over the country. It is easy to understand how, in times like those of to-day in Russia, this network of societies may be changed into a most powerful political or revolutionary organization. Besides, the censorship debased the standard of native literature and lent a pernicious tone to the Russian publications abroad. Under the enjoyment of greater freedom of circulation of home and foreign literature the undue appetite for "forbidden fruits," common to perverse human nature, would not have produced results which it is impossible to deny are for Russia's government a source of danger.

One Nihilistic periodical is now published in London, entitled Wpered (Forward), and others are published in Geneva, Berne, and Amsterdam. These journals, printed expressly for contraband importation, certainly are, for the most part, abominable sheets. They cross the frontier in tin boxes, as we learn, and evade the vigilance of the custom-house officials, as shipments of sardines, canned fruits, preserved meat, condensed milk, and the like. It is sadly amusing to notice the ingenuity with which innocent enough looking tin boxes have been hit upon as the only safe vehicles of journalism.

We have said enough, we trust, to throw light upon the real condition of the Russia of to-day. The time has arrived, in our opinion, when in spite of unsparing despotism the dead level of contented ignorance can be maintained no longer. The whole population evinces a firm determination not to acquiesce any longer in a system which recognizes no rights at all, but which places everything, both in the spiritual and in the temporal brder, at the mercy of an irresponsible despot.. Whatever advance Russia has made in the path of education and intellectual culture during the last half century, has been essentially irreligious. There is no one to impart instruction in genuine religion; there is no one to make head against the swelling tide of immorality. There is no one to check the spread of skepticism; there is no one to heal the universal chronic disease of immorality.

The Russian empire of to-day is a mass of men sufficiently well instructed to be aware that they are excluded from a measure of political freedom which is enjoyed everywhere else in the civilized world. But this same mass of men is unacquainted with any religious or moral guide that may direct and control their efforts to obtain deliverance from the thraldom of ages. They are hemmed in on all sides by an army of officials which offers dogged resistance; which is as extortionate and oppressive as Pasha misrule. Can we wonder, therefore, that Nihilism found a suitable soil in Russia? Can we wonder that a populace driven to despair carries on a war of deliverance by terror and assassination against a gov

ernment which tries to crush them back by sheer brute force into hopeless, passive submission? Or should we not rather wonder that a portion of Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century recalls to our minds the picture of some Asiatic tyrant in the far East, reigning, with apathetic indifference to their sufferings, over a number of turbulent hordes?

The revolutionary organ, Land and Liberty, refers in the following words to the draft of a constitution by Valousiff:

"A constitution is not what we want. What could we do with a constitution under present circumstances? So long as the country is denied all justice, a constitution would be of no use. Let us be given justice without distinction of persons and we shall be satisfied. But if the state goes on as before, our old programme must be maintained: Death to the Court camarilla and death to all criminal officials.'"

This violent and uncompromising language is not altogether unaccountable if we remember that according to official statements only about 700 out of 56,000 persons transported to Siberia had been sentenced by courts of law.

We disclaim emphatically any intention of writing an apology of Nihilism. On the contrary, we condemn the Nihilistic doctrines without qualification; for the success of the Nihilists would throw the empire into a state of complete anarchy, and anarachy is no basis for the formation of a government properly balanced between law and liberty. Russia cannot be placed by violent proceedings on a line of march toward the position occupied by the other states of Europe. We have merely desired to point out that individuals of all ranks of Russian society who are now in great numbers arrested, incarcerated, court-martialled, shot, or exiled to a living death, that these individuals do not deserve to be classed with ordinary social conspirators, whether Nihilist or Communist or Socialist. The ill-will of an official or an unjust suspicion is quite enough to secure the forfeiture of life and property, and not seldom a sentence of death.

The past sufferings of Russia explain her present deplorable condition; and her past and her present sufferings appeal to us strongly for sympathy with the sufferers. Not by revolution, nor by anarchy; not by war, nor by a reign of terror can the political regeneration of Russia be accomplished. Even in ages which could not boast of the superior intelligence of the nineteenth century the exercise of despotic power has always been precarious. But the days are now past when despotism can successfully contend against the ceaseless encroachments of Christian civilization. Retreat into the dark ages of Asiatic barbarity is impossible. In vain, therefore, does the Russian Government try to oppose the acceptance of the rules and regulations by which the family of Western nations are

governed. The spirit of the age, demanding religious liberty and public freedom, is at work in Russia. Her greatest need is the introduction of those elements which will free the nation from the fatal effects of Peter's and Catharine's reign; that is to say, replacement of shallow superstition by true religion, and a fresh supply of vigorous sound moral principles.

The history of Russia serves as a warning example that the socalled Christian religions do not stand on one and the same level. Outside of the Catholic Church Christianity (so-called) has not been able to produce civilization in the true meaning of this muchabused term. Protestantism has reached a stage of rapid decomposition. The Greek Church is but a weak shadow of its former self. And in spite of the deepseated religious craving of the Russian nation, we see what the mock Christianity of that Northern despotism has led to.

