my head on a block and forfeit my life than reveal the secrets which have been disclosed to me in the ministerial discharge of my duty." Dr. Gahan became acquainted with Bishop Butler (Lord Dunboyne) in 1786. The acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship, which, though interrupted for a time, was renewed on the eve of Lord Dunboyne's final departure from his earthly possessions. The sermons of Dr. Gahan are read and studied wherever the Catholic faith is planted. As a pulpit orator he shone with extraordinary lustre. Eloquence, however, was not his sole praise. His religious works will keep his name perpetually green in the hearts of his countrymen. Of all his ecclesiastical contemporaries in Ireland, he was probably the most instrumental in inducing Lord Dunboyne to assist Maynooth College in its infancy by a timely bequest. Lord Dunboyne's bequest amounted to 1000 per annum, but the legal contest and parliamentary action reduced it to £500. When Vesey Fitzgerald, the memorable opponent of O'Connell at the famous Clare election, which opened the gates of the British constitution to Irish Catholics, was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, £700 were added to the Dunboyne annuity, which is the permanent property of the college. The highest class is that of the Dunboyne students, who number twenty, sometimes twentyfour. They are generally, but not always, the most distinguished students of the college. A student may carry off, during his whole course, the highest honors of the institution, but, unless there is a place vacant for him in the Dunboyne establishment, he must immediately after ordination commence his missionary duties. Maynooth has been sometimes assailed by adversaries who might, with more consistency, and certainly with more justice, have assailed Trinity College, which has been the nursery of the petty tyrants who have ruled Ireland with a rod of iron. I have never met, and I have had considerable college experience on both sides of the Atlantic, I never expect to meet a more learned, a more industrious, a more exemplary, and a more patriotic body of students than the noble and gifted students of Maynooth. They are the flower of the Catholic youth of Ireland. The sons of the people, they love the people, know their wants, sympathize with their sufferings, and share their aspirations. Their patriotism is of the truest and purest kind. They read and study Irish history; they love their country with a love as strong as death, but they are not lunatics or knaves. I may mention, as a proof of their patriotism, that the presence of Archbishop MacHale was always sufficient to evoke such enthusiastic cheers as young Irish hearts can give to honor and encourage the champion of a good cause. The sight of his well-known figure always kindled their patriotic enthusiasm, because they looked upon him as the most fearless champion of his race, country, and creed. Such was their devotion to him that each would seem to say: Mallem, mehercle, cum illo errare quam cum aliis recte sentire. The influence which Maynooth College exercises upon the Irish race is not confined to the distinguished ecclesiastics who, year after year, go forth from its classic halls to preach the Gospel and diffuse the blessings of knowledge among the poor. In Ireland, in England, in Scotland, in the United States, in the Canadas, in Australia, in Hindostan there are Maynooth men; some distinguished as lawyers, some as physicians, some as journalists, others as engineers, and others as professors. They bade farewell affectionately and honorably to their Alma Mater, because they feared that they had no vocation for the priesthood. Their influence is great; it is not the less effective because they do not proclaim it on the house-tops. No contact with the world can efface from their hearts or memories the Catholic training which they received in Maynooth. and scientific productions are their most eloquent eulogies. They are They are too active and energetic to follow the example of the literary drones of Trinity College. They devote their leisure hours to the composition of works which are daily giving Maynooth a wide celebrity. Ireland was disestablished a few years ago, the Maynooth grant was withdrawn. The British ministry, however, paid to the trustees of the college, as a compensation for the withdrawal, the sum of nearly four hundred thousand pounds. The grant was long the cause of annual discussions in the House of Commons, which kept anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice alive, and roused the worst passions of the patrons of Exeter Hall. Many good Irishmen also feared that it might ultimately be the cause of sundering the ties that united the priests and people for centuries. Thus, from different motives, English bigots and Irish patriots were opposed to the annual endowment. The withdrawal of the grant, however, cannot affect the future success and prosperity of Maynooth College. That noble seat of learning has triumphed over difficulties which can never again lessen its influence or retard its growth. A people who are grateful for the countless benefits which it has conferred upon them will always be proud and willing to support it when necessary, and by voluntary contributions. That Maynooth may be long the great university of the Irish priesthood is the prayer of every true Catholic Celt who loves the When the Protestant