it gave to the Church the great patriarch of the western monks, St. Benedict. Charity was as eminent in this patrician and consular house as the purity of its faith; so that, as we read in the letters of St. Augustin, it was always as Catholic in belief as perfectly Christian in regard to manners.* Such is the type according to which the Catholic Church tends to form the nobleman. As the old epitaph describes Chronopius, Bishop of Perigueux :

"Nobilis antiquo veniens de germine patrum,

Sed magis in Christo nobilior merito."+

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"As for the civil nobility," says Cardinal Palæotus, "unless
it be conjoined with Christian charity and piety, and referred
to the glory of the great God, it is vain and superfluous."+
But is this the type recognized without the Church? Truly
you must be of noble blood, since your anger can be appeased
so promptly," says Pedro Crespo, in the Alcade of Żalamea
by Calderon. This was logical within the Catholic Church;
but out of the reach of her influence would it be even intel-
ligible? We need not search far for the answer.
"The new
gentlemen," says the Breton poem, alluding to the infidel up-
starts who had turned out the old noble proprietors, “are hard
men. The old were good masters, and they loved the peasants
from their hearts." But we need not cross the seas for proof.
It was not a Catholic voice that cried,

"Alas the country! how shall tongue or pen.
Bewail her now uncountry gentlemen ?
The last to bid the cry of warfare cease,
The first to make a malady of peace.

For what were all these country patriots born?
To hunt and vote, and raise the price of corn?
The landed interest groans from shore to shore,
For fear that plenty should attain the poor.

They roar'd, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England-why then live? for rent!"

Before the false reform no one could so paint a race. Externi isti sunt mores. And mark how well did the noble trees of the ancient families respond to the culture which they received from the Church. "In quamcunque memorabilium partem exemplorum convertar," says Valerius, “ velim nolim, in cognomine Scipionum hæream necesse est." We may similarly

* Ep. 145.

† Père Dupuy, l'Estat de l'Eglise du Périgord, tom. i.

Card. Gab. Pal. de Imaginibus, lib. i. c. 7.

§ Hersart de la Villemarque, Chants Populaires de la Bretagne. Val. Max. lib. iii.

U

declare, that to whatever works of heroism, charity, or munificence we turn, whether in times past or present, we find the Catholic nobility gloriously though unostentatiously employed, furnishing occasion for the poet's eulogy:

"O! qui, nominibus cum sis generosus avitis,

Exsuperas morum nobilitate genus."

The illustrious family of Mathaplama had long borne for its arms ten lilies surrounding a man in chains, with this motto: "O Domine, libera me ab istis vinculis;" these arms having been granted to Enfremius de Matha, Count of Montforo, seeming a divine presage of the glory destined to that family, when it gave birth to John de Matha, one of the founders of the Order of the Holy Trinity for the redemption of captives from their chains.*

But it would be endless to cite instances. We must pursue this road no further, having sufficiently seen what rich compensation the higher classes receive from Catholicity, which, if it seems at the first glance to teach contempt for their cherished distinctions, repays them thus, as we have proved, for that imagined slight more than a thousand-fold, teaching,

"Ut quantum generi demas, virtutibus addas."+

All the forest round rings with the glory that they gained in consequence. But it is time to rest, and here await renewal of the day.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ROAD OF HONOUR.

ow many inviting paths open to the inexperienced feet of men on first entering the forest of this life; and how many snares await them, whichever they may choose to follow! Here is one, called the path of honour, branching off immediately from the last through an underwood of ancient laurels, stately, solemn, but full of perils further on, which many pretend, and some aspire, with all the energy of their souls, to pursue, whom we cannot refuse to accompany, as they challenge us to trace it

*Baron, Annales Ord. SS. Trin. 411.

† Hor. Ep. i. 20.

with them to its source. Upon the utmost verge of a high bank, by craggy rocks environed round, we climb; then passing on through grand imposing precipices, dark with the forest's gloom, we proceed thoughtful, nor stop till to a tower's low base we come. Here dwell those who, for interim to our studies, would relate in high-born words the worth of many a knight. But the whole way winds through castles; and my guides repeat such words as Dante heard

"See that thou mark

Some spirit whose name may by his deeds be known;
And to that end look round thee as thou go'st."

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"How many glorious examples," they exclaim, “ are found here of that private majesty, resulting from personal character, which, as Valerius says, can awe the wicked-Sine tribunalium fastigio, sine apparitorum ministerio!"* What wealth, or grandeur, or power," they ask, can be compared with this dignity, as when the presence of Cato refrained the people at the Floral games?" 66 Exiguum viri patrimonium, astricti continentia mores, modica clientela, domus ambitioni clausa, paterni generis una imago." Such a man will be to others of the common herd as is the osprey to the fish, who takes it by Sovereignty of nature. Let men of this stamp be thy models. They still cry,

"Inform

Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou may'st prove
To shame invulnerable, and stick i' the wars
Like a great sea-mark standing every flaw,

And saving those that eye thee."

