In reading one of the most recent histories of the Tudor period, the impression was gained that the Catholic martyrs, admittedly gallant men, worthy to be compared for courage even (amazing admission!) to Drake and the seamen, were swept to a glorious doom for attempting to stem the tide of inevitable change. The stirrings of the Renaissance and Reformation, the coming-of-age of the spirit of nationality, the mental activity that followed the spread of printed books, and, to crown and clinch it all, the popular, forceful, ruthless, but progressive tyranny of the Tudors—all these forces were sweeping away the mediaeval Church as surely as the rising tide sweeps away a castle of sand.

The martyrs, one gathers, were brave men—to be admired for refusing to change with the times out of base motives, but their cause was as hopeless and their protest as useless as that of (say) a modern upholder of the legitimist claims of the Stuarts. And it is as well, the history almost makes us feel, that this was so, because their cause and the modern world, even that adolescent modern world of the sixteenth century, had nothing in common.

It is never safe to take it for granted that you are loved for yourself alone in this world. After all, why should you be? Even Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher had to be disillusioned upon this point. He thought he was the hero of his own story—he who shone only in the reflection of a hidden light. Yet who should be a hero if not a cat? How seriously and courteously he bears himself indoors, yet how freely and blithely he sallies forth to slay monsters and destroyers! And if this is true of cats in general, how especially true it is of one cat in particular: that is of Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher, who flourished in the City of Paris in the reign of Philip the Fair.

I say ‘flourished,’ but, to tell the honest truth, Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher, though destined to a snug and creditable lot, had a kittenhood as dangerous and obscure as any cat in Paris. In fact, it was not until he reached die lanky, introspective age, when the chasing of his own tail offered more physical difficulties and fewer imaginative attractions every day, that he was rescued from death by Master Robert the Scrivener, and presented by way of a love-token to Alis, daughter of Ernoul the Crossbow-maker, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortunes.

It is somewhat startling to find that decidedly Anglican body, the Society for Promoting Christian knowledge, acting as sponsor to a history of the domestic controversies of the English Catholics, even though that history be penned by a writer of the broad and liberal outlook of Miss Maude Petre. The Society indeed explains in a Prefatory Note that its own standpoint is by no means that of the author, and that it publishes her book only ‘in the hope that it will contribute towards the cause of Christian Reunion.’

The Lord Petre whose Life is here set forth was, in his common sense, strong-willed character, deep personal piety, very extensive charities, and constant patronage of struggling scholarship, a fine example of his class. In the present volume he figures almost entirely as the ostensible and social leader of the Cisalpine section of the English Catholic laity in the latter half of the eighteenth century, Charles Butler being the brains of the party. Miss Petre has not very much that is new to tell us of the complicated disputes and negotiations that led up to the Catholic Relief Act of 1791. She just goes over the ground already made familiar by Bishop Ward in his Dawn of the Catholic Revival, here and there supplementing that remarkable work by letters and papers drawn from the archives of the Petres, the Throckmortons, and other ancient Catholic families, and setting out at length documents hitherto known only in summary. Her main object seems to be to vindicate the memory of her great-great-grandfather and those associated with him from the aspersions of Dr. Milner and his school.

Though a bright young lady remembered to have read a notice Trespassers will not be Prosecuted, the attentive will mark no fatal difference of futility between this alleged and the well-known warning. Departure Platform; Beware of Pickpockets; and there are others; juxtapositions of words which do not scan, are not irreducible, leave the uninstructed ignorant; and, if we consider them in any carping spirit, are filled with false assumptions, petitiones principii, innuendoes and concealed negatives. Warn a man; do. Warn him briskly, leaving him no rejoinder; laconically. A warning connotes danger, proximate or contingent. It is useless to say Wolf to a stranger in the Tube. He would only reply: ‘Excuse me, sir, my name is Lambb.’ But when the voltage is known and protection is nugatory, express your thoughts succinctly. No matter in what land of Europe, you have seen the notice, pictorial, resembling the design of the jolly roger, affixed to posts supporting live wire. There is the human spirit: alike expressed in the will, fulfilled, to have the tramcar hurtle through the province, threading hamlets like pearls upon a worthy chain, as far from the waterfall as it desires; and in the sober stare of death: Do not meddle, brother.

But Trespassers will be Prosecuted; a decayed relic of that noble fruit of the mind, the expedient rules drawn up by the piratical farmers old Norwegians were, to the end that fighting and plunder might continue their honourable course, and life be yet prolonged for the service of God and men.

No one, I think, has ever ventured to compare Mr. A. J. Cook with William Cobbett. If we are to judge by the daily press, Mr. Cook is not a popular man among the ruling classes, among the middle classes, nor even among the working classes. Not the ignorance of journalists, but the policy of newspaper owners—a remarkably small class, and daily growing smaller—is responsible for the abuse heaped upon Mr. Cook. If he has not been compared with William Cobbett, it is not because Cobbett is less well-known than he ought to be, but also that his views would be as unpopular to-day as are those of Mr. Cook. Cobbett has not yet been dead long enough for his views to be regarded dispassionately by the majority, and a century hence Mr. Cook will still have his critics. But his critics will not then be malicious. He will still be branded as an ‘agitator,’ but common sense will show that British miners and not Russian Bolsheviks were his paymasters.

The Rural Rides show Cobbett to have been a keen observer, not only of nature—for he was a born farmer—but of that continually changing thing which we call the social organism. Observation of the present led him to study the past: from the effect he traced the cause, and to this we owe his History of the Protestant Reformation, which showed that upheaval to have been in this country an economic rather than a religious movement.

‘Soeur Marie Bernard est morte : quelles souf-frances depuis vingt ans!’ Sister Mary Bernard is dead : how she must have suffered all these twenty years.’ Nearly fifty years have come and gone since the day in Easter week when these words fell on my ears from the holy and revered priest, the friend and guardian of my childhood. He had known and loved the little peasant-girl of the Pyrenees and had often spoken about her to the child, still unfamiliar with death, who listened to his words. To the latter the name of Sr. Marie Bernard had hitherto called up only wonder and admiration. She had seen more than once the Mother of fair Love, the Cause of our Joy! Had not the Beloved Mother promised, too, to make her happy in the kingdom of her Son?

But there was no mistaking the accents of compassion in the mouth of the good priest. He knew so well what poor Bernadette had had to endure for those twenty-one years she still dwelt in this vale of tears, after having beheld, fleetingly no doubt, perhaps ‘through a glass, darkly,’ the Vision of incomparable Loveliness.