Δεῖ γάρ με

Εἶναι μὲν ὥσπερ εἰμὶ, φαίνεσθαι δὲ μή.

They are holy, and simple, and true; for the tatters on the children of the Catholic Church are above the rags of Thyestes. Accordingly, it is the mendicant poor who, in the primitive Church, are the confidants of martyrs; it is to them that is confided the secret hiding-place of pontiffs: "Leave Rome by the Appian Way," said St. Cæcilia to Valerian, "proceed to the third milestone; there you will find some poor who ask alms from the passers-by. These poor are the objects of my constant solicitude; and my secret is known to them. Give them my blessing, and say Cæcilia sends me to you, in order that you may lead me to the holy old man Urban, for whom I have a secret message." * But let us hear Cæsar of Heisterbach, in the middle ages, citing instances of the holiness of the poor: "A few years ago," he says, "died a man who had been blind from his birth, a simple man, whose name was Engilbert. On account of various gifts with which divine grace had illuminated his interior, he was known through diverse provinces, and by many and great persons of both sexes much venerated. In a simple hood and woollen tunic, barefooted, with a little boy to lead him, he visited many remote holy places, never eating flesh, nor sleeping in a bed, but only on straw. I have seen many of his good deeds, and he edified me and many others by his conversation and example. On one occasion, some thieves entering by night the house of a rich matron in which he lay, he seized a key, and made such a noise with it, striking right and left like a furious man, that he drove them out of the house. It happened afterwards, that the same men, moved, as I think, by his prayers, went to confession, and lived ever afterwards a religious life. And, because the Lord speaks with the simple, a spirit of prophecy was given to him, so that the loss of exterior light was compensated by the brightness of his interior eyes. One time, being invited by the duchess of Saxony, the wife of Duke Henry, a very religious matron, he predicted to her, among other things, that one of her sons would be emperor. This we saw fulfilled afterwards, in Otho, who succeeded Henry in the empire. After his election, being in great tribulations, and almost despised of by all, he was comforted by the same blind man, who assured him that in every way what was preordained by God would be fulfilled." † Such poor persons are still found in Catholic countries. "The song of Paradise," says Hersart de la Villemarque, in his work on the Breton Popular Chants, "of which the air is as sweet and charming as the poetry, was sung to me for the first time by a poor beggar, seated at the foot of a cross on the road-side. She could hardly restrain her emotion; but she wept as she sung it." An English traveller in Spain met a mendicant of the same class. "At Manzanares, a large village in La Mancha," he says, "as I stood in the market-place conversing with a curate, a ragged blind girl, about eighteen, dark as a mulatto, being accosted by me in Gitano, replied that she was no gypsy, and commenced asking me questions in very good Latin. She told me that she was born blind, and that a Jesuit priest had taken compassion on her when she was a child, and had taught her the holy language, in order that the attention and hearts of Christians might be more easily turned towards her: I soon discovered that he had taught her something more than Latin; for, upon telling her that I was an Englishman, she said, 'that she had always loved Britain, which was once the nursery of saints and sages, for example, Bede and Alcuin, Columbus and St. Thomas of Canterbury; but,' she added, 'those times had gone by, since the reappearance of Elizabeth.' Her Latin was pure, and when I, like a Goth, spoke of Anglia and Terra Vandalica, for Andalousia, she corrected me by saying, that 'in her language these places were called Britannia, and Terra Betica.' When we had finished our discourse, a gathering was made for her; the very poorest contributed something." He adds, that "the people seemed pleased at her conversing with me, as if impressed with a conviction that she could easily confound a stranger, whom they suspected of an evil belief." He was wise in his generation to fear this beggar: the stranger knew a lady, whose loss of friends and riches dated from the hour when the answer of a mendicant in London streets awoke her from the dreams of heresy, to leave her faith for sole abundance. And in fact, if the Catholic poor, confronted with men of the new opinions, are pressed with maxims of the false philosophy, their brief reply has often everlasting consequences. It is, at all events, significative of their happy and most wise ignorance, for they are content with saying, "Sirs, you speak a language that I understand not." Against the modern errors respecting certain dispensations from the moral law, consequent upon extreme indigence, they are in general well armed, without having read Cicero. If asked his question, "Nonne sapiens, si fame ipse conficiatur, abstulerit cibum alteri, homini ad nullam rem utili?" while the patriot and the orator, and I know not who else besides, will answer in the affirmative, the Catholic poor man, who has least heard speak the

educated classes, answers from the dictates of nature, in accordance with the Roman sage, "Minime vero. Non enim mihi est vita mea utilior, quam animi talis affectio, neminem ut violem commodi mei gratia." * While the maxims of some who would relieve his wretchedness are often far below the standard of the pagan morality, no one can doubt that he is Christian from the heart. His humble formulas of demand, his meek replies, his devout expressions of thanks to the chance almoner, can all awaken a train of Catholic thoughts, and direct men to investigate the source of such wide-extended and holy traditions. "Two beggars told me," says the tired wandering Imogen, seeking for Milford Haven, "that I could not miss my way;" and in the forest of life such poor folks can often direct lost travellers to the true harbour of refuge, where all find safety, and him who is their lover for eternity. Yes! still even in unblessed places they speak the language of our holy faith. As in the old mystery, when a charitable lady gives a sack of corn to a beggar at her gate, they reply

