This terrible scene at last ended. The Archbishop knelt down and prayed in silence. He then rose and pronounced a last benediction on his friends kneeling around him. These six Christians rose more confident and resigned to meet a terrible death, and the funeral procession continued its march. The Abbé Allard led the way, chanting in a subdued voice the "De Profundis." He was preceded by Romain, who marched with both hands in his pockets, and with a careless air, as if performing some ordinary duty. The Archbishop walked after the Abbé Allard, accompanied by M. Bonjean. Then the Abbé Deguerry and the Fathers Clerc and Ducoudray. The Communists surrounded them, marching in disorder. A fresh halt was occasioned by finding a gate locked, of which the key was wanting. While a turnkey went to fetch it the Archbishop attempted to pronounce a few words, but was silenced by insults. The key was found, and they passed on. After that we have no direct evidence of what followed. Six minutes later a prolonged subdivision fire was heard with two short intervals, and then some isolated shots. This was at four minutes before eight o'clock. The victims fell exactly where their bodies were found, for the wounds corresponded to the pools of blood on the ground. They were ranged on their backs nearly parallel. The Archbishop to the right hand, then M. Bonjean, the Abbé Deguerry, and Fathers Clerc, Ducoudray, and Allard. The heads of the latter rested on the body of Père Ducoudray.

After the murder the soldiers retired by the court-yard. Verig, when leaving, showed a pistol to Periet, the turnkey, and said: "You see it is still smoking; I have just used it to give the last stroke to the famous Archbishop."

Another remarked, "That old canaille would not die; he rose three times, and I began to be afraid of him."

Outside they boasted that they had gained fifty francs, and Romain and François proceeded to search the cells. In that of Père Allard they found nothing. There was a discussion in that of the Archbishop over his pastoral ring, and they nearly came to blows over the division of the spoil.

At two o'clock in the morning, Verig, Romain, and several others, lighted by lanterns, proceeded to the place where the crime had been committed. They searched the bodies, tearing the clothes, snatching off buttons, etc., in their haste. Then Latour threw the bodies of the Archbishop and the Abbé Deguerry into a small hand-cart, and, escorted by Communists, they left for the cemetery of Père la Chaise. Latour dragged the cart and the rest pushed it. At the cemetery the bodies were placed in a common grave already prepared. The party returned for the other corpses,

but Garrard was too drunk to go the second time. Verig paid the men sixty centimes each.'

This is sufficient to prove that there exists an inextinguishable animosity, on the part of the dangerous class, against religion and its ministers. The clergy represent that order and obedience to law which this class almost instinctively detests. They delight, when opportunity serves, to visit their hatred of religion upon its votaries. Everything indicates that, if this element in French and Belgian society preponderate to-morrow, similar atrocities would be perpetrated. The clergy themselves, very naturally, but very illogically, associate these tendencies with republicanism. But they are as opposed to it as to monarchy. We do not call the semi-anarchical specimen of republicanism seen in Europe the genuine article. The fact is, under every form of government, there exists a distinctive class, generally too much repressed by law to be largely dangerous. It is only when the law is withdrawn that we see the unbridled display of passions which are only restrained by FEAR, as the wild beast is by the lash. The hell in their souls runs riot as soon as their cowardly natures feel that they have no fear of penalties. The only safeguard of society against the preponderance of this ever-aggressive element is that “righteousness" which "exalteth a nation," erecting, in its honest and peaceable citizens, impregnable bulwarks against every form of

wrong.

'Evidence at the trial of the Communists at Versailles, January 27th, 1872.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND POPULAR

EDUCATION.

HE work the Catholic Church is doing in our day and coun

TH

try in the effort to foster and promote Christian education is plain to the world. In spite of obstacles and difficulties—in the face of legislation that everywhere operates unfairly against her, and of a public opinion that is either hostile or indifferent, the Catholic Church steadily demonstrates her zeal for education by establishing and multiplying schools and institutions of learning, in order to afford in every parish and to every community the blessed advantages of a system of education from which God will not be excluded, and where Catholic youth shall receive a thoroughly Christian training.

In this beneficent and heroic work the Church shows that she is faithful to the traditions of her venerable past.

Her zeal for schools and generous patronage of science and learning is not a new manifestation. The fact is as old as the Church itself, and shines out in glorious prominence on every page of Catholic history in every land; during the earliest ages, as in later times, down even to the present day.

It may not be regarded as a useless task to devote a few pages to the duty of showing precisely what has been the attitude of the Catholic Church regarding this question of common schools and popular education; and it may be not altogether in vain to seek to demonstrate that, far from opposing the wide dissemination of knowledge, the Church has been the steady and consistent friend and patron of science and learning. And not, as is sometimes asserted, in favor of the few,-seeking to confine its advantages to a special class, or classes, but rather has labored from the beginning to extend and enlarge the opportunities of education so as to bring its blessings and advantages within reach of all her children, even to the humblest degree and the lowliest condition.

