repast as the circumstances admitted of, he took occasion to criticise all their arrangements, including their food. He speaks of them as "French peasants," severely condemning Père Deniaud for inducing them to leave their homes, apparently quite unaware of their character as missionaries. It is to be hoped Mr. Thomson may learn with more experience of life greater sympathy with the aims and motives of others, as it would be a pity if a spirit of intolerance and self-sufficiency were to mar the many fine qualities which enabled him to do his own work in Africa so creditably and well.

Ungenerous criticism of this kind is indeed in many quarters the only recognition bestowed on the Catholic missionary's labours in the cause of humanity, and the meed of human praise reaped by him is at best but small. The motives which sustain the ordinary traveller are in his case non-existent. His discoveries will evoke no applause from the learned, his adventures no sympathy from the multitude, his life's work will be obscure to the end, his name unknown, his death unchronicled. In the remote deserts where he has cast his lot scarce a word of appreciation from the world without ever reaches him to cheer the lonely hours when, amid the depressing influences of his surroundings, he seems to be labouring in vain; for European civilization, absorbed in the whirl of its own busy round, can spare no thought to those who by African lakes and streams are working at the noblest task possible to man here below-the moral regeneration of his fellow

man.

ART. VII.—A RECENT CONTRIBUTION TO ENGLISH

HISTORY.

The History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain. By T. E. BRIDGETT. Two vols. C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.

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ISTORY is no longer the simple narrative of facts that it used to be—ad narrandum non ad probandum; the exhibition of concurrent events just as they happened en masse, if we may so say; a panorama of the contemporaneous political and religious and social and domestic life of nations at a glance. The spirit of subdivision, characteristic of the times, has changed, completely changed, the old summary character of history. The keen analytical temper of the day has thrown men back on the past to scrutinize and mark off and draw out each constituent part, each separate feature of human society, in order to discover and to estimate at its true worth each

separate motive power in the development and growth of nations that has contributed to make them such as they are in the present. Buckle's "History of Civilization," Lecky's "History of European Morals," Freeman's "Historical Geography," each in its turn and measure is an example of this. Stubb's "Constitutional History of England" is a still better example. And the history that is before us, the "History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain" is the best example of all. It is the history of one single doctrine in its results on the individual life and the public character of the various races-Britons, Picts, Scot, Saxons, Anglo-Normans, English and Scotch-that during a period of more than a thousand years successively peopled this island and assisted the slow formation of the English nation.

I.

A more fitting title than the one adopted could not have been chosen for this work. And yet it is open to misconception. It is just possible that it will mislead people and give them an impression of something too doctrinal to be generally interesting, of something very abstract and learned and dogmatic, or controversial, or pious: more suitable for the study of theologians or the meditation of religious than for the general reading of ordinary laymen. This is just what it is not. It is learned, yes. There is something of dogma in it and something of controversy too. And moreover it is pious, since that may truly be called pious which, though marred by the record of much irreverence, is essentially a narrative of the piety of England in connection with the Blessed Sacrament, the Mysterium Fidei, the object of supreme adoration, during all the centuries that followed the adoption of Christianity by our forefathers down to the hour when the revolt of lust and greed and pride overthrew the altar of sacrifice and extinguished the lamp of the old Church throughout the length and breadth of the land. But so far from being a dry theological dissertation, a mere abstract, dogmatic, controversial treatment of the great central rite of the Catholic religion, it is, as we have already said, a history of the Holy Eucharist in its effects on the individual and public life of a nation; and it is so full of real personal interest, so full of varied biographical and historical incident; it sets forth in so fresh and striking a way the important civilizing, educating influence of the faith of the English people in the Eucharistic Presence, that it will enable many to see, who have never seen before, how singularly onesided and incomplete that estimate of our national growth and development must be that, heedless of the operation of this particular belief in early times, overlooks the fact that the Holy

Eucharist was the origin and sanction of some of the great principles of our national prosperity, as well as a bond of union between the rulers who enunciated and upheld them and the ruled for whose benefit they were in the first instance chiefly established.

A few years ago it would have been impossible to produce such a history. The difficulties that stood in the way, great as they must have been now, would have been simply insurmountable then. And, indeed, notwithstanding the publication of the Rolls Series, of the Annals and Memorials and State Papers, of the Ecclesiastical and Conciliar Documents, of the critical studies of all the various antiquarian and archæological societies that have been laid under contribution for it, it is surprising that it has been possible even now. A moment's reflection will show why. The old Chroniclers were indifferent to every-day events. The routine of life, the quidquid agunt homines, had few attractions for them, little power to arrest their attention and claim a place in their records for future generations. Scandal itself-Et quando uberior vitiorum copia?

had a better chance of immortality at the hand of the scribe than a regularly recurring round of worship which everybody was bound to know and everybody was bound to practise.

