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                                   THE
                             CATHOLIC WORLD.

                                    A
                            MONTHLY MAGAZINE
                                   OF
                     GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

                               VOL. XXII.
                     OCTOBER, 1875, TO MARCH, 1876.

                                NEW YORK:
                     THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
                            9 Warren Street.
                                  1876.




CONTENTS.


    Allegri’s Miserere, 562.
    Anglicans, Old Catholics, and the Conference at Bonn, 502.
    Anti-Catholic Movements in the United States, 810.
    Apostolic Mission to Chili, The, 548.
    Are You My Wife? 13, 194, 309, 590, 735.

    Basques, The, 646.
    Birth-Place of S. Vincent de Paul, 64.

    Castlehaven’s Memoirs, 78.
    Chapter, A, in the Life of Pius IX., 548.
    Charities of Rome, The, 266.
    Christmas Vigil, A, 541.
    Colporteurs of Bonn, The, 90.

    Doctrinal Authority of the Syllabus, 31.
    Duration, 111, 244.

    Early Persecutions of the Christians, 104.
    Eternal Years, The, 656, 841.

    Finding a Lost Church, 282.
    Freemasonry, 145.
    Friends of Education, The, 758.
    From Cairo to Jerusalem, 529.

    Garcia Moreno, 691.
    Gladstone Controversy, Sequel of the, 577, 721.
    Grande Chartreuse, A Night at the, 712.

    Historical Romance, A, 43, 162, 339, 614, 772.

    Incident of the Reign of Terror, An, 260.
    Indian Legend, 277.
    Is She Catholic? 188.

    King of Metals, The, 417.

    Law of God, The, and the Regulations of Society, 223.
    Lord Castlehaven’s Memoirs, 78.
    Lost Church, Finding a, 282.
    Louise Lateau before the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, 823.

    Madame’s Experiment, 637.
    Message, A, 445.
    Midnight Mass in a Convent, 523.
    Missions in Maine from 1613 to 1854, 666.
    Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 289.

    Nellie’s Dream on Christmas Eve, 560.
    New Hampshire, Village Life in, 358.
    Night at the Grande Chartreuse, A, 712.

    Palatine Prelates of Rome, 373.
    Pious Pictures, 409.
    Power, Action, and Movement, 379.
    Precursor of Marco Polo, A. 210.
    President’s Speech at Des Moines, The, 433.
    President’s Message, The, 707.
    Primitive Civilization, 626.
    Progress _versus_ Grooves, 276.
    Protestant Episcopal Church Congress, The, 473.
    Prussia and the Church, 678, 787.

    Queen Mary, 1.
    Questions Concerning the Syllabus, 31.

    Recollections of Wordsworth, 329.
    Reign of Terror, An Incident of the, 260.
    Revival in Frogtown, A, 699.
    Rome, The Charities of, 266.
    Rome, The Palatine Prelates of, 373.

    S. Agnes’ Eve Story, A, 637.
    St. Jean de Luz, 833.
    Search for Old Lace in Venice, A, 852.
    Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy, 577, 721.
    Sir Thomas More, 43, 162, 339, 614, 772.
    Songs of the People, 395.
    Story of Evangeline in Prose, The, 604.
    Story with Two Versions, A, 800.
    Summary Considerations on Law, 223.

    Traces of an Indian Legend, 277.
    Tennyson’s Queen Mary, 1.

    Village Life in New Hampshire, 358.
    Vincent de Paul, S., Birth-Place of, 64.

    William Tell and Altorf, 127.
    Wordsworth, Recollections of, 329.

    Year, The, of Our Lord 1875, 565.
    Yule Raps, 484.


POETRY.

    Adelaide Anne Procter, 89.
    Æschylus, 209.

    Christmas Chimes, 501.

    Free Will, 559.

    Not Yet, 394.

    “O Valde Decora!” 12.

    Paraphrase from the Greek, A, 222.
    Patient Church, The, 613.

