Volume Ii Part 22 (1/2)
It is difficult to write an interesting history. Simple facts of the past stated in dry statistical style, like the reports of an insane asylum or a poor-house, are about as interesting as they, and appear to the general reader to be of about equal importance. We may be thought weak in judgment to say it, but we should like to read history for the same reason we like to read the last novel by d.i.c.kens, in which the author wields his magic pen to paint life-pictures of the events of the world before our mind, and compels us to be living witnesses of the past in the realm of imagination. To insure a deep interest and a lasting impression all the faculties of the mind should be engaged. Our imagination must not be told to step out of doors or go to sleep whilst our memory takes an inventory of facts consigned to its storehouse by a historian. The senses of sight and of taste are given to man that he may be guided in supplying his stomach with the proper quantum and quality of the food it craves. What these senses are to the stomach, the imagination is to the mind, and if it have no hand in the choice of mental food there cannot help but be an indigestion; the brain, indeed, holding the crude ma.s.s, but unable to make any use of it.
We may sum up in a few sentences the application these remarks may have to the history before us. The volume {144} comes to us with uncut edges. Let the reader open it at random. He finds before him a fair page, printed in large cool type, with broad generous margins, looking as a page ought to look, like a goodly field of wheat or corn, and not like a stiff, prim, pinched, and gravelled parterre. Let him read down one page, and he will surely bring his paper-cutter into requisition and follow the author to the beginning of the next paragraph. He will find the style, if we mistake not, like one of those charming, shady, winding, country roads, which always entice you to go just as far as the next turning; an agreeable contrast to the ordinary page of history, which to us is so like a grievous paved military road in France, straight enough, wide enough, and direct enough, but lamentably monotonous, dry, dusty, and tiresome. There is a little stiffness and dull regularity about the division of the subject-matter; but this is inevitable to any history of a long period, and may be regarded as the signboards and finger-posts on the road, making up in convenience what they detract from the romance.
As to the character of the work of M. Darras as a history--as one in which we can learn the actual life of our mother, the Church; one which we can quote with confidence in public, and not be obliged to contradict to its back as it stands on our shelves; one which we can give to our friends, of all cla.s.ses and opinions, as a good, reliable, and respectable Church history--we are content to take it as such upon the warm approbation it has received at the hands of the Holy Father, the use that is made of it in colleges and seminaries in Europe, the approval it has obtained from the Rt. Rev. bishops there and in the United States, and the good opinion universally expressed concerning it by scholars whose critical judgment is worthy of reliance.
Certainly we have no Church history equal to it in the English language, and we bid this translated French one welcome, and hope it may receive an hospitable reception amongst us.
The dissertation on the perpetuity of the Church, and the immortality of the Papacy, from the pen of the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding, which embellishes this edition under the form of an introduction, is both appropriate and well deserving of perusal. The learned prelate puts us at once on reading acquaintance with the work of M. Darras, and enkindles in us the desire to know more of the eventful course of the existence of Holy Church.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
CAPE COD. By Henry D. Th.o.r.eau. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865.
12mo., pp. 252.
COMPLETE WORKS OF THE MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., late Archbishop of New York. Comprising his Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc.
Carefully compiled from the best sources, and edited by Lawrence Kehoe. Two vols. 8vo., pp. 670 and 810. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.
PASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST RET. J. B. PURCELL, D.D., Archbishop of Cincinnati, to the Clergy and Laity of the archdiocese, on the late Encyclical Letter of his Holiness Pius IX. promulgating the Jubilee of 1865, with the Bull of Pius IX. authorizing the Jubilee of 1846.
Printed at the ”Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph” Office.
NATURAL HISTORY. A Manual of Zoology for Schools, Colleges, and the General Reader, by Sanborn Tenney, A.M. Ill.u.s.trated. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 12mo., pp. 540.
From D. & J. Sadlier and Co., New York, we have received the following: BANIM'S COMPLETE WORKS. PARTS 1, 2, 3, AND 4; THE OLD HOUSE BY THE BOYNE, by Mrs. Sadlier; CATHOLIC ANECDOTES. Part 1. Translated from the French by Mrs. Sadlier; THE LIVES OF THE POPES, from the French of Chevalier d'Artaud, Parts 1 and 2; CAECILIA, a Roman Drama, and THE SECRET, a Drama, by Mrs. J. Sadlier.
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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL, II., NO. 8.--NOVEMBER, 1865,
From Revue Generale, Bruxelles.
