Voltaire (or was it Lord Chesterfield?) once declared that human beings should be divided into three classes, ‘Men, Women and Herveys’; while Dr. Johnson was wont to say, ‘Call a dog Hervey, and I shall love him.’ These two celebrated utterances aptly hit off the characteristics of a brilliant family intimately associated with English history and literature. For the Herveys were almost all of them eccentric to a degree, and yet at the same time possessed of a superlative charm.

John, Lord Hervey of Ickworth, the friend of Queen Caroline of Anspach, and the writer of those invaluable memoirs on which every historian of the reign of George II to-day so greatly relies, had for his third son a remarkable being who figures largely in not only the England but the Europe of the eighteenth century. Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, the ‘mitred Proteus’ of Horace Walpole, the ‘wicked prelate’ of George III, the ‘episcopal patriot’ of Northern Ireland, the ‘modern Maecenas’ of artists and sculptors, and the ‘man plenteous in good works’ of John Wesley, if he left no mark on his age as author or statesman or courtier, was a cosmopolitan personage whom we meet with in every memoir, diary, newspaper, and letter of his time, and whose memory as a wealthy epicurean, open-handed globe-trotter is still kept alive by the inevitable ‘Hotel Bristol’ found in every continental town. The foreigner’s fixed and traditional idea of the rich, mad, restless English ‘milord’ can be largely traced in its origin to him.

A navigator in charge of the steering of aship, in addition to the compass and other aids, has to keep a constant look-out for rocks, some of which are visible, others submerged. The locality of these submerged rocks is as a rule well known and is marked on the chart, but from time to time we read that a ship has struck on some uncharted rock or reef and has gone down, or at least has suffered some damage.

There is something analogous to this in the life of a human being. He has a course to steer, a goal to reach; he has rocks to encounter and keep clear of. As long as these are visible—as long as he is conscious, that is to say, of these rocks—it is an easier matter; but from time to time he strikes something which, so to speak, is not on his chart and yet profoundly influences his life. Disturbance of an emotional character may ensue, the root of which lies in the uncharted rocks of the sub-conscious mind.

This is merely a simile introduced by way of illustration to show the fundamental thought which runs through this treatise on the psychology of emotion.

The part which emotion—or, as older writers would say, passion—plays in human life is so obvious that the fact is barely worth mentioning. Without emotion life would resemble the existence of an oyster, fixed on its bed, immovable, impervious to any stimulation other than that which procures for it its daily diet of animalculae. It is in the quality of the emotional life that we find those oscillations of the personality which are familiar to us all.

A friend of mine, an Anglican clergyman, has written to tell me that he has just returned from his first visit to a Catholic country, thanking God that this experience has been enough to put an end, once and for all, to certain doubts and fears once entertained by him, that it might be his duty to ‘go over to Rome.’ What has caused the recoil is no part of Catholic dogma, with practically all of which (save for some academic difficulties concerning the Primacy of the Pope) he is in almost complete agreement. What has offended him is not Catholic theory, but Catholic practice. In other words, he has found himself for the first time in a Catholic atmosphere, and has discovered that it is little to his liking.

As examples of the sort of thing which has alienated his sympathies he relates how he went into the Santo at Padua, and found the Tabernacle (after some difficulty) in a deserted side-chapel, while the first thing that attracted his eye when he entered the vast church was the shrine of S. Anthony, which was thronged with worshippers. Now my friend has, in theory, a good deal of sympathy with the cultus of the saints. What disedified one who had fought so valiantly for the reserved sacrament in his own Church was the fact that the shrine of S. Anthony was so full, and the side-chapel so neglected. And this was not the worst of his experiences. Proceeding south by slow stages, punctuated by duty visits to churches containing a bewildering number of pictures alleged to be miraculous, which seemed to absorb practically the whole devotion of the people, he came to Rome.

For us Anglicans it is, of course, open to question whether the latest Papal exposition of the doctrine of inspiration has not imposed restrictions on exegesis which embarrass rather than assist the modern Catholic expositor.’

Since the Reformation the Church has been told that she does not encourage people to read the Bible, that she is opposed to its translation, that she is obscurantist, traditionalist, ultra conservative, etc. Sometimes ‘our erring sister’ is gently chided, but there is always a hardly-veiled air of superiority in rebukes thus delicately administered. Nearly thirty years have elapsed since Leo XIII published his Encyclical, Providentissimus Deus,on the study of Scripture, and it is nearly three-and-twenty years since he established the Biblical Commission, which published its first decision, that on the Pentateuch, in 1906. Of the writers in the various Biblical reviews during the subsequent years some ‘accord us the praise at least of their silence’ ; others are hostile; many contemptuous: few show any conception of the meaning and value of such Papal pronouncements. The disheartening feature is the fact that hostile and ignorant criticisms are not confined to effusions of the daily Press or irresponsible writers in magazines; they emanate from scholars who should know better. Such criticism continues to this day. Dr. Gore can even now speak of ‘this amazing Encyclical’ and add a hope that ‘this assertion of verbal inspiration in its most stringent sense as the doctrine of the Church’ may not be infallible.

The establishment of a Holy Year, or year of Jubilee, is universally attributed to Pope Boniface VIII, who in the fear 1300 published a bull granting a plenary indulgence to all who, having approached the Sacraments, should visit as pilgrims the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in their separate basilicas on the Vatican Hill, and outside the Walls. Amongst the many reasons which led Pope Boniface to publish this jubilee was a strong tradition that exactly a century previous Pope Innocent III the Great had promulgated the same indulgence. Many witnesses came forward to attest that they had heard this stated by those who had actually been present in Rome as pilgrims in 1200. Two men from Beauvais and several Italians were amongst the most aged of the witnesses, in addition to two reputed eye-witnesses. One of these latter was a Spaniard, Fernandez by name, a reputed nephew of St. Dominic, who now in his hundred and fifteenth year told the Pope that he had been present in Rome during the indulgenced year of Innocent III. The other was an Italian, aged one hundred and seven years, who related that his father (prophetic man!) had ordered him many years before to come to Rome if still alive in 1300, in order to gain at the tomb of the Apostle a plenary indulgence such as he himself had gained in 1200.

Boniface VIII published the Jubilee by the bull ‘Antiquorum, February 22nd, 1300, and so great were the crowds of pilgrims that flocked to the Eternal City to gain the indulgence that the Pope directed the Jubilee to be held for the future on the first year of each succeeding century.