X. Frederic Ozanam

PERE GRATRY has said somewhere in his writings that one difference between the society of the Middle Ages and of these later centuries consists in this, ' Society then was Catholic, and sustained men above themselves; but now society is Catholic no longer, and drags men downwards with itself.' The truth of this is to be seen perhaps more clearly in France and in this century than in any other period or country. The first French Revolution decatholicised the society of France. Its Catholicism has survived in individuals, and yet they have, with exceptions indeed, shown the depressing and distorting power of the society into which they were born, and by which they were nurtured. What the Germans call the ' Time-Spirit' is powerful everywhere, but it has shown its subtilty and its supremacy nowhere1 more visibly than in the noble and chivalrous race of Catholics who have so powerfully urged onward the reaction towards faith in France since the year 1830.

M. de Broglie has truly said that the principles of 1789 were formulated and published, not only as a charter for France, but as a Gospel for mankind. M. Thiers said to a Bishop on his way to the Council, ' Do not at tack the principles of 1789; whoso touches them touches the marrow of Frenchmen.' They have penetrated into the intelligence and created a public opinion which affects even those who resist them. To this fact we may ascribe two phenomena strange and sad in the Catholic action of France for the last forty years: namely, that those who were labouring in the Catholic reaction to restore faith, piety, and fidelity to the Holy See were divided, and opposed to each other; and that one band of men, for whose devotion, piety, intellectual elevation, and chivalrous fidelity to the Catholic Church, every Catholic must have admiration, should have been so perceptibly, though, we believe, unconsciously, affected by the Time-Spirit created by the principles of 1789.

Frederic Ozanam was one of the most brilliant of the brilliant band of Catholic writers in whom this can be traced. We are, therefore, desirous of making unmistakably clear our judgment on these points before we go on to express our profound admiration and affectionate sympathy with him, and many of those who were associated with him, in this noble conflict for the Catholic Faith against the infidel politics and Voltairean society of Paris and of France.

The youth of France were the offspring of the infidel university of the first Napoleon ^ Neither under the Eestoration, nor under the reign of Louis Philippe, was its destructive influence counteracted. Society was either infidel and indifferent, or Voltairean, that is, infidel and scoffing. Such a society pulled down all its members; and into such. a society Frederic Ozanam was born. It might be divided into three classes. First came the non-Catholics, who believed nothing; secondly, the Catholics who gave splendid examples of a perfect fidelity to the Church; and thirdly, those who may be called Catholics juxta moduin; that is to say, they were in some particulars and details affected by the Time-Spirit of their age and country. Nevertheless among these were some of the noblest and most chivalrous sons of the Church, and some also of the most ardent and loving Christians and true soldiers of Jesus Christ. It seems to us that we ought to render justice to all such men. And we feel that we can do so without incurring a suspicion of our being ' liberal Catholics.' We have had our baptismus opprobriorum as Ultramontanes, and even as ultra-Catholic and ultra-Ultramontane. Our chief mission has been to learn of the living voico of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and to repeat his utterances with a perfect fidelity. We therefore claim to ourselves the freedom of speaking generously of those who in our judgment may not in some things have followed the guidance of the Holy See, for we have bought that freedom with the great price of no little odium and no sparing censure for our extreme Ultramontanism.

It seems to us to be the duty of justice, not to speak of charity, that while we remain inflexible in our own attitude we should endeavour, as far as possible, to appreciate at its full all that is high, noble, truthful, and Catholic in them; and while we note the points in which we believe them to have come short, to render to their lives, characters, and memories the fullest recognition of what they were. We say their memories, because of those of whom we have, to speak hardly one survives.

Between the years 1830 and 1850 there arose in

France a group of men whose lives have left an in delible mark upon their country. The period of De Maistre and Chateaubriand was followed by that of Larnennais, De Bonald, De Salignis, Gerbet, Lacordaire, Montalembert, Ozanam, Eio, Combalot, Cochin, and, in its later time, Gratry; and we must add, as a youthful disciple called away before he had inscribed his name by toil, Henry Perreyve.1

While conscious of divergencies and deviations in certain things, it was impossible not to see and to love the noble character of these men. Endowed with great natural gifts, and with wide and various cultivation, there \vas one thing in common with them all — a great mental beauty, and a great breadth of heart. No one can have read the writings of Gerbet, Eio, Ozanam, Montalembert, and Gratry, nobody can have known Henry Perreyve, without seeing and feeling the singular beauty of their intelligence, and the generous impulses of their character.

We have no fear in rendering this just and affectionate tribute to their memory; and if in anything we have at times strongly opposed their way of judging and speaking, we never forgot, and never shall cease to declare, that they were noble sons of France, which had marked them for its own with some of the best tokens of its less stable age. There is also another truth to be borne in mind. If we were to try the language of some of the Antenicene Fathers by the terminology fixed by

1 With the exception of Lamennais, De Bonald, and Ozanam, it •was the good fortune of the writer to know all the others, and some of them with much intimacy.

the Council of Nicsea, we should find matter for criticism. In like manner, if we were to try the writings of some of the noblest and most fervent defenders of the Catholic Faith and of the Holy See in France by the later tests of the Syllabus and of the Vatican Council, we should commit an injustice. At that period we might have been as they were, without an exact terminology, and with questions as yet undecided.

With these few words of precaution, we will give a slight sketch of the life of Frederic Ozanam, of his character, and of the work he has left behind him. But first we must very warmly commend the work of Miss O'Meara, which is written with great fulness, but with no prolixity. It would have been impossible to set before us any adequate notion of Ozanam's singularly great and fertile mind in a smaller compass. While the author sympathises with an affectionate reverence with the subject of her biography, she skil fully surrounds certain periods of it with just explanations which show a perception of what an adverse critic might incline to say.

