Those in Rome who are praying and working for the uniting once again of the Orthodox Church with the See of St. Peter, were encouraged by the sight of the Orthodox Archimandrite and some of his flock who came to honour St. Nicolas at the Greek Liturgy celebrated at the Church of St. Nicolas in Carcere for the closing of the seventh centenary year of the church.

St. Nicolas, called the Wonder-worker, has long been venerated by both East and West. Russia, in particular, has had great devotion to the sainted Archbishop of Mira, who is known as Nicolas of Bari, on account of his body being at that Adriatic port.

The church of this Saint was suitably prepared for his feast day on December 6th by having ikons of Our Lord, Our Blessed Lady, and St. Nicolas placed before the sanctuary where the ikonostasion would have been, had it been an oriental church. The Liturgy was celebrated by the Rector of the Greek College, and five other priests of the Byzantine Rite, including a Russian and two Roumanians, concelebrated.

Of the hero of this story I know little, but as that little is known perhaps only to me, I record it. It must have been some time in 1915 that I first met him. At a dismal ‘depôt’ in the Midlands, I was sharing a leaky tent with a fellow Second Lieutenant known to his friends as ‘Jimbo.’ As we were endeavouring, by means of a Primus stove, to dry some clothes faster than the leakage of the tent wetted them, we were nowise pleased to hear that a newcomer was allotted to our tent, and to have to make room for the baggage that his batman dropped squelching in the entrance. Its owner soon followed, muttering frightful things about the climate and the Kaiser.

He would have been tall if he had not stooped. He had thick black eyebrows that almost met, and that gave nim a scowling expression belied by the genial smile of his thick lips. We soon learned that he was our senior as an officer, and that he was some kind of engineer oy profession. It was some hours later that I found he was a Catholic. Though naturally silent, he was by no means unsociable, and he dropped into his place in that tent as though he had known us for years.

Was there ever such a benighted stretch of railway as the Birmingham, Cannock and Rugeley Line, L.M.S. P The grime, the smoke and reek, the glimpses of ‘dumps and the offal of modern industrial conditions, the gloomy, forbidding-looking stations, and the dank fields in between are so depressing that we instinctively bury ourselves in a book so as not to see the spectres.

Yet if we knew it, if Vre could but lift the veil of two hundred years, we might be conscious of spectres of a very different type. For we are on hallowed ground, even though now so defiled and besihirched that nothing seems further from it than romance. But here is the romance. In the British Museum there is preserved a list of convicted Recusants in the reign of Charles II. This list has been compiled from the returns made by the clerks of the peace in twenty-three counties during the years 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28 and 29, of Charles II. In it we have enshrined the names of 10,236 people who, rather than conform to the Church by law established, preferred to pay a fine of £20 a month for each grown-up person thus absenting himself, though only £10 for a wife.

Last September I had occasion to refer, in an Irish paper, to certain impressions a recent stay in Belgium had left in my memory. At that time Belgians were particularly interested in the so-called Louvain Controversy, which centred round a Latin inscription that the American architect of the New Library in Louvain, with singular lack of restraint, desired to impose on the building to the confusion of all wicked Germans and to the greater glory of all good Americans. The grandiloquent inscription was meant to crown his labours on this field of Flanders ten years after the close of the Great War. I noted some extraordinary features in the reactions of Belgian public opinion in this connection. The controversy, I had then reason to believe, was at an end. I was mistaken. According to the latest information from Belgium, the inglorious struggle has been renewed, to the disgust, we may be sure, of all true lovers of culture, not only in Belgium, but in America and the world over. One would like to know more of the reactions of public opinion in America on the issue that has quite recently been the subject of legal proceedings in Louvain, which have resulted in the American plaintiff being non-suited. But to come back to my own impressions of Belgium last year.

How Belgium has changed with the times. What, no doubt, will especially strike the traveller, who has known Flanders before the War, will be the rapid transformation that has taken place, not merely in the face of the country but in the very mind and spirit of the people. True, Bruges remains unchanged. Under the shadow of her belfry, lulled with sounds of sweetest melody, dreaming only of the past and heedless of the future, she slumbers to-day as peacefully as ever.

Fidelia Vulnera Amantis

In the September number of Blackfriars Father McNabb has attempted to trace the influence of Cartesian Doubt in the development of modern algebra. Now just as philosophy must not be identified with the fallacies of philosophers, so mathematics must not be identified with the mistakes of mathematicians, nor algebra with the absurdities of algebraists. To make such an identification betokens lack of knowledge of the subject under discussion. It is this nescience of modern algebra which vitiates the strictures passed by Father McNabb.