REV. DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN, AND THE CATHOLIC SETTLEMENTS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
The events of which the United States have, during late years, been the theatre of action, have revived in the recollection of the editors of the _Historisch-politische Blatter_ of Munich the name of Loretto, a small and unpretending town of Pennsylvania, the founder of which was Prince Demetrius Angustin Gallitzin, the son of the remarkable woman of whom Germany has a right to be proud. The occasion has suggested to them a biographical sketch, which, full of interest and appositeness, will unquestionably be read in Belgium and France with as much avidity as in Germany.
Twenty years have elapsed since Prince Gallitzin, who had exchanged the luxuries of princely courts for the poverty of those who herald the glad tidings, slept in the Lord, after forty years of apostles.h.i.+p in the wild regions of the Alleghany mountains. The work set up by the pious missionary yet remains, marked by all the elements of thrifty life, and the little oasis will long continue to be what it was at its origin--the cradle of a Christian civilization, which will go on spreading its blessings to the remotest boundaries, still retaining the un.o.btrusive modesty which moved its founder's thought. Indeed, had the matter rested with Gallitzin's own wishes, his very name would have pa.s.sed into vague tradition in those extended regions. It might even have slept in oblivion; for the prince, so careful was he to avoid anything that could attract the attentions of the world, lived and exercised his holy ministry for many years under the borrowed name of Schmidt.
In Father Lemcke, however, and fortunately too, a canon of the abbey of the Benedictines of St. Vincent in Pennsylvania, was found a man who, better than any other, had it in his power to preserve the reminiscences of the n.o.ble missionary, and accurately to depict for us the traits of his manly character. Not only did the biographer of the prince know him personally, but he was also his friend, his confidant, his confessor, and his co-laborer in the missions. After Gallitzin's death, Father Lemcke came into possession of his papers, letters, and memoranda, which supplied him with desirable data on the period of life preceding their ministerial connection. He, and he alone, therefore, was in a condition to write a true biography of the prince, and he deemed it a duty to {146} rescue from oblivion the memory of this distinguished man. In connection with this subject, Father Lemcke indulges in a judicious remark: ”The life of Gallitzin,” says he, ”is so intimately inwoven with the events which occurred during his own times, that it holds out to future generations an interest like to that which is offered to us in the life of a Bonifacius or of an Ansgarius, by reason of the facts which have characterized the epochs in which they lived.”
Gallitzin belonged to the phalanx of missionaries who, in the United States, scattered the seeds of spiritual life. When the prince stepped on the soil of that vast territory, there was but one prelate, Rt.
Rev. John Carroll of Baltimore, the first bishop of the United States, who, from the circ.u.mstances of the Church, had been obliged to seek Europe for his episcopal consecration. [Footnote 23] He had been but two years installed--from 1790--and had but uncertain and broken intercourse with his flock. His surroundings, restricted in numbers, but devoted to the holy cause, were mainly composed of, French priests. In this infant church Gallitzin was the second priest consecrated by the Bishop of Baltimore, and missioned, as a true pioneer of civilization, to carry the cross through the untouched forests of the New World, There is an unvarying likeness in all great undertakings; yet it required but a short time--a relatively short time--considerably to increase the number of those men who had devoted themselves to the task. In contrast with the bishop, who, in the course of five years, could ordain and rely on two priests only to feed the flock of the Lord, ”The Catholic Almanac” of the day exhibits to us, for the United States, seven archbishops, thirty-six bishops, and four apostolic vicars, with the ministry of two thousand priests, with the addition of convents of various orders, of seminaries, of colleges, of numberless benevolent inst.i.tutions, with over 4,000,000 of Catholics living under the protection of the laws, in the practice and enjoyment of their faith.
[Footnote 23: There are new details on this distinguished man in a recently published work: ”_Die Katholische Kirche in den Vereinigten Staatm von Nord Amerika_,” etc., etc. Regensburg. 1864.]
The Germans delight in recalling to mind that one of those who helped to lay the foundations of the Church in North America was the offspring of a princely house of the Fatherland. Gallitzin was a German on the maternal side; and the n.o.ble parent could well claim both the spiritual and natural motherhood of her son, the latter of which was, perhaps, glory enough. How magnificent a mission was that of Princess Amelia Gallitzin! While gathering around her circle the choice spirits which seemed destined to keep bright the torch of faith in Germany, and its living convictions in the midst of a superficial society without belief and without its guiding lights, the princess was rearing for the New World a son who was about to turn aside from a career which his birth and his wealth justly reserved for him, and take up the arduous and thankless labors of the apostles.h.i.+p. This very son it was who, through the work of faith, was destined to be the founder and civilizer of a now flouris.h.i.+ng colony.