with her hair, and nearly blinding mother's bright loving eyes with his little dimpled hands.

Victor stood up and held their curlyhaired cherub, kicking and laughing, high up in the sunlight, and the sunlight was dying from crimson to yellow, and Madeleine saw visions of the future even more golden than the bright west made this.

A week later they went away into Brittany, sought out the village ever memorable in Victor Berthauld's life, and were fortunate enough to secure a house not very far from the well-remembered wooden-gabled mill and plashing waterwheel. It was a long low cottage, with many windows opening on a narrow strip of garden—a green bushy garden that had been neglected, but was beautiful in its flowery luxuriant wildness. The house itself, with its doors opening from room to room, the sunlight on its polished floors, and streaming in its diamondpaned windows, was to Madeleine's eyes the loveliest place she had ever been in. It was so simple and neat, so much a quiet home in the country, sheltered by shadowy eaves, and hidden among its trees, that it was to be loved for a certain unpretending humble air as much as for any charm of its build or surroundings. There the Berthaulds spent the end of the summer. They had Lucia with them, and old Martha, and a Breton woman as a servant, and it seemed to them that all the pleasure and peace they had known together were concentrated in that holiday time. As for Berthauld, the quiet panelled cottage rooms, the garden, and the house that held the woman of his heart and his little lisping child, were to him an earthly heaven. Madeleine's smile of patient courage or cheering joy, her thoughtful tenderness, her endless fund of wise thought and happy talk seemed all to be worth double when the noisy world was shut out and left far away.

Every anxiety was happily over and at rest. He revelled in his happiness and in hers, but with a grateful heart, not with forgetfulness. "Who shall say there is no Eden on earth?” he thought. This is mine-anywhere if she be there. I

66

suppose it is she herself and not my home that is my paradise. What was

there in the first old Eden that is not in her?"

It was no wonder that the weeks passed quickly; that August, laden with summer riches, went by all too soon, and September came with chiller air and bright clear skies and the first brown leaves. Still the days were warm, and never did the country look more lovely than in the early autumn. Victor and Madeleine enjoyed every shade and change of light and hour and season. They drank in the pleasure that the all-beautiful world gave to eye and ear and heart. But the same world is not all made for enjoyment, and Victor began to feel more and more that he should soon have to leave his loved seclusion. They were beginning to talk about going back to Paris. He had his profession to think of. He had been studying the law, and was to take it up more seriously now on his return; but he felt that even work would be made light and easy by his renewed strength and the precious remembrance of this entirely happy time in Brittany.

For the present, however, he did not think of returning, nor did he even give so much thought to the great noisy world as to follow the account of its greater and noisier doings in the newspapers. But at the close of September his attention was suddenly roused, and he took an interest, more keen and more personal, in the political world than he had yet done since he left Paris. Perhaps it would be more true to say his interest in public affairs was of a nature deeper and more anxiously alive than it had ever been before in his life. A paper, sent by chance from the capital, contained the news telegraphed from Italy that Garibaldian bands were crossing the frontiers of Papal territory, and an invasion was expected with greater numbers than had yet been brought together.

The news caused him great agitation. From the first day that he said from his heart "I believe," his devotion to Rome had been a part of his devotion to God. His mind was seized by the strong truth that to honour or defend Christ's Vicar

on earth, His visible representative, is to honour or defend Christ Himself. Το uphold the rights of the Pontiff and that temporal power which enabled him freely to govern the world-wide Church, was to uphold God's own rights. To injure them, to take away one iota of them, was not only unjust before men, but sacrilege -robbery of the Most High.

Victor Berthauld saw the storm coming. He knew it. In a few days more the red-shirted adventurer would be drawing after him the scum of Italy to the cry of "Rome or Death!" What wonder that he forgot his Eden for awhile, haunted by a cloud of sorrow and apprehension.

That night he walked up and down, up and down, unweariedly before the dark closed windows of the house, where the moonlight shone on the diamond panes in broken sparks of light. The little garden was still. The trees sighed in the night breeze. The stream going on towards the mill went by with a quiet sobbing sound beyond the side hedge.

