but

timorous-in my life, difficult for many sides, brightening now, hampered just the same.' In presence of such a cry, what shall we do? Admire the sincerity, earnestness, and modesty of a great man, or be surprised at the indifference of the crowd of rich Philistines, spending lavishly money on everything except on that which is the greatest and most beautiful man can produce?

Rodin is about fifty years old, consequently he is at an age in which but a very few, even great artists, do not begin to repeat themselves. But for Rodin the general law of fulness and of decline of talent does not exist; eternal youth of spirit keeps him in the ranks of the most daring innovators, and his art is the art of the future, for it descended to the very depth of the modern man's soul and brought out its secrets. It is the art, not of muscles, but of nerves; not the art of rest, but of movement; not the art of harmony, but of continual changes. Consequently its form corresponds with its spirit: it is different from the former art; it is apparently rough and unfinished, it speaks by unrestful lines; it is based on impression, on illusion, which serves to produce impressions unknown till now in plastic art, of truth and life. This art is not the absolute property of one great man; it rises everywhere, not only in France. In the Great Palace of Art, in the hall of international sculpture, there were many works vibrating with nerves and blood, reproducing the movements of the soul, taken from life. They stood side by side with other works, created according to former traditions, which constituted an interesting contrast with the works of very modern aspirations of art, which satisfies less the sentiment of beautiful forms, but stimulates the thought; and although the works vary in their degree of talent and artistic value, collectively they are the expression of people with refined minds, disturbed spiritually, analysing themselves with painful insatiable curiosity, trying to penetrate beyond the hitherto known limits of knowledge, to enter into secret lands beyond the reach of the senses.

'There were times in the history of humanity,' said Maeterlinck, 'in which the beautiful ruled incontestably and almightily, but notwithstanding that, the soul retreated to those inaccessible depths, hid before our eyes (viz. Renaissance); there were other times, in which the soul spoke aloud through severe and childish forms (viz. twelfth and thirteenth centuries); the present time is the returning wave of manifestation of the soul.'

S. C. DE SOISSONS.

THE KING'S TEST DECLARATION

THE administration of the old Parliamentary Test Declaration, by way of oath, to our new Monarch, on the occasion of the opening by him of his first Parliament on the 14th of February last, caused a pang of sorrow to the Catholic peers present, followed by a respectful but earnest letter from them addressed to the Lord Chancellor. They desired to impress on him, so the letter ran, that

the

expressions used in the Declaration made it difficult and painful for Catholic peers to attend to-day in the House of Lords in order to discharge their official or public duties, and that those expressions cannot but cause the deepest pain to millions of subjects of His Majesty in all parts of the Empire.

It is not to be expected that so unusual a step would have been taken without serious consideration or without good grounds. Let us peruse the Declaration in question. It runs as follows:

I, A. B., do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the Elements of Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever: And that the Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous. And I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I do make this Declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain

The accusation of superstition and idolatry against believers in transubstantiation, invocation (not adoration, which is a pure invention) of Virgin and Saints, and the Mass, doctrines believed in by millions of persons all over the habitable globe, might have obtained a hearing among the credulous and fanatics in the reign of Charles the Second or William of Orange, but must be scouted as ridiculous in the present age. Dr. Johnson, a staunch old Protestant, had more common sense than the framers of this Declaration. He quite understood the Catholic doctrines. In his dialogues the following occurs: Boswell: 'The idolatry of the Mass." Johnson: Sir, there is no idolatry in the Mass. They believe God to be there, and they adore him.' Boswell: The worship of the Saints.' Johnson: Sir, they do not worship Saints; they invoke them; they only ask their prayers.' (Life of Johnson by Boswell, vol. i. p. 561.) Of course abuses can arise everywhere.

and ordinary sense of the words read unto me, as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any Dispensation already granted me for this purpose by the Pope, or any other authority or person whatsoever, or without any hope of any such Dispensation from any person or authority whatsoever, or without thinking that I am or can be acquitted before God or man, or absolved of this Declaration or any part thereof, although the Pope, or any other person or persons, or power whatsoever, should dispense with or annul the same, or declare that it was null or void from the beginning.

The history of this curious Declaration is worth attention. was enacted as part of the famous Parliamentary Test Act of 1677 (30 Car. II. Stat. 2), and was only intended for members of Parliament, not for a monarch. Although many portions of that Statute were from time to time during the last century repealed, yet the remains of it were not abrogated until 1866, by 29 Vict. c. 19, an Act to amend the law relating to Parliamentary oaths, which repeals of it so much as is unrepealed.' The Declaration itself, however, was kept alive in the following way. The Bill of Rights, passed in 1689, in its tenth section extended it to the monarch, and requires

that every King and Queen of this realm, who at any time hereafter shall come to and succeed in the Imperial Crown of this kingdom, shall, on the first day of the meeting of the first Parliament next after his or her coming to the crown, sitting in his or her throne in the House of Peers, in the presence of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or at his or her Coronation, before such person or persons who shall administer the Coronation Oath to him or her, at the time of his or her taking the said oath (which shall first happen), make, subscribe, and audibly repeat the Declaration mentioned in the Statute [of 30 Car. II. Stat. 27.

