of Italy, rather than of the brilliant theoretical genius of France. The author imposes a strict restraint upon himself, allows himself no pictorial effects, indulges in no general views and wide speculations, marshals his facts in close array, devotes page after page to statistical details, rejoices in tracing the development of the Roman power in the names and situation of the colonies, in the distribution of its forces, in the increasing numbers of its population returns. The history might have been modelled on the author's conception of the Rationarium Imperii, the Imperial calendar which Augustus elaborated with his own hand, and bequeathed as a heirloom to his successors. The style is grave, compact, transparent, not unlike the style of Cæsar himself in his Commentaries. It is the style of a man who feels himself superior to the petty vanity of the rhetorician, whose aim it is to instruct his reader, but who does not condescend to entertain him. It is the style of a monumental inscription, and seems to challenge the regard, not of contemporaries, but of a late posterity. If such ideas as these have been in the Emperor's mind, we think that he has not been unsuccessful in giving effect to his conception of the place in literature which is appropriate to his position in politics.

It is not till we have gone through two-thirds of the volume that we arrive at the hero himself. The history of Rome has been made to lead up to him. The constitution of the Commonwealth has been carried through centuries of conquests, shaded by occasional defeats, and the fruit of corruption and decay has been traced to seeds sown under the kings, and germinating, in their healthiest vigour, under the Republic. But Roman civilization has become over-ripe, the law of its development has been accomplished. The Republic has become impossible. It is time to inaugurate the Empire. In this conclusion we are fully disposed to agree. But the present volume carries the life of Cæsar no farther than to his consulship, through the first stages only of his attack on the ruling aristocracy. His views and plans are hardly yet patent to the general observer. It is easy to over-estimate the definiteness of his aims at this early period; and the author seems, perhaps, inclined to over-estimate it. But we cannot speak conclusively on this point till the later volumes of the work are before us; and it will be more interesting to the reader, and more respectful to its illustrious author, to defer our remarks on Cæsar's policy, and on the view he takes of it, together with the comparison he suggests between it and his own, till the whole is completed.

A Reminiscence of Cardinal aliseman.

BY A PROTESTANT.

In the winter of 1830-31, the British Catholics were represented at Rome by Cardinal Weld, of the Welds of Lulworth Castle. His Eminence was an English country gentleman, of the simplest manners, of no literary pretensions, of liberal politics, as were indeed all his Catholic countrymen in those days, and delighting to do the honours of the Eternal City to persons in any way connected with his family and home. It was to an intimacy of this kind that I was indebted for my introduction to the Collegio Inglese, at that time presided over by Dr. Wiseman. Among the students under his care was a young cousin of the name of Macarthy, with whom I soon formed a lasting friendship, and thus I was brought into frequent relations with the Rector of the College. These two men, Cardinal Wiseman, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and Sir Charles Macarthy, Governor of Ceylon, have passed away within a few months of each other, the younger going first; each having done, in his separate walk of life, that which is a man's first duty-to use the talents given to his charge for what he believes to be a right purpose and honestly to win the respect and regard of mankind.

There was then in the English College the fresh recollection of the grateful jubilee that had been held to celebrate the political emancipation of the Catholics of Great Britain by the long efforts and frequent sacrifices of the Liberal party in Parliament; and Dr. Wiseman was looked upon with little good-will by those who were content to base the spiritual and temporal government of the world on a relation of absolute authority and obedience. He had withdrawn his pupils from their attendance on the lectures at the Jesuit College; and it was rumoured that Pope Gregory had by no means maintained the amicable feelings which had been manifested towards him by Pope Leo, his fast friend and patron. However that might be, Dr. Wiseman pursued an independent course of action, and impressed on all who came within the more intimate circle of his acquaintance, his sincere desire to reconcile the liberties of literature and science with a respectful recognition of his ecclesiastical position.

His life and education had been somewhat cosmopolitan. Some German translator of his Hora Syriaca had described him in one manysyllabled word as the "From-an-Irish-family-descended-in-Spain-born

in-England-educated-in-Italy-consecrated Syrian scholar;" but he showed no inclination to merge his British nationality in his sacerdotal or scholastic character. His conversation ran mainly on subjects of English literature; and his greatest pleasure was to converse with his intellectual fellow-countrymen. He encouraged those tastes and habits among his pupils, as far as was consistent with the practices of a Catholic seminary. The books which were read aloud, according to conventual custom, during the noontide repast, were usually our British classics; and I remember, on more than one occasion of this kind, listening to a novel of Walter Scott's. Dr. Cullen was at that time the rector of the Irish College; but although I have met the future Catholic Primate of Ireland on high-days in the Hall of the Collegio Inglese, there was little intercourse between the two establishments, and apparently no close intimacy between the heads. The two bodies always walked separately in processions at great church ceremonies; and I am not aware that any of my English fellow-countrymen ever received such a tribute of fervid admiration as was paid to their Irish comrades, while, in their due turn, they were bearing aloft the Holy Father through the colonnades of St. Peter's at the festival of Corpus Christi, when a young English lady having exclaimed, "Oh, papa! do look at those handsome young priests; did you ever see such fine eyes? was dreadfully shocked by the answer of one of them, in an unmistakable accent-" Thank you, Miss, for the compliment."

