11 "^^ v^'^ A"' .XV <^r. '■^^ ^S^,: it %■ A^' v^^% O ^ < •^oo"^ -f^ vL xV V o*^ -^ ,, ■> " " .^^ ^t^ c^ .H ■v^ ..'^ ^ ^ ^ * 4 s .-^^ ^5 -^c*-. ■>^ •^ 'p ■^ \ ^. .<' ^^. * o », ^ X^-'^ ^, .0 ^^. w ,0 c ./\ '^ ^ , X * V "»- ': ^ <^ ^' -f rC- h z ^v <^ X '^ 4^. 0' ,.v .- V ' .--^ A^'' A' ^ <0^ <^. 'i> c^ ..V s^ -^ j:^'^^. .-^^" %"■'.. v-^^^G^ -->. \^^^. .^^' S ^ >* /^■^' -' ,>»■■ 1> c,^- ^'^^• •^/>- % ^ B X, '?- ' , -x-^ ■/ <^- -0" ^ -< '>'-- 0^ - O 'O ''^ii',<^ :^ ■^- V " .Ji"^"^- ''^ <>' <-> V #"^i o\ O ^^ -n^. ^ - o >> ,. "< .> •^'.'?^''^^^ G^^ ^ .-^'^ '4> ^ ^ V -^ -0 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN College ®a50 at (Seorgetoton AND OTHER PAPERS BY / J. FAIRFAX McLaughlin, ll.d. ILLUSTRATED 4 PHILADELPHIA ^tesis of J. 3U, Hippincott ffinmpang MDCCCXCIX .^ 38420 Copyright, 1899 J. Fairfax McLaughlin i\N0C0P\t-hi weceivEO. '> JUN2ai899 CONTENTS PAGE Chronological List of Presidents of the College . 9 Introduction 11 CHAPTER I The Jesuit Pioneers of English America 17 CHAPTER n Legal Status of Maryland Jesuits during Days of their Suppression ^2 CHAPTER HI Peaceful Settlement of Early Disputes — The College firmly established 63 CHAPTER IV Reminiscences of the Era of Dr. Ryder, the Pride of -^^^ the Maryland Province 83 CHAPTER V Recollections of the Class-Room — The Two Mulledys 116 CHAPTER VI Father William F. Clarke — His Graphic Letters in Re- lation to the College 134 5 / CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE Father Robert Fulton — Extracts from his Letters — New York Alumni — Father McElroy ......... 150 CHAPTER VIII The Gastons — Father George Fenwick — Fathers Ma- guire and Early — Charles B. Kenny's ** Taurea Fuga" — Robert Y. Brown — College Days before the War . 171 CHAPTER IX Harvey Bawtree — Father E. H. Welch — Longfellow — Centennial of College — President Cleveland's Speech — Woodstock Scholasticate — End 196 APPENDIX Charles A. Dana on Georgetown University — John Gilmary Shea on " The Ratio Studiorum" 219 List of Subscribers 227 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS /^ PAGE Georgetown University Frontispiece Sir George Calvert 26 I' Archbi'^'-iop John Carroll 81 Dr. James Ryder, SJ 108 y J. Fairfax McLaughlin 196 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRESIDENTS OF THE COLLEGE • [R. D., i.e.y Reverendus Dominus. R. P., i.e.y Reveren- Dus Pater.] R. D. Robertus Plunkett a. i Oct. 1791. R. D. Robertus Molineux a. 14 Junii, 1793. R. D. LuDov. Dubourg a. I Oct. 1796. R. D. Leonard Neale a. 30 Mart. 1799. R. P. Robertus Molineux a. i Oct. 1806. R. D. GuLiEL. Matthews a. 10 Dec. 1808. R. P. Francise Neale a. 1 1 Dec. 18 10. R. P. Joannes A. Grassi a. i Oct. 1812. R. P. Bened. Fenwick a. 31 Jul. 1817. R. P. Anton. Kohlmann a. i Oct. 1818. R. P. Enoch Fenwick a. 16 Sept. 1820. R. P. Bened. Fenwick a. 15 Sept. 1822. R. P. Steph. L. Dubuisson a. 9 Sept. 1825. R. P. Guliel. Feiner .a. 8 JuL 1826. R. P. Joannes G. Berchter a. 31 Mart. 1829. R. P. Thom. F. Mulledy a. 14 Sept. 1829. R. P. Guliel. McSherry a. 25 Dec. 1837. R. P. Josephus a. Lopez a. i Jan. 1840. R. P. Jacobus Ryder, V. R a. i Maii, 1840. R. P. Jacobus Ryder a. 17 Sept. 1843. R. P. Samuel A. Mulledy a. 10 Jan. 1845. R. P. Thom. F. Mulledy a. 6 Sept. 1845. R. P. Jacobus Ryder a. 6 Aug. 1848. R. P. Carolus H. Stonestreet . . . a. i Aug. 185 1. R. P. Bernardus Maguire a. 15 Aug. 1852. 9 LIST OF PRESIDENTS R. P. Joannes Early a. 4 Oct. 1858. R. P. Bernardus Maguire a. I Jan. 1866. R. P. Joannes Early a. 14 Jul. 1870. R. P. P. F. Healy, V. R a. 23 Maii, 1873. R. P. P. F. Healy a. 31 Jul. 1874. R. P. Jacobus A. Doonan, V. R. . . . a. 25 Jan. 1882. R. P. Jacobus A. Doonan a. 17 Aug. 1882. R. P. J. Havens Richards a. 15 Aug. 1888, R. P. Joannes D. Whitney a. 3 Jul. 1898. 10 INTRODUCTION A HALF promise to one of the Jesuit Fathers, made without hesitation, but perhaps not without rashness, is mainly responsible for bringing to light the following pages. Undertaken merely as reminiscences of the days of my own student life at Georgetown, I had no sooner begun to write before the plan widened into a sketch of the College. But such a sketch required historical research and exceeding care, and imposed upon me rigid scrutiny of the little-understood legal status of the ex-Jesuits in Maryland and the District of Columbia during the years of the suppression. Two or three chap- ters, consequently, had to be indited before I could get down to the task proper which I had set for myself, of personal recollections of college days from 1851 to 1862. In my earlier years I was acquamted with several old Jesuits, such as Fathers McElroy, Fenwick, and Stonestreet, who had made a thorough study of everything connected with the history of the Col- lege, and from them I derived much information on the subject. The mind of one of those gentlemen II INTRODUCTION was a sort of chronological map and Noah's ark, not only of every important place and fact and person in the annals of the College, but in those of the State and Colony of Maryland from the beginning. The Jesuits came in the first expedition of Calvert, and Father Fenwick could tell you about them all, and their vicissitudes from St. Inigoes to George- town, — their trials, sufferings, and final triumph, whereby they made Maryland the Land of the Sanctuary, and, greater still, they made their mis- sion the corner-stone of the solid edifice of the Catholic Church in the United States. The his- tory of the Jesuits in colonial Maryland has not yet been written, but the lost chapter, I am happy to learn, may yet be rescued from the moth and rust of time, and even now, by research in Europe and America, is in course of systematic preparation. He who examines the earliest landmarks of Catholic colonization in North America must be struck by the singular influence of opposite causes in promoting and retarding its growth. Catholic navigators were the first explorers of the rocky shores and primeval forests of New England. Car- tier and Champlain, with the Franciscans and Jes- uits, planted the lilies of France within the present northeastern boundaries of the United States many years before the arrival of the Puritans at Plymouth Rock. The Catholic names of rivers and lakes sufficiently denote the religion of the discoverers 12 INTRODUCTION who first adventured into those northerly regions. Leaving out of view the Spanish settlements to the southward, the last vestiges of which were swept away in the recent Spanish-American war, among the rival European nations contending for domin- ion in the New World, France was the first to reach that precise point on the Atlantic coast which afforded the only practicable entrance to the vast interior portion of the most important division of North America. But the explorations of Cartier and Champlain proved but a stage and resting- place in the march of French discoveries. Within fifty years from the time of the arrival of the first settlers from Europe, those fearless pioneers, the French Jesuit missionaries, had discovered the sources of the Mississippi, explored its principal branches, and taken their daring way down the channel of the mighty river itself to where it empties its resistless tide into the Gulf of Mexico. Before the close of the seventeenth century a con- tinuous chain of French posts and missionary establishments extended over a vast empire, — from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi. AUouez, Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle were the first European pioneers of the West, and, although mighty cities and States have grown up in the regions first trodden by those daring Catholic explorers, two of whom were Jesuit mis- sionaries, and the sceptre has passed to another 13 ^ INTRODUCTION race, their names are imperishably connected with the country as its discoverers. One of them was the first white man that ever reached the Father of the Lakes, another discovered the sources of the Mississippi, while still another completed the work by reaching its mouth, and, being shipwrecked on the shores of Texas, settled there and made Texas a French discovery and " a part of Louisiana." This is not the place to inquire into the causes of the overthrow of New France, or the triumph of the Pilgrim Fathers who came to Maryland on the Ark and the Dove. French colonization, al- though it ended in failure, furnishes the most splendid story of Christian heroism since the days of the Apostles. But the modest Jesuit mission in Maryland took root, and through tribulation and feeble beginnings became the germ of the American Catholic Church of to-day. George Calvert was as far in advance of his age as Shake- speare himself His Charter received not its full interpretation until the Declaration of Indepen- dence, nor the Toleration Act of 1649 ^^^ flower of maturity until the passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1785. The torch of faith, though quenched in the blood of Brebeuf, Jogues, Rasle, and other Jesuit martyrs in the North and West, was kept alive in the South by White, Copley, Altham, and their suc- cessors. Shall I say, certainly I am unable to 14 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN CHAPTER I THE JESUIT PIONEERS OF ENGLISH AMERICA THE cradle of Georgetown University was the Indian school taught by Father An- drew White, S.J., at St. Mary's City, Maryland, in 1634, several years before the found- ing of Harvard by the Puritans. This was the year of the landing of the Ark and the Dove at St. Mary's under Leonard Calvert, brother of Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore.* Father White, founder of a new spiritual empire in this country, out of which has grown the Catholic Church in the United States, planted the first seeds of the present flourishing institution at Georgetown when he translated into the Indian tongue a grammar, dictionary, and catechism for use among his neo- phytes of the Yaocomoco tribe of St. Mary's. He not only taught and converted Indians, but he * During the voyage out "two Catholics, Nicholas Fairfax and James Barefoot, died." — Relatio Itineris. 17 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN tells us in his " Relatio Itineris" that in addition to hundreds of the natives, nearly all the Protestants who had come out in the first expedition, as well as some settlers from Virginia who found their way across the Potomac to St. Mary's, were con- verted to the Catholic faith. The generally received opinion is that only two priests. White and Altham, accompanied the first Pilgrims to Maryland, but Archbishop Carroll, in his " Narrative of the Establishment of the Cath- olic Religion in Maryland and Pennsylvania,," mentions others ; and Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick, in his " Brief Account of the Settlement of Mary- land, with a Notice of St. Inigoes," speaks of sev- eral Fathers or Lay Brothers in addition to White and Altham. When these two accounts were written, certainly the former of them, the " Relatio Itineris" had not yet been discovered at Rome by Father McSherry. Father White's statement, that two Jesuits, himself and Father Altham, sailed on the Ark and the Dove, would settle the question of the exact number, if silence dictated by persecu- tion had not made it a rule of that age to keep the names of Catholic priests as much in the back- ground as possible. In a notice of Father White in the first volume of the " Woodstock Letters" it is stated that Ce- cilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, applied to Father Blount, first Jesuit Provincial of the Eng- iS COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lish Province, and to the General of the order 2^ Rome, Father Mutius Vitelleschi, for some mem- bers of the Society to go out in the first expedition in order " to attend the Catholic planters and set- tlers, and to convert the native Indians." That the number sent exceeded two is probable, as Kilty, in his " Landholder's Assistant," pp. 66-68, says that Thomas Copley, known on the mission as Father Philip Fisher, took up lands, claiming that Fathers White, Altham, and their companions had been sent over by him. In fine contempt of human glory tney obliterated themselves under aliases, and were mindful only of the work of the missions. In tracing them out with difBculty for his " Collections," Rev. Dr. George Oliver says, their " names are written in the book of Eternal Life ;" and Mr. Henry Foley with extraordinary industry gathered in his " Records of the English Province," especially in that part of it relating to Maryland, the many assumed and real names of the missionaries whose only concern was " the greater glory of God." His book is the recognized key by which the self-effacement of the early Maryland Jesuits may be partially deciphered for purposes of identifica- tion. A statue of Andrew White, the pioneer, whose catechism, dictionary, and grammar furnished the primal weapons of church and school in English 19 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN America, should rise at Georgetown College. He was the first founder. The title-deeds of the Uni- versity begin with him. From the hour of its inception the school was always under Jesuit auspices. It started at St. Mary's in 1 634 ; passed to Calverton Manor under Father Thomas Cop- ley, alias Philip Fisher, and Mr. Ralph Crouch in 1640 ; to Newtown Manor under Father Michael Forster and Brother Thomas Hothersall, alias Slater, an Approved Scholastic, about 1677 ; to Bohemia Manor, probably under Father Thomas Poulton, about 1 745 ; * to Georgetown Heights under the auspices of Father John Carroll in 1789. The hope of erecting the school into a college was en- tertained even from the beginning, when Fathers White and Poulton ascended the Potomac to Pis- cataway, and went from Kittamaquindi to the wig- wams of the Anacostans, a few miles farther up the river. The Anacostan tribe inhabited the region now known to the whole world as the District of Columbia. Father Ferdinand Poulton, alias Brock, in 1638 wrote to the Jesuit Provincial in England asking leave to establish a college in Maryland. The Provincial, Very Rev. Edward Knott, S.J., * United States Catholic Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 71. Some Early Catholic Grammar Schools, by Rev. William P. Treacy. Dr. J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 404. 20 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN answered this application in 1640, and said, " The hope of establishing a college which you hold forth, I embrace with pleasure ; and shall not delay my sanction to the plan, when it shall have reached maturity."* Father White is called the Apostle of Maryland. To this title should be added that oi pater familias of Georgetown University. His statue there would be truly a sermon in stone or bronze, combining the dignity of real history with the amenity of ideal landscape. Let it rise on the College campus in lofty proportions, fashioned by hands as nearly approaching the plastic skill of those of an Angelo or Canova as the age possesses. The first century of formative growth is past ; the second should bring the fine arts and Saturnian times at George- town. Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was the only other English Catholic in that age of in- tolerance with still more ample titles than Father White to the gratitude of posterity. An eminent statesman, fired with the ambition which usually accompanies talents of the first order, he overcame " that last infirmity of noble mind" by joining the Catholic Church when it was a sinking cause in England, under the ban of royal interdict, and * United States Catholic Magazine, vol. vii. p. 580. J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 56. 21 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN closing against himself the avenues to a court of which he was an acknowledged favorite. Planting a colony in America in the interest of Catholics, in spite of the well-meant opposition of the most influential adherents of the ancient faith in Eng- land, with the celebrated Father Robert Parsons, S.J., at their head, Lord Baltimore became the first of the law-givers of ancient or modern times to found an asylum of free conscience, where per- secution was punishable by statute and love of God was not measured by hatred of man who dif- fered in religion from his neighbor. The English Catholics had essayed two or three other attempts prior to that of Lord Baltimore to establish colonies in America. The first of these was that of Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerard, two Catholic knights, who proceeded with circumspection, for Elizabeth or Jezebel was queen. They obtained a royal patent June 1 1, 1578, in the name of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a Protestant friend, as it would have been perilous, if not beheadable, for any Catholic to apply directly. But conces- sions and restrictions so mingled in this Elizabethan grant that the two brave Catholic gentlemen, to whom Sir Humphrey had assigned substantial rights, boldly petitioned the queen's principal sec- retary. Sir Francis Walsingham, for better " lycens to travell into those counteris, their to remaine or returne back to Englande at their will and pleasure, 22 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN when and as often as nede shall require." No an- swer can be found of record, but Father Parsons afterwards said that the queen and council gave their consent with jeers and laughter, as an easy mode of getting Catholics out of the country. " The papists hope," said Tichbourne, the gov- ernment spy, " it will prove the best voyage for England that was made this forty years." The expedition of five vessels, after many draw- backs, at last set sail June 11,1 583, just five years after the patent was issued. Sir Humphrey Gilbert commanded, and two hundred and sixty persons embarked. Entering the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland, July 30, they took possession in the queen's name, and sailed thence for Norumbega, the proposed place of settlement, held generally to be the present State of Maine, although Professor Horsford, in a recent paper, claims that Massachu- setts was Norumbega. After passing Cape Race the principal vessel was lost. Sir Humphrey turned back dismayed ;' but shipwreck also overtook him, and the remnant of the expedition, after many hardships, reached England. A Spanish captain rescued some of those who clung to the masts of the first vessel lost, and brought them back to their native land. Peckham was the first Catholic among the Eng- lish who sought to plant a colony in America of whom we have any account. But his Catholic 23 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN fellow-countrymen no longer shared in his hopes. In 1605 Winslade, who had served in the Spanish Armada, strove to collect together the Catholic refugees who had fled out of England and were scattered at several points upon the continent of Europe. A second expedition of Catholics to America was projected by him. Father Parsons, perhaps the ablest writer among the English Jesu- its in the time of Elizabeth, opposed this project, and dissuaded many of his co-religionists who still remained in England frojn taking any active in- terest in Winslade's scheme. But during the same year two eminent Englishmen organized a further expedition to the New World, which, like that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, is generally believed to have been under Catholic auspices. These were Sir Thomas Lord Arundell, of Wardour, a Catholic, and his brother-in-law, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, a Protestant, and son of the patron of Shakespeare. Publicity was avoided owing to the prejudice against Catholics, but on the 5th of March, 1605, the ship Archangel, com- manded by Captain Weymouth, set sail on its voyage to the West. Among the intending planters was one whom historians mention as James Rosier, doubtless a Jesuit Father, who, to save his relatives from danger and Captain Weymouth from the penalties of the statute denounced against those who harbored 24 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN " popish priests," concealed his identity under an assumed name. He was employed to come out to America, as he himself informs us, " by the Right Honourable Thomas Arundell, Raron of War- dour," a true Catholic gentleman. After the Jesuit custom, Mr. Rosier wrote an account of the expe- dition, which he entitled " A True Relation of most Prosperous Voyage made this Present Yeere, 1 605, by Captain George Weymouth, in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia." This is the only account of the expedition now extant. It has the flavor of the missionary : " We supposing not a little present private profit, but a publique good and true zeale of promulgating God's holy Church, by planting Christianity, to be the sole intent of the Honour- able settersforth of this discovery." The Arch- angel reached the coast near Cape Cod in May, soon after touched at Monhegan, to which Captain Weymouth gave the name of St. George's, an- chored at Rooth Ray, which he styled Pentecost Harbor, and ascended the Kennebec River.* At this period Father Parsons issued a tract against such expeditions, entitled " Judgement about transferring Englishe Catholiques to the Northern part of America." He argued that the king and council would oppose the scheme, and without their approval Catholics could not sell * J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 26. 25 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN their estates and leave England. Thus, rich Cath- olics would imperil their property by going out of the kingdom, and poor ones could not go without the rich. He pointed out that Spain, Flanders, and other governments, jealous of English col- onizers, would obstruct such expeditions, and pressed his objections so ingeniously that Lord Arundell was discouraged, and relinquished the project which Captain Weymouth was carrying out so prosperously in his voyage to New Eng- land, then called, by Mr. Rosier, Virginia. But a third experiment, first the voyage to Ava- lon and next the expedition to Maryland, was en- tered upon a few years later by a man in whose vocabulary the word failure would seem not to have been found. This was Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore. " The charter of Mary- land," says William George Read, " the undoubted production of his pen, is the fair and lasting monu- ment of his wisdom and his virtues. His military exploit may be lost in the blinding blaze of Eng- land's martial glory; his sacrifices to conviction may be merged in those of her myriad martyrs ; but his charter shall endure on our statute book so long as the blue firmament of the American flag shall sparkle with the brilliant beams of the Maryland star." I think it is peculiarly fitting to place a likeness of this truly great man, who sent the Jesuits to Maryland, in a little volume relating 26 SIR GEORGE CALVERT First Lord Baltimore COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN to a college which those same Jesuits founded. The New York antiquarian bookseller, the late Mr. Joseph Sabin, procured this picture in London, and informed me that connoisseurs considered it a good one. I purchased it from him shortly before his death. When the Pilgrims of the Ark and the Dove reached the Potomac they came to anchor near an island which they named St. Clement's, prob- ably that now known as St. George's. The first mass was there celebrated on Lady-day, the 25th of March, 1634. Father White was filled with joy, and says in his " Relatio Itineris," " On the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the year 1634, we celebrated the first mass on that Island ; never before had it been offered in that region." In this opinion he was in error. Over a century earlier — that is to say, in 1526 — mass had been offered up repeatedly by Dominican Fathers at Guandape, on James River, Virginia, and again it had been often celebrated on the Rappahannock River, Virginia, by two Jesuit Fathers in the year 1570, sixty-four years before the mass was said on St. Clement's Island by Father White. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon was the first European to reach Virginia. He came out with a numerous colony in 1 526, under a patent obtained from the Emperor Charles V., en- tered the Capes and Chesapeake Bay, ascended the 27 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN James River, and planted his colony at a place where a village named Guandape was built, almost on the identical spot selected eighty-one years after- wards by Captain John Smith and the English ex- plorers sent out by the London Company in 1607 to plant their colony and build a town, to which they gave the historic name of Jamestown. Fathers Anthony de Montesinos and Anthony de Cervantes and Brother Peter de Astrada, all of the Order of Saint Dominic, accompanied Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon to Virginia. They became the first resi- dent priests, erected a chapel, and offered the holy sacrifice daily from the summer of 1526 to the spring of 1527, when a malignant fever broke out among the colonists, which carried off the com- mandant, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, and led to the abandonment of the colony. These Spaniards were the first Europeans who entered the primeval forests of the Old Dominion. The survivors set sail under Francis Gomez, the second in command, for Santo Domingo.* The Jesuits were the next to arrive in Virginia. On the 10th of September, 1570, just thirty-eight * The profound historian. Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in his learned history. The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, pp. 104-107, gives an elaborate array of authorities in relation to this the first colonization of Virginia. The chief historians cited by Shea are Navarrete, Father Cervantes, Fernandez, Melendez, Charlevoix, Touron, Valladares, and Helps. 28 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN years before the coming of Captain John Smith, several Jesuit missionaries settled on the banks of the Rappahannock River, where, for six months, they celebrated mass and preached the gospel to the Indians. These men were Fathers Segura, S.J., and Ouiros, S.J. (the former was Vice-Provin- cial of Florida), and the following Scholastics and Lay Brothers: Solis, Mendez, Redondo, Linares Gomez, and Zevallos. They built a chapel and a rude dwelling on the banks of the river, and labored zealously among the red men until the month of February, 157^' when their treacherous Indian guide led a hostile band of savages among them, and a general massacre followed, only one escaping, Alonzo, an Indian boy, a convert to Christianity, much attached to the missionaries. This youth was concealed by a friendly native, and later carried intelligence of the massacre to the Spaniards, An investigation laid bare the ghastly details. Father Quiros and Brothers Mendez and Solis were slain on the 14th of February, 1571, and Father Segura and the surviving Brothers on the 18th of the same month.* The first blood of white men shed in Virginia was that of these martyrs in the cause of religion, * Jesuit Missions in the United States, p. 16, by Father J. F. X. O'Conor, SJ. Dr. J. G. Shea's Catholic Church in Colonial Days, pp. 149, 150. 29 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN which gave to the " sacred soil" a higher claim to that title than the civic exploits, however noble, of its subsequent heroes. Southern historians and chroniclers may permit me, a native Virginian, loving the grand old State ardently, as every true son should love such a mother, to offer a hint that their strange omission to mention the Dominican mission on the James, and the Jesuit mission on the Rappahannock, leaves an historical hiatus, which should not be allowed to disfigure future narratives. It was only the other day that one of the most respectable Protestant historians, of Massachusetts, Mr. George C. Ellis, frankly admitted that the celebrated Puritan hero Captain Miles Standish, of Plymouth Rock, whose praises Longfellow has sung, may have been after all a good Roman Catholic. He used to go away quietly to Canada at regular intervals, Mr. Ellis informs us, in order, it is conjectured, to make his confession, and thus equip himself the better to govern the Puritans, after having been shriven by a French Jesuit."^ * The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of Massachu- setts Bay, by George C. Ellis, 1888. This recent work, re- markable for historical research, contains the following inter- esting statement respecting Miles Standish : ** Our historians have long recognized something unexplained in the relations between the famous, peppery-tempered — but for his prowess invaluable — military captain. Miles Standish, and the Pil- grims at Plymouth. He had followed their fortunes from his 30 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Magna est Veritas. Why conceal these things ^ If true, they are bound to be found out. But our most distinguished historical writers are not obnox- ious to my criticism of some Virginia chroniclers. Such men as Irving and Bancroft, and the Protes- tant Bishop Kip, of Albany, have not hesitated a moment to tell the truth about the early Jesuits. " Greater devotion to the cause than theirs," says Dr. Kip, " has never been seen since the Apostles' days." Warming to his subject, he thus expresses himself in the preface to his interesting work, " Early Jesuit Missions in North America" : " There is no page in our country's history more touching and romantic than that which records the labor and sufferings of the Jesuit missionaries. In these Western wilds they were the earliest pio- neers of civilization and faith. The wild hunter or the adventurous traveler who, penetrating the forests, came to new and strange tribes, often found that years before the disciples of Loyola had pre- service in the Low Countries, and was constant to and fully- trusted by them. But he was not under their church cove- nant, though not shocking them otherwise than by free speech. It has been suggested that the explanation may be that Standish, loyal to the faith of his ancestry and family, may have been an adherent of the old Church, being quietly reticent on the matter. He was always ready to go in his pinnace for truck- ing with the Indians at the Kennebec. Here on his visits he might easily have had the services of a priest for adjusting his conscience.'* P. 366. 31 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN ceded him in that wilderness. Traditions of the ' Black-robes' still lingered among the Indians. On some moss-grown tree they pointed out the traces of their work, and in wonder he deciphered, carved side by side on its trunk, the emblem of our salvation and the lilies of the Bourbons. Amid the snows of Hudson's Bay — among the woody islands and beautiful inlets of the St. Lawrence — by the council fires of the Hurons and the Algon- quins — at the sources of the Mississippi, where first of the white men their eyes looked upon the Falls of St. Anthony, and then traced down the course of the bounding river as it rushed onward to earn its title of ' Father of Waters' — on the vast prairies of Illinois and Missouri — among the blue hills which hem in the salubrious dwellings of the Cherokees — and in the thick canebrakes of Louisiana — everywhere were found the members of the ' Society of Jesus.' Marquette, Joliet, Bre- beuf, Jogues, Lalemant, Rasle, and Marest are the names which the West should ever hold in remem- brance." Not less emphatic is the testimony of United States Commissioner John Russell Bartlett, in his " Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, New Mexico," etc., published in 1854. "Long before the consecration of Plymouth Rock," says Mr. Bartlett, in speaking of the Jesuits, " the re- ligion of Christ had been made known to the In- COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN dians of New Mexico ; the Rocky Mountains were scaled, and the Gila and Colorado Rivers, which in our day are attracting so much interest as novel- ties, were passed again and again. The broad continent, too, to cross which, with all the ad- vantages we possess, requires a whole season, was traversed from ocean to ocean before Raleigh or Smith or the Pilgrim Fathers had touched our shores." Here are the words of that still more eminent writer, the Goldsmith of America : " All persons," says Washington Irving, in his " Knickerbocker," " who are in the least familiar with the early his- tory of the West, know with what pure and un- tiring zeal the Catholic missionaries pursued the work of conversion among the savages. Before a Virginian had crossed the Blue Ridge, and while Connecticut was still the extreme frontier of New England, more than one man whose youth had been passed among the warm valleys of Languedoc, had explored the wilds of Wisconsin, and caused the hymn of Catholic praise to rise from the prairies of Illinois. The Catholic priest went even before the soldier and the trader ; from lake to lake, from river to river, the Jesuits pressed on unresting, and, with a power which no other Christians have exhibited, won to their faith the warlike Miamis and the luxurious Illinois." Nor is the historian of the United States want- 3 33 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN ing in his tribute to the Jesuits. " Every tradi- tion," says Mr. Bancroft in the second volume of his history, " bears testimony to their worth. . . . The horrors of a Canadian life in the wilderness were resisted by an invincible passive courage, and a deep internal tranquillity. Away from the ameni- ties of life, away from the opportunities of vain glory, they became dead to the world, and possessed their souls in unalterable peace. The history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America ; not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." Such were the men who had come into Mary- land with Governor Calvert to open a school which has grown to be Georgetown University, and to lay the foundation of the Catholic Church in the United States. The one particular spot racy of the soil of ancient Catholic Maryland, part and parcel of it, carved out of its bosom, peopled in the whole blood by the sons of its Pilgrims, and bearing the likeness of the Land of the Sanctuary written in its face, is the shrine and the College at Georgetown. The See of Baltimore is something larger, some- thing different. The Father Carroll of 1 773 was a simple, ardent Jesuit, a true son of the Pilgrims, but the Father Carroll of 1 784, when he became, by decree of the Propaganda, Prefect Apostolic 34 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN of the Catholic Church in the United States, and much more of 1 790, when he became first Bishop, was no longer a Jesuit. A true son of the Pil- grims always, he had become like Washington in another sphere, who was first a Virginian, and next father of his country, the representative of others outside of the Maryland patrimony ; he had become spiritual father of the Catholic Church in the United States. His glowing dream of Georgetown, of which his early letters to Father Plowden contain an animated picture, underwent a change. He strove hard at first to make the dream fulfil itself, but its outlines es- caped him, and, as he stretched out his hand to grasp them, they vanished. Henceforward he left the shrine on the Potomac to the Jesuits, to whom it belonged, while ever holding it and them in most affectionate regard. He now directed his gaze to the Patapsco, where he planted a new seminary, and received from France providentially a holy Order of Men, the Sulpitians, cast out of native land by the infidel French revolution, who gladly came to Baltimore to lift up the hands of the zealous Carroll, and help him to establish another seat of theological and secular learning, St. Mary's College.* * Referring to Archbishop Carroll's relations to the College at Georgetown and the Seminary at Baltimore, Dr. John Gil- 35 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Later on Dubois, Whitfield, Purcell, McCaf- frey, and other holy and able men built up Mount St. Mary's College at Emmittsburg, Maryland, a third prolific nursery of bishops, priests, and lay- men. But Georgetown is the offspring of the Pilgrim Fathers of 1634. The Jesuits who came in the Ark and the Dove were the lineal ancestors in the ecclesiastical order of Neale, Molyneux, and McElroy, of Kohlmann, Grassi, and Dubuisson, of Ryder, Fenwick, and Fulton, of Healy and Doonan, and of Richards and Whitney^ as well as of that long line of Jesuits which stretches from the cradle-land of St. Inigoes, in the early part of the seventeenth century, to Georgetown Univer- sity, at the dawn of the twentieth century. Father Carroll founded the Academy on the Potomac in 1789, and Father Ashton, procurator of the temporalities of the Jesuits, advanced the money to pay the grantors of the land, John Threlkeld and William Deakins, Jr., and the bricklayers and carpenters who built the first house, which still stands in the statelier group soaring to-day above and around it. The reader may readily recognize it in the mary Shea remarks : ** His endeavor to effect a hearty har- mony in education and mission work did not succeed." — Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, p. 604. 36 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN picture I have reproduced at the beginning of this volume, which gives a southeastern view of the College buildings. While living with his mother on Rock Creek Father Carroll's attention was attracted by Alex- ander Doyle, architect of Trinity Church, to the noble hill just west of Georgetown, overlooking the Potomac, where it emerges from its narrow bed in rocky defiles and widens into a navigable river. After General Braddock left Alexandria on the fatal march to the West, he pitched the first encampment on the high ground where the Na- tional Observatory now stands, thereafter known as Camp Hill. It is said that the charming pros- pect which there unfolded itself to the eye of the young Washington decided his choice at a later day for the location of the seat of government. From the river an expansive plain spread out in the shape of a crescent. Majestic hills towered over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac, ex- tended around to the north in swelling elevation, and then curved westward into almost mountain heights, the last of which jutted out over the river, a noble promontory, where Georgetown College now stands, the whole vista forming almost a perfect semicircle. The peculiar configuration of the College heights afforded a natural drainage, sanitary breezes from every point of the compass, and protection from 37 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN the rigors of winter by the higher hills to the west, and the spreading champaign country similarly protected on the east. For over fifty years not a single death occurred among the students. I have spoken, or rather written, here of the Fathers who founded Georgetown College as Jesuits ; ex-Jesuits more properly I should have called them, for the Society of Jesus, on the 2 1 st of July, 1773, dies ir^, was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV., at the maleficent instigation of the Bourbon kings of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples, who had already expelled the Jesuits from their kingdoms, and sought in vain to secure their destruction at the hands of Pope Clement XIII. When the tomb by Canova was erected to the memory of that gentle and holy Pope, who had refused to be coerced into crushing the Jesuits by the enemies of the Church, the great sculptor de- signed two lions couchant on pedestals at the feet of the Holy Father, one sleeping, the other awake and watchful. " The sleeping lion," said he, when asked what they typified, " denotes the gentleness of Pope Clement XIII. ; the lion fully awake sym- bolizes his courage and firmness in refusing to sup- press the Jesuit Society assailed on all sides by deadly enemies." But the emissaries of the Bour- bons, Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour, of France, — though the infamous woman died before the suppression, — the vulture-like Florida Blanca, 38 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN of Spain, and the ever execrable Pombal, of Portu- gal, waited in stealth until the conclave was assem- bled to elect the successor of Clement XIIL They then swarmed to Rome, invaded the cloister of the Sacred College itself, and became a potent and malignant factor in the elevation of Clement XIV. It was an evil hour for the Church. For some time the fortitude of the new Pope was proof against their blandishments and intrigues. He answered their importunities by directing attention to the impressive public approval of the Jesuits by nineteen popes, the unanimous praises of their order, uttered without a dissenting voice by the whole thirty sovereign pontiffs who had reigned since their foundation, and to the solemn, august sanction of the Institute of Saint Ignatius by the Council of Trent itself. Oh, the inconsistency of man ! Overborne at last by the imperious Bour- bon kings and their impious tools, Clement XIV., without the Specification of a single offence, reluc- tantly signed the bull suppressing the Jesuits throughout the world, threw overboard the most precious portion of the cargo, as if that would save the imperilled ship, then took to his bed, the vic- tim of an inconsolable grief which baffled the doc- tors, and passed away at the end of fourteen months, literally done to death by the enemies of the Church. The control of the Sacred College once more be- came of paramount importance ; but, to the ever- 39 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lasting credit of the dying Pope be it said, he re- fused to make the Church the football of kings. May that brave speech, "We will not do it," meet him in heaven, and outweigh all the rest. " While at the point of death," says Artaud de Montor, " he was greatly urged to name eleven cardinals who in that year had been reserved in petto ; but he con- stantly replied, ' We cannot and we will not do it. The Lord will judge our reasons.' They knelt to him and repeated their request. He replied de- cisively and regardless of etiquette, ' I am on my way to eternity, and I know why.' " * Where are the Bourbons to-day ? Quite down and out, scattered to the four winds of heaven by another unscrupulous despot. Napoleon Bonaparte ; while Pius VIL, one of the worthiest occupants of the chair of Peter, restored the Jesuits to their lost rights, and on the 7th of August, 1814, put them again in the vanguard of the church militant. Many philippics against them and many eulogies of the Jesuits are found in history, but perhaps the noblest tribute that can be paid to them is to point to the fact that the bull of suppression, Dominus ac Redemptor noster^ was submitted to by them with- out a murmur, although it destroyed their mighty order at one fell blow, and not a word of censure, * Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. ii. p. 376, by De Montor. 40 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN much less of rebellion, did they ever utter against the hand that smote them. Match this self-denial v/ho can.* * Father de Ravignan's Apology for Clement XIII. and Clement XIV., the high-minded champion and the reluctant destroyer of the Society, is the best defence of the latter Pope which has been written, because it is unequivocally true. This noble work was not only written by a Jesuit, but the idea of writing it was inspired by the General of the Jesuits, Father Roothaan. In a letter to Father de Ravignan, suggest- ing that he should perform the magnanimous task. Father Roothaan said, *' * Poor Pope,' wrote St. Alphonsus Liguori, * che potevafaref What could he do?' This is a view to which I subscribe with all my heart, and it constitutes, as it seems to me, the pontic's true defence." — De Ponlevoy's Life of Father de Ravignan, p. 488. 41 CHAPTER II LEGAL STATUS OF MARYLAND JESUITS DURING DAYS OF THEIR SUPPRESSION IN Maryland the suppression led to a very com- plicated situation. There were no other priests in that colony but Jesuits. For nearly a cen- tury and a half they had labored in Maryland under the greatest difficulties. Plundered by Claiborne and Ingle^ some of them slain and the rest carried off into captivity, their order was reinforced by equally zealous successors, who, at the hands of Coode and the Puritans of the Cromwellite era, endured trials fully as cruel, but less destructive than the earlier persecution. The planters, whether Protestant or Catholic, had learned to love the Jesuits, and shielded them from their enemies. After the revolution of 1688, throughout the Jacobite wars, and particularly after the battle of CuUoden, although the Maryland Jesuits were anti-Jacobites, and Cardinal York, the brother of Charles Edward Stuart, was one of their active en- emies at Rome at the time of the suppression of their order, nevertheless King William, Queen Anne, and the three Georges proscribed and double- taxed them in Maryland as Jacobite sympathizers, 42 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN and hounded them down with causeless and inex- cusable harshness. During the old French war, preceding the American Revolution, the Maryland Jesuits continued to be the victims of fanatical op- pression. The laws of the Colonial Assembly at this time contain numerous anti-Jesuit enactments. But the sympathy of the people was on their side, and the Fathers labored on in secret among the gentry and the plain people with a constancy and devotion which has wrung praise and admiration from such respectable Protestant historians as Hawks, Davis, and McMahon. They had acquired a considerable landed estate during the earlier and better days of the colony, called by McMahon the golden age of Maryland, before the Toleration Act was torn to pieces by the new-comers attracted to the colony by the liberal policy of the Calverts. In his " Brief Ac- count" Bishop Fenwick relates the following inter- esting particulars : '' Rev. Thomas Copley, called Thomas Copley, Esq., profited by the conditions of plantation proposed by the Lord Proprietary. He had a number of servants transported to the province for which he demanded and obtained twenty-eight thousand five hundred acres of land, giving the greater part to others, and reserved only eight thousand acres for the Society and Church." * * Woodstock Letters, vol. ix. p. 171. 43 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN By donations and purchase from the Indians, and occasional legacies by pious Catholics, the Fathers afterwards added somewhat to their original landed possessions. Much was lost after Protes- tant ascendancy was established through confis- cation and the persecutions already mentioned. That any remnant of their property was saved to them in those dark days is due to the chivalrous sense of equity, not only of Catholics but of their Protestant neighbors, who when the spoiler was nigh took title from the Fathers by deeds of abso- lute conveyance, with a secret trust, not for record, as the title was in fee, but compliance with which was left to the grantee's sense of honor, and to that alone. A few rare instances of bad faith are re- lated, but to the credit of those noble Protestant and Catholic gentry be it said, these secret trusts were faithfully observed, and at the dawn of a bet- ter day discharged by a reconveyance of the lands thus magnanimously protected.* * I am indebted to Fathers George Fenwick, James Ryder, and Charles H. Stonestreet, dear, dear friends of my boyhood, whom I often conversed with in relation to the early Jesuit Fathers of Maryland, for much information about them not found in books, and which would be of priceless value if it had been reduced to authentic form. It is fast becoming legendary gossip. Father Fenwick especially was a prodigy of an antiquarian. 