"I wonder, what are the Italians doing now?" he thought. Can they possibly be helping those wretches, the Garibaldians? What is our Emperor doing? Why does he not send a good force to Rome and make things secure? he will have to send troops sooner or later." He smoked his cigar and thought a long time, watching a white glimmering star near the moon, and then looking down at the soft grass on the weedy path. How still the world was! How beautiful in the cool, fresh autumn night! Who could believe that base deeds were being planned from the Cabinet to the café, and good deeds basely left undone. Even now under that same moon there were red-shirt rebels somewhere creeping through the vines, and men who talked loud of liberty and knew none except the liberty of evil, were forcing themselves upon a people that hated them, and talking of the fine coming days of the Roman Republic, while they drained their late glasses in the taverns.

"What does the Papal army number?" wondered Berthauld. "Are there many volunteers going? They have a fine lot of Irishmen there, I hear,-Englishmen, Canadians, Belgians, Dutch, and our own

French, and these good Bretons-so my Jesuit friend told me when he came back from Rome that time. I hope more will go. They want every one they can get. These are terrible times."

A star-a faint streak of sudden light shot across the sky and vanished. He saw it, scarcely raising his eyes. Swift as the meteor, a thought had rushed into his mind. "Rome wants volunteers. Men ought to go. Ought I go?"

He stopped in his walk. It was a new thought, utterly new, one of those ideas that change men's lives at unexpected times, or introduce into them features so new, that life, if not changed, is stamped with the seal of a great event, an epoch. He reasoned long. He asked a higher help than his own strength of thought, and a wiser guide than his own heart, there under the soft, clear, night sky. Then he paced to and fro again, but with slower steps.

“Why should I not go as well as others?" he thought. If every one were to hold back as I am tempted to do, saying that they will find plenty of men ready to set out for Italy-why, then there would be no volunteers. Let me see. That dreary law-suit ended well after all. Madeleine is amply provided for; she would be safe till I came back, and even if I intended working in Paris at the law, it would be working for superabundance, not for subsistence."

He thought long, but the more his reflections lengthened out into the night, the more clear the fact became that every man in the defence of Rome was one man more, however slight the help of one might be; and that the same reasons that had persuaded so many to go already now urged him to offer his services to the Vicar of Christ in the hour of peril.

His enthusiasm rose. The fervour of his heart and the strength of his faith were carrying him on as the swift current of a river. "I must not make a sudden resolve," he said to himself at last. "I will go into the house and rest, and Madeleine must not hear anything about this till I have taken time to think it over far better."

In the morning he and his young wife

knelt in church at Mass among their poorer brethren. There were the peasant women, with their sun-brown faces, their trim white caps, their short skirts and wooden shoes. They said their beads and whispered their prayers for the home and the harvest, as they knelt in groups on the wide stone floor. And men were there before their work, with their toilworn hands and their hardy features. Five of them knelt before the altar, all close together in a row, all earnest with down-bent heads; and they wore the clothes that were only brought out on feast days-coats with much braiding, great, strong, new shoes, long stockings tied at the knee with ribbon. Their hats were thrown on the pavement, soft and broad-brimmed, with coloured knots or bits of feather fastened to the band. The women looked at these men ; some sighed, some prayed more when they saw them. The men and boys whispered and looked too. Some had shaken hands with them when they were coming in, an unwonted sign of friendship; and now that Berthauld counted the groups of people, he noticed that their number was greater than on ordinary mornings of the week. As the Mass went on these five strong-limbed labourers stood up and went with their noisy shoes to the altar-rail. The priest came down and gave them the Bread of Life. A whisper, or a murmur, or a sigh of emotion, went through the prostrate people.

