ART. III.-LITERATURE FOR THE YOUNG. I. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 1. The Catholic Children's Magazine. London & Dublin: James Duffy. 2. The Juvenile Missionary Keepsake. London: J. Snow. 3. The Juvenile Missionary Magazine. Edinburgh: Oliphant & Co. 4. The Band of Hope Review. London: S. W. Partridge & Co. 5. Little Folks. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin. 6. Golden Childhood. London: Ward, Lock & Co. London: "Leisure Hour" Office. London: Routledge & Sons. London: Routledge & Sons. HAT is the charm of childhood ?" asks Mgr. Dupanloup, in his well-known work, "L'Enfant," when he is about to sum up his impressions after twenty-five years' experience of education; and he gives the answer of a venerated friend of his own :— it is not alone the fascination of simplicity and candour, not alone the charm of innocence; there is an attraction yet beyond: "This it is children are the joy of the present-but, above all, they are the hope of the future." The hope of the family is in the new generation, entrusted with its name and honour, and guarded with lavish love. The hope of the State is in the children of its subjects; they are the future "people" on whom the strength and prosperity of the nation depends; it watches them sedulously so that they be taught after its own heart, in these degenerate days mainly with the view of making them peaceable subjects and efficient toilers and spinners for the common good. But more than all, they are the hope of the Church, the heirs of her faith, her sanctity, her traditions; her future rests with them. Therefore our hope is in them perpetually, as they come fresh and pliant, full of the ardour of young life, peopling our homes and filling our schools. Whatever concerns them is of vital interest. As the heirs of Christ, there is no greater work than to guard them, no greater calamity than that one of them should perish, no greater mystery in the world than the tremendous issues hidden under their present littleness-littleness of knowledge, where yet there may be mental power to lead other minds captive-littleness of experience, where the life may yet become part of the whole world's experience-bodily littleness, wherein are locked the secrets of human souls, whose influence will touch hundreds of others, ere the new generation melts out of the world's sight into eternity, leaving the world's face in some way changed for their coming here and for their passage thither. It is this thought of the future-as well as the responsibility where there is question of the impressionable souls of the young -that gives almost an awful importance to what otherwise might seem but trifles concerning children. There can be nothing trifling where their welfare is touched. They are in our keeping to be, as we trust, the strength of the Church, and the seed of her glory in successive faithful generations unto remotest time. The child is the hope of the future. This fact is thoroughly realized by the enemies of God's kingdom. In the full appreciation of it, all attacks upon the Church are planned. These are not the days of physical torture, but of a more terrible and subtle force-legalized moral persecution; and the first brunt of it is directed by the new laws of every antiChristian government against the faith of the children in the schools, and against the freedom of Christian teaching. When at the orders of the Municipal Council of Paris, the Prefect of the Seine caused the crucifixes to be torn down from the schoolroom walls and carted away like rubbish to be destroyed, the action was a type of the whole plan adopted by Governments warring against the Church. Their first aim is not to deprive Catholics of political rights, nor at once to banish the clergy, nor to silence their voice in the pulpit, nor to close churches, nor to enforce a pledge of infidelity as the proof of loyalty to the State. All these measures, in modified forms, may come afterwards, but the world has grown older and wiser since the attacks upon religion were begun with such open defiance. To take the cross away out of the children's sight, to banish the Crucified as a stumbling-block, a remnant of medieval foolishness, interfering with secular learning and social progress; to hope that outside the godless schoolroom in due time the obsolete doctrines swept out thence will be destroyed as worthless; this is the aim and these the tactics of the persecutors of our day, whether in revolutionized Italy, or in the French war against "clericalism, the enemy," or in the Kulturkampf beyond the Rhine. Even the free Republic of the United States has developed a taint of the same worldly wisdom, and lays hands upon the children's souls to barter them for national prosperity. American citizens may VOL. VI. NO. 11. [Third Series.] BB To return to the temples. Julian's mad career was soon cut short. Jovian, during his seven months' reign, recalled from banishment St. Athanasius, and other bishops exiled by Julian, and proclaimed freedom of worship to all; but the Pagan temples and sacrifices again fell into disuse, if we may trust the authority of Socrates. In In 364, he was succeeded by Valentinian in the West and Valens in the East. Of the latter, Theodoret says: "Valens gave licence to all to worship what they pleased, and only opposed those who defended the Apostolical doctrines. Throughout the whole of his reign, fire burned upon the altar of idols, libations and sacrifices were offered to them, and festivals in their honour were held in the market-place. Those who celebrated the orgies of Bacchus were seen running about the streets clad in skins, and worked up to madness, tearing dogs to pieces, and committing other excesses, inculcated by the lord of the festival."* the West his brother, Valentinian, is said, by Ammianus Marcellinus, to have "disturbed no one, nor commanded that any one should worship either this or that; nor did he by threatening interdicts bow down the necks of his subjects to that which he himself worshipped, but left these matters undisturbed, as he found them."