care Besides, the paternal hand, ever ministering to a thoughtful heart, had placed solemn verses, borrowed from the Psalms, upon a wall where the green ivy climbed, leaving only part of the stone visible, thereby imparting a more profound mysterious force to the very words which seemed to issue from the depth of long past ages. Further, and this was a moment never to be forgotten, in his truant hunting through all secreted localities, he discovered one night a large crucifix, that seemed to drop blood, concealed in a huge old press belonging to some devout faithful creature, who proved to be the nurse. Some time afterwards, his visits to the oak press led to his finding what Robinson Crusoe discovered in rummaging the chests of the wreck, namely, what he calls "two or three popish prayerbooks," which, strange to remark, he tells us that he " fully secured," and which proved no less useful to this other lost navigator; for the books, with the crosses so mystically stamped upon the red illumined page, never left his memory. Such things only by stealth were seen; but others that pointed to the Church as clearly, were allowedly present before him; for the rooms and even ceilings were covered with pictures of angels and madonnas. Within doors, indeed, no one could be persuaded to disclose the great secret of which the child knew well they were all conscious; but the external family was not so easily to be silenced. There was a gardener, dear delightful friend, there were his sons, sweet kind boys, with whom he used to play, to dig, to plant, to uproot, to build, and to pull down what had been built. There was an old solemn steward, of whom he had an occasional glimpse, and a most familiar shepherd, who all adored in the strange distant chapel across the moor, that was called Roman, and who from time to time used to drop some words about it that fell upon his ear like sounds from another world. Nor was this all. A potent earl had a wide domain at a distance of seven miles, to whose castle he used often to be conducted with familiar guests. There, in one of the woods, under thick foliage, a cell of wood and moss, with dark green chambers echoing to the murmurs of a brooklet running by them, along which one arrived at it by a winding path, had filled his mind with love for anchorets, whose dwelling it was feigned to be; for it was expressly called the hermitage. Sounds too were used, slow plaintive tunes, played upon the flute in the twilight hour, by a dear playmate, though almost a man, who had the vice remarked by Horace,-never to be persuaded, when asked to sing; but, unordered, never to cease.* Ah, how some who had early mandates to depart are yet allowed to steal athwart his path to tell of days long past! This floating melody from * Sat. i. 3. a poor brother's flute, itself an artless thing, made with his own hands, like that we hear of in old idyls, the cutting of which had made sore the boy-musician's finger,* so sadly but sweetly beguiling summer evenings to a circle of children who loved to watch the owl's passing across the windows of the old hall in which they sat, thinking all the while of things past their utterance, acquired a different interest when he discovered afterwards that it was the music of the Catholic Church caught first by the peasant youth, then learnt from them by his brother, that he heard; for it is a fact, that in all lands the children of the poor love to sing them, so consonant are they with that natural chant of man which is sorrowful. There, at all events, it was so. As Fauriel remarks of those in Brittany, the popular airs were simple, plaintive, melancholy, resembling the plaintive chant of the Church; from which, in fact, they were derived. The old Gregorian tones thus reached him : "Musa loquebatur: pennæ sonuere per auras, But the issue was not yet to be discovered, before involving himself deeper in the labyrinth; for as the child grows into the boy, or, to use Homeric language, ὅτε δὴ μέγας ἐστὶ, καὶ ἥβης μέτρον ἱκάνει, fresh turnings appear on every side, while the straight avenues to truth are obstructed; he has before him wilds and depths, tracts rich and barren; here chestnut woods, there healthy paths, then inland streams, and the olive mountains, shapes which seem like winks or returns of childhood's sunny dream; so transversely he proceeds, "Per juga, per silvas, dumosaque saxa vagatur." § * Theoc. n. † Ov. Metam. v. 294. Od. xix. 532. CHAPTER III. THE ROAD OF YOUTH. Ainsi du tout Enfance délaissay T is thus that the old poet, Charles of Orleans, speaks of his advance to the second road of this great forest, which bears the inviting name of youth, where, if obstacles increase to conceal the openings to truth, its attractive force, as we shall find, increases with the development of the intelligence, or the expansion of those sweet affections which it is the office of religion to regulate and sanctify; "for nature, crescent, does not grow alone in thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes, the inward service of the mind and soul grows wide withal." Still more than childhood, youth is full of piercing observations, which it copies and treasures up. At first sight of a thousand things which grown men remark not, it calls, like Hamlet, for its tablet, and says, "Meet it is, I set it down." How many lessons then are chronicled which attest the hollowness of all those who would conceal from it the glories of the Catholic Church! Error likes not that the sharp wit with which the young will often reason should ever glance at its "establishments." None are for it that look into it with considerate eyes. Let it be our object then here to observe, how youth, wandering thus through the forest of life, finds avenues at every turn, as if made expressly for itself, through which it can discern the great happy bourn to which all wishes tend. Now, at the first steps, it is clear that piety, or the religious sense, is congenial to the young. Here is the first opening, and truly a glorious one it is. Never was there