Another Irish ecclesiastic, however, Dr. McHale, Bishop of Killalaseemed more familiar with the inmates of the Collegio Inglese; perhaps from the very contrast of his character to that of the scholarly and courteous Dr. Wiseman, who used to watch the various demonstrations of his Hibernian zeal with considerable interest and amusement. That persistent nationality-which during his long career as Archbishop of Tuam has not only alienated Dr. McHale from all social intercourse with the representatives of British power in Ireland, but which has caused him. to include in one sweeping denunciation the fiercest acts of old oppressors and the most benevolent efforts of modern legislators-the 'thorough' Strafford and the gentle Carlisle-had remained unaffected by the passive political attitude which was then the habit of the Roman Court-though not yet elevated into a doctrine-and refused to surrender an iota of his rights of resistance to civil authority. The example of Poland, just then succumbing after an heroic struggle to the colossus of the North, not only without the active sympathy of the Papal power, but with the distinct injunction to her ecclesiastics to submit humbly to the schismatic conqueror, was not calculated to assure the independent spirit of the Celtic prelate, who might anticipate a period when British diplomacy might turn against the Irish Catholic Church even her own spiritual arms, and coerce her to obedience by ultramontane aid. A result at that time by no means improbable: for who then dreamt of the political destiny

of Italy, which was quietly approaching to its dawn? Who then cared to trouble the pleasant somnolence of Art and Antiquity, in which the princes and peoples between the Alps and the sea reposed, with any more serious agitation than a commentary on Dante, the merits of Santa Filomena, or the respective claims of the mature Pasta and the youthful Grisi? Happy days those for the tourist, whom no one troubled about his opinions or his religion-for the archæologist, who looked on Italy as an inexhaustible necropolis, and found it so-and for the collector, to whom every day noble poverty surrendered treasures of Art and curiosities of history at a moderate cost, with giallo antico not exhausted, and Constitutions undiscovered!

Yet, although the Protestant visitors of the English College were perfectly secure from any intrusive proselytism, and the only influences of the kind brought to bear were fair controversy when challenged and amiable inducements to see all that was best and most striking in the practice and symbolic action of the Roman Church, there was no concealment of the special interest attached to the circumstances and conduct of recent British converts. A Cornish baronet, far advanced in life, had not only lately professed himself a Roman Catholic, but, at his urgent desire, had been ordained a priest. The deepest anxiety was expressed as to his first performance of his mystical office; and it was hinted that a more than natural power of retentive memory was vouchsafed to him on the occasion. The son of Earl Spencer, who afterwards became notorious as Brother Ignatius, was at that time a resident in the college, and his first sermon in the church set apart for the services of the English Catholics, excited an intense interest among the students; and here, too, the success, though not very apparent to us curious Protestants, was a subject of much thankfulness. In all such matters Dr. Wiseman's interest was always affectionate and judicious, and never provoked any sense of extravagance in the outsiders.

Soon after the French Revolution of 1830 a remarkable company of Frenchmen arrived at Rome. The Abbé Lamennais, whose previous and future career I may assume to be generally known, came to demand justice of the chair of St. Peter against the throne of the bourgeois Gallican king. His enterprise of opening the public education of France to the free competition of the Church had been arrested by the law; and his young colleague, the Comte de Montalembert, had just commenced his strange and varied public life of distracted opinion and irreconcilable tendencies, by an eloquent and fruitless defence of the cause at the bar of the Chambre des Pairs. These two remarkable men were accompanied by the Abbé de Coux and M. Rio, now well-known throughout Europe as the graceful and pious historian of Christian Art. Lamennais, like Dr. Wiseman, had received Pope Leo the Twelfth's intellectual sympathy and honourable protection, and the author of the Essai sur l'Indifférence was known to have been designated at that time for the highest dignities

of the Church: but another spirit now predominated in the Roman Court, and he and his lieutenants were received with more than coldness and disregard. It did not, perhaps, become any non-Catholic to judge the causes of this policy. It certainly appeared to the casual observer that the dominant motives of the actors in these scenes were the disinclination to quarrel with the representatives of a successful revolution in France, and an indistinct dread of the large and popular basis on which the Abbé Lamennais was content to rest the authority and destiny of the Catholic Church. It is, however, no doubt open for any believer to discern in this repudiation of the future heretic and revolutionist a superior prescience of the danger of giving trust or favour to a lofty intelligence liable to serious aberration, and a mind too haughty to be steadfast in its service to any external rule. Be this as it may, the immediate impression was eminently disagreeable. You saw a man who had grown great in the defence of the Church, now that he had pushed forward some theories, which had the acceptance of the more earnest Catholics in France, with an inconvenient enthusiasm, not only left unsupported in his struggle but regarded with aversion. He had difficulty in even getting access to the Pope; and one day, when he showed some little resentment on this score, a Monsignore superciliously observed that the Abbé surely did not come from a country in which his order were treated with especial respect. "You are mistaken, sir," said Lamennais; "in France no one despises a priest-they reverence him, or they kill him."

The

To these missionaries of a wider and braver Catholicism Dr. Wiseman proffered a generous hospitality, which was thankfully received. minute person and phthisical constitution of Lamennais did not permit him to take any important part in general society; but the charm and earnestness of Montalembert-so French in his emotions and so English in his thoughts-competed with the simple, audacious spontaneity of his Breton colleague Rio-a Christian in politics and an artist in religion-to make the conversation of the decorous seminary as bright and coloured as that of the gayest Paris drawing-room. After the publication of the Affaires de Rome, the breach between the Abbé Lamennais and the Church probably precluded all future intercourse between the reformer and the prelate the host of that table rose in honourable gradation to the loftiest functions of his profession; and of the guest I will only record what a French artisan said to me in 1848, when I asked whether he knew by chance where M. Lamennais lodged?" Dans cette maison-là très-haut-tout près du ciel."

This is not the place to praise or criticize the lectures on the "Connection between Science and Revealed Religion," which I heard delivered by Dr. Wiseman in the apartments of Cardinal Weld during the Lent of 1835. But it is well to remember that at that time the subject was comparatively new, and the knowledge imparted in a great degree necessarily derived from original sources. The matter was not then contained in popular