godless, and in practice sectarian. Both are crying evils, and naturally the efforts of Catholics are directed to obtaining one of two points either, 1. A fair proportion of the school fund for the purpose of supporting exclusively Catholic schools; or, 2. The removal of the burden imposed on them of paying taxes to support a system of education inconsistent with itself, the practical workings of which give the lie to legislative enactments, which insults and injures us in what we hold dearer than life. The day may be far distant when success shall crown our labors, when we shall obtain our rights, but it is a long lane that has no turning. We have our tongues and our pens, and with these we must battle until we conquer. Our first duty is agitation, and our second duty is agitation, and our third duty is agitation. O'Connell has proved to a demonstration the omnipotence of cool, persevering agitation. Words strike deeper into brain and heart than sword-stabs or bayonet-thrusts, and ink often washes out more wrongs than the outpoured blood of legions.* Thus stands the question. We have established schools and colleges in hundreds, independent of State patronage, and while burdened with State school taxes. The Catholics of America have done a noble work, but God expects of them a nobler. To begin is well; to advance and improve is better; to aspire to excellence better still; and to attain it is the reward of enthusiasm and perseverance. We began the work of education out of our own resources; with our own resources and God's right arm we must finish it. We cannot afford to sit down and admire the past, and belaud ourselves for what we have done, but, like the Apostle of the Gentiles, forgetting the things that are behind, we must stretch forward to those that are before, to the mark of the supernal vocation in Christ Jesus, to the goal of excellence in nature and in grace. There is a disposition among many of us to crow over our past labors and sacrifices, to strut pompously backward and forward between yesterday and to-day, instead of pursuing humbly and swiftly our journey toward to-morrow. Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator, sings the Latin bard,but remark it was an empty traveller, one whose pockets were unconscious of dimes or dollars. But we have immense wealth about us, and we shall lose it all if we stand like fools singing our own praises by the wayside. Here, we think, is the pitch, the sticking point of the whole difficulty. We have got tired of our work; we think we have done enough; we want to breathe for a while, to brood over the past, and to take heart for the future. We have schools enough, and good enough. If they are not what they might be, they are, at any rate, as good as those of non-Catholics. We have done our part, let our children do the rest. So down we sit, and chant a pæan, and— The writer in regard to Common Schools speaks for himself, not for the Review.-Ed. B. Q. Review. Like little Jack Horner, And cry, "What a great people are we!" Thus we idle away precious time, and make little gods of ourselves, while the impetuous stream of life and progress rushes by us. Some fine morning we shall be found fossilized on its bank. "Let an The contemplation of the past is useful as an incentive to the future, but sometimes it unnerves us by making us satisfied with ourselves and the present. Laurel wreaths in politics and war, science and literature can be kept green and fresh only by new triumphs. The most unfortunate thing that can happen to some, is to distinguish themselves at an early age by a clever hit, an able essay, or a prize poem. Like single-speech Hamilton, whose first and grand display of oratory, in the British Parliament, nearly a hundred Years ago, was his last and only one, they live on the fame of one successful feat, until that scanty capital is exhausted, and then sink to the level of ordinary mortals. The same fate may befall bodies of men and institutions. Mushroom in their origin and growth, they begin to imagine themselves great trees, beneath which all the fowls of the air may find shelter, when, in truth, like the gourd of the prophet, they flourish and die in a day. other's tongue praise thee." Self-praise betrays both vanity and a want of trust in the native strength of our cause. If a stranger were to take up the Catholic papers during the months of July and August, and read the accounts of college and academy commencements, he would imagine, in his honest simplicity, that Attic scholarship was a pigmy by the side of the intellectual giant of American Catholicity; that our boys can write Greek plays as readily as Sophocles; that our girls can compose music like Beethoven, and sing it like Jenny Lind. But one who is behind the scenes knows newspaper notices of school exhibitions are not unfrequently beautiful and lying monuments over literary graves, over lifeless institutions, and lifeless minds. He knows that the editor or correspondent,-who, by the way, is sometimes personally interested in the matter, as teacher or student, has kissed the blarney-stone, and is laying on the soft soap as many feet deep as a southern editor threatened to pave Pennsylvania Avenue with corpses, if Abraham Lincoln were elected President of the United States. Yet if, in consequence of this knowledge, he ventures to suggest that a truer test of the efficiency of our educational institutions would be a thorough examination in all the branches taught in them, by a board of persons not connected with the institution, it is gently hinted to him to observe the eleventh commandment, by minding that his own business, and to keep his finger out of a pie that does not belong to him. Should he go further and express his doubts about the absolute perfection of Catholic schools, and give his reasons for those doubts, there are those who would brand him as a heretic, and answer his arguments by fulminating an anathema. We boast that we are free; the phrase means that our neighbor graciously accords us permission or freedom to think, and write, and act as he does. If we set up for ourselves, and boldly study out and express our sentiments on questions lying exclusively within the domain of reason, the leash is slipped, and the hounds are at our heels. We have the means of improving our schools if we will but use them. These means are men and money; and both would be forthcoming if there existed among Catholics an enlightened public opinion on the necessity of liberal education. The difficulty lies. in creating this opinion. It can be done only by the schools and colleges themselves; the supply must, in this case, precede the demand. A first-class institution would inspire its alumni with literary tastes; it would show them what education is, and the immense advantages the educated man enjoys. These young men would go into the world as apostles of a better order of things, of a higher learning; and the contrast between them and halfeducated men would soon begin to tell effectually on society. The stagnant waters would be moved, and the stream of a pure and energetic public opinion would leap joyously forth from the barriers which prejudice had set to it. Let the present young generation be well trained, and the Catholic public will, in