There are treatises on algebra which give a most unsatisfactory account of complex numbers, just as there are treatises on the Eucharist which give an unsatisfactory account of its sacrificial nature. But neither algebra nor theology is invalidated by the inadequacy of its exposition.

The article by Father McNabb affords an illustration of the lamentable lack of understanding between philosophers and mathematicians. A mathematician taking up the study of philosophy labours under the well-known disabilities due to the difference in the nature of proof demanded in each discipline. A philosopher taking up the study of mathematics is bewildered by the many meanings which the same mathematical term may possess in different branches of study. Thus the word ‘number’ may mean a signless integer, a positive or negative integer, a fraction, an irrational number, a complex number, a matrix, an operation. All these are distinct species of number and a mathematician, writing for mathematicians, often fails to state explicitly to which species he refers. Thus’ the statement that there exists no number whose square is equal to —i requires to be elucidated by a definition of the word ‘number.’ The statement remains true for the first four species of number mentioned above, but is false for the last three species.

A war between Prussia and France would succeed that with Austria in the logic of history.

I did not doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before the creation of a united Germany.

At the root of it (i.e., the war) was a clerical conspiracy.

Prince Bismarck.

If a united Germany and France can fight in a ring fence victory is virtually assured to us.

von Moltke.

Better the Prussians in Paris than the Sardinian troops in Rome.

But this is my war.

Empress Eugenie.

A war provoked by Prussia would be hailed by many as a welcome relief from internal troubles. So far as I can judge, Ollivier is not a man to shrink from it.

Lord Lyons (May 6th).

Peace has never been better assured.

Ollivier to the Chamber (June 30th).

Never has the political sky been so clear of clouds.

Mr. Hammond (Permanent Under-Secretary to Lord Granville) when he succeeded the Earl of Clarendon (July 5th).

If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to withdraw, it is war forthwith, and in a few days we are over the Rhine.

de Gramont (July 12th).

This is the most national war in which France has been involved. I can only rule if I lead, and I am borne away on a torrent which I am powerless to stem or control.

Napoleon III (July 15th).

While St. Vitus’s Dance stands in this twentieth century as a term perfectly well recognised, a query as to St. Hubert’s Disease would probably puzzle even most doctors in a sort of ‘How much do you know’ medical examination. But time was when it was quite a common synonym for Hydrophobia. The Saint, of course, was converted while in the hunting field, and so became the Patron of Hunters and incidentally of their Hounds. ‘His’ disease, then, was the ailment that occasionally attacks the pack. And this is only one out of plenty of similar instances.

In the Middle Ages ‘radegoundes’ was a recognised and very prevalent disease. It comes over and over again in the literature of the day, a notable instance being a reference in Piers Plowman. A kind of running sore, it owes its popular name to the patron saint of Poitiers, in France, Ste. Radegonde, wife of Clotaire the First. So many cures were effected at her tomb—later sacked by the Huguenots in 1562— that the ailment itself began to be called by the name of the saint. In precisely the same way St. Avertin’s Disease was an ancient name for epilepsy, so many miraculous cures having been wrought at the tomb of this saint, a friend, by the way, of our own St. Thomas of Canterbury, that in old French the word ‘aver-tineux’ figures as meaning epileptics. While on the subject, one might remember that the same malady had two other popular names, ‘St. John’s Evil’ often standing for epilepsy, and ‘St. Mathuron’s Disease’ being one more title sometimes found in the old medical books.

May it please the Company—Worthies, Worships, Elders and all my Betters : you know how a chance-found quotation will sometimes fish up from one’s subconscious mind a haul of impressions which, when they come to the surface, prove to be a valuable addition to one’s philosophy of life?

That has just happened to me, when, searching through one of my Common Place Books for Somebody’s terse and pertinent remark about Something, I came upon these words of Ernest Hello; whereupon I had to leave my other occupation to haul up the overwhelming catch of ideas and impressions it gave me.

‘Little men,’ he says, ‘borrow all their importance from their actions, which they accomplish. Without these actions they would be absolutely nothing.’

Tempora mutantur . . . Vergil knew the proverb; yet what a theme for his idyllic muse had he foreseen the restoration of the crumbled ruins of his Tiber city to recall the Golden Age! Even Nemi must be drained for its gold and galleons . . . . ‘Tempora mutantur........’ There is a hungering for the charm of antiquity, a charm which progress cannot destroy. Nor is it peculiarly Roman. The castles and cathedrals of Old England, signs of a lingering greatness, call to the heart of every genuine traveller with the same age-old voice.

Older civilizations, too, are not without this attraction. What of Spain, relic of the Ice Age, one might say? There is no need to resurrect her former glory by excavative endeavour, for the Plaza de Toros still rears its lofty, red-brick walls in disdain over the presumptive football ground that has ranged alongside. The gaudy artistry of cigar-box lids has yet its inspiration; the mantilla still survives, on occasion, the ubiquitous toque; nor has the automobile altogether ousted the bullock-cart off the country lane.

