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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 29, 16 November 1883, Page 1

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AT HOME AND ABROAD.

In the Month for September the Bey . Father Clarke MISERY IN S.J., gives his fourth paper on his visit to Ireland. Ireland. — He found the village of Lacken, on the Coast of Sligo, in a miserable state. The marks of hunger met his eyes on every side, and a few days before his arrival there a man had died of it. "He had been ill some daya, and at length the priest was summoned, and at first could not discover the cause of his mysterious ailment, till at last out came the melancholy truth. ' The truth is, your reverence, that I have not had a mouthful of food for days.' The priest gave what he comld, and the relieving officer was summoned ; but a day or too passed before that functionary paid his visit to the starving family. When he came he told them be could do nothing without a doctor's certificate, and so another day passed, when at last the relief came, it was too late and the poor sufferer died from no other cause than sheer starvation." The people of the village were living, or trying to live, on seaweed and limpets.— Th c proximate cause, says the writer, was the failure of crops and fisheries, " but the ultimate cause was to be sought in the history of Ireland, in the method in which, she had been governed, in the crashing effect of ruined commerce, and fisheries destroyed in the interests of strangers, in the occupants thrust in to possess her soil, and in the policy of Government by force." It is true that there is also misery to be found in England, but the writer's experience tells him that in those cases where it is chronic or oft-recurrent, it may be traced to vice or recklessness as its cause. In English towns at ordinary times there is a sufficiency of wages to be earned— as there is also in Dublin, and in some of the larger provincial towns. Exceptional instances there may indeed be, as, for example, the distress of 1861 in Lancashire — as an effect of the American -war. Cases of individual misfortune there will also be everywhere. But the misery in Ireland is different; it is that of "dwellers in the country, persons honest, sober, respectable, industrious. It is the misery on the verge of which they always live in spite of all their efforts, and into which they are plunged whenever the yield of earth or sea falls below the average. It is the misery which results from their surrounding circumstances, not from themselves. It is the misery not of an individual heie and there, but of a large portion of the community. It is the misery which results from injustice, cither in the past or in the present, from a system of Government by repression, from the neglect or cruelty of those who have forgotten that, in every position of trust or authority, the good ruler rules for the interest of the ruled, and with a keen sense of the duty he owes them, of the mercy, gentleness, compassion, not to mention the justice he is bound to exercise towards them." It is with English villages the Irish villages are to be compared, and the question is why are the conditions so different.— lf the cases of apparent cruelty were few there might be room to suspect the fault lay with the sufferer. " "But when not an individual here and there, but the great bulk of the population of a district are in destitution or distress, when there are famishing by the roadside not on« or two evil-doers among the tenants, but scores of men, women, and children driven ' forth by the angry fiat of the landlord, when loud in their protest against the wrongs inflicted upon the people are not demagogue or socialist seeking to stir up strife, but the messengers of peace, the friends of order, the obedient subjects of lawful authority, priests and nuns, and monks and bishops, when the visitor who has no interest on either side, almost always returns home full of indignant sympathy for the peoples' wrongs and the peoples' sufferings— then, indeed, it is time to probe the wound and seek for a permanent remedy of so wide-spread a malady." But what are the hopes that the condition of Ireland's things in Ireland may be remedied, or that concord hope. may ever exist between Celt and Saxon? Professor Baldwin, in his evidence before the Bichmond commission, says, ill-feeling in Ireland towards England was |

