In order to understand the present deadlock in Ireland it is necessary to study its history and the series of political blunders which has led up to the deplorable situation now prevailing in that unhappy country. For this purpose I would recommend everybody, who has not already done so, to read an article entitled “A Tragedy of Errors” that appeared in The Nation on January 8th, written by Mr. H. L. Hammond. This most admirable article has now been reprinted in pamphlet form and can be obtained in the offices of the “Peace with Ireland Council,” 30 Queen Anne’s Chambers. Also the excellent study of recent Irish history, The Evolution of Sinn Fein, by R. M. Henry, should be read by all.

It is difficult for those who have not been over to Ireland to realize the lamentable effect that the policy of the Government is having upon the Irish people. As soon as you cross the Channel you are in a totally different atmosphere. Everybody is living on the edge of a volcano and the talk is of reprisals, raids, murders, robberies, and the sad and dreadful events that are happening daily in town and countryside.

Readers of Wiseman’s Fabiola will remember how when Corvinus tries to provoke Pancratius to a quarrel he calls the Christian boy “a cowardly worshipper of an ass’s head.” The author explains in a footnote that this was one of the many calumnies against the Christians that were current in pagan Rome. Now, most lies have some slight foundation in truth. Even the deliberate inventor of a calumny looks round for some reality that can be distorted into a seeming confirmation of his story. And it will sometimes happen that when there is enough ill-will to make men keenly watchful for something that can be made the basis of an accusation, they more or less honestly make mistakes and unconsciously misrepresent and misapply real facts.

There is some reason for believing that the pagans of the early centuries who circulated this story of the worship of an ass’s head by the Christians were thus maliciously blundering. Strange to say, the cultus of an Egyptian god seems to supply the key to an answer for the puzzling question as to how it was that this calumny ever gained credence, not merely among the ignorant crowd, but also amongst the educated men of the time.

A good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since the world laughed at the “table-turnings” of the Count de Gasparin in Paris in 1854, or thought that Spiritualism was down and out for good with the exposure of Eusapia Paladino. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is no doubt justified when he claims that vastly more evidence has been collected for the genuineness of certain spiritual phenomena than is required to prove very many other scientific matters which cannot be tested by the majority of us. An investigation like that conducted by Dr. W. J. Crawford with the medium Miss Kathleen Goligher, carried on during three years in Belfast under the most exact and rigid conditions excluding the least possibility of fraud, has demonstrated scientifically the existence of a psychic material in the human body which can be weighed, felt, and photographed, and which takes as real a place in the outfit of the human machine as that of the hand with which I write this article. The census conducted by Mr. Gurney, or that by Prof. Henry and Mrs. Sidgwick, with the fifty odd weighty volumes of evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research, completely lifts apparitions of the dead out of the world of chance and mere imagination. Lastly, the investigation of such cases as those well set out by Sir William Barrett in his book, On the Threshold of the Unseen, and the work that has been done by such men as Bennett, Crooks, Maxwell, Flammarion, Hyslop, Lodge, Wallace, and scores more, together with those we have already mentioned, simply compels belief in the existence and operation of dis-carnate spiritual powers. Catholics have Mr. J. G. Raupert to confirm them.

“The Oxford Movement is a spent force.” Several recent writers and speakers, both Catholic and Anglican, on either side of the Atlantic, have given utterance to this phrase, which has been indignantly denied by High Church leaders, and even by Catholics whose interest in non-Catholic affairs has led them to study the present situation of our separated brethren. In view of the recent demonstration of the Anglo-Catholic Congress, and the marked activity of the English Church Union under the able leadership of its new Secretary-General, there would seem, at first blush, to be rather a preponderance of truth in the denial, and all the more so when one remembers that the statement has been made, and denied, again and again, since the secession of Newman from the movement which he led (though he did not start it), and that to the confusion of prophets, Anglican and Roman Catholic alike, the trend towards Catholic doctrine and practice in the Establishment, and in the American Episcopal Church, has been steadily onward and upward. We do not read, nowadays, of High Church Vicars being hooted through the streets of London for daring to preach in a surplice, or imprisoned for donning other “rags of Popery.”

As an old “hymn-tinker,” sere if not yellow, may I presume to discuss the subject of hymns? I suppose all hymnodists begin with zeal and end with knowledge, as even I, the least, but I hope not the last, since there is still room on top. There is room chiefly for original hymns. We have too many of the wrong sort and not enough of the right sort, and the career of Father Faber is an expensive object-lesson. For every good hymn he gave us we have three bad ones, and I venture to suggest that all his hymns could well be done without except O Purest of Creatures and Faith of Our Fathers. Perhaps I speak without the book, but even on second thoughts I cannot recall any indispensable hymns of his except that on St. Benedict. Would that he had always wrought up to this standard ! But he set bad headlines for worse men and women than himself. Not only this, but he shelved Caswall and obscured Newman. Now Caswall was our best translator, of distinctly higher quality than Neale (who is not “ours”), and some of his original hymns, e.g. Joy, joy, the Mother comes, are models of what is wanted. I do not for a moment admit that he reaches the heights of Newman, but he is better than anyone else I know of, after Matthew Bridges. And only after Matthew Bridges at his best.

The Catholic Social Guild is distinguished by one feature which marks it off from every other of the many Catholic societies which flourish in this country. It seeks to promote its objects not by action so much as by thought. Personal investigation and common discussion are the characteristics of its life. The student and the study-circle are its essential elements. I can go further and boldly assert that the Catholic Social Guild is a University—a Catholic University—the most democratic of all universities if it is judged by its members, and the most aristocratic of all if it is judged by its aspirations. This University of rich and poor, young and old, wise and simple, is naturally growing up everywhere in these our islands, because it has in itself that spontaneous creative spirit of every true University—the love of learning.

It is that same spirit which manifests itself at this very meeting. I have been accorded, not the duty of giving an instruction, but the privilege of initiating a discussion. For the former task I hold no expert qualifications ; but for the latter favour I hold those which belong to every man.

There are three possible qualities in a work of art. These three qualities are mimicry, intellectual content, and original form. Every work of art must have these three in one degree or another. First of all I will explain what I mean by these terms. By “mimicry” I mean what is called representation, i.e. likeness to something existing in Nature. By “intellectual content” I mean that in the work which expresses the story or anecdote it relates, that is to say, its literary significance apart from its significance as a representation of something. These two qualities are, I suppose, readily understood. Everybody is able to judge as to the degree of likeness to something which artists achieve in their work ; also everybody is able to understand the notion that by means of representation it is possible to tell a story or express a meaning or idea. It is the third quality, which I have called “original form,” which is the most difficult to appreciate, and yet it is original form that is especially the artist’s business, whether he be painter, poet, or potter. For an artist is not so called because he has the ability, in paint, words, or clay, to make things which shall resemble things seen in Nature ; if it were so any kind of imitation would rightly be called a work of art, which is absurd. Neither is a man an artist because he has the ability to present in paint, words, or clay some matter of fact or even of fiction, for were that so every spoken sentence would be a work of art, which again is absurd.