Catholicity and Literature

                                                                                                                CATHOLICITY AND LITERATURE

We have heard it maintained that the province of a quarterly review is to criticise books, and not to discuss the subjects which books treat or suggest; and we have ourselves been denied, on that ground, the right to be regarded as a reviewer. But we think those who so maintain labor under a slight misapprehsion. A review, according to modern acceptance and usage, is not necessarily a purely literary work, and it may review subjects as well as books, and the practice of nearly all American and foreign reviews is to do so. The book introduced is regarded as little more than an occasion or a text for an original discussion of some question which the author wishes to treat. The doctrinal or moral character of books is as proper a subject of review, as their literary character. Books are worthy of no great consideration for their own sake, and literature itself is never respectable as an end, and is valuable only as a means to an end. Literature is to be highly esteemed, and assiduously cultivated by those who have a literary vocation; but, as an instrument, as a means of effecting some lawful purpose, never for the sake of itself. It has never been, and, probably, never will be, the main purpose of our Review to criticise books under a purely literary aspect, for it is not designed and conducted simply in the interests of authors and booksellers. It was originally devoted, and will continue to be devoted, to what should be the ends and aims of literature, rather than to literature itself.

            It has also been contended in more circles than one, that it is narrow-minded bigotry for a Catholic critic to make his religion a criterion in judging literary works. We have seen in a work of fiction an imaginary Catholic critic unmercifully ridiculed by an imaginary Catholic priest, for pronouncing judgment on literary works, according to Catholic faith and morals. The author can have little reason to pique himself on his proficiency as a moral theologian. He seems to proceed on the assumption, that religion has nothing to do with politics. The writer, most likely, has not reflected that between judging of a book, as one to be commended or not to be commended to the public, and judging its simply literary merits, there is a difference. If in the former case, the much-ridiculed imaginary critic used his Catholicity as his standard of judgment, he acted only as an honest man, and a consistent Christian; if he did so in the latter case, he deserved, no doubt, to be rebuked for taking up a trade he did not understand. For ourselves, we judge, and we cannot help judging, all literary and artistic productions, when determining their doctrinal or ethical character, by the standard furnished by our Catholic faith and morals; but in determining their purely literary or artistic merits, we judge according to our literary or artistic cultivation, tastes, and principles, as every man does, whether Catholic or non-Catholic. Books may be, as the Wahlverwandtschaften of Goethe, unexceptional, under the relation of mere literature, and yet not be commendeds literary works, because they may be false in doctrine, unsound in philosophy, and immoral in their spirit and tendency. Books, again, may be free from all blame as doctrinal and moral; and yet, like Father Jonathan, for instance, be wholly deficient in literary merit. In the latter case, as a Catholic, we recognize the author's orthodoxy and applaud his good intentions; but, as a literary man, we have nothing to say to his favor, and must beg him to excuse us from commending or reading his productions.  In the former case we may recognize the purely literary or artistic merit; but however great it may be, we must condemn the work, because no amount of purely literary merit can atone for the slightest offence to Catholic faith and virtue. We must condemn the book, though in doing so, we condemn not the genius, learning, ability, or skill of the author, for they, in themselves, are good; but his application, or rather, abuse of them.  

            We have here the old question of the mutual relations of the two orders, or the mutual relations of nature and grace, on which the same confusion reigns in the minds even of some Catholics that we so often meet, in regard to the mutual relations of the temporal and spiritual.  There is often a deplorable want of a clear and distinct understanding of the theological maxim, gratia supponit naturam,-a tendency, on the one hand, to exclude nature altogether; or, on the other, to exclude grace. The former is the error of the Jansenists; the latter the error of the Pelagians. The Jansenists will allow the lawfulness of no literature that has nature and not grace for its principle; the Pelagians allow all literature to be lawful that is natural; not perceiving the precise medium between the two errors, a certain class of Catholics take it into their heads, when not writing professedly on dogma or morals, that, since nature is not totally depraved, they may follow nature, not only in the sense that nature is below, and simply corresponds to grace; but in the sense in which nature is opposed to grace, falling into the precise error of those who maintain, because the state is independent in its own order, we have a right to act in politics as we please, regardless of the teachings of our religion. They assert literacy atheism, as our radicals assert political atheism.  It is against this literacy atheism, as against political atheism, we have as a reviewer, uniformly set our face, and must do so, or be false both to God and man.