'Tis a pity that the folk-lore of the Poto- mac, the St. Mary's, and the Patuxent in the days of F. F. White, Altham, Copley, Poulton, Hunter, and Lewis, of 44 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Bishop England, with his accustomed eloquence, thus refers to these gleams of sunshine which re- lieve the gloom of an otherwise trackless night of rapacity and oppression : " Some of the Irish, and a few of the American Catholics," says the Bishop, " sought through the friendship and honor of their Protestant neighbors to preserve at the same time their property and their faith. They gave absolute titles of their lands, by a legal transfer, to their Protestant friends, who undertook privately, by a pledge of honor, which was all they could give, that whilst their ostensible ownership covered it from confiscation and rapine, they would administer it for the bene- fit of the Catholic family that confided in their friendship, and would reconvey it to the proper owners by sufficient titles when the law should permit Catholics to become proprietors. ... In America equally as in Ireland were the Catholics emaciated in numbers and in property by the oper- ation of this atrocious code. . . . And in Mary- land, as in Ireland, if we find evidence of Protes- tant cruelty and oppression, we also find many noble instances of Protestant generosity, of Protes- tant friendship, and of Protestant protection." * which he told me so much, should be buried in his grave. He wrote but little. * Bishop England's Works, vol. iii. pp. 234, 235. 45 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Having paid this just tribute to Maryland Protestants, it is obvious that Bishop England could not have been aware that much of the property which he refers to in the same paper from which I have quoted the preceding extract be- longed to the Jesuit Fathers, who confided it to the honor of those very Protestants so highly and so justly commended for their fidelity by the dis- tinguished Bishop. He could not have known, when he says the property " legally vested in the priests of Maryland," a corporate body, " insensi- bly passed into the possession of the Jesuits of Georgetown," that it could not have passed into the possession of anybody else without a violation of good faith on the part of those Maryland priests, all ex-Jesuits, in whom it was " legally vested," but who had plighted their word of honor so to pass it to its Jesuit owners at the earliest practicable moment. Having praised Protestant trustees for protecting the property of Catholics, Bishop England would not have withheld praise from the secular priests of Maryland for protecting the property of Jesuits, had the true state of the case been known to him when he penned the following observations : " There was another obstacle, arising from the poverty of the Catholics as a body and the almost total absence of any funds, save what could be obtained from their generosity ; the sole exception 46 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN was some property which had been originally des- tined for the missions that were served in early times by the Jesuits, and a portion of which had by a variety of contrivances been preserved, and which had at this period been legally vested in the priests of Maryland, who had been incorporated by the new government ; and which has since in- sensibly passed into the possession of the Jesuits of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, upon- the condition of paying something towards the sup- port of the archiepiscopal See of Baltimore. It was from this fund that the clergy then derived the principal means for their support." * Bishop England, of course, believed he was stating the facts correctly in the extract quoted, or it goes without saying that he would not have written it. But he was mistaken. Those who held title to the Jesuit estates. Catholic and Prot- estant confidential trustees, were confronted after the suppression with this difficulty, a most serious problem : there was no one to whom they could turn over those estates in good faith to their prin- cipal, the late Society. Bishop Challoner did not claim them after the brief of suppression ; under the penal laws of England, he could not do so without the risk of almost certain confiscation by the British government. But, as a matter of fact, * Bishop England's Works, vol. iii. p. 239. 47 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN he made no claim whatever to them, and restricted himself simply to asking and receiving written submission to the brief of Clement XIV. on the part of the Maryland Jesuits. Twenty-three Jesuit Fathers in Maryland and Pennsylvania had become secular priests, merely private individuals. These things happened at the dawn of the American Revolution, and thereafter the Articles of Confed- eration and the Constitution of the United States swept away English penal laws, and afforded ample protection to the person and property of every citizen. By the terms of the suppression the property of Jesuits, wherever situated, passed to the local ordinaries of the Church. I quote the language of the brief: " We take from it and abrogate each and all of its offices, ministries, administrations, houses, schools, and habitations, in all provinces, kingdoms, and states whatsoever, and under what- soever title to them belonging. . . . And we wholly transfer that same jurisdiction and authority to the local ordinaries, according to the form, the case, and the persons." * This brief of Pope Clement XIV., dated July 21, 1773, ^^^ expressly repealed by the brief of Pope Pius VII., dated August 7, 1814, restoring * Artaud de Montor's Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. ii. pp. 358, 359. 48 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN the Society of Jesus throughout the world. I quote the words of Pius VIL : " And we do now and from this time take under our own, and this Holy See's immediate patronage, protection, and obedience, all the colleges, houses, provinces, and members there united (of Jesuits), or which or who may thereafter be united or ag- gregated thereto. . . . Notwithstanding the apos- tolic constitutions and ordinances, and especially the aforesaid letters, in the form of a brief, of Clement XIV. of happy memory, beginning Dominus et Redemptor noster^ expedited under the seal of the Fisherman on the 2 1st day of July, 1773, which to give effect to these presents we hereby intend expressly and specially to repeal, and all others whatever to the contrary." * There was no local ordinary in Maryland, and Bishop Challoner would not and could not act. As the Jesuit Society could hold no property under the proscriptive penal laws of England (fortunate obstacle, similia similibus curantur)^ the Maryland estates of the Jesuits remained in the custody of individual priests and others as secret trustees. The learned Dr. Shea was of opinion, from devel- opments in other more recent cases, such as the Pious Fund of California and the Jesuit estates in * Artaud de Montor's Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. ii. p. 702. 4 49 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN the province of Quebec, that the view entertained at Rome was that the brief of 1773 vested the property of the Society in the Pope. " This," says that great Catholic historian, "though not expressed in the documents, will explain the action in the Maryland controversy."* Constitutional lawyers might show that this view is near the dangerous border-line which di- vides temporal from spiritual dominion in the United States. The opinion of Roger B. Taney in the Harold case, when President John Quincy Adams unwarrantably intruded in the spiritual affairs of the Holy See, an interference distinctly disclaimed by the Secretary of State, Henry Clay, when he wrote that it was conducted in his absence " by direction of the President," furnishes an ad- mirably lucid exposition of the true distinction be- tween temporal and spiritual power. " The power," said Mr. Taney, " exercised by the Pope in the Roman Catholic Church has no connection what- ever with that which he possesses as a temporal prince, but differs from it altogether in its charac- ter and the means by which it is enforced. And if he should be deprived of his temporal dominion, his jurisdiction in the Roman Catholic Church would remain unaltered in any respect. His au- * Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 71. 50 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN thority in the Church is merely spiritual, and obe- dience in spiritual matters to a spiritual superior is certainly no transfer of allegiance in temporal con- cerns; and it is impossible in the nature of things that obedience due from a Roman Catholic, whether layman or clergyman, to the authority of the Pope, in spiritual matters, can ever come in conflict with the duties of allegiance or the calls of patriotism. The spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope is a part of the Roman Catholic religion, and is necessary to the free exercise of that religion. And it is a part of the civil rights of those citizens of the United States who are members of the Roman Catholic Church that this spiritual jurisdiction should be freely exercised, and the government of the United States have no right to restrain it, nor to interfere with it. And such an interposition on the part of the government of the United States would be an unwarrantable invasion of the rights of the Roman Catholic citizens of this country, and a palpable violation of the principles of the Constitution (Signed) " R. B. Taney. "Baltimore, November 23, 1829."^ Mr. Gaston, in his opinion in the same case, de- fines the limits of papal authority, and points out clearly, but with not quite the unequivocal bold- * Bishop England's Works, vol. v. p. 231. SI COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN ness and vigor of Mr. Taney, that its operations are confined to the conscience of the citizen, which in the United States is free and untrammelled. " The Bishop of Rome," says Mr. Gaston (the first student at Georgetown), " is the acknowledged head of the Roman Catholic Church, and as such must have a jurisdiction of some sort over it. Juris- diction implies obedience. . . . He who omits no duty and violates no command, which fidelity to his country demands, has fulfilled all the obligations of allegiance. The obedience rendered to the orders of the spiritual superior has no connection with or reference to the temporal authority of that supe- rior, and would be precisely the same whether such superior were the inmate of a prison or the pos- sessor of a throne. The conscience of him who obeys, and his conscience only, regulates his obe- dience, and of that conscience his country allows him the undisputed dominion. " The right of the citizen cannot be infringed by a requisition which he may disobey if his con- science will permit, and the authority of his gov- ernment is not concerned in a matter purely of religious obligation. That cannot be deemed a sentence which depends for its execution on the en- lightened will of the individual to whom it is di- rected ; the aid of the government is not needed to protect him against admonitions addressed to his conscience ; and those intrusted with temporal 52 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN power here have no right to interpose to prevent his receiving or to induce him to disregard them." (Signed) " William Gaston. "Raleigh, November 26, 1829." After they had recovered somewhat from the first shock of the blow which fell upon them like an electric bolt, the Maryland Jesuits faced the new situation with that cheerful courage which always and everywhere has distinguished the disci- ples of Loyola. As everybody wished to act hon- estly, the complication was unravelled in this way : Forming themselves into a voluntary association of secular clergy, with Father John Lewis at their head, as he had been the Superior of their late Society, they continued to defer to him as Vicar- Apostolic of the London District, a title incident to his former office. At a Chapter of this Body of the Clergy held at Whitemarsh on October 11, 1 784, they re- adopted a resolution which they had passed at a previous meeting or Chapter, held at the same place on November 6, 1783, to the following effect : That they would " to the best of their power promote and effect an absolute and entire restora- tion to the Society of Jesus (if it should please 53 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Almighty God to re-establish it in this country) of all the property belonging to it." * This was the way in which that property " has since insensibly passed,' if I may repeat Bishop England's words, " into the possession of the Jesuits of Georgetown." The Maryland statute of mortmain, and the common law doctrine in regard to the lands of religious bodies, rendered it necessary for the vol- untary association of the clergy to become a body corporate. They accordingly procured the passage of an act by the Maryland Legislature, December 23, 1792, entitled " An Act for securing certain estates and property for the support and uses of the Ministers of the Roman Catholic religion." By this statute a body politic and corporate was created, to which all persons holding the old Jesuit estates were authorized to convey them for the better carrying out of the original trusts. This was done by the individual holders of the farms. The new body adopted a name, as it was empow- ered to do, and it was thereafter known as " The Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen." All seemed clear sailing at last, but no, one thing had been overlooked. At a General Chapter of the Clergy, held at Whitemarsh, November 1 3, * Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, by B. U. Camp- bell, p. 373. 54 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN 1786, authority to erect a school at Georgetown had been granted, and shortly after Fathers Car- roll, Molyneux, and Ashton were appointed special trustees to purchase and take title as grantees of the land on which the Academy was to be built. They so acted, as appears from the subjoined en- dorsement of the clerk of the court, which the indefatigable Father J. Havens Richards, S. J., late President ot Georgetown, caused to be copied for me, I had almost said photographed, such is that Father's rare executive precision, from the back of the old deed which is still preserved at the College : ** Deakins & Threlkeld u. TO . ^ Carroll Molyneux & Ashton j ^ rec^ this 11*'' of April 1789 to be re- corded. And same day recorded in Liber D. folio 196 And 197 One of the Land records for Montgomery County And Examined pr B Beall Clk" The Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergy- men procured the passage of another act, January 20, 1798, so careful were the old ex- Jesuits in guarding the corpus of the estates of the late So- ciety, authorizing and empowering Messrs. Carroll, Molyneux, and Ashton to convey to the said Cor- poration the lands, buildings, and appurtenances 55 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN known as Georgetown College. This was accord- ingly done. The same statute, the last concerning the College enacted by the Maryland Legislature, as Georgetown soon after passed under the juris- diction of Congress, authorized the Corporation to receive donations for the Academy or College suffi- cient to maintain and educate thirty scholars, pro- vided that the annual usufruct of such donations should not exceed four thousand dollars. Now began complications which, like Jaundice against Jaundice, seemed to be interminable. Pope Pius VL, June 9, 1 784, as we have seen, appointed Father Carroll Superior of the Missions in the thirteen United States of North America, with the faculty to administer the sacrament of confirmation as Vicar- Apostolic. " The Form of Government" in nineteen articles was adopted by the Chapter held at Whitemarsh, on the 1 ith of October, 1784, together with " Rules for the particular government of members belonging to the Body of the Clergy, binding on all persons at present composing the Body of Clergy in Maryland and Pennsylvania." The clergy safeguarded the temporalities, which on the same day they resolved to return to the Jesuit Society, if restored, by retaining them in the mean time in their own exclusive custody. I quote the language of the article : " XIX. The person invested with spiritual juris- diction in the country shall not in that quality 56 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN have any power over or in the temporal property of the Clergy." The Vicar-ApostoHc, Father Carroll, was present and perfectly acquiesced in this article. On the 6th of November, 1 789, Pope Pius VL appointed John Carroll Bishop and Pastor of the Church of Baltimore, and clothed him with the commission to institute a body of clergy deputed to divine worship, to establish an episcopal semi- nary in Baltimore or elsewhere, and to administer ecclesiastical incomes. Up to this time the body of the clergy was composed exclusively of ex- Jesuits. Now the See of Baltimore began to at- tract to it other priests both secular and regular. They came in considerable numbers, utterly un- acquainted, as they necessarily were, with the course of events prior to the erection of the see, and as books were scarce, they had no ready means of acquainting themselves with the struggles of the mission in colonial times and, after the suppression of the Society, to preserve the farms of the hunted Jesuits. The proceedings of the various Chapters at Whitemarsh were as a sealed book to the new- comers. These in their very nature were confi- dential proceedings, and even down to the present age they have been and still are very imperfectly understood. It was not surprising, therefore, that the priests then arriving from Europe accepted the situation 57 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN as they found it. The temporahtles they deemed to be vested by law in the Corporation of Roman Cathohc Clergymen by an absolute title ; the Jesuits had been suppressed and were not restored, and the Holy Father had clothed the Bishop of Baltimore with authority to administer ecclesiasti- cal incomes. They naturally believed that the estates in Maryland were the property of the Bishop and corporation of secular clergy, and not of the Jesuits, whose order had long been extinguished by a brief of the Holy See. So, at least, thought Archbishop Marechal, and so, perhaps, thought his friend. Bishop England, who came to this coun- try at a later day. During the last decade of the eighteenth and the first few years of this century the title to those farms of Fathers White, Copley, Hunter, and their fellow-martyrs and apostles of the Jesuit Society during the golden age of Mary- land, provoked much controversy, a little vexation, and some acrimony. Three eminent lawyers were finally retained by the sensible Archbishop Whit- field (how much disedification would have been avoided had it been done sooner !) to straighten out the legal tangle in business affairs and matters of purely worldly concern, complications which are incident alike to saints and to sinners. The law- yers thus wisely consulted were Roger B. Taney, then Attorney-General of Maryland and later Chief Justice of the United States ; John Scott, a Balti- 58 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN more jurist, father of Judge T. Parkin Scott ; and William George Read, of Baltimore, orator of the Philodemic Society in 1842, at the first celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims. Bishop Carroll, who had followed the progress of the efforts to save the Jesuit farms from the beginning, and knew more about the equities in- volved than any other man in America, at length, on the 21st of June, 1805, quietly, without much noise, revived the ancient Society in this country, with the co-operation of Father Gruber in far-off Russia, where, protected by the Empress Catherine, as also happened in the dominions of Frederick the Great, the Jesuits never had been affected by the suppression. On that day Bishop Carroll appointed Father Molyneux Superior of the Society of Jesus in the United States, with the powers of a Provincial. " The Society of Jesus," says Dr. John Gilmary Shea, " in Maryland and Pennsylvania then re- entered into possession of the property which had been preserved. It was, however, agreed between Bishop Carroll and Father Molyneux that 'the annuity allotted to the Bishop from the estates of the Society or Corporation shall continue per- petual and inalienable, and an authentic instrument of writing to that effect shall be executed.' " * * Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, pp. 525, 526. 59 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Guarded from Protestant spoliation by honor- able Protestants, and from Catholic alienation by the Corporation of Catholic Clergymen and their unselfish Bishop, the patrimony of the Jesuits was restored to them, and the future of Georgetown College assured. Father Ambrose Marechal, the learned and pious Sulpitian priest, teacher of the first class of phi- losophy at Georgetown, and third Archbishop of Baltimore, stoutly maintained the opinion that the old Jesuit farms belonged to his Archdiocese, and not to the restored order. He was a thorough Frenchman, zealous, holy, and impulsive. Father William Matthews, President of Georgetown when ex-President George Washington paid his memo- rable visit to the College, was a Charles County cavalier of character equally positive as the pro- nonce Marechal, and, holding to the Jesuit side of the controversy, he opposed to the Gallic impetu- osity of his former professor of philosophy an up and down Harry Hotspur spirit which once led to an amusing war of words between them over the crops in the ground at Whitemarsh, and on another occasion sent him in hot haste to the State Depart- ment to ask John Ouincy Adams not to allow the holy prelate to take him by surprise. The climax was finally reached when the former professor, now become Archbishop, went to Rome and laid claim in 1822 not only to the crops, but 60 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN to the plantation of Whitemarsh itself. If, like his prudent successor, he had turned over these things to the lawyers. Archbishop Marechal would have avoided snags, or as Shakespeare phrases it, those " nice, sharp quillets of the law," with which the authorities at Rome ought not to have been pestered and embarrassed. It was a pure question for lex loci adjudication. Title to land in Maryland must be settled in the courts of Maryland; to them alone belongs original jurisdiction in every such controversy. The Archbishop petitioned the Pope to take away Whitemarsh from the Jesuits, and transfer it to the See of Baltimore. As Arch- bishop Marechal and Father Charles Neale, Su- perior of the Jesuits, were both citizens of Mary- land, they should have fought out their battle as plaintiff and defendant in an action of ejectment in the Circuit Court of Prince George's County, Maryland, in which county the plantation is situ- ated. If not satisfied with the judgment there, the losing party would have the right of appeal to the Court of Appeals at Annapolis, where the con- test could be brought to an affirmance or reversal of the judgment of the court below, and if the remittitur was in favor of the Archbishop, all that remained to do would be to enter up final judg- ment in the Court of Prince George's, and send the sheriff to eject Father Neale, provided he proved recalcitrant. The Holy Father could not 6i COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN be expected to be learned in the law of real prop- erty in Maryland, but with all that native benignity and mildness which Sir Thomas Lawrence has im- mortalized on canvas, he entertained the petition of Archbishop Marechal, and that excellent prelate — nullus clericus nisi causidicus — pleaded his own case, in spite of the wise rule against the choice of such a lawyer, and bungled it sadly. 