Religion has been served by this phase of literature in two ways. The least important is the rehabilitation of the ages of faith by its enthusiastic admirers, like Count de Montalembert and Mr. Digby. What is of far greater consequence is the establishment of those fixed rules, and of that disinterested spirit of investigation, which rigidly exclude the influence of prejudice, interest, or passion, pursue not the application of trúth so much as its discovery, and apply to moral science something of the patient self-denial and closeness of observation which belongs to natural philosophy. If these qualities have been rare till lately in modern times, they were not unknown to an earlier age. Bishop Adelbold of Utrecht begins his life of St. Henry with the following definition of the duties of a historian: "Scriptor veritatem tenere nequit nisi hæc quatuor aut potenter devitaverit, aut aliquatenus a mente deposuerit: odium et carnalem dilectionem, invidiam et infernalem adulationem. Odium enim et invidia bene gesta aut omnino tacent, aut dicendo transcurrunt, aut calumniose transmutant. E contra male gesta dicunt, dilatant et amplificant. Carnalis autem affectio et infernalis adulatio, quæ male gesta sunt, scientes ignorant et ignorantiam simulantes, veritatem occultant; bene gesta autem, placere quærentes, spaciose dicunt, et plus justo magnificant. Sic per hæc quatuor, aut in bene gestis aut in male gestis veritas evanescit, falsitas superducto colore nitescit. Spiritualis autem dilectio veritatis amica, nec male gesta celat, nec bene gesta pompose dilatat; sciens quia et male gesta sæpe prosunt ad correctionem, et bene gesta frequenter obsunt, dum ducuntur in elationem."

We gather from the names that have reached us of the members of the Academy that the moral sciences will be chiefly cultivated, for in the others few of course are really competent, and the interference of amateurs can only lead to a demoralising shallowness. It will be well if this is so, for those branches of learning are of more vital importance than physical science. They touch religion and morals more directly, and influence more powerfully men of cultivated minds, whilst illiterate persons are more easily struck with the facts and influences of the material world. It is, we presume, only for the facility of illustration, and perhaps from old reminiscences, that so many of the Cardinal's instances are drawn from geology and the physical creation. These sciences are of a subordinate utility to religion, even when cultivated in a religious spirit; and when directed against religion, have not the same force as the sciences which are connected with her origin, her history, and her doctrine.

Much will depend on the regulations which are to guide the Academy, and on the changes which will become necessary in order to adapt the original rule to new wants. As learning does not flourish even with protection so well as with freedom, no institution without some degree of selfgovernment can retain an enduring vitality. The less it resembles a manufacture, and the more it obtains the character of an organism, the better it will fare. In the constitution of the French Consulate, the majority of the senate was originally appointed by the government, and it then completed its numbers by election. We know not whether this is the plan adopted by the Academy, but we have no doubt that the original list has been drawn up in conformity with the rule which was followed on that occasion. "We put aside," said the Third Consul, "all personal affection in our choice, and considered nothing but the merit, the reputation, and the services of the candidates."

The Academy of the Lincei, which is alluded to in the discourse, may supply some useful hints to the new association. Their historian, the Duke of Cezi, tells us that they were very different from the philosophers of our day; for they considered religion not only as the first of all sciences, but as the only safe basis, the principle, and true source of all knowledge,-an idea which is better expressed by a writer already quoted: "Quia tam sensus quam ratio humana frequenter errat ad intelligentiam veritatis primum fundamentum locavit in fide" (Metalog. iv. 41). Amongst their rules we applaud the following: "Non minus sedulo et hoc observent ne Lynceorum quemquam aut voce aut calamo perstringant, quorum tamen opiniones, ut amplectantur, non ob id adstringantur, cum cuilibet proprii genii, et ingenii modulo in hujuscemodi disciplinis philosophari, et ad veritatem quam proxime collimare libere linquatur." It is easy to see that the Lyncei were not of the party who were disposed to give up religion and theology for the sake of an elegant Latinity.

The purpose of an academy has been defined to be to advance learning, whilst the mission of a university is to communicate it. This distinction, founded on the necessity of a fixed and finished matter for the instruction of youth, and of a direct religious control which the growth of science will not bear, did not originally subsist. The first academy was also the first university, and the name of the spot where Plato lectured on the banks of Cephisus has survived in both. We should think little of a university which did nothing for the enrichment of literature, and produced

men, and not books. But it has been usual for academies to addict themselves more exclusively to their own special function of acquiring, not of distributing knowledge; and it is not one of the least meritorious points in the Society of which we are speaking, that it returns in some manner to the old plan, and proposes to extend to younger men the advantage of witnessing its proceedings, and gathering something of its spirit. The majority of the academies which sprung up in every part of Italy, in consequence of the number of universities and the deficiency of public employment, can supply no useful example for the serious and practical design which the Cardinal is endeavouring to realise amongst us. The scheme of Leibnitz for the Academy of Berlin, the purpose of which was to advance at the same time the public good, learning, and religion (" un point des plus importants serait aussi la propagation de la foi par les sciences"), is the only one with which we are acquainted that combines such exalted ends.