never stronger than it now is, and in America it is still stronger, among the Irian and their descendants. And this illfeeling has entered on a- new phase.— Education, and the very concessions made to Ireland, have done much to bring about the change of tone in which Irish newspapers and patriots'speak of England. — But the New Ireland that has sprung up across the seas has done more towards this change. The heart of the Irish emigrant abides in Ireland, but le carries his country and his faith with him into other lands, and every act of oppression or cruelty at Home has added to the strength of the nation abroad.—" While the whole population of the States has increased 190 per cent, within*the last forty years, the Catholic population, who are for the most part Irish, have increased to the astonishing rate of 810 per cent. Since 1880 lam told that the increase has been more rapid still. The close compact organisation existing among them adds not a little to their numerical strength, and every year they are a more important element in the political world." The consciousness of this growing power has emboldened the Irish of late to meet the English face to face in a way never before attempted. "It is this dawning sense of strength, this glimpse of success drawing nigh in the struggle -which they regarded as a hopeless one, that has made them fasten with the quick intelligent instinct of those who have an object to gain and intend to gain it, upon their present leader, and as friends and foes alike must confess, their most successful leader in the House of Commons." And the writer is convinced that Ireland will ultimately succeed in winning her cause.— Sbe will win it as a reward for her heroic devotion to the cause of God. " Nor does it need any dragging in of the supernatural to foresee this. Apart from any but purely natural causes she must in the end prevail. The Celtic race cannot fail to outrun the Anglo-Saxon ere many centuries have run their course. They will do so by the very force of numbers. The average of grown children in an Irish family is five ; that in an English about three. Allowing thirty years for a generation, it follows that in a hundred' years the descendants of an Irish family will be three times more numerous than those of English parentage." As to the causes of the difference, the writer is not concerned with them generally. " But one difference there is which tends more and more to tell in favour of the Irish, and that is is their superior morality. The vice so common, so almost universal in England and Protestaat America, not only tends to degenerate the Anglo-Saxon race, but actually to reduce its numbers. The dislike to large families which is prevalent at present in the upper class in England necessarily diminishes the population. Other forms of evil if they do not materially affect the numbers, at least undermine alike the physical and moral strength of the nation." — The superiority of the Celt, moreover, in quick intel. ligence to the Anglo-Saxon is developing itself now that restrictions on education and the Protestant ascendancy no longer stand so fully in the way, and the rapid manner in which the Irish race are gaining on the English is a security for success."— ln America their superior power of organisation is confessed evea by their greatest enemies, and the Irish vote is becoming every day more important in American politics. Even in England they are awaking to the conviction that in at least a score of Parliamentary boroughs the Irish vote might determine the election." In England, however, it is argued that English supremacy will outlive the present generation and that posterity may provide for themselves.— But dynamite scares arc but a presage of what is to come. English Ministers point to the calm prevailing in Ireland as a sign that their repressive policy has succeeded. The calm, nevertheless, precedes the storm. "Agitation in Ireland has probably only just begun. The words of the Irish members do but faintly echo the feelings of the nation, when, emboldened by success, they openly declare that the sooner it is recognised the better that a state of war exists between England and Ireland, and that the people would break out into open insurrection if the people had the power." The true nature of Irish ill-feeling towards England, however, is best seen in Amercia. "It is not the wild declamation of a few revolutionaries or demagogues, it is the expression of the calm, deliberate opinion of the great mass of Irish and Irish-born citizens of America." Not only in godless newspapers will abuse of England be found, bnt in religious papers, side by side with sermons of Cardinal Manning's or Father Burkes. Recent emigrants have left Ireland with no kindlier feelingg than those who went before

them, and however beneficial the change, they look upon their emigration as an exile enforced by English tyranny.-If in their own breasts the feeling of hatred to the English Government burns fiercely, they transmit it with increased rather than diminished violence to their descendants. Every fresh emigrant adds to it, and by adding to it adds to the danger which threatens England in the not very distant future. When the Irish bishops* protest against emigration as the chief means to be relied upon for the relief of Irish destitution, they are pleading a cause to which, if for.no other reason, England should listen from mere motives of! self-interest. What policy more fatal to the Empire as an Empire than to foster with the money of the Empire a hot-bed of fierce hostility to England's dominion and England's sway, to increase at the country's expense the number of her irreconcilable enemies, and to place them where they can attack her unrestrained, now indeed with the weapons of tongue and pen, but with these only as the prelude to more effeo tive weapons which they intend to employ against her as soon as some important war leaves her less able to repel their attack, or some other circumstance strengthening their own hands or weakening those of their foe gives them a chance of success in their long-nursed projects of vengeance." Bat, in order that these projects of vengeance may be earned out, it is necessary that Ireland should be kept in a state of disturbance, and that ;will be done by a continuance of bad Government. If, on the contrary, the political union which the intelhgent Nationalist also knows to be necessary for the welfare of both countries, is to be (maintained, England must follow another course and try to make Ireland contented and happy. « She must make it to be clearly to the interests of the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland that the state of strife between the two countries should come to an end. She mnsfc consult the people of Ireland and their chosen leaders, clerical and lay, not the miserable minority of Protestants, the class now dominant. She must cease to govern the country from a distance by means of those who are aliens in sentiment in sympathy, in race, in religion, ftom those they govern." The Iri B h people, nevertheless, cannot be won over all at once. The misdeeds of the past must be undone and expiated, and this can be brought about only by a long course of prudent concessions. A home must be provided for Irishmen in their own land and not in America, and those who know best— intelligent politicians, devoted pastors, skilled and scientific agriculturists— declare that there are abundant means of doing so without inflicting wrong on any man. The writer advocates no sudden change nor violent measures, but the peaceful extension of what has already been begun. « The liberation of Ireland from her present miseries may in the end be brought about by means of emigration, but ifc will be a process of violence and force which cannot fail to carry with it a thousand evils and a long scene of civil strife. If she is to be freed peaceably and happily from her career of suffering, it can only be by England's willing concession to her of the freedom she herself enjoys by generous efforts to wipe out the cruel injustice of the past, and to restore to poor oppressed Erin, as far as is possible the lands that were confiscated and handed over to strangers, the xeligion that was persecuted to the death for centuries, the liberty which has been stamped under foot by those who took possession 01 her soil"— The writer concludes by a prayer that the desire to do justice he believes to be growing daily stronger among educated Englishmen may, before it is too late, become the sentiment of the whole nation—and he makes his prayer not only for Ireland s sake, but also for that of England.

