that shall enforce, by rule, intellectual activity on its members, and require talent as one of the requisites for admission. The wants or the times demand it. We should have hesitated to make the suggestion, had not the necessity of changes of the kind been forcibly brought to our attention by the enlightened remarks of religious themselves.

Complaints have been made of the difficulty of getting young ladies of a high order of talent to enter the novitiates. One main reason is because the convents themselves do not give the education necessary to prepare successful teachers. Ecclesiastical seminaries are mainly recruited, as far as the native priesthood is concerned, from the colleges; the novitiates of the religious female orders from the conventual schools. If the latter do not send out accomplished pupils, they cannot expect accomplished teachers when the former school-girl becomes a sister. In the majority of

cases our best instructresses were not educated in Catholic academies. According to the present system, the evil goes on perpetuating itself. Inefficient teachers form inefficient pupils, and they, in turn, become inefficient teachers; and so the sad work pro

gresses.

The third and last point of our remarks concerns the system of our colleges and schools, parochial and conventual. The radical fault of the system is that it attempts too much, that it attempts to unite elements the most heterogeneous, as opposite as the poles. There are institutions among us which combine, under the same roof, the infant school, the primary school, the grammar school, the secular college, the preparatory seminary, and the theological seminary,institutions where the whole curriculum of sacred and profane science is taught, from c-a-t, cat, and twice two are four, up to the philosophy of the Absolute, the highest regions of pure mathematics, and the tenets of the Thomists, Scotists, and Congruists on the most abstruse questions in grace; and yet all these expected to work in and out of one another with per

elements are

with all the agility of a circus clown, from theology into arithmefect harmony. The poor professor is expected to turn a somerset, tic, thence head over heels into Latin or history, back into grammar, and forward into Holy Scripture.

Such seven-headed hydras. Heaven send us some Bellerophon, to do battle with them, and

smite off the supernumerary heads. Nothing can be accomplished until college is separated from ecclesiastical seminary,-until, in fact, we adopt either the English or the German system. Let a primary

versity, an

only that, nothing more, nothing less. podrida system in reference to the Catholic colleges of England have been so

ecclesiastical seminary an ecclesiastical seminary, and The evils of the olla

prelates of the English hierarchy, that we prefer, instead of pursuing our own line of remarks, to give the letter which he published on the 10th of last July, announcing the changes to be introduced in St. Mary's college, Oscott. We take refuge behind the venerable name of the Rt. Rev. W. B. Ullathorne, Bishop of Birmingham.

"Complaints have been lately heard in various quarters, of the inefficiency of our colleges; but it should be remembered that they began their career under circumstances of great trial and difficulty, and with very slender resources, and that they were obliged to meet the requirements of a very limited circle, on the lowest possible terms. Hence, the work of conducting them has been one of clerical devotedness and self-denial, which has not always, perhaps, been duly appreciated. I will put the case in a brief, but I think an intelligent form. Catholic parents have been in the habit of expecting from our colleges a course of education on a very expanded system, and ranging from the first work of a preparatory school to the concluding studies of a university. And this course of studies they have expected to be accomplished within the period allotted in this country to a grammar school. Nor is this all.

"Ever reckoning on the indulgent kindness of the clergy, and not sufficiently alive to the importance of training on system, as the best preparation for any future career, individual families have required their sons to be put into exceptional lines of study, which throw them off the regular course. The evil that results from this interference with uniform system is four-fold.

"Whilst the plan of studies is already too widely extended for efficient training, it is constantly disturbed and interfered with; the professors are harassed and distracted from their proper work; the pupils gain only a superficial acquaintance with the many subjects between which their attention is divided; and the character of the establishment necessarily suffers. In the old public schools of this country a youth is educated up to his seventeenth or eighteenth year; and by that time he has acquired in regular course a considerable knowledge of the two classical languages, employed as instruments of training rather than for gaining information, English, a certain amount of geography and history, arithmetic, and the elements of mathematics. To these has been lately added, in some of them, a knowledge of French. During the same period of life, a Catholic youth is supposed in one of our colleges to have completed his classical education, and to have included in that education two or more modern languages, besides his own, rhetoric, logic, and a course of the physical sciences; whilst an additional year or so is supposed to give him a course of moral and mental philosophy.

In a word, by the time he has reached his eighteenth or nineteenth year, his college is expected to have performed for the Catholic youth the four-fold office of a preparatory school, a grammar school, a college, and a university. I put from sight the functions of that college as an ecclesiastical seminary, because I am simply considering its relations with its lay students. But this is by no means a statement of the whole case.

"This vast amount of teaching is expected to be achieved at the cost of scarcely more than a quarter of what is paid for the training given to a youth at one of the old endowed schools of the country. And yet, for the causes mentioned, a much larger number of teachers is required by us for not half the number of scholars that frequent the public schools so often referred to.

"Under these circumstances, how can a college sustain a high character for efficiency? The clergy, indeed, devote themselves to the work from a high principle. They work, it may be said, almost if not altogether gratuitously, at a task that is always laborious and often thankless. And the divinity students are called upon, to the detriment of their proper pursuits, to supply for the deficiency of older professors. But it is gratifying to observe that the laity as well as clergy see that the time has now come for gradually, but effectually ameliorating this state of things; and the following principles have been adopted as a guidance in this work of reform. The system of studies requires to be wisely limited in its earlier period, and rather directed to open and train the faculties than to fill the

mind.

"For to the young especially, a thorough, though limited knowledge is much better than a more extensive, but less accurate one. The course will be so arranged that those who follow it regularly will, at the proper age, be perfectly qualified to pass the examinarequired for military or civil employments, at home or in

tions now

India.

"It will be requisite that the pupils henceforth received into the college should follow the regular course of the establishment.

