12. Will it be said that this deplorable ignorance on matters of religion is to be dissipated later? Alas! how many young people, men of ripe age, in the various conditions of life, do we know, who, from the time they left college, have devoted twenty-four hours to the study of religion!

13. How many, on the contrary, may we not cite, who, so far from developing what little they knew of religion, have long, long since, lost even the elementary notions of the Catechism! Thus we have shown that classic paganism condemns the immense majority of instructed men to an eternal ignorance in matters of religion.

GAUME.

IT

83. PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CLASSICS.

T has often been a subject of astonishment and complaint, that a direction almost exclusively classical should be given to the studies of youth in modern times; and though it might not be difficult to detect the real cause which has operated to produce this partiality, which certainly must be sought elsewhere than in the supposed barrenness and barbarism of the ancient Christian literature, it may be sufficient here to bear testimony to the justice of such complaints.

2. For, in fact, what can be more unreasonable than to maintain that an acquaintance with the histories and manners of the ancient Greeks and Romans is more essential to complete the instruction of Christians than the like knowledge of the habits and institutions of their own national ancestors and fathers in the faith; that an English student should be familiar with Livy without having ever even heard of Ingulphus or a William of Malmesbury; that he should know by heart the sentences of Demosthenes, without being aware that St. Chrysostom was, perhaps, his equal in eloquence and grandeur; and that he should be afraid of corrupting his Latinity by looking into St. Jerome, of whom Erasmus said, that if he had a prize to award between him and Cicero, he should

be tempted to give it to the Christian father rather than to the great orator of Rome.

3. Ah! could these mighty spirits of the ancient world give utterance to the conviction which now possesses them in answer to the multitude of voices which continually are raised from earth to speak their praise, they would counsel their fond admirers to place their affection upon diviner models; they would speak in words like those of the shade of Virgil, when he first meets Dante: "We lived in times of false and lying gods: we sung of earthly conquests, but why dost thou return to this fatal region? why not scale this delicious mountain, which is the beginning and the cause of all joy?"

4. "

At Rome my life was past,

Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time

Of fabled Deities and false. A bard

Was I, and made Anchises' upright son

The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
When the flame preyed on Ilium's haughty towers.

But thou, say wherefore to such perils past

Return'st thou? Wherefore not this pleasant mount
Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?"

5. Now it is not certainly too much to affirm, that the customs and manners of the Middle Ages are deserving of quite as much attention from us, as that Homeric way of life, and those Pythagorean manners spoken of by Socrates, that their literature might supply most interesting variety to those who may very well think that they have heard enough of the hard Eurystheus and the altars of the illaudible Busiris, and the other verses which continue to arrest so many vacant minds; and that these our domestic antiquities would furnish ample matter to exercise, with the greatest advantage, all our diligence and research, though we had the industry of a Chrysippus, who was so curious, as Cicero says, in collecting various examples from all history.

6. In whatever direction, on that blessed shore, we turn our steps, we shall find inexhaustible riches of every virtue, of wisdom and learning, of beauty and grandeur; to cheer the sage, who may then detect the truth of things in an abyss of radiance, clear and lofty; to ravish that imagination of the young which is kindled by the splendor of eternal light; and to satisfy in all

"The increate perpetual thirst, that draws

Towards the realm of God's own form.”

7. But if a description of the armor of one hero could justly Occupy so many verses as those of Homer and Virgil, in explaining that of Achilles and of Eneas, what indulgence may not be granted to him who should endeavor to place before men's eyes the grandeur and holiness of the lives and deaths of men under the ancient Catholic state?

8. Guizot, who, in such a question, is an authority not to be suspected, says of the writers of the Middle Ages, who recorded the deeds and thoughts of holy men, "If we consider them in a purely literary point of view, we shall find their merit no less brilliant and no less varied. Nature and simplicity are not wanting in them; they are devoid of affectation and free from pedantry."

9. A slight acquaintance with them will, with most minds, generate a distaste for those innumerable books of later times which bear undoubted signs of having been written by men who were full of themselves, and who, in composing them, were really no otherwise occupied than in worshipping their own miserable image.

DIGBY.

84. CHRISTIAN ORATORS.-FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.

THE

HE eloquence of the Fathers of the Church has in it some thing that overa wes; something energetic, something royal, as it were, and whose authority at once confounds and

subdues. You are convinced that their mission comes from on high, and that they teach by the express command of the Almighty. In the midst of these inspirations, however, their genius retains its majesty and serenity.

2. St. Ambrose is the Fénélon of the Latin Fathers. He is flowery, smooth, and rich; and, with the exception of a few defects, which belonged to the age in which he lived, his works are equally entertaining and instructive. To be convinced of this, the reader need only turn to the "Treatise on Virginity," and the "Praise of the Patriarchs." St. Jerome is particularly distinguished for a vigorous imagination, which his immense learning was incapable of extinguishing.

3. The collection of his letters is one of the most curious monuments of patristic literature. He loves to dwell on the nature and delights of solitude. From the recess of his cell at Bethlehem he beheld the fall of the Roman Empire. What a vast subject of reflection for a holy anchorite! Accordingly, death and the vanity of human life are ever present to his

view.

4 "We are dying, we are changing every hour," says he, in a letter to one of his friends, "and yet we live as if we were immortal. The very time which it takes to pen these lines must be retrenched from my day. We often write to one another, my dear Heliodorus; our letters traverse the seas, and, as the ship scuds along, so life flies: a moment passes with every wave." As Ambrose is the Fénélon of the Fathers, so Tertullian is the Bossuet.

5. Part of his vindication of religion might, even at the present day, be of service to the same cause. How wonderful that Christianity should now be obliged to defend herself before her own children, as she formerly defended herself before her executioners, and that the "Apology to the Gentiles" should have become the "Apology to the Christians!"

6. The most remarkable feature of this work is the intellec tual development which it displays. You are ushered into a new order of ideas; you feel that what you hear is not the

language of early antiquity, or the scarcely articulate accents

of man.

7. Tertullian speaks like a modern; the subjects of his eloquence are derived from the circle of eternal truths, and not from the reasons of passion and circumstance employed in the Roman tribune, or in the public place at Athens. This progress of the genius of philosophy is evidently the effect of our holy religion.

8. Had not the false deities been overthrown, and the true worship of God been established, man would have continued in endless infancy; for, persevering in error in regard to the first principle of all other notions, would have been more or less tinctured with the fundamental vice. The other tracts of Tertullian, particularly those on "Patience," the "Shows," the "Martyrs," the "Ornaments of Women," and the "Resurrec tion of the Body," contain numberless beautiful passages.

9. "I doubt," says the orator, reproaching the Christian females with their luxury, "I doubt whether hands accustomed to bracelets will be able to endure the weight of chains; whether feet adorned with fillets will become habituated tc galling fetters. I much question whether a head covered with a network of pearls and diamonds would not yield to the sword."

10. These words, addressed to the women who were daily conducted to the scaffold, glow with courage and with faith. Among the fathers of the Greek Church, two only are highly eloquent-SS. Chrysostom and Basil. The homilies of the former on "Death," and the "Disgrace of Eutropius," are real masterpieces. CHATEAUBRIAND.

85. "LET THE WATERS BE GATHERED TOGETHER." [ST. BASIL occupies a distinguished rank among the great bishops who rendered illustrious not only the Church, but their age, and humanity itself. As a model of eloquence, he now particularly interests us. Erasmus affirms that in the art of oratory he has no rival. Rollin, who closely studied his principles of elocution, proposes him to youth as one of the most skilful mas