Father 3la*ke, moreover, has a few words to MB. PABNELii. say concerning Mr. Parnell that are worth hearing, . . and doubly so coming as they do from an English ecclesiastic. For, sooth to say, English ecclesiastics have distingmshed themselves by their intolerance and prejudices all through this Irish movement, and, with some noble exceptions, such as, for example, the Bishop of Nottingham, have done much to estrange from their class the sympathies, confidence, and affection of Irishmen. Knowing especially, as we do, that the London Tablet is the organ « a Jf^ cc L clesiastical PaHy. is particularly pleasing to us to find that the chief organ of the English Jesuits differs so widely from that mischievous and calumnious publication in its" treatment of Irish affairs. The rev. editor of the Month then writes as follows of Mr. Parnell-" lreland's chosen champion and idol." "He is an alien to her faith, and bas committed some political errors on account of his inability to sympathise with the Catholic hatred of revolution and disobedience to the just claims of authority. But he represents, as no other living men do, the prevailing temper of Ireland. He is the spokesman of young Ireland, quick with growing tope, and I fear I must add growing defiance. He alone, since the days of O Connell, has ventured to come forward and boldly to throw down the gauntlet in the face of English opinion. He alone has dared to browl>eat the English Ministry in the great English Parlianient. He alone has gathered his party around him and simply bid defiance to the files of English "statesmen who glared hatred at him across the floor of the House of Commons. Educated in England ana intimately acquainted with English feeling, an English gentle-

man in that which gives weight and influence in an English assembly, always cool, always calm, always courteous, he fights Englishmen with their own weapons and hides a fiery temper and an indomitable •will under an imperturbable exterior. I am not in this estimate of the cause of Mr. Parnell's wonderful success expressing merely my own opinion. I am but repeating what I haye gathered-from Irishmen who have watched events from a position of vantage. They have told:- me and I do not fail to recognise (t as trqe, that in the present temper of Irishmen, the delicious sigtifc of their leader encountering with repeated success those whom they had hitherto regarded as beyond the reach of their weapons was simply irresistible. It filled them with an intoxicating joy, which, if I may be forgiven for mixing my metaphors, completely carried them off their feet." Under such circumstances then the testimonial to Mr. Parnell followed naturally. "If Wolseley (so argues the Irish farmer) was to have a peerage because he drove the poor Egyptians scampering before Us disciplined troops, and Seymour because the shot and shell played havoc with the forts and town of Alexandria surely something were due to one who had led a forlorn hope to victory, not during one brief campaign of a few days, but in battles repeated every day, and amid all sorts of labour, obloquy, and disappointment. It is a matter of justice in his eyes that Mr, Par. Nell should be rewarded. Even apart from any except a commercial view of the case, it was but fair that he should receive some little portion of the spoils won from the English possessors of the soil. He had been the advocate of the nation, and it is right just that the advocate should have his fees, and that the zeal and power of his advocacy should have a substantial and solid reward. Jaat as the owner of an ancient manor who has been engaged in a long suit with one whom he regards as a intruder and a tyrant, who has thrust him out of what is his own, considers himself as bound to bestow a handsome reward on the pleader whose energy and eloquence have won back foi him some little portion of his ancient rights, and postpones to the payment of his advocate the claims of poor relations and hungry dependents who are clamouring at the gate for bread ■o the people of Ireland considered themselves bound to subscribe a handsome acknowledgment of the services of their Parliamentary advocate, even though the poor cottiers of Western Ireland may be starving." Mr. Parnell had besides identified himself Tvith Ireland's wrongs, and suffered for her. — "When men wonder how Ireland in her poverty can furnish so generous an acinowledgemnt of all that he has done for her, they forget how warm the Celtic heart goes forth with enthusiastic gratitude to all who show kindness to their country. They forget, too, the almost reckless liberality of the Irish nature."

