She counsels submission to the Omnipotent" ways of fate," and to the ponderous roll of circumstance," and enjoins a striving for duty-duty to whom? or to what?-and enumerates a good deal of that sort of jargon that is talked by certain pundits of the Grub Street of to-day. Concluding, however, with lines that have the scent of the Scriptural Lily about them :

"I toiling at the task assigned to me,

66

Am summoned from my labour suddenly :
The King recalls his handmaiden; and she
Submissively herself anoints,

Going whither He appoints.

The sheaves are gathered now, her work is done,

The day is waning, and she must be gone,

To bend herself before the Holy One,
And strictly her appointed meed
There assert in very deed.

"I pray that He will your lone spirit bless,

And if to leave you be my fate,
Pray you for me while I wait."

(pp. 69-73.)

Meanwhile, instead of receiving the Viaticum, or perusing the Word of God, the dying girl and her lover have a Shakesperian reading, and conclude with the Lady of Shallot. At last she dies in the midst of a fearful tempest, nature howling in mockery over the stricken lily-flower, whilst the survivor exclaims as she is passing:

"But what care I though deluges do pour,

Beating earth to mire,

Though heaven shattering with the thunder's roar,
Scorcheth now in fire,

Though every planet molten from its place

Should trickle lost through everlasting space.

"For this blank prospect, void of all but dread,
Void as any tomb,

My soul was left, and by a lonely bed

In a girl's sick room,

Hangs there expectant of departing breath,

The silent voice of doom, the stroke of death."

(p. 85.)

In such a juncture the Catholic would gather comfort from the communion of Saints, and from the refreshment, light and

peace he knows the souls in the Intermediate State receive from the Holy Sacrifice. But this bereaved mourner prefers to think that the soul of his Beautiful Lady

"Dwells somewhere in this waste

Of worlds, that fill the overwhelming heavens
With light and motion."

(―p. 103.)

He then betakes himself to her grave, where her spirit, in a voice from heaven, tells him why she was removed from him. The reason being that he did not love her soul, but his "Lily's worldly dross." Now we always thought "a love of souls" peculiar to Divines, and that it did not obtain in the relations between the sexes. To our thinking, "with my body I thee worship" has a beautiful, a mystic, and a most Christian meaning. We cannot deem the form hallowed by the Incarnation, the "fearful and wonderful" tabernacle of the soul and through which the soul can only be loved, (except in a theological point of view), is not to be the motive power of love. Behold, now, I know thou art a fair woman to look upon," is a good, sufficient, and scriptural reason for wedlock, in our poor judgment. The unhappy poet, having committed the unpardonable sin of falling in love with a Beautiful Lady, is now "warned of his sin," and, on his acceptance of this warning and revelation, he is to become a "spiritual Quixote," to tilt at all" shams" and "wind bags," and, as it seems to us, himself to "jabber like an ape of the Dead Sea" for ever afterwards.

Evil communications not only corrupt good manners, but spoil good poems. If Mr. Woolner" could clear his mind of cant," to wit Macmillanism, he has the capability of writing a poem that would be complete as a work of art. But as he is not a Catholic he has not done this. In proportion only as he becomes one, or assumes a virtue, if he has it not," will he ever execute a thoroughly artistic poem.

FRAGMENTA VARIA.

No. IV. COURAYER AND HIS BOOK ON ANGLICAN ORDERS.

WE extract the following from Vol. I., Art. 3, of "The Present State of the Republic of Letters" for the year 1728 :

"As it is something uncommon and extraordinary for a Roman Catholic clergyman to be admitted to Degrees in Divinity by Protestant Universities, the curious will be pleased to see the following Diploma from Oxford, creating F. Courayer a D.D., and to observe in his answer that moderation, charity, and temper, concerning religious affairs, which is but rarely to be found in the clergy of his persuasion, and but too seldom in those of our own."

The Diploma, translated into English, runs thus :

"Whereas academical degrees were instituted by our ancestors to this end, that men excelling in erudition, and who have deserved exceedingly well of the Christian Church, should be distinguished from the rest; and whereas the Rev. and Most Illustrious P. Peter Francis Courayer, Canon Regular of the Abbey of S. Genevieve at Paris, has so forcibly and learnedly defended the holy ordinations of our Bishops, which we have been always wont to reverence as the true and unquestionable successors of the Apostles, that nothing can be rejoined on the opposite side but anile tales. Whereas, he has in general expressed our opinion concerning the most weighty controversies to that degree, that in reading his writings we seem to have in hand one of our own professors. Whereas, finally, there shines forth in him the highest intellectual ability, in conjunction with no ordinary erudition, remarkable candour of mind, and unfeigned desire of bringing back to concord all the Churches of Christ. Know ye that we, the Chancellor, masters, and scholars aforesaid, desiring to mark with the deepest honour in our power a man of such illustrious merit, have created and constituted, on this 28th day of August, 1727, by the unanimous vote of a very large number of doctors and masters, in solemn senate assembled, the said Rev. and Most Illustrious P. Peter Francis Courayer, Doctor in Divinity, and have cumulated upon him all and each of the privileges appertaining to the Doctorate in Sacred Theology. In faith and testimony whereof we have ordered the public Seal of this our University of Oxford to be affixed to these letters. Given in our House of Convocation, the day and year forenamed."

