66 The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom, Many are strong and rich, and would be just, As if none felt And in truth that mere prattle without practice is all the natural virtue which many men possess in all ages of the world, who make the greatest pretensions to it, will not be long doubted by those who "piously understand," as St. Augustin says, the innate poverty of the human heart *." As was observed upon a former road, of each best and greatest of the heathens, we can only say, in the words of Cicero, " Virtutem inchoavit; nihil amplius +;" and too often what Niebuhr says of Calpurnius Piso, might be truly added, "he was a remarkable man, but in a bad way." Where naturalism sways the judgment, as with sophists, always in this respect distinguished from the people, "what we do worst, hitting a grosser quality, is oft cried up for our best act." Without the supernatural guidance offered by Divine and what may be termed heroic principles, as raising hearts above the interests of selfishness and time, the best man resembles Frederigo, in the fable, who is seen wandering at a distance, seeming undecided which way to direct his steps, sometimes taking one direction, and then changing to the opposite one; which state is described by Dante, in the lines "For this man, who comes with me, and bears yet Such is still too often "Man, who is once a despot and a slave; A traveller from the cradle to the grave Plato says that "insolence and anger develope in man the nature of the lion; voluptuousness, and flattery, and baseness, that of the serpent and ape§." Elsewhere he seems to suppose himself left to choose between those who have a sound nature with bad habits, and those who have good habits with a bad nature||.” * Epist. clxiii. + De Finibus, v. 21. || De Legibus, lib. ii. Advance to the moderns, who renounce faith, and among them, turn to what side you will, and there is no escape from the conclusion at which a great German philosopher arrives, that "the undivided sway of nature leaves men savage and loveless." A forester, present at such discussions, would say, that nature, in man, is like the beech-tree, which has, at the same time, excellent qualities and great defects. "Its wood is employed with advantage," says Varenne- Fenille, "in a multiplicity of ways: but it is subject to be worm-eaten, to split, and to shrink prodigiously; it has neither strength nor elasticity." Look at your philosophic moralists, at your respectable men, who have all the goodness that an abundant capital imparts in the judgment of the Exchange; and will you not admit the justice of the comparison? No doubt, they are proper for a multiplicity of purposes, where neither youthful generosity, nor pure disinterestedness, nor warm affections, nor a poetic turn of mind are wanting; but, whenever any occasion for such qualities presents itself, see how they always shrink within themselves, and present to every noble suggestion an impenetrable surface of insensibility and egotism. See what a crowd of villanous insects, in the shape of spiteful or ambitious intrigues, can be detected within the bark of that grave respectability with which they are so thickly covered. Place us, as we exist, naturally or artificially, with all our human virtues, all our philosophic reason, all our elective affinities, all our affections, desires, and aims, all our titles to what is called religion by some, and respectability by others, in presence of those who, without any pretensions, perhaps, to either, are secretly, but heroically guided and moved as living members of the Catholic Church, and, truly, to use the poet's words "We melt away, Like dissolving spray, From the children of a diviner day." Accordingly, when the new world of the Church was disclosed to the Gentiles, it is to their former experience, as well as to his own, that the Apostle of the nations, proclaiming it, appeals, reminding them, that they were dead in their offences and sins; wherein in time past they walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, and of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief *. The second avenue to which this road leads us, is formed by a sense of the supernatural or heroic character of virtue in the Catholic Church; "the beauty of which," says St. Isidore, * Ad Ephes. ii. 66 is twofold: the one beauty shining by good life here; and the other, by glorification in recompense *," only to be seen when— "Forth from the last corporeal men shall come Into the heav'n, that is unbodied light; To an observation of the first of these beauties, the attention of most men who take this road in Christian times, is, at some period or other of their lives, directed. Whether you open the ancient Catholic books, or recur to the achievements of men who studied or obeyed them, your conclusion, with respect to Catholic guides upon this road, must be, "they speak like men that know what virtue is, and can love it." These moralists could act and comprehend; they knew how genuine glory was put on. 66 When, passing through the forest, we come to a noble tree that rises into the air, far above all its fellows, we are tempted to stand still for a moment to admire it, surprise being naturally excited at its magnificence and elevation. When travelling on foot from the monastery of Engelberg to Sarnen, after crossing the Storek, the stranger passed through a forest in which were many trees of a most surprising height; and he remembers that, descending into the Melch Thal, even the goat-herd, who guided him, coming to one gigantic plane, stood still, and, muttering to himself, looked up to its vast summit with an expression of astonishment. “ In India there are trees," says Pliny, so lofty, that an arrow cannot reach their summit;" but "if a tree, the branches of which, the oldest as well as the youngest, are striving," as Goethe says, "to reach heaven, be well worthy," to use his words, " of veneration," in the moral forest, the attention