audience incalculably more important in numbers, in intellectual antecedents and possibilities, than the most distinguished that the shy Roman professor, with whom we have coupled his name, ever aspired to reach.

Take the note of such a life, then, and you will find that, while its ineradicable conservatism helps you to interpret the past-a past, be it observed, much remoter than Scholasticism reveals the sureness of its faith and the subtlety of its inward ear will enable you also to catch the first indeterminate accents of a new dialect of the spirit, in which Catholicism seems to speak once more as one having authority, not only over the contented millions whose fathers have known it and blessed it from within; but over the challenging multitudes whose fathers have not known it, but have spoken ill of it, and perhaps blasphemed it from without.

Though it would be inexact to say that Newman failed to receive adequate recognition from the official side of Catholicism before his death, his star nevertheless appeared late. Was it because its true rising was veiled in envious eclipse? Whether he would himself have admitted it or no, he was a true child of his age, and was, from first to last, not a pilgrim, as he loved to describe himself, but a questioner and a pioneer. In this he represented, more completely, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries, the true spirit of his time; and it is in his life, accordingly, that the Catholicism of the time seems to take up, in behalf of all sincere questioners, the "burden and the task eternal," of commending the magnalia Dei in an idiom which can easily be recognized as both ancient and new, if only it be listened to with evangelical good will. If the re-edited Oxford Sermons, the Essay on Development, and the profounder Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent justify any appreciation, they justify an appreciation like that.

Instances like those we have cited would seem to prove that, whatever else may be alleged against Catholicism as an historical whole, it can never be alleged against it that it is intellectually moribund, or hide-bound, or out of touch with the true actualities of the age in which it lives. It is always pertinent, because it is always alive. Opinions may differ as to the quality of that life or its value as a force distributer in the upward movement of the race. But alive it certainly is at every stage at which the student turns to examine it, even amid the most

untoward surroundings, intellectual or ethical, making variously for obscurantism or for moral decay.

Its power of renewal seems never to fail it. When it all but dies along with the crumbling classical world in Northern Africa, it suddenly takes root beyond the Danube and the Rhine, where it flowers primarily in the gorgeous figure of a suzerain church and ramifies under a score of guises, religious, political, or economical, which one feels can only be inadequately expressed and summed up in the recondite theologies, the symbolisms, the naïve complexities of the art and life of the Middle Age. Amid all its moral sinuosities and adaptations to environment, as intricate and as difficult to decipher sometimes as the traceries of its unique cathedrals, it never loses its original definition of type, and is, even in the face of the all-scrutinizing modern world, more completely of a piece with its Roman and Palestinian beginnings than is any oak of the forest with the buried tap root out of which it springs.

So may Catholicism not ineptly be described in bare rhetorical outline; if, indeed, one ought to be content with a description which depends, from the nature of the case, rather upon art than upon inspiration for an account of its exuberant plenitude of life. We say from the nature of the case advisedly. For Catholicism is one thing; and accounts of Catholicism are quite another. Whether we make use of rhetoric, or poetry, or painting, sculpture or architecture, whether we mount higher still into the resources of the technical soul and seek in music a mysterious vehicle of prayer, we are still dealing with symbols which are a kind of abstraction; and Catholicism is more than a symbol, as it is surely more than an abstraction. It is, like the Incarnation, an Economy, a divine adaptation of divinely human means to a divine end; or rather, it is the Incarnation itself writ large, as with a certain geographical and secular largeness; a projection of the Mystery once hidden from the foundation of the world into the vastness of all actual and possible human needs. It has been set forth as a system and described in terms of Plato and Aristotle. Thomists have enriched its schools with a persuasive completeness and simplicity of vocabulary. Scotists have pleaded in behalf of its sacramental mercies and almost enhanced them by arguments that still stir the consciences of its ministering priests. Descartes has armed apologists in its defence; Kantians and Neo-Kant

ians, and the followers of even Hegel himself, have furnished considerations out of which later thinkers have attempted-no doubt sincerely and consistently-to rationalize, not only its more recondite mysteries, but also the incredible beginnings of its remote past. Essays similar to these will in all probability be made again. In a sense they are inevitable; though authority from time to time may frown upon them, and possibly condemn them, because they seem to lay hands upon the intangible and look like attempts to reduce to an abstract formula what is too vast and real and vital and concrete for adequate expression in the thought-forms of any school.