Frederic Ozanam was born at Milan in 1813. He died at Marseilles in 1853. His whole career was therefore contained in forty years. The Ozanam family was, it appears, of Jewish origin, and of great antiquity. The name of Hozannam is said to be found in the thirty-eighth Eoman legion; and a Jewish colony seems to have been planted at Bellignum, or Bouliginceux, near Lyons. They were baptised by S. Didier, and thenceforward the Christian name took the place of the old Jewish name. Benedict, the grandfather of Frederic, was the first who changed the orthography to Ozanam. Antoine, father of Frederic, served four years as a conscript under the first Napoleon. But to avoid the political changes in France, he went from Lyons to Milan. Frederic was his second son. The-family returned to Lyons soon after his birth. At the age of sixteen Frederic wrote a letter to a friend, which is a wonderful evidence of precocity. It is an auto biography, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, which im plies an extraordinary self-knowledge, self-observation,, and self-discipline. At the age of seventeen he describes his first religious doubts and his intense sufferings,, which, however, ended in a complete faith. He says,. * I believed henceforward, with an assured faith, and,, touched by this mercy, vowed to consecrate my days to the service of that truth which had given me peace.' He studied at Paris under Abbe Noirot, and soon reached and retained the head of his class. He was destined for the law; but, being so young, his father recalled him for two years to Lyons, where he studied in an actuary's office, but spent his pastime in learning English, German, Hebrew, and Sanscrit. At the age of eighteen he wrote a work against the Saint-Sirnonians. His letters at this time show a maturity and thoughtfulness more like eight-and-twenty than eighteen. He then began his legal studies in Paris; and found himself in the midst of infidels, scoffers, and blas phemers. Professors and students in this were all alike. At this date he had an interview with Chateau briand, who asked him whether he had been to the theatre. He said no; Chateaubriand asked him whether lie intended to go. Ozanam had promised his mother, who was a fervent Catholic, that he never would; and after some hesitation, he said he had resolved not to go to a theatre. Chateaubriand said very earnestly, ' I implore you to he true to that promise to your mother. You' would gain nothing at the theatre; and you might lose a great deal.'2

The biographer gives an interesting sketch of the state of the University of France, its schools, lycees, and of the Sorbonne, in which infidelity reigned with an absolute sway. Slowly and by chance, one or two Catholic youths found each other out in this atrno- ' sphere of unbelief, and joined themselves together for mutual support. They then began to controvert the sceptical and infidel teaching of the professors. They wrote answers, which were publicly read out. At last Professor Jouffroy3 openly attacked revelation, and was answered by a protest, drawn up by Ozanam, and signed by fifteen Catholic students, which the Professor had to read out to a school of 200, and to declare that he never meant to ill-treat Christianity. Ozanam was then under twenty years of age. ' Let us cheer up,' he wrote to a friend; ' the work of God is advancing, and will be accomplished by the youth of this very day; who knows, perhaps, even by you and me?'4 This knot of young men then resolved on having an organ or paper. It so happened that some of them lodged in

2 Life, p. 28.

3 M. Jouffroy died a Christian death in the unity of the faith, and with the ministrations of the Church. Who can say how much Ozanarn may have contributed to this happy end?

4 Vol. i. p. 56.

the house of a M. Bailly, who was proprietor of a printing establishment and a newspaper called the Tribune Catholique. A debating society was founded in his house. It was here that Ozanam first found his power of speech. He was continually harassed by the taunts that faith must be shown by good works; and out of this came the conferences of S. Vincent of Paul, of which he was the real founder at the age of twenty, though he always refused to be so regarded. They had as counsellor in their work of charity Soeur Rosalie. These conferences began in 1833, and at this time are spread throughout the Church. In 1834, Lamennais' fall had come, and Lacordaire had begun his confer ences at the College Stanislas. Ozanam and he became intimate friends, and it was through Ozanam that Lacordaire was admitted to give his conferences in Notre Dame. Ozanam had by this time completed his legal studies, and entered on his duties as a barrister. But his drawings were strongly to literature; and at that moment the municipality of Lyons petitioned that he should be appointed to a chair of Commercial Law about to be founded in Lyons. Ozanam was then only twenty-four. He was, at that age, nominated to the chair of Commercial Law at Lyons, and at the same date M. Cousin offered to him the chair of Philosophy at Orleans. In the year 1841 he accepted the office of Assistant Professor of Foreign Literature in the Sorbonne; shortly afterwards the chair of Literature in the University of Lyons was offered to him. He had by this time only reached his twenty-eighth year. We have brought these facts together as the best way of showing in what estimation he was held by the public men and public authorities of France. His office of Assistant Professor at the Sorbonne gave him the first full occasion of putting his powers to the proof. His biographer says:

' Ozanam possessed all the elements of the purest eloquence, a ready and retentive memory, a clear conception, a facility for rigidly sketching the outline of his subject, and filling it up in strong, brilh'ant, and delicate colours' (i. p. 196).

' Early next morning he would resume the interrupted chain of thought, and then, when the time came, after invoking on his knees the light and aid of the Holy Spirit, he went forth to de liver his message' (p. 197).

' His manner of lecturing was full of charm; he dispensed his vast erudition with the simplicity of a boy, and with a prodigality that belongs only to inexhaustible abundance. Every one of his lectures was a book condensed into a chapter, and he frequently compressed into a sentence an amount of thought and information which a mind less magnificently replenished would have diluted into a chapter, telling away in an hour, like the intellectual spendthrift that he was, the treasure it had taken years to accumulate. He stripped knowledge of half its difficulties by his way of imparting it. Knowledge with him was not so much an intellectual system as a mental habit, which had become a part of his being; he did not divest himself of it, as some men do, taking it up and laying it down at stated times; when the signal came for him to impart it officially, he did not seem to stand up and perform the functions of a professor so much as to avail himself of an opportunity for revealing the rich deposit of thought, scientific analysis, and observation which life-long study had left in his mind; he gave it out naturally, spontaneously, and with the real enthusiasm of a devout scholar, — devout in the sense of devoted; his devotion to science, and to his own particular branch of it — history — partook of the nature of his religion; it was to his mind what faith was to his soul. It was the spontaneity of his method, united to its finished art, which exercised such fascination on all, and possessed such an unrivalled power of attraction for the young. They were interested and enchanted even before they were convinced. If they arrived at the lecture-hall ignorant of the subject, or indifferent to it, they were quickly excited to a curiosity which put an end to indifference, and stimu-

VOL. II. B B lated to inquiry and investigation. Few minds ever possessed in a higher degree the faculty of kindling the minds of others with his own — a faculty which, may be taken as the supreme test of mental and moral power. Ozanam followed the Socratic method, of which he had learned the secret from M. Noirot. Taking hold of the mind on every side, by sympathy, by the reason and the imagination, he compelled the student to work with his own brains while following the working of another's. M. Cousin once exclaimed, on coming out from a lecture of Ozanam's, " The lyceums and colleges send us distinguished professors, but the Abbe Noirot sends us men'" (p. 197).