            But in doing this, we have never gone to the other extreme, denied all development and play to nature, and condemned all literature not adapted to spiritual reading.  Grace supposes nature, and consequently leaves a large margin to natural sentiments and affections.  Not all the works of infidels are sin. Not all non-Catholic literature is to be condemned as anti-Catholic, any more than all literacy works by a Catholic are to be approved as Catholic. Our nature was created to respond to grace; and though despoiled by original sin of its supernatural gifts and graces, it has not been totally corrupted, or despoiled of a single faculty, power, or element, which it ever possessed as pure nature. No works, proceeding from nature alone as their principle, do or can merit eternal life; because that life is in the supernatural order, and is bestowed only as a reward to works which proceed from a supernatural principle, and are directed to a supernatural end. No man is entitled to heaven, even for keeping the whole law of nature; but not, therefore, do we deny nature to be good in its own order; or that the natural virtues of temperence, justice, fortitude, prudence, benevolence, humanity, are entitled to a natural reward. They are virtues in their own order, and though they lack the dignity of the Christian virtues, they are presupposed by them, and without them, the Christian virtues themselves do not and cannot exist. They cannot of themselves alone merit heaven; but heaven cannot be merited without them.  

            Now, the theological principle we have set forth, is applicable to every department of human life; and as applicable to the department of literature and art, as to any other. The highest rank is to be assigned to those literary works which have, so to speak, the infused habit of grace, and stand on the elevated plane of the Christian virtues, which proceed from nature elevated by grace, not from nature alone; but we are not at liberty to deny a certain degree of merit  to works  of a less elevated character; or to condemn,  as sinful, any works which, though they proceed from nature alone, do not oppose grace or the supernatural. We may treat, as imperfect, all literary works which are not positively Catholic; but we can censure, as sinful, none which contain nothing repugnant to Catholicity. The post or novelist has no right to be anti-Christian, to be heretical, or immoral in spirit or tendency; to run in anything counter to Catholic truth or virtue; but he is perfectly free to follow nature in all respects in which nature stands simply below grace, without standing opposed to it. He is free to write a poem or novel, which turns wholly on natural principles and affections, and which displays only natural virtues, but he is not free to write a work, which opposes his religion, and contradicts Catholic morality. Though writing professedly as a literary man, he must still remember that he is a Christian and a gentleman. The law which binds his conscience in his devotions, binds him equally in his poem or his novel; and he has no more right, in his own character, to be immoral, indecent, coarse, vulgar, rude, and uncivil, to curse, swear, to  lie, to slander, calumniate, or excite impure thoughts or prurient fancies in his literary productions, than he has in well-bred Christian society. He may be natural, but natural only in the sense in which nature is not perverted; in the sense in which nature responds to grace, or is in accordance with it.  

            Let not our readers suppose that we are defending ourselves; we are only availing ourselves of an objection urged by certain writers against us, in order to state, explain, and defend the rule which should guide the Catholic in his literary productions. The principles which should govern him in literature, are precisely those which should govern him in every department of secular life,-in politics, business, and amusement. In all these, he is bound to be, at least, negatively Catholic. He who follows the evangelical counsels chooses the better part; but no one is absolutely bound to do more than to follow the evangelical precepts. All are not bound to withdraw from the world, and to retire to the cloister. It is lawful for Christians to live in the world, and to take part in its daily commerce; to love and be loved; to marry and be given in marriage; to laugh and joke; to sing and to dance; to be glad and to be sorrowful;-in a word, to do whatever is innocent, providing no positive duty is neglected. Undoubtedly, he who aims only at this secular life, does not aim at the highest, and may be in danger, by aiming no higher, of falling short of the mark at which he aims. He certainly does not aim at perfection; but not all imperfection is sin, and no man is bound to be perfect. It is possible to inherit eternal life, by keeping the precepts, without attaining to the perfection which comes from keeping the evangelical counsels,-" If thou wouldst be perfect, sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come and follow me." We envy those privileged souls who are called to the perfection of the religious state; but it will be much for us, if we attain to that lower degree of virtue, which, though it secures not that perfection, yet, through the mercy of God, may suffice to admit us into heaven. We must be content, if we can bring the majority of Christians to keep the commandments; and, therefore, we must be content to leave to literature all the latitude left to nature by the positive precepts of our religion; or all the liberty which the church concedes to the secular order in general. All secular life is free in so far as not hostile to supernatural faith and marals; and to the same extent, our literary aspirants are free to follow their natural genius, taste, and tendencies. If they aim higher, and voluntarily assume the counsels as their law, we applaud them; they do what is best; but if they are content with secular literature, we have no right to complain, so long as they use their liberty, without abusing it.

