fountain-head of Catholic life, the ever-flowing springs of civilization irrigating the whole earth.

They know what they are about, however. But Catholics, who do not understand the immense, the irreparable injury done to their religion, done to the entire human race by the suppression and destruction throughout Italy and in Rome of the monastic orders. and their nurseries, must be either very ignorant or very unsteady in their faith.

We have said that in a Catholic country, like Italy, and in the very centre itself of Catholicity, the interference and antiChristian legislation of the Piedmontese government followed the priest in his very ministrations within the church and within the sanctuary. We have mentioned instances of parish priests seized at the altar during the celebration of mass, and taken perforce away to the barracks to serve in the ranks. But the new lawgivers of Italy went further. They prohibited even in the country places the solemn procession of Corpus Christi prescribed by the ritual and practised, to the delight and edification of the people, ever since the establishment of the feast of the Blessed Sacrament in the thirteenth century. Within the year last past, in the city of Rome and within the great court of the chancery palace, belonging to the Pope, the city authorities forbade the procession of the Blessed Sacrament! What would it be if, as before 1870, the procession was held in the square of St. Peter's, the Pope himself officiating? Protestants have described the solemn scene under Pius IX. as the most magnificent ever beheld on earth. It was the triumph of our EMMANUEL in the central sacrament of His love; it was the holiest, dearest rite in Catholic eyes, after the Divine Sacrifice itself; and the Pope dares not celebrate it within the precincts of the basilica of the Holy Apostles and of the great square designed and constructed to favor the sacred function!

But there is more than this. It is the real anti-Christian legislation on the Sacrament of Matrimony and its administration, as prescribed by the Church and her councils. The matter of the sacraments by divine right falls within the jurisdiction of the Church alone. In Christian marriage the very contract, or mutual consent, by which the parties pledge themselves for life to each other, is the essential matter of the Sacrament. Under the law of the Gospel, it is the duty and the province of the Church to see to it that the parties fulfil all the conditions required by Christ and by the Church herself. She has to see that both the man and the woman come to the performance of this contract with all the dispositions and conditions that may secure them the fullness of blessing and grace attached to the worthy performance of the contract, the pledging of their mutual consent, which, given in presence of

her minister or according to the forms she lays down for its validity, becomes, ipso facto, a Sacrament of the New Law, having its august type in the union of Christ with His Church.

To be sure, the State has a deep and vital interest, for the sake of families and the valid inheritance of property, and other causes, in the due and faithful observance of all the forms and rites prescribed by the Church in matrimonial matters. Therefore it is, for instance, that in Canada, where the old French law still holds, the registers of marriages, baptisms, and burials, authenticated by the bishop, are kept in duplicate; one register being kept in the parish archives, and one in the Prothonotary's office in the Court of Queen's Bench. This natural and reasonable interest and superintendence of the State the Church admits, wherever both powers, as it ought to be, agree with each other and act in concert to secure the interests of religion which are those of the State as well, the well-being of families, the peaceful and rightful transmission of property.

Such was the accord between the two powers which existed in every state in Italy before the year 1848. As the Piedmontese armies invaded state after state, till Rome herself fell into their power, the old laws and forms relating to matrimony were set aside. The revolutionary power would not recognize the divine right of the Church, universally acknowledged in Christendom before the "Reformation," over the matter and form of the Christian matrimonial contract, or Sacrament of Matrimony. Every man and woman who intend to contract such a union are bound under the severest penalties to apply to the civil authorities, and to be married by them. They may go to the parish priest afterward if they like. But one can imagine how, by degrees, all sorts of moral obstacles are put in the way of their doing so. And thus it becomes more and more the custom, in Italy as in France, to be satisfied with the civil marriage, and to have nothing to do with the priest.

This is not all. But should the parties dare to go to the priest first, and should he have imperative and most urgent reasons for blessing their union then and there, both he and the contracting parties are open to the severest penalties of the law.

Hence-not to go further into this matter-the sacred union of marriage, the foundation of the Christian family and the Christian home, as the family is itself the foundation of the State, is violently, sacrilegiously deprived by the new Italian laws of its holy character and the consecration of religion.

So marriage, the sacred fountain of family life; so education, the very root of the Christian State; so all that is most fundamental and vital in domestic and civil society, is thus made godless in the

new order inaugurated in Catholic Italy and in the capital of the Christian world.

With what results the intelligent reader may easily imagine. Let one man, whose venerable years, whose glorious services to Italy, whose sufferings for her cause, transcendent literary fame, and inflexible devotion to the Church and her pontiffs, have made his name dear to all scholars and all Catholics,-let Cesare Cantu tell us how far Catholicity has gained or lost by the Revolution and the suppression of the Temporal Power.