"Dame, Dieu, qui voit et perçoit
Des cœurs le vouloir plainement,
Le vous rende au grant jugement
Qu'il doit tenir!"†

Catholic poetry has thus at times chosen for its theme the poor beggar. But oh! how unlike is the character it represents to that which songsters of the modern views present us with, when they wish to describe him! the one devout, meek, charitable, resigned; the other godless, hating mankind, in stern defiance, and even in death, proud of his isolation. “In this pit," says the Old Vagabond of the infidel poet, who in one exquisite picture portrays the philosophy and civilization of the age along with him

"Let us end in this pit where I have sunk,
Old, weak, and weary I die;
Those who pass will say that he is drunk,
So best; I hate their sigh.
I see some who turn away their faces;
Others throw me from afar some pence;
Speed on to the fête to the races,
Without you I can pass hence.
To artisans, when young, I used to cry,
Teach me some good trade, I pray-

* De Offic. iii. 6.

+ Miracle de Nostre Dame, comment elle garda une femme d'estre arsé.

Begone, we have not too much work, swear I,
Begone, and beg your way.

Work, work, ye rich, who used to say,

Some bones have you thrown to me, poor sot;

'Tis true I have slept upon your hay,
Old Vagabond, I curse you not.

The pauper has he a country?

What are your wines and corn to me?

And your gold and your industry?
And your senate with its oratory?
I might have stolen, -yes, poor wretch;
But no, better to hold out my hand, said I.
At most 'twas some apple from the ditch,
That had ripened the high road by.
Yet twenty times have they imprisoned me,
In the name of some new law,

To take all they were then sure to see;
But, Old Vagabond, the sun I saw.
As an insect, that can only injure men,
O rich! why not on me tread?
Ah! you should have rather taught me then
How to earn my daily bread.
Saved from the blight that is not seen,
Twould be an ant, not a worm so;
A brother dear you would have been ;
But, as it is, I die your foe."

The poet who thus paints the mendicant unconsciously bears his tribute to the Catholic religion, which had removed all the social evils he deplores, changed indifference into charity, murmurs into songs of thanksgiving, and the scowling enemy of the rich into a brother already attached to them, with the love that was to endure in a just and happy world for the eternal years.

It is needless to recall here the different signals which we have now passed directing to Catholicity on the road of the poor. If men are inclined to pursue some circling path without heeding them, it is not by a recapitulation of them in the style of a rhetorician's epilogue that their feet can be retained upon the way of peace.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ROAD OF CAPTIVES.

HROUGH the forest of life, as in the natural wood, are some very ancient tracks, like those called after Brunehault in France, and the Romans in England, which seem to invite rather the antiquarian than the common traveller; being now, except here and there

at a few places, quite impassable and overgrown with trees, or nearly buried beneath the soil which has been accumulating over them by the works and ruins of successive generations.

The

Leaving the road of the poor, and following a transverse alley in order to enter at once upon some one of the special ways of active life, at an oak which bears on its huge trunk an image of St. Leonard, we arrive at the intersection of one of these ancient causeways, now strewed with husks and formless ruin of oblivion, which present perhaps more an historical memorial than a positive advantage to the wayfarer; and yet, finding ourselves thus upon it here, we cannot make a better choice than to follow it for some distance. ground over which it leads is still, like that we have just traversed, closely bordering on the region of practical life; and, after proceeding a few steps, we shall find that formerly no road of the world's wilderness commanded more glorious views of the benefits resulting from Catholicity. It still leads, therefore, in a straight direction to the Catholic Church those who follow it with eyes intent upon the past, and on the signals which once directed the multitudes that thronged it; and although the road of captives be no longer in much use, in consequence of the changed condition of the world, and the fallen state of the Pagan and Mahometan powers, which caused it for so many ages to be a beaten way of men engaged in voyages and commerce, there are still some parts where it is followed by a few, whose opportunities of beholding the truth of Catholicity must not be passed over in silence. Besides, its ancient fame cannot but arrest the steps of all who pass near the road of the poor, and invite them, however impatient, to trace it for some space before they leave this district of the intellectual forest, which seems more immediately to derive its whole character from the many ways of