    S. Philip’s Home, 139.
    S. Louis’ Bell, 527.
    Seven Fridays in Lent, The, 734.
    Sine Labe Concepta, 357.
    Song, 275.
    Sonnets in Memory of the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, 444.
    Stars, The, 126.
    Suggested by a Cascade at Lake George, 771.
    Summer Storms, 416.
    Sweet Singer, A, 89.

    To-day and Yesterday, 564.

    Unremembered Mother, The, 110.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

    Acta et Decreta Concilii Vaticani, 718.
    Alcott’s Eight Cousins, 431.
    Allibert’s Life of S. Benedict, 575.
    American State and American Statesmen, 719.
    Allies’ Formation of Christendom, 858.
    American Catholic Quarterly Review, The, 859.

    Baunard’s Life of the Apostle S. John, 573.
    Bégin’s Le Culte Catholique, 286.
    Bégin’s The Bible and the Rule of Faith, 288.
    Birlinger’s Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, 718.
    Boudon’s Holy Ways of the Cross, 717.
    Buckley’s Supposed Miracles, 856.

    Calderon’s Groesste Dramen religiösen Inhalts, 718.
    Clarke’s Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 575.
    Coleridge’s Public Life of Our Lord, 717.
    Constable and Gillies, Personal Reminiscences of, 720.
    Cudmore’s Civil Government of the States, etc., 429.
    Correction, A, 860.

    Dix’s The American State and American Statesmen, 719.

    Earle’s Light leading unto Light, 143.
    Eight Cousins, 431.
    Evidences of Catholicity, 574.
    Exposition of the Church, An, etc., 419.
    Exposition of the Epistles of S. Paul, etc., 144.

    First Annual Report of the Chaplain of the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
    Flowers from the Garden of the Visitation, 287.
    Formation of Christendom, The, 858.
    Full Course of Instruction in Explanation of the Catechism, 432.

    Garside’s The Sacrifice of the Eucharist, 718.

    Historical Scenes from the Old Jesuit Missions, 575.
    History of the Protestant Reformation, 574.
    Holland’s Sevenoaks, 430.
    Holy Ways of the Cross, etc., 717.

    Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, 430.
    Indoors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney Corner, 720.

    Jannet’s Les Etats-Unis Contemporains, etc., 716.

    Kavanagh’s John Dorrien, 287.
    Kip’s Historical Scenes, 575.
    Knight and Raikes’ Personal Reminiscences, 288.

    Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, Personal Recollection of, 428.
    Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen Kirchenrechts, 718.
    Lonormant’s Madame Récamier and her Friends, 431.
    Life and Letters of Paul Seigneret, 576.
    Life of S. Benedict, 575.
    Life of the Apostle S. John, 573.
    Light leading unto Light, 143.
    Lynch’s (Bishop) Pastoral Letter, 576.

    MacEvilly’s Exposition of S. Paul’s Epistles, etc., 144.
    Manual of the Sisters of Charity, 432.
    Manual of Catholic Indian Missionary Associations, 859.
    Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, 574.
    Miller’s Ship in the Desert, 573.
    Miscellanea, 432.
    Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 575.
    Moriarty’s Wayside Pencillings, 431.
    Morris’ The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 141.

    Noethen’s Report of the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
    Noethen’s Thirteen Sermons, etc., 144.

    Pastoral Letter of Bishop Lynch, 576.
    Perry’s Full Course of Instruction, etc., 432.
    Persecutions of Annam, The, 719.
    Personal Reminiscences by Knight and Raikes, 288.
    Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, 428.
    Personal Reminiscences by Constable and Gillies, 720.
    Public Life of Our Lord, 717.

    Rohling’s Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, 574.

    Sacrifice of the Eucharist, etc., 718.
    Sadlier’s Excelsior Geography, 430.
    Sevenoaks, 430.
    Ship in the Desert, The, 573.
    Shortland’s The Persecutions of Annam, 719.
    Spalding’s Miscellanea, 432.
    Spalding’s Evidences of Catholicity, 574.
    Spalding’s History of the Reformation, 574.
    Story of S. Peter, 718.
    Supposed Miracles, 856.