The unjust outcry raised against the Church on this head proceeds, it is true, from the shallow-minded and the ignorant, the weak partisan and the intolerant bigot; but this class, unhappily, are too often the sonorous oracles of Protestant pulpits, glib declaimers in the popular lyceum, and, more dangerous opportunity still, are to be found in the highest places, as in all the gradations of popular journalism.

Indeed it is scarcely extravagant to assert that no charge and reproach against the Catholic Church is more familiar to the public ear, and no other is pressed with greater vigor and pertinacity than

this ridiculous and unfounded charge, that she is, or at all events has been hostile to popular education, unfriendly to common schools, and opposed to the enlightenment of the masses of the people. "Wherever that Church has been able to wield power and to employ her resources unfettered," say these hostile critics, "she has shown herself hostile to education; has everywhere sought to cramp and fetter the mental powers and the intellectual activity of her subjects in a word has been a bar and an obstacle to the mental as well as to the social and political advancement of peoples and nations."

Nor is this language confined to avowed enemies of the Church; it is the familiar burden of the so-called philosophies and popular histories and text-books; it is repeated ad nauseam in well-known educational organs, and it is the favorite and fruitful theme for the essayist and the encyclopædist. How often do we not see quoted, as in triumphant and conclusive testimony of the justice of these allegations, "priest-ridden Italy," "benighted, retrograding Spain," and "poor, ignorant, Catholic Ireland?"

We shall now proceed to examine these inculpatory charges, and endeavor to show how altogether shallow and unsubstantial is the basis they rest on.

It will be shown that, from the earliest period in the history of Christianity down through every succeeding age, the Catholic Church has been unceasingly solicitous to foster and promote education. It will be made manifest in the countless schools established by her authority and under her patronage; and by her constant and unremitting efforts to encourage and propagate a general zeal in the cause of science and knowledge; and this zeal moreover was not merely in favor of schools for the wealthy, for ecclesiastics, but specially and notably shown in providing schools for the poor, free schools.

There is a more or less generally widespread impression and ⚫ belief that the existing system of free schools is of comparatively modern origin, and the claim has been put forward that New England is entitled to the glory and credit of having first instituted the system, which has since been so widely disseminated.

We shall see that free schools existed far back in what are ignorantly stigmatized as the "dark ages," and that traces of their existence will be found even in the first ages of Christianity. Facts are not wanting to show that Ireland may justly lay claim. to the honor of having been almost the first among the nations of Europe in zeal for education and learning.

Historians now acknowledge that the schools of Ireland were not only free, that is, education was given gratis in the Irish schools to all, but even books, food and lodging were supplied to students

who sought her shores from the neighboring islands, and the continent, but, Ireland went a step further-and here is a shining fact which, we may venture to assert, is unexampled in the laws or history of any nation,—the masters of Irish ships were bound to give free passage to those who sought to find in the schools of that island masters in the sciences and sources of knowledge which could nowhere else in that age be found in Europe!

This is a subject and period, however, which more naturally will present itself in illustration at a subsequent page of this sketch.

In the earliest ages of Christianity, that is to say, between the first and second centuries, we read of the Catechetical schools founded by the bishops in Alexandria (the same that was lately the focus of public attention), Cæsarea, Antioch, and Rome. The letters and epistles of the first Popes and Bishops abound in exhortations and instructions to the heads of churches and to the faithful to promote in every way the establishment of schools for the education of Christian youth.

In one respect at least there is a curious and suggestive affinity between the pagan system of education in the time of the Cæsars, and the modern State methods-instance the design of Julian the Apostate, who endeavored by means of "unfriendly legislation" to suppress in the schools all Christian teaching. He forbade the Christians to have schools of their own. "If the Christians fancy," said the Emperor in one of his outbursts of fury, "that the sentiments of the pagan authors are derogatory to the majesty of their Gods, then let these Galileans be content to explain Matthew and Luke in their churches." A declaration like this does not sound altogether strange and unfamiliar to the modern ear. Have we not somewhere and sometimes heard that "six days in the week should be given in the schools to secular knowledge-one day is enough for God!" Six days for the science of the world, the multiplication table, and only one day for the Commandments, for God, and Eternity! The writings of the early Fathers, and the annals of the primitive Church abundantly testify to the zeal for education shown in those early ages; the proofs would cumber these pages with quotations; indeed, as to the early Church our proposition would not be seriously controverted.

It would be admitted by some that the zeal for schools grew naturally out of the development from Roman and Grecian civilization, and the already existing enthusiasm for knowledge; while others would acknowledge it as due to the influence of the "purer Christianity" of the Church of the first ages. We shall see.

The wonderful civilizing and educational mission of the Church