And as the creation of the Russian Church has been an act of the Czar, so the abandonment of the false position which the autocrat of the North fills must likewise proceed from him. Any thorough and effective reform can arise only from the disposition and the wishes of the Czar, as long as he unites in his person the majesty, both civil and religious, of the realm. The influence of one who combines the legislative and judicial functions de jure and de facto, as the Russian Emperor does, can hardly be exaggerated, if but exercised for the benefit of the people. The genius of true religion, of true culture, of true civilization, clamors for admittance at the portals of the empire. This spirit addresses the judgment and the virtues of the Czar, begging to be established beneath the fostering aid of his prodigious power. This spirit tries to wrest from the present sovereign not an unmeaning, momentary triumph; not the shadow or the name of liberty, but something worthy of a great ruler and lastingly beneficial to the happiness of a great nation. This spirit tries to teach him to yield by a free act of his own volition those prerogatives which have become untenable, and which will be forced from his successors if not from himself. And this same spirit also assures him that order and tranquillity flourish better under civil than under martial law; and that a return to true religion, or at least to religious toleration and security of person and property, would gratify his fondest aspirations after fame, and engrave his name indelibly and honorably on the record of history. But whether these truths, which, we think, must force themselves upon the attention of the Czar, will receive due consideration, or whether fear and pride will withstand the appeal they are making to his better feelings and judgment, remains to be seen.

VOL. IV. 45

CARDINAL POLE.

The History of the Life of Reginald Pole. 1767.

In two volumes. London,

Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D., F.R.S, Dean of Chichester. Vol. viii., Reformation Period. London, Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1869.

Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism. By Nicholas Souder, D.D., Sometime Fellow of New College, Oxford. Published A.D. 1585, with a continuation of the History, by the Rev. Edward Rishton, B.A., of Brasennose College, Oxford. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by David Lewis, M.A. London, Burns & Oates, 1877.

THE

'HE life of Reginald, Cardinal Pole is chiefly interesting to us from the steadfast devotion which it exhibits to the principle of Catholic unity. Not that it is otherwise at all unattractive; indeed, it is safe to say that from first to last it abounds in matter of a description most likely to win upon the reader. The singularly eventful period which it embraces, the historic importance of the personages and scenes introduced, its variety of incident, and the altogether uncommon cast of its leading features, arouse and rivet the attention as few lives have power to do. Many of these circumstances, however, independently of the special attractiveness which they may have in themselves, contribute greatly to heighten the interest which gathers about the main thought and motive of Pole's life. Whether we join him in the haunts of his literary leisure, or follow him on his generally unsuccessful embassies to royal and imperial courts; whether we view him as Legate to Trent, or on the point of election to the Papal See, we cannot forget that these various situations are incident upon, and, in a measure, the result of that decisive step which made him an exile and the object of prolonged and vindictive persecution for conscience sake. To the same cause must be largely attributed the alternate praise and blame heaped upon his memory. He has been exalted or cast down, glorified or defamed, according to the creed or religious bias of the writer. The motives which governed him were founded in selfishness and self-deception, or they sprang from an overwhelming sense of duty, just as his biographer happens to be of the same religious belief as his subject, or shares the antipapal animosity of his persecutor. While Catholics such as Phillips, for example, credit him in his consistent and strenuous opposition to the pretensions of his royal but ungodly relative, Henry VIII., with a fervor of piety and a depth of conviction equal to that which led

More and Fisher to the block, Dr. Hook labors with an assiduity, not at all compensated by his measure of success, to show that he was at heart a Protestant, but that "he mistook malignity for zeal," and, "through hostility to Henry, became a Papist." This latter opinion, it may be taken for granted, hardly meets the approval of the more fair-minded portion of Pole's countrymen.

Though it would be, indeed, a graceless office to tax with an intentional want of fairness one to whose thorough kindliness of nature, and uprightness of character, Mr. Gladstone has recently borne such eloquent testimony, yet there is no disguising the fact, that throughout his life of Cardinal Pole there breathes a manifest bitterness of prejudice, which makes its perusal absolutely painful. It is, however, gratifying to note, notwithstanding the misleading influence of works of this class, the quite general approach, among non-Catholics, to a more dispassionate and enlightened temper of mind in the discussion of Catholic questions. Canon Oakley, in a very interesting contribution to the June number of the Contemporary Review, graphically traces the manifold evidences of change, in this respect, which has passed over the English people during the last fifty years. It leads to the earnest and reasonably grounded hope, that the day is not so far off when the non-Catholic historical biographer will recognize the wisdom of treating with candor, if not with exact impartiality, the lives of men who, like Pole, in a period of doctrinal strife were identified with the defence and propagation of Catholic principles.

Reginald Pole was born in March, A.D. 1500. His birthplace is subject to dispute; some say Stourton in Staffordshire; Dr. Hook quotes and agrees with Dallaway in giving the honor to Lordington in Sussex. His father, Sir Richard Pole, a brave and devoted adherent of Henry VII., died before Reginald, his third son, had completed his fifth year; and the sole care of his children, four sons and two daughters, fell to their affectionate mother, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. This illustrious lady was daughter to Clarence, Duke of York, niece of Edward IV. and Richard III., and, through her mother, Isabel Neville, granddaughter of Earl Warwick, "the proud setter-up and puller-down of kings." Her life pathetically illustrates the extremes of wretchedness and happiness which close kinship with royalty frequently occasions. Her earlier years were saddened by the loss of her brother, Earl Warwick, the victim of the dark policy of Henry VII., who beheld in him a possible rival to his son. His daughter-in-law, the ill-fated Catharine, sought in after years, by the strongest mark of affectionate esteem, to make her some slight atonement for the grievous wrong then inflicted. She was chosen sponsor in confirmation to the Princess Mary, appointed her governess, and invested with the general