In a letter written to the author of this article on October 13th, 1884, he says:

"The information you give me on your own country is very precious. Good and evil are mixed up together with you, as in other lands. With your present population and your vast territory, your last year's budget (expenses of government) was only $240,000,000, while ours in Italy was $300,000,000, a sum that compels them to crush us down with imposts. Thereby industry and agriculture are cramped. Money with you, I think, is to be had for 3 or 2 per cent. Here we get 5 or 6 per cent. for it. This is the reason why foreigners, Englishmen especially, are so eager to risk their money in Italian speculations.

"I am only speaking of northern and central Italy; for in the south interest is demanded at the usurious rates of 12 and 20 per cent., and even then one has no security. The low state of public morality in our country is a something incredible. There seems to be left no feeling of honor, of delicacy, of honesty. A long, long time must elapse before Italy becomes worthy of her destiny. One great obstacle is the war which is waged, openly or covertly, not only against Catholicity as an institution, but against the principles of Christianity itself. The question of the Temporal Power, unhappily, affords some reason for treating as the enemy of Italy a religion to which is due her chief greatness. The different Protestant sects are going to great expense to found establishments; they spend for that some eight or nine millions of francs annually. 'This,' says in concluding a report drawn up by one of their ministers, 'is a great pecuniary resource for Italy.' The government affords them all possible facility for their labors. It is in their favor that catechetical instruction has been banished from our elementary schools, as well as all religious acts connected therewith. For the crucifix and the portrait of the Pope they have substituted those of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel. Baccelli, our Minister of Public Instruction, who shows himself all the more ardently hostile to Catholicity that he was formerly a subject and servant of the Pope, lately appointed a commission to choose school-books for the kingdom. One of the conditions imposed by these gentle

men is, that no books shall be admitted which treat of any form of religion. Fortunately, people pay no heed to this rule. In Milan the Fröbelian establishments, the primary schools, and the infant schools begin with prayer, and teach the children their morning and evening prayers, church hymns, and catechism. So the little ones, even if prevented from going to mass, return to their homes after contracting the Christian habits which our rulers are fain to do away with.'. .

"Just now again I am sent statistical tables which show, among other things, that from 1863 to 1883 suicides were reckoned by thousands. Our prisons are crowded with condemned criminals. Immorality is daily on the increase, and crimes are multiplying on every hand."

God knows how sincerely we desired that Italy, in pursuing and attaining the object of her aspirations after national unity, could have preferred federation to centralization! But Piedmontese

ambition has ruined all.

1 The Milanese Catholics have a good deal of the old Lombard spirit about them; it is sadly lacking in other cities of Italy.

LECTURES AND CATHOLIC LECTURE BUREAUS.

HE work of lecturing would seem to be assuming of late

somewhat ample proportions. If to the degree of amplitude corresponds the degree of efficacy in spreading Catholic influence and thought, we think that the movement augurs well in the line of Catholic progress. Lectures are understood to be learned discourses. They may be written, but they are also to be spoken. They are not essays, which are only to be read. Nor are they quite what is meant by speeches. For speeches do not include that element of erudition which the title of lecture seems to guarantee. Perhaps it is owing to this element of learning in his address, that the lecturer not only by custom commits to paper the results of his researches, but is privileged by fashion to have his manuscript with him and before him.

The supreme value of spoken instructions, and of the spoken word generally, is a topic that has often been insisted upon; and we do not think that we could add anything, and enforce the logic of the position, either in theory or in practice. The nervous vitality of the spoken word may assuredly be left to defend itself even to the end of time. Yet there are not wanting artificial systems of theoretic or practical education, of religious or ethical instruction, which screen from view this evident principle, that man was meant to be instructed orally, by word of mouth; and that the written word on the printed page is at best a reminder, a memorandum, of subordinate use in the work of development. This is true in every order of development, literary, scientific, moral, and religious. Yet, in certain systems of education the text-book is allowed to grow like a fungus over the oral system of teaching in the primary and the grammar school. In certain denominations the written essay, read from the desk, has supplanted the whole function of the living word. And we know how, in the whole non-Catholic world which claims to be Christian, the dead printed page of God's Word in Holy Writ is made to bear the burden of all religious teaching and dogmatic affirmation, to the complete ignoring and extinction of oral tradition and of the Church's voice. And the consequences are such as we see, a gradual extinction of all religious affirmation, and a complete ignorance of Christian life.

In view of these and other considerations, we may be allowed to emphasize a little the privileges of the spoken word in our days and in our parts of the world. And this may be the more readily granted us, as we mean to make a passing allusion to an enterprise