62 CHAPTER III PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF EARLY DISPUTES THE COL- LEGE FIRMLY ESTABLISHED HIS Grace's first plea was that the Brief erect- ing the See of Baltimore vested in Bishop Carroll all the estates of the old Maryland Jesuits. Per contra^ in a note addressed to the trustees of those estates, dated May 26, 1790, Bishop Carroll had distinctly renounced any such claim by virtue of that Brief. The Brief com- missioned the Bishop " to administer ecclesiastical incomes." Not another word occurs in it upon the subject of property or revenues. Archbishop Marechal next cited the act of December 23, 1 792, by which the Maryland Legislature created the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen. He held that this act granted the entirety of the said estates to the Bishop and secular clergy. This ex- traordinary assumption was a misconception both of the scope of the act and the power of the Leg- islature. It was an enabling act which permitted one set of trustees to convey the Jesuit estates to another set of trustees for the uses already in ex- istence. It would have been ultra vires for the Legislature to go further. No new beneficiaries 63 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN were created by the act of the Legislature. All the members of the corporation were former Jesuits, who had already declared their purpose to return the property in their hands to the Jesuit Society, if restored. The third plea of his Grace was a reference to a certain formal instrument dated September 20, 1805, by the terms of which the Superior of the Jesuits, Father Molyneux, covenanted to pay to Right Rev. John Carroll the perpetual yearly sum of one thousand dollars. I am not aware that his Grace further informed the Holy See that this al- leged annuity to Dr. Carroll was in favor of one entitled as a former faithful Jesuit to some interest, support in old age, and other benefits out of the Jesuit property, by the terms of one of the articles of agreement entered into by the Body of Clergy at Whitemarsh. Neither did the pleadings, as far as I know, disclose the fact that such annuity was promised in consideration of the transfer to the Jesuits of all their old estates, among which Whitemarsh was included. But in addition to these equities of the case, a sufficient objection in law was interposed by Father Neale, who an- swered that the Jesuit Society had no legal status in 1805, as the Pope did not restore it until 1814; its revival by Father Carroll in 1805 was limited; that the act of Father Molyneux in that year was the act of an individual, and as such it was not of 64 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN binding effect in law upon the Society at a later date. Finally, his Grace set up an adverse possession or right to Deer Creek and Whitemarsh in the Catholic Church, but as the only Catholic Church in Maryland was that of the Jesuits during colo- nial days, and as the Chapters of the Body of Clergy since that period recognized the right of the Jesuits to recover all the estates, including Whitemarsh, formerly held by them in Maryland, this adverse claim of the Catholic Church was too vague to be traced, jurisdiction must have its limits somewhere, and too indefinite, coram non judice^ to be considered in any forum. The Pope referred the claim to a commission of three Cardinals, Castiglione, Fesch, and della Genga, to hear and report. The members of this commission were as little acquainted with the pro- ceedings of the Chapters of the Body of the Clergy at Whitemarsh as was the good Arch- bishop himself; no Maryland Jesuit having been cited before the commission ad testificandum or to produce books, documents, or records duces tecum ; they accordingly reported ex parte in favor of the Archbishop of Baltimore. Pursuant to the recom- mendations of this report the Holy Father, on July 23, 1822, directed Father Aloysius Fortis, the General of the Society, and through him the Maryland Jesuits, to turn over Whitemarsh, or two 5 65 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN thousand acres thereof free of mortgage incum- brances, to the Archbishop of Baltimore. By an alternative clause of this decree, if the substitution of another plantation for Whitemarsh could be shown to produce less hardship, the Jesuits were allowed to make representations. In relation to the other property of the Jesuits title was quieted, and their undisputed possession confirmed. When the Brief covering these conclusions of the dispute was communicated to Father Charles Neale, the Jesuit Superior in Maryland, he prepared a protest, in which he pointed out the surreptitious nature of the proceedings, the ex parte character of the testimony adduced before the commission, and the jurisdictional defect of surprise and non-service of notice on the Jesuits, who were not allowed to present their case before the commission. Father Neale answered the most reverend prelate's pleas by denying that the Maryland statute created any new beneficiaries, by citing Bishop Carroll's renun- ciation under the Brief which created the See of Baltimore, and by showing the want of legal status in Father Molyneux to bind his brethren. The Archbishop replied to this protest at great length, waxed warm, and wanted the Holy See to resort to drastic measures, expel members from the Society who refused to yield, and to deprive them of the right to leave Maryland without his consent. The General of the Society declined to sign the 66 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN transfer awarded, and the matter dragged on for a year or two. But in the interests of peace Father Fortis directed the Maryland Fathers to pay to the Most Rev. Dr. Marechal one thousand dollars ^^r annum, as formerly was allowed to the ex-Jesuit Archbishops Carroll and Neale. This mode of settlement was disallowed by the Propaganda, and an order was issued by it, dated July 26, 1824, directing the surrender of Whitemarsh within six months to Archbishop Marechal. The old Charles County cavalier. Father William Matthews, duo fulmina belli^ at this juncture brought the matter to the attention of the President of the United States, James Monroe. In a letter to Henry Clay, Secre- tary of State, written October 10, 1828, about four years after the close of the controversy. Father Matthews used the following language : " When Mr. Adams was Secretary of State, and the case of the Archbishop of Baltimore and the Jesuits was agitated, I was expressly informed that, whatever was written to Rome by one party through the State Department, a copy of it would be furnished to the other party." * An old Jesuit, one of the greatest historical scholars I ever knew, once informed me that President Monroe, in a most respectful way, sug- gested to the Holy See, through an American * Works of Bishop England, vol. v. p. 221. 67 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN minister residing at a leading European court, that by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States no American citizen can be de- prived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Mr. Monroe acted on this occa- sion with great delicacy, for he was not only one of the most tolerant men that ever lived, but he was very friendly to Catholics, and gave repeated proofs of his personal regard for them. When Father John Dubois was driven from France by the hor- rors of the French revolution, he came a stranger to Virginia, where Catholics in the early day re- ceived but scant courtesy. Not so with James Monroe. He welcomed Rev. Mr. Dubois to Richmond, opened his doors to receive him, and gave him a home under his own hospitable roof.* Not having a church in which to say mass, the future founder of Mount Saint Mary's College, and the third Bishop of New York, was permitted by the State authorities of Virginia, through the kind interposition of Mr. Monroe, to have the use of one of the rooms in the State Capitol in which to celebrate the holy offices of his faith .f '^ A Brief Sketch of the History of the Catholic Church on the Island of New York, by Rev. J. R. Bayley, p. 83. f Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, by Richard H. Clarke, LL.D., vol. i. p. 418. 68 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN When ambassador to France, Mr. Monroe placed his daughter at school in a convent in that country. Thomas Jefferson also, while ambassa- dor to the same court, sent his daughter to a French convent. Both young ladies applied to their fathers for permission to embrace the Catho- lic faith, and to enter the religious state. Mr. Jef- ferson, without showing opposition to her wishes, consummate tactician that he was, quietly with- drew his daughter from the convent school, and contrived to throw her into the fascinating gaieties of the French capital. The whirl of a brilliant court sufficed to change her thoughts from spiritual to worldly affairs, and we hear no more of her leanings to Catholicity. Mr. Monroe, on the con- trary, assumed not the dread responsibility of in- terfering in so delicate a matter. Miss Monroe, with her father's entire approval, became a Catho- lic, and died a holy, edifying religieuse in France.* May not her prayers, as the late James A. Mc- Master observed, have influenced the conver- sion of her nephew, the brilliant Colonel James Monroe, who died in the service of his coun- try at Harper's Ferry, and of his pious brother Frank, who died a Jesuit priest in the city of New York? ^ Catholic Mirror, July 29, 1882. Randall's Life of Jef- ferson, vol. i. p. 538. 69 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN After Mr. Monroe's delicate and friendly sug- gestion in relation to the Whitemarsh farm was received in Rome, the Holy Father, as " arbitrator" ' (Bishop England uses this designation), promptly recognized its inestimable value as an aid to his own sound judgment in reaching a proper solution of the controversy. The matter was soon accom- modated, and the risk of infringing on American law — a purpose which the Holy See had never in the remotest degree entertained — was very happily avoided. Pius VIL advised those in charge of the business at Rome that the offer of Father General Fortis to pay Archbishop Marechal from the 1st day of November, 1826, annually during his natural life eight hundred Roman crowns ought to be ac- cepted, and Cardinal Somaglia notified the Most Reverend Archbishop of Baltimore that the Pope and the Sacred Congregation were of opinion and recommended that this adjustment and offer ought not to be refused by his Grace.* Thus ended a very vexatious dispute, by the exercise of the good sense and good feeling of all the parties involved in it. I have made a diligent search for the letters which may have passed between Rome and Wash- ington during the pendency of the controversy. * Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 71. 70 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN and incline to the opinion that no documents on the subject are among the files of the State Depart- ment. Bishop England once made the same in- vestigation that I have since made. Mr. Daniel Brent, a confidential clerk there at the time that John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State, during James Monroe's two administrations, told the dis- tinguished Bishop of Charleston, whose words I quote, as follows : " Mr. Brent said that Mr. Har- old was under a mistake regarding the interference of that department in the differences between the Archbishop and the Jesuits : and that there were no documents upon that subject in the department." * For some length of time I surmised that Mr. Brent employed diplomatic reserve in this statement, but I have come to think differently. I once made careful search through Mr. Adams's voluminous " Memoirs and Diary," in twelve large octavo vol- umes, but could not find a word on this subject. I am now of opinion that John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War in James Monroe's cabinet, and not John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, first brought the subject to the President's notice. My reasons are these : an opinion prevailed, which I think was erroneous, that Mr. Adams had prejudices against Catholics. " Bitter and violent denunciations of the Catholic Church," says Dr. John Gilmary Shea, * Works of Bishop England, vol. v. p. 228. 71 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN " its clergy and laity, pullulated in almost every- thing written by Mr. Adams." * It is only justice to Mr. Adams to say, whatever may have been his utterances which led to such an opinion, that his conduct to the Jesuits, when he was minister to Russia, was most civil and obliging ; and his treatment of Father McElroy, when that pious Father visited him in the State Department to obtain passports for the six young scholastics who went from the College to Rome in 1820, — Mulledy, McSherry, Smith, Pise, Ryder, and Fen- wick, — was courteous and decidedly friendly. Father McElroy, in his diary for 1820, says, — " June 2. — ^ Waited with the above young men on the Secretary of State to obtain passports; were received with great kindness by Mr. Adams, who offered to write introductory letters to the different consuls ; and Daniel Brent, his chief clerk, wrote also to the consul at Gibraltar." I have heard old Jesuits say that Mr. Calhoun, who lived in Georgetown at that period, in an elegant mansion on the Heights, often inter- changed neighborly courtesies with them, and seemed to take much pleasure in his visits to the College. He would go there to talk science with Father Levins, the distinguished mathematician, to ^ Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 104. 72 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN whom he offered a professorship at West Point ; and to discuss philosophy with Father Dziero- zinski, a famous disciple of the Angelic Doctor and Aristotle. Father Curley once related anec- dotes to that most excellent man, Father John S. Sumner, peace to his ashes, and to myself of these visits of Mr. Calhoun, and of his fondness for talk- ing metaphysics with the learned Russian Father of the jaw-breaking name. It seems to me more probable that the Jesuits should have sought to reach the President through one so near to him and so friendly to them as Mr. Calhoun, rather than through Mr. Adams, who, while treating Jesuits with great respect, was not on terms of social intimacy with them. Adams had great pugnacity in his make-up, while Calhoun was renowned for his urbanity. For these reasons I think the Whitemarsh controversy was brought to the President's notice by the South Carolina statesman. Mr. Brent's denial that there were any papers on the subject in the State Department negatively strengthens my opinion. Archbishop Marechal always felt a sincere in- terest in the College. In a letter to the Propa- ganda, written about this period, he said, " There exists at Georgetown a magnificent College which is directed by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. It is greatly to be regretted that it is burthened with debt. But as the Society has recently recov- 73 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN ered all its estates and other • property, which was held by the Jesuits before the destruction of the Society, it will undoubtedly soon be very well en- dowed. There is no part of the Catholic world in which the Society of Jesus can exist more se- curely, labor more widely, and produce richer fruit."* The distinguished professor of the first class of philosophy taught at Georgetown still had a warm place in his heart for the old institution. Congress raised the College to the rank of a University in 1815, and President Madison signed the bill on March 1 of that year. It was, however, a clumsy act, and conceded authority merely to confer degrees, leaving the College as it was before, an association of private individuals organized in Maryland during the last century under the gen- eral power applicable to schools. Mr. Gaston pre- sented the petition, evidently not written by him, as he was too good a lawyer to have omitted from the prayer those clauses necessary to create the College a body politic and corporate with a seal. The application was barely for leave to confer degrees, a permissive prayer. The bill brought in by the Committee on the District of Columbia was laconically responsive to the petition, granting what was asked for and no more. This defect was * Shea's History of Georgetown College, p. 54. 74 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN cured by a further bill introduced in the Senate by Hon. Jacob W. Miller, of New Jersey, Chairman of the Standing Committee on the District of Columbia, on January 22, 1844, by which body it was passed on February 28. Senator William D. Merrick, of Maryland, brother-in-law of Father William Matthews, was a member of this Com- mittee, and probably the manager and advocate of the bill. He was the father of three noted alumni of the College, William M., Richard T., and George C. Merrick. I once spent an afternoon with the venerable Senator at Gadsby's Hotel in Washing- ton, a famous hostelry there in old times. I was struck with the likeness between the father and his eldest son, the late Judge William Matthews Mer- rick. The judge was taller, however, than his father. George C. Merrick, my close friend and schoolmate when we were little boys at George- town in the early fifties, was the youngest son of the Senator. I called on him with George from the College on the occasion mentioned, when he told me that his father had just arrived from his country-seat, and the son invited me to join him in the visit. Mr. Merrick had then retired from the Senate, and was a very old gentleman. George is the only survivor of this distinguished family, and, coming by talents naturally, is an able judge in Prince George's County, Maryland. After passing the Senate the bill incorporating the Col- 75 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lege was sent to the House for concurrence. On May 14, Hon. John Campbell, of South Carolina, moved to take up the bill, and the motion prevailed. It was read through by the Clerk of the House, and after some remarks by Hon. Charles Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, whether in favor of or in opposition to the measure the Globe does not disclose, it was laid aside. Mrs. Sarah Mynton Maury, in her volume called " The Statesmen of America in 1846," observes that Mr. Ingersoll knew and admired many Catholic prelates, and when in Washington dined occasionally with the Jesuits at Georgetown College. The inference is that his remarks on this occasion were favorable. The bill finally passed the House on May 25, and was signed by President Tyler on June 10, 1844. The act created the President and Directors of Georgetown College, who were James Ryder, Thomas Lilly, Samuel Barber, James Curley, and Anthony Rey, into a body politic and corporate with a common seal, with perpetual succession in law and in equity, to receive and to hold, for the use of the College, estates real, personal, and mixed, and to grant, sell, and convey the same for the use of the said College, and by the same name to sue and be sued, with the usual rights, privileges, and duties pertaining to similar incorporated bodies. The annual net income of an eleemosynary char- 76 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN acter, which the Maryland Legislature originally allowed the College to receive in donations in any one year, was increased from four thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars, over and above and ex- clusive of educational receipts. Going back a few years, I also find that the Church added its recognition to that of American law-makers. Pope Gregory XVL, on the 30th of March, 1833, by a gracious decree granted to the College at Georgetown the power and right to confer degrees in philosophy and theology, which formerly enured to all Jesuit colleges by the Briefs of Julius in. in 1552 and Pius IV. in 1561. Georgetown College then enjoyed the distinction of being the only college in the United States thus publicly recognized by the Holy See. Its doctor- ate is highly prized among theologians and divinity students. John Carroll, founder of the College, was the son of Daniel Carroll, the Marlborough Irish mer- chant, whose father, Charles, held high stations in Ireland under James II. and in Maryland under Lord Baltimore ; and of Eleanor, daughter of Henry Darnall, a distinguished name among the early Pil- grims, whose seat of Woodyard was the Brundu- sium of the old Catholic cavaliers of Maryland. Woodyard was the safe refuge of proscribed Jesuits when such saints as Father George Hunter 77 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lived in the land, and people told of angel visitants to his abode.* The blood of Celt and Pilgrim, of faith and piety, flowed in the veins of the future first Arch- bishop. The parents of Eleanor Darnall, of Wood- yard, Maryland, like those of Margaret Sharpe, of * Father Stonestreet, in The Messenger of the Sacred Heart (xxii. p. 609), relates the story handed down, of the two young men who vanished from sight after guiding Father Hunter into Virginia and back again to his home in Maryland. " The Virginia side," says Dr. Shea, in his Life of Archbishop Car- roll (p. 87), "was one of great danger. It is said that Father Frambach, from Frederick, visited it only by night, and slept beside his horse, ready to mount and put him to his full speed at the slightest warning ; and that more than once the bullets of the pursuers whistled around the head of the devoted priest, for whose blood men were thirsting in their hatred of the Church of the Living God. By the firesides of Catholic Maryland was long told how the great Father George Hunter, whose reputation for sanctity was general and enduring, was once summoned at night by two young men, who guided him to the Potomac, ferried him over by quick and noiseless strokes of the oars, then galloped with him to the cottage on horses ready for them. After the dying Catholic had been prepared by all the blessed means the Church aiFords for the terrible hour, his mysterious guides conducted the good priest down the Virginia roads, across the Potomac, to his own door, and there in the bright moonlight vanished utterly from sight. No such youths were known among the Catholics on either side of the river. That good Father Hunter believed them to have been angels sent to guide him to a soul whose prayers had reached the throne of God has ever since been the tradi- tion in Maryland." 78 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Cumberland, England, sent her to a French convent in quest of education denied to her in her native land, for in Catholic France could be obtained the training described by Saint Basil, where the torch was first trimmed at the altar before it lighted the way among the spoils of Egypt. The mother forms the child. Like Gaston, the son of Margaret Sharpe, Carroll, the son of Eleanor Darnall, showed his gentle blood in courtly manners and aristocratic tastes. At Wardour Castle, among lords and gentlemen of high degree, and beneath the roof-tree of Washington, the noblest Roman of them all, he breathed an atmosphere in which he was perfectly at home. But at Bohemia Manor, Saint-Omer, Liege, Whitemarsh, and in the archi- episcopal palace of Baltimore, he had learned and practised the precepts taught in the Institute of Saint Ignatius, the lessons of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He was a Jesuit of the Jesuits. Rising, like Antaeus, from the more than Herculean stroke of suppression which laid his order in the dust, he became the twofold founder of the American Church and of its first American College. When the day was far spent and his course nearly run, glad tidings of great joy under the seal of the Fisherman reached him, the voice of Peter speaking through the lips of Pius VII. : " We hereby expressly and specially repeal the brief of Clement XIV., of happy memory, beginning Dominus et Redemptor nosterT 79 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Archbishop Carroll felt himself again a Jesuit, blessing God, whose mercy is forever and ever, ready to lay down the mitre, and once more put on the black gown of his dear order. He had wished to follow the example of the Bishop of Verona and resign the burden of his great ofBce. " Can I promote the honor of God more," said he, "by relinquishing than by retaining it'?" Thus he wrote to Father Marmaduke Stone ten years before, when the Society of Jesus was slowly re- viving. In the same letter he added these words, touching the controversy which I have already referred to in the preceding pages : " Into whose hands," said Bishop Carroll, " could the Diocese be committed, who would not perhaps thwart the establishment of the Society, and oppose the re- investment in it of the property formerly possessed and still so providentially retained^ These con- siderations have hitherto withheld my coadjutor and myself from coming to a resolution of return- ing to the Society." * The order was restored on the 7th of August, 1814. Willingly, even then, would he have re- signed his See and gone to Georgetown, which he had founded, seeking readmission as a simple Jesuit. But it was too late. Born January 8, 1 735, he would be eighty years old in five months * Shea's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, p. 521. 