    Thirteen Sermons preached in the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
    Three Pearls, The, 573.
    Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, The, 141.

    Vering’s Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen
        Kirchenrechts, 718.
    Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, 718.

    Wayside Pencillings, etc., 431.

    Young Catholic’s Illustrated Table Book, etc., 430.




THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXII., No. 127.--OCTOBER, 1875.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.


MR. TENNYSON’S QUEEN MARY.[1]

Mr. Tennyson has achieved a great reputation as a lyric poet. He urges
now a higher claim. In the sunset of a not inglorious life, when we
should have expected his lute to warble with waning melodies and less
impassioned strains, he lays it aside as too feeble for his maturer
inspirations, and, as though renewed with the fire of a second youth, he
draws to his bosom a nobler instrument, and awakes the echoes of sublimer
chords. He has grown weary of the lyric

    “hœrentem multa cum laude coronam,”

and with some confidence claims the dramatic bays. Nay, he even invites a
comparison with Shakspere. True to the temper of the times, his prestige
follows him in so hazardous a competition, the accustomed wreaths are
showered upon him with unreflecting haste, and the facile representatives
of the most incapable of critics--public opinion--have already offered
him that homage as a dramatist which had already been too lavishly
offered to his idyllic muse.

It is an ungrateful task to go against the popular current, and it is
an ungracious one to object to crowns which the multitude have decreed.
But there is no help for it, unless we would stoop to that criticism of
prestige which is so characteristic of the age, and would follow in the
wake of the literary rabble, criticising the works by the author, instead
of the author by his works.

We may as well say, at once, that we have never felt it in our power
to acknowledge the poetical supremacy of the English poet-laureate.[2]
It has always appeared to us that there is, in his poetry, a lack of
inspiration. To borrow a too familiar but expressive metaphor, the coin
is highly burnished, glitters brightly, and has the current stamp, but
one misses the ring of the genuine metal. He sits patiently on the
tripod, dealing forth phrases as musical as Anacreon’s numbers, and
as polished as those of a Greek sophist, spiced with a refined humor,
which has a special charm of its own. But his soul does not kindle at
the sacred fire. We miss the divine frenzy. A passionateness of love
of the beautiful does not appear to be the quickening inspiration of
his creations. All alike show signs of extreme care and preparation. We
do not forget the counsel of Horace. But that only refers to a distant
revision of creations which an unchecked genius may have produced under
the divine influence. Whereas, Mr. Tennyson’s poetry bears evidence of
infinite toil in production. All his thoughts, ideas, and images, down to
words and phrases, are too evidently, instead of the happy inspirations
of genius, the labored workmanship of a polished, refined, and fastidious
mind. They something resemble the _tout ensemble_ of a _petit maître_
who has succeeded in conveying to his dress an appearance of such
consummate simplicity and unexceptionable taste that every one notices
the result of hours before the mirror. His diction is pure and polished,
his phrases simple and nervous, and the English language owes him much
for what he has done towards neutralizing the injury inflicted on it
by the gaudy phraseology of the “correct” poets, and the antithetical
sesquipedalianism of such prose writers as Johnson and Gibbon, and
for preserving it in its pure and nervous simplicity. But his soul is
dull to the poetic meanings of nature. His natural scenery is rather
descriptive than a creation, much as artists, of whom there are not a
few, who reproduce with consummate skill of imitation objects in detail,
and bestow infinite care upon color, shade, perspective, grouping, and
all the other technical details of a picture, whilst comparatively
indifferent to the subject, which ought to be the poetic meaning of
creations of genius. And what are they but only fruitful manifestations
of the love of the beautiful, and echoes of its creative word, not the
mere manipulations of an artificer? Mr. Tennyson’s descriptions of nature
owe their vividness to the brilliance of word-painting and a certain
refined delicacy of touch; sometimes, even, and indeed very often, to a
certain quaint humor which is inconsistent with the highest art--it is
not a passionate love which regards the object beloved from a ridiculous
point of view--as when he describes the willows living adown the banks of
a streamlet as “shock-headed pollards _poussetting_ down the stream.”

