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GREETINGS TO THE CHRIST CHILD: a Collection of Christmas Poems for the Young. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1880.

This is a delightful volume for children, and even for those of more advanced years. The illustrations are good, and the poems well chosen. The latter are not strained and elaborate, like so much of the ambitious poetry of the day, which often needs hard study to find out wherein consists its title to the name. They are all selected from Father Faber, Longfellow, F. Abraham Ryan, etc., and will make their way at once to the hearts of all, old and young.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION. A paper read before the University Convocation of the State of New York at Albany, July 11th, 1877. By Brother Azarias of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. New York: E. Steiger.

A brief pamphlet of not many pages; but terse, elegant, full of vigor and keen analysis, like everything that comes from the pen of the gifted President of Rock Hill College.

THE STORY OF JESUS. Simply told for the Young. By Rosa Mulholland, with a preface by Rev. Richard Brennan, LL.D. Benziger Brothers, 1880.

It is not always an easy matter to maintain the dignity of a religious subject when it has to be lowered to the capacity of children. Yet the fair authoress has done this most admirably, giving Our Lord's whole life in beautiful yet simple language, adapted to the intelligence of any child. Both this and the preceding are very appropriate gift-books for the season, as they are very nicely gotten up and well illustrated.

THEOLOGIA MORALIS NOVISSIMI ECCLESIÆ DOCTORIS S. ALPHONSI IN COMPEN-
DIUM REDACTA ET USUI VENERABILIS CLERI AMERICANI ACCOMODATA. Auctore
A. Konings, C.SS.R. Editio quarta auctior et emendatior.
ger Fratres.

1880. Two vols., royal, 8vo.

Neo-Eboraci: Benzi

We have already noticed with commendation in a former number this excellent work of Father Konings. It is a sign of the favor with which it has been received by the clergy and theological students that it has already reached a fourth edition.

PRELUDES. By Maurice F. Egan. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1880.

We have read this little volume, which contains much more of value than its modest title would suggest. Mr. Egan is no trifling songster, but a genuine poet. If he but continues as he has begun, he will yet carve out for himself a name and reputation amongst the few poets of whom the country can boast.

THE HOLY MASS. A History of the Mass and its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church. By Rev. John O'Brien, A.M. Fourth edition, New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1880.

This admirable book has been already praised, as it deserved, in the pages of the REVIEW. The author, we understand, had before his death prepared a good deal of additional matter, which it is to be hoped will enrich some future edition.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL FOR 1880. New York: Catholic Publication Society.

For neatness, elegance, and most interesting and useful information this is one of the best works in the country. And if the Catholic Publication Society were to publish nothing else, it ought to exist for the sake of this Annual alone.

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC

QUARTERLY REVIEW

Vol. V.-APRIL, 1880.-No. 18.

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN FRANCE-THE FERRY BILL.

Les Erreurs de M. Spuller sur le projet de loi de M. Ferry. Paris, Lecoffre fils, 1879.

Les Débats de la Commission de 1849. Par H. de Lacombe. Paris, 1879. Rapport de M. Guichard sur le budget des Cultes. Paris, Victor Palmé, 1878.

Enseignement Secondaire congréganiste. Paris, Jacques Lecoffre, 1879.

F

RANCE is now passing through a political and religious crisis, formidable in many respects, very hopeful in many others. The religious side of the question, which is the only one of which we intend to treat, hinges altogether on the alternative of freedom of education or the reverse. The subject, consequently, cannot but be of extreme interest to the Catholics of the United States, since it happens that they also have to guard their right of securing the religious education of their children. A clear statement of the actual position of French Catholics will, therefore, be instructive to all of us in this country, and on this account it is undertaken in the present paper.

If the spectacle presented by the attitude both of the enemies and the friends of Christianity in the French republic is attentively studied and accurately appreciated, it strikes the mind at once as one of the most remarkable and interesting in the whole course of French history. For the stern determination, the freespoken defiance, the certainty of success, displayed on both sides, leaves no room for doubt or hesitation about the matter which is in dispute; and this is certainly of the highest order in point of VOL. V.-13

national interest. Is Christianity, that is, Catholicity, to continue in France or not? This is the question; and although the party of M. Gambetta hypocritically pretends not to aim at religion, he himself, the party's leader, openly declared it when he said: Le cléricalisme, c'est l'ennemi. Every one understands that clericalisme means Catholicity.

But the Church is not dead, and does not want to die. No one would have suspected forty years ago that there could be so soon so great a revival of religion in the upper classes of that country. For it is not the clergy alone who show vigor, energy, and strength. Laymen without number, of every station in life among the educated part of the population, speak and write with the same frankness and uncompromising firmness as do the most energetic, talented, and eloquent bishops. This is a feature peculiar to this epoch, which the writer thinks has never before been witnessed in France, in the same degree. And in the ardent conflict, thank God! the intellect, the science, the real literary and oratorical talent are undoubtedly on the Church's side. She must win in the end! Let us enter directly into the subject. The attacking party follows a very simple and plain policy. Let the education of the rising generation, in all its degrees, be left entirely to the control of the state; and as the state is now, and will, they hope, continue to be godless, in twenty years there will be no religion left in the country. This, they imagine, is the best means to establish in France the republican form of government. They seem firmly convinced that Catholicity is monarchical, and thus they identify politics with religion, and they must in the end adopt open persecution as a political measure if their adversary should let them go as far as that. Let us first look at the question in past ages.