The Dublin Nation says :—": — " No less than three THE pkt OF THE thousand applications have been made at the English NATION. English Home Office for the vacant post of bang-

man, and one of the applicants by way oE recommending himself to the good graces of Sir William Harcourt, declared that ' he would be ready to hang his own brothers and sisters without fear or fa.vonr.' What a charming people those English must be to be sure 1 " — But who would not eagerly seek a post where approbation, admiration, and favour would accompany him in life, and in connectioa with which after death his memory would be held in affection 7 Marwood, as hangman, was esteemed while he lived, and the noblest sons of England vied to do him honour. — Since the day, indeed, when Tristan l'Hermite enjoyed the favour and confidence of King Lotus XL, we may doubt as to whether a gentleman of his calling had ever attained to such high consideration — and we may conclude that it is the office of executioner which, among the chances and changes of the times, is once more becoming exalted rather than the standing of the English nobility that is growing debased. — Was not Louis XI. a great monarch ? and so English Lords may remain great lords although they have held out the right hand of fellowship to the common hangman. — The comparison is fortunate, and saves us from error, since, wanting it, we should, be led to conclude that the English House of Lords had sunk down to a very low and disgraceful lerel, additionally suggestive of the truth that the time for abolishing a hereditary chamber, and sach a hereditary chamber, was near at hand. Here, then, is what the Daily Telegraph reported a few weeks previous to the lameuted death of the national favourite : " English society has been stirred to its depths by a circumstance which, funny as it seems to be, is no less a fact— the visit of the public executioner to the House of Lords, and the free welcome given him by the peers in the lobbies. Marwood, in fact, was ' lionised,' and patrician golertunushcs eagerly sought his autograph. Such is fame in decent, honest England ? " We may conclude, therefore, that among those hundreds who have purchased photographs of Marwood since his death the aristocratic world have been well represented, and that many a photographic album stamped with a coronet is so adorned. Perhaps, indeed, the very ropes and Btraps the hangman used in his profession, and which we are told • his wife has since offered for sale, may at this moment be amongst the cherished ornaments of more than one fashionable mansion at

the West End, or noble hall in the country. But all this reminds ns of how far removed from culture and the manners of the great world poor Ireland is still to be found— will it be believed,'the admired of all English admirers, the lion of the House of Lords, and ornament of fashionable albums, was despised by Irish labourer?. In fact, their disgust at him was once availed of by Father Tom Burke to play one of those merry tricks for which he was famous. — A writer in the Month describes the matter thus : " Father Burkes love of innocent mischief accompanied him to the last. Only a short time before his death lie was coming over to England, and at Holyhead happened to be alone in a second-class carriage with a small dark man, who somewhat resembled the portrait of Marwood. Presently, to the disgust of his fellow-traveller, a number of labouring men came up to the carriage, deposited their bundles and ran off for a drink before the train started. 'What a nuisance,' said Father Burkes fellow-traveller ; « I thought we should have the carriage to ourselves. You are a priest; cannot yon make your fellowcountrymen go elsewhere 1 ' ' Certainly,' said Father Burke, « if you will leave me free to use what means I like.' The man consented, and when the Irishmen returned and greeted him respectfully, Father Burke made a significant grimace, and pointing over his shoulder into the carriage, whispered to them, 'Marwood.' Then, turning to his fellow-traveller he said aloud, ' Well, sir, did it all go off well at Kilmainham ? ' O*be man looked astonished, and answered doubt-tMy-j 'yes, very well.' This was quite enough. The Irishmen seized their bundles, and left the carriage with hot haste, as if the very devil were there."—" When," adds the writer, " the man heard of the trick that was played on him he was not a little wrath with Father Tom, who had the malicious satisfaction, after he had left the carriage at Chester, of seeing a crowd of curiou3 and inquisitive faces gather round it in order to catch a glimpse of the supposed hangman."— Had the labourers been of the culture of English lords, nevertheless, we may conclude that Father Burkes ruse would have had a totally different effect from that intended.— Let us not be surprised, then, that there have been numerous and anxious candidates for the vacant place.— Who would not be a hangman if by such means he were sure of becoming the pet of the nation 1

