can the human intelligence feel convinced that it has found it? Do you ask still more? Do you desire, -as oh, who does not ? -that even the necessity of temporary separation should be obviated? Catholicity can satisfy you; for by loving your friend sacramentally, catholically as a fellow member of the mystic body, you insure even your uninterrupted union with him; and therefore St. Augustin says, "Deus virtutum, beatus qui amat te et amicum in te. Solus enim nullum charum amittit cui omnes in illo chari sunt qui non amittitur.” * Your sweet friend departs to the bosom of Abraham, as Nebridius left St. Augustin to drink from the fountain of eternal wisdom, happy for ever; but he becomes not so inebriated from it as to forget you; since God from whom he drinks remembers you. And after all, taking another point of view, perhaps the imperfections of the best friendship while enjoyed on earth furnish a last signal. St. Gertrude never found a friend to whom, without hesitation, she could venture to notify the greatness of the spiritual revelations made to her, on account, she says, of the pu pusillanimity of the human heart, which is slow of believing. Without assenting to the melancholy remark of the hermit in Atala, that "there are always some points by which two hearts do not touch each other, and that these points would suffice in the end, if indefinitely protracted, to render such union insupportable," we must come to the conclusion that friendship, however true, however charming, can be perfected only in heaven. So the love of man by its deficiencies, as well as by its intensity, directs to the love of the Creator, which is perfect and which makes perfect, and consequently to that Church which is his spouse. CHAPTER II. THE ROAD OF UNION. ALM and sweet healing herbs here cast a wholesome perfume all around, and testify how the supreme goodness has made careful provision for all human wants, conveying thus a lesson of universal love to men. Here we must pause awhile amid these oaks, that are identified in many imaginations with the love of country, on which we have to hear some necessary distinctions that will aid our quest; and before we reach the scenes of practical life, we have still to pass through smiling valleys that are traversed by another road of love, upon which we can well mark the fortress and main tower of the true city; journeying on perhaps more tardily than else we would for others' sake: and here some little art behoves us, as said the guide who led Dante, that our steps observe the varying flexure of the path; for the false philosopher, that dreadful Cyclops wandering on the lofty hills, will often choose a position on this way to obstruct the view of truth * Confess. iv. 10. † Insin. Div. Piet. ii. 23. "longa est injuria, longæ Ambages; sed summa sequar fastigia rerum."* And, though we shall hereafter meet him at the head of his legions in a ranged battle, it will be well already to observe some kind of military advantages; to await him at his foragings, at his waterings, and whenever he feels himself secure. He professes to have first taught fraternity and respect for men; Philanthropist is his name, led, as he affirms, by the love of humanity. Let us see whether he speaks truly, whether this is a road on which we can lose sight of the Catholic Church, and find a surer source than it contains of affection for mankind. These new roads, also, it must be admitted, have charms to attract all who sincerely follow nature; for nothing is more congenial to the human heart than love, than those offices, as Cicero says, "quæ pertinent ad hominum caritatem, qua nihil homini esse debet antiquius;" † though it is no less true that in the ancient world there was only a faint track here indicating the passage of but the lonely wanderer, who, like Cato, "nec sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo." It was indeed the general opinion of the Greeks, that men owed nothing to each other without some express compact; and we may judge of the extent to which such ideas prevailed over the world, from the fact observed by Cæsar among the Germans, of whom he says, "Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quæ extra fines cujusque civitatis fiunt." Moreover, even while following the suggestions of nature, the paths of especial love and friendship which we followed last, pass imperceptibly into the present road, as is attested by the poet when he says "Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, And by St. Augustin saying, "Amicitia quoque hominum caro * Æn. i. 341. + De Off. i. 43. nodo dulcis est propter unitatem de multis animis."* And indeed, if the way which we now propose to follow should grow tedious, it is probable that we followed only false tracks before. "Quid enim amatur," to repeat the question of St. Augustin, " si charitas in odium venit?"† Moreover, we must be familiarized with the ground through which this road leads, if we would gain any advantage from all future wanderings; "for," as St. Augustin says, "our life being a pilgrimage through a wilderness-si non vultis in ista eremo siti mori, bibite charitatem; fons est quem voluit Dominus hic ponere, ne deficiamus in via." ± + That fountain, let us now proceed to observe, is at the Catholic Church, which by its sacraments and its doctrine forms "The mind that, in a calm angelic mood For already mark the flow of its pure waters. "The chief thing," says Antonio de Guevara, "which God recommends to us is charity, which you will accomplish by loving your neighbour, not because he loves you, but because he loves God. The man charitable and compassionate may rest assured that God will hold him by the hand, so that his faith will never diminish nor his hope fail; for God will not be cruel to him who has had charity. We must love all men, or we cannot love God. The good Lord is so fond of the Christian soul, that in loving us He wishes to be alone, and when we love Him He wishes to have company, which is exactly contrary to what is required by worldly love." § O, how charming then is the Catholic faith, which places perfection in charity, in love, and compassion, and tenderness for all men; for than the affection which arises from such sentiments can anything be dearer or sweeter to the heart of man? "Learn," it cries, "to make others happy. Spirits, come! This is thine high reward, and when the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul seems to anticipate the joy of heaven." "Embrace the whole world in your love," says the rule of blessed Elred; "consider how many are the good, and congratulate them; consider the evil, and lament for them; remember the misery of the poor and unhappy, and condole with them." || If such lessons prove * Conf. ii. 1. Ibid. + In Ep. S. Joan. Tract. 