            We dwell on this point, because we are approaching the period when Catholics are to make large contributions to our American national literature, and it is of great importance that our literary aspirants should clearly understand their liberty and its restrictions, and start on the right track. The danger to be apprehended is that they will take their models from the national literature of the Old World. We Americans have asserted our political independence, are on the point of asserting our financial independence, and we ought to be instant in asserting our literary independence. We would not speak lightly of the popular national literatures of Europe; but we must be permitted to say, that none of them are a suitable model for American literature. A national literature is the exponent of national civilization, and is truly national, only in so far as it accords with the elements of its civil life. Our civil life, our civility, in the old sense of the word, is, though below, in strict accordance with Catholicity. Here, for the first time in the history of Christendom, have we found a civil order in harmony, as to its principles, with the church. Here, then, only that can be our national literature, which accords with Catholic faith and morals. And here, for the first time since the founding of the Christian Church, has such a literature been possible. All the literatures of the Old World, aside form the literature of the church, of which we do not now speak, have been the exponents of a civilization which was pagan in many of its elements, and never in entire harmony with the teachings, the mind, and the wishes of the church. Those old national literatures, which proceed from, and speak to the popular heart, in European nations, are the product of a society never thoroughly converted, and they are, every day, growing more and more pagan, more and more incompatible with Catholicity. The popular national literature even of Catholic Europe is only partially Catholic, and if we take that as our point of departure, and as our model, we shall not contribute to the creation of a literature in perfect harmony, either with our church, or with our American civil order. We shall retain and exaggerate the descrepancy, now so marked in Catholic Europe, between profane and sacred literature, and place our literature in hostility both to our religion and to our politics, or civil polity.    

            It is a fact worthy of note, that we have never, as yet, found in Catholic Europe that harmony between religion and popular literature, which strikes us so forcibly in ancient Greece and Rome, or even in modern Protestant nations. No doubt, a principle cause of this nearly perfect harmony between religion and literature in the non-Catholic world, is that in the ancient pagan, as in the modern Protestant nations, literature and religion both proceed from the same source, and have the same end.  Both originate in perverted human nature, and give expression, under various aspects, to that nature in its fallen and unregenerated state. Catholicity, on the contrary, is from above, is supernatural, and expresses the devine wisdom, power, and love; and, therefore, stands opposed to perverted nature. But another reason is, that the popular literature of Europe, as distinguished from that of the church, took its rise in a society not wholly converted from paganism, and has retained pagan elements and tendencies. Now, as we are, for the most part, trained in this old European literature, greatly deteriorated as to its principles and tendency, by the later influences of Protestantism, humanism, and incredulity, we are predisposed to reproduce it, and we can avoid doing so only by being well instructed in the application of faith and theology, as well as in the nature and application of the principles of American civilization, and being constantly on our guard against the false principles and tendencies of our literary education. There is not a man in the country who has had in his youth a thorough literary training, in strict accordance with our religion and civilization; or, that has not been trained in a literature, if he has had any literary training at all, in many respects adverse to both. The nature that has predominated in his training, is not nature simply in the sense in which it responds to revelation and grace, but a lawless and licentious nature; and the political principles which underlie and pervade it are either those which presuppose the absolutism of the one, or the absolutism of the many. Our popular political doctrines, as expressed in such American literature as we have, are derived chiefly from European sources, and are incompatible either with liberty or with government. The democracy of our institutions is a very different thing from the democracy of our literature. The democracy of our literature is that of European radicals, red-republicans, revolutionists, social despots, and anarchists; for our literature is not yet American, and has not yet been inspired by our own American institutions and like, but copied from the literatures of the Old World. In literature, we are, as yet, only a European colony, under the tutelage of the mother country, and unaware that we are of age and may set up for ourselves. Only Catholic Americans are in a position to assert and maintain American literary independence; for, it is only they who have a religion that demands, or that can aid in effecting, such independence. We hope our young literary aspirants, who are coming forward in such numbers, will lay this to heart, and prepare themselves for the work that awaits them, not only by prayer and meditation, which are never to be dispensed with, but also by a profound study of the philosophy, if we may so speak, of our religion, and of our American institutions; so that they may give us a literature which shall respond to both. We do not ask them to aim at producing a literature for the cloister, or one specially adapted to spiritual reading; for, in that literature the Catholic world already abounds, and, moreover, that literature is Catholic, not national, and can be produced as well in one age or nation, as another. What we ask of them to aim at, and prepare themselves for, is a popular national literature, which, though natural, is pure and innocent; though secular and free, is inoffensive to Catholic truth and virtue; and which, though not doing much directly to advance us in spiritual life, shall yet tend to cultivate, refine, and humanize barbarous nature, and to remove those obstacles to the introduction and progress of Catholic civilization, which are interposed by ignorance, rude manners, rough feelings, wild and ferocious passions. The office of popular literature is not precisely to spiritualize, but to civilize a people; and as we look here for the highest development of modern civilization, we demand of our American Catholics the highest and purest secular literature.