AS a further contribution to the Lutheran literature A contrast, of the moment, we shall quote another anecdote,

related also in the Month, of Father Burke. " For years," says the writer, " his suffering had been almost continuous, owing to internal ulceration. Bat so far from beating him down, it seemed to rouse him to greater activity, and only evoked fresh bursts of drollery. Whilst undergoing a most agonising operation, he was more brisk and full of fun than ever. When he was about to be literally cut open with a view to discover the character of the ulceration, he told the doctors a most absurd story during the preparations. He absolutely refused to take chloroform, preferring to endure the agony for the sake of that Master who had endured tie agony on the Cross for him. While the operation was being performed, Father Burke under stress of the agony, uttered a groan* ' Poor fellow !' said a Protestant doctor.'whoiwas holding his head, in kindly pity. 'Don't pity me,' replied Father Burke quickly, « it is the best thing that could happen me. If your friend Martin Luther had had a touch of this when he first began his tantrums, he might have been in heaven now 1* When the operation reached the eeat of the ulceration., someone asked him whether he would like one of the Fathers who was his confessor to be sent for. ' No,' was the answer, 'it is not necessary ; he has known, ray interior for years. Besides there is an axiom in theology : JEcctesia non judicat de ■Interim." Luther's admirers, then, may find it interesting to contrast Father Burkes patience with, for example, the roaring of their Apostle at Wartburg over his maladies. — We are ourselves unable to furnish our readers with the test, as the roaring in question is revolting beyond endurance, even in the Latin tongue, and we dare not if we would, translate it into English.

Ottr contemporary the Dunedin Mvrmng Herald will not accept our exense of insanity for Luther,

A KOTE 02? LUTHEB.

and this is to be regretted in the cause of charity.

But let us not dispute the matter — violence, rancour, fury, cruelty, license, losefless, distinguished Luther's career, and yet Lutber was a pious maii — Perhaps in like manner he was a sane man, although he witnessed portents, and raved continually of the devil who appeared before hi? oms and thundered, rattled, or chattered unceasingly in his ceij^ -^re may possibly have been an exception, and an extraordinary/y •-•,-To the rule by which sane men are judged, as he certainly was an exception, and an egregious one, to the rule that defines the pious man. But our contemporary fixes on the " Table Talk " as that "which reveals Luther's true being, and looks upon it co revealed as everything that was good and noble. The "Table Talk," nevertheless, probably stands highest in the estimation of those who have never read it. Those wbo have done bo have found there gross superstition— the filth not only of a coarse age, but a good deal more than that, and provocative of immorality,

—anger, intense self-love, and immoderate conceit. But even those utterances that are free from snch faults are mere claptrap. We know not what degree of merit there may be in having been the first or among the first to invent the commonplaces of sectarian piety, but that is, in fact, all the merit to be descried in Luther's more decent and less harmful '• Table Talk." There is in it a great deal that might very well be spoken in his lucid moments by any minister of the present day who bad lost his wits— never having had very much more' than his neighbours to lose. There is also a great deal that no decent minister could possibly say if he were sane, and which if he were to say when he had become insane his former decency might very well be called into question. Finally, we agree with our contemporary, that Luther is " far beyond the reach of calumny." It would be impossible for- the foulest tongue to calumniate him.

