obligingness to the lower, and that everything is for the best. But at the same time I lose all patience when I see people trying to relieve their uncomfortable feeling at the thought of misery, just as they would relieve any other uncomfortable feeling, merely because it happens to be uncomfortable and in them.

Ah!" cried Donna Maria in one of those fits of self-accusation which were one of the lovable varieties in her lovable and variable nature, "I know something about that sort of thing! In my very small experience I see two cases which look rather like crimesmiserable children born of fathers in the last stage of consumption, and who distinctly owe their existence to the fostering care of myself and my friends-and we all know nowadays that physical degeneracy may ramify into every sort of moral imbecility and perverseness! And yet I cannot help thinking that whatever mischief it may occasionally lead to, there is safety and usefulness in the feeling which makes us miserable at others' sufferings; it is an instinct of moral self-preservation for ourselves and others."

Lady Althea nodded.

"I think," she said, "that it is an excellent thing that we should not be able to enjoy ourselves thoroughly in the presence of other people's sufferings; a great amount of the world's suffering is due to the vast majority of us being able, on the contrary, or having been, to enjoy themselves quite equally whether others suffered or not. It is one thing to guard against rash action springing from such feelings, and another to guard, as your cousin pretends one had better guard (only he doesn't really think so), against the feelings themselves; the harm is in the rashness, and rashness is harmful in totally different matters don't you think? Doing good—or, rather, doing the right thing (I don't see why the expression should always be applied. to doing what is really doing the wrong thing)-doing the right thing, then, not in the worldly sense, should not be the mere relieving of a want in ourselves-which, of course, may be selfishly relieved like any other; it ought to become the fulfilling of one of the principal functions of life, with only that amount of satisfaction to ourselves which attaches, negatively almost, to the fulfilment of any other function. We ought to want to save other people from pain, as we want to save ourselves, and therefore try not to bungle them into worse pain, as we should try not to bungle ourselves into it. We ought to cultivate our aversion to other folk's pain (not neglecting our own, by any means); but, at the same time, to train ourselves to see and feel in the future and the distant, minding as much what happens there as what happens nearer ourselves and the present, and sacrifice meanwhile the acutely felt present to a future which we can foretell although we may not as yet acutely perceive. We must train ourselves to disliking injustice and suffering irrespective of

where and when, and to dislike it worst only where it really exists in largest amount or acutest degree, closing our ears and eyes to the fallacious appearance, the mere hallucination of our egoism, that things are worse because they happen to be under our eyes: they are not, any more than objects are bigger because they are near. Or rather, I should have said, let us use the present, the near at hand, to learn from it what must be the future and distant, getting to know the larger by our knowledge of the smaller, instead of letting the smaller make us forgetful of the larger. Our business, as rational beings, is to try and understand-is it not? and to try not to act, if possible, without understanding at least this much, that in the particular case any action may be preferable to none. The case to which Maria alludes, and in which her good sense was really overridden by the sentimentality of her friends, was an instance of what may result from trying to cut short an individual evil without calculating what new evils may result from the operation.

“Of course I've been repeating a lot of truisms," said Lady Althea, setting her horse gradually to a trot, "but one is apt to forget even truisms in the course of an argument, and after your cousin's plea in favour of hard-heartedness I thought it useful to point out the necessity also of the reverse, more particularly as I am rather a hardhearted woman myself."

They hurried along the grassy slopes till, suddenly, they met the main road which runs north from Rome, and a great brown bend of the Tiber, the poplars along its banks just barely tipped with delicate yellowish new leaves, the willows in its swirl covered with soft catkins. It had rained here, and everything had that warm, blonde quality which lends the Roman landscape a spring-like air almost in winter. The grass here by the riverside was lush-green already, and full of long-stemmed daisies and star anemones, but frosted over with delicate grey withered thistles. Some wild olive trees formed a dark-green tuft upon the slope, and beneath it lay a big sheep-dog, while a man, with goatskin leggings like a satyr, sat milking a sheep; all round about the little new-born lambs were bleating and sucking, snow-white in their newness upon that greenness of new grass. And below, with the wide bend of river, its eddies faintly reddened by the afternoon sun, stretched the green, yellow, and brown boggy valley, its faint undulations marked with hay-ricks and long snaking fences.

“The fact is,” continued Lady Althea, rather to herself than to her companions, "that we are utterly unreasonable. We wish, we sensitive people, to see all round us a certain amount of comfort. That is to say, to enjoy in ourselves a degree of moral peacefulness, for which the moral expenditure of the world—what we are willing to pay in thought, in abstinence and effort is utterly insufficient. As

with material wealth, so with spiritual, we do nothing but waste; yet we expect to have the means of sending every beggar from our door metamorphosed into a prosperous citizen. We are trying, with cur toy pails, to empty out a sea of ignorance and selfishness."

"I don't understand in the least what you are alluding to,” answered Donna Maria, briskly.

"And yet we have talked it all over very often with Baldwin,' replied Lady Althea sadly; "and you must have met it often enough in books—you who have always read such a lot."

"Baldwin always irritates me with his cocksureness; however, I'll try and be less irritated next time," rejoined Donna Maria. Boris laughed his bitter, miserable laugh.