We cannot wonder that his power, over his hearers was irresistible, and that their attachment to him was a kind of devotion. But all this he usecl for the end to which at seventeen he had vowed his life:

' It was nearly half a century since the voice of a Christian teacher — a teacher identified with the Christian faith — had been heard in the Sorbonne, while, on the other hand, its walls had echoed unceasingly to every false and fantastic doctrine of the Voltairean and Rationalistic schools; and this absence of talent, or at least this silence amongst the Catholic men in the great seat of learning, went far to sanction the popular idea that talent, not to say genius, had utterly disappeared from the Catholic ranks. But now a new era had begun. At the age of twenty-seven Ozanam took his seat amongst the veterans of the proud old university, and electrified young and old by the splendour of his gifts and the burning ardour of his faith. It was a strange coincidence that the same audience which so lately had listened with delight while Villemain and Cousin exposed their favourite theses, should now hear, with no less favour, those same theses energetically denounced from the same rostrum by the daring new-comer. It was a rash experiment on his part. The State, as yet, held the monopoly of the university, and looked with an evil eye on the men who were leading the war against it in behalf of the rights of the Church. It was natural enough, too, that an assembly of young men, all enlisted in warm partisanship on one side or the other, but amongst whom the opponents of the Church largely predominated, should form a dangerous audience for a professor of Ozanam's ardent religious convictions. But he did not stopi to calculate risks; and Fortune, who sides mostly with the brave, stood by the 3roung champion of the Gospel. Here was no sophist, no subtil philosopher striving to palliate hard sayings, or smooth down unpalatable propositions, but a daunt less knight, who rode into the lists with his drawn sword flashing in the sunlight, and, flinging down his gauntlet, dared all comers to pick it up. He dealt in no compromise, he made no conces sions to the hostile susceptibilities of his hearers. The sceptics heard him in astonished admiration, the Catholics applauded with a sense of victory' (pp. 193-195).

M. Lenormant, a professor of the Sorbonne, had the courage to follow Ozanam's example; but his hearers rose in revolt with hisses and yells, with blasphemous cries. Ozanam was present, and,

' Unable to contain his indignation, leaped up beside the lecturer, ^and stood for a moment surveying the tumult with proud defiance. The courageous action drew forth an instantaneous salvo of applause; but Ozanam, with a scornful gesture, commanded silence, and proceeded to tell the assembly what he thought of their be haviour, and what value he set on their plaudits; he spoke with a fiery vehemence that startled all into attention; he adjured them in the name of libeily, which they so loudly invoked, to I'espect liberty in others, and to allow every man the freedom of Ms conscience. The effect of the harangue was magical; the tumult ceased, and M. Lenormant continued, or rather began, his lecture, and finished it without interruption. The next day, however, the cours was closed by order of the Government; authority thus yielding to violence, when by a little firmness it might so easily have taken the upper hand, and constituted itself the guardian of social peace, and the bulwark of social principles. This cowardly and cruel precedent did not daunt Ozanam, or induce him to abate one iota of his independence; he continued his lectures without mitigating in the slightest degree the out-and-out Christian tone of his teaching. The boldness of this conduct, while it heightened his prestige with his own party, increased his general popularity. His name became a power in its sphere, and was cited everywhere as an example of the energy and growing strength of the Catholics. It once happened during the noisy days of the Lenormant riots, when the learned Sorbonne was transformed into a battlefield, that some person, meaning to be witty, scratched out the words " litterature etrangere," after Ozanam's name on the door, and wrote over them " theologie."

He was informed of tins as he was entering the hall. He said nothing until he had finished his lecture, and then, as he was about to descend from his chair, he observed, in a tone of great dignity, " I have not the honour to be a theologian, gentlemen; but I have the happiness to believe, and the ambition to place my whole soul with all my might at the service of truth." The courageous profession of faith was greeted by loud and general cheers' (pp. 220, 221).

It is not wonderful that such courageous fidelity should have the reward of popularity. Even his ene mies were at peace with him:

' A man who represents the most unpopular conviction, who serves it and stands by it through thick and thin, is sure to gain influence in the long-run: undying devotion to a cause eventually conquers the respect of its enemies, though it may not make its champion popular. The qualities of the man himself must do this. He must have a heart, or he must pass for having one. Ozanam was essentially a man of heart. His genius excited admiration, his piety commanded respect, but it was his kindness that made him loved. Lacordaire says that he had a charm, "which, added to his other gifts, completed in his person the artisan of a predestined enchantment. He was gentle to all men, and just towards error" ' (p. 224).

In 1844 his principal, M. Fauviel, died, and Ozanam was nominated professor for life. In the year 1846 — his health and strength had been always frail, and severely taxed by incessant work — he began to give way; but he would not relax his labours. A malignant fever, however, compelled him to submit, and he was sent on a literary mission into Italy. He passed the winter of 1846-1847 in Eome. In 1848 came the Kevolution, and the martyrdom, as it may well be called, of the Archbishop of Paris; for he was slain in odium Christi, by a spontaneous acceptance of death, for the bonum commune Reipublica et Ecclesice. It is not commonly known that the Archbishop went on this errand of self-oblation at the request of Ozanam and two others. But, before they had sug gested it, the Archbishop had already pondered it in his heart, as if by an inspiration. The whole event is touchingly narrated in the book before us.