The situation of the Irish National League before A dreadful % the Dunedin daily papers came out last Saturday report, morning could only be compared to that of her Most

Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria on a certain occasion previous to the publication of an important American newspaper.—Said Mr. La Fayette Kettle to Mr. Martin Chufczlewit, on the occasion alluded to : -"Well, sir, I tell you this : there ain't a en-gine with its biler bußt, in God A'mighty'a free U-nited States, so fixed and nipped, aDd frizzled to a most e-tarnal smash, as that young critter, in her luxurious location in the Tower of London, will be, when she reads the next double-exira Watertoast Gazette." Little we knew, indeed, what the morning papers had in store for us early last Saturday morning, and we are in a position to state that those members of the Irish National League who have as yet seen them are quite as much disturbed as was Queen Victoria when she, at length, perused the Watertoast; Gazette— if she ever did so.— And such will be the fate, also, we may add, of those members of the League who are still, for the first time, to read the papers alluded to. — The fact is they contained the most fixing, nipping, frizzling and e-tarnally smashing report that we had seen for some time.— They contained a notice to us that a banner had been flung out on the air against ns — denouncing us with the pious, glorious, and immortal motto : " Kennel up you d d curs." — There is at hand no obliging reporter to "suppress the " national participle," and, therefore, we must give the motto in all the force of the original. — The Champion of Protestantism, in short, has come forward a second time in his recognised character and we acknowledge him worthy of the cause he heads, as the cause is worthy of him. — Mr. Larnach, M,H.R., then Proposed on Friday last, at a Protestant gathering the following resolution :— " We, the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society and the Orange Institution, condemn the Irish Land League and its professional agitators as being responsible for the atrocious assassinations and outrages that have recently disgraced Ireland ; and therefore are of opinion that it behoves all Orangemen and Protestants in New Zealand to carry out their principles, to increase their vigilance, and to still further prove their loyalty." — Murder in Irish 1 What a blight has fallen upon us now. These temperate gentlemen, these considerate Christians, these pure patriots, say they look upon us as stained with atrocious assassination.— ls it any wonder, then, that they should fly out against us that banner with the motto of their Champion, "Kennel up you d d curs."' — The motto is, moreover, worthy of the societies as the societies are of the motto, and both together are worthy of Mr. Larnach, and he of them.— But the days when Protestant Alliances and the Orange institution were formidable to Irishmen arc gone by. — They have done the dirty work fcr which the Government had encouraged their formation and sustained them, and there is no longer a use for them. — They were the miserable tools by which, while bigotry was of use in overthrowing any Irish movement, the Irish cause was now and again blasted. — Bigotry Js now, however, a feeble weapon, and one of no force against the great Irish nation, scattered but united all over the world,— and consequently Protestant Alliances and Orangemen will find themselves confined to their proper quarters where all their valor must waste away in unheeded scolding. — Some puppy-dog, perhaps, may be excited to bark at the sound, but there will hardly be anything else to notice it. Meantime, we should propose for the perfection of that banner not only the characteristic motto of the Champion, bnfc his likeness as well. — Let him be represented as he nobly appeared the acknowledged Champion of Protestantism, preud with his victory at the Peninsula election last February. — The attitude would he an imposing as well as an appropriate one.— But if the banner should seem to have braved, for some little time, the battle and the breeze, as even a new banner belonging to an old party might fitly do, if it should even appear somewhat dilapidated and battered, as banners will that struggle with the wind and weather ; it would be all the more suitable to wave In advance of a party lhat has seen -its best days— such as they were— and now can only look forward to utter contempt, and final dissolution for the benefit of the humanity concerned.— But we speak of the future :as it is. of course, we have, like her Majesty, been taken with a « cold chill " at the dreadful report that has reached us.

The celebration of Luther's birthday in Dunedin the luther Tvas nothing very remarkable after all. In fact, celebration, had the reporters thought it desirable to go a-