Church of dear old land and the dear old faith. Dr. Russell, the eloquent biographer of Cardinal Mezzofanti, is one of the most accomplished scholars in Ireland. A distinguished linguist, and a noble type of a true Irish gentleman, he reflects honor upon the responsible position which, for many years, he has worthily filled. Dr. Murray is at once famous as a poet, a brilliant essayist, an acute and eloquent critic, and one of the greatest theological writers of the age. I remember the saintly Dr. Callan, who rendered signal service to natural philosophy, and the gifted Jennings, whose premature death deprived his Alma Mater of one of its brightest ornaments. I have a fresh recollection of Dr. Molloy, the terror of infidel geologists, and Dr. McCarthy, the learned expounder of the Sacred Scriptures. In a word, to borrow the language of Cardinal Wiseman, the students of Maynooth can bear comparison with those of any other ecclesiastical or literary institution in the world. ST. AUGUSTINE AND SCIENTIFIC UNBELIEF. ST. AUGUSTINE wrote his treatise, De Utilitate Credendi, for the benefit of his friend Honoratus, whom he had left behind him in the ranks of the Manichees. These sectaries held captive their proselyte, by fair promises of teaching him nothing but what was manifest to reason; whilst they poisoned his mind against Catholicity by ridiculing the idea of faith, which believes on authority what it does not understand. Clearly what a great saint had to say, on such an occasion, may aptly claim our attention at the present time. And his words will have all the more weight because they were written, under the impulse of strong concern for a friend, by a man of keen intellect and of high moral worth, who had himself first painfully beaten out the path along which he now sought to lead another. Hence, though with more brevity than in his Confessions, he recounts his own example. "I left you," he says, "and crossed the sea, in a state of doubt as to what tenets I should still hold by, and what I should give up. This perplexity of mine daily grew greater from the time I became the hearer of that man* whose advent, you know, was heralded to us as that of some heaven-sent teacher, who should make clear all the dark questions that stirred our souls. But, except for the eloquence there was in him, I found him like the rest of instructors. Being now in Italy, I held much debate with myself, not as to whether I should abide in the sect, into which it grieved me that I had chanced to fall, but how I should find out the truth, my sighs after which are known to none better than to yourself. Often it seemed to me that the quest was vain; and the current of my ideas began to set towards the skeptical school of the Academy. Often, coming back upon my thoughts and pondering deeply, I was brought to be of opinion that, whereas the mind of man was so active, so cunning, so far-searching, it could not be that truth was undiscoverable to it, unless it were because the mode of investigating truth lay undiscovered; and this mode of investigation, I conceived, must be by way of some divine authority. The question was left, Where was this authority? for, amid many conflicting parties, each side asserted for itself the claim to authority. Then arose before me a very forest of bewilderment, to enter which was vexatious in the extreme. Meantime, from my longing to come at truth, my mind was agitated without respite. I began more and more to withdraw from the companionship of those from whom I had determined to separate. In the midst *Faustus, the rhetorician. of my trials there was nothing left me but, with agonizing and tearful cries, to beseech the Divine Providence to come to my aid. And this petition I urged most insistently. Certain discourses of the Bishop of Milan had already done somewhat towards raising in me the desire, not unattended with hope, to make thorough research concerning the Old Testament, which, as you are aware, we used to loathe as of illrepute in our sect. My mind was made up to remain a catechumen of the Church to which I was attached by parentage until such times as I should either find what I sought, or should arrive at the conviction that further inquiry must be abandoned. At this time, had there been any one to teach me, he would have found me an apt and docile pupil. If, therefore you now find yourself harassed as I was, and in the like distress of soul, and if you are of opinion that you have already been buffeted about sufficiently, and wish to put an end to your laborings, then follow the way of Catholic discipline, which has come down to us from Christ himself, through the Apostles, and by us will be handed on to posterity.' Now what is noteworthy in the conduct of St. Augustine is, that he realized the problem before him, saw its momentous importance to himself, and determined, at all costs, to solve the question to the best of his ability. On the solution of the difficulty he brought to bear a mind at once dispassionate, humble, and open to all the influences that could rightly claim to move a reasonable and honest man. These three mental dispositions are each deserving of consideration in detail; for they are characteristics which seem to be lacking in many of our modern advocates of scientific unbelief. 1. In the first place, then, I fear there is evident a degree of passionate hostility in the way in which nonbelievers approach the question of |