dreamers; for their language is the language of modern Catholic saints, and their lives have never been more exactly imitated than by modern Catholic martyrs. It is evident that the same spirit lived in both. If De Brébeuf and Marie de l'Incarnation were only mystical dreamers, S. Paul, whom Festus supposed to be insane, was no better.

Mr. Parkman's error has been to judge men and actions wholly beyond the comprehension of an ordinary Protestant, for whom the material alone has any value, and the natural any meaning. The spiritual and the supernatural belong to a sphere from which he is self-excluded. If he had wished to make a safe and prudent use of his talents and industry, he should have made himself the biographer, not of Catholic, but of Protestant missionaries. He would at least have understood the latter; and if we judge him rightly, his unflinching candour and his sympathy with all that is heroic, he would probably have given just such an account of them as we have lately read in the work of an English Protestant, who has watched their operations in many lands. "No men that I know of," says this gentleman, who never gets out of his depth by talking of the supernatural, "take better care of themselves than missionaries-I mean those of our own Church; for the Roman Catholic propagandists go where duty calls them, without making any fuss about dangers and privations to which they are about to be exposed. All honour to them for it! But our clergy most do congregate where skies are bright and natives tractable, and their cry is always the same-' Money! Money!! Money!!! We cannot save another soul without money.'

ART. IV.-PRINCIPLES OF CATHOLIC HIGHER

EDUCATION.

Essay on Education. (Irish Annual Miscellany, Vol. II.) By Rev. PATRICK MURRAY, D.D. Dublin: Bellew.

What does it profit a Man? By the SON OF A CATHOLIC COUNTRY SQUIRE. London: Burns, Oates, & Co.

THE "Month" of last October makes a statement, which we

believe to be substantially true. "If... the universality of a particular topic of conversation," it says, " amongst our higher and middle classes is a true index of the feeling of

* "Recollections of a Life of Adventure." By William Stamer. Vol. ii. c. 7, p. 147. 1866.

Catholics, there can be little doubt that the great want which makes itself more and more urgently felt among us, is a liberal education analogous to that given at Oxford and Cambridge." But though Catholics are agreed on the great desirableness of a certain end, we hardly remember an instance on which so much difference of opinion has existed as to the appropriate means. In fact, no fewer than six different plans have from time to time been proposed, Firstly, the frequentation by Catholics of existing colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Secondly, the foundation of a Catholic College at Oxford. Thirdly, an agitation for the admission of non-resident candidates to Oxford and Cambridge degree examinations. Fourthly, a frequentation by Catholics of the Irish Catholic University. Fifthly, a college in England for higher Catholic education. Sixthly, an English Catholic University.

Of these various plans, the two last-named (as we have more than once argued) appear to usin every respect preferable; while the two first are now, thank God, entirely out of the question. But at all events, so long as the existing divergence continues in regard to the appropriate means, no combined effort can be put forth for attaining the desired end; and it is very important therefore that such divergence should, if possible, be reduced. It has occurred to us that there will be greater hope of this result, if the question of principles be kept distinct in argument from that of application. In our present short article therefore, we purpose to consider exclusively the principles of Catholic higher education. This may possibly lead to discussion; and this again may result in the correction or enlargement of our views on this or that particular. In such a manner by degrees thoughtful Catholics, or the large majority of such, may arrive at such general agreement on the matter, as shall greatly facilitate the path of ecclesiastical superiors. For whenever there comes to be general agreement on principles, we do not think any great discrepancy of opinion will arise on the best method of applying them.

We have named at the head of our article two very different works, written by two very different writers; which agree however in this, that they treat with signal ability the question of principle. Dr. Murray's Essay was published not less than seventeen years ago, on occasion of the then projected "Queen's Colleges" in Ireland; and it is interesting to see how many of his remarks are precisely applicable to the present crisis of Catholic England. "The Son of a Catholic Country Squire " wrote at a much later period, in reference to the "Castlerosse

Memorial" of ignominious renown. His pamphlet performed very effective service in its day; and we hope some of the passages we shall select may again on the present occasion do execution. We shall not however follow either of our authors in the plan of our article, because our immediate purpose is by no means the same as theirs.

Higher education, we need hardly say, is for the comparatively leisured classes; for those who can carry on their education to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, and not only to that of eighteen or nineteen. At present no system whatever of higher education is offered to English lay Catholics; and the want of such an education is more and more urgently felt by them. For want of it, they are both at a moral and intellectual disadvantage; they are almost obliged to employ, in comparatively useless occupations and amusements, those very years, which are immeasurably the most precious for purposes of intellectual training.

When boys have grown into men, we have no universities to send them to. We have schools and colleges; and though they are deficient in many points, we can content ourselves with them. But at that very period at which the mind is most capable of receiving impressions and at which the character is fashioned and stamped for life,-when the energies and powers of the intelligence are most keen and are open to the greatest peril,—and we look around for a place to send our boy to be educated in the real sense of the word, and formed into a man,-nothing but blankness presents itself to us.