courting like that one in Dublin of whom a contemporary recently told us, or had they been absent from any less gallant cause, it might still have been possible for them to have written out in advance very tolerable reports of all that took place. Bishop Nevill's speech alone, perhaps, would have betrayed them, foi His Lordship spoke in an unexpected sort of a manner, and one, we fear, conducive in no way to the union of Christendom. On the contrary, Dr. Boseby first interrupted and afterwards contradicted him — maintaining that all the Churches represented were of an equal antiquity with the Church of England, and that none of them were infallible. Bishop NeviU's contention, we need hardly say, was that the Church of England had always existed in a state of i^fgnibility, although for some time corrupt, in England, whereas the sects had been born of the Reformation. The mind of the Anglican divine, however, is a mystery that can be understood, if it be understood, indeed, only by himself, and whether it be the High Churchman, buoying himself up on palpably groundless theories, or the Low Churchman, acting with an inconsistency that seems hardly honest, the position appears to those who look on perplexed and unfortunate in the extreme. That Bishop Nevill should depreciate Luther who so loudly railed at the true founder of His Lordship's Church — that is king Henry VIII., was natural, but that he should think it prudent to do so, and to assert his own fancied superiority, in such an assembly was somewhat strange. Perhaps it was owing to the feeble manner in which his pretensions were put forward that His Lordship got ofi so easily. The Mayor, honest man, who presided, does not appear to have known very much about Martin Luther, and indeed, it is evident that in this respect he did not stand alone — but be had read up for the occasion Mr. Froude's article in the Contemporary Review, and taken a notable propagator of falsehood as an authority — and so is what they call history taught among the masses. As for the rest of them, they seemed to have got up their parts as best they could, some from one source, some from another, but there ia not a sentence in all the reported speeches from which we could infer that any speaker there had ever studied the works of Luther himself Dr. Stuart, for example, gave us all that stuff about the interesting student's study of the Bible — which by the way is variously related, and its striking and lasting effects upon his mind. But said Luther, in his " Table Talk," " I read very much in my Bible whilst I was a monk, during my youth ; but this availed me nothing : I simply looked upon Christ as another Moses." Dr. Roseby, again, narrated the old fable concerning the indulgences, showing in the narration a complete ignorance of what an indulgence is. His reverence likewise made that display of learning which we are accustomed to in the reports of his addresses, and with the usual betrayal that the display made was a very shallow one. How, moreover, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, could have described the state of the Church in the 16 th century is a wonder that Dr. Roseby himself alone can explain — has the doctor par hasard also made a journey through the Inferno, climbed the hill of Purgatory, or mounted into Paradise 7 For in some one or other of these regions only could he have learned from the lips of these men the condition of the Church in the century alluded to, and even there he might better have learned it from some one else. But if Dante, for example, in bis proper day, denounced popes and cardinals, rebuked preachers and found fault with religious Orders, who than he was more submissive to the Church ?— Not one tittle of her doctrine does he call in question, and his great poem may still be Tead by Catholics as a deep and instructive theological work and as a fervent book of devotion. — Petrarch, Boccaccio and Erasmus are not authorities that may be trusted. Of the other speakers, some said one thing, some another, but none gave Luther credit for his full merits. As the Bible- reader, the translator, or in the words our worthy Mayor seems to have fossicked up somewhere and got off by heart for the occasion — " the man, the monk, the scholar, the author, the reformer, the poet and musician." As all these Luther was duly celebrated, according as a little misleading and superficial reading had made the speakers acquainted with hishistory. Butinhis chief character as the " jolly good fellow " he was shamefully neglected, ~Bot one speaker among the lot deigned to spare a word in order so to describe him. This pleasing duty then falls to our share, and we fulfil it, in concluding our article, with a quotation from the reformer's own lips in which the whole man stands clearly revealed :— " Poor Jerome Weller," he says, pitying an unhappy friend, and yearning over him in the great depths of bis most pious soul, " yon have temptations ; you must get the better of them ; when the devil comes to tempt you — drink, my friend, drink deeply ; make yourself merry, play the fool, and sin, in hatred of the Evil One, and to play him a trick. If the devil says to you, ' You surely will not drink,' answer him thus : I will drink bumpers, because you forbid me. I will imbibe copious, potations in honour of Jesus Christ.' Follow my example. I should neither eat, drink, nor enjoy myself so much at table were it not to vex Satan. I wish I could discover some new sin, that he might learn to his cost that I laugh at all that is Bin, and that I do not think my conscience charged with it, Aw&y with the Decalogue

when the devil comes to torment us, when he whispers in our ear, ' You will be damned in the next world.' " — Was it not a crying omission, then, to refrain from honouring Luther also as the "jolly goo fellow "? And, by the way. a new idea strikes us. May there no have been method in his madness ? Oar contemporary the Morning Herald may possibly be Tight, for what " jolly good fellow " would not willingly keep a troop of devils in attendance on him if only he could put them to such excellent uses as Luther speaks of? This doctor made a famous use of them, and how have they in torn be* hayed towards him ? Dr. Boseby might ascertain this, perhaps, on bis next excursion into another world.