state, do all proceed on the highest, or Ultramontane views of the papal supremacy.*

Nor has this combination to renew the ascendancy of the Catholic faith and worship been without its effects. Thus, the colossal but ill-compacted power of Austria is understood to be continually consolidating and strengthening itself through the growing efficiency of a church, which, as it involves in itself the idea of absolutism in the highest form, is the natural ally of absolutism in the state. Even in France, out of Paris, and with the further exception of a few towns and districts where Protestantism has long existed in considerable strength, the power of the hierarchy is again, we are told, beginning to be felt. Nay, in Paris itself, the success of St. Simonianism, until it was suppressed by authority, and more recently still, that of the new French Church, (L'Eglise Française,) under the Abbé Chatel, both of which in their religious aspects seem to be neither more nor less than infidel parodies on catholicism, clearly indicate to what form of positive religion the people are inclined, so far as they are inclined to any. Nor has this increased activity of the church of Rome confined itself to Catholic countries. In England and Scotland, and especially in the commercial and manufacturing cities, popery, it is said, never since the final ascendancy of Protestantism at the accession of Elizabeth, has made any thing like such rapid strides as during the last fifteen years. Seventyfive years ago, it appears, from official documents, that there were only seventy Roman Catholics in Manchester; now there are fifty thousand. At the commencement of the present century they were comparatively few in number in Liverpool; in 1833, they were estimated at fifty-two thousand. In Glasgow their number was estimated, at the same time, at thirty thousand, one seventh of the entire population. And in London there were two hundred thousand.

Meanwhile, the wave, in its onward course, has reached our shores. It is within the memory of some, when a papist in the New England States would have been shunned by the less enlightened, with superstitious dread, and by all with strong religious and political dislike; and when an attempt openly to celebrate mass would have excited in many places

*Vues sur le Protestantisme en France; par J. L. S. Vincent. Tome II. p. 309.

a tumult difficult, if not impossible, to quell. The first Catholic priest ordained in this country, (the Rev. Mr. Badin, now, we believe, of Detroit,) is still living. In 1807, the Catholics had but one prelate in the United States, the bishop of Baltimore. Now they have one archbishop, fourteen bishops, three hundred and seventy-five priests, four hundred and fortythree churches and stations, thirteen ecclesiastical seminaries, twenty-three female religious institutions or convents, fourteen colleges for young men, and thirty-seven female academies. Their whole number we have no means of ascertaining with exactness; but it probably does not vary much from eight hundred thousand. And to this it should be added, that we are bounded on the North by the Canadas, where the Catholics are to the Protestants as four to one, and on the South and West by Mexico, where none but the Catholic religion is tolerated.*

* For most of these statements I am indebted to "The United States Catholic Almanac, or Laity's Directory for the year 1837." The Catholics are most numerous in the Southern and Western States, partly because in some of these, as in Maryland, Louisiana, Missouri, and Illinois, they were the original settlers, but still more on account of the rapid and continual ingress of Catholic emigrants from abroad. This appears from the diverse tongues in which the word is dispensed; for they not only have French and German churches, but the same church is sometimes used at different hours for preaching in both these languages, as well as in the English. Thus, in the Cathedral of St. Louis, on Sundays, besides the high mass at 10 o'clock, at which there is an English and a French sermon alternately, there is mass and a sermon in the German language at 9 o'clock. Less is done by the Catholics than is generally supposed for the conversion of the natives; but they have some Indian schools and missionary stations. A mission has lately been established among the Kickapoos, at Kickapoo village, in the Indian Territory, Arkansas, by two Jesuits, the Rev. Charles Vanquickenborne and the Rev. P. Hoecken, assisted by three lay brothers of the society; one of whom superintends a school for the Indians. Much was said a few years ago of the flourishing state of the Catholic colleges and seminaries in the West, but their glory, it is believed, is fading away before the earnest competition of the rising Protestant institutions. reading the General Regulations of St. Louis University, we could not but wonder at the toleration of a rule like the following by the "high-souled chivalry" of that section of our country. "Violations of the established discipline of the University are repressed in a kind, parental manner; corporal punishment is inflicted only for grievous offences, and by none but the President,

In

The alarm, which a too exclusive view of these facts has excited in some minds, has been heightened still further by the concurrence of circumstances of a more incidental or local character. Among these I may mention the reëstablishment, in 1814, of the Order of Jesuits, after it had been suppressed for more than forty years at the instance of the Catholic powers. Then the whole history of the struggle for Catholic emancipation in England, and its final success in 1829, would

or, in his absence, by the Vice-President." But our wonder abated sensibly, when, on reading further, we found that "No student is admitted under the age of eight years," "unless for special reasons; and in all cases it is required that he bear a good moral character, and know how to write and read his vernacular language." We copy from the Almanac the following table of Establishments conducted by different Religious Societies.