In 1850 Ozanam's health again began to fail. He went in search of health to Brittany, and came over to England. Lacordaire has given a characteristic account of his visit to Westminster Abbey:

' " He went in with the crowd of strangers and foreigners, and found himself presently behind the choir, in front of the tomb of S. Edward. The sight of this monument, mutilated by Protestantism, filled him with anguish, and falling on his knees before the relics, such- as they are, he prayed there alone in expiation for that people that no longer knows its saints, to the great contempt, doubtless, of the lookers-on, who took him for an idolater, if not for a madman." We are not surprised to learn that the indignant beadle hunted him out of the church' (p. 352).

But these intervals of rest and change were of little avail. The intensity of his mind gave no respite to his failing frame, and in 1852 he was again dangerously ill. Then came his last appearance at the Sorbonne:

' He was still confined to his bed, suffering great pain, and consumed with fever, when one day he heard that the public were clamouring for him at the Sorbonne, accusing him of self-indulgence and neglect of duty in being so long absent from his cours, when he was paid by the State for giving it. The news stung him to the quick. " I will show them it is not true. I will do honour to my profession!" he cried. And, in spite of the tears of his wife, and the entreaties of his brother and another medical attendant, he had himself dressed, and drove straight to the Sorbonne, where he found the crowd still collected outside his class. When the professor, leaning on the arm of a friend, pale, worn, more like a spectre than a living man, advanced through their midst, the rioters were smitten with horror and remorse: as he ascended the chair that had witnessed so many of his triumphs, and that lie was never to ascend again, their applause broke forth, rising and falling like waves around him. He stood for some minutes gazing in silence on the thoughtless, cruel young crowd,, his black dazzling eyes shining with the terrible light of fever, his long hair hanging, his whole appearance that of a man who was nearer to death than to life. When at last the tumult subsided, he spoke. His voice rang out clear as silver, more piercing from its very weakness, like a spirit imprisoned in a body too frail to bear the shock of its inspiration. " Gentlemen," he said, " our age is accused of being an age of egotism; we professors, it is said, are tainted with the general epidemic, and yet it is here that we use up our health; it is here that we wear ourselves out. I do not complain of it; our life belongs to you; we owe it to you to our last breath, and you shall have it. For my part, if I die. it will be in your service." He said truly; this last effort killed him' (p. 303).

"What remains is soon told. Ozanam went to Eaux. Bonnes, and into Spain, and finally into Italy. "W& follow him to Pisa, Genoa, Sienna, Antignano, and finally to Marseilles; and here came the end:¹

the members of the Society of S. Vincent de Paul, who knelt in silence, joining in the prayers that were speeding their founder into the presence of his Judge. He had fallen into a gentle slum ber, waking up at intervals to murmur a blessing, a word of love, an invocation. Suddenly, opening his dark eyes in a wide startled gaze, he lifted up his hands, and cried out in a loud voice, " My God! my God! have mercy on me." They were his last words' (pp. 453, 454).

We have thus briefly traced the dates of time in order to show in how few years a great life was lived. Ozanam's studies were completed by the age of twenty-two; and in eighteen years he accomplished all that he has left behind of finished writings, and all that he wrought into the hearts and lives of the youth of France in the widespread revival of faith, which is expanding to this day. They were eighteen years of great intellectual and spiritual intensity. One word spoken by a mind raised to the pitch of its powers does more than a thousand scattered from an unimpassioned mind. We have rarely seen clearer evidence of mental intensity than in Frederic Ozanam. It may be well believed that it was not only the energy of a mind inflamed with the love of God, but that the keen energy of a nervous system which daily consumed itself added to the intensity of the will. There can be no doubt that he accomplished the vow of his youth by spending and being spent to the last beat of his pulse for ' the truth which had given him peace.'

A kindly critic the other day closed a notice of his biography with the words, * Dying at the age of forty, he left behind him a brilliant and a beautiful memory.'

To estimate either the character or the works of Frederic Ozanam would require more than one article.

The copious and sympathetic biography before us brings out many beautiful traits of the filial tenderness and veneration he bore to his mother, which may always be taken as the sure test of a manly and Christian heart. He had great cause to love her, for it was her fervent piety that formed his character from his earliest consciousness. He fully understood this inestimable blessing. Just after her death he writes:

' Alas, what havoc this death has made in my mind, as well as in my heart! No, I am wrong: what so crushed me was the long illness that I beheld day by day destroying her, and which — shall I say it? — seemed as if it were going to dishonour the sacrifice before consuming it, by quenching the intellectual faculties, and blunting the moral feelings. This thought was horrible, and haunted me constantly; I seemed to see her soul dying with her body! Mercifully the trial was shortened; just at the end the energy of her soul revived, and Christ, in descending into the heart of His beloved servant, left there strength for the supreme struggle. She remained for three clays, calm, serene, murmuring prayers, or acknowledging our caresses and services by a few words of ineffable sweetness. At last the fatal night came; it was I who was watching. I suggested to my clear mother the acts of faith, hope, and'charity, the same that she had taught me to lisp after her as a little child' (p. 101).

' Happy the man to whom God gives a holy mother! This dear memory will never forsake us. Often in my solitude now, in the midst of the anguish that weighs down my soul, the remembrance of that august scene returns to sustain and uplift me. I think of how short life is, how soon we shall be reunited with those from whom death has parted us, and then I feel all temptations of self-love, all the unworthy instincts of my nature, fade away, and my desires are concentrated in the single one of dying like my mother! 0, how I rejoice now that I did not abandon that blessed deathbed to run after the vague promises of university honours! If at this trifling sacrifice I should only have earned the privilege of passing a few more months near her, of being there on that last night, I am more than paid for it' (p. 10-2).

