BY NO MEANS ASTONISHING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 223, 10 August 1877, Page 11

BY NO MEANS ASTONISHING.

" Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are ! " Seven years ago it was thought that the influence of France over the affairs of Europe bad been finally lost, or at least relegated to a vastly inferior position for an indefinite period. To-day the German Empire and United Italy are agitated to their inmost recesses because of a change of Ministry in France. Tlie vitality of the conquered nation has been proved marvellous, and the " burnt straw " theory with regard to it has turned out as flimsy as many of the other conceits of a writer whose quaint expressions and peculiar style often serve to make twaddle emanating from him pass for wisdom and originality. France has resumed her throne amongst the peoples of civilisation, and from which, were she to be truly ejected, it would be to the disaster of the human race. This fact has called out much astonishment, for it bespeaks a stability and an energy thac the French nation were supposed incapable of. There is in truth no people under the suu that had been more unjustly estimated than had this of which we speak. Its surface only seems, in many quarters, to have been read. Paris was France, so folk said ; and Paris was judged of by her glittering and unsubstantial outside. Visitors looked with the admiration excited by a gay but frivolous pageant upon the brilliancy of the Champs Elys6ea

or Longchamps ; were amazed, not unpleasantly, at the licentiousness of the stage, or filled with a complacent horror — if we may use the expression — by the scenes witnessed at a lal masque or some other place of amusement equally questionable, if not more so. They were entertained with tales of social scandal, or amused by gossip connected with the Tuilleries, which most frequently was false, and thus they believed themselves to have acquired an intimate acquaintance with the great heart of the French people. They knew nothing of the industry that underlay all this — of the attention to the realities of life, the benevolence, the tender devotion to parents, or the fostering care here, perhaps more than in any other country on earth, bestowed upon children.

They saw the sinfulness of the Cities of the Plain, but they knew nothing of the ju3t by whom the mass was leavened, and who existed to a far greater number per cent., probably, than that which in itself alone would have sufficed to ward off the fiery doom from the famous towns of old. Vice was apparent, but virtue was hidden. The mind of George Sand was printed in books and disseminated far abroad ; that of Eugenic de Guerin was written only to meet the eyes of her brother. If there were ladies of high birth and breeding whose names were tarnished, and whose persons were conspicuous in their paint and attire, all but meretricious notwithstanding its elegance, amongst the crowd, there were others, such as were the Sisters De la Ferronay, passing their days in a manner that rejoiced the choirs of angels. Nay, even amongst those who were themselves of vicious life, some there were who, in the inmost chambers of their being, reverenced all that was pure and holy. It has been said that there are many who conform to the ordinances of religion, not from faith, but from policy, and believing them necessary to the preservation of propriety and order. Be it so. Some such there may be, for the human mind is various, but we are persuaded, and there is ample proof on which to ground our conviction, that the opposite to this is generally the case, and that the faith still smoulders in many a heart while the surface is cold and hard —

igms Suppositos cineri doloso.

If ever there was a man who might have been supposed to have restored and professed religion from reasons of policy, it was Napoleon ; yet Napoleon, when all cause for his carrying the heavy cloak of hypocrisy had ceased, and he was wearing away the sad remnant of his life in banishment, gave sincere evidences of what his belief had been all through his career, however obscured it might have been by ambition. He bequeathed to .posterity from his place of imprisonment a testimony to the divinity of CHiUBT that would have done honour to the intellect and eloquence of the most renowned of theologians, — words that might almost have flowed from the lips of St. John of the Golden Mouth himself. The Prometheus of the ancient world supported his sufferings by the thoughts of the influence that still remained to him and of deliverance to come. The modern " Prometheus " comforted himself on his rock by looking forward to the mercy of that God whom in his childhood he had learned to revere, but from whom, alas ! the storms and passions of an eventful life had long turned away his mind. Let it do what it will, that cleareyed and tender-hearted French nature cannot shut out from itself the grandeur and beauty of religion. It is still the comfort of afiliction and the source of lofty sentiments. Bee anger, for instance, scoffed at all that was sacred, yet he recognises the solace of her rosary and of the piety its possession bespeaks, as the sustaining treasure of the poor woman whose sad story he relates with such deep pathos, and who had been reduced from being a great prima donna and the reigning favourite of Paris, to beg for bread at the door of Notre Dame. Alfred de Musset likewise was no believer, but still he records the impressing powers ot sanctity.

"Go in peace, it is impossible that the child of these tears shall perish," said a holy bishop to St. Monica, when she had repeatedly implored him to intercede for the salvation of her son, — afterwards the great St. Augustine. Far too many unblemished hands, and voices sweet with purity, have been uplifted on behalf of France, to permit of its growing utterly reprobate at any time. The land of Sts. Clotildb and Genevieve, of St. Louis, St. Francis, and St. Vincent, cannot become wholly corrupt. True, there are and have been many evil men there, but others have been found of exceeding goodness to expiate their wickedness. A hundred such as Talleyrand might well be atoned for by Apfre or Darbois, and one like Dupakloup outweighs many Gam-

bettas. As the elements of resurrection from her prostrate state were present at the time of France's deepest humiliation, in the vigour and elasticity of her people, so the promise of the ultimate triumph of religion, of which we have lately seen an earnest, lies in the virtues that have been overlooked by foreigners.

While England is .astonished, and Germany troubled, by the recent victory of the Catholic party in the country of which we write, the Italian Government stands aghast at it. Homer has a metaphor, where, speaking of the Trojans' pursuit of Ulysses, interrupted by Menelaus and Ajax, he likens it to the chase of a wounded deer by hyenas. They seize the prey and are about to devour it, but a lion appears, and the growling vermin slink away relinquishing their booty in affright. Is the Government of the re galantuomo atraid that some such retribution is about to overtake them ? Let us hope that their fears are well grounded, and that the day is not far off when they will be fully realised.