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generals, in reply to their interrogatory, that the hap-
piest day of his life was that of his first communion.
For this fact M. Dannat, archbishop of Bordeaux, in
a late address, persuasive of the alliance of religious
observance with a soldier's profession, named as his
direct authority a distinguished officer, present on the
occasion, and to whom the emperor, perceiving that
to him at least the cause appeared to correspond with
the effect, while the others seemed incredulous, tap-
ping him familiarly on the shoulder, said: "Très bien,
Drouault! très bien; je suis heureux que tu m'aies
compris."

The happy moment, too, of his first communion,
left the most powerful impression on the mind of the
poet Tasso, as his letter to Jacopo Buoncompagno
shows, while the recurrent recollection of that bliss-
ful period presented to his morbid imagination an
afflicting contrast with the mournful course of his
subsequent life. (See Rev. R. Milman's Life of Tasso,
volume i., page 61.) And at St. Helena, on Count
Bertrand's withholding all signs of assent to his
arguments in proof of our Saviour's divinity, the ex-
emperor sharply reproved his favourite, adding: "Si
vous ne croyez pas que Jésus-Christ est Dieu, eh bien!
j'ai eu tort de vous nommer général." Of Molière's
celebrated drama, "Le Tartuffe," exhibited on our
theatres under the title of the Hypocrite, he also
declared his surprise that Louis XIV. permitted its
exhibition, adding: "Cette pièce présente la dévotion
sous des couleurs si odieuses, que si elle eût été faite
de mon temps, je n'en aurais pas permis la représen-
tation." (Las Cases; under the 19th of August, 1816.)
The admirable Bourdalouc, whose virtues should alone

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have redeemed his calumniated order-the Jesuitsfrom their attributed faults, as expressed by Boileau, equally indicated and reproved the tendency of such representations in his Sermon for the seventh Sunday after Easter. An Italian moralist similarly remarks on the subject: "Il satireggiare sù l'imperfezzioni dé relligiosi, pecca in moralità, e scandalizza i huomini pii." Yet Voltaire succeeded in wresting the approbation of his Mahomet from Benedict XIV.; and Beaumarchais' importunity forced from Louis XVI. the permissive exhibition of Figaro.

Numerous are the Protestant testimonies which we could adduce, in full accordance with Napoleon's opinion of the salutary action of Catholicism on our moral, social, and political system; but we must confine ourselves to a few of significant import. Mr. Laing, in his "Notes of a Traveller," already adverted to, pointedly observes, at page 212, "that Catholicism is, in fact, the only barrier in Prussia against a general and debasing despotism of the State over mind and body." Three years later, in 1844, we find a lady, the Countess of Hahn-Hahn, after claiming for herself and her brother the title of steadfast Protestants, thus addressing him: "Yet, you must allow that Protestantism is a terrible closer of hearts. In the hospital of the Sisters of Mercy at Berlin, no Roman Catholic is admitted. In what Roman Catholic hospital in the world does any such proscription exist? In none, I believe." And we may add from recent and authentic information, that at this moment, no less than nine convents of Sisters of Charity, those admirable Catholic

* Orientalische Briefe, von Ida Gräffin Hahn-Hahn. (Berlin, 1844, 3 Bände.)

institutions, are established in the Protestant city of New York. They are swayed by no distinction in relief of the sick. Still more comprehensive than the tribute of the German Countess, or the British traveller, is the evidence of Sir Humphry Davy, as we learn from his "Life by his brother," (volume ii., page 374.) "The obedience which the Catholic Church requires, the submission of reason, the unlimited faith, he considered favourable to religious feeling, and the surest harbour for the unfortunate and afflicted, the strongest hold against popular schism, scepticism, and fanaticism." In a letter, again, to his wife, the 24th of June, 1827, on occasion of the ceremony of Corpus Christi, he declares himself "struck with the affecting nature and superiority of the Catholic religion, which gives joy and comfort to the heart, by making a festivity, and not a hard duty, of worship;" while another Protestant writer, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, in his "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," presents us that able but sanguinary man, as the type, or rather, as he terms it, "the culminating point of Protestantism." "Le style, c'est l'homme," affirms the great painter of nature, Buffon; and the maxim is not gainsayed by Mr. Carlyle, whose views of heroic virtues as little accord with moral appreciation, or historic truth applied to persons like Cromwell, as his style does with literary taste. Lord Chesterfield's definition of his son's tutor, Mr. Harte's style, (Letter of 16th April, 1759,) will not ill apply to Mr. Carlyle's latter publications: "Harte's History of Gustavus Adolphus does not take at all......... the style is execrable; where the devil he picked it up, I cannot conceive, for it is a bad style of a new and

singular kind. It is full of Latinisms, Gallicisms, Germanisms, and all isms but Anglicanisms; in some places pompous, in others vulgar and low." See "Cromwell's Letters," pp. 58, 74, 76, 124 of the first volume, for Mr. Carlyle's sentiments on Catholicity, and for the usurper's desolating campaign in Ireland, p. 451—456, with the entire Fifth Part, and also his "Introduction," for the ascription of transcendent heroism to the puritan fanatics. Cromwell, prominent, of course, among them, is described as closing his guilt-stained life, in the words of Schiller, "So sterbt ein Held"-thus dies a hero, (vol. ii. p. 668.) With the wonted self-contradiction of his brethren, this extraordinary man proclaimed himself the patron of religious freedom, always excepting the Catholics and their Mass!

And, on the ground which has been the source of loudest reproach against Catholics-" Intolerance”— history gratifies us with the proof, that the first constitutional acknowledgment of religious tolerance emanated from the Catholic colony of Maryland, founded by the Catholic governor and proprietors, the successive Lords Baltimore, George and Lucius Carey. There, in 1634, it was made a fundamental law, that every form of christian worship was equally free, and "there religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world," observes Mr. Bancroft, in affecting simplicity of language. (History of the United States, vol. i., p. 270.) Judge Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," (vol. i. p. 108,) had precedingly laid due stress on the same fact, while the Anglicans of Virginia, and the "Pilgrim Fathers" of the North, just escaped from persecution, but, ("Tacit. Annal.

lib. i., cap. 20,) eo immitiores quia toleraverant," ruthlessly proscribed each other. In his third volume, page 32, the justly esteemed historian of the United States, Mr. Bancroft, again remarks, "that in 1704, when Maryland was possessed by the protestants, the catholics alone were disfranchised. In the land which, while catholic, was opened to the protestants, the catholic inhabitants were the sole victims of Anglican intolerance.

In every province the same persevering and cruel persecution existed. And in New York, the legislature made a law in 1700, condemning to death every catholic priest that voluntarily came there." (Ibid. p. 193.) Most justly, indeed, does Sir James Macintosh predict "that the flagrant inconsistency of all protestant intolerance is a poison in its veins, which must destroy it." (History of England, vol. ii., ch. v.)

But, if the Catholics may vindicate as their right the primary legislative enunciation of religious freedom, we must, on equal evidence, claim for their writers the earliest advocacy of the principle of toleration. "Fides suadenda, non imponenda est,” is the maxim and recommendation of the last Father of their Church, St. Bernard, (Sermo lxv. edit. Benedict, 1719;) and where among the reformers shall we meet such language as the following? In his Utopia, so called as the name shows, that is nowhere, (Oroza) first published in 1516, at Louvain, (4to.) under the title of "De Optimo Republicæ Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia," Sir Thomas More, after producing a fanatic preacher of intolerance in his imagined island, adds that the inhabitants "Talia concionantem comprehenderunt ...... siquidem hoc inter antiquissima

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