And two years after her death, when less loving and sensitive natures would have lost the vividness of their perceptions, he wrote:

' Nothing is so appalling as the growing solitude, the void that death creates around us. I have gone through it all; but this state did not last long. Then followed quickly another, when I began to feel that I was not alone, when I was conscious of some thing infinitely sweet in the depths of my soul; it was like an assurance that I had not been left alone; it was a benign though invisible neighbourhood; it was as if a cherished soul, passing close by, touched me with its wings. And just as formerly I used to recognise the step, the voice, the breath of my mother, so now, when a fresh breeze revived my strength, when a virtuous thought •entered my mind, when a salutary impulse stirred my will, I could not but think it was still my mother. After a lapse of two years, when time might have dispelled what was merely the effect of an over -wrought imagination, I still experience the same thing. There are moments when a sudden thrill passes through me, as if she were there by my side; above all, when I most stand in need of it, there are hours of maternal and filial intercourse, and then I shed more abundant tears, perhaps, than in the first months of my bereavement, but an ineffable peace is mingled with their sadness. When I am good, when I have done anything for the poor, whom she loved so tenderly, when I am at peace with God, whom she served so well, I see her smiling on me in the distance. Sometimes, when I am praying, I fancy I hear her voice praying with me, as we used to do together at the foot of the crucifix every night' (p. 163).

The same tenderness of heart is visible in his friendships. His letters to M. Falconnet, and his grief at the death of a mutual friend, breathe an aifection which can be found only in those who have grown up in the full play of filial and brotherly love. The same also is to be seen in all the notices of his domestic life. At the age of twenty-eight he married Mdlle. Soulacroix, daughter of the Kector of the Academy. She was in every way a worthy companion of his gentle and ardent mind. Her intelligence appreciated his intellectual culture and aspirations; and she had elevation of soul to second him in enterprises in which self gives way to duty. In 1848, when the barricades were in the streets of Paris, Ozanam was under arms in the National Guard. ' Personally,' says the biography, 'he did not know what fear was. This courage was shared by his wife. " Thank God! Amelie is courageous," he says to more than one friend, whom he keeps informed of their position during the outbreak; and he constantly congratulates himself on finding a support instead of a hindrance in her presence throughout' (pp. 312, 313).

The same love and largeness of heart pervades his writings and his life whensoever he speaks of the poor. But this will fall more naturally into its place when we come to speak of his politics, or rather of his efforts as. a social reformer in their behalf.

It is impossible for us to give any adequate representation of Ozanam's literary works. For eighteen years, distracted by the state of France both before and after the Pievolution of 1848, with health always frail, and for the last five years sensibly giving way, it is wonderful how Ozanam could have accomplished so much. The amount of writing contributed by him to the Tribune Catliolique, the Ere Nouvellc, the Moniteur lieligieux, journals which were striving to rally the youth of France to the Catholic reaction against infidelity, or to stir up chanty and zeal for the amelioration of the poor, must have demanded the time and thought and energy of any ordinary man. But with him these accessory writings never suspended his-serious and systematic literary work. Even his journeys for health and rest gave rise to one or more volumes.

His journey to Italy produced Lcs Poctes Franciscans, and his short excursion into Spain A Pilgrimage to the Land of the Cid.

He had formed for himself an outline of a work to which he purposed to devote his life, A History of Civilisation among the Germans. He has left a record of what he intended to demonstrate in the following passage in a letter to M. Lallier:

' It was only at the close of my lectures that the serious interest of the subject revealed itself to me distinctly. It is a case of proving that Germany owes her genius and her whole civilisation to the Christian education she received; that her greatness was in proportion to her union with Christendom; that she drew her power, her light, her poetry from her fraternal connections with the other nations of Europe; that for her, as for others, there is, there can be, no real destiny except through Roman unity, the depositoiy of the temporal traditions of humanity, as well as of the eternal designs of Providence. All this looks simple, natural, almost trivial in its self-evident truth this side of the Rhine; but, on the other hand, the national pride plumes itself in dreams of an autochthonous civilisation from which Christianity has, by the way, caused them to decline; in a literature which, without contact with the Latin, would have developed into unexampled splendour; in a future, in fact, which promises to be magnificent, provided it steeps itself in unmixed and unalloyed Teutonism. The German type is no longer Charlemagne, but Arminius. These doctrines pierce in divers forms through the various philosophical, historical, and literary schools, from Hegel to Goethe, from Goethe to Strauss. It seems to me advisable to attack them at home, on their own ground; to show how alone they were simply barbarians; how, thanks to their Bishops, their monks, to the Roman faith, the Roman language, the Roman law, they entered into possession of the religious, scientific, and political inheritance of modern nations; how, in repudiating it, they fell back gradually into barbarism. An introduction which will precede and conclusions that will follow the history of the literature-of German chivalry, the principal object of my task, will, I hope, bring out this idea in strong relief (pp. 205, 200).

Of this work two volumes exist, of which Montalem-

"380 FBEDEBIC OZANAM.

bert says, in a letter to Madame Ozanam, after her 'husband's death, ' I have a volume of the Etudes Germaniques always open before me.' The best known of Ozanam's works is probably Dante et la Philosophic Catholique au Treizieme Siccle, in which the full beauty of his mind and all the tenderness of his fervent faith were especially manifest. During the greater part of his career he would not allow his lectures at the Sorbonne to be taken down. It was not until the year 1846 that he consented. They were found to be so fit for publication that he regretted, as we must also regret, that he had not consented sooner. This has given to us two volumes called La Civilisation au 'Cinquieme Siecle. To this, his last work, he prefixed an Introduction, which gives the outline of the work to which he proposed to give himself for life. He says:

' I purpose writing the literary history of the Middle Ages, from the fifth century to the close of the thirteenth, up to Dante, where I shall stop as at the point most worthy of repre senting that great epoch. But in the history of letters I shall make civilisation, of which they are the flower, my chief study, and in civilisation I recognise the chief work of Christianity.... As a layman I have no mission to deal with theological subjects, and God, moreover, who loves to be served by the eloquence of man, finds plenty in our day to vindicate our dogmas. But while Catholics were absorbed with the defence of doctrine, the unbelieving seized upon history. They laid hands upon the Middle Ages, they sat in judgment upon the Church, judging her sometimes with enmity, sometimes with the respect due to a fine ruin, often with a levity they would not have used in treating profane subjects. We must reconquer this territory, which belongs to us, since we find it cleared by the hands of our monks, our Benedictines, and our Bollandists, — those men who did not think their life ill spent in growing pale over parchments and legends. Gibbon, the historian, went to visit Rome in his youth. One day, while wandering through the Capitol, the sound of hymns broke suddenly on his ear; he saw the doors of the basilica of the Ara Cceli open, and a long procession of Franciscan monks come forth, brushing with their sandals the pavement traversed by so many triumphs. It was then that indignation inspired him; he formed the design of avenging antiquity, outraged by Christian barbarism; he conceived the plan of the Decline of the Roman Empire. And I, too, have beheld the monks of Ara Cosli treading on the venerable pavement of Jupiter Capitolinus; I saw it, and I rejoiced at the victory of love over strength, and I resolved to write the history of the progress of that period where the English philosopher saw nothing but decay; the history of civilisation in the barbarous ages, the history of the human mind escaping from the shipwreck of the empire of letters, and traversing the flood of the invasions, as the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, and under the same guidance: " forti tegente brachio." I know nothing more supernatural, nothing that proves more clearly the divinity of Christianity, than to have saved the human mind' (pp. 382-384).

Although Ozanam chose literature for his calling in life, and although he refused again and again the proposal to enter the Legislature, or to be called a politician, and that, too, with a declared purpose of working out social reforms in distinction from political, nevertheless he avowed himself explicitly to be a Republican. This we have no doubt has caused him to incur the censure of Legitimists, Royalists, Imperialists, and even to lose the perfect confidence of loyal Catholics, who associate order and obedience with monarchy, and if not anarchy, at least instability of both public and private morals with Republicanism. This was especially true in France, where the name of Kepublic and the reality were identified with 1793 and the Phrygian cap of revolution. We shall not be suspected of Kepublicanism, and our loyalty to the great English monarchy of a thousand years, founded broad and deep in the natural order of prudence and justice by our Catholic forefathers, and subsisting to this day, the only commonwealth against which revolutions have broken themselves in vain, — we say we shall not be suspected of Eepublicanism, or of any uncatholic tendency in politics, if we clear Frederic Ozanam also from any such suspicion.

We have heard it said that no Kepublican can be a good Catholic. We would commend this dictum to the conscience of Cardinal M'Closkey and to the pas tors and people of the Catholic Church of the United States; or, to come nearer home, we would commend it to the deliberation of Mgr. Mermillod, who would, we imagine, distinguish between the Helvetian republic and the gang of infidels and persecutors who now tyrannise over Geneva. But we may even go further, and remind those who censure Ozanam's politics of the republics of Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, of the Catholic chivalry which issued from them, and of the Saints who sprung from them.

Now it was precisely the mediaeval Christian and Catholic republic which fascinated and filled Ozanarn's mind. In it he saw the check and balance which would have saved France from the excesses of its later kings, and, therefore, from the sanguinary and anarchical reaction called the Revolution. His indignant lamentations over the state of the people of Paris; his burning zeal for the poor, whose degradation in poverty, ignorance, and depravity he, as a Brother of S. Vincent of Paul, saw with his own eyes, and relieved with his own hands, — all this made him pray and toil for a Christian equality of brotherhood such as he had read of in the commonwealth of Israel. Perhaps the instinct of a theocratic commonwealth ran in the hlood of a Hozannam by direct inheritance.

But we can find for Ozanam another plea. In the years when he was entering into the studies of his manhood there appeared in France a book which has more than almost any other, moulded and directed the political thought of the nineteenth century; we mean De Tocqueville's Democracy in America.5 We shall better convey our own meaning by simply letting De Tocqueville express his. In his Introduction to his work he writes as follows:

' The more I studied American society the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which, the New-World presented to me. I observed that the equality of condi tions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States; and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe' (p. xiii.).

He ascribes this equality chiefly to the action of the

Catholic Church:

' Soon [he says] the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself; the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, — to the poor and to the rich, the villain and the lord; equality penetrated into the government through the Church, and the being who, as a serf, must have vegetated in perpetual bondage, took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not unfrequently above the heads of kings' (p. xv.).

After saying that every fifty years has levelled 5 Democracy in America, Reeves's translation (London, 1865).

France more and more nearly after the model of America, he continues:

' Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whither soever we turn our eyes, we shall witness the same continual revolution throughout the whole of Christendom. The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy. All men have aided it by their exertions; those who have intentionally laboured in its cause, and those who have served it unwittingly; those who have fought for it, and those who have declared themselves its opponents, — have all been driven along in the same track, have all laboured to-one end, some ignorantly and some unwillingly; all have been blind instruments in the hands of God. The gradual development of the equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a Divine decree i it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress' (pp. xix. xx.).

' The whole book which is here offered to the public has been written under the impression of a kind of religious dread produced on the author's mind by the contemplation of so irresistible a revolution, which has advanced for centuries in spite of such amazing obstacles, and which is still proceeding in the-midst of the ruins it has made' (p. xxi.).

' The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most alarming spectacle; the impulse which is bearing them along is so strong that it cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided: their fate is in their hands; yet a little while and it may be so no longer. The first duty which is at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate the democracy; to warm its faith, if that be possible; to purify its morals; to direct its energies; to substitute a know ledge of business for its inexperience, and an acquaintance with its true interests for its blind propensities; to adapt its government to time and place, and to modify it in compliance with the occurrences and the actors of the age. A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world' (p. xxii.).

' Zealous Christians may be found amongst us, whose minds are nurtured in the love and knowledge of a future life, and who readily espouse the cause of human liberty as the source of all moral greatness. Christianity, which has declared that all men are equal in the sight of God, will not refuse to acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the sight of the law. But, by a singular concourse of events, religion is entangled in those insti tutions which democracy assails, and it is not unfrequently brought to reject the equality it loves, and to curse that cause of liberty as a foe, which it might hallow by its alliance' (pp. xxxi. xxxii).