an error in more flat contradiction to experience, than the idea, that as men grow old they grow religious. The general order is exactly the inverse, according to the remark of Prospero : "And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers." Those whom we meet upon the road of the young are therefore pious, and consequently disposed to acquiesce in the truth of catholicity. What can be more striking than their reverential air in churches! The sweet, serious, and almost severe countenance of holy youth before the altar is so divinely beautiful, that one might imagine it could convert an observer to the love of the Catholic religion, in which alone that look is found. Niess speaks of a boy in a certain college, in the year 1609, who, in consequence of some disease, being admonished to stand, and not to kneel in the church, replied, that he would rather die than not show reverence to God in his holy temple.* Youth's fervent prayer with joined palms, its devout contemplation, fancy free, leaving indifference, incredulity, and the slavery of a defiled imagination to those whom long misused years have cankered, are among the proofs that the morning of life is like the morning of the day, clear, pure, harmonious, that objects are then distinctly seen, and that the commonest seem golden. The road of youth, naturally elevated, commands thus by its ordinary avenues noble views of truth ; but the history of the Church bears witness to the general and pure belief of all ages, that other extraordinary openings are often made by angels' hands, and that light is afforded miraculously to guide the young, of which, perhaps, we should find that instances are never wanting, if all that passes in the youthful mind were known. John Moschus relates a vision which terrified some children who tended cattle in the fields near the town of Torax, in Syria, which led to the erection of a monastery on the spot; and Drexelius mentions a dream which led to the conversion of two Hebrew boys of Portugal, in later times. But St. Thomas of Villanova supplies a more remarkable instance. "A certain convert from Judaism, when sick, sent for me," says the Archbishop, "and related to me the cause of his conversion. When I was a boy, he said, and yet a Jew, I was travelling with another Jew-boy for some business of my father, and by the way we talked devoutly about the Messiah that we thought was to come, wishing that it might be in our days; and as we spoke together thus, we excited each other to greater fervour of piety. That evening, in the twilight, the sky seemed suddenly illuminated, and the heaven as it were to open, and we both knelt down and besought God to reveal to us his Messiah; when lo, in the midst of the brightness we saw a resplendent chalice, surmounted by the Host, according to the Christian rites. From that moment we believed in Christ, and on my return home I secretly became a Christian, and received holy baptism."+ We find an instance of the same extraordinary guidance nearer home. The youth in a brown cloak seen twice by the martyr, Edmund Genings, near St. Paul's, in London, was discovered miraculously by him to be his own brother, for whom he was searching, when he would not otherwise have * Alphabet Christi, 303. † In Die Corp. Christi, c. iii. been able to recognise him, from not having seen him since he was a little boy, eight years before; for each time, on meeting him, who only struck his attention as being so unlike the pursuivant through fear of whose wolf-like figure he had looked back to see who was following him, he felt all his joints trembling, and his face glowing, and his whole body bathed in a cold sweat, which strange accident twice occurring, led him to suspect that this strange boy, thus casually met, must be the poor lost brother, for the recovery of whose soul he was exposing himself to the death he soon afterwards suffered, and which, by a subsequent illumination of grace as wonderful, consequent upon the sorrow it occasioned, led to that youth's conversion to the Catholic faith. But not to remain at these mystic spots upon the way, it is certain that the mere natural characteristics of youth have a tendency to direct it on the path which leads to the Catholic Church. The avenues on the road of youth are, however, more the result of manners than of reason. The views are more elevated, mystic, and divine, than those in general which afterwards succeed, being rather angelical and intuitive, than the result of the slow and purely human process of ratiocination. They are besides owing much to the power of taking a keen, clear glance at things as they exist on every side, for boys purchase much knowledge by their penny of observation, and to an obedient, docile acquiescence in the just impressions which are opposed by the passions and interests which later years bring with them. We must not therefore, be surprised, if the instances at which we arrive should be disdained as inadequate by the judgment of a mere secular and proud philosophy, which is as incapable of comprehending as it is of experiencing the impression. We come first, then, to the sweet, short opening of love or charity, to which all young hearts are so easily inclined. A German author relates a charming incident of his youth, where he tells us how, having, while stopping to feed his horse, remarked the son of a poor innkeeper, of his own age and figure, very nicely dressed, he wished to borrow his clothes for a day, to which project the strange lad cheerfully consented, entering with heartiness into the scheme of surprising a neighbouring family, when the young horseman should ride up to visit it, dressed in his own holiday suit. That disposition to make friends with every one, and love him as a brother at first sight, to make a stranger welcome as morn to the lark, and give the hand of fellowship at each obliging turn, without suspicion or the pride that says how clay and clay differ in dignity, whose dust is both alike, bespeaks not only the amiable graces which win the favour of |