            The principles of this independent American literature are determined by our religion, and our political and civil institutions; but its form may be flexible, and bent to the varying fashions of the day. The Catholic is at perfect liberty to avail himself of poetry and fiction. He may use fiction, but he must not abuse it. It is not true, as a friend writes us, that we haveopposed all use of fiction by a Catholic writer. We have opposed the greater part of modern novels and romances, not because they use fiction, but because they make an improper use of the sentiment or passion of love, and inculate false and pernicious views of love and marriage. We need no novels and romances to awaken the sentiment or passion of love in either sex, for it is sure to awaken quite soon enough of itself. There are very few modern novels and romances which, as a Christian, a patriot, and a man, we do not feel it our duty to condemn. Their authors, generally speaking, are men of little thought and less experience. Few of us have lived to middle age and not lived and outlived more romance than the best of them are able to embody in their works. They write from fancy, not life. The love they speak of is itself a fancy, as our old writers called it, a caprice, an affection of the sensitive soul, usually a disease. Their love is fatal, irresistible, uncontrollable, and to attempt to interupt its course, or to prevent two silly lovers from being united in marriage, is to war against " manifest destiny ." Trained under this false view of love, our young people expect from marriage an elysium which they will never find, and which can never be obtained except from a very different sort of love. Under the influence of love as a sensitive affection, a fancy, they imagine that their union is essential to their mutual happiness, and that they will continue to feel in regard to each other after marriage as they now feel. They little dream of the misery that awaits them when the illusion is dissipated.  The sort of love they feel, and on which they rely, is morbid, transitory, and expires in its own gratification, like every passion or feeling that has its origin in the sensitive soul. The two simple souls were ready to die for each other, but they are hardly married ere the charm is dissolved, and the romance is ended. Each is no longer an essential to the happiness of the other; each is disappointed, cools to the other, becomes indifferent, and to indifference succeeds dislike, upbraiding, recrimination, hatred; and each takes course apart from that of the other, and seeks happiness, distraction, or forgetfulness, in some sort of dissipation.  It is the influence of the false and illusory love chanted by our poets and romancers, that creates that morbid state of society, so general, which gives rise to the woman's rights movements, and the legislation, becoming so alarmingly popular, which facilitates divorces, and renders even marriage only a transitory union.