Perhaps, when all is said and done, the best account of the Mystery will be found in a necessary and confident adaptation to our present needs of Christ's eternal account of himself. Catholicism is more than a system; because it is a Way; the Way; it is more than a philosophy; because it pretends to be a Truth; the Truth; it is more than a venerable and historic religion; because it inevitably reveals itself as Life. How it still performs that three-fold function in a world which has ever been too prone to prophesy its approaching demise, will be shown in subsequent articles in this Review. Our concern in these introductory remarks has merely been to direct attention to the many lessons lying behind the crises by which Catholicism invariably vindicates afresh its eternal right to endure.

Seton Hall, South Orange, N. J.

LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.*

BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D.,

Author of "My New Curate"; "Luke Delmege"; "Glenanaar," etc.

CHAPTER X.

LISHEEN.

HE three months swiftly swung around; and the time for the liberation and triumph of the evicted owners of Lisheen was at hand. Immense preparations were made on all sides for the great event;

and it was decided that the occasion was one

that demanded a great public demonstration.

Pierce and Debbie McAuliffe had been dismissed from prison a week prior to the liberation of their parents; but they were detained by friendly hands in the city, on the plea that all should go home together. But they were kept quite ignorant of all the important events that had occurred during their imprisonment. They didn't know they had a home to go to; and Pierce was speculating about employment in Tralee.

When at length the great day arrived, the city was thronged with cars and vehicles of every description-side-cars, country carts, covered cars, traps; and the whole country-side seemed to have poured in its population to take part in the great ovation that was to be given to the now triumphant victims of landlordism. A deputation was drawn up outside the prison gate; and the moment the poor old people appeared there was a mighty shout of welcome; and, to their infinite confusion, an address was read by the Secretary of the League, lauding their valor to the skies. But not a word about the triumph and surprise that awaited them.

A few times Pierce tried to get through the impenetrable secrecy that seemed to surround everything connected with their liberation; and he began to ask impatiently:

"What is it all about? Where are we going? Sure we have no home now!"

But he was always met with the answer:

* Copyright. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.

"Whist, ye divil! Can't ye wait and see what the nabors have done for ye?"

At most, they expected the shelter of a Land League hut. After much colloquing and congratulations and toasts pledged twenty times over, yet still with the impenetrable veil of secrecy hanging over everything, the triumphant cavalcade got under weigh. First came the local Lisheen Fife-and. Drum Band in a wagonette, over which a green flag, faded but unconquered, was proudly floating. Next came Next came a side-car with Owen and Mrs. McAuliffe, and two intimate friends. Then a succession of cars, every occupant waving green boughs. Here and there was an amateur musician, with a concertina or accordion, playing for bare life, and in an independent manner; for whilst the band thundered out "God save Ireland! the minor instrumentalists played "The Wearing of the Green," or "The Boys of Wexford." In the centre of the procession there was another wagonette, in which Pierce and Debbie had prominent places; and the remaining mile or two was occupied with all the other vehicles, each smothered in a little forest of decorations.

Now and again the old couple, or Pierce, or Debbie, would ask wonderingly:

lent.

"What is it all about? Where are we going at all, at all?" But the answer was:

"Nabocklish!" or "Bid-a-hust!" or some English equiva

At last they came to the old familiar place, where formerly a rickety, tumbled-down old gate, swinging on creaking hinges, opened into the boreen that led to the house. Here the cars drew aside, so that the McAuliffes might come up and enter their home together. The old people drew aside, refusing to recognize in the cemented and chamfered pillars, and in the blue, iron gate the entrance to their home. But they had to dismount and walk up the stoned and graveled passage, under the trim hawthorn hedges now bursting with foliage, and already showing the autumn haws, into the yard that fronted their dwelling.

"Where are ye bringing us to at all, at all?" the poor old woman would ask. "Sure, this isn't Lisheen!"

"Whisht, will you? Can't you wait till the play is over ?" was the reply.

VOL. LXXXVI.-14