staff he has already chosen, as professor of moral philosophy, Dr. Bouquillon, a noted writer on the subject; of Biblical studies, Dr. Hyvernat, a native of Lyons, and disciple of the celebrated Professor Vigouroux, of Paris; of canon law, Dr. Messmer, a native of Switzerland, but for many years resident in America; of dogmatic theology, Dr. Schröder, author of standard works on the subject, born at Beeck in 1849; and of Thomistic philosophy, Dr. Pohle, born in 1852 at Niederspay on the Rhine, eminent as a writer and contributor to erudite ecclesiastical compilations.

The course will consist, for the present, of lectures every day on dogmatic and moral theology, the Holy Scriptures, and higher philosophy; three times a week on English literature; and once a week on ecclesiastical history, liturgy, and various scientific subjects. Later on will be instituted courses of Biblical languages, as well as of sacred music and church ceremonies. The University is intended to consist, when completed, of seven great blocks of building, of which those assigned to the schools of law and medicine will be immediately erected.

So rapid was the construction of the Divinity Building as to make its completion the visible monument of the centennial of the hierarchy, and its inauguration the central event of the celebration. The imposing festivities, of which that ceremonial formed a part, have roused the world to a sudden consciousness of the conquests of Catholicism in a new sphere. But such an occasion can be fittingly celebrated only if its triumphant retrospect be linked with an equal promise of anticipated achievement, and its memorial foundation should be as a milestone facing both ways, recording on the one side the progress of the past, and pointing on the other to the work still remaining for the future. The Washington University will be such a reminder, marking the determination of all who profess Catholicism in America that its second century shall be at least as fruitful as its first. For the Church, conformably to her militant character on earth, can never afford to rest in the consciousness of a completed task, but must ever gird herself to fresh action. Movement and progress are the necessary conditions of her divinely bestowed vitality, as they are of that of more purely human institutions. For the main trunk, indeed, they can never fail, but in the secondary branches their diminution would indicate loss of vigour, and decay would be the Nemesis of sterility.

Nor can the policy of geographical isolation proclaimed by the State in America be ever adopted by a section of that body among whose chief titles to authority is her universality. The Transatlantic Church cannot separate herself from the wants and strivings of the greater community to which she belongs, but must do her share in the work of the Church as a whole.

The

consolidation and development of her own organism has fully occupied her energies during the first century of her growth, but the second should see her, fully matured and firmly rooted, prepared to transmit to others the light she has herself received.

Nay, she is, perhaps, in a more especial manner than others called to this task, since it is for her pre-eminently one of expiation. The African slave trade, initiated by the demand for labour in the American colonies, lies heavy at the door of her flock, and entails an obligation of atonement to the race to which has been done the most grievous wrong ever suffered by humanity. Already it has wreaked, in sanguinary civil war, a dire retribution on the continent that gave it birth, while the threatening aspect of the negro question, looming large among the difficulties of the future, seems to show that its inheritance of evil is not yet exhausted.

But even this great blot on the record of mankind may be yet effaced, if it be made the means of working out the redemption of the lost African race by the nation primarily responsible for its enslavement. The evangelization of the great heathen continent, now for the first time rendered practically possible, is the largest task set the coming generation; and the Anglo-Saxon race, with whom lies the world's future, should, if true to its position, bear the heaviest part in it. It will be at best a slow growth of time, impeded by material obstacles, for while missionaries have been, and will be, found ready to die in the attempt to plant the Cross in the equatorial wilderness, white colonization, giving a wider scope to the contact between religious influences and barbarism, is throughout its vast extent a physical impossibility. But if the European races are thus excluded, their place might be taken by the Christianized negroes of North America, fitted for the requirements of African colonization at once by affinity of blood, linking them to their heathen kinsfolk, and, by hereditary tendency of constitution, enabling them to work and thrive in a climate enervating or deadly to the natives of the temperate zone. The increase of the coloured population, raising a problem for the future of the United States, would here find a profitable outlet, and the original violent deportation of the negro would be atoned for, if utilized as a means of leavening with civilizing influences the 210,000,000 Pagans yet unreclaimed in Africa.

A step towards these results has already been taken in the opening by St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society of a college in Baltimore during the great celebrations of the Centenary, for the education of missionaries, both of European and African descent, exclusively devoted to the conversion of the coloured race. The negroes of America, among whom there are already from 25,000 to

30,000 Catholics, are the first objects of its solicitude, but the prosecution of this task is intended to be but preparatory to the larger one of the evangelization of the parent stock. The adoption of the work as a national one on a more extended scale would be a worthy result of the Baltimore Congress, and a fitting consecration of the second century of American Catholicism. Wonderful as has been its past, a future still more wonderful may await it in the infusion of fresh Transatlantic vigour which it may be destined to impart to the missionary work of the Church at large. Over 100,000 Indians already gathered to its fold testify to its proselytizing power, with such increase even to their material well-being, as is testified to by the concurring testimony of all travellers. The success that has attended the efforts of American Catholics in this quarter should encourage them to invade that still greater domain of heathenisin, whose conquest to the Cross is, perhaps, reserved for them as a visible atonement for the sins of their fathers against it. The material prosperity of their happy continent makes their obligation all the greater to succour that most miserable one, the slave-raider's prey and the fiends' paradise, which awaits a double redemption at the hands of the more favoured peoples of the carth.