            Nothing having no more solid foundation than our sensitive nature can be permanent and unchangeable, or be satisfied even with the attainment of its end. Love, as a fancy, the only love recognizable by the sensualist philosophy, is a blind, a morbid craving, which nothing can fill. The heart is uneasy, and asks it knows not what, and, whatever illusion it follows, is sure to be disappointed and rendered only the more wretched. Hence nothing is less impracticable to persons trained in the modern school of romance, than the doctrine which makes marriage indissoluble, and binds love in the chains of duty. But the remedies sought bring no relief. Your legislatures may make marriage dissoluble at the will of the parties, or of either party alone, and leave all to the workings of what is called " Free Love, " but they will only aggravate the evil, which is already but too real and too great. The praises or the enchanting pictures of love by your novelists and romancers, bring no relief, for the mistake is precisely in relying on the love they labor to exalt.  Love, in any worthy sense of the word, is an affection of the rational nature, intrinsically reasonable, and controllable by reason and duty. It is a capital mistake to suppose that love is subjected to the law of necessity, and that we cannot love where we ought, and refrain from loving where we ought not to love. Disappointment in genuine love, no doubt, brings sorrow, and casts a shadow over the sunlight of the heart, but it never breaks the heart or induces despair; for whatever has its root in rational nature has, through that nature, a recuperative power, which enables it to heal its wounds, however deep. Men and women of the tenderest hearts, of the most loving natures, have experienced the most cruel disappointments in their purest and dearest natural affections, and have survived them, recovered their peace and tranquillity, found out new sources of enjoyment, and obtained as large a share of happiness as ever falls to the lot of mortals. Almighty God has in no instance made the happiness of life depend on the possession of the creature, however worthy, or so bound us up with the creature as to leave us no solace for its loss.

            Our poets and romancers make love, as a sensitive affection, sentiment, or passion, an infallible indication of the will of God. Marriage without love, they tell us, is prostitution, and it is love, and love only, that legitimates the union of the sexes. Where love is there is true marriage, the real sacrament of matrimony; and love laughs at conventionalities, laughs at legislative enactments and moral codes, and goes where it will, and touches what heart it pleases, without condescending to say, " by your leave. " It is the love that authorizes the marriage, not the marriage that authorizes the love. Society should recognize this, and leave marriage free wherever there is mutual love, and suffer it to cease whenever the mutual love ceases. This is the doctrine of a large and increasing modern school, and is, consciously or unconsciously, countenanced by the authors of nearly all our modern popular literature. You may detect it in the Elective Affinities by Goethe, in the novels of Georges Sand, and in all the writings of your modern socialists, communists, and world-reformers. It is the doctrine of your " free-love " associations. According to it the marriage contract, in which party solemnly promises to love, cherish, and cleave to the other until death separates them, is immoral and impracticable, for each promises what it is impossible to perform.  To love or not to love does not depend on us, and it is immoral to exact from us promises to do what exceeds our power to do. Love legitimates marriage, and the union of the sexes without love is immoral. Love is the " higher law, " and to forbid marriage where it demands it, is to set up human law against the law of God.  This is the conclusion to which we must come if we start with the premises supplied by our modern poets and romancers. Certainly, if it is love that legitimates marriage, and if it depends not on us to love or not to love, Catholic marriage is indefensible; for in it the parties contract to do what they cannot, and what it may often happen they ought not to do.  Perhaps there is a deeper truth underlying the doctrine of our romancers than at first sight appears, and we are not certain but they draw the only conclusion a consistent Protestant can draw. If left, as Protestantism leaves us, to nature alone, marriage in the Catholic sense is for the most part impracticable; and to fulfil the conditions of Catholic marriage, the grace of the sacrament is indispensable. Hence it is the non-Catholic world rejects it, and substitutes for it polygamy, concubinage, or licentiousness.

            Our modern novels and romances give our youth a wrong view of the relation and importance of marriage. They represent it , in some form, as the end and aim of life, as that to which all the thoughts and aspirations of the young should be turned. To live unmarried is to fail in the great end for which we were created. This is a purely Protestant notion, to which Protestants have been driven in order to find a justification of their insane warfare against monasticism and the celibacy of the clergy. But it is a notion fraught with mischief. It gives from an early moment a wrong and dangerous direction to the thoughts and fancies, hopes and expectations of our sons and daughters. Marriage is honorable, and desirable for the great majority, but it should not be regarded as the only honorable and desirable state, nor should the idea ever be entertained that every unmarried man or woman is necessarily useless or miserable. We reverence maternity, but we reverence virginity more; and we prefer that system of education which trains our youth of either sex to a sort of mutual independence; which, while it fits them to discharge all the duties of married life with alacrity and affection, yet enables them to be self-supporting, and to feel that the highest ends and aims of life are within reach of the unmarried, as well as of the married.  Whenever marriage needs to be urged, and celibacy discouraged, we may be sure that we have fallen on evil times, and that the age and country we live in are corrupt and licentious.