Of course, one does not realise this immediately. Every country has its own type of ‘red tapestry,’ and at Irun one makes acquaintance with the peculiar Spanish texture. It is a nuisance. International relationship seems to demand it. But why, in these enlightened days?

Then, the fresh beauty of the Pyreneean scenery soothes one’s ruffled feelings, and Iberia’s stronghold is entered.

It has been said that on the whole it is more important that the law should be certain than that it should be just. Perhaps it is by a similar process of reasoning that criminologists are led to aver that it is the certainty of punishment following the crime in a short space of time rather than the amount of punishment which provides the chief element in its deterrent effect.

The law prior to 1925 relative to the authority of the father over the religious education of his children was certain. It was also, on the whole, just. Difficulties arose from time to time in its application, but at least there was some fixed law to be applied. It will be well, therefore, to consider this law and afterwards to attempt to understand what alterations have been made by the Guardianship of Infants Act, 1925.

The Law of England may be classified under two headings, Common Law and Statute Law. Common Law is the Law of decided cases—case law. It finds its authority in the fiction that such law always existed and to such pre-existing law the judges appeal. In fact, of course, case law is judge-made law.

The position of the father at Common Law was peculiar. The absolute dominion of the father, the ‘patria potestas’ of Roman Law, was not given to him. He had no power over life and death. But almost every other power was his. Moreover, such paternal rights were not counter-balanced by corresponding duties.

The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland has issued a very beautiful book by way of accompaniment to the Centenary celebrations which took place in Dublin from the igth to the 23rd of June. The lucky person who obtains a copy will hesitate about lending it lest the borrower be tempted to hold it for keeps. It is excellently printed and well illustrated, and we feel that photography is put to the purpose for which surely it was intended when we see these pictures of exquisite works of art such as the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Bell, the Ardagh Chalice, the Cross of Cong and manuscript pages of the fine script peculiar to Ireland. The book is worth having for these photographs alone; but that is not to say that the letterpress is not all of a piece with the setting of the book. The articles are of a uniformly high standard, eminently readable and written with the easy grace, dignity and restraint which are the accompaniments of unconscious art. If this is a fruit of the New Ireland, then even our worst foes will not be able to withhold their grateful assent to emancipation as a thing of joy.

Now love to this unloving breast

Has come, abandoning a throne; And trustful as a child at rest He lays His head—upon a stone.

The Holy One to this foul cell

Descends to banquet there with me. What can I offer but the smell And running sores of leprosy?

Ah God! Ah Son of Man! Without A miracle how can it be?

Make now the very stones cry out,

The leper clean to welcome Thee..

Theodore Maynard.

During the last year or so, English Catholics have been subjected to a good deal of criticism. Their taste, their devotions, their religious education, their papers, have all been weighed and found wanting. Criticism is no bad thing, and Catholic criticism of Catholics is no new thing; for a certain measure of criticism is a sign of life, and, as Père Brou has well said of the Church, ‘Sa grande tradition, si l’on peut le dire, c’est de vivre.’ But the criticism to which I am now referring has this to distinguish it, that it is anonymous. No doubt, that is no new thing, either; but whether it is desirable is worth considering. We are told that an anonymous article is judged on its merits, as things should be judged; and we are led to presume that the signed article is judged with too much reference to the name, distinguished or not, that is appended to it.

The argument has had the support of some respectable names, and it might, at first sight, seem to have the authority of The Imitation of Christ, where it is written : ‘Non quaeras quishaec dixerit, sed quid dicatur, attende.’ But the quotation occurs in the chapter on the reading of Holy Scripture, and the attitude is recommended just because the scriptures are to be taken, not at their face value, but on the authority of God. And whatever the authority behind the opinion, it can hardly blame us for considering it on its merits, as, in fact, it bids us do.

All men fall under the spell of Vermeer’s pictures, although the roads leading to the temple of their adoration are many. This man bends the knee because the Delfter has taught him what colour really is; the man yonder loves them for their charming intimacy. To him Vermeer is the Elia of painters because he can introduce a man to his family and relatives without boring him and at the same time make him feel that he is the one and only friend to whom he accords the privilege. Another may be drawn by the intrinsic genre revealed in the interiors. I think I was first attracted to him on hearing that he paid his baker with his pictures instead of with coin; for there was ever a dearth of the latter in the Vermeer home.

It doesn’t really matter however why you like Vermeer : reasons are not always essential. We all understand the couplet:

‘I do not like thee Dr. Fell.
The reason why I cannot tell.’