Thus it will be seen that the Parliament of William and Mary did not compile the objectionable Declaration, but only adopted one invented in the reign of Charles the Second. The Declaration being ordered by the Bill of Rights to be taken, it has been continued to these days, although the Statute of Charles the Second which enacted it has been entirely abrogated since 1866.

The bitterness of the Declaration is extraordinary. It does not content itself with asserting what doctrine the person who is sworn believes in himself; for with such limit there could be no cause of offence. But the Declaration carries war into the opposite camp by gratuitously insisting (1) that so and so is the doctrine believed in by the other side, and (2) that such doctrine, so laid down by the accuser, is superstitious and idolatrous,' the other side being condemned without a hearing, and stigmatised as 'superstitious and idolatrous' on an ex parte statement.

2 From this it will be seen that the Declaration will not be required to be taken again at the coronation. The Coronation Oath is prescribed by 1 Will. and Mary, sess. i. c. 6, and is merely assertive, not accusative.

To understand the origin of this Declaration it is necessary to call to mind the acrimonious differences in politics and religion which pervaded the seventeenth century, now happily passed away. We must also remember the changes of government which followed each other rapidly during that time. The country was upset, alarmed, agitated; nor could a dispassionate view of matters be taken by any party which then held sway in Parliament.

A few years before this the country was governed by the Puritans. Next, General Monk entered into London (the 3rd of February, 1660), and commanded the existing Parliament in the name of the whole Commonwealth to issue writs within a week for the assembling of a new Parliament. Then, having secured the naval and military forces in his own hands, he sent Sir John Grenville to Brussels to advise King Charles the Second as to his (the King's) conduct, and to assure him of his services. Meanwhile the elections for the new Parliament secured everywhere returns in favour of the Royal party; the Presbyterians and Royalists were united, and called for the King's restoration. When the Convention Parliament met, Sir John Grenville was called in, bearing with him a letter from the King to the Commons. The letter was written from Breda, and offered a general amnesty (without any exceptions but such as might thereafter be made by Parliament), liberty of conscience, arbitration of all grants, purchases, and alienations, payment of the arrears of the soldiers' pay, and future pay at the same rate as they had been receiving. Such was the Declaration from Breda. Then followed, as is well known, the Proclaiming of the King in Palace Yard, at Whitehall, and at Temple Bar, ending with the entry of the King into London on the 29th of May of the same year. By a legal fiction the first year of Charles the Second's reign is called the twelfth, because he was King de jure on the death of King Charles the First (the 30th of January, 1649). His (Charles the Second's) reign has been termed an 'era of good laws and bad government,' but it might more truly be described as a continuous bad government, with occasional good laws, mingled with some violent, or at least questionable in their character. The Cavalier' or Pensionary' Parliament, otherwise called the Long Parliament of the Restoration,' which lasted from the 8th of May, 1661, to the 24th of January, 1679, 'was,' says Macaulay, 'more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for episcopacy than the bishops,' and their strong attachment to the Established Church and their hatred of Nonconformists continued unabated to the last.

6

On the accession of King Charles the Second the melancholy austerity of the Puritans fell into discredit; while the Royalists, who had ever affected a contrary disposition, augmented their gay and

fashionable manners. Doctrine fought with doctrine; prelacy was restored; all the ejected clergy were reinstated in their livings, and the liturgy of the Established Church was again admitted. The King had suffered indignities from the Scotch Presbyterians; he bore them no goodwill. In England, Prelacy and Presbytery struggled for the superiority; the 'Long Parliament' became an effective support to the former. Only fifty-six Presbyterians had obtained seats in the House of Commons, and they were powerless to oppose the measures of the majority. Bitterness was displayed against the 'Solemn League and Covenant,' which had been adopted by the English Parliament in 1643, at the desire of the Scots; it was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. The Act of Uniformity, which required, inter alia, abjuration of the 'Solemn League and Covenant,' was passed in 1662, following the Corporation Act of the year before, which had struck a blow at the Presbytery by enacting that magistrates and members of corporations could not be chosen unless they had taken the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England' within one year before their election. These provisions,' says Hallam (Const. Hist. ii. 328), 'struck at the heart of the Presbyterian party, whose strength lay in the little oligarchies of the corporate towns, which directly or indirectly returned to Parliament a very large proportion of its members.' They affected other Dissenters, and also the Catholics, establishing an inequality of civil rights in favour of Established Churchmen which, so far as regards the religious test, continued until the reign of George the Fourth (1828), when it was abolished by 9 Geo. IV. c. 17.

The King, as is well known, had married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, in 1662, in a private room at Portsmouth, according to the rites of her (the Catholic) Church, and this, notwithstanding the disgraceful manner in which he behaved to her, may doubtless have favoured the false idea that he had himself secretly joined that religion. Be this as it may, the King's brother, the Duke of York, was a Catholic. It is therefore not surprising that the King issued the 'Declaration of Indulgence,' dispensing with the laws enacted against all Nonconformists or recusants, granting to Dissenters the public exercise of their religion, and to Catholics (O generous gift!) the exercise of it in private houses.

This unobjectionable, but to our modern eyes unconstitutional, measure, sapping the very authority of the Legislative Assembly and

The dispensing power of the Crown was nothing new. Henry the Third was probably the first to make use of the non obstante clause, and his successors throughout the Plantagenet period frequently exercised both the dispensing and suspending power. The practice was derived from the Papacy, who issued Bulls 'non obstante any law to the contrary.'