            Moreover, modern poetry and romance, for the most part, encourage an indocile and rebellious spirit. The popular literature of the day is, to a fearful extent, satanic, and seems to labor expressly to place the flesh above the spirit, and to eliminate from every department of life all law, except the law in our members. It exalts passion at the expense of reason, and recognizes in man no free agency, no power to govern his passions, and to regulate his affections according to an objective moral law. To insist on his doing so, it is maintained, is intolerable tyranny; and hence with a depth of thought not always appreciated, M. Proudhon has dared assert that the belief in God is incompatible with the maintenance of liberty, that is, liberty in the sense of modern popular literature, which makes love a passion, and duty a sentiment.  M. Proudhon is a far profounder thinker than our "Know-nothings." They stop short with saying Catholicity and liberty are incompatible; he goes further in the same direction, and says, God and liberty are incompatible, and that whoever asserts the existence of God must, if logical, accept the whole Catholic system, and acknowledge the authority of the Catholic Church. God, he maintains, is a tyrant and the source of all tyranny, which is only the last word of modern popular literature, and strictly true, if man has no free will, and is merely a creature of sentiment and passion. There is an innate repugnancy between the moral system of modern literature and that of the Bible or Catholicity.  The Catholic system proceeds on the assumption that man is essentially rational, and is always able, grace assisting, by the exercise of his reason to control his passions, and conform even his affections to the law of God, which prescribes authoritatively his conduct. It does not forbid love, but treats it as an affection of the rational soul, and as such controllable by reason and will, subject to the precepts of law, or the demands of duty. Where the law makes it our duty to love we can love, and where the law forbids us to love we can refrain from loving. It is always in the power of the husband to love his wife, and in the power of the wife to love her husband, and in the power of each to love only the other; and so in all other respects. We are not only placed under law, but endowed with the faculty of living according to law, and of marrying love and duty in an indissoluble union. This is the Catholic moral system, the system of the moral world itself, and against this system modern literature tends everywhere to stir up the mind and heart in rebellion.

            Now the abuse of fiction, whether by Catholics or non-Catholics, which we have here indicated, we of course condemn, but the use of it by Catholic writers, in a legitimate way, for the conveying of useful instruction or innocent amusement, we have never dreamed of censuring.  Fiction adopted as a vehicle of false philosophy, false morality, false political and social theories, or of amusement, entertainment, or diversion at the expense of innocence, is not allowable, not because it is fiction, but because it is a misuse misapplication of fiction. Here the rule we have laid down in regard to literature in general obtains. But here also it may be well to bear in mind, that in our days novels which are sound in principle, though a little free or suggestive in expression, are less dangerous than those which, though chaste in expression, are licentious in their principles.  Alban may be thought objectionable in some of its allusions descriptions, and if our taste were consulted, several passages would be omitted in a new edition; but the most fastidous reader must acknowledge that its principles are sound, and that it will never, in the slightest degree, mislead the judgment or corrupt the heart; while Indiana and Consuelo, though seldom indelicate in phrase or direct allusion, are even more dangerous than the novels of Fielding, Smollett, or Paul de Kock, with all their dirtiness. Yet whatever excites an impure emotion, or an impure thought, is an objection, and should be carefully avoided by the romancer. But still more sedulously should we regard against those things which through the senses or the sentiments pervert the judgment, and create an erroneous conscience, for these undermine the moral fabric itself, and leave us no foundation on which to build, no spot on which to rest the fulcrum of the lever of reform.  Hence it is, however vicious may be one's life, we hope for his recovery so long as he retains the faith and a correct moral judgment, and despair of regaining the apostate, although he preserves, and in fact in proportion as he preserves, a good degree of moral decency in his exterior conduct. 