He then sums up the saddest feature of our times — the unnatural and fratricidal conflicts of those who have common interests, and are combining for the same ends. It is as if Ate had come between men:

We cannot leave De Tocqueville's name without adding that he was born of a fervent Catholic Breton family; that, like too many Frenchmen, he -became practically indifferent; but that he ended his days at Cannes with the pastoral care of the cure and the watchful service of a Sister of Charity.

Now we can.hardly believe that Ozanam had not become familiar with De Tocqueville's thesis, and we might venture to assert with De Tocqueville's writings. If so, we have the key to the passages which we now add, in which Ozanam pours out his whole political creed.

His biographer, who evidently has studied all his works, has summed up his mind as follows:

' The philosophy of history, as he interpreted it, had led him to believe that there is no real meaning or character in the movement of human society unless through all its changes and con-VOL. II. CC² vulsions we can discern a steady and continual progress through Christianity to the dignity of freedom. This condition of freedom, which he held as essential to the welfare and happiness of com munities, he considered equally indispensable to the Church. He was consequently intolerant of the least bondage for her, and impatient that a Christian people should tolerate it, when at the same time they were, perhaps, fighting manfully for the emancipation of their country. If the Church were free, free in the fullest sense of the word, — free to guide, to rule, and to teach mankind, — then all legitimate freedom would follow' (pp. 272, 273).

' "A struggle is preparing," he says, " between the classes, and it threatens to be terrible; let us precipitate ourselves between these hostile ranks, so as to deaden the shock, if we cannot prevent it." In 1836 he wrote to his friend Lallier: " The question which agitates the world to-day is not a question of political forms, but a social question. If it be the struggle of those who have nothing with those who have too much, if it be the violent shock of opulence and poverty which is making the ground tremble under our feet, our duty, as Christians, is to throw ourselves between these irreconcilable enemies, and to induce one side.to give, in order to fulfil the law, and the other to receive, as a benefit; to make one side cease to exact, and the other to refuse; to render equality as general as it is possible amongst men; to make voluntary community of possession replace taxation and forced loans; to make charity accomplish what justice and law alone can never do." He adhered to this political creed all his life. Twelve years later, on the eve of the " violent shock" which his far-seeing sagacity foretold, he repeats, as in his student days, "It is a social question; do away with misery, Christianise the people, and you will make an end of revolutions" ' (pp. 294, 295).

' The first duty of Christians' now is not to be frightened; and the second is not to frighten others: but, on the contrary, to reassure the timorous, and to make them understand that the present crisis is like a storm that cannot last' (p. 308).

' Here we are in this great and opulent metropolis for the last seven weeks without a government or a regular police force, and yet we hear of no more murders, robberies, or other misdemeanours than before. Don't believe those evil-minded persons who go about spreading absurd stories; there is not a word of truth in them, and nothing is more contrary to the dispositions of the population of Paris, who on every occasion seek to show respect to religion and sympathy to the clergy. My friend, the Abbe Cherduel, who has blessed thirteen trees of liberty, has been quite affected by the proofs of faith which he found amidst this people, where, since 1815, the priest has been taught to see only enemies of God and of the Church. Occupy yourself as much with ser vants as with masters, with workmen as much as with employers. This is henceforth the only means of salvation for the Church of France. The cures must set aside their pious parish congrega tions, little flocks of good sheep in the midst of an enormous population to whom the parish priest is a stranger. He must henceforth occupy himself, not only with the indigent, but with that immense class of poor -who do not ask for alms, but who are, nevertheless, attracted by special preaching, by charitable associations, by the affection that is shown to them, and which teaches them more than we think. Now, more -than ever, we ought to meditate on a beautiful passage in the second chapter of the Epistle of St. James, which seems as if it had been written expressly for these times' (pp. 308, 309).

Once more, in a passage which we reluctantly abridge, he brings out the profound conviction of his mind that the infidel revolution is the rotting and malaria of a land where the ' salt has lost its savour:'

' " It is within, not without, that we must seek for the sources of men's happiness and its principal enemies," he declares; " and we shall have done nothing, absolutely nothing, so long as we have not carried light and reform into those internal disorders which time does not right, which are more incurable than diseases, which last longer than the clwmage, and go on multiplying pauperism long after the grass of the graveyard has effaced the last traces of civil war. God did not make the poor; He sends no human creatures into the chances of this world without providing them with those two sources of riches, which are the fountain of all others — intelligence and will.... Why should we hide from the people what they know, and flatter them like bad kings? It is human liberty that makes the poor; it is it that dries up those two primitive fountains of wealth, by allowing intelligence to be quenched in ignorance, and will to be weakened by misconduct. The working men know it better than we do...." God forbid that we should calumniate the poor whom the Gospel blesses, or render the suffering classes responsible for their misery; thus pan dering to the hardness of those bad hearts that fancy themselves exonerated from helping the poor man when they have proved his wrong-doing.... But while we have put crushing taxes on salt, meat, and all necessaries of life, we have not yet discovered in the arsenal of our fiscal laws the secret of arresting the multiplication of distilleries, of raising the price of alcoholic liquors, of restricting the sale of those detestable, adulterated, poisonous drinks that cause more sickness than all the rigours of the sea sons, and make more criminals than all the injustice of men combined. What reforms have you introduced into the public amusements of this Parisian population, so infatuated about plea sure, so ready to let itself be led to the ends of the earth, not with bread, as it has been said, but with amusement? Last winter the Prefecture of Police delivered four thousand licenses for night balls. The State puts no limit to those unhealthy diversions, which the good sense of our fathers contracted within the six weeks of the Carnival. Every year it authorises the opening of a new theatre in some wretched haunt of the Faubourgs, where the sons and daughters of the people are fed nightly upon the scum, of a literature whose cynicism would revolt the chastity of the opera pit. And when, for six months of the year, the youth of the working classes have spent their evenings and their nights in these horrible dens, where their health runs as much danger as their morals, you are surprised to see them turn out miserable puny creatures, incapable of supplying the military contingent, but supplying innumerable recruits every year to the prisons and the hospitals! Let us not imagine we have done our duty by the people when we have taught them to read and write and count.... When it was a question of crushing out the last embers of the insurrection, there was no need of delays and formalities to pitch twenty camps in the Boulevards of Paris, and up to the very doors of the Hotel de Ville; and here we are, after four months, when in the 12th arrondissement alone there are 4000 children without shelter — here we are still struggling amidst adjournments, motions, and debates, fighting to overcome I know not what scruples of com mittees, boards, administrations, and the rest of it, who are terri fied that the State will be ruined and overturned if the education of the young ouvriers is confided to Sisters and Brothers, to teachers capable, that is, of teaching them something more than how to spell out the syllables of the newspaper, and to scrawl the ordre de jour of the barricades on the walls with a piece of coal" ' (pp.. 323-325).³