When the Mass was over, Victor Berthauld withdrew between the small round pillars of stone to that corner of the aisle where the light came softly in the deep-set window, and where the great crucifix hung darkly and sorrowfully against the cold white wall. He knelt upon the spot where first the Redeemer's love had touched his heart, and the light of Heaven had broken in upon the darkness of his mind. He prayed now for light and guidance, and he remembered how he had thought that night in the silent darkness: "If one believed all this, one should live all for God, life should be one long sacrifice of love, nothing should be spared."

The slow, heavy, uneven walk of labouring men sounded behind him.

The five countrymen approached and knelt in a group beside him. One was very young, a mere boy, with a wonderfully frank, intelligent look upon his face, great determination and unwonted solemnity. Two others were young also, but above twenty. Another had a touch of grey in his hair, but he was of massive build, with limbs that had won many a wrestling match before now. Lastly, there was amongst them one better dressed than the rest, with sparkling black eyes that told a tale of keen ready wit, and a handsome face, dark as a hot sun could make it, and merry as the face of a boy.

Victor waited a long time, praying and thinking. At last they rose and went away. After a few minutes he followed. Madeleine came to meet him from a stone seat under an ivy-covered window, where she had been waiting with a book in her hand. They went down the church together. Outside was quite a crowd-all the people that had been present at Mass.

?

"They have not come out yet?" said a fair-faced village girl, pressing her way between the knots of people.

"No-they are yet at the altar of our Lady."

Berthauld and his wife waited to see them come. They wondered much what it was all about, especially when the men walked out from the carved worn doorway, and the people pressed round them with a thousand salutations. The gaylooking young man drew the arm of the pretty white-capped girl through his

"So you will wait till I come back, Marie ?"

"Yes; I am proud that you are going. Our Lady will keep you for me." "And I am proud of you," he answered, with a most courtly bow.

"Who are those men?" Berthauld asked an old countryman.

No. 90.-VOL. VIII.]

JUBILEE OF EMANCIPATION.—

IN

III.

N our last number we spoke of the Conciliatory Act passed by the Irish Parliament in the year 1744. We alluded to its origin, and to the chief motive which induced the English Government to allow the Act to be passed. It will be well worth while to study the Act itself, and especially its preamble. The wording of the Act is well calculated to show us the thoughts and sentiments of Protestants about Catholics, and particularly of English Protestants about the Irish Catholics. We shall also very clearly see the reckless manner in which assertions and insinuations can be made, when those who govern tyrannically wish to blind themselves or others, to the real motives which prompt their actions. Considering the subject in this way will not be a useless reminder of old grievances. It will not be the mere act (to use a common expression) of ripping up old sores. We shall learn a useful lesson for the present, by analysing the thoughts and motives of those who have preceded us. In the April number of this magazine, and in the first article on Jubilee of Emancipation," the difference of our position before the law, and before public opinion, was noticed. The legislature has done a great deal to relieve us from persecution by the law, but in consequence of the prejudice against us in the minds of a large majority of Englishmen, we are still grievously oppressed by public opinion. This prejudice against us, existing at the present day, is the prejudice which has been handed down from father to son, since the time when, in the sixteenth century, the first re

The

[PRICE 3d.

formers succeeded in poisoning the minds of the English. In the reign of Elizabeth and the three first Stuarts this prejudice produced a bloody persecution. In the reigns of William the Third, Anne, and the early Georges, this prejudice, though it did not prompt the shedding of blood, yet it led to the most searching and grinding laws, enacted for the express purpose of destroying, if possible, the very existence of the Church in the British Isles. In the reign of George III., the necessity of uniting the people against the common enemy, and the milder views of our religion taken by several influential statesmen, caused a relaxation of the penal laws. But still the prejudice against us was so great, that we Catholics were not even acknowledged as forming part of the State. We were looked upon as strangers, and as dangerous strangers. The Acts passed in our favour were regarded both by those who enacted them, and those who benefited by them, as gratuitous acts of cautious mercy.