+ He removed the edicts against nocturnal sacrifices and magical conjuring. But, in 371, he expressly decreed: "I do not rank augury among the interdicted malpractices. I do not regard as culpable either this art or any religious observance established by our ancestors. The laws enacted by me from the beginning of my reign are proofs of this. They grant to each one liberty to follow such worship as he wishes. I do not condemn augury itself; I only forbid it mingling itself up with criminal practices." He made some laws about the temples, in order to prevent collision between the faithful and the heathen. He forbad Christians to be guardians of heathen temples; and in the case of disused temples, he revoked the measures by which their revenues were handed over to Pagan priests, and turned them to his own privy purse.§ Publius Victor gives a list of the temples standing in Rome in the time of Valentinian, divided according to the fourteen regions. In all, they number 152 temples, and 183 small chapels, ædicula. At this time no heathen temple in Rome is known to have been transformed into a Christian church.|| In Smith's valuable "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities" we read: "It is stated by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, that in the reign of Valentinian, an emperor whose Arian sympathies divided and weakened the Christian party, Paganism assumed so aggressive a demeanour that the clergy were afraid to enter the churches or the public baths."* In our own copy of Anastasius this circumstance of the clergy not being able to enter the churches or baths is stated to have occurred in the reign of Constantius, on the occasion of his coming to Rome, exiling Felix, and restoring Liberius. Hence, it would seem that the violence was on the part of the Arians, and not of the Pagans. M. Allard has followed Beugnot, from whom the author of the article cited above has evidently drawn his information; but we venture to consider the mistake to have arisen from Beugnot having seen a corrupt copy of the "Liber Pontificalis." St. Augustine was a youth of twenty at the beginning of Valentinian's reign, and he describes Paganism as in full liberty. He asks of the Pagans, in the second book of the "De Civitate Dei:" Why their gods took no care to reform their infamous morals? . It belongs to gods, who were men's guardians, to send prophets openly to threaten punishments to evil-doers, and promise rewards to those who live rightly. When did the temples of those gods ever echo with such warnings in a clear and loud voice? I, myself, when I was a young man, went to the spectacles and sacrilegious entertainments. I saw the raving priests, and heard the singers. I took pleasure in the shameful plays in honour of their gods and goddesses, of the virgin Cælestis, and of Berecynthia, the mother of them all. And on the solemnity consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch, publicly, by the most wicked players, things so foul that it would not be decent for-I don't say the mothers of the godsbut for the mothers of any senators, or of any honest men; nay, for the mothers of those very players themselves, to hear. If those are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this is purification, what is pollution?† .... It is well for us sometimes to be reminded of the abominations from which Christianity has delivered us! In 375 Valentinian died, and his son Gratian succeeded him. Gratian was the first Christian emperor who refused the insignia of the Pontifex Maximus, saying: "Such a vestment would not be becoming for a Christian." Thus, in him Paganism ceased to be the state religion. However, he proclaimed free toleration to all to assemble in their houses of prayer, except the three heretical sects of the Eunomians, Photians, and Manichees. The altar of victory, which had been replaced in the senate house, he "De Civ. Dei," ii. 4. * Vol. ii. p. 1538, "Paganism." Zosimus, iv. 36. ordered to be removed. In the East, in 380, Theodosius decreed : "We will that all the nations subject to our sway be of that religion which the divine Apostle Peter delivered to the Romans."* In 382, Gratian ventured upon a more decisive blow at Paganism. He confiscated all the landed property of the temples. He revoked all the civil and political honours associated with the priesthood, and the public honours paid to the vestal virgins for many centuries. He left them the right of receiving gifts and legacies, and did not suppress sacrifices, nor close temples, nor strip them of their treasures. Even the annona templorum still continued to be paid.† In 383, Gratian was murdered at Lyons, by the troops of the usurper Maximus, while Valentinian II., Gratian's brother, found a powerful friend and protector in Theodosius the Great, who, in 385, issued an edict against divination in every temple, either by day or night; and in 388, had the question solemnly debated in the senate, "whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans." The arguments for the ancient idolatry had been eloquently stated by the learned Prefect of Rome, Symmachus, and the orator Libanius; but St. Ambrose, who had been a statesman before he was Bishop of Milan, had effectually fortified the mind of the emperor, and the senate decreed, by a large majority, the degradation of the heathen gods. In 391, Theodosius published an edict: "Let no one pollute himself with sacrifices, let no one slay a harmless victim, let no one approach the shrines, nor purify the temples, nor lift up his eyes to idols made by human hands." He went further; and in 392, legislated against the household gods, and decreed: "All places where it shall be proved that the smoke of incense has burned, if they shall be proved to be the property of those who have offered the incense, shall be confiscated to our treasury."|| Theodosius has been said to have decreed the demolition of the temples. Theodoret says it of him, as he said it of Constantine, but no such law appears in the Code. We shall give some instances in which certain temples in the East were demolished by order of the emperor, but there is no trace of any general law to that effect having gone forth at all, much less of its having affected Rome in the West. Perhaps the best reflection of Christian public feeling in the West, during the reign of Theodosius, is to be found in the *"Cod. Theod." XVI. i. 2. Gibbon, c. xxxviii. vol. v. p. + Zosimus, iv. 55. 100. § "Cod. Theod." XVI. x. 10. Ibid. sec. 12. |