Unfortunately, her first aim, after acquiring wealth and secur ing her power, is, to exclude the Roman Catholic Church as far as is practicable from the benefit of the system, to oppose her whenever she would follow in the wake of her progress, and either to allow paganism or Mohammedanism to continue in quiet possession wherever they exist, or to substitute for them as far as possible her Protestantism. At all events, the Catholicity of the Church is to be crushed, or at least thwarted, to make room for the catholicity of the English nation.

And it looks as though such, in truth, would have been the result, had not the stubbornness of the Irish character stood in the way; if the Celt of Erin, after centuries of oppression and opposition to the false wanderings of the European stream, had not insisted on following the English lord in his travels, dogging his steps everywhere, entering his ships welcome or unwelcome, rushing on shore with him wherever he thought fit to land, and there planted his shanty and his frame church in the very sight of stately palaces lately erected, and gorgeous temples with storied windows and softly-carpeted floors.

And after a few years the Irish Celt would show himself as active and industrious in his new country as oppression had made him indolent and careless on his own soil; the shanty would be replaced by a house worthy of a man; above all, the humble dwelling which he first raised to his God would disappear to make room for an edifice not altogether unworthy of divine majesty; at least, far above the pretentious structures of the oppressors of his religion. The eyes of men would be again turned to "the city built upon a mountain;" and the character of universality, instead of being wrested from the true Church, would become more resplendent than ever through the steadfast Irish Celt.

Thus the spreading of the Gospel in distant regions would be accomplished without a navy of their own. As their ancestors did in pagan times, they would use the vessels of nations born for thrift and trade; the stately ships of the "Egyptians " would be used by the true "people of God."

For them hath Stephenson perfected the steam-engine, so as to enable vessels to undertake long voyages at sea without the necessary help of sails; for them Brunel and others had spent long years in planning and constructing novel Noah's arks capable of containing all clean and unclean animals; for them the Barings and other wealthy capitalists had embraced the five continents and the isles of the ocean in their financial schemes; the Jews of England, Germany, and France, the Rothschilds and Mendelssohns, had accumulated large amounts of money to lend to ship-building companies; for them, in fine, the long-hidden gold deposits of California, Australia, and many other places, had

been discovered at the proper time to replenish the coffers of the godless, that they might undertake to furnish the means of transportation and settlement for the missionaries of God!

And, to prove that this is no exaggeration, it is enough to look at the number of emigrants that were to be carried to foreign parts, and that actually left England for her various colonies or for the United States. For several years one thousand Irish people sailed daily from the ports of Great Britain; and for a great number of years 200,000 at least did so every twelve months. When we come to contrast the Irish at home with the Irish abroad, we shall give fuller details than are possible here. These few words suffice to show the immense number of vessels and the vast sums that were required for such an extraordinary operation.

This phenomenon is surely curious enough, universal enough, and sufficiently portentous in its consequences, to deserve a thorough inquiry into its causes and the way in which it was brought about.

It will be seen that it all came from the Irish having kept themselves aloof from the other branches of the great Japhetic race in order to join in the general movement at the right time and in their own way, constantly opposed to all the evil that is in it, but using it in the way Providence intended.

The chapters which follow will be devoted to the development of this general idea; the few remarks with which we close the present may tend to set the conclusion which we draw more distinctly before our minds.

There is no doubt that, taking the Irish nation as a whole, we find in it features which are visible in no other European nation; and that, taking Europe as a whole, in all its complexity of habits, manners, tendencies, and ways of life, we have a picture wholly distinct from that of the Irish people. England has striven during the last eight hundred years to shape it and make it the creature of her thought, and England has utterly failed.

The same race of men and women inhabit the isle of Erin today as that which held it a thousand years ago, with the distinction that it is now far more wretched and deserving of pity than it was then. The people possess the same primitive habits, simple thoughts, ardent impulsiveness, stubborn spirit, and buoyant disposition, in spite of ages of oppression. In the course of centuries they have not furnished a single man to that army of rash minds which have carried the rest of Europe headlong through lofty, perhaps, but at bottom empty and idle theories, to the brink of that bottomless abyss into which no one can peer without a shudder.