the next generation, have sound views of education. Parents are readily reached through their children,-the prejudice and sluggishness of age through the frankness and enthusiasm of youth. If one college were to elevate the standard of education to a high point, the others would be compelled, in self-defence, to emulate the example; for in education as in commerce, people go where they can get the best article. Let us have one model school, one model female academy, one model college, and we shall soon have twenty. Excellence multiplies and diffuses itself; "it is more active than all active things, and reaches everywhere by reason of its purity." The literary supply must precede the demand. "Wisdom," says the Holy Ghost, "goeth about seeking such as are worthy of her, and she sheweth herself to them cheerfully in the ways, and meeteth them with all providence." So is it with education. Men will not respect and love her until they see her in her perfection,-until she offers herself, in her beauty and nobility, to their possession. The schools and universities of the Middle Ages created the intellectual activity of that epoch; they were not created by it. Alfred the Great, Theodore of Tarsus, Charlemagne, Alcuin, and Scotus Erigena inaugurated the system which was afterward improved by William of Champeaux and Abelard, when the latter established the University of Paris. These scholars, and the institutions which they founded, created the thirst for knowledge, and that thirst, when once created, is never quenched. In all cases society is acted on and influenced by a chosen few. The man makes the men, the university or college gives the tone to its time and country. The University of Cambridge, England, was not the result of an intellectual movement in English society, but of the professional ability and enthusiasm of a few French monks. Goisfred, a student of Orleans, came to England and became Abbot of Crowland. He sent four of his French religieux to Cottenham, near Cambridge, where they opened a school in a barn. Their lectures were attended with such success that, by the second year, neither house nor church sufficed for the number of their auditors, and they compelled to form several schools. "Betimes, in the morning," says Wood, in his account of Cambridge, "Brother Odo, a very good grammarian and satirical poet, read grammar to the boys and those of the younger sort, according to the doctrine of Priscian; at one o'clock, a most acute and subtle sophist taught the elder sort of young men Aristotle's Logic; at three o'clock, Brother William read a lecture on Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Flores. On Sundays and holidays, Master Gislebert preached the word of God to the people." These were the humble beginnings of the world-famed English university. The supply created the demand. Wisdom took up her abode on the banks of the Cam, and cried to all that passed by to come and drink of the waters free; and those waters became a fountain springing up for the intellectual life of "Merrie England." were We admit that our people are not alive to the necessity of education, but the fault lies at the door of the colleges and academies. They do not supply the genuine article; the public detects the counterfeit, and despises both it and its coiners. Too many of our teachers have hearts of ice, instead of hearts of fire; they kindle no warmth, no enthusiasm, no deep-rooted, reverent love of learning in the breasts of their pupils. The schools do not act on the world, and the world cannot be expected to act on them. Let life be infused into the high places of education, and then may they stretch themselves, like the prophet of old, on the corpse of society, and restore to its brain the pulsation of intellect, and to its heart the life of enthusiasm and love. The influence of one institution is remarkably shown in the histor of Jansenism. The Abbey of Port Royal was the soul of that heresy, a lighthouse amid the raging waves of theological and political strife, braving with a perseverant defiance, worthy of a better cause, the flashes of indignation and the thunders of St. Peter. The Arnaulds, men and women, priests and nuns, Pascal, De Sacy, and Nicoll, were, despite their errors, people of unconquerable wills, whose thoughts and writings teemed with the luxuriance of an intense intellectual life. Here was the secret of their wonderful influence. Under the banner of Jansenism were enrolled the wit and poetry, the deep philosophy and historic talent of France. Port Royal was the home of literature, art, and criticism. There Racine composed dramas, and Tillemont wrote the annals of the early Church; there Anthony Arnauld and Nicoll reared to the Catholic dogma of the Real Presence, the immortal monument of la Perpetuitė de la Foi; there Mère Angelique and Mère Agnes prayed with the fervor of angels, and resisted the Church with the pride of Lucifer. The splendor of genius glittered around the abbey walls, and the charm of romance still haunts its ruins. Intellect will make itself felt; it is a power in itself distinct from Church and State. Give it a noble mouthpiece, be it man or institution, and its trumpet tones will ring over the world. But it is loath to use the tongue of Balaam's ass. sors. Our colleges cannot shift the responsibility of their defects upon the want of sympathy and support shown by the Catholic public. Let them make themselves a name based on realities, not on the flimsy and mendacious praises of newspapers and their own profesLet them be beacons on the mountain tops, and the nations will flock to them for light and heat. Why did the proud Roman sit in reverent attention at the feet of Greek sophists in Athens,Athens which Roman arms had conquered, and over whose Acropolis the lordly Roman eagle flapped his wing in the full flight of victory? And why, at a later period, did the imperial student tear himself away from the vineyards of Italy, the isles of Greece, the tropical beauty of Central and Southern Asia, to take up his abode on the marshy Delta of the Nile? Because, in both cases, Athens and Alexandria had that to offer which Rome and Naples, Constantinople and Antioch could not supply; because the city of Minerva and the city of the Macedonian Conqueror were the most illustrious universities of the ancient world. They had a supply which created a demand. So it was in the Middle Ages; Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Cambridge, and Salamanca were cosmopolitan cities. In their lecture halls Spanish gravity and French fancy, English sense and German subtlety met and fraternized. At the present day, the ecclesiastical student and the art student go to Italy, because she is one of the richest treasure-houses of sacred seience, because her picture galleries and studios are colleges and universities of the beautiful. Set it down as truth, then, that educational reform must be inaugurated by the schools and colleges themselves; a new intellectual life must be generated from within. From its own ashes the phoenix springs to life. We are as well off, it is said, in point of intellect and learning, as our neighbors; our institutions are as good as theirs. We say transeat to the assertion. But, granting that others are imperfect, |