sons of toil will displace the pampered children of luxury, and “the fittest will survive."

Whatever may be the merit of these peculiar theories, advanced by modern philosophers, they go to show, at least, this much: that the growth of luxury is something alarming to contemplate. If, now, we turn even to the most temperate writers of a very different school from those we have quoted, we shall be told that the signs of deterioration are on every side of us, even where we should least of all expect to find them. Not long ago, they remind us, there were women so prudish that they covered the legs of their pianos with pantalets, and feigned to swoon away if any one called them legs in their hearing. At present, these same women, or their daughters, imagine that they are not refined or attractive, unless they appear in society in such a condition that a man, who keeps a becoming guard over his eyes, dare not look at them; and that their conversation is not "cultured" or fascinating, unless it is racy with what they euphemistically style the "natural," but what the highest authority condemns in the strongest terms as "flesh and blood-caro et sanguis." They verify, literally, the words of the inspired author: they call good evil, and evil good. Their moral sense is utterly depraved. Physical cleanliness is confounded with moral purity; squalid virtue is decried as immoral, gilded luxury is extolled as highly moral. There are lower depths, into which the votaries of "culture" have fallen; but I care not to sound them to the bottom. Would that those who are gayly dancing upon the brink of the precipice, were to listen to a word of timely warning and retrace their steps! But, perhaps, this is more than we have a right to expect from them; for "the bewitching of vanity obscureth good things, and the wandering of concupiscence overturneth the innocent mind."

What aggravates the difficulty and the danger in our age is the want of definite religious principles. Without religious principles it is impossible to fix the bounds of morality, to determine when the exaggeration of seeming modesty degenerates into prudery, or the want of genuine virtue becomes lasciviousness. Without religious principles, the customs and usages of cultured society will infallibly end, as they are ending among us, in the grossest sensualism and nature-worship. The only true remedy is to be sought in the salutary restraints imposed by Christianity. As it rescued men from the barbarism of paganism, so it can rescue them from the barbarism of culture. As it reclaims individuals, so it can reclaim society. The task, we admit, is a difficult one. But Christianity has reserved forces that need only be called forth. What is wanted is united, concerted action on our part. The evils which we deplore are the direct effects, not of Atheism in the garb of science

or of rationalism in the disguise of philosophy, but of false culture in the form of literature, of art, and of society.

Men are not tempted to commit mental or moral suicide by an appeal to their reason, but by an appeal to their feelings. They do not covet evil, unless it be presented under the appearance of good. Cleopatra wished to die by the fangs of a viper concealed in a basket of roses; Heliogabalus by a sword of gold; the sentimental young maiden, of whom we read, by a goblet of poison wreathed in her intended wedding-crown. And to borrow an example from a higher authority than profane history, Eve was not tempted to eat the forbidden fruit until she had looked and seen that it was beautiful to behold. It is the fickle heart, the vagrant imagination, the truant senses, which hurry men and nations to destruction.

If, then, we desire to arrest their headlong course, we must not be satisfied with refuting the false principles of a rationalitic philosophy or the assumptions of atheistic science; we must encourage Catholic literature, cultivate Catholic art, and build up a Catholic society.

We must endeavor to make Catholic society what it was made in days past by Thomas More, the martyred premier of England, by Francis Borgia, the sainted duke of Gandia, and what it is made at the present day by those who have remained true to the traditions of the Catholic home: a school of virtue, from which we may return to the privacy of domestic life, not only more refined gentlemen and ladies, but what is infinitely more important, better men and women. This, it seems to us, is the special mission in life of educated Catholics of leisure, who realize that nothing is truly cultured, truly refined, truly æsthetic, truly beautiful, except in so far as it mirrors and reflects the infinite loveliness of God, the prototype, not only of what is true in science, but of what is beautiful in literature, in art, and in society.

THE MONKS AND CIVILIZATION.

The Monks of the West. Montalembert.

Legends of the Monastic Orders. Mrs. Jameson.
Lives of the Saints. Butler.

IVILIZATION is the condition of man who, fallen from

"original justice" and its accompanying dominion over the world, has revived in himself more or less the image and likeness of God in which Adam was created, and reasserted in a greater or less degree that control of the universe, its occupants and forces, which had been granted him from the beginning. This state implies mastery of his passions, development of those faculties which have for their object the true, the good, and the beautiful, and advance in the knowledge and direction of the elements of nature, as well as in the government of the family, the state, and the supernatural society established by the Son of God. Progress, properly so-called, must be in this direction. Hereby lie its final or motive principles.