No heresiarch has found place among them; no fanciful philosopher, no holder of fitful and larid light to deceive nations

and lead them astray, no propounder of social theories opposed to those of the Gospel, no inventor of new theogonies and cosmologies-new in name, old in fact-rediscovered by modern students in the Kings of China, the Vedas of Hindostan, the Zends of Persia, or Eddas of the North; no ardent explorer of Nature, seeking in the bowels of the earth, or on the summits of mountains, or in the depths of the ocean, or the motions of the stars, proofs that God does not exist, or that matter has always existed, that man has made himself, developing his own consciousness out of the instinct of the brute, or even out of the material motions of the zoophyte.

We would beg the reader to bear in mind those insane theories so prevalent to-day, out of which society can hope for nothing but convulsions and calamities, to see how all the nations of Europe have contributed to the baneful result except the Irish; that they alone have furnished no false leader in those wanderings from the right path; that their community has been opposed all through to the adoption of the theories which led to them, have spurned them with contempt, and even refused to inquire into them with these thoughts and recollections in his mind, he may understand what we mean when we assert that the Irish have stubbornly refused to enter upon the European movement. Although, by the reception of Christianity, they were admitted into the European family, the Christianity which they received was so thoroughly imbibed and so completely carried out that any thing in the least opposed to it was sternly rejected by the whole nation. Hence they became a people of peculiar habits. Rejecting the harsh features of feudalisin, not caring for the refinement of the so-called revival of learning, sternly opposed at all times to Protestantism, they would have naught to do with what was rejected or even suspected by the Church, until in our days they offer to the eyes of the world the spectacle we have sketched. Thus have they, not the least by reason of their long martyrdom, become fit instruments for the great work Providence asks of them to-day.

England, the great leader in the material part of the social movement which has been the subject of this chapter, for a long time hesitated to adopt principles altogether subversive to society. In her worldly good sense she endeavored to follow what she imagined a via media in her wisdom, to avoid what seemed to her extremes, but what is in reality the eternal antagonism of truth and falsehood, of order and chaos. Twenty years back there was a unanimity among English writers to speak the language of moderation and good sense whenever a rash author of foreign nations hazarded some dangerous novelties; and in their reviews they immediately pointed out the poison which lay conrealed under the covering of science or imagination, and the peril

of these ever-increasing new discoveries. If any Englishman sanctioned those theories, he could not form a school among his countrymen, and remained almost alone of his party.

But at last England has given way to the universal spread of temptation, and to-day she runs the race of disorganization as ardent as any, striving to be a leader among other leaders to ruin. Every one is astounded at the sudden and remarkable change. It is truly inexplicable, save by the fearful axiom, Quos Deus vult perdere, dementat. Hence not a few expect soon to see storms sweep over the devoted island of Great Britain, which no longer forms an exception to the universality of the evil we have indicated.

Which, then, is the one safe spot in Europe, whither the tide of folly, or madness rather, has not yet come?

Ireland alone is the answer.

CHAPTER III.

THE IRISH BETTER PREPARED TO RECEIVE CHRISTIANITY THAN OTHER NATIONS.

THE introduction of Christianity gave Europe a power over the world which pagan Rome could not possess. All the branches of the Japhetic family combined to form what was with justice and propriety called Christendom. Ireland, by receiving the Gospel, was really making her first entry into the European family; but there were certain peculiarities in her performance of this great act which gave her national life, already deviating from that of other European nations, a unique impulse. The first of those peculiarities consisted in her preparation for the great reception of the faith, and the few obstacles she encountered in her adoption of it, compared with those of the rest of the world.

Providence wisely decreed that redemption should be delayed until a large portion of mankind had attained to the highest civilization. It was not in a time of ignorance and barbarism that the Saviour was born. The Augustan is, undoubtedly, the most intellectual and refined age, in point of literary and artistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. No country, in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen of her philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of her poets and artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities, and inherited her taste for science and literature.

But art and literature embody ideas only; and, as Ozanam says so well: "Beneath the current of ideas which dispute the empire of the world, lies that world itself such as labor lias made it, with that treasure of wealth and visible adornment which render it worthy of being the transient sojourn-place of immortal souls. Beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, lies the useful, which is brightened by their reflection. No people has more keenly appreciated the idea of utility than that of Rome; none has ever laid upon the earth a hand more full of power, or more capable of transforming it; nor more profusely flung the treasures of earth at the feet of humanity. . .