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proposing the election of Father Lacordaire to the post of Provincial, -a step which seemed to imply the triumph of the less-observant party. It seems, however, that, whether his judgment were right or not, he did not recommend the measure out of any weakness or personal feeling. On his return to Rome he was received kindly, but he describes his position in a letter of the time, by the words, "moi, je suis resté un peu le bouc émissaire de tout cela: je ne le regrette pas, puisque c'était la condition de la paix et du bien." His conduct in this affair, and his remarks upon his position, were just what might have been expected of him. Men of his character are hardly in their place where the greatness of the end in view requires for the moment a disregard of many considerations that might otherwise persuade to condescension and compromise. Yet, strange to say, in the next difficult mission committed to him-the last in his life-he found himself outrunning the sagacious policy of his superiors in the direction of severity. He remained at Rome for some time after his return from France, feeling deeply the want of success that had attended his efforts there. He thought, far too readily, that because he had differed in opinion from his general, he had therefore forfeited his confidence. He betook himself with fresh ardour to his work at San Sisto. One of his paintings there executed at this time is said by M. Cartier to bear traces of his vivid recollections of the bright skies and gorgeous colouring of the East. If his mind was dwelling on his life at Mossoul with anything of a regretful longing, it was soon set at rest by an earnest prayer from the missionaries there that he might be sent to them once again. The superior whom he had left in his place had been obliged to leave, and fresh troubles had arisen, which seemed to call for him as the only person able to set them right. It was not without much reluctance on the part of Père Jandel, and of the Holy Father also, that Père Besson was allowed to act upon this invitation. He first went to France, where some important matters had to be settled with the government. The consulate of France at Mossoul had been suppressed, and the consequences were likely to be disastrous to the missionaries and their little flock. Père Besson was to press earnestly for the restoration of the consulate. At first it seemed as if he had little chance of succeeding; but just at that time M. Thouvenel took the place of Count Walewski as Foreign Minister; and as he had strongly urged the very measure in question while ambassador at Constantinople, he was easily induced to grant at least that a vice-consul should be placed at Mossoul. Besson spent a few more weeks in France and Belgium, visiting convents, and bidding adieu to friends and penitents, and then returned to Rome, only to depart for the East in September 1859.

The last six months of his life were full of suffering. The first thing that happened at Mossoul after his arrival was the death of the French vice-consul, on whose support he had reckoned so much. Then he set himself to the question which had been the immediate cause of the troubles that had made his return necessary. They arose from that principle of intense nationality which has caused so much mischief in the Church since the very earliest times, and which appears to be as lively and stubborn a root of evil in the present day as ever before. It was not, however, at all events directly, a quarrel between the native Chaldean clergy and the foreign missionaries. But the Chaldeans, before their own return to unity, had been under the jurisdiction of the Nestorian patriarch. They had, moreover, the same rites and the same liturgical language as the Christians of Malabar, in India, who had also been under the patriarch's government. This was quite enough to constitute a reason, in the eyes of the more national among

them, why the Malabar churches should be furnished with bishops by the Chaldeans, notwithstanding the submission of both to the Holy See. These, of course, would be brought into collision with the Roman organisation by which Malabar was administered. Ignorance came to the aid of prejudice; the Chaldeans and the disaffected in Malabar each thought they should gain greatly by connection with the other. A priest and some young students were sent from Malabar to the Chaldean patriarch, that he might ordain them as the first members of a national clergy. Père Besson was able for a time to prevail on him to hold his hand; but the patriarch was at last over-persuaded by the opposite party. He openly broke with and denounced the French missionaries, one of whom had been commissioned by the Pope's delegate to represent him in his absence. Meanwhile the course of events. in Italy, which seemed to threaten the Holy See with great troubles at home, encouraged the schismatical party. The patriarch fortified himself by the adhesion of some other Chaldean bishops, and at last proceeded to consecrate a bishop for the Malabar Christians. The Dominican representative of the Papal delegate threatened him and the other bishops with the censures of the Church; but they disclaimed his authority, and appealed to the Holy Father himself.

