Christ, and we find in it the outlines of this new social philosophy. We look at the history of the early Church, and we find attempts made to reconstitute society on a basis which is precisely that of Marx and Lassalle. We open our canonists, and discover that Social-Democratic dogmas are the social dogmas of the infallible Church, formulated before modern society had developed into the monster which it now is. De Maistre a hundred years ago said: "When I consider the general weakening of moral principles, the immensity of our needs, and the inanity of our means, it seems to me that every true philosopher must choose between these two hypotheses either he must form a new religion altogether, or Christianity must be rejuvenated in some extraordinary manner. Everything announces some grand unity, towards which we are advancing with mighty strides." That is what I expect too, and expect to find it in Social Democracy-not in a godless communism, but in a great Christian social revival. Wait a bit. The day may not be so distant when the successor of St. Peter will set himself at the head of this movement, and Christ will appear Himself not merely as the moral but also the social regenerator of the world. Empires, constitutional monarchies, republics have been tried, and have not proved completely successful. Perhaps a great Christian SocialDemocratic State will prove the solution of the question how men are to be governed. The Apostolic Chair has not received sufficient favours from modern emperors, kings, and presidents to have much scruple in consigning them to the lions. The phoenix may consume her nest, but she will spring from the flames newborn, victorious.'

I do not say that Socialism has made much way among German Catholics. On the contrary, I assert that it has

not; but I do assert that Catholicism is not likely to oppose its extension.1

There stands, however, in Germany, one dyke against which Social Democracy may dash itself, but which it will never undermine or overleap-not the iron empire, not penal laws, not the military force, not the Catholic Church, but the great Bauerstand-a Portland Beach of very small pebbles, loosely lying together, uncemented, but impossible to move or break through. The Bauerstand clings to real property with inflexible tenacity. Not a bauer can be allured by the dreams of communism; and the Bauerstand is the basis of the empire. In the Russo-Turkish war, the spade proved a more important weapon than the bayonet; and in the future battle between property and proletariatism, the spade will make the rifle pits in which the capitalists will cower, and from which they will decimate their assailants.

The recent encyclical of the Pope on Socialism has been in fact a slap in the face of the Jesuits, who have for long been coquetting with Social Democracy, and whose trump card has been the above programme.

CHAPTER XVII.

CULTURE.

Viola.-The rudeness that hath appeared in me, have I learned from my entertainment.

Twelfth Night, act i. sc. 5.

For thirty years Germany was a battle-field. In Saxony 900,000 men had fallen within two years; in Bohemia the number of inhabitants had sunk to one-fourth. Augsburg, instead of 80,000 inhabitants, numbered but 18,000. Every province, every town throughout the empire had suffered in like manner. The country was completely impoverished. The trades had disappeared. The busy looms were hushed, the factories destroyed, the warehouses gutted. Vast provinces, once flourishing and populous, lay entirely waste and uninhabited. In Franconia-which, owing to her central position, had been traversed by every party during the war-the misery and depopulation had reached such a pitch, that the Franconian Estates, with the assent of the bishops, abolished the celibacy of the Catholic clergy, and permitted each layman to marry two wives, on account of the numerical superiority of the women over the men. Science and the arts had fled the realm. In place of learning, pedantry dragged on a wretched existence; and when a desire came for works of art, Germany was fain to import a style from France. It had none of its own. Thirty years are a

generation. A generation had grown up without the restraints of moral or other law; had grown up with their only idea of right—the right of the strongest. Mediæval culture had been killed in the course of development. The humanising effects of a gradually unfolding civilisation were undone, and the whole nation was replunged in barbarism. Chivalrous respect for women was gone; domestic life was done away with. To bouse and fight in the taverns became the practice of men. Art had to be recreated or imported. Poetry, literature, painting were extinguished. Religion also had expired.

I was speaking once at Lille with an old French commercial traveller, on the irreligion of Frenchmen as compared with Belgians. He made the excuse: Foreigners forget, in judging us, that a whole generation grew up without God, without public worship, without religion of any sort, under the first Republic. Republic. God, worship, religion became only a tradition. The Church had to relay her foundations, and start with the reconversion of a country with a gap in its past.'

In Germany culture of every kind became a tradition only. A gulf of thirty years stood between the old civilisation and the new era. Everything had to be reconquered, on every field. Everywhere lay only ruins; and it was not till more than thirty years later that the heart came back to men to set up again the fallen stones.

This most important consideration must not be put aside in estimating modern Germany. We have had no such break in the continuity of our civilisation since the Wars of the Roses, and they were a trifle compared with that of thirty years in Germany. Our social development has, therefore, not been spasmodic, but leisurely and methodical. But in Germany civilisation has not been as systematic. The advance has not been all along the line.

In some departments there has been extraordinary development; in others stagnation. German wood-engraving is absolutely unsurpassed by any in Europe. German architecture is in the lowest abyss of degradation. In figure-drawing German artists are all but unrivalled; in colour they are nowhere. In poetry they have conquered a proud position; in romance they have yet one to make. In science they have proved themselves masters of destructive criticism; they have done little as yet in the more difficult work of construction. 'Germans,' says Dr. Croly in his preface to 'Salathiel,' are never content till they have demonstrated all facts to be fiction, and laboured to convert all fiction into facts.'

The German intellect is sharpened and polished into the most admirable instrument, but the 'manner' which 'maketh man' is left sadly untutored. This is what every Frenchman or Englishman notices. It is impossible to blink a patent fact. But allowance is not made often enough for the Thirty Years' war, whose fatal influence is still felt in this particular. It is not my wish or intention to illustrate this deficiency in culture of manner by modern examples, but rather to excuse it. Germans who have associated with foreigners are ready enough to admit the want of refinement at home, and lament it; but they can always excuse it by pointing back at their history. Modern politesse is the development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of medieval chivalry. Mediævalism, with all its good as well as its evil, was buried in Germany in the seventeenth century, and a new civilisation started. In two hundred years the fruit cannot be as mature as that which has ripened through seven hundred.

The mischief wrought by the Thirty Years' war was not merely the rupture with the past. It went farther; it interfered with future amendment by insulating the