In the course of his answer (dated Hannemont, near S. Germain-en-Laye, Dec., 1727), which he begins by observing must be, for many reasons, very guarded, Courayer says:

"I am not conscious of having adulterated the truth through

any inordinate desire of peace; or to have softened down or corrupted the doctrine of either side through prejudice, whether of hatred or affection. For so scrupulously should we handle all matters relating to the faith, that neither charity should dissemble errors, nor zeal for the faith invent or prescribe any new dogma.

"Would that in these things, O ye men of wisdom, in which we still differ, we would mutually lay down this rule for ourselves. That wretched schism, which has torn the Church in so many ways, would not last long; nor do I doubt but that, were each on either side to apply themselves to search out the truth in a spirit of peace and zeal for charity, the whole mass of controversies now corrupting and disgracing religion might soon be reduced to a very few heads.

"Possibly for lessening these, the defence of your ordinations, which I have undertaken, may not be without its use, and will excite others to handle other topics with like success and more ability-a work truly to be attempted in every way by Christian Divines, and the more worthy of your University, because, being always full of learned erudite men, it can do so much the more in advancing peace, by how much the more versed it is in the study of antiquity, and more liberal in professing the truth.

"Nothing could indeed tend more to increase your fame; and as you have admitted me to a share of your glory, permit me, most learned masters, to exhort you thus far to try what success can be attained in so great a work. Such attempts, even if they do not succeed, will be full of honour. I will forward them to the best of my ability, and will willingly share in the labour and peril, should there be but the glimmering of a hope of conciliating parties and attaining peace."

The Chancellor's letter signed" Arran,” and dated “ Bagshot, August 9, 1727," recommending the University to confer "their highest degree of honour" on him who had "so well defended the highest order in this Church," is given in the Quarterly Review for Dec., 1811-as for his concluding sentiments he had already expressed them--still more pointedly in his letter to the English translator of his work, Mr. Williams, dated Paris, March 14, 1724. Thus :

"Je souhaite que les semences de paix et de ré-union que j'ai repandues dans ce traité puissent fructifier dans le temps, à l'avantage de votre Eglise et à la joie de la nôtre. Le retour de l'Eglise Anglicane à l'unité Catholique entrainerait bientôt celui de toutes les Eglises Protestantes, qui paroissent sentir mieux que jamais le défaut de leur gouvernement, et les excès de leurs premiers Réformateurs. (Oxford Ed., 1844, p. 12).

It would be superfluous, after the extraordinarily able account given of Courayer and his writings in the introduction. to the Oxford edition of his principal work, printed in 1844,

to go into any details respecting him or them, which are there supplied-neither the Diploma, nor his letter of thanks in return for it, are, however, more than cursorily referred to by his modern editor; and as for the extracts which we are about to append, we have every reason to suppose that they have never appeared in print before.

Watts (Bibl. Britan., " Courayer,") assigns the year 1723 to the first French edition. A letter from Mr. J. Walker to Abp. Wake (Foreign Letters from 1722 to 1726), dated Lille, 2d July, 1722, says :

"I have found with a great deal of pleasure the Church of England very much esteemed by all the men of learning I meet with abroad. A chanoine at Bruxelles has promised to procure me a dissertation in MS. proving the succession of the English bishops at the Reformation, which was wrote in the time of James the Second, when some learned men at Louvain were consulted from Rome upon that subject. I doubt not but your Grace has seen long ago the apology of Father Courayer upon the same subject, which, I suppose, is now printed, according to the accounts which I have had of it some months since from Paris, though I have not yet seen it."

A letter from Mr. Ayerst, chaplain to Sir R. Sutton, English Ambassador in Paris at that time, dated 1st Nov., 1721, apprized Abp. Wake of one of the secret difficulties that lay in the way of its publication :—

"The Abbé tells me he had informed your Grace in the enclosed of what has past between him and the Chancellor, who has referred him to the Cardinal de Noailles, for fear his Eminence, who has been weak enough to consent to a re-ordination of some apostate English clergymen, should take it ill, that a book should be published wherein that practice is condemned."

One of these was a Scotchman named Sharp. In another letter, dated Nov. 19, 1721, Ayerst says:

"Abbé C. has been with me, and tells me that the Cardinal de Noailles will not give his consent to the impression of his treatise, and therefore desired of me to speak to Sir Robert to get the Cardinal du Bois and the Chancellor to promise to connive at the printing of it without a privilege."

But in a P.S. to one dated 22d Nov., 1721, he adds :

"I do not find that Sir Robert has yet obtained anything in favour of Abbé C.'s book. I send your Grace the first two sheets of it which were already printed off before the privilege was stopped."

By Feb. 19, 1724, all Paris was in an uproar.

The book