Dominican Convent, in Kentucky and Ohio,

Congregation of the Mission or Lazarists, in Missouri,

The Society of Jesus, 2 in Maryland, 2 in Missouri, and 1 in
Kentucky,

The Redemptionists, in Ohio,

Society of St. Sulpitius, in Maryland,

2

1

5

1

1

The Ladies of the Sacred Heart, have under their care 2 institutions in Louisiana, and 3 in Missouri,

5

The Ursulines, 1 in S. Carolina, and 1 in Louisiana,

The Carmelites, 1 in Maryland,

The Sisters of Mercy, 1 in South Carolina,

1

The Order of St. Joseph, 1 in Illinois,

The Sisters of St. Clare, 1 in Michigan and i in North West
Territory,

The Sisters of Loretto, 2 in Missouri, and 5 in Kentucky, The Ladies of the Visitation, 1 in Maryland, 1 in Illinois, and 1 in Alabama,

7

3

2

1

The Sisters of Charity, 7 in the diocess of Baltimore, 9 in that of Philadelphia, 8 in New York, 1 in Massachusetts, 2 in Ohio, 1 in Indiana, 2 in Missouri, 5 in Kentucky, and 2 in Louisiana,

87

In speaking of the "Statistics of the Catholic Church throughout the World" the editors of the same work say: "From an Almanac published annually at Rome, under the inspection of local authorities, we learn that there are 12 patriarchates, 114 archbishoprics, and 556 bishoprics. The number of Catholics in the world is estimated at one hundred and eighty millions."

seem to imply that a disposition favorable to the Catholic religion, or, at least, to a removal of all restraints upon it, is gaining ground among Protestants. Their dreams are less troubled than they once were with the visions in the Apocalypse; they have come to the conclusion that the pope is not Antichrist or the Man of Sin, or, at any rate, they have ceased to fear or to hate him as they did formerly; and in either case, a principal obstacle to the spread of popery, to a certain extent, in Protestant countries is taken away.

At the same time, some facts have transpired respecting Protestantism itself, which must operate, temporarily, to the advantage of its opponents. One is the tendency to an infidel and dead rationalism, which has manifested itself especially among the German Protestants, and which has done not a little to shake the confidence of timid or distrustful minds in the very principles of Protestantism. There is also a class of Protestants, more inclined to mysticism than to rationalism, with whom it is growing into a fashion to speak unguardedly of religion as founded on sentiment rather than on knowledge and argument, and who appear to think that symbols, and scenic exhibitions, and the fine arts, provided they act powerfully on the imagination and the feelings, have quite as much to do in regenerating and sanctifying the soul, as truth. This is certainly, though doubtless unconsciously, playing into the hands of the advocates of a communion, which unquestionably in all these respects can claim superiority over our plainer and simpler modes of worship, and of which it has been said, not

* There is, I know, another side to this argument. Where Catholics have been persecuted, as in Ireland, it is probable that many individuals and whole families have continued their adherence to the faith of their fathers, not so much from conviction or real preference on other grounds, as from the point of honor which hindered them from deserting an old cause and old friends in distress or jeopardy. Accordingly the "Irish Gentleman " begins the account of his "Travels in Search of a Religion " thus: "It was on the evening of the 16th day of April, 1829, the very day on which the memorable news reached Dublin of the Royal Assent having been given to the Catholic Relief Bill, — that, as I was sitting alone in my chamber, up two pair of stairs, Trinity College, being myself one of the everlasting Seven Millions' thus liberated, I started suddenly, after a few moments reverie, from my chair, and taking a stride across the room, as if to make trial of a pair of emancipated legs, exclaimed, Thank God! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant.""

less truly than happily, "The Church of Rome is dramatic in all its features. It seems to be its office, and its very essence to act Christianity, and to hold out in exterior exhibition that, which, in its true light, no eye but God's can see. No wonder the Church of Rome is fond of sacraments, when the definition of one so admirably suits herself; - she is 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual church.'"* I may add that there is a deeper reaction than that in favor of the Catholics, which the exigency of the times has brought forth, and by which the latter is aided; I mean the reaction which the license of innovation in every thing has created in favor of every thing which discourages innovation. A distinguished living writer, in speaking of the remarkable analogy between the last fifty years and the era of the Reformation, observes: "In each the characteristic features are a contempt for antiquity, a shifting of prejudices, an inward sense of self-esteem leading to an assertion of private judgment in the most uninformed, a sanguine confidence in the amelioration of human affairs, a fixing of the heart on great ends, with a comparative disregard of all things intermediate. In each there has been so much of alloy in the motives, and, still more, so much of danger and suffering in the means, that the cautious and moderate have shrunk back, and sometimes retraced their own steps, rather than encounter evils which, at a distance, they had not seen in their full magnitude." +

Furthermore, it is believed that the evils to be apprehended from the spread of popery in this country are peculiarly great. Even that glorious principle of our constitution, which forbids the government to interfere in matters of religion, secures to the Roman pontiff a degree of authority here which he would hardly dare to assert in the most Catholic of the European states. Austria, for example, which stands at the head of the Catholic powers, though it acknowledges the pope's spiritual supremacy, by no means allows him to act even in that capacity within its territories, except under the control of the

*The (Dublin) Christian Examiner, cited by the author of an able article on the "Spread of the Catholics in the United States," published last year in a series of numbers in the Christian Register.

f Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe. Vol. I. pp. 498, 499.