In all this we see a profound faith in the words of the Holy Scriptures, ' Sanabiles fecit Deus nationes super terras.' He believed the nations to be sick be cause their faith had almost given way under the spiritual, moral, and physical conditions of their life. But he profoundly believed in the healing power of God through the Church and the ever-renewing health of the generations of man. France, it is said, had once two-and-twenty thousand leprosy hospitals, but they have disappeared together with the leprosy which called them into existence. So he believed that the social evils of France were to be healed by the power of Christianity upon the heart of man. ' Christianise the masses:' this was his gospel and his political creed — a creed which has a higher sanction from S. Gregory the Great to Pius IX.

And the mention of this august name reminds us that we cannot better close this hearty tribute to a beautiful mind and a noble life than by the words in which Ozanam professed his filial and loving obedience to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The winter of 1846-1847 Ozanam passed in Eome. It was at the beginning of the Pontificate of Pius IX, On Easter Sunday he wrote thus:

' This is the moment to speak to you of the Papacy, now that I have -just assisted at its most solemn pageants, and am still under the spell of the emotion called up by that most thrilling spectacle which is to be seen on> earth, the Papal Mass and the benediction of the Urbi et orbi' (p. 255).

Ozanam was received by the Holy Father with the most fatherly affection, and it was returned by a filial love which inspired his whole soul with the loyalty of a chivalrous Catholic. He says, speaking of the Holy Father:

' He has resumed, one by one, all the active functions of the Episcopacy — preaching, giving Confirmation, visiting incognito schools and hospitals and the poor in their garrets, going to say Mass in any obscure chapel, and distributing Communion to all who are present, as my wife and I had the happiness of receiving it from him. And, with all this, a purity of life that was the admiration of those who knew him as a young priest, and a charity so boundless that when he set out to come to the conclave he was obliged to borrow six hundred crowns for his journey.... But what strikes one above everything else in him are those two sentiments that have made the greatness of all great Popes, — an immovable faith in the Divine authority vested in him, and a profound conviction of his unworthiness; a trust in God that enables him to undertake everything, and a contempt for himself that enables him to suffer everything; hence the aureola of sanctity which illuminates his countenance, and that burning accent which pervades his discourse' (p. 259).

At a public meeting, on his return from Borne, he said:

' I believe the future has serious troubles in store for Pius IX. I believe it is for his greater glory. God does not raise up such men for ordinary difficulties. If this great Pontiff had only to cope with the over-enthusiasm, the eagerness of his people — a thing that so few princes have to complain of — his mission would be an easy one; it would fill too small a place in history; his bark would glide over tranquil waters. We must look out for the tempest. But let us not fear, like the disciples of little faith; Christ is in the boat, and He is not sleeping; never has He been more wakeful than in these present days' (pp. 269, 276).

Such was Frederic Ozanam, a pure and nohle soul, on fire with charity to all men, especially to the poor; consumed by zeal in the service of truth; pious, with a filial tenderness; exemplary in every path of life; more eloquent in the supernatural beauty of his thoughts than in the loving words which fell from his lips; more illuminated with the ardour of Christian faith than with the manifold lights of literary cultivation: such a man bore in him a Catholic heart full of all instinctive loyalty, as ready to give his life for a jot or tittle of the faith, or for a definition of the Divine authority of the Church, as he was to counsel the Archbishop of Paris to tread in the steps of the Good Shepherd, and to lay down his life for his sheep. May God raise up on every side laymen like Frederic Ozanam.

THE END.

LONDON: ROBSON ANt> SOKS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS PvOAD,

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Footnotes

1. His arrival at Marseilles was quickly known, and the brother hood of S. Vincent de Paul hastened to his door with every testimony of sorrow and respect. He was too ill to see any of them, but he was greatly touched to hear of their constant visits. No thing could surpass the serenity that his soul now enjoyed; every trace of fear, of apprehension, had vanished; all bodily suffering-had likewise ceased, and he appeared like one already dwelling in the sensible presence of God; he seldom spoke, but communed still with his beloved ones by a pressure of the hand, a sign, and that smile that lay like a halo on the wasted face, touching it already with the peace that passeth all understanding. Feeling that the end was near, he himself asked for the last Sacraments, and received them with great fervour and the liveliest consciousness. When all was over, his brother, remembering how keenly he had feared the Divine judgments, urged him gently to have confidence in the great mercy of God; but Ozanam, as if he understood not the allusion, answered, with a look of sweet surprise, " Why should I fear Him? I love Him so much!" On the evening of the 8th of September, the feast of our Lady's Nativity, the summons came. His wife was beside him, and his brothers, and a few near relatives. The adjoining room was crowded with those other brothers.. ↩

2. The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are the apostles of civilisation and of intelligence' (pp. xxxiii. xxxiv.). ↩

3. " The poor devils," he said, " who are beguiled to the barricades, but who are Christians at heart, are ready to melt at a word of kindness"' (p. 267). ↩