A hundred years ago a priest had only been a few months safe from arrest; and the property of a Catholic gentleman had only been a few months safe in his own hands. It is only fifty years since that same prejudice gave way to the extent, and a great extent, no doubt, of establishing our right to be considered as a portion of the State. But was prejudice extinct? Far from it. Even Lord Grey, who was always our friend," who had, along with Lord Grenville, broken up a Ministry because he could not pass z Relief Act, Lord Grey, the Reformer of 1832, the champion of "civil and religious liberty," even Lord Grey, to the last hour of his days of office, could not be prevailed upon to appoint a Catholic to a legal office in Ireland. Down to the first

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F

administration of Lord Melbourne in the year 1834, "Catholic Emancipation" had been, to use the phrase of M'Cullagh Torrens, “an empty name and a mocking unreality." In other words, the prejudice against us had prevented the carrying out of that law, for which two great parties in the State had fought for many years. And so down to our own days prejudice prevents the impartial administration of the law, and the practical application to Catholics of several admitted principles of the British Constitution. In our April number we gave some instances to illustrate the action of prejudice. Many more in different matters might have been added. But its influence is well known to all. It lives and acts. It is an heirloom of evil in thousands of English families; and it is kept with the greatest care. It is an evil plant which is constantly cropping up. It cannot be eradicated. Its existence cannot be ignored, for it poisons the air. We should know its properties, in order to be on our guard against its influence. We must judge of it by its fruits. We must not be content with looking at the fruits it now bears. We must look back to its history, and see what it has borne. The venom is still in the root, its produce is always bad; and sometimes it fructifies to the injury, and even the ruin of many.

The

It is, therefore, worth while to consider attentively the Irish Act of 1774. oath prescribed by this Act was, we believe, the first proposed to Catholics which was not condemned at Rome; it could be conscientiously taken without explaining the words in such a way as to explain away their meaning; and it was the model on which the oaths to be taken

"Memoirs of Lord Melbourne," vol. vii. pp. I, 2.

While writing this article, we have read the following paragraph in a provincial newspaper : "Lord Bury's secession to the Church of Rome disposes altogether of his chance of becoming Lord Redesdale's successor as Chairman of Committee, a post on which Lord Bury is said to have set his heart." How far the facts stated in this paragraph are true, we do not know. But it shows only too well the action of prejudice. A man becomes a Catholic, and it is immediately concluded that, however well he may be fitted for an office, all chance of obtaining it is for ever gone.

under future Relief Acts were formed. The preamble of the Act was as follows:* "Whereas many of his Majesty's subjects in this kingdom" (that is, Ireland) “are desirous to testify their loyalty and allegiance to his Majesty, and their abhorrence of certain doctrines imputed to them, and to remove jealousies which hereby have for a length of time subsisted between them and others his Majesty's loyal subjects; but on account of their religious tenets are, by the laws now in being, prevented from giving public assurances of such allegiance, and of their real principles, and good will, and affection towards their fellow-subjects; in order, therefore, to give such persons an opportunity of testifying their allegiance to his Majesty, and good will towards the present constitution of this kingdom, and to promote peace and industry among the inhabitants thereof, be it enacted," &c. We must digress for a moment to observe, that shortly after the passing of this Act, the Irish Catholics determined to address the King, in order that they might be assured that their grievances were personally known to his Majesty. The address was written for them by Edmund Burke, the staunch friend of the Catholics; and probably as great a friend as it was possible for a Protestant to be, and whose wisdom, experience, and exertions in the management of our affairs, have been handed down to posterity in the grateful testimony of the illustrious Milner.+

This address was intrusted by Lord Fingall, Mr. Preston, and Mr. Dermott, to Lord Buckinghamshire; and through him it was presented to the King. This first address of the Irish to the King is a more dignified and less timorous production than the first address of the English Catholics to his Majesty in the year 1778. It puts the state of the Irish Catholics before the King in a forcible way, reminds him of the breach of the treaty made with William III.; and though the tone of the whole is submissive, there are indications of a latent spirit, which might

*This Act may be found in the "Pamphleteer," vol. xx. p. 454.

"Letters to a Prebendary," end of Letter vii.