It cannot be wondered at that Père Besson and his brethren were now advocates for strong measures; but as the appeal recognised the authority of Rome, and so left a door open for further negotiations, it is not surprising, on the other hand, that the affair should still have been kept open by Rome herself. She does not usually throw away the chance of a future reconciliation. Père Besson and his colleagues had to bear some taunts from their enemies, for it certainly seemed as if their threats had failed to be ratified by the power they represented; but by so doing they served the Holy See far better than if they could, by possibility, have induced it to act with precipitancy. But there was more than this for them to bear; for they were assailed at Rome by their enemies with charges against their general conduct and way of life such as it must have been very hard for them to have to confute. Père Besson bore all with his usual patience and humility, though, tormented again by the fear that he was not trusted, he begged of his superiors to be allowed to return to France. Before his request could be answered he was in his grave, a real victim to his own charity. An epidemic fever appeared at Mossoul; he threw himself at once into the midst of the danger, as he had done in the early days of his religious life, when the cholera was raging in France. It was a relief to him, amid the troubles of the mission, to be able to devote himself to the service of the sick. He took no precautions, and spared no exertion, though the fatigue wore him down terribly, and he was all the time keeping the Lent fast with Oriental strictness, which exacts more in the way of abstinence than ordinary Europeans can bear. length, when his strength seemed to be failing altogether, he was persuaded to go to the mountain convent of Mar-Yacoub for rest and change of air. But he only reached it to die. The fever was already upon him; and after a fortnight's illness, he sank under it on May 4th, 1861. He was then forty-five.

At

M. Cartier has added to the life of Père Besson a second volume, containing nearly two hundred of his letters. They are almost entirely on spiritual subjects. These, and any more that may hereafter be collected, will form the most lasting monument of the writer, whose very attractive character they recall and reflect. They are not so brilliant as those of Lacordaire; their charm lies in their simplicity and freedom from effort, and in the genuine charity and piety with which they glow.

They are full of prudence and practical wisdom. Père Besson was more fitted, perhaps, for direction of souls than for the government of communities, at least in difficult times, and laboured more successfully in the confessional than in the pulpit. In this particular sphere he exercised a great influence. He was always ready for it, and never denied his best help to any who sought it. He did not even abandon it when sent to the East, but kept up a correspondence with many of his former penitents in Europe, larger than he had time for without letting it fall, now and then, considerably into arrear. This was one of his complaints against himself in his last illness. Such men as he do not often come to be very prominent; their life is interior and hidden; it is something like an exception if circumstances call them into publicity; and when they are so called, they appear sometimes to fail at a critical moment, not in virtue or charity, but in judgment or firmness, and the seeming failure is the means of bringing to them the cross which is to accomplish their perfection. They leave behind them memories cherished by those who knew them with a tenderness in which others can hardly expect to share, until they study them and their remains in the pages of some such biography as that before us— simple, truthful, and loving-in which the writer has skill enough to give a perfectly definite and intelligible idea of the character which he is describing, and judgment enough to let that character make its own impression on his readers.

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ARNOLD'S ESSAYS.*

MR. ARNOLD has deservedly gained a great reputation as an essayist He writes, we believe, seldom, but always with care, always with point and brilliancy. The announcement of an article from his pen is sure to excite curiosity, which is not commonly disappointed. His readers have learnt to expect from him something not merely clever, but thoughtful, informing, and suggestive: his style is graceful, though with a little, now and then, of affectation; and his ideas sometimes flash with a light which is almost that of genius. There is a good deal of amusement too to be found in what he writes. We are never sure but that we may not find him all at once engaged in administering chastisement to some offender against taste or propriety, in a style of exquisite and gentle sublimity, very entertaining to his readers, whatever sensations it may occasion in the sufferer. On the whole, therefore, Mr. Arnold has certainly not misjudged the mind of the public in collecting his scattered articles, and giving us the opportunity of reading them consecutively. Of the many volumes of this kind that have lately been published, few will have a better chance of outliving the present generation than that of Mr. Arnold.

The essays have little connection with one another beyond the bond of common origin; but there is much family likeness between them. The two first are so far the most important that they contain more than the others a formal profession of their author's literary aims and special ideas, so far as he has any. They are entitled 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' and 'The Literary Influence of Academies.' These are followed by articles on Maurice and Eugenie de Guérin, on Heine, Joubert, and Spinoza. The volume also contains two elaborate essays on 'Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment,' and on 'Marcus

* Essays in Criticism. By Matthew Arnold, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Macmillan, London and Cambridge.

Aurelius.' Each of these attracted much attention at the time of its first publication. We might find much to say about them not quite in harmony with Mr. Arnold's views; but our want of space will compel us to confine ourselves to a few remarks on the essays first mentioned, and of these we can only speak somewhat generally.

Criticism, says Mr. Arnold, is "a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." He makes a great point of this disinterestedness which criticism ought to have. "How is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from practice; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all the subjects that it touches; by steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, . . . . but which criticism has really nothing to do with." He instances as his ideal organ of criticism the Revue des deux Mondes, "having for its main function to understand and utter the best that is known and thought in the world, existing, it may be said, as just an organ for the free play of the mind;" and he contrasts with this Revue, to their disadvantage, the English Reviews, which are all more or less the organs of certain parties, and which give expression each to a certain definite shade of opinion. In this way criticism is enslaved and fettered, and prevented from discharging its proper function, which is the "creating of a current of true and fresh ideas;" and it lends its aid to that narrow self-satisfaction, which Mr. Arnold justly describes as "vulgarising and retarding," and of which he gives some amusing instances-not, however, drawn from criticism or literature, but from the speeches of members of parliament to their constituents, or of country gentlemen to their tenants.