Until the revolution of 1793 no one dreamt in France that education could be an exclusive attribute of the state. The idea that teaching was altogether under its control, so that no one could open a school except with its permission and under its strict supervision over all educational details, took its rise during that period which has been justly called the Reign of Terror.

In mediæval times, until the fourteenth century, the teaching body received all its powers and privileges from the Church. Not only was every one left free by her to open a school, but the zeal of the learned to impart their knowledge to others by teaching was always encouraged. The freedom was so complete that often teachers of error arose who had to be brought to reason and sense, as was the case with Abelard and many others.

From the fourteenth century down to the eighteenth the state shared with the Church the power of supervision, but it continued to be understood that the ecclesiastical authority was paramount,

and the governmental action was limited to the enforcement of orthodoxy, on which the social welfare of the people rested. Consequently all the teachers in public schools, particularly in universities and colleges, were either secular or regular clergymen. The idea that laymen alone can teach—l'éducation LAÏQUE, as it is now called-is a ridiculous pretension, which does not go farther up in time than the last twenty years. A decree of the Convention, it is true, forbade to former religious and clergymen to teach in schools; but as at that time there were absolutely no schools of any kind in France, that decree fell flat and was never revived since. Meanwhile the upholders of the freedom of education in the ominous struggle which is at this moment going on in the new French republic, can point with pride to the fact that the teaching imparted to the nation by clergymen during nearly a thousand years, has been productive of the most magnificent results, and during a long time placed France intellectually at the head of Europe.

There was, however, a decline, of which it is important to speak briefly. The so-called revival of learning previous to and coeval with the Reformation, was not an absolute blessing, as is sometimes pretended. In France, particularly, it introduced into literature a mawkish imitation of the old pagan authors, and Greek mythology became an almost universal element in poetry, and to a certain, degree in eloquence. In philosophy it evidently disposed the minds to an antagonism towards theology, and produced an incalculable injury to the cause of truth. But with all these disadvantages education, being always in the hands of the clergy, remained on the highest level. It penetrated Christianity to the core, and the great French writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries carried the literary art almost to perfection. It is then that the French language became the usual channel of social intercourse among educated Europeans of all nations.

With the spread of infidelity, however, the eighteenth century. witnessed a thorough revolution in literature, though the education of young people remained the same. Religion was first insidiously, then openly attacked by a set of sophists who took the name of philosophers. It is known that to their pernicious doctrines must be mainly attributed the civil and social commotions which after a hundred years are still as violent as ever. What was then the state of education in the country? and must the evils referred to be attributed to it? A respectable clergyman, l'abbé Gaume, has written many volumes to prove that the chief cause of the Revolution and of its consequences was the classical learning imparted in the French schools, in which the pagan authors of Greece and Rome were exclusively studied. This is not the place to enter deeply into this question. The single fact to which we must limit

our remarks is that public education was still at that time entirely in the hands of the clergy, and they could not be even suspected of intending to bring back France to paganism. If the reading of Latin and Greek authors by boys in colleges brought them naturally and necessarily to despise religion and become infidels, how is it that in the previous century-the seventeenth- the same baneful effect did not follow in France? Why is it that in other European countries, in England, for instance, where the same classical authors were studied perhaps more thoroughly than on the other side of the Channel, no effect of this kind was produced? There must have been some other cause than the one assigned by M. Gaume, and none can be perceived other than the revolution in literature mentioned a moment ago.

Although education was in good hands and perfectly free, the deleterious doctrines of the philosophers had altogether shaken the influence of the Church. Rousseau particularly had undermined all the bases of the former Christian educational system by his Emile, and the country was prepared for a thorough revolution in education as well as in literature.

The Constituent Assembly of 1789 and the following years, in preparing to give a new Constitution to France, began its work by the destruction of all previous institutions. Thus, together with the monarchy, the whole social, civil, and religious system, was swept away. The parliaments, the nobility, the provincial privileges, the Church organization, having been either altogether destroyed or essentially modified, the old system of education could not continue to exist; and university after university, college after college, primary schools in cities, and village schools in the country, were the successive objects of as many decrées which demolished them root and branch. The Legislative which followed the Constituent Assembly finished at last the unholy work, and when the last blow was struck France remained without public teaching of any sort.

The Convention in 1793 had thus a fair field for its theories. Its first attempt at reorganization was to revive the Spartan system. The children were declared to belong to the state, not to their parents, and this is the Satanic origin of all the educational nonsense that has followed, and it is also the origin of the present attempt of M. Ferry and his friends to revive the now exploded idea that the state alone is the instructor of youth. I call it "exploded," because freedom of education having been granted in 1850 and 1875, France had then acknowledged that the children belong to their parents.

To understand it better still, however, this interesting history must be continued. The Spartan system, as it has been called, consisted in bringing out the children, boys and girls, for the cele

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