Why should the annalist describe what everyone knew and daily witnessed? It would have seemed as natural to chronicle the daily rising of the sun and the effect of its rays upon the world. Indeed, there is a singular analogy between what is said of the weather and of the Blessed Sacrament. The annalists place on record how there was an earthquake throughout England in 1089, how a comet with two tails appeared in 1097, and mock suns in 1104; how at one time the Thames was almost dried up, and how at another it overflowed its banks; how thunder was heard on the feast of the Holy Innocents in 1249, while snow fell at the end of May in 1251. They tell of eclipses, murrains, severe winters, droughts, signs and portents. But they never describe the verdure of spring, the genial heat of summer, the fruitfulness of autumn; they never describe the full river flowing peacefully, or the midnight skies covered with brilliant stars. In the same way, if a church is burnt in an incursion of the enemy, if a murder is committed within the walls of the sanctuary, if the sacred vessels are stolen from the altar, if the holy rites cease during an interdict, such events are chronicled. But the daily service of the church, the fervent communions, the prayers poured out before the altar, the acts of faith and charity-all these, as a matter of course, are scarcely heeded.

Yet not for an instant must it be supposed that the "History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain" is unduly concerned with the dark side of the picture; that evil is more prominent than VOL. VI. NO. I. [Third Series.]

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good in it; that irreligion and sacrilege perpetually cast their deep shadows across its pages. Abuses and crimes have their place, for the author does not suffer from the endemic perennial fidget about giving scandal,' and think that facts should be omitted in great histories, or glosses put upon memorable acts, because they are not edifying?'* But the sanctuary in which a murder was committed evidences something more enduring than the crime that profaned it; the stolen vessels betoken something more general than the sacrilegious theft that desecrated them; the interdicted rites witness to something more habitual than the disorders that led to their suspension. And it is just this something, the sustained faith of ages in its highest manifestations and noblest issues that Father Bridgett has mainly occupied himself with, till from the homes of the serf and the freeman, from the haunt of the wretched leper, from the quadrangle of the cottage, from the lecture-hall of the university, from the camp of the soldier, from the cell of the hermit and recluse, from the cloisters of the monastery and convent, from the courts of justice, from the legislative assemblies of the nation, from the councilchamber of the bishop, from the palace of the sovereign, he has brought a vast concourse of witnesses, men and women, bearing testimony to one all-pervading belief, which, penetrating the whole fabric of society, domestic, social, and political, ennobled life, stayed crime, and found a royal utterance in the Cathedrals and Abbeys that are still the wonder and glory of our land, and that -in spite of all the scientific knowledge of this age of discoveries, in spite of all our mechanical appliances, of all the skill of our artizans, of all the ceaseless industry of our operatives, unspoiled by the enforced idleness of Saints' days, so distressing to the enlightened, far-reaching wisdom of political economists-no architect can now approach in beauty of proportion and form, and no workman can surpass in strength and perfection of

masonry.

II.

Beginning with the early British Church, we find the scant though clear proofs of a belief in the Real Presence identical with the belief of the Catholic Church at the present day, and consequently a belief utterly opposed to the tenets of Protestantism, gradually augmented by side lights from Brittany, and finally completed by the full radiance of the Gallo-Roman and Frankish Church, with which the Armorican Church was in close union, and which, in turn, the Armorican united to the sister Church of Great Britain and Ireland. This chapter, Side Lights from

*Card. Newman, "Historical Sketches."

Brittany, is a very important one, and is, besides, an admirable instance of the historical acumen of Father Bridgett and of the critical and constructive method employed throughout his book.

A few words of Tertullian's, written in 208, as many of Origin's, a few more of St. Jerome's, St. John Chrysostom's explicit statement that, 'even the British Isles have felt the power of the Word; for there, too, churches and altars (volaornpia, a word of special significance, used as it is by St. John Chrysostom in the numberless passages of his works where he maintains the doctrines of the Real Presence and of Sacrifice) have been erected;' the fact that the Council of Arles, held in the year 314, at which canons were enacted, regarding the uniform observance of Easter according to the decision of the Bishop of Rome, the consecration of bishops, and the inviolability of the sacrament of marriage, was attended by the Bishops of York and London and Caerleon; a brief mention, here and there, by the ascetic and keenly religious' Gildas, of the most holy sacrifice, the heavenly sacrifice (sacrosancta sacrificia, cœleste sacrificium) called mass or missa, then as now, and one or two of his canons treating of the Eucharistic Rite, with special reference to the penances incurred by carelessness in the administration of it, together with his lament over the unworthy lives of certain of the clergy, "raro sacrificantes et nunquam puro corde inter altaria stantes," this is the sum of what we know expressly concerning the faith and practice of the British Church in relation to the Blessed Sacrament before the landing of St. Augustine in 597. Definite, unmistakeable, sufficient evidence, it is true, for those who know how to read it aright, yet really how scanty viewed apart from what it implies. But when we cross the water, and are landed on that little corner of territory, cut off by geographical position, as well as socially and politically isolated from the rest of Gaul, we are presented with a store of facts, which, though it has not been totally ignored hitherto, has, nevertheless, been so little heeded that modern historians have failed to realize that it belongs directly to the history of the Church in this country, and bears expressed on its beliefs and practices rarely more than implicitly or indirectly conveyed to us by the passing allusions of ancient historians.

That the Britons from Great Britain founded a small independent kingdom in Armorica a century before Clovis and his Franks passed the Rhine, is now, Father Bridgett, using the words of M. de Courson, the learned historian of ancient Brittany, says, as uncontested a fact as the existence of the sun in the heavens; though Breton writers, under Henry III. and Louis XIV., had to expiate in the Bastile their temerity in maintaining such a