These are the lessons of those who have affected the fine strains of honour. One by one they show us heroes; and of each I cry, with him who saw their later doom, “not yet mine eye hath had his fill." I therefore stay my feet to scan him; and the high enterprise I have in view permits that I should pause and, with these stately figures, walk backward a space.

"Honour we love ;

For who hates honour hates the gods above."

This first signal is sufficiently clear. It may be to paganism, then, that this road leads to the distinctions and to the temples of the pagans; for they thought it derogatory to the majesty of the gods to comprise honour and virtue in one temple. When Marcellus built a temple to honour and virtue, the college of pontiffs refused to consecrate it, saying that each must be worshipped apart; whereupon they built a

* Val. Max. ii.

second.* If this announcement should startle us as unjust, it is not from a want of warning tongues that we shall be disposed to wonder. Let us hear how many voices agree; and first, in recommending the straight direct road, from which this may be a deviation. "Take care not to lose the right way," says St. Ephrem, "lest you should stray into dark paths, and so become perverse and oblique before God and man, Væ enim,' cries the Wise Man, iis qui dere linquunt vias rectas, ut ambulent in viis tenebrarum. Væ his qui lætantur in malis et gaudent in consuetudine mala, quorum semita obliquæ ac pravæ, et flexuosi cursus eorum, ut longè abstraharis à via recta, et alieneris à sententia justa.' If by good paths they had walked, they would have found the ways of justice plain and easy. We must therefore keep the right way, and obey him who says, 'Ne declines ad dexteram neque ad sinistram: averte pedem tuum à via mala; vias enim quæ à dextris sunt, novit Dominus: perversæ autem sunt quæ à sinistris sunt." But is not the path of honour the right straight way? Yes, in the language of the world it is so; but the straight direction may be in an inverse sense from that which the former passages imply. "The language of the world," says D'Avila, "teaches, like that of the ancient Ro mans, which, as St. Augustin observes, was full of arrogance, to desire only honour and the esteem of men-honour for its own sake." O, vain honour, condemned by our Lord upon the cross at the cost of his great dishonour, that sittest in the temple of God, which is the Christian heart, like Antichrist, desiring to be adored for God! Let no one regard as a small evil the love of worldly honour; since our Lord, who knows the heart, has said, "How can you believe in me, since you seek honour one from the other, and not that which comes from God only?" It is not strange, then, that the austere school should denounce honour as it does. "This," says Olier, "is the unhappy idolatrous disposition from which hardly any one is exempt. The flesh, under the influence of the demon, ever since the sin of Adam, impels us to wish that we might occupy the place of God in the hearts of men, receiving honours from them, not to offer them to God, but to apply them to ourselves, to be worshipped in the world instead of God." Even natural light can show the baseness of this path; for this teaches us that men should do works worthy of honour, but not for honour's sake; for a great soul should be indifferent to blame or praise, and should deem nothing great but virtue. Let the Christian consider that since the world has despised the Son of God, who is eternal truth and *Val. Max. i. † S. Eph. Paræneses ad Mon. Catéchisme de la Vie Inter. xiii.

any

the sovereign good, no one should esteem its judgment of value; though every Christian is bound to have regard to his reputation, not for its sake, but in order not to offend his neighbour. Let us hear the answer given by that great rule of St. Basil to the question, "si oportet honorem quærere?" "We are to render honour to whom honour is due; but we are forbidden to seek honour, our Lord saying, How can you believe gloriam quærentes ab invicem? to seek such glory is equivalent to infidelity and a sign of alienation from God, the apostle saying, 'Si adhuc hominibus placere vellem, Christi servus non essem.' If they are condemned who receive the honour offered by men, of what judgment are they worthy who seek what is not even offered?" This, I repeat it, is an ancient road-so old, indeed, that we find our first mother following it, as where the poet ascribes to her the words which rightly express the heart that moved her, saying angrily

"But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt

To God or thee, because we have a foe

May tempt it, I expected not to hear."+

For such is the complaint of all the great, "glorying to have done so by their own strength, not by the sufferance of supernal power," whose cry is always in substance the same→→→

"Our puissance is our own; our own right hand
Shall teach us highest deeds -."S

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quam non in Deo "And what is the

This leads far from the centre, and near to things in consequence which should strike honour sad. "Nulla enim major iniquitas," as St. Isidore of Seville says, sed in se velle quempiam gloriari." || honour of the world," asks St. Bridget, "but wind and labour, and diminution of divine consolations? What is it to promise to a just man the honour of the world, unless to threaten him with the privation of spiritual advantage?" T The heart of the man who is thus fatally directed to the world's honour has contracted a spot which will extend over the whole character, and never cease spreading its obstructions till it has excluded all access to truth and to spiritual grace. The friend to God and the lover of this honour are at the antipodes of life; for, as St. Diadochus observes, "He who loves God no longer seeks his own honour, but rather desires Him to be honoured from whom he expects immortal hoRegula S. Basilis, lxiii. § Ibid. v.

* Euvres Spirit. d'Avila. Par. Lost, ix.

D. Isidori de Summo Bono, lib, i. c. 12. ¶ Revelationum S. Birgittæ lib. iv. c. 15.