7. || Reg. B. Ælredi, c. xlvi. ap. Luc. Holstein Cod. Regul. attractive, men are drawn to Catholicity through the desire of finding them taught and practised; for in the Catholic Church alone are they uniformly and efficiently delivered. The shafts of Protestantism are not golden; they are obtuse at the end, and loaded with lead under the reed. They put love to flight. Those of the Philosophy which has followed it are found, in point of fact, to have no other office. Experience proves sufficiently that all true love of men must spring not from clubs, or conventicles, or the chairs of scorners, but from the Catholic source; and the reason must be, no doubt, that as Peter of Blois says, "All holy communion and society emanates from God to angels and men; and that from the ineffable union of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity descends that communion of love which is diffused in the hearts of men by the holy Spirit." * All other streams, call them humanity, philanthropy, or what you will, are poisoned; for, as St. Bonaventura says, "Offenso Creatore omnis creatura offenditur." The Greeks, as if foreseeing an apostasy more malignant than their own, used to call the hairy herb in hedges which sticks to the clothes of men who touch it, philanthropo ;‡ and with no greater justice is the same title applied at present to those men with their mouths full of philanthropy and their hands itching for booty, who set up for being establishers of fraternity and universal love, while treating as obsolete the charity of the Catholic religion. What are they but burs in the way? They will attach themselves indeed to all to monks and nuns, both to churchmen and seculars, to the poor, to the rich, to rulers and people, but only to pilfer and annoy. All this kind of affection is content with words. But Catholicism rejects every claim to the possession of a good will which does not actually yield that love of mankind pure and undefiled, which is described by the apostle. "The love of man," says Drexelius, "necessarily accompanies the love of God;" and as St. Thomass says, "Unus utriusque est habitus." He cannot love God who does not, as He orders, love his neighbour; for it is like a circle, where no lines can be produced from it to the centre unless they also touch each other, as Euclid demonstrates. Do you wish to touch the centre by love? You cannot, unless you touch all the lines which end in that centre. You do not touch the lines by love. Then you will depart from that centre excluded as an enemy.|| Each book of Catholic philosophy must therefore thus begin and end, like Stolberg's works, with the book of love. * Pet. Bles. De Charitate Dei, xxxv. + Serm. de B. Magd. ii, § ii. 2, Q. 25, a. 1. ‡ Plin. N. H. xxiv. 116. || Roşæ select. virtut. i. CHAPTER III. THE ROAD OF STRANGERS. YPRESS and cedars of Libanon forming here a dark alley amidst oaks and elms indigenous in this forest of the West, are instances to show that trees, like men, can be foreigners and strangers in a land; since not alone amongst them the oriental and European races generally, but also in their particular features, the Italian, the German, and the Spaniard can be distinguished. The beech had not yet visited England when Cæsar came to it, and sycamores in France arrived much later from the Holy Land. The horse-chestnut, a native of Northern Asia, visited France for the first time in 1615; and the weeping willow, born in the Levant, had never seen England till Alexander Pope planted the twig of a fig-basket from Turkey, which he observed putting out a shoot, from which stock all the weeping willows in this country sprung. Pliny, indeed, seems to think - "arborum quoque, ut hominum naturam novitatis ac peregrinationis avidam esse." * Nor is it saplings only that can wander with impunity. Full-grown elms are removed from place to place without being injured. Theophrastus mentions that the plane-tree, when uprooted by the winds, was often planted elsewhere; and Pliny says that the Romans used to transplant trees that were twenty feet high. In 1636, trees seventy or eighty years old, and fifty feet in height, were removed to an island near Brazil, and took root there, bearing fruit the very first season. From the forest of Heidelberg came large lime-trees, that lived afterwards near the palace of the Elector Palatine; huge oaks were welcomed thus as strangers at the château of the Mareshal de Fiat; an entire forest was removed by Louis XIV. from Versailles to the plains of Boulogne; and at Mont-Louis, a small château at the foot of the Pyrenees, a scene previously naked, became, in the course of a few weeks, clothed with groves of great ) magnificence. A theme appropriate to such scenery demands our attention at this turn; for the obstacles to a realization of the desire which leads men on the gracious road which we have followed to this spot, may be divided into two classes, distinguished as those arising from the heathen, or still narrower sentiments of race, nationality, and patriotism, and those which are pro* N. H. lib. xvii. 12. |