132 THE STATUE OF DOMITIAN. the one side, and on the other, opposite the three columns in front of San Maria Liberatrice, and that it was bounded by the ancient Comitium and the Via Sacra. No spot of ground on the habitable globe has been subjected to such searching scrutiny, or has challenged a sharper passage of arguments in the conflicts of the learned in endeavouring to determine the precise line of boundary of this Roman Forum. Recently, however, a discovery has just been made upon the Forum, which will not only interest all archæological students, but also all classical scholars in the world. It is the remains of the pedestal of the colossal equestrian bronze statue of Domitian, which, according to Statius, was situated in the middle of the Forum, and the discovery of which has always been looked forward to as the solution of the many difficulties and contending theories connected with its topography. In form it is a parallelogram, the length of which is parallel to the Via Sacra, and distant about forty feet from it. Its direction, therefore, is towards the Arch of Titus, and corresponds exactly with the position assigned by Statius to the statue of Domitian. It is near to that spring which bubbles up on the Via Sacra in front of the Basilica Julia; and as regards the length of the Forum, it stands very nearly midway between the Rostra Veteres and that lofty platform of a small temple discovered at the beginning of the year by Signor Rosa, and believed to be the temple of the Deified Julius. The pedestal measures 4.60 metres in width and about 7.20 in length; but, as far as has been ascertained, it would seem to have been something longer. From the discovery of this pedestal, no further doubt can remain either as to the direction in which the Forum lay, or as to the names which have been given by the Italian, English, or German archeologists to the buildings which EDUCATION AND RELIGION. 133 surround it. Behind the pedestal stand the remains of the Temples of Vespasian and of Concord, and immediately in front of it the platform on which once stood the Temple of the Deified Julius. On the right side are the remains of a gigantic Basilica, the Basilica Julia; and on the left there can be no doubt that the continuation of the excavations will, at a more or less equal distance, reveal the remains of the Basilica Emilia. Finally, the face of a statue occupying this pedestal, being turned a little to the right, would look directly towards the Imperial Palace and the Temple of Vesta, the remains of which are now covered by the Church of Sta. Maria Liberatrice. Education in Rome and in URING my ramble through the city, I passed numbers and resnlts afford the most conclusive reply to those who assert that the Catholic Church is opposed to education and scientific progress. The Church has ever zealously patronized and cherished secular and religious education, natural and divine. She has ever stimulated youth to aspire to the highest attainment of both, but never separately, always concomitantly. She regards religion as a guide, indispensable to the safety and utility of scientific education; and that without the light of her guidance, science may blindly tend to the destruction of the scholar, and eventuate in the most baneful disasters to society. The Acts of the Vatican Council 134 VATICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION. again emphatically enunciated these principles, as may be learned from the following extract from those Acts. The following remarkable passage is quoted from the acts of the Council: "The Catholic Church perpetually and unanimously has also held and holds that there is a twofold knowledge-natural and divine. And not only can faith and reason never be at variance, but they afford each other mutual assistance; for right reason demonstrates the foundation of faith, and, illumined by its light, cultivates the science of things divine, while faith frees and guards reason from errors, and furnishes it with manifold knowledge. So far, therefore, is the Church from opposing the cultivation of human arts and sciences, that she many ways helps and promotes it; for she is neither ignorant of, nor despises the benefits to human life which result from them, but confesses that as they come from God, the Lord of sciences, so, if they be rightly treated, they lead to God by the help of His grace. Nor does the Church forbid that each of these sciences, within its own sphere, should make use of its own principles and its own method; but while recognizing this just liberty, she is sedulously on her guard, lest, by opposing the divine teaching, they assume the patronage of error, and lest, going beyond their own boundary, they invade and trouble the domain of faith". Secular learning has been cultivated by the children of Holy Church in every age, and to their zeal is the world indebted for the preservation of all the treasures of historic, artistic, scientific, and classic literature which it possesses. Even her ecclesiastics have ever been the most prominent pioneers in penetrating unknown regions of, and making new discoveries in, literature, in astronomy, and in all the arts and sciences. In modern times Cardinal Wiseman seemed to have been born in the PRIESTS PROMOTERS OF SCIENCE. 135 centre of a circle of every branch of polite literature, of art, taste, and science, and to have taken up each alternately, and displayed and developed them all to admiring multitudes. Cardinal Maï drew from oblivion treasures of classic lore. Cardinal Mezzofanti was the greatest linguist that ever lived. Pope Benedict XIV. was the most learned personage of his age. The Royal Society of London so highly appreciated the acquirements in astronomic science of Boscovie, a Jesuit, that they selected him as one of the best qualified professors in the world to travel to a distant land to take observations, and report on the transit of Venus across the Sun. Father Shiner was pre-eminent in his knowledge of the sense of vision and in optics. Father Secchi is universally admitted to be one of the first professors of Europe in the science of astronomy: and Father Monyal in abstract mathematics: and Father Mercenne in other literary and scientific branches of secular education. It was also a Catholic priest who, after a vast amount of labour, fixed the precise dates of every eclipse of the sun and moon which occurred to a very remote date of antiquity. Another discovered and elucidated the very abstruse laws which govern the formation of crystals. His learning commanded the respect of even the infidels of the first French revolution. Pope Gregory the Great reformed the calendar. Father Calvius distinguished himself in the same department of science. Even in our own country and in our own days, Very Reverend Dr. Callan, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Maynooth College, elicited the acknowledgments and admiration of the science professors of the world for the discoveries he made in the mysterious agent or fluid of electricity or magnetism, and invented a battery which they wished to designate as the Callan battery, but which I have no doubt of his modesty named, and which has now acquired universal celebrity as, the Maynooth battery. Copernicus was the Newton of his age, and through his writings, experiments, and his discoveries on our planetary system, may be justly regarded as Newton's preceptor. The Prussians, ambitious to enumerate this great genius amongst their celebrities, assert he was a native of Germany. Their arguments are quite inconclusive. his having been a native of Poland. The name is derived not from the German, but from the Slavic. Melancthon, the "Preceptor Germaniæ", was a contemporary of Copernicus, and in a letter of his lately found in the library of Wolfenbüttel, in alluding to the great astrologer, he styles him "Sarmaticus", which in those days signified a Pole. He thus expresses himself in reference to the discoverer of the Copernican system: "Ut ille astrologus Sarmaticus qui terram movet, et solem figit". "As the Polish astrologer who makes the earth to move, and the sun to stop”. Priests and monks have in every age attained celebrity as musical composers and painters-amongst them Abbé Vogler; and the pencil of the Blessed Angelico was amongst those of the most charming of artists. Cardinal Ximenes was preeminent amongst the most distinguished literary characters of the world at the close of the fifteenth century. The library of the Propaganda in Rome contains 45,000 volumes, and the college is constantly circulating literary productions of the deepest research and of the most erudite character through its publishing agent, Don Pietro Marietti of Turin ; and which, even for paper, typography, and binding, are unrivalled in the world, and won the prizes in the London and Dublin exhibitions as the most successful specimens. This college once possessed twenty-five founts of valuable and very rare type, in |