A complete body of professors will be appointed, and exclusively devoted to the work of teaching; and the old plan of largely employing divinity students as teachers will be gradually abandoned. "Not only the efficiency of the lay department, but equally that

of the ecclesiastical, demand this reform.

"And, as a necessary consequence of this step, the pension will be raised to all pupils entering the college after this time. The full particulars of this change, as also the programme of the course of studies, will be published as soon as possible. Meanwhile, 1 will only add that it is proposed to continue and enlarge the system of voluntary competitive examinations, with valuable prizes offered to the most successful candidates, which has already been found to be productive of much good during the past year, and generally to do more for the encouragement of emulation throughout the whole

college.">

In an article on ecclesiastical seminaries, published in the October number of the Review for 1859, we pointed out the necessity of an educated clergy. The combination of seminary and secular college renders it impossible to give a high-toned, finished, literary training to candidates for the priesthood. The wants of the missian compel our bishops to give but a short course to their seminayoung man is fortunate, indeed, who has been allowed

rians.

That

to devote three full years to the study of theology, Sacred Scrip

ture, and Church history. We have known cases of persons having been ordained after their first year's theology; and some have graduated in ecclesiastical science, after an extensive course of six months. Certainly every moment of a seminarian's 'limited time is as precious as gold. How can you expect him to fulfil the precept labia sacerdotis custodient scientiam; how can you expect him to be a scholar ready to hold his own and defend the Church in the midst of an intellectual Protestant society, if you distract and worry him, and break his spirit in the seminary, by the arduous labors of prefectship or tutorship? Arduous labors they are, if perfectly performed. Ten years of the seminary life has convinced us of the fact that the better the teacher or prefect, the worse the seminary, and vice versa. Those who devote themselves energetically to college studies, lose the spirit of their state, neglect their ecclesiastical studies, and finally suffer shipwreck of their vocation; whilst, on the other hand, the young man who is devoted to his purely ecclesiastical duties-who wishes to become a pious and learned priest,--cannot but repine at a system which makes this impossible. The union of seminary and college was the result of necessity. At a time when ecclesiastical institutions could not depend for their support upon the contributions of the faithful, a plan was devised, first, we believe, by the venerable Bishop Dubois, of enabling seminarians to clothe and educate themselves by teaching boys in a secular school attached to the seminary. That was fifty years ago. Things are quite different now. laity are able and willing to support the diocesan or provincial seminary, but many of them demur to contribute to a mixed institution, when the secular may swallow up the spiritual, and when what was given for ecclesiastical purposes may, by the very necessities of the case, be engrossed by collegiate interests. It is the old difficulty, in another form, of the two orders, of the spiritual and temporal, Church and State. During the late quests for Papal alms, many Catholics said, "We are willing to give to the Pope as the head of the Church, as the representative of the spiritual order, but we will not contribute to his wants as a temporal prince." We do not say that they were right; we only state a fact.

The

Superiors and professors of ecclesiastical seminaries are painfully impressed with the want of general knowledge, of preparatory mental training shown by many students of theology. They are endeavoring to build the sublime stucture of ecclesiastical science without the foundation of classical studies, and the attempt is, as might be expected, a miserable failure. There is no way of remedying the evil but that pointed out by J. W. C., in the article on "Vocations to the Priesthood," in the last number of the Review.

Boys, belonging to this country, manifesting hopeful signs of an ecclesiastical vocation, must be set aside from a tender age, and

trained in preparatory seminaries, by accomplished teachers, in all the branches of a classical education. Do not send them to the theological seminary until they have a fair knowledge of ancient and modern literature; until they are, in every respect, competent to master metaphysics and divinity. The plan that we proposed fifteen months ago, of making the diocesan seminaries feeders to the metropolitan seminary, was sneered at by some of our critics, as provincial. We confess to a want of appreciation of the force of the objection; there may be, however, more in it than we see.

The Council of Trent, it is true, admonishes each bishop to provide a seminary for his own diocese, and advises a provincial seminary only in case the individual dioceses are too poor to support their own. But we have an example, in our own day, that must forever silence all objections, of the erection of a metropolitan or provincial seminary, in the strict sense of the word, without interfering with the coexistence of the local or diocesan seminary. Pope Pius IX., by letters apostolic of June, 1853, founded in Rome, in the buildings of St. Apollinaris, the Seminario Pio," in which" (we quote the words of the bull) "faithful clerics chosen from all the dioceses, may gratuitously be imbued with piety, the ecclesiastical spirit, and literature."

Each of the seventy-eight dioceses of the Pontifical States possesses, in the Seminario Pio, one scholarship. Sinigaglia, because it is the Pope's native place, has two. "Clerics," says the bull, "having received, at least, the first tonsure, taken from the diocesan seminary, are to be preferred; for their education, undertaken by the care of their own bishop, affords no slight testimony of their future progress and of their vocation." Why can we not imitate the example of the Holy Father? Two or three metropolitan seminaries, or theological universities, could coexist with the diocesan institutions, and would, in fact, elevate their character by supplying them with superiors and professors. Nothing is wanting to the of educational reform but union, combination, harmony of view, and action. But, unfortunately, geographical institutions and local interests can exist in the sanctuary, as well as in politics. To the winds with all paltry jealousies; let us stand together, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, and our irresistible onslaught will sweep the field clear of all obstacles.

success

The elimination of the ecclesiastical from the lay element in our institutions of learning is only one step, though a mighty one, in the work of reform; it is the breaking of the first gleam of light on chaos, but chaos still remains. The college, to fulfil its mission, must rid its skirts of the grammar school, it must exclude infants and boys, and admit only young men, and them only after they have proved, by satisfactory examination, that they have already mastered the elements of Greek and Latin grammar, history, and arithmetic. According to the present system, there are huddled to