Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/524

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the Union and of the Council; 2. By public meetings; 3. By petitions or memorials, or deputations to the Authorities; 4. By local branches; 5. By correspondence with similar societies in other countries; 6. By procuring and publishing information on subjects of interest to Catholics; 7. By cooperation with approved Confraternities, Institutions, and Charitable Associations, for the furtherance of their respective objects; which cooperation shall, in each case, be sanctioned by the Bishop of the Diocese; 8. By any other mode approved of by the Council and the Bishops." For thirty-seven years the Catholic Union has worked steadily and successfully on the lines thus indicated. It has also been of great utility in affording advice and assistance to Catholics, especially the clergy, in matters of doubt and difficulty, legal and administrative. It is governed by a president and council elected by the general body of members. From the first the office of president has been held by the Duke of Norfolk, and for many years the Marquis of Ripon has been the vice-president. On its list of members will be found most British Catholics of position and influence.

The Catholic Truth Society was founded in 1884 by the late Cardinal Vaughan, then rector of the Foreign Missionary College at Mill Hill, and has since had a career of much usefulness. Its main objects are to disseminate among Catholics small and cheap devotional works; to assist the uneducated poor to a better knowledge of their religion; to spread among Protestants information about Catholic truth; to promote the circulation of good, cheap, and popular Catholic books. It holds every year a Conference for the elucidation and discussion of questions affecting the work of the Catholic Church in England. During the twenty years of its existence it has issued publications, great and small, at the rate of about a million a year. It has formed a lending library of books for the blind; and it has a collection of about forty sets of lantern views, with accompanying readings on subjects connected with Catholic faith and history. It has been copied by societies bearing the same names in Scotland and Ireland, in the United States, Canada, Bombay, and Australia.

The Catholic Association was originally founded in 1891. Its objects are stated in its Rules as being "(I) To promote unity and good fellowship among Catholics by organizing lectures, concerts, dances, whist tournaments, excursions, and other gatherings of a social character, and (II) to assist, whenever possible, in the work of Catholic organization, and in the protection and advancement of Catholic interests." It has been particularly successful in the organization of pilgrimages to Rome and other places of Catholic interest.

We cannot better bring to an end this brief survey of the career of Catholicism in England since the Protestant Reformation than in some eloquent and touching words with which Abbot Gasquet concludes his "Short History of the Catholic Church in England":—"When we recall the state to which the long years of persecution had reduced the Catholic body at the dawn of the nineteenth century, we may well wonder at what has been accomplished since then. Who shall say how it has come about? Where out of our poverty, for example, have been found the sums of money for all our innumerable needs? Churches and colleges and schools, monastic buildings and convents, have all had to be built and supported; how, the Providence of God can alone explain.... From the first years of the nineteenth century, when the principle `suffer it to be' was applied to the English Catholic Church, there have been signs of the dawn of the brighter, happier days for the old religion. Slight indeed were the signs at first, slight but significant, and precious memories to us now, of the workings of the Spirit, of the rising of the sap again in the old trunk, and of the bursting of bud and bloom in manifestation of that life which, during the long winter of persecution, had been but dormant. Succisa virescit. Cut down almost to the ground, the tree planted by Augustine has manifested again the divine life within it; it has put forth once more new branches and leaves, and gives promise of abundant fruit."

W. S. Lilly.

Anything like a complete bibliography of the subject treated in the foregoing article would attain to the dimensions of a large library catalogue. But the following books may be mentioned: Bellesheim, WiUielm Cardinal Allen, 1532-1591,, und die englischen Seminare auf dem Festlande (Mainz, 18S5) ; B vtler. Historical Memoirs of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics (3 vols., London, 1819-21); Id., Historical account of the Laws respecting the Roman Catholics (London. 1795); Id., The Book of the Roman Catholic Church (London, 1825); Brewer. Gaird- NER. AND Brodie, eds., Calendar of Letters and Papers foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII (18 vols., London, 1862- 1902); Challoner, Memoirs of the Missionary priests and other Catholics that suffered death in England, 1S77-16SU (2 vols., .Manchester, 1803; Derby, 1843); Collier. History of the Church of England (London, 1708-09); Dodd, Church History of Eng- land from 1500 to loss (Brussels, 1737-42). and new edition by TiERNEY (5 vols., London, 1839); Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (7 vols., London, 1880); Gas- quet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (5th ed. , London, 1893); Id. and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1890); Gillow, Literary and biographical his- tory of Roman Catholics (5 vols.. London, 1886); Gillow ed., Haydock Papers (London, 1888); Hallam, Constitutional His- tory of England from the accession of Henry VII to death of George II (3 vols., tenth ed., London, 1863); Haudeccecr, La Conservation providentielle du Catholicisme en Anglelerre (Reims, 1898); HusENBETH, Notices of the English Colleges and Convents on the Continent after the dissolution of the religious houses in England (Norwich, 1849); Knox, Records of the English Catho- lics under the Penal Laws (2 vols., London, 1882-4); Law, A Calendar of the English Martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1876); Lilly and Wallis, A Manual of the Law specially affecting Catholics (London, 1893); Macaulay, Works (8 vols., London, 1866); May (Lord Farnborough), Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860 (2 vols.. 2nd ed., London, 1863-5); Milner, Letters to a Prebendary; ans. to Re- flections on Popery by J. Sturges, remarks on the opposition of Hoadlyism to the doctrines of the Church of England (7th ed., London, 1822); Id., Supplementary Mvmoirs of English Catholics (London, 1820); Id., The End i.f /,'•'-, i ,.i,troversy; Id.,

Vindication of the end of religious < . ' ■■m exceptions of

T. Burgess and R. Grier (Lond<>ii, '- - 1' ./am. Memoirs, giving account of his agency in Em; . ' , ' , fr, by Bering- ton, added, ,State of English Calhnlic Church (Birmingham, 1793); von Ranke, Dierom. Papste in d. letzten vier Jhdtn (3 vols., 7th ed., Leipzig, 1878); Zander, Rise of the Anglican Schism U5S5), with continuation by Rishton, tr., with notes, etc., by Lewis (London, 1877); Simpson, Edmund Campion (London, 1867); Statutes at Large: Strype, Annals of Reforma- tion (London, 1708-09); Ward, Catholic London a Century ago (London, 1905).

English Literature.—It is not unfitting to compare English Literature to a great tree whose far spreading and ever fruitful branches have their roots deep down in the soil of the past. Over such a tree, since the small beginnings of its growth, many vicissitudes of climate have passed; periods of storm, of calm, of sunshine, and of rain; of bitter winds and of genial life-bearing breezes; each change leaving its trace behind in the growth and development of the living plant. It is obvious, then, that to present the complete history of such an organism in a few pages is impossible; all that can be attempted in this article is to describe the main lines of its life.

It should not be forgotten, at the outset, that English literature has been no isolated growth. It has sprung from the common Aryan root, has branched off from the primal stem, and has received, and continues to receive, in the course of its growth, multitudinous influences from other literatures growing up around it, as well as from those of an earlier time. Yet, as Freeman said, "We are ourselves, and not somebody else", and one of the most remarkable things about English literature is its power of assimilation. Latin, French, Italian, Greek Spanish literatures, to name only a few, have poured their influences upon us, not once only, but time after time leaving their trace, and yet our character, our language, our literature, remain unmistakably English. The ancestors of the English (the Teutonic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and some Frisians) spent nearly