THE LIFE OF DR. DOYLE.*

THIS work, unquestionably one of the most valuable contributions recently added to our stores of Catholic biography, illustrates a period at once so near to our own, that its events largely influence that in which we live, and also so remote that it is rapidly passing out of the recollection of the existing generation. We will endeavour to indicate the importance of these memoirs to all who are interested in the recent condition or the future prospects of Catholicity among us. Dr. Doyle was well known in England as well as in Ireland. With many of the liberal statesmen who assisted in carrying Catholic Emancipation he was intimate; and from his conversation, as well as his writings, they derived many of the arguments by which they replied to the political bigots of those days. He preached the sermon at the consecration of Dr. Baines, and witnessed the beginning of that advance which Catholicity has made in England.

To his native land Dr. Doyle was attached by historical as well as religious ties; and patriotic aspirations were from the first intertwined with his devotion to the Church. He was the descendant of an ancient family, long settled in the

*The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Right Rev. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. By William John Fitz-Patrick. James Duffy, Dublin and London.

neighbourhood of Wexford, which had been outlawed for its fidelity to James II., and which, after the confiscation of its property, had, in spite of the penal laws, retained its faith and held its ground in a condition of honourable poverty. Times that we look on as remote were to him as the days that preceded Catholic Emancipation are to us.

"How often," wrote Dr. Doyle, in his letters on the state of Ireland, "have I perceived in a congregation of some thousand persons how the very mention of the penal code caused every eye to glisten! . . . . The very trumpet of the Last Judgment, if sounded, would not produce a more perfect stillness in any assemblage of Irish peasantry than a strong allusion to the wrongs we suffer."*

....

This circumstance is the key without which we shall fail to understand the remarkable career of Dr. Doyle, or to conceive that state of society which provoked from an antagonist who early learned to fear him, Dr. Magee, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, the flippant witticism, that "among the Roman Catholics of Ireland politics constituted a religion, and religion meant nothing beyond-politics."

Dr. Doyle was born in the year 1786, at New Ross. Close to that place, in 1798, he witnessed one of the fiercest battles that took place during the Rebellion. His companion on this occasion was a boy of about his own age.

"Dr. Doyle, many long years after, in a conversation with his stanch friend, Father Martin, referred to this incident of their young days. The only beating I ever got,' he said, 'was from you, while both of us lay concealed in the furze-bush.' 'You deserved it, my lord,' was the reply. 'Nothing would do for you but to be popping up your little black head after every volley, to see if the battle was over. I at last lost all patience, and belaboured you unmercifully with a hazel-switch. You lay pretty quiet afterwards,-Deo gratias! -for had our hiding-place been observed, we should in all human probability have been piked or bayoneted." "+

In 1800, he was sent to a seminary then recently established in New Ross by Father John Crane, a member of the Augustinian Order, where he was more noted for studiousness than for natural quickness. Here he resolved to enter that Order; his preference for a career among the regular clergy having been not a little produced by his dislike to that species of maintenance upon which the secular clergy were then as now forced exclusively to depend. Upon the latter subject his views, at a later time, underwent a great modification; and, in spite of his love for the cloister, Providence had destined him for the most active career † Vol. i. p. 9.

*Vol. i. p. 5.

which a Catholic priest can know. In 1804, he lost his widowed mother.

"She was," remarks Mr. Fitz-Patrick, "in a great degree to him what Monica was to Augustine; and we may attribute to the early instruction which she caused to be imparted to his tender mind, the germ of that breadth of brain and strength of piety which in after-life surprised the world."*

In 1805, he entered on his novitiate in the Convent of Grantstown, a small thatched building, approached by a long avenue lined on either side by stately trees, and standing near the sea-shore, within some miles of Carnesore Point, which forms the junction between the eastern and southern coast of Ireland, and near the ruins of an ancient monastery belonging to the Eremites of St. Augustine. The next year he made his vows. The laws prohibiting Catholic education had been repealed in 1782; but, preferring a foreign education, which at a later time he speaks of as a thing calculated to enlarge the mind, and increase, not diminish, the student's love for his own country, he placed himself in the then celebrated university of Coimbra.

Here he found memorials in abundance equally apt to excite his devotion and his patriotism. Here Archbishop Talbot, of Dublin, and Father Luke Wadding had studied; and here an Irish college had been founded by Dominick O’Daly, of Kerry, the historian of Catholic persecution in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. In this beautiful retreat the future Bishop laid the foundation of that extensive knowledge which afterwards distinguished him. That retreat was not, however, exempt from its dangers. The Voltairian philosophy even here had found entrance. The youthful stranger from Ireland breathed for the first time an atmosphere tainted with that poison of infidelity which, issuing out of France, had infected so large a part of Europe. But he did not fall. His studies convinced him that the philosophy then so fashionable was as superficial as it was brilliant. At a later time he said:

"I recollect, and always with fear and trembling, the danger to which I exposed the gifts of faith and Christian morality which I had received from a bounteous God."

A short time afterwards we find him, with a fellow-student, serving in the English army, with sword for book, against the French invader, and acting as an interpreter. Such were the vicissitudes of that time, and such the rough training, by

* Vol. i. p. 13.