Universities of our own we have none. Is he to remain at home, eating the bread of idleness, and exposing himself to the awful dangers of doing nothing? (Pamphlet, p. 27.)

We need not however enlarge on the great need which exists for Catholic higher education, because such need is now unanimously admitted by all. Let us rather proceed to consider of what character this higher education should be, and in what particulars it should consist.

Firstly it must of course be such, as shall correspond with the earlier education which has been imparted, and conjointly with that education shall give due and effective cultivation to the various mental faculties. Many questions have lately been started in England, on the appropriateness of respective instruments for this purpose: on the comparative value, e.g., of classics and physics; of ancient and modern languages; of philosophy, philology, history. We shall not here enter in detail on these questions, though they are undoubtedly of great practical importance. We shall not enter on them in detail, because none of them are questions raised between Catholics and Protestants as such, or between Catholics

of different schools as such. We will but briefly and generally express the views to which we incline, and to which indeed we think that English public opinion is on the whole rapidly converging.

We hold then, that no better intellectual foundation can be laid than in classics and mathematics; though we also hold that in various ways-such as by the excision of very much superfluous verse making-a solid classical education can be given, with very far greater economy of time than has hitherto been the case. As to physics, As to physics, we think that all should be instructed in the general principles by which physical truth is discovered and authenticated, and that well-chosen illustrations should be given of these principles; but we greatly doubt the effectiveness of physical studies, pursued in detail, towards first-rate intellectual training. We think that study of modern languages, such as German no less than French and Italian, may be made of great value in the way even of intellectual culture; while for practical purposes, they may in these days be almost counted as a necessity. We hold, as we suppose every one holds, that historical facts in great abundance should be from the first mastered and chronologically arranged in the mind; and that on these, as the faculties expand, a wide and scientific study of history should be based. Nor lastly, of course, is any higher education worthy the name, which does not contain philosophical discipline as a very prominent portion of itself.

At the same time, for reasons which we shall give before we conclude our article, it seems to us of less importance that the intellectual discipline of Catholics be in itself the very best attainable, than that it should be altogether similar in character to that prevalent among their non-Catholic fellowcountrymen of the period.

We

But now secondly-and this is the point on which, for present purposes, we lay by far our greatest stress-it is the business of education, not merely to impart mental cultivation and power, but far more emphatically to impart speculative and practical truth. A great deal might be said on this subject, in the way of general principle and argument. venture e.g. to consider it a most serious defect in a work, otherwise so unusually powerful as F. Newman's volume on "the scope and nature of University Education," that the author lays so little stress on this particular function of universities. But on the present occasion it will be perhaps more useful, if, instead of treating this grave question comprehensively and in the abstract, we look at the matter with a direct and immediate view to practical results.

By giving Catholic youths a higher education, you give them ipso facto a far keener interest than they would otherwise have, in philosophy, history, literature. But here in England, philosophy, history, literature are saturated with principles the most violently and fundamentally anti-Catholic. Unless therefore you have provided them with a special antidote against those principles, not only your education will have conferred on them no benefit, it will have done them unspeakable injury. Take these two cases. On the one hand, a clever youth remains pure in morals and heartily loyal to the Church; but after the age of eighteen or nineteen he devotes himself to such occupations as these; he talks and acts on party politics; frequents county society; reads in a superficial way reviews, magazines, and newspapers; amuses himself with hunting, shooting, yachting, cricketing; while he gives at the same time to his priest both money and full moral support. Well, at all events he is leading a life considerable less frivolous than "seventy per cent. of those who take degrees at Oxford": for these, according to the Rector of Lincoln College in that University, are either "the foppish exquisites of the drawing-room," or "the barbarous athletes of the arena." (See our last number, p. 412.) However you make it your boast that you rescue him from this comparatively torpid life; you make him free of the intellectual guild; you inoculate him with a keener taste for philosophy, history, and literature; and then-you leave him without any carefully devised intellectual defence against those godless principles, which he will thus imbibe with unintermitting draughts. "Pol me occidistis amici, Non servâstis, ait." Of youths so exposed, we have no doubt at all that some would actually apostatise. The remainder would grow up a noxious school of disloyal, minimising, anti-Roman Catholics: Catholic in profession, but anti-Catholic in spirit Catholics, who combine the naked dogmata of the Church with the principles of her bitterest enemies, and place the priceless gem of the Faith in a setting of every basest metal: a constant cause of anxiety to ecclesiastical authorities: a canker eating into the Catholic body: a standing nuisance and obstruction.

Indeed even as things are now, many well-intentioned children of the Church, who are very far from meriting the severe epithets which we have just recited, yet find serious difficulty in submitting their intellect to the Holy Father's doctrinal instructions. Whence does this difficulty arise? From this circumstance, that those instructions imply throughout certain momentous, consistent, long-established principles, which Catholics have unconsciously learned (from the godless