Its

The call to enter upon this work has been already recognized by the Protestant sects in America, and the foundation, some seventy years ago, of the American Colonization Society for the Regeneration of Africa proclaimed its purpose in its name. outcome was the creation of Liberia, a settlement of freed negroes on the west coast of Africa, where they and their descendants now number 40,000, and rule over some two million of native African subjects. That a similar system, carried out by a Catholic association for the conversion of Africa, would be likely to be attended with still larger results, is the belief of even Protestant writers, and we quote, to this effect, Dr. E. J. Blyden, who at one time represented the Negro Republic of Liberia at the Court of St. James's :

Another plan of propagating religion in Africa through indigenous agency is followed by no Christian Church with greater zeal and determination than the Church of Rome. That Church, ever ready to recognize and utilize those elements in human nature which can be made subservient to her interests, is now everywhere educating Africans for the African work. We are convinced that the only hopeful and effective way of proceeding in respect to Africa is that which may be summed up in the words the conversion of Africa by the Africans. Christian black settlements ought to be attempted all over Africa, even, if need be, among the Mohammedans, after the difficult and costly manner followed by Monsignor Comboni. The task is full of hardship, but no other system will avail. Whether it will be possible to organize bands of the Catholic Africano-Americans for

the settlement and conversion of Africa-as their Protestant brethren, who sail to Liberia in numbers varying annually from two to five hundred, are organized for that very purpose-remains to be proved. Large funds are required-hard heads and generous hearts to carry out such an enterprise; but genuine faith, hope, and charity are divine and creative forces, and we must look for great results where they exist, and are brought into energetic action.

The connecting link between Africa and the outer world will thus be supplied by the American coloured race, sent back as messengers of civilization to their outcast kindred. Great tracts of the most fertile regions of the earth lie derelict, depopulated by the slave trade, awaiting inhabitants sufficiently advanced in arts and knowledge to be able to cope with the exterminators of their kind. We do not despair of seeing the day when these slaughter-scathed areas shall be transformed into so many Catholic Liberias, true oases of freedom and faith scattered through the barbarian wilds. The realization of such a dream would, doubtless, be a heavy task, but none too heavy for American energy and enthusiasm. Its fulfilment would make the coming century worthy of that which is past, by crowning the second cycle of the Transatlantic Church with the redemption of another continent.

EDITORIAL.

Science Notices.

The Photographic Chart of the Heavens.-The Holy Father has given one more proof of his disinterested love of learning, and of the elasticity of mind which enables him, in the midst of innumerable cares, to share, in full sympathy, all the nobler aspirations of humanity. Within the walls of the palace which is his prison, he has decreed the erection of an astronomical observatory, already, at his instance, enrolled among those co-operating in the great international work of charting the heavens by photography. The instrument required for the purpose has been ordered from the MM. Henry, of Paris, and will doubtless be executed with all possible despatch. It may be described as a twin-telescope, a single tube enclosing a refractor of thirteen inches aperture, at the focus of which the sensitive plates are exposed, and a refractor of eleven inches for the visual use of the operator, whose business it is to keep the stars steady during the operation. The photographic object-glass is as unfit for looking through, as the visual objectglass for taking photographs with, for the simple reason that each is constructed to concentrate into an image the different qualities of light to which the human and the chemical retinas are respectively sensitive. There may be insects which see best, or solely, with the high-up rays that blacken salts of silver; but our own species needs the help of longer and less frequent vibrations.

is now

Father Denza of the Barnabite Order, for some years the head of the observatory at Moncalieri near Turin, has been nominated by the Pope director of the Vatican establishment, and as such a member of the Permanent Committee charged with carrying out the resolutions of the Photographic Congress of 1887. The French Astronomical Society marked their esteem for him personally, no less than their appreciation of the service to science he has been chosen to render, by electing him, on the 6th of last November, an honorary member of their body. The meeting of the Permanent Committee at Paris in September 1889, was in every respect satisfactory. Some important decisions were arrived at; others, less pressing and more likely to divide opinions, were wisely reserved for future consideration; technical points were discussed and elucidated; proposals, hitherto vague, received a tangible form; and the whole work, notwithstanding the novelties of principle and detail met with at every stage of its organization, was notably facilitated and quickened. Twenty observatories, distributed over the wide range of latitude from Helsingfors to the Cape of Good Hope, have now engaged to share its practical execution. Of these, fifteen are expected to be completely equipped early in the present year; and the five recently added-at Vienna, Catania, Manilla, Tacubaya in Mexico, and the Vatican-will be ready by its close. Each will have to take about seven hundred photographs, in the