80 ARCHBISHOP JOHN CARROLL Founder of Georgetown College COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN from the date of the restoration. He would not be a burden even in the house of Loyola. It was not long before the end came. Attended by Father Grassi, a holy Jesuit of Georgetown College, to whom among his latest utterances he expressed his exceeding joy that his See was under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and by which Father he was tenderly pre- pared for a happy death, John Carroll, the first Archbishop of Baltimore, honored of men and a favorite of heaven, departed this life at six o'clock in the morning, the Angelus hour, on Sunday, the 3d of December, 1815. Archbishop Leonard Neale, the coadjutor who had wished to return to the Society with the vener- ated Carroll, succeeded him in the See of Baltimore. He supplemented his predecessor's transfer to the Jesuits of their farms in 1805 by a formal assign- ment to the Order, now fully restored and rehabili- tated throughout the world, of all their ancestral estates in Maryland, — a sacred inheritance trans- mitted from apostles and martyrs, and providen- tially rescued from Protestant confiscation on the one hand, and the mailed hand of Bourbon robbers on the other. The agreement by which was carried out this most equitable redemption was executed on the 3d of April, 1816, by an instrument in writing to which the parties were Leonard Neale, Archbishop 6 Si COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN of Baltimore, for himself and on behalf of the Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen of Maryland, parties of the first part, and John An- thony Grassi, S. J., Superior of the Maryland Mis- sion and President of Georgetown College, for the Society of Jesus, party of the second part.* In his " History of the College," referring to the years preceding the date of this agreement, Dr. Shea says (p. 43), " The College, in its an- nouncements at this time, was said to be under the direction of ' The Incorporated Catholic Clergy- men of Maryland.' " With his characteristic close scrutiny of important facts, the learned doctor had no further occasion, after 1816, to note that de- scriptive phrase. Thenceforward it was a Jesuit College, of which Andrew White was pioneer, John Carroll was founder, and Leonard Neale the final restorer. * Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1808-15 to 1843, p. 31. 82 CHAPTER IV REMINISCENCES OF THE ERA OF DR. RYDER, THE PRIDE OF THE MARYLAND PROVINCE 1 BEG AN my life among the Jesuits, and sup- pose I will continue among them or near to them to the end. A saint of the Order baptized me in infancy, a blessing for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. This was Father Dubuisson, who had seen life in the wars of Napoleon near to the person of the emperor, but he became admon- ished by the imprisonment of Pius VII. that the military staff of the Little Corsican was no place for a good Catholic. He accordingly threw up his commission, and, having still a taste for fighting, joined the advance guard of the Church militant, the followers of St. Ignatius. Well authenticated miracles took place at his and Prince Hohenlohe's joint intercession, the details of which are related by Bishop England. When I was a little boy not yet in my teens, my father having gone to California with the Argo- nauts, my mother, on the 1 2th of March, 1851, took me up to Georgetown College and entered me a full-fledged student. Whew ! how important it 83 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN all seemed ! In the absence of Father Ryder, the President, Father Lynch, the Vice-President, re- ceived me ; but when I said good-by to my mother, and saw her carriage roll away out of the big gate, I sat down on the porch of the North Building utterly frightened and desolate, and shed the first bitter tears of my life. There were several people walking about in strange black gowns and three- cornered little caps, each wearing a girdle of beads around the waist with a big medal pendant. One of them came over to console me, and soon an- other joined us. The first was Father Ardia, who had the most heavenly eyes I ever saw ; the other was Father Curley, who told me he was well ac- quainted with my grandfather and great-grand- father, the latter then long since dead, and made me dry my eyes and forget my sorrow by talking about everybody at home like one of the family. Presently Father Lynch returned with Davy Hub- bard, a collegian, and Brother Billy Smith, the dor- mitorian. The latter took away my trunk, and Davy Hubbard, a student from Alabama, became my constant companion for the next three days, inducting me into the mysteries of college life. Davy and I went immediately around the Walks, where we met another student, Jimmie Randall, author in after-years of the famous war song " Mary- land, my Maryland," performing the same agreeable duties of socius for another new-comer. 84 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN My first teacher was Mr. Shyne, a layman, who presided over second and third rudiments. Having just been promoted from the nursery, I entered third rudiments, a class not usually included in the College course ; but Father Ryder had come back recently from Mexico with two or three tots in his train from the land of the Monte zu mas, and this a b c class for them and me was started under Mr. Shyne. I recall the name of only one of those little boys, — Isidore Sota, from Orizaba, Mexico, with whom I became a fast friend. He went home with me to Alexandria for the Easter holidays, and, if still in the land of the living, he may remember how he cried and carried on when the day arrived for our return to College and the irksome tasks of short division and the spelling-book. I was soon promoted to second rudiments, and after vacations in '51 I came back and entered first rudiments, then taught by that formidable man, Mr. James McGuigan, S.J. Thomas E. Waggaman, a well- known citizen and art collector of Washington, was a classmate of mine at this time. Mr. Mc- Guigan believed implicitly in Solomon's injunction, " He that spareth the rod hateth his son." Once he took me out of class and gave me a sound whipping with the cat-o'-nine-tails. How it stung, and how mad I got I It was very cold weather, and the canal was frozen from Georgetown to Alexandria. I strapped on my skates, and it was 85 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN not long before I reached home, a veritable run- away from College bounds and discipline. Ex- pulsion, thought I, was an inevitable certainty ; and so indeed it would have been had not Father Stonestreet been President, a former pastor of St. Mary's Church at Alexandria, who, on account of my extreme juvenility and his warm personal attachment to the old folks at home, imposed a proper penance on the contumacious rebel, and re- admitted me to the College. Father Charles H. Stonestreet, an apostolic son of the Pilgrims, was a preux chevalier in every fibre. But that whipping did the business for me. Talk about it as we may, I am thoroughly persuaded that Mr. McGuigan's cats made a new man of me. From that day on- ward I became the closest student in a class of thirty or forty boys, and took the silver medal at the next commencement. Mr. McGuigan once rescued Father James Clark from a sharp assault by a prominent gentle- man of Georgetown, whose little son the Father had punished for some infraction of College rules. Father Clark had been a West Pointer, a dashing officer in the Florida war, and was perhaps as in- capable of fear as any man alive, but when attacked with a cane by the Georgetown man, the old Adam flashed .in his eye and face, and for one moment it looked like as pretty a fight as one could desire ; when lo ! the Jesuit got the better of the grim 86 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN soldier, and Father Clark calmly folded his arms and gave the assailant full scope for his splenetic rage. But Mr. McGuigan happened to be present, and, not yet having taken religious vows which would bind him over to keep the peace under all circumstances, pitched in, snatched the attacking party's cane from him, and shook the irate gentle- man into his senses, of which be had seemed pre- viously to be bereft. Father Clark was a profound mathematician, and author of a Differential Calcu- lus. He taught First Mathematics when I was a member of that class. For him I had a deep affection. Jefferson Davis had been a classmate of his at West Point, and they were very cordial friends. When Secretary of War and United States Senator from Mississippi, the future Confed- erate President used to visit his old West Point crony at the College. Father Clark was a Penn- sylvanian and a stanch Union man. " How do you like Fort Sumter ?" once asked the celebrated Father John Boyce of the Jesuit at a dinner-party at the house of the author of" Shandy McGuire," pointing to a mound of jelly or ice-cream which the confectioner had fashioned into the shape of a fort. " I would like it better with the United States flag over it," replied Father Clark. I went with him in i860 to Harrisburg, where a young man was on trial for killing a nephew of Father Clark, whom he attacked without warning, 87 —<■ COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN through jealousy, a young lady's preference for the matrimonial attentions of young Mr. Robinson, the name of the victim, being the innocent cause of the cowardly and fatal assault. Poor Charles Robinson had been a student at Georgetown, where I became well acquainted with him. His uncle and myself were called as witnesses to his general good charac- ter, which was excellent. Murder in the second de- gree was the unexpected verdict, brought about by the skill of pettifogging lawyers, rather than justice and a due execution of the laws, for the crime seemed to be a wilful murder, and the victim was a good citizen, respected and loved for sterling qualities and upright life. When Father Clark in after-years became Presi- dent of Holy Cross College, at Worcester, Massa- chusetts, he appointed me professor of Latin and Greek and English literature in that institution, where I spent two or three years pleasantly and profitably with my old Georgetown professor. He was a convert to the Catholic Church, and a truly holy man. He was a good executive officer, and was President of Gonzaga College at Washington after he left Holy Cross. Father Clark died at Georgetown College, September 9, 1885. During the first century of its existence the College has had the services of many noted men of science among its professors. Perhaps the most distinguished of these were Fathers Wallace, Levins, ss COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Secchi, and Curley, although there have been and are others of scarcely less repute. Father John G. Hagen, the present Director of the Observatory, is in the front rank of scientific scholars, not only in this country but in Europe ; and Father John T. Hedrick, his accomplished assistant, is also a scholar of note. In the early part of the century there were em- ployed in the New York Literary Institution, an offshoot of Georgetown, situated on the site of the present magnificent St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue, two young teachers of singular moral and intellectual merits. One of these young men, Thomas Kelly, was very saintly; the other, James Wallace, was a decided mathematician. They attended St. Peter's Church in Barclay Street, where a young widow, Mrs. Seton, also worshipped. She was the daughter of a distinguished physician of New York, Dr. Richard Bay ley , whose family has given two famous converts to the Catholic Church, Mother Seton and James Roosevelt Bayley, eighth Archbishop of Baltimore. Dr. Richard Bayley rendered invaluable public service during the prev- alence of yellow fever, and afterwards of ship fever, in New York, from the latter of which he died. His daughter had married a young New York gentleman, William Seton, a descendant of the Lords Seton, of Scotland, a family represented in the present age by the Earl of Winton, but his 89 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN early death had left her a widow with five httle children to battle with the world alone. She be- came a Catholic, turned her back on the world of fashion, of which she had been a bright, beautiful ornament, and before the altar of St. Peter's heaped up riches for herself in heaven. The two young tutors formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Seton, and a kindred feeling to relieve the wants and miseries of the poor made them excel- lent friends. To impart the blessings of Catholic education, not only to the wealthy classes, such as attended their instructions in the Literary Institu- tion, but to the poor, the struggling, the many, who most needed their aid, this was the gen- erous wish of Thomas Kelly and James Wallace. To provide for destitute orphans, and stretch out a helping hand to the many girls she saw growing up in ignorance of their Christian duties, was the noble desire of Mrs. Seton, the Madame Le Gras of America. The three holy souls often spoke to each other of their purposes and aims, and some- times met for charitable conferences in the tower of St. Peter's Church, like St. Vincent de Paul and Madame Le Gras at the College of Bons Enfans in Paris. It was finally agreed among them that the two young men, as soon as their engagements in New York permitted, should go to Georgetown and apply for admission among the Jesuits, and that Mrs. Seton should go to Baltimore and apply 90 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN to Archbishop Carroll for regular employment among orphan girls in works of charity and educa- tion. The Archbishop and Father Dubourg, of St. Mary's College, a former President of Georgetown, extended to Mrs. Seton a cordial welcome, and after she had been for some time in Baltimore, she went to Emmittsburg to develop her charitable scheme, bearing from the Archbishop and the President of St. Mary's College strong letters of approval and recommendation to Father John Dubois, Presi- dent of Mount St. Mary's College at Emmitts- burg. Thus was established in the beautiful Val- ley of St. Joseph, nestling among the mountains, the Order of Sisters of Charity in the United States. The name of Mother Seton, the saintly foundress, is enshrined in the hearts of the whole American people, regardless of religious differences. On battle-field, in the fever-laden atmosphere of hos- pitals, in pest-house, the Sisters of Charity have become the white-winged angels of the human race ; mothers of the motherless, in schools, acad- emies, orphan asylums, magdalens, they labor un- ceasingly in the very spirit of their founder, that most beautiful character in the bead-roll of modern apostles. Saint Vincent de Paul. The two young levites were received in the Jesuit Order, and distinguished themselves, the one, Wallace, for extraordinary scientific attainments ; the other, Kelly, for Aloysian sanctity, but the 91 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN span of his life, like that of the patron saint of youth, was soon cut short by death. " Some days before his death," says Father John McElroy in his " Recollections," " he told Mr. Wallace he would die on the feast of the Assumption. Mr. Wallace thinking him somewhat delirious, turned his head and smiled. Mr. Kelly repeated he would find his words verified, and asked to be shaved. He con- tinued perfectly sensible till the last moment. I was at his bedside, with the exception of a few moments, until his decease. He begged to be left alone to pray, in which he occupied himself with most fervent ejaculations, particularly to Jesus and Mary. His death, indeed, was that of the just. May my last end be like unto his ! He died on the very day foretold by him."* Father Grivel, a distinguished Jesuit and a very holy man, had a similar premonition, I was once informed, of the very day of his death. " Brother Wallace, a scholastic of the Society," writes Father Kohlmann, " is our master of mathe- matics, one of the ablest in the United States." An anecdote is related of his mathematical knowl- edge in an article on Gonzaga College in the "Woodstock Letters." M. Pageat, the French Ambassador to the United States, was dining one day at Washington with Father Matthews, and * The Woodstock Letters, vol xix. pp. 1 8 and 19. 92 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN produced a mathematical problem over which European savants had been puzzling their brains, and offering prizes for its solution. Father Mat- thews proposed to have it solved in two hours by Father Wallace of Georgetown College. A mes- senger was despatched forthwith to the College, and returned before the dinner was over with the prob- lem cleared up. " It had taken Father Wallace," he said, " but fifteen minutes to solve it." A fine collection of scientific works, some of which are still in the College Observatory, was shortly after- wards presented to Father Wallace by the French Academy, — a graceful recognition of his talents. Another mathematician of rare ability was Father Levins, D.D., who was professor at George- town in the twenties. His diary contains an inter- esting account of the visit of Lafayette to the College in 1824, and of the " squabble" over ban- ners between the students of the two Colleges, Columbia and Georgetown, at the gates of the Capitol, on the occasion of the grand parade in honor of the French patriot. His skill as a civil engineer was displayed when he was living at New York in the great works of the Croton Aqueduct. The plans for that marvel of its day, the High Bridge over Harlem River, were drawn by Dr. Levins. When that most brilliant of all our Sec- retaries of War, John C. Calhoun, was building up the Military Academy at West Point, he ten- 93 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN dered the professorship of engineering or mathe- matics in that institution to Dr. Levins. This was about the time of his retirement from the Society in 1824 or 1825. He did not accept Mr. Cal- houn's offer, but became pastor of the Cathedral under Bishop Dubois at New York. Dr. Levins had a Drogheda temper of his own, which some- times got him into hot water. Despite this in- firmity, which led to his suspension by the spirited little French Bishop of New York, he was a good man and a true Catholic, and his faculties were re- stored to him when Bishop Hughes became coad- jutor. Dr. Levins was editor of the Green Banner^ one of the best of the early Catholic papers of the city of New York. But the great scientific scholar among the Georgetown professors, as subsequently Father Camillus Mazzella, S.J., was the great theologian, was that master of physical problems, Father Angelo Secchi, S.J. His fame is world-wide ; his rank is with Newton, Laplace, and Herschel. The student of science will find in Volume XXXII of the " Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical So- ciety" Father Secchi's beautiful delineation of the lunar crater " Copernicus," so named after the astronomer of Cracow, which presents a true idea of the formation of the surface of the moon. Galileo was the first astronomer to gain with his telescope a rude idea of the real nature of the 94 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lunar surface, and he traced in it a striking resem- blance to the geography of our own globe. Milton adopted the suggestion of Galileo that the brighter and rougher portions of the moon might be con- tinents, and the dark smooth portions oceans, when he depicts the Tuscan artist viewing the moon's orb through his optic glass, " To descry new lands. Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe." But the improvements in the power of the tele- scope dashed these fine poetical visions, and Father Secchi with the polariscope discovered that the sun's rays passed through no liquid at the moon's surface ; lunar atmosphere he sought in vain ; sup- posed volcanoes in the moon he traced to bright spots illuminated by light from the earth. The fancies of Galileo and Milton faded away under the searching eye of Secchi, and the moon's true surface is now better known. Father Secchi wrote from Rome in 1877 an in- teresting paper on the physical constitution of the sun for Professor Simon Newcomb's " Astronomy," which is published in full in that work, with a finely drawn illustration. Fig. 71, of " Secchi's Theory of Solar Spots." This celebrated astrono- mer came to Georgetown a year or two before I entered the College, and resided there a little less than twelve months. In speaking of him, Father 95 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Curley said to a friend, " Father Secchi looked very much like Daniel Webster." While he was at the College he taught a class of physics, and constructed an electrical battery which was exhib- ited at the commencement in 1849, ^^^ held up sixteen hundred pounds. The magnet I believe is still at the College. The " Smithsonian Con- tributions to Knowledge" for 1852 contains Father Secchi's " Researches in Electrical Rhe- ometry," a treatise which attracted no slight attention. The name of Curley is one of the household words of Georgetown College. Mezzofanti's knowledge of languages was not more precocious than Father Curley's knowledge of faces and names. For over fifty years he taught at the Col- lege, and I myself have witnessed his recognition of old students whom he had not seen for twenty or thirty years, as occasion again brought them to the College. One student in 1832, Mr. Michael Delany, visited the College after almost a half-cen- tury of absence, an old man with gray hair. He was a little boy Avhen he left, and he relates in a letter to the College Journal in 1894 that the good old priest recognized him at once, notwithstanding the changes which fifty years had made in his per- son. Father Curley taught Natural Philosophy when I was in that class. Can any old student who graduated at Georgetown during his half-cen- 96 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN tury of teaching say that Father Curley was not ! | also his professor, or failed to know him whenever he visited the College '? Dear old man, simple, holy, learned, I can see him still, as he goes forward with his peculiar long stride, now to the Convent to say mass for the nuns ; now to the greenhouse to tend his beloved flowers ; or climbing the hill over by the vineyard on his way to the Observatory. I will never for- get his appearance one night as he was descending the stairs from his bedroom in the North Building. He carried a candle in his hand, which pierced the surrounding gloom, and gave him a weird look. The Philodemic meetings were held in the Philos- ophy Room next door to the Library, directly under Father Curley's chamber. It was getting on towards war times, and everybody was in a bel- ligerent mood. Our debate that night was particu- larly stormy. Jack Gardiner's stentorian tones had penetrated up-stairs to Father Fulton's room next door to Father Curley's, and a characteristic mes- sage already had been sent down from Father Ful- ton : " Ask Mr. Gardiner please not to swear so loud in his flights of eloquence." The climax was finally reached, and a scene followed not unlike some of those then frequently occurring in Con- gress, — a free fight. Bill Hodges, of Mississippi, who sat next to me, sprang at the Vice-President of the Society, James Owen Martin, of Louisiana, 7 97 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Jack Gardiner, of Maryland, rushed at me. Bob Brown, of Mississippi, at Warfield Semmes, of Georgetown, and Henry Foote, of Mississippi, was rushing Joe Orme, of Washington, eloquently along the floor. Jim Dooley, of Virginia, Gus Wilson, of Maryland, Jim Hoban and Pres. Sands, of Washington, Alphonse Rost, " Sonny" Buard, Paul and Placide Bossier, Bob Lovelace, and Lassaline Briant, of Louisiana, James L. O'Byrne, of Georgia, and many other Philo- demics, were mixed up in the melee in inextrica- ble confusion, when somebody suddenly put out the lights and left us in total, ludicrous darkness. A lull in the storm ensued. It was at this mo- ment, the door having been opened, that we be- held Father Curley in skull-cap descending the stairs right in front of us, shading his eyes with one hand, and holding a candle above his head in the other, as he peered in dubiously to the quarters of the contending hosts. He looked like a spectre in the darkness, but it was a good spectre after all, for the apparition exorcised the spirit of war and ended the fracas. Father Early, the Presi- dent of the College, sternly prohibited future meetings of the Philodemic Society for the rest of the year. All appeals of the budding orators to be allowed to continue our debates were denied, all promises of amendment futile. The genial smile of the rector was gone. " I am determined 98 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN to put a stop to such disgraceful scenes," retorted Father Early ; and the fatherly eyes for once snapped with fire, and the quivering lips, where so much good nature usually hovered, carried the menace home to ievery one of us that expulsion awaited those who should again get into such a chance medley. Claudite fores I and as we walked out, bang went the door upon a wiser if not a happier set of extinguished orators. Father Curley, the learned astronomer, was the first director of the Observatory, which the gener- osity of Father Stonestreet had enabled him to complete. He discovered the true meridian of Washington when the reckonings of others were all astray. " His first work," says Dr. Shea, in his " History of the College," " was to determine ex- actly the true meridian ; the Jesuit astronomer found that his calculation did not coincide with that of the Government Observatory at Washing- ton. There was a natural reluctance to admit an error in their calculations, but when the laying of the first Atlantic cable, in 1858, enabled Ameri- can astronomers to revise their observations with greater accuracy, the calculations of the George- town professor were sustained, and his meridian was recognized as correct." Father Curley, who was born October 25, 1 796, lived to his ninety-third year. Shortly after his death, which occurred July 24, 1889, some reminis- 99 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN cences of him were communicated to the College Journal by my father, the late Professor Hugh C. McLaughlin, of Rock Hill College, Maryland, who had known him since 1831. " My last interview with the venerable Jesuit," he says, " took place on the 25th of June of the present year, the day of the annual commence- ment of Georgetown College. In company with my son and grandson, I was conducted to Father Curley's chamber in the Infirmary by Rev. Father Richards, S.J., President of the College. The meeting was a touching one. Memories of long ago were revived, names of departed ones who had figured in college life over fifty years before were recalled. The Georgetown of the Dzierosinskys, Dubuissons, Mulledys, Fenwicks, and Ryders again rose before our vision, and wonderful it was to me to hear the aged priest, almost a centenarian, as he peopled the place with its ancient giants, and dwelt upon some characteristic incident in the life of each one of them with a recollection that was indeed extraordinary and surprising. Pointing to my son, whom he had taught, and to my grand- son, Father Curley said, ' Here are three genera- tions of your family present, but I was well ac- quainted with two more generations before you, — Mr. Edmund Sheehy, your wife's father, and Mr. Edward McLaughlin, her grandfather, — and visited them at their homes in Alexandria before you 100 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN were married.' As clear as the mind was, I saw that the enfeebled frame was almost at its journey's end, and so did not prolong my visit. ' Bless the three generations that yet survive, venerable father,' I said, as I took his hand for the last time ; and as we all knelt down in front of the arm-chair in which he sat, the holy priest raised his arm over us, and, resting his hand successively on our heads, invoked the blessing of God with affectionate fervor upon myself, my son, and my grandson." I remember the first time I ever saw Father Ryder, " the pride of the Maryland Province," as he was justly called, and the impression he made on me continues to this day. It was a year or two before I went to the College, and although I was a little child, I distinctly recollect his arrival one day at my father's house in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in company with Father Peter O'Flan- agan, S.J., the beloved pastor of Trinity Church, Georgetown. Father Ryder's ability as a preacher made him a favorite everywhere throughout the Union, and his services were constantly sought after in the pulpit or on the platform, and even before Con- gress, where his discourse upon the late Repre- sentative Bossier, in presence of the great officers of government, the diplomatic corps, and a large throng of people, won plaudits from such men as Clay, Preston, and Calhoun. Indeed, he was re- lOI COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN garded as a second Bishop England on account of the splendor of his eloquence, his depth of theo- logical learning and general scholarship. Over- flowing crowds, as formerly in the case of the Bishop of Charleston, or at a later day in that of Father Tom Burke, gathered to hear Father Ryder. He was born in Dublin in the year 1800, and had the rich diction, voice, and intonation peculiar to educated men of that city, where the English lan- guage is spoken, as scholars remark, with greater purity than in any other place in the British Empire. His father was a Protestant, who died while his son was a child. His mother, who was a Catholic, came to America and placed James at Georgetown College as a student. This entry occurs in Father McElroy's diary: "1813. Jan. 29. This day Rev'd F*^ Malone arrived at the College, accom- pany'd by Masters Doyle and Ryder ; these two make our number of boarders 45." He soon ap- plied for admission to the Jesuit Order, and went to Whitemarsh to make his noviceship. In 1820 he was sent to Rome to complete his studies in company with several other bright young men, — Pise, Fenwick, MuUedy, McSherry, and Smith, — nearly all of whom became men of mark in after years. Upon finishing his course. Father Ryder was appointed Professor of Theology and Sacred Scriptures at the University of Spoleto, in Italy, the Archbishop of that See then being Cardinal Ferrati, 1 02 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN afterwards better known to the world as Pope Pius IX., a true hero of Christianity as ever lived. Between the Cardinal and Dr. Ryder acquaintance ripened into the warmest affection ; two such men could hardly be together without attracting each other, and the friendship continued throughout their lives. The visit to Upper Marlboro was in conse- quence of an unexpected attack upon Dr. Ryder by the late James A. McMaster, editor of the New York Freeman's Journal^ and shortly afterwards a spirited reply under a nom de plume, but written by my father, appeared in the Boston Pilot. The controversy, as is usual in such cases, waxed warm, and Mr. McMaster got it into his head that Dr. Ryder was the writer in the Pilot, and so declared. The disputants wielded vigorous pens, and charges and denials, rejoinders and surrejoinders attracted wide attention, and finally got into the New York Herald, in which paper the authorship of the letters was avowed by my father over his own name. Mr. McMaster was a convert, and an excellent man, but an extremist. He had criticised the theol- ogy of one of Dr. Ryder's sermons, and hence the controversy. The elder James Gordon Bennett, himself I have heard educated for the Church, ridiculed the notions of Mr. McMaster as hyper- critical and untenable, and invented the nickname of " Abbe McMaster" for him, which stuck to the 103 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Catholic editor for life. Profoundly versed in the schools of St. Thomas, of Bellarmin, of Petavius, and of Suarez, Dr. Ryder, who had as little of merely human ambition as any man I have ever known, felt no concern over a passing criticism of his tenets, but as president of the leading Catholic College in the country his friends considered it im- portant that he should not be placed in a wrong light before the public. He was temporarily absent, I repeat, from the College when my mother took me there to become a student, but soon returned, having been away on a missionary journey to Charleston and Savannah. I had been getting up previously with the other boys about five o'clock in the morning, but in view of my diminutive size Dr. Ryder sent for me one day, and, after some playful remarks upon that unconscionable hour, allowed me to sleep two hours longer in company with the other little shavers, of whom there were seven or eight at the College, — the Macedos, Sota, and others. I en- joyed the privilege greatly, for tumbling out of bed before daylight and hurrying down-stairs to the wash-room in the basement, thence across the yard in the nipping March air to the study-room and chapel in the south row, was not precisely a joyous pastime to a certain little boy of my pro- clivities. The students went in ranks to the chapel, refectory, and dormitory, and when the 104 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN line was formed all talking was strictly for- bidden. One night, going up to the dormitory, I broke this rule, as I was good deal of a chatterbox. Mr. Gentinetta, the prefect, espied me, and when I got to the top of the stairs and turned into the upper dormitory, a sharp grip of the culprit's ear turned my whisper into a screech, " Ouch I that hurts," for which double offence of first whispering and then yelling out loud I was incontinently turned out of the dormitory, and sent about my business. Down-stairs near the front door I went, and took a seat in the passage on the bench between the parlor and museum. Along about nine o'clock I heard the President's door open at the head of the first flight of stairs, and down the steps came Dr. Ryder himself on his way to the community chapel in the old building. I began to get frightened now. " What are you doing here, my child*?" said he. I told the whole story. " It is against the rules to talk in ranks, and you must not do it any more. Come with me." This very paternally. Up the stairs we walked, side by side, in perfect silence, one, two, three, four flights, to the very top of the North Building. Mr. Gen- tinetta was near the door as we went in. The President beckoned to him, and as he approached, said rather frigidly, in a low tone, "Allow this little boy to go to his bed," and departed without 105 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN another word. I hastened to bed greatly re- lieved. Some of our most celebrated orators have left no written speeches worthy of their fame. Wil- liam Pinkney, the greatest lawyer of his age, who was described by John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Roger B. Taney as eloquent in a transcendent degree, has afforded to us no means of judging of his powers from his literary remains. The same want is felt in the case of Dr. Ryder. He was an artist in the use of language in the sense that Tennyson and Ruskin are artists, fitting the thought in a vesture so suitable that it seemed a part of it. I heard him once describe Judas by the single word " rascal," and picture with the delicacy of Meissonier the whole Grecian and Roman civilizations by one adjective for each of those mighty races : " the proud Greek and splendid Roman." If you attempted to give his thoughts in any other language the charm was gone. Welded by the Ryder genius, the delicate tracery, the cunning joinery must remain as the artist con- structed them or they vanished. Yet I was told by an old Jesuit that Ryder toiled, and moiled, and shed the brine of labor over his books for long years, wrote and copied with the zeal of a Scriptorian monk, assimilated his style to the best models, and wasted the midnight lamp, lim^ labor et mora^ in perfecting himself for his after-flight. io6 { COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN No man could attain to his eminence who did not do it. All must do it who would become true artists in any field of human endeavor. Imagine a reporter following him through the dialectics of a syllogism, to which this American Bourdaloue was much addicted, the discursive flight of his creative imagination, the unexpected transi- tion to a pithy epigram, the rapid fire of a summa- rized recapitulation, — division, narrative, argument, body, soul, and essence of the discourse epitomized into a few winged words, — and where would your poor reporter be*? I once heard him preach a funeral sermon with which the mourners were so impressed that one of them prevailed upon me to ask the preacher to let them have it for publica- tion in pamphlet form. " My dear Jimmie," re- plied Dr. Ryder, " it is not in my power to oblige our good friends ; the remarks were impromptu. I have not written out a sermon during the past twenty years." Reporters found it exceedingly difficult to fol- low him ; not that he was too vehement in man- ner, — indeed, he was not so at all, however ve- hement the play of mind might be ; but when he got well under way he was so magnetic, his idio- syncrasy was so very much that of the perfect orator, — voice, gesture, eye, train of thought, like the limited express at full speed, everything went onward with such rapt unity and vim, — that it was 107 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN next to impossible to report him correctly. His strokes were like symphonies of Beethoven, — first a single deep one, followed by two, then by three, next one again, when the climax came with an intense burst of sonorous eloquence. His wit and raillery were delicate and incisive, and were brought into play with pure Attic expression dashed with Irish flavor quite delicious. His logic and reasoning power so permeated the whole dis- course that I fancy the best short-hand reporter would find himself caught in the spell, and before he was disenchanted the thread would escape him, and his fingers forget their cunning in the best parts. When the beautiful church of St. Aloysius, in Washington, was built, under plans designed by Father Sestini, another of Georgetown's brilliant scientific scholars and mathematicians, whose ad- mirable likeness by Brumidi appears among the figures of the altar piece, — the First Communion of Saint Aloysius, — the dedication of the church, in 1859, ^^^ made an imposing and memorable event. The two foremost Catholic orators of the country were invited to preach, — Archbishop Hughes, of New York, at the High Mass, and Dr. Ryder at Vespers. I heard both discourses. The church was crowded with distinguished people on both occasions. President Buchanan attended the morning services, Stephen A. Douglas, the loS DR. JAMES RYDER, S.J. Nineteenth President of Georgetown College COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Little Giant of the Senate, the evening. There was great and bitter rivahy at that time for control of the Democratic party between the President and Senator, and the discord that followed in the Charleston Convention of i860 disrupted the Democracy, and led to the election of Abraham Lincoln. The absence of Mr. Buchanan in the evening, when Dr. Ryder preached, was com- mented upon at the time by those who were aware of the friendship and intimacy which had long existed between the two gentlemen. Dr. Ryder, I have heard, had once instructed Mr. Buchanan, at the latter 's request, in the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and my informant said that the old statesman had remarked to the priest, as the result of these conferences, that all of his doctrinal difficulties had been solved save one, — the doctrine of transubstantiation, and that if Dr. Ryder could demonstrate that cardinal point satisfactorily he would have overcome his doubts. Ryder under- took the task, and Buchanan, after repeated con- ferences between them, after much reading and deep weighing of authorities, finally admitted to his instructor that he had no other objections to offer. Then Dr. Ryder told him he must become a Catholic, and Mr. Buchanan procrastinated. Ryder became alarmed for his distinguished cate- chumen, and frankly told him he could no longer plead doubts as to faith, or invincible ignorance, 109 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN as the theologians call it. Buchanan was not pleased at the turn the controversy had taken, but Ryder, who was a man of positive character, re- doubled his assurances that he was under an impera- tive obligation to enter the Church. Mr. Buchanan was also a man of positive character, and remarked that as he had not decided upon that step, he must put it off for future consideration. As Ryder was inexorable, Buchanan took offence, and thus the two friends parted. One New Year's day I met Dr. Ryder at Mr. Howell Cobb's reception. Cobb was Secretary of the Treasury in Buchanan's administration. We left the Secretary's house together, and walked to the corner of G and Fifteenth Streets. " I am going to the President's, Father Ryder ; are you not going there, too V I said. His answer was an emphatic " no." It is so long since this occurred, about forty years, that it would be idle to attempt to give his words, but I well remember that his re- fusal to visit the White House was emphatic and unmistakable. The estrangement had taken place long before the dedication of the Church of St. Aloysius, and, of course. President Buchanan was not among the orator's hearers. Reports of the sermon were published in various papers throughout the country, but as usual failed to give an adequate idea of the matchless eloquence of the orator. There was a practised writer in no COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Washington, an old friend of Dr. Ryder, who had the temerity to edit the newspaper versions of the sermon, having himself heard it, and he brought it out in pamphlet shape. But it proved only a half- breed. Before sending his notes to the printer he submitted them to the orator himself for correction and emendation. Dr. Ryder's letter in reply, which the editor of the sermon gave to me, is here repro- duced for the first time after thirty-nine years' re- pose in my scrap-book. The " chaos" of the reports is modestly but pungently pointed out by the orator. " My dear Friend, — How can I thank you for the kind interest you evince and the trouble you have taken to give order and light to the chaos perhaps of my thoughts, certainly of others' reports ? God, I hope, w^ill reward you. Now, as I only received the package this morning (Monday), and you wish it to-morrow, I cannot, sick as I still am, undertake to do much ; but I will suggest that you change on the first page * tasty' into tintSf church into * chair of truth.' In the other sentence, the last part should read after sacrifice * offered thereon under the forms of bread and wine.' The next sen- tence should read thus : * The Catholic heart under these in- fluences has expanded, and from the contemplation of the ma- terial perfections of this earthly structure easy is the transition to the contemplation,' &c., &c. On page 19 (by the bye what means such paging ?) erase after the word ' directed' the rest of the printed sentence, and place a full-stop after * di- rected.^ In place of defence put edifice. In page 20 it were well to italicize the notes of the Church, also the word nil in the same page, as from it the argument flows : the text also should be, * teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.' On page 25 I put true victim, and III COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN make the sentence read, ' who, according to the order of Melchisedech, under the appearance of bread and wine, offer no other than the sacred body and blood of the Godman.* Page 30, after the words who died upon the cross, add * and who declared to the world that once elevated upon the igno- minious gibbet. He would draw all things to Himself.' In the last sentence, instead oi privilege of their compact^ put * approval of their creed, and their unwavering faithfulness to the Faith they have received will sanctify them to the end of time.' ** God bless you and yours, and believe me, " Most gratefully, *• Your friend, "J. Ryder, S.J. <* November 7, 1859." Some time before, the same gentleman who gave me the preceding letter had sent a bottle of rare wine to Dr. Ryder during the latter's sickness. The graceful note of acknowledgment from the priest was also presented to me, and from my scrap-book I here subjoin it. I was not the James mentioned in the note. ** Alexandria, Va., March 15, 1858. " My dear Friend, — Your cordial present, with your still more cordial note of congratulation on my recovery, I have received through the kindness of James, and sincerely thank ■ you for both. The liquid I have tasted, and despite all the defects of a vitiated palate, drugged of late with pills, &c., I consider it the true, genuine article, worthy of the gracious J Operto, and improved by the gravity of age, truly Lusitanian. ^ In this kind of wine I have some experience, for while in Philadelphia we imported the pure Port from a conventual vineyard in Operto. It is so pure that I should think even Father Mathew might not object to it. I hope I shall be able 112 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN to drink your health and that of your amiable family in a glass of it on St. Patrick's day. I am still far from well, but if this lovely weather continues I hope ere long to be myself again. "James has been my constant companion of late, though I heartily wished him better employment. The vista that you pen is cheering. May it not be a cul-de-sac. It is, however, in good hands. Mr. Kelly is a real Irish advocate, fearless, cordial, and persevering. I long to make his acquaintance. With best wishes for your health and happiness, and those of your family, I am, ** With great sincerity, " Gratefully yours, "James Ryder, S.J." The Mr. Kelly here referred to was Mr. John Kelly, of New York, at that time an influential member of Congress. Father Ryder was trans- ferred from Alexandria, where he had been modest assistant to the quaint Father Peter Kroes, S.J., to St. Joseph's Church at Philadelphia. During the last year or two of his life he was in failing health, and died in the latter city January 12, i860, almost about the same time that the saintly Bishop Neu- mann, the glory of the Church of Philadelphia, suddenly passed away. The life of such a Jesuit as Dr. Ryder presents a sharp contrast to that of a great worldly man. The powerful Provincial of yesterday guiding his Order, is the humble subor- dinate in a small parish to-day. Ryder at Alexan- dria, Brady at Bohemia Manor, and Fulton in New York, went about obedient to others, faithful in 8 113 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN small things as they had been in great, shining examples of a true humility which teaches the world an object lesson much needed as a corrective of that sin by which the angels fell, — ambition. Heroes, indeed, were those Jesuits in the right sense of the word. The Philodemic Society, founded by Dr. Ryder at Georgetown in 1830, held commemorative ex- ercises on the day of his funeral, when I made some memorial remarks on account of my inti- mate relations with the deceased, at the request of my fellow-members of the Society. The Philo- demic printed my youthful tribute. A gentleman who remembered the former friendship between Dr. Ryder and Mr. Buchanan advised me to send a copy of the speechlet to the President. I did so, and received the following reply : "Washington, 31st March, i860. ** My dear Sir, — I have received your favor of the 23d instant, with the accompanying copy of your eulogy on the late Rev. Dr. Ryder. I shall take great pleasure in reading your remarks when I can find leisure to do so. "The pressure of important public duties must be my ex- cuse for not acknowledging your favor at an earlier day. ** Yours respectfully, ** James Buchanan. * Mr. James Fairfax McLaughlin, *' Georgetown College." I had not expected a letter from the President of the United States in response to a school-boy's 114 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN effusion, but older heads than mine understood its meaning better. When Mr. Buchanan was Sena- tor and Secretary of State, and Dr. Ryder President of Georgetown College, the statesman's carriage was often at the College to take the Jesuit to din- ner at the hospitable table of the distinguished Pennsylvanian. For years they were intimate friends, though latterly estranged ; and those who knew of these things construed the courtesy to me as a bow of the President of the United States to the ghost of an old and tender friendship. 