            So far from objecting to the use of fiction by Catholic writers, we should be glad to see them make a bolder and a more liberal use of it than they have hitherto done. We do not like those petty Catholic tales which mix up a poorly managed love story with a dull, commonplace, and superficial theological discussion; but we object to tem on the score of taste, rather than on the score of morals, and we would never discourage their production, save in the hope of encouraging the production of something better. No one who has read I Promessi Sposi of Manzoni, can doubt that Catholic genius, talent, and learning, may lawfully write novels and romances; and the romances of Scott, Bulwer Lytton, and James, show us what advantages we might derive from the historical novel, if we chose to cultivate it. The novel is at present the popular literary form, and we must adopt it, if we mean to act immediately on the mind and heart of our age and country.  Fabiola, by his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, will have a greater popular influence than his admirable Lectures on the Catholic faith. In our principles, in all that touches faith or morals, the mind or the wishes of the church, we must be inflexible and uncompromising; but in what relates simply to the literary form, we are free to conform to the reigning fashion, as much so in literature as in the cut of a coat, or the shape of a bonnet. The novel may not be absolutely the best literary form, but it is here and now the best literary vehicle, after the newspaper and the review, that we can adopt. We see no reason, then, why our authors should not, in so far as comports with their genius and ability, adopt it.

            Polite literature, as it used to be called, here where everybody reads, and will have his reading made easy, is a power, and a power that may be wielded for good as well as for evil. We can use it with as much effect as our enemies, and so use it as to counteract no small portion of the evil which results from their abuse of it. A novel written with genius, learning, and taste, giving a correct view of some misrepresented period of history, or presenting the various passions and affections of human nature in the light of Catholic morality, giving them the full development and play allowed by that morality, would not only help on the general work of civilization, of mental culture and refinement, but would force non-Catholics to recognize Catholic genius and talent, in a field where they are best able to appreciate their value. A novel or a poem, such as we can conceive it, would, in the present state of the reading world, do more to enable our religion to assume its proper place in American life, than the theological treatise or the polemical tract, however able or learned. The age of controversy, in any legitimate sense of the word, has gone by, and the non-Catholic world is not to be won back by polemical literature.  We must meet non-Catholics on their strongest side, and on what they regard as their own ground, and prove to them that we can, on that very ground, successfully compete with them. We must prove to them that in polite, as in controversial literature, we can bear away the palm. It will not do to rely on our past laurels, on what Catholics have done for literature in past ages or in other countries. We must show that we can, here and now, win and wear the crown. Not otherwise, humanly speaking, shall we win for our church, and secure for ourselves, that elevated position which we have the right to claim for both. We must throw ourselves fearlessly, lovingly, confidingly, into the deep and broad current of American life, American thought, and American literature, and show that not one of them can dispense with our services, or exist without us.

            Nor is this all. We have become, in this country, a numerous people in ourselves. We do not all live in the cloister, or conceal ourselves in catacombs. We live here in open day, spread all over this immense country, engaged in every department of life, in law and justice, trade and commerce, in agriculture and the mechanic arts, in art and literature. We have all the classes that go to make up a people, and all the literary, artistic, and intellectual wants and tastes of an entire people. What have we done, or what are we doing to meet these wants and tastes? What are we to do with this multitude of youth of both sexes, growing up in our schools, academies, and colleges?  How are we to meet and satisfy their intellectual, literary, and artistic wants? Do we expect to meet and satisfy them with the Bible, prayer book, and manual of meditations? Experience teaches us that that is out of the question. Do we expect to silence their cravings, or to change their tastes, by the voice of authority, and leave them nothing between the church and barbarism? If it were desirable, as it is not, it is impracticable, and not to be thought of. To do so were contrary to the uniform practice of the church, for the popes have always been the most liberal promoters of art and literature.  Moreover, we live in a reading age and country, and our youth share and will share their spirit and tastes, and they are not and will not be satisfied with the literature of the cloister.  They will resort to the corrupt and corrupting literature of the day, unless we furnish them a secular literature of our own, free from all corrupting principles and tendencies, equally attractive and adequate to their wants. We have no alternative; we must lose the greater part of these youth, or else provide for them a literature, which, while it runs athwart no Catholic principle, avails itself of all the resources of nature and art,-a free, fresh, original, living, popular literature, adapted to meet and satisfy the wants of our youth, without weakening their faith, or creating in them a distaste for prayer and meditation. Such a literature we need, both for ourselves and the country; for the corrupting popular literature furnished by non-Catholics will be displaced only by means of a purer, superior, and equally attractive Catholic literature. Protestant nations are preserved from lapsing into all the filthy abominations of the old pagan world, only by the presence and moral influence among them of the Catholic Church.