It is not by principles that the world is moved, but rather by men who are the incarnation of those principles. All great movements are begun by extraordinary individuals, every reform needs a man for its leader, every institution, even Divine Religion itself, must have a MAN for its corner stone. "The founders of the various religious communities," says Mrs. Jameson, "were all remarkable men, and some of them were more, they were wonderful men; men of genius, of deep insight into human nature, of determined will, of large sympathies, of high aspirations, poets, who did not write poems, but acted them." Although at first the communities were exclusively of laymen, very soon many of them were elevated to the priesthood by the authorities of the Church who recognized their fitness, and innumerable bishops out of the most holy and illustrious in history sadly abandoned their alls to wield the pastoral staff. At least forty of the Supreme Pontiffs were of the Order of St. Benedict, beginning with Gregory the Great, Apostle of England. The monkish missionaries carried the light of the Gospel into the wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, Belgium, where heathenism still solemnized impure and inhuman rites, and with the Gospel carried peace and civilization, and became the refuge of the people, of the serfs, the slaves, the poor, the oppressed,

against the feudal tyrants and military despoilers of those barbarous times. "They were," says Kemble in his "Anglo Saxons," "permanent mediators between the rich and the poor, between the strong and the weak, and it must be said to their eternal honor that they understood and fulfilled in a marvellous way the duties of this noble mission."

Our own country's story gives examples of the same influence in latter days. On the bronze doors of our Capitol at Washington the figure of the monk reminds us of the part played by him in the first great enterprise of our country's discovery, and the name of the Dominican Las Casas is immortalized in the history of Columbus as that of the "friend of the weak." He exerted himself to the utmost to protect the Indians against their conquerors, made four voyages back to Spain to influence legislation in their favor, and was appointed Protector General of the Indians in America. Failing, however, he resigned his bishopric in 1551, and, retiring into his monastery, wrote two books, which he dedicated to Philip II., on the tyranny of the Spaniards in the Indies, and which, scattered among the people of the Netherlands, animated them exceedingly in their revolt against Spain.

When the discoverer of America was turning with despondent heart from the Court of Castile to seek elsewhere countenance and aid for his scheme, he, like other poor travellers, applied for hospitality at the usual place, the monastery, and telling his sublime story to a monk, Juan Prez de Machena, of the Franciscan Monastery at La Rabida in Andalusia, this one comforted his soul and interceded so effectually in his favor that Ferdinand and Isabella retained for Spain the honor she was about letting slip from her grasp, of patronizing the great sailor and winning a new world for mankind.

To come to our subject. The monks as priests were the recognized mediators between the rulers and the ruled, and while they hesitated not to resist even to death the abuse of authority, they threw the full weight of their office against the destructive spirit of revolution. Thus, while the monks in England gradually united and welded into one great kingdom the petty liberties of the country, they did not scruple to take part in those free parliaments of the nation which deposed unworthy monarchs, and so taught that people that wonderful union of law and freedom of which their constitution forms so shining an example. The preaching of the faith was usually the opening work of the monks. Following this came the establishment of the monastery, wherein the traveller, the sick, the outcast, the orphan, and the poor in general received consideration, and the heart of the people was won by practical benevolence, even before their minds could yield to the strange doctrines. The number of poor, despoiled and distressed persons

in the first ages after Benedict was very great on account of the unsettled habits of the warlike hordes of invaders, and the ruin. they wrought upon the property and homes of the civilized inhabitants. These poor people in their need settled around the monasteries and were preached to, prescribed for, taught letters, trades and agriculture by the monks. As these settlements grew in stability and strength, they formed towns and built splendid Cathedrals, receiving an episcopal character on account of their importance. They copied the monastery's form of government. They united with other similarly-founded towns and met in congress, and thus consolidating their powers and uniting their forces, at last compelled all the robber-knights and feudal tyrants to submit to law and order. These monasteries being often founded, for peace and solitude's sake, in remote and waste places, of which there were vast tracts in England, it came to pass that these districts were reclaimed and made flourishing by a system of agriculture so perfect that no country can boast a better.

"Indulging and training the British spirit of freedom," says Montalembert," the monks adapted legislation to it, and the local Parliament of England rose, grew and prospered under their care. And the like being done in every monastic establishment, unity of national sentiment also developed until the seven kingdoms were united into one in the year 827, and the English people sprang into that greatness which still endures." The Sunday-rest was most vigorously maintained in favor of the serfs, and a law is to be read. whereby a slave who was compelled to work on Free-day, as it was called, became ipso facto a freeman. This was only one of the provisions whereby the monks hampered slavery, until it was gradually abolished. The extent to which the monks took part in the public concerns may be judged from the fact that a charter of the Parliament of 934 gives us in a list of its members: four Welsh princes, two archbishops, seventeen bishops, four abbots, twelve dukes, fifty-two thanes. It must be remarked that these prelates were nearly every one promoted from the cowl. An illustration of the humanizing influence may be noted in the penalty the Commons sometimes inflicted on some repentant robber or oppressor of the poor, which was to build a church or to grant lands for the foundation of a hospice for travellers, to build a bridge, mend a road, erect cottages for the needy. Thus his expiation itself had a civilizing effect on him, and helped to teach him wherein true. manliness and nobility consisted. The first general parliament met in the cloisters of the Abbey of Westminster, and twenty-nine abbots were found in the popular branch of the government; and to this day the highest deliberative assembly in the world recalls in its meeting place the glory of those who first gave it countenance,