115 CHAPTER V RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CLASS-ROOM THE TWO MULLEDYS IT was my lot to plod steadily, a year in each class, from First Rudiments to Philosophy. I made Third Humanities under Mr. Tehan ; Second Humanities under Mr. Prendergast ; First Humanities under Mr. Jameson ; Poetry under Father Barber for a part of the year, who fell sick about the period of middle examinations, and under Father Brady for the rest of that year ; Rhetoric under Father Fulton ; and Philosophy under Father Nota. Mr. Prendergast and Father Barber were the best teachers I ever had. They possessed the teaching faculty in a marked degree, and I learned more under them than under anybody else. Mr. Prendergast was a large, raw-boned man, of strong Celtic characteristics and thorough-going methods. By the bye, he was the best weight-thrower or shot- putter in the house. His way of getting down to business was novel. When the lesson, for exam- ple, in Lucian's Dialogues or Xenophon's Ana- basis, was in order, he would turn to Charley ii6 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Dimitry, who sat at the upper end of the right- hand bench, and exclaim, in a loud tone, " Deme- thry, xai and." This meant, Hke Father Nota's " incipiamus nos^'' that we were now to proceed with the lesson. Mr. Prendergast believed in short tasks, but absolute thoroughness. Five or six lines of Greek were all he required. This we thought a trifling, easy task, as we could translate that little bit in a few minutes. But when " Old Prendy" ut- tered the inevitable " jcat and," and we began and rattled off the translation, then the real trouble began. You had not only to parse, but pick to pieces every word, give the parts of speech and their derivations, conjugate the verbs usque ad finem^ de- cline the nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, tell the declensions, explain the diaeresis, government, ellip- sis, construction, why this tense and that mood were used and not others, descant upon the functions of the middle aorist and optative dative, etc., until your head fairly reeled with Greek roots. If you slipped up, " Old Prendy" was at you instanter. "Hot, sir'?" (^/^^//V ?J^ ^J^ ?JN ^jC ?JC Austrinus videns nos tam refulgent in armis, Prudens instanter retreated dolefully backward, Fugam simulans." After a while the cunning General Beauregard comes out of his masked batteries, and the impet- uous General McDowell pressing on, the battle begins in earnest. "Jam stetit; instamur ; concurritur — though, at a distance, — Bangere muskets, roare cannon, et crackere rifles Incipiunt." The panic followed, to which the defeat was popularly ascribed in those days, for as yet we had not become aware of Stonewall Jackson, who undoubtedly would have captured Washington in short order if they had permitted him to have his own way, — " Stonewall's way," as a clever poet some time after called it ; but everybody then insisted it was the panic that caused the rout, and Carolus goes on to describe that monster. " Adfuit in pugna portentum horribile visu. That Jupiter unkindly sent, chancing noddere Juno, Scattering terrores ; it panicum nomine dicunt ; Awful as when it routed the Gallic vandals from Delphi. Tremendum advancit, et straightway made for the Zoo- Zoos, 189 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN Ut videre monstrum, and all its horrors, per umbras, Pars shiveravit in bootibus ; pars vertere terga, Screechere pars, fugiensque in Novo Eboraco halted. But omnes nos seeing the rout and its horrible causa, DifFugimus visu exsangues ; tremor seizes our knee-joints, Sumpserit any shape but that, et nos never would tremble. »l-» vL» "Jy vL» vL* vL« vt* vL» ^Y* >f* *^ *^ *Y* *T* "T* ^y* Woe to the North this unfortunatissima Sunday." William H. Russell, correspondent of the Lon- don Times, had left Washington in the morning in great fettle to go to the battle, but came back pre- cipitately, quite as demoralized as the rest, earning by his antics the nickname of " Bull Run Russell," which stuck to him for life. John Gilpin's ride was eclipsed by the wing-footed Englishman, who frantically sought to get away from the Rebels and seek asylum from imaginary pursuers in the house of the British Minister, Lord Lyons. Caro- lus touches off Russell's flight quite humorously : " He flies like the wind, et vires acquiret eundo ; Macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad Lyons ! Shun fields, shun stumps; for medio tutissimus ibis; Hippomene, go it boy, nunc viribus utere totis, — Occupat extremum scabies, I'm safe for the present. Dixit ; then writes graphicissimas sketches to Hingland." The condition of affairs at Georgetown during the few years immediately preceding the war was extremely flourishing. The house was full of students from all parts of the Union ; the prepon- 190 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN derance of boys from the South was marked. Canada and Mexico, Central and South America were represented. Of the foreigners, Cuba con- tributed the greater number. The Faculty was strong in all the schools. In theology, philosophy, and the sciences. Fathers Duverney, Cicateri, De Maistri, Ardia, Nota, Sestini, Curley, Clark, and Welch ; in the classics. Fathers Lynch, Fenwick, Charles King, Barber, Fulton, O'Callaghan, Brady, Force, Young, McMullen, Prendergast, Strong, O'Hagan, McNerhany, Mullaly, and Bahan ; in the modern languages. Fathers Aschwanden, Bau- meister (commonly called " Barrister"), and Peters, and many others scarcely less learned and accom- plished, each contributed to make the corps of professors and tutors under Maguire and Early ex- ceptionally brilliant, able, and thorough in all the various departments of the College. How many bright, ingenuous youths and young men were gathered together during those jocund days on the College Heights. How many lusty athletes went bounding over the College campus in the games of foot-ball, hand-ball, running, jump- ing, and other sports. How many gymnasts of powerful thews and muscles then inhabited the house, expert in all exercises and feats of strength with dumb-bells, weights, parallel-bars, rope-lad- ders, and swinging-rings in and around the gym- nasium. At length came the great upheaval, when 191 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN those same collegians sprang to arms in deadly war, some on the Northern side, more on the Southern side, the Blue and the Gray torn asunder only to blend again in fraternal union, and have inscribed the endearing and symbolic names on the College colors of Alma Mater. But what gaps in their ranks those four terrible years produced ! Heaven save us from another civil war ! I had at Georgetown a dear friend and class- mate, Robert Young Brown, of Mississippi, who went through the fiercest battles of the war. Bull Run, Richmond, Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, on to the bitter end, and who came out of the fiery ordeal with honorable scars to die of yellow fever — oh, irony of earth's fleeting day- dreams ! — ^in a few months after he had opened a law-office at New Orleans.* I never think of Bob Brown without understanding better the feelings with which Alfred Tennyson wrote of the friend of his youth, Arthur Hallam, in his great poem " In Memoriam." If ever I met a noble soul, full of genius for high deeds, full of bravery for life's * A few weeks before his death I received from dear Bob a most affectionate letter, in which he asked me to pay him a visit at New Orleans. That letter, instinct with the genius of the gifted writer, is before me at this moment. For a third of a century I have kept it as a priceless memento of one whom I loved beyond the measure of a brother. 192 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN battle, full of mentality and promise of eminence, whatever his calling might be, Robert Young Brown was that man in very truth. His father, ex-Governor Albert G. Brown, was the colleague in the Senate of Jefferson Davis, but I am per- suaded, able and distinguished statesman though he was, that his noble son was his superior in talents and force of character. I think of others, and recollections of gifted collegians crowd thick and fast upon me. Some survive, many have passed away, but still in all the hues of youth there they go trooping through my memory, uneffaced and ineffaceable. Will the reader believe me ? though a mediterranean gulf of nearly forty years rolls between that day and this, I can recall in vivid recollection every com- panion of those College days, every face, but not every name, as though the halls of Georgetown were still alive with them, and I have never failed to recognize any boy I knew at College whenever and wherever I have met him throughout life. Happiness and length of days to those comrades of yore who may yet survive ; peace and joy. of Heaven to all of them who have entered into their rest.* * A few well-remembered names occurred to me as I wrote the closing words of this chapter. If it gives half as much pleasure to old students who may read my pages to see these 13 193 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN One evening about two or three years ago, when I was visiting Mr. John Vinton Dahlgren, in New names as it affords to myself, I will be fully rewarded for in- scribing them here. Bob Harper, Billy Wills, Bob Ray, Old Hammer (Carrell), Dominick and James L. O'Byrne, Billy and Hugh Gaston, Billy Marye, Harvey Bawtree, Jim and Will Dougherty, Jimmy Randall, Davy Hubbard, George Merrick, John and Tom King, Phil Madden, Cornelius O'Flynn, Charley Kenny, John and Henry Bowling, Wil- liam Boyce, Charley Hoyt, Bill Choice, Billy, Jim, and Charley Duncan, Madison Cutts, Wilfred Fetterman, John Hamilton, Jim Wise, Enoch Low, John Graham, Henry and Romilly Foote, Bob Brown, Jim Hoban, Pres. Sands, Joe Orme, Jim and John Dooley, Boyd Faulkner, Jerome Bauduy, Leon Michel, Johnny Marion, Henry Clagett, William Price, Victor Benoit, Bill Reilly, Frank Palms, Beverley Kennedy, Emile and Alphonse Rost, Leopold Armand, " Beef" Des- londe, ** Buster," Pye, and Eustace Neale, Lucius and Harry Northrup, Johnny Plater, Vernon Smith, " Chin" Miller, Bill Murphy, Isidore Sota, Alfred Macedo, *' Old" Guiterez, De- metrius Valdez, Jules Esclava (" Monkey"), Jules Delacroix, Jules Deschapelles, John Laloire, M. Fernandez, Ike and Nick Parsons, Otis Keilholtz, James Owen Martin, M. Du- pre, Zeb. Ward, Alf. and Charley Bahan (*' Crab"), Beres- ford Carr, Madison Grigsby, Jim Lester, John and Willy Dawson, ** Sunny" Buard, Tom, ** Cincy," and Ed. Magru- der, " Rit" Leary, Tom Ryan, M. Knoblock, Placide and Paul Bossier, Bill Hodges, Bob Lovelace, Warfield Semmes, Gus Wilson, Bowie and *' Fip" Johnson, Bob Johnson, Billy Bar- rett, Nick Hill, Charley and Theodore Dimitry, Frank Rudd, Billy Leary, Dan Casserly, Henry Brent, Jim Murphy, Tom and Pete Herran, Virgil Dominguez, Tal. Lambert, John Kidwell, " Bub" Ritchie, " Pat" McLeod (James), M. Mc- 194 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN York, a middle-aged gentleman came in, and I said, before his name was announced, " Why, here's Charley Hoyt !" It was Mr. Hoyt, although I had not seen him since 1857, when he was a boy at Georgetown. Shane, M. O'Dowd, M. Spelissey, M. Zuniga, Albert Young, Joe and William Blandford, Benedict Semmes, Bob and Tom Simms, Ludim Bargy, Frank Baby, Julius Choppin, "Little'* Hullihen, Aleck and " Bull" Loughbrough, M. Picquette, J. Escobar, Cypriano Zegarra, John Callan, Patrick Walsh, Jim Doonan, John Morgan (the "Judge"), Frank and Clem Lancaster, Mike Cass, Nat. GofF, Edward White. Why go on ? " I came to the place of my birth," says an Arabic manuscript, ** and cried, * The friends of my youth, where are they ?' And an Echo answered, ' Where are they ?' " 195 CHAPTER IX HARVEY BAWTREE FATHER E. H. WELCH LONGFEL- LOW CENTENNIAL OF COLLEGE PRESIDENT CLEVE- LAND'S SPEECH WOODSTOCK SCHOLASTICATE END ' SOME one has spoken of the period of youth as " the blessed age of admiration." How many a village Hampden, mute, inglorious Milton, and Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood, immortalized by Gray, does not the school- boy picture to himself in the companions of child- hood, boyhood, and more especially of College life! ** The school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour," from Byron down, or for that matter, — " O formose puer,'' — from Virgil down, has always been and always will continue to be a delightful part of the life of a collegian. I indulged in it. I used to think Harvey Bawtree, my fellow-student, the greatest Richard the Third that ever lived. I had not then heard Edwin Forrest. Harvey would run up and down stairs in the Infirmary, to the amuse- ment of that most excellent man, Brother Johnny Cunningham, — 196 J. FAIRFAX McLaughlin Class of '60 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN '* I do remember an apothecary. And hereabouts he dwells," — as well as to the rapid depletion of his own breath- ing apparatus ; then burst on the stage where the play was in progress in the Study Room, shouting as best a breathless king could shout, — f* "^ *y* ^j* 206 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN She stoopM ; and out of languor leapt a cry. Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; And I believed that in the living world My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips." In Longfellow the lovers meet at the death-bed of Gabriel. Observe the difference between the poets in treating of the emotions of love. For long years Evangeline had searched the continent in vain for Gabriel, but at last finds him dying in a hospital. Transported with surprise, joy, grief, she gives way to natural feelings, and then thanks God with Christian resignation as Gabriel dies in her arms. On a pallet before her, as she went among the sick and dying ministering to their wants, she beheld her betrothed husband. " Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish That the dying heard it and started up from their pillows. Then through those realms of shade in multiplied reverber- ations Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that suc- ceeded. Whispered a gentle voice in accents tender and saint-like, * Gabriel ! O my beloved!' and died away into silence. Vainly he strove to rise ; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him. Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was [the light of his eyes, but it suddenly sank into darkness. As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a case- ment. 207 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN And as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom. Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, * Father, I thank Thee !' " Since Milton, Longfellow is the most learned of our poets. He was master of eleven languages, ten of which he spoke.* He naturalized a new metre into our tongue, which every English poet who tried it before him, from Spenser down, had failed to do, and many of them, such as Byron, Scott, Poe, and Lowell, declared it impossible to do. They all made the mistake, extremely com- mon to classical scholars, of confounding ancient and modern hexameters, and of supposing the spondee of Homer and Virgil an invariable and necessary factor of English hexameters, which made them harsh and hiccoughy, or, as quaint old Tom Nash wittily said, " English beggars." With such a cast-iron rule it is beyond the power of any human being to write a good English hexameter poem. The silent but mighty revolution in lan- guage from quantity to accent, which had been going on as human society grew, was absolutely ignored by English poets from Spenser to Southey. * In a letter to his father, written in 1825, he says, "I have a most voracious appetite for knowledge. ... I have somewhere seen or heard the observation that as many lan- guages as a person acquires so many times is he a man." — ** Life and Letters of Longfellow," by Samuel Longfellow, vol. i. p. 58. 208 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN The indications of its progress were not wholly wanting, even in ancient times. Aristotle, the wisest of philosophers, detected its latent influence when he declared that the iambic measure was the natural rhythm of conversation. Anglo-Saxon runs naturally to iambic accent, because it is con- versational and discursive. " There has no more wonderful revolution taken place," exclaims the profound Dr. Whewell, " in the use of human lan- guage than that by which the versification of mod- ern Europe took the place of the versification of ancient Greece and Rome." * Spenser and Sidney followed classic quantity and failed. " Why a God's name," petulantly ex- claims the former, " may not we, as the Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by the sound, reserving the quantity to the verse *?" And he vainly tried to put into English gyves and strait-jackets the old Latin and Greek measure. To the English language belongs the glory of leading all the modern tongues in every other metre save the hexameter, where, until Longfel- low appeared, we dismally failed. Our tongue gave the law to the language of tragedy, with Shakespeare and Fletcher the acknowledged pio- * Vice-Chancellor William Whewell in the North British Review y 1853, article " Hermann and Dorothea." 14 209 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN neers ; and gave it again, as Percy's " Reliques" attest, to the measure of ballads ; all followed obediently the Anglo-Saxon lead. But Germany and Sweden left England far behind, clinging to classic spondee, a deadly enemy, when Voss and Goethe and Tegner threw it off and mingled it with trochaic verse, having discovered that accent not quantity was the future arbiter of all human speech. The prophecy of Aristotle was fulfilled when Goethe wrote " Hermann and Dorothea," and Longfellow made the same discovery when he wrote " Evangeline," and in that poem and the "Courtship of Miles Standish" naturalized the dactylic hexameter as a new metre in the English language. Hactenus h^ec. I am quite forgetting Alma Mater. The most memorable event or series of events in the history of Georgetown College took place during the three days set apart for the Centennial celebration, February 20, 21, and 22, 1889. I attended the exercises, and found that since my day, under the initiative of the energetic and in- trepid rector. Father Patrick H. Healy, S. J., a mag- nificent new building, facing the main entrance to the College, had lifted its lofty front, covering the whole space to the east of the old north and south buildings, and connecting them all into a grand, continuous group. The ceremonies on the 2 2d were the most in- 210 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN teresting. On the stage among the members of the Faculty and many alumni, sat Cardinal Gib- bons, Archbishops Corrigan and Ryan, five or six Bishops, and a large number of distinguished clergymen from various parts of the country. Laymen of the highest distinction mingled among the churchmen. The President of the United States and the Secretary of State, Mr. Cleve- land and Mr. Bayard, Chief Justice Fuller, and Associate Justices Harlan and Miller of the Su- preme Court of the United States, foreign Min- isters, Senators, Congressmen, generals, and naval officers, and famous men of letters and in the lib- eral professions, literally crowded the spacious plat- form from end to end. There sat the scholarly Chancellor of Harvard, Dr. Thomas Dwight, in his picturesque robes of office, and the learned Chancellor of Georgetown, Father Edward H. Welch, another son of Harvard, in the historic soutane of Loyola. Dr. Welling, President of Columbia, and the rectors of many other Colleges, swelled the lists of notabilities, perhaps as imposing in numbers and celebrity as ever were assembled together in any institution of learning in this coun- try. They had come to extend greetings and all hail to Georgetown on the completion of its first century, or, as I have contended elsewhere, on the completion of its two hundred and fifty-fifth year. As Father Welch arose to deliver the Chancel- 211 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN lor's Latin address the scene was striking, the rationale of the occasion presented to the thought- ful mind agreeable reflections and contrastive mem- ories. There sat Puritans and Cavaliers who had been crossing swords from Worcester, England, in the seventeenth century, to Gettysburg, Penn- sylvania, in the nineteenth, now gathered like a band of brothers beneath the roof-tree of the Jesuits, who had come over in the Ark and Dove, under the segis of Lord Baltimore's char- ter, to plant the Cross in English America. Cleve- land, Dwight, and Welch, of the race that came in the Mayflower ; the CarroUs, Lees, and Tuckers, and other representative Cavaliers, whose sires sprang from the hives of St. Mary's and James- town, all assembled. Cavaliers and Puritans, to honor Georgetown on its anniversary. The two great fighting divisions of the Anglo-Saxon race, which under the standards of the Stuarts or in the armies of Old Ironsides or the Duke of Cumber- land, from Marston Moor to CuUoden, had waged relentless war against each other, were met here in peace at last, of all places in the world the strangest, in the house of the long hated and persecuted Jesuits, old animosities gone with the years be- yond the Flood, and the only watchword now, as President Cleveland said, " good American citizen- ship," or as Cardinal Gibbons said, ^'' Prosper e pro- cede, et regnaT 212 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN My own thoughts reverted on this historic occa- sion to