            The literature we need must be American, cast in an American mould, and conformed to American institutions in all respects in which they are in accordance with Catholicity; for the persons we have chiefly to care for are the young, who are for the most part born in the country, and who will, let the old folks say what they please, grow up Americans. Italy has an Italian literature for Italians, France a French literature for Frenchmen, Spain a Spanish literature for Spaniards, Germany a German literature for Germans, Ireland an Irish literature for Irishmen, and we must have an American literature for Americans. The great body of Catholics in this country are, or if not, in a few years will be, Americans. We must suffer neither ourselves nor others to overlook this fact, or to think or speak of our church here as an alien. She has been here long enough to have taken out her last papers. She is at home here, naturalized, and as indigenous to the soil as any other American institution. All honor and gratitude to those who planted our religion here, and who have nursed it with their pious care, and watered it with their tears and their blood; but we must be permitted to feel that she has become an American institution, and has entered as an integral element into American life. We may, and must proceed in our literary productions as if the whole American people were Catholic or at least prepared to read what we write, and to listen to our Gregorian chant, as the writings and chant of their fellow citizens. Let our young literary Catholics, who aspire to leave their mark on the age and country feel this, and open their hearts to the glorious prospect it unfolds before their eyes; let them take courage and rise to the level of their position, and with buoyant feelings, and loving hearts, go forth with their fresh enthusiasm to contribute their full share to the creation of such a literature as the world has the right to expect from our republic. Young America, if we did but know it, is Catholic America freed from the autocracies and clogs of the Old World: and here he has a field equal to his aspiring genius, equal to the vastness of his ambition, and let him betake himself with all his ardor, under the providence of God, to its cultivation.  

            We have only brief space in which to speak especially of the works cited at the head of this article. Willy Reilly is an interesting  Irish story, founded upon fact.  It is said to be Carleton's best, but to our liking it is far below The Poor Scholar. Carleton has genius of a certain order, and his sketches of Irish  character certainly have great merit. In Willy Reilly he shows that his sympathies are with the oppressed part of his countrymen. His exposition of the wrongs they endure, and the cruelty practised by the government and officials towards them, is as truthful as it is harrowing. But we do not read him with the pleasure that we do Gerald Griffin, or even Banim, to either of whom he is inferior in the nobler qualities of the heart, and the true Irish genius. The hero of his book we are told is a good Catholic, but his conduct and words indicate what we call a liberal Catholic, one who knows little, and cares less for his religion, and adheres to it less from conviction than from a point of honor. He is so liberal that he would deprive the clergy of all voice in education, and give the control of it to the state; make even a Protestant state the educator of the children of Catholics, so as to prevent them from growing up bigots and becoming intolerant. From such a Catholic we can only say, "Good Lord deliver us."

            Mr. MacCabe is a Catholic, what we call a Papist, and is not ashamed of the papacy.  He is a man of learning, ability, and industry. His style as a writer is rich and vigorous, but a little too stiff, and lacking in  ease, naturalness, and grace. He has admirable descriptive powers, and a powerful imagination, but a little wild, and quite too sombre. He does not appear to be quite free of his craft as a novelist, and though well read in the chronicles of the middle ages, in which his scenes are laid, his novels will not bear a comparison with the historical novels of Scott or Manzoni.  His pictures  are too dark, and his Bertha and Florine would  be both healthier and more pleasing if they were more frequently relieved by scenes of a lighter and more humorous character.  He does not give us breathing-spells enough. The tragic interest of his works becomes too painful.  Nevertheless his tales possess a very high value, and are calculated to do much to give their readers a correct view, the one of the nature of the struggle between the papacy and the empire in the time of St. gregoryVII., the other of the first crusade. Several of the characters are well drawn and sustained.  Beatrice is a vision of loveliness and purity, Philip of Brefney in Florine is a noble creation, and the old man, Walter Fitzwalter, is a very fair representative of the devil. The author, however, however, is not very remarkable for nice discrimination of character, or delineating its finer and subtiler shades. He is historical rather than dramatic in his genius, and we could not always detect the person by hearing him speak. Bianca,Beatrice, Bertha, Florine are all the same person in different positions and circumstances. Amine is good, but colorless, and Zara is in part a copy of Naam in the Uscoque of Georges Sand, but has less firmness, and a more turbulent temper. Still we are glad the works have been written and that they are republished on this side of the water.