The sensations provoked by his poetry resemble those of one who has
sauntered through a museum of precious stones of rare workmanship and
purest water. Our æsthetic taste has been pleased by the glitter and the
color and the brilliance, but our mind and heart have not been deeply
moved. His poems are ablaze with detached thoughts of lofty meaning,
and of a multitude of others whose meaning is not obvious, all alike
expressed in vivid imagery, in the purest phraseology, and in rare melody
of rhythm. But they are confused and cabalistic. He seems to be always
laboring to be incomprehensible. He calls it “the riddling of the bards.”
And he succeeds. The problem of the Sphinx, the emblematic warning sent
by the Scythians to their Persian invader, the mute counsel sent by the
Samian to the Corinthian tyrant, a Delphic oracle, all were clear and
easy by comparison with Mr. Tennyson’s lyrics, alike in detached passages
and in entire poems. None of woman born can fathom the meaning of the
_Idylls of the King_.

This defect alone is fatal to poetry. So keenly did Spenser feel it that
although the meaning of his allegory, _The Faerie Queene_, is obvious
enough to any ordinary intelligence, he is careful to explain it in full
in a letter dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh.

Mr. Tennyson, on the contrary, involves himself in the thickest mystery
he can contrive, and expects his worshippers to take it for inspiration.
Take the following, for example, from “The Coming of Arthur”:

    “Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow in the sky!
      A young man will be wiser by-and-by,
    An old man’s wit may wander e’er he die.

    “Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow on the lea!
      And truth is this to me, and that to thee
    And truth, or clothed or naked, let it be.

    “Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows,
      Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?
    From the great deep to the great deep he goes.”

These are, no doubt, “riddling triplets,” as he himself calls them. The
riddling of Shakspere’s fools, even the wanderings from the night of
distraught Ophelia’s brain, are light itself by the side of them. We may
well echo his invocation of “Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who
knows?” Whatever inspiration may be evident here, it is not that of the
beautiful. And yet even this has snatches of meaning which many passages
we might adduce have not; as the following, from “Gareth and Lynette”:

    “Know ye not, then, the riddling of the bards?
    Confusion, and illusion, and relation.
    Elusion, and occasion, and evasion?”

It is almost a pity that the bard did not complete his “riddling” while
he was about it. Another couplet:

    Diffusion, and ablution, and abrasion.
    Ablution, expectation, botheration,

would have rendered still more impenetrable the bardic mystery.

There is no resemblance in this studied concealment of meaning, if
meaning there be, to that

            “Sacred madness of the bards
    When God makes music through them,”

of which he sings. It is more like the melodious confusion of the Æolian
harp. Even if the poet have a definite meaning in his own mind, if he
so express it that I cannot even guess it, to me it is nonsense; and
nonsense, however melodious, although it may enchant my sense, cannot
move my heart. Here and there, however, our poet sings snatches of real
poetry, as Sir Bedivere’s answer to his king in “The Coming of Arthur”:

    “I heard the water lapping on the craig
    And the long ripple washing in the reeds.”

Upon the whole, Mr. Tennyson excels in a certain underlying vein of
exquisitely refined humor. And when his subject admits of it, he is
unrivalled. His is the poetry of humor. We would name as examples “The
Northern Farmer” and the satirical poem, “Locksley Hall,” perhaps the
most vigorous of all his productions; and, of his longer poems, _The
Princess_. It is for this reason we think he is more likely to excel, as
a dramatist, in comedy than in tragedy.