"That is it! Let us read all about it in books; better still, in reviews, which are less boring. Let us talk it over with Baldwin, with Tom, Dick, or Harry-I beg your pardon, with the eminent economist A., the celebrated philanthropist B., and the great idealist philosopher C. during an interval at dinner, or while we are waiting for the carriage on coming out from the ball, or in one of those charming chats before the lamp is brought in-it, I presume, being the way of diminishing inequality and increasing human welfare without any loss to the great civilisation of which we are a part, and our houses and carriages and bibelots also a part. Meanwhile, the Huns and Vandals are also thinking how they may diminish inequality and increase human welfare. But, being hampered by no houses, carriages, bibelots, philosophy, philanthropy, or economics, they will manage the business in a less cautious manner. And there will not remain much of our civilisation, of our economists, philanthropists, and philosophers— nay, perhaps not much of Hun and Vandaldom, to record what the Huns' and Vandals' method was. And now, good evening; I see your brougham and the groom waiting for your horses. I think my best way home is by the next city gate."

A few gas-lamps made twilight apparent in the wretched muddy suburb of jerry-built houses, from whose windows floated unseemly rags. Some carters were yelling over their horses, and from inside Rome there came a melancholy jangle of bells.

VERNON LEE.

THE POLICY OF LEO XIII.

A REJOINDER FROM ROME.

*

I.

HEN there appeared in the October issue of this REVIEW the now celebrated article, which professed to weigh with impartiality, for the benefit of the English-speaking public, the policy of Leo XIII., I lost no time in publishing, in the Civiltà Cattolica, a criticism of it, which afterwards appeared in pamphlet form in Italian, French, English, German, and Spanish. After calling attention to the false and misleading judgments passed by the anonymous writer upon the policy of Leo XIII., I examined all his so-called facts, and taking one by one all the evidences which he gave and all the documents which he quoted, proved, as clearly as I could, that his contentions as to the final aim and immediate results of the policy of our Holy Father were as fallacious in their principles as they were unconvincing in their proofs.

I am not aware of ever having intentionally in the course of my criticism said anything to hurt the susceptibilities of the censor of Leo XIII., and should be very sorry to have done so. And if, seeing

a venerable and beloved superior" shamefully misrepresented and publicly insulted by one who professes to be his dutiful son, "my speech was not always with grace," I find sufficient consolation in the thought that on those few occasions my speech, like that of St. Paul to the sinful Corinthians and of Christ our Lord to the Pharisees, was not uttered in order simply to make my adversary sorrowful, but to make him sorrowful to repentance (2 Cor. vii. 9).

K

Be this as it may, I do not wonder at the fact, made clear by his latest article on "The Pope and the Bible,"† that my criticism was

* "La Politica di Leone XIII. e la CONTEMPORARY REVIEW." Esame Critico di S. M. Brandi, S.J. Roma: Tipografia Pefani. 1893. All the following references are to the pages of this pamphlet.

The CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for April, pp. 457-179.

not very agreeable to him, and is held, like his former production, "answerable for much wrath, bitterness, and, I fear, less venial sin." But I do wonder that he should have attempted to refute it, even when, as he with peculiar grace tells his readers (p. 464), "disquieting doubts flitted across his mind whether my criticism' was indeed the work of a serious apologist, and not a marked attack levelled by a cynical satirist against his Holiness the Pope." Still more do I wonder when I see that to refute it effectually he found it necessary to fill fourteen of the twenty-four pages of his article with a second-hand German dissertation on the value and necessity of Biblical Criticism, a subject, I submit, totally foreign to "the policy of the Pope," and consequently to the only point at issue.

*

However, as the author has thought fit to attempt a reply, I too consider it my duty to make, by way of a rejoinder, some remarks on the few pages of his paper which refer to my criticism. As to the remainder, I shall not say one word-first, because Biblical Criticism has nothing to do with the present controversy; and, secondly, because I have no desire of affording the author an opportunity of treating the readers of the CONTEMPORARY, by way of a reply to my censures upon his numerous critico-biblical errors, to another production akin to those which he has already achieved, as interesting and pertinent to the point in question as would be a dissertation upon the transcendental constitution of the Republic of Utopia, or an elaborate sketch of the medieval customs of the descendants of Cain in the regions of the moon.

II.

The author's whole reply to my pamphlet may be reduced to the simple formula: Quod scripsi, scripsi. He declares, in fact, that notwithstanding my criticism, " each and every one of his contentions as to the final aim and immediate results of the policy of our Holy Father remains absolutely unweakened and untouched."+

It is, moreover, only fair to note that the author, having read my pamphlet and those of others, feels himself in duty bound towards his

readers "frankly to acknowledge and sincerely to deplore the circumstance that when dealing with the political events of many years and many countries, the records of which were not at hand at the time of writing, certain inaccuracies unavoidably crept into his article."‡

Although, as we presume, our author has examined the documents which at the time of writing were not in his possession, he nevertheless takes very good care not to correct-nay, not even to specifythose inaccuracies or slips. Had he done so, his readers would easily have recognised that the so-called inaccuracies were indeed enormous historical blunders, which did not concern a mere date, a simple name, * The italics in the quotations are mine.

+ P. 457.

‡ Ibid.