of wayfarers is likely to be still more arrested, from time to time, by coming into the presence of those persons whose spiritual growth has not been affected by the confined air of earth around them, and who are true representatives of what Catholicity can produce when its action is unmixed and unimpeded. Among the Capitular instructions at Monte Cassino, in 1273, attention is called to the supernatural elevation of certain virtues observable in the Church. Among things which can hardly endure in the world, they propose the instances of humility with riches and truth, with much energy of discourse. Again, casting a truly indulgent glance at human life, certain virtues, embraced as the sources of greatest happiness in Catholicity, are considered so high above our nature as to constitute martyrdom without effusion of blood. "Such," say these instruc+ Par. 30. * De Sum. Bono, i. 17. N. H. lib. vii. 2. tions, “are abstinence in abundance, continence in youth, and liberality in poverty *." The same appreciation occurs in a homily, written in the Celtic language, of which a fragment has been lately published, from a manuscript of the library of Cambrai. Every affliction," it says, "in the three kinds of martyrdom is accounted a cross. It is so accounted if one receives white martyrdom, or grey martyrdom, or red martyrdom. The white martyrdom is, when a person parts, for God's sake, with every thing which he loves. The grey martyrdom is, when one parts with his passions in sorrow.-Castitas in juventute, continentia in abundantia. The red is, to suffer slaying for Christ's sake+." Alanus de Insulis says, "that men who practise the supernatural virtues while on earth, are already in heaven. "Hic habitat, quem vita pium virtusque beatum Fecit, et in terris meruit sibi numen Olympi; Corpore terrenus, cœlestis mente, caducus Carne, Deus vita, vivens divinitas, extra Terrenum sapiens, intus divina repensans. Quem non erexit fastus, non gloria rerum, Non mundi dejecit amor, non lubrica fregit Luxuries, non luxus opum, non ardor habendi. Succendit, non livor edax, non anxia foedæ Pestis avaritia, non laudis cæca Cupido : Nec mirum si lætitiæ par gratia cunctos, As supplying an instance of the impression caused by such characters, when exalted to the highest state of sanctity, on persons pursuing the ordinary roads of life, let us hear the friend of Marina de Escobar, relating the testimony which was given by some who had seen her on their passage. "The excellent Don Alphonso Pimentel, Count of Benavente, whose Christian manners, saith he, I will not speak of, lest I should make his modesty blush, attests, on oath, that he has found the perfection of all virtues in Marina; that, when he visited her, in all his adversities, and in his greatest spiritual struggles, he always found the greatest consolation from her, and the wisest counsels, and that the mere beholding her used to inflame his soul with a love of virtue. The most illustrious Don Francisco Calderon, and Vargas, Count of Oliva and marquis of the seven churches, attests, that he and his lord grandfather used always to revere * Hist. Cassinensis, viii. 407. + Bib. de l'École des Chartes, tom. iii. 200. her supernatural graces, and that they used never to do any thing without consulting her and commending themselves to her prayers; so that, shortly before his parent was arrested, though the latter knew that his affairs were in an evil state, and that he would be arrested, he addressed himself to the saint, and asked her what he ought to do; and she replied, that, if he desired the good of his soul, he would do nothing; and that he so entirely trusted her, that he waited for his incarceration.. The illustrious Don Francisco de Guzman, Viscount of Villoria, concluded his testimony, saying, that he felt convinced that the common opinion repecting her being a saint was true, and that whatever belonged to her should be esteemed as a holy relic, and that as often as he passed by her house he venerated it as a great sanctuary. Don Juan Arias de Rua, of the king's council, said, that no words could convey an idea of her merits; and he concluded, saying, 'I know that those who passed across the place in which she lived and died, used always to uncover their heads on seeing her house, and venerate it as a sanctuary. In fine, Æmilian de Zupide, who held a high place in the royal chancellery of Valladolid, concluded his evidence with these words: When I used to enter her chamber, the venerable and holy lady used to order a seat to be left for me, but I never accepted it, though she would press me; but I fell on my knees, and remained inclined at her bed-side, as before a venerable creature *.' 999 Such are the first general impressions wrought on witnesses by meeting with persons to an extraordinary extent supernaturally good within the Catholic Church. Nor is it necessary to wait for such perfect examples to find the attention of men awakened by observing virtues of this order; for when they are beheld practised, in a much lower degree, in the common intercourse of life, by persons undistinguished from the body of the faithful, they still present the characters of a phenomenon distinct from all merely natural results; and it is not alone the highly educated classes that make such observations, but the attention of every one is more or less attracted. Men and women the most remote from sanctity find that there is something noble in the clear mind, furnished with harmonious faculties, moulded from heaven, something attractive in the whole carriage of the young man whose character was originally formed by this type. Though the particular individual who represents it before them may seem to descend to be on a level with themselves, having, in fact, become a degenerate specimen, still there is remaining a certain manner and expression which strike them with a new pleasure. Where the contagion of evil has not been experienced * Vit. Ven. Virg. M. p. ii. lib. iii. c. 4. |