If our readers would estimate the full force of our remarks, we would
invite them to read the works of any of the principal of our earlier
lyrical poets, as, for example, Collins. We name him because he too
excels in that melody of versification for which Mr. Tennyson is so
distinguished. At times, as in his “Sonnet on Evening,” he surpasses the
Laureate in that respect, although for sustained and unfailing rhythmical
melody the latter bears away the palm from him, and perhaps from every
other rival. But in profound sympathy with nature, in the fidelity of his
creations, in the echoes of the beautiful which he provokes within the
soul of the reader, the Poet-Laureate must yield to the Demy of Magdalen.
Like Shakspere, he peopled inanimate nature with a fairy world, and
amongst elves and genii and other dainty spirits he abandoned himself to
that power of impersonation which is almost an attribute of a true poet.

Our space does not admit of illustrative quotations, but we would refer
the reader inclined to institute the comparison suggested to the elegy
over Fidele, in the play of _Cymbeline_, and to his _Eclogues_.

Mr. Tennyson’s poetry has beauties of its own peculiar kind of so
remarkable and striking a description that we might have hesitated to
take any exceptions whatsoever to his poetical genius. But his new poem,
his first effort in dramatic poetry, seems to us to set all doubt at
rest. It convinces us that, for whatever reasons, of the highest flights
of poetic inspiration Mr. Tennyson is incapable. We are convinced that he
lacks that which constitutes a great poet. However beautiful his poetry,
we feel that it wants something which, however keenly we may be sensible
of it, it is not easy either to analyze or explain.

For what is the inspiration of poetry but the echoes of the beautiful
within the soul of man? The universe of things is the visible word
of God. It is his essential beauty projected by an energy of creative
love--the quickening spirit opening his wings over chaos--into an
objective existence, on which its generator looked with complacency
as “very good,” and which he generated in order that his creature,
whom he had made in his own image, might, with himself, rejoice in
its contemplation. He did not, at first, endow him with the power of
beholding himself “face to face,” but only his reflex. We have the right
to believe that, whilst in union with his Maker, he read at a glance the
meaning of the word, he felt instantaneously the beauty of the image. His
nature, into which no discord had as yet been introduced, uncondemned
to the judgment of painful toil, did not acquire charity and knowledge
by long and laborious processes, disciplinary and ratiocinative, but by
intuition. Incapable as yet of the Beatific Vision, he comprehended the
whole of the divine beauty as revealed in creation, and the comprehension
itself was a transport of love. He saw, and knew, and loved, and the
three were one simultaneous energy of the sonship of his nature. But, as
now, “the greatest of these was charity.” It was the result and sum and
end of the sight and knowledge. It was the feeling they inevitably and
unremittingly occasioned. To speak as we can only speak in our actual
condition, it was as those thuds of loving admiration with which our
hearts throb when we look upon some surpassing embodiment of innocent
and modest female loveliness. When the mind, jealous of pre-eminence,
led captive, so to speak, the heart in revolt against the revealed law,
the human being was no longer in union with himself, a war of impulses
and of energies was set up within him, the image of God was defaced, his
perception of created beauty became more and more obscure as he went
further away from his original abode of innocence, until, finally, it was
all but lost. The emotion, if we may describe it as such, which it was of
its nature to suggest, could not perish, for it is imperishable. But it
had lost its true object, and surveyed knowledge in a form more or less
degraded.

Now out of this very faint and rapid sketch of a psychological theory
which would require a volume for its development, we hope to be able to
convey some idea, however vague, of the nature of the poetic spirit.

It is certain that the remains of the divine image have not since been
alike and equal in all the individuals of the race. It may be asserted,
on the contrary, that there are no two human microcosms in which the
elements of the confusion introduced into them by the original infidelity
exist in the same proportion. Those in whom the intelligence is the
quickest to see, and the mind, heart, and soul to love in unison, the
image of divine beauty revealed in creation--those, that is, in whom the
divine image remains the most pronouncedly--are the truest poets.

When this echo of the soul to the beautiful does not go beyond the
physical creation, the inspirations of love express themselves in lyric
or idyllic poetry. The poet imitates the divine Creator in reproducing,
even creating, images of his lower creation so faithful and suggestive
that they who look upon them experience similar sensations and emotions
to those provoked within them by the divine creation itself, nay, not
unseldom, even profounder ones. He reveals