It is perfectly true that we are very much in need of a criticism that shall elevate and enlarge the public mind, and devote itself honestly and unflinchingly to the discovery of what is true, noble, and good, without caring for the practical motives that may arise for turning our eyes away from what may be unwelcome though true, and humiliating though precious. Mr. Arnold closes his second essay by a severe, but not unjust, remark on a saying of Lord Macaulay about the unequalled value of English literature, a saying which belongs to a strain of selfglorification to which Mr. Arnold again applies his favourite epithets, "vulgar and retarding." But that intense self-conceit, which Mr. Arnold is too academic and refined to call by its right name, has its root in ignorance more or less profound of things outside our own special range; and what higher task, under such circumstances, can criticism undertake than the removal of such ignorance? It is not merely that "English thought is streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant of its existence;" this thought wells up from the heart of a nation that has long been in the habit not only of ignoring most of what was foreign to itself, but also of misunderstanding what it could not altogether ignore. Let Mr. Arnold protest as much as he will against taking criticism out of the purely intellectual sphere and making it practical, still the sphere of criticism is as wide as the sphere of intelligence and knowledge, and its duties embrace the correction of falsehood and the dispelling of ignorance, how practical soever they may have become. Literature without a purpose and without any effect upon life becomes vapid, enervating, and affected. Mr. Arnold seems, therefore, to us to be somewhat too fastidious, and to shrink from the highest and most important part of the work of criticism, as it is set forth in his own definition; for surely

"the best that is known and thought in the world" cannot exclude the most vital subjects on which thought can be exercised, or knowledge attained. Moreover, the state of things around us calls for a somewhat more commonplace, but also more manly, view of the function of criticism. Instead of a lounging, exquisitely-refined criticism that blandly entreats literature to be disinterested and not so vulgar, to drop provinciality and to learn to be urbane, we want a very good-humoured, a very inoffensive, but at the same time a very downright and plain-spoken criticism indeed-one that will not mind telling our countrymen that they are full of prejudice about things they do not know, and full of ignorance about things they write and talk about. We want an industrious and laborious criticism that shall not question without confuting, nor assert without proving, nor waste itself in generalities, nor destroy without building up, nor root up without planting; but we want one that will not be afraid to question and to assert, and to destroy and to root up, and which must clear the ground of weeds and rubbish before it can hope to do more.

Mr. Arnold feels, and has the courage to say, that less of current English thought comes into this "best that is known and thought in the world" than of the current literature of France or Germany. The proposition may be partially true; but in order to find a remedy for the evil we must descend to particulars, and point out the departments of thought and knowledge in which we are behind others. It is good to protest against the insularity, the exclusiveness, the self-conceit which stain a great portion of our current literature; but the effect has an historical and tangible cause with regard to great and important subjects of thought, and a writer in Mr. Arnold's position could have pointed it out with some hope of being attended to. But we fear that a good deal of what, in Mr. Arnold's view, is "the best that is known and taught in the world" requires correction every where on certain points, and that as to these the evil affects the current literature of France and Germany not less than that of England. Mr. Arnold is much amused by a remark addressed to himself by a certain member of parliament, "that a thing is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it whatever;" and he hopes that the day may come when it shall be enough to make a thing objectionable that it is an anomaly. The current literature-at all events the ephemeral press-of the Europe which Mr. Arnold considers as the great common country of criticism,— "for intellectual and spiritual purposes one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result, whose members have, for their proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another," the literature of this Europe has lately been occupying itself with a great ecclesiastical declaration of principles and doctrines, and we fear that the exhibition has been as anomalous elsewhere as with ourselves. For what can be more anomalous, or, if Mr. Arnold likes it better, more "vulgar and retarding," than for literary men to write about a document whose phraseology they do not understand, to cast aside, in their reflections upon it, all the rules of interpretation that apply to the class of pronouncements to which it belongs, and thus to blunder on from one absurdity about it to another? We have seen plenty of this in our own country, certainly; but we fear that criticism has something to find fault with on this head elsewhere also. If the members of the "great confederation" start with no larger stock of knowledge than that of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another, they start with but a poor outfit for the acquirement of "the best that is known and thought in the world." With writers like Mr. Arnold, who place them

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