scenes quite different. I beheld, in imagi- nation, Father Andrew White banished from Mary- land and sent back in chains to England ; Father Sebastian Rasle murdered at Norridgewock ; Father Frambach fleeing from Virginia, whither he had journeyed to carry the Bread of Life to some dying Catholic, and saved by the fleetness of his horse from the bullets of his pursuers ; Father Francis Neale stoned in the streets of Alexandria during the last decade of the eighteenth century ; as Father Ryder was twice pelted with stones in the streets of Washington City, on towards the middle of the present century ; Monsignore Bedini afterwards mobbed in Cincinnati ; and Father Bapst still later tarred, feathered, and ridden on a rail in the State of Maine. Zeal above knowledge is fanaticism, and the worst of all fanatics are religious zealots when once they become persecutors. How happy a revolution had brought us to this day ! Here in the mother-house of the Jesuits, among the sons of old Maryland Cavaliers, were the illustrious men of Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and other States, none the less Protes- tants because they were tolerant, or, if I may again borrow President Cleveland's expression, "good citizens," foregathered in brotherly love among the Jesuit Fathers of Georgetown College and their Catholic fellow-citizens. How vast the change 213 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN mirrored forth this day in Gaston Hall ! how grandly America had grown in charity, the divinest of all the cardinal theological virtues ! In the throng were descendants of William Gas- ton, whose name bestowed on the Hall in which we sat is a household word at Georgetown ; of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the Catholic Signer ; and I think, too, of the most celebrated of Georgetown scholars, Robert Walsh, our Consul-General to Paris, author of " An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain," and of the " Didactics." Robert Walsh preceded James Russell Lowell and Wash- ington Irving as the scholar in politics, and from the day when he, a boy student, welcomed George Washington in a poetical address to Georgetown College, to that when he departed this life in France, the Nestor of the guild of American let- ters, he was honored everywhere as scholar, gentle- man, and Catholic. The venerable Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIIL, sent fatherly greetings. The most ancient Universities of Europe and America vied with the youngest in fraternal messages. Sev- eral thousand people gathered there to take part in the festivities. Already Father James A. Doonan, Mr. (afterwards Judge) Martin F. Morris, Mon- signor Thomas S. Preston, Mr. Conde B. Fallen, and other scholarly men had laid their tributes upon the College shrine. In choice and eloquent phrases Cardinal Gibbons recalled College memorabilia, 214 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN and paid tribute to the ability and holiness of the great Archbishop Carroll, founder of the College. In a forcible speech President Cleveland pictured the joy and pride of Georgetown College alumni on the auspicious anniversary, and, enlarging upon the value of a sound education, such as this insti- tution gave, pleaded the duties of American citi- zenship as incumbent upon every individual, and closed by wishing for the College, as it has had in the past, a future army of patriotic and learned alumni. As the ceremonies drew to an end the shades of evening were falling, and cannon thundered with- out, reverberating over the Heights and down the beautiful river to and beyond Mount Vernon. Hundreds of alumni after years of separation met on the inspiring occasion, and felt and said in every look and word that Alma Mater was Queen, robed in her hundred years of collegiate life and her two centuries and a half of academic training. Well might Father Richards look happy and triumphant, for he had done his work well as rector of George- town College in the Centennial year. Perhaps the second century of the College will have come and gone before those halls again shall witness another celebration to rival that of which a faint portrayal has been here attempted. The crying want of the American Church had long been a proper training-school for priests. 215 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN There were several good ones, but the far-seeing Provincial Father Angelo Paresce conceived the scheme of a great one, such as the old canonists of the middle ages, or the Jesuits who carried the Ratio Studiorum to the summit of excellence, had established in Europe. To lay properly all foun- dations of university training, such a school, such a fountain of religious education, was wanting, and Father Paresce supplied it when he founded the incomparable Woodstock Scholasticate. His strong will controlled and directed all with a firm- ness not inferior to that of Archbishop Carroll in the early day. Fortunate, indeed, were its begin- nings. A giant mind of almost universal training in dogma and morals was found ready at hand in the person of Father Camillus Mazzella, S.J., to guide the institution in its infancy. A Petavius in learning and almost a Suarez in genius (I employ the words of the late Father William F. Clarke), he entered upon the noble work, and when after some years he was called away from Woodstock to become a Cardinal, and perhaps some day a Pope, Father Mazzella left his Scholasticate, prolific feeder of Georgetown, the greatest ecclesiastical Seminary on this continent. From that Tusculum we old alumni expect streams of the higher educa- tion of the future to flow in upon the mother-house. O ye doctors of the Teaching Order, usher in at Georgetown Saturnian days. Wheeling into 216 COLLEGE DAYS AT GEORGETOWN space, yonder the new century comes. May my eyes behold Alma Mater, before I have tasted of death, circling in pride of place, a modern Sala- manca or Alcala, a Catholic University such as was dreamed of by Carroll and striven for by Ryder, a seat of learning like one of those founded by the Jesuits in the days of Acquaviva or of Retz, when the Ratio Studiorum led Europe in science and classics, in philosophy and fine arts. " The course of truth," says Cardinal Newman, in his sketch of the " Rise and Progress of Universi- ties," " never dominant in this world, has its ebbs and flows. It is pleasant to live in a day when the tide is coming in. Such is our own day. ... A new era seems to be at hand, and a bolder policy is showing itself In particular, the Church feels herself strong enough to recommence the age of Universities." I close my little volume with cordial salutations to all the sons of Georgetown. School-boy friend- ships are among the most unselfish of human ties. Old and young, wherever you abide, may the Lord love you. Boys. 217 APPENDIX During the lifetime of Mr. Charles A. Dana, the distinguished editor of the New York Sun, the fol- lowing editorial appeared in its columns. Mr. Dana was a Protestant, but always discussed Cath- olic questions with a fairness in keeping with his eminent ability. {From the Sun, February ^5, i8g^.) "the GEORGETOWN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. " Especial interest attaches to the University at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, because this was the first Catholic institution of the higher learning founded in the United States, students having entered it as early as 1791. Since 1805 it has been under the direction of members of the Society of Jesus. In 181 5 it acquired from Congress the power of con- ferring ordinary degrees, and in 1833 it received from the Holy See authority to grant degrees in philosophy and the- ology. It deserves the name of university for the reason that, in addition to the College proper, or school of arts and sci- ences, it comprises an astronomical observatory, a law school, and a school of medicine. If the requirements for admission to the professional schools seem inadequate, when compared with the conditions imposed in Germany, the shortcoming is common to almost all American institutions, while the precau- tions taken at Georgetown to assure the proper significance to the A.B. degree are deserving of very high commendation. 219 APPENDIX ** The faculty and officers of Georgetown University num- ber 66, and there are 512 students, exclusive of 177 in the preparatory department. If we look at the classification by residence, we find that 68 students come from the District of Columbia, 97 from the five States of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, 26 from New Eng- land, and that 24 other States are represented by from 12 to I each. There are also undergraduates from Central America, Cuba, Canada, and France. We have referred to the preparatory department, which is a distinctive feature of this institution, and is intended to qualify boys for entering the College proper. The prescribed age for admission to this school is now thirteen, and a candidate must have received a good elementary training in what are known as the English branches, including a thorough acquaintance with arithmetic to the end of percentage. The graduates of this school, in which the study of Greek and Latin is compulsory, are ad- mitted to the College proper as a matter of course. From other preparatory schools of established reputation students are admitted on the principal's certificate, but that a knowledge of the classical languages is demanded is clear from the exam- ination which all applicants not provided with acceptable cer- tificates must pass. The subjects of the examination compre- hend English composition, a general outline of ancient and modern history, and the elements of either French or German grammar. In arithmetic an applicant must offer the whole of arithmetic, algebra to the end of quadratics, and the ele- ments of plane and solid geometry ; in Latin, the entire gram- mar, including prosody, Nepos's Lives, two books of Phas- drus's Fables, selected letters of Cicero, two books of Csesar's Commentaries, and a thousand lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses; in Greek will be required a complete knowledge of etymology and an acquaintance with the outlines of syntax, two books of Xenophon's Anabasis, and certain of Lucian's Dialogues. As regards facility in prose composition, the candidate must 220 APPENDIX translate at sight complex sentences into Latin and simple sen- tences into Greek, A careful inspection of these require- ments will convince the reader that Georgetown may fairly be compared, from this point of view, with most of the lead- ing American universities, and that it is actually more exacting than Harvard, where a knowledge of Greek is not demanded of applicants. " It should further be remarked that at Georgetown an undergraduate is not permitted to abandon the classical lan- guages soon after entering college, but is obliged to study them during the first three years of the quadrennial course leading to an A.B. degree. This is the only American College known to us where the student is for three years trained in speaking as well as in writing Latin, and in reading it at sight. The Latin authors with which a Georgetown man must become conversant comprise the whole of Horace, the ^neid and Eclogues of Virgil, Juvenal, Sallust, Livy, and the Agricola and Germania of Tacitus, Quintilian, and the Orations, Letters, De Senectute, and De Amicitia of Cicero. In Greek an un- dergraduate must read the Iliad, the Hellenica of Xenophon, the Olynthiacs and De Corona of Demosthenes, and the CEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles. In mathematics, which he cannot avoid by a soft elective, he must have finished algebra, and mastered analytic geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, and the differential and integral calculus. He must carry on the study of that modern language, French or German, which he offered for admission, and must also acquire the rudi- ments of the alternative one. Other prescribed studies during the two last years of the course are chemistry, mechanics, physics, astronomy, and geology ; and naturally a good deal of attention is paid to logic, metaphysics, and ethics. Alto- gether it is evident that an excellent education is attainable in the College proper at Georgetown, and that its A.B. degree possesses the value which ought always to pertain to a diploma of the kind. We add that the master's degree is given not as 221 APPENDIX a matter of course, but only to those holding the correspond- ing baccalaureate degree after one year of residence, during which certain prescribed lectures have been attended and cer- tain examinations have been passed. "The number of students in the medical school belonging to the Georgetown University is 135. The complete course of study in this department comprises four sessions of seven months each. At the end of each session written examina- tions are held, and no student failing to pass these can obtain an M.D. degree. Unfortunately, the possession of a College education is not required for admission, nor indeed is it by any medical school in the United States. The graduate of any high school or academy may enter the medical depart- ment of Georgetown, but on other candidates a preliminary examination is imposed. In the law school, which has 267 students, no examination for admission is prescribed, and it follows that young men having merely a common school edu- cation are admissible. The course leading to the degree of bachelor of laws covers only two years, but there is a post- graduate course open to those desirous of securing also a master's degree. We should note that these diplomas are conferred only upon those who successfully pass examinations in the several subjects of study, and thus an effort is made to compensate for the deficiencies which, owing to the freedom of admission to the school, must be observable in many of its students. ** On the whole, there can be no doubt that under the direc- tion of the Jesuit Fathers a great deal of sterling work is done at Georgetown in the field of the higher education. The progress made by this institution is the more remarkable be- cause it is unendowed and destitute of pecuniary resources save the income derived from the fees of students. Yet much as this struggling University may have felt the need of money, it has firmly refused to swell the number of its undergraduates by lowering the requirements for its A.B. degree." 222 APPENDIX Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in his History of the College, has an admirable passage upon the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits. No layman in Amer- ica understood the subject better. I have often talked with him on educational questions, and re- call with profound admiration the depth and jus- tice of his views. He was my dearest and most intimate friend in New York, and when he died the American Catholic Church mourned its great- est historical scholar. I must find room here for an extract from his lucid remarks. {From Shed's ^''History of Georgetown College^'' p. 82 et seq.) " THE RATIO STUDIORUM. " When the Society was restored, in 18 14, she could not of course regain everywhere, at a single bound, the pre-eminence she had formerly enjoyed in matters of teaching. The manner of her restoration was so different from the gradual organic development which had marked her original establishment, and the evils which she had to face, wrought during her period of death, by that general upturning of society called the French Revolution, were so formidable and so engrossing that she found but little of the scholarly leisure and repose necessary for the formation of ripe scholars and eminent teachers. ** Yet in a very short time almost incredible advances were made, and when, in the year 1824, Leo XII. restored to the Jesuits their Roman College, they were able to provide it with professors in the various Faculties not unworthy of its ancient renown. " At the period of the foundation of the Society, a great 223 APPENDIX change was coming over the face of the civilized world. New ideas were taking root in the minds of men, the old systems were on the verge of decay, and even the great universities, which for centuries had been the creators and rulers of thought, were about to be swept away. The great founder of the So- ciety saw well that ideas can be combated only by ideas ; that education was the only weapon against the coming foe. He therefore instituted a body of teachers to mould and form the minds of the young. Time, however, is required to fashion a great idea into a working system, and it was not until many years after the death of St. Ignatius Loyola that the Ratio Studiorum came forth as a great organized system of education. . . . " In the year 1832 the Ratio Studiorum was thoroughly re- vised and adapted to modern requirements by a commission appointed by Father General John Roothaan, in virtue of a recommendation of the Twenty-first General Congregation, and this revision is now universally employed in the Society, so far as the circumstances prevailing in different countries admit of its application. ** There are some faults for which the Jesuit system of disci- pline has no mercy, and in the first place is found the vice of impurity. For this crime the only punishment is expulsion, since contamination is looked upon as the greatest evil that can be spread amongst the young. Hence the virtue of purity is fostered with all possible care and solicitude, and even Protestants have borne witness to the high moral purity of Jesuit students. ** With regard to the method of teaching to be observed, we cannot do better than to quote the words of a German Prot- estant who holds a prominent place in the work of modern education. Mr. Korner, in his ' History of Pedagogy,' thus writes of the Jesuits : * The Jesuits founded an educational system which was the best in its time, and soon won for itself well-merited fame throughout the world. It is the 224 APPENDIX fashion to represent the Jesuits as heartless beings, malicious, cunning, and deceitful, although it must be known perfectly- well that the crimes imputed to them are historically ground- less, and the suppression of the Order in the last century was due entirely to the tyrannical violence of Ministers of State. It is only our duty to justice to silence the folly of such as declare the Jesuit system of education to be nothing but fanat- ical malice, and a corruption of the young. The Jesuits were the first educators of their time. Protestants must with envy acknowledge the fruitfulness of their labors ; they made the study of the ancient classics a practical study, and training was with them as important as education. They were the first school-masters to apply psychological principles to education ; they did not teach according to abstract principles, but they trained the individual, developed his mental resources for the affairs of practical life, and so imparted to the educational system an important influence in social and political life. From that period, and from that system, scientific education takes its rise. The Jesuits succeeded in effecting a moral purity among their pupils which was unknown in other schools during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.' '* The writer has well expressed the Jesuit system ; its end and object is to educate not merely in the limited sense in which that word is usually taken, to express simply the im- parting of information : training is the object to be sought for ; the mind must be disciplined, and, above all, the character must be formed. The axiom that knowledge is power is no doubt true, but it may be power for evil as well as for good. The principle running through the whole Jesuit system is that knowledge for its own sake is worthless ; and, indeed, this must seem evident, for it is only a knowledge used according to the dictates of right reason, and morality that can purify and elevate, and to purify and ennoble should be the end of all science. "The influence of this principle is seen in the paramount 15 225 APPENDIX importance given in the Jesuit plan to religious training. It could not be otherwise with a body devoted entirely to the service of religion and the Church. " Hence, also, those rules, recurring everywhere through- out the Ratio, which direct the teacher to aid his pupils as much by his prayers for them, and by the good example of a truly religious life, as by his formal instructions. He must give them exhortations from time to time, especially on the eves of great festivals. He must lead them to habits of prayer, to daily attendance at Mass, to examination of conscience, to the frequent and devout use of the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. He must strive to induce them to practise par- ticular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and to His Blessed Mother, and for this purpose Sodalities are instituted among the students. His influence must help them to shun vicious habits of every kind, and to practise virtues worthy of a Christian. The teacher must watch over the reading of his scholars, suggesting good books, and using every effort to deter them from the use of dangerous or licentious literature. " To the methods and spirit of the Ratio Studiorum Georgetown University has always been faithful, so far as the circumstances of time and place and available material in scholars and teachers would permit ; and in this fact is found the explanation of her great success, and of the exceptionally large proportion of her graduates who have attained distin- guished positions no less in literary and learned professions than in the practical management of affairs.'* 926 LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons, Arch- bishop of Baltimore i copy. Kis Grace Michael Augustine Corrigan, Arch- bishop of New York i " Rev. John D. Whitney, S.J., President George- town College 500 copies. Rev. James J. Dougherty, D.D., New York, N. Y 20 Boston College, Boston, Mass 10 St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, Pa 6 Rev. Arthur T. Connolly, Boston, Mass. . . 5 Gonzaga College, Washington, D. C 2 Loyola College, Baltimore, Md 2 The Novitiate, Frederick, Md 2 Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass 2 Rev. Richard L. Carne, Richmond, Va. ... i Rev. J. H. Sandaal, Athens, Pa i CO py- ¥ ¥ ¥ Mr. Charles B. Kenny . . Pittsburgh, Pa. . . Mr. John Vinton Dahlgren New York, N. Y. . Mr. Charles A. Hoyt . . Brooklyn, N. Y. . Mr. Frank Rudd .... New York, N. Y. . Judge E. Boyd Faulkner . Martinsburg, W. Va Mr. Thomas E. Waggaman Washington, D. C. Mr. Wm. Michael Byrne . Wilmington, Del. 227 20 copies. 20 10 10 10 10 10 LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS Judge Emile Rost .... Mr. Wm. V. McGrath, Jr. Mr. Anthony A. Hirst . . Mr. Robert J. Collier . . Mr. Charles N. Harris . . Commissioner J. W. Ross Mr. John P. O'Brien . . Mr. Henry S. Foote . . . Mr. Talmage A. Lambert . Judge George C. Merrick . Judge Martin F. Morris . Mr. Frank F. Palms . . . Mr. John W. McFadden . Mr. T. P. Kiernan . . . Mr. Thomas Walsh . . . Mr. Henry Major . . . . Mr. John J. a' Becket . . Mr. Andrew J. Shipman . Mr. John M. Ryan , . . Mr. Michael Gavin . . . Mr. E. D. O'Brien . . . Mr, Joseph Noonan . . . Mr. John Brisben Walker . Mr. John H. Walsh . . . Mr. H. W. Clagett . . . Judge Daniel B. Lucas . . Judge Robert Ray . . . . Mr. J. R. Ross Mr. Daniel A. Boone . . Mr. H. E. Mann . . . . Mr. Clement Manly . . . Mr. C. C. Magruder . . Dr. L. A. Kengla . , . . New Orleans, La. Philadelphia, Pa. Philadelphia, Pa. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. Washington, D. C New York, N. Y. San Francisco, Cal Washington, D. C Upper Marlboro, Md Washington, D. C Detroit, Mich. . Philadelphia, Pa. Utica, N. Y. . . Brooklyn, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. Brooklyn, N. Y. Rosaryville, Md. Charlestown, W. Va Monroe, La. . Baltimore, Md. Baltimore, Md. Baltimore, Md. Winston, N. C. Upper Marlboro, Md San Francisco, Cal. 228 6 copies n t( <( t( it 4 (t 4 t( 3 a 2 ic 2 it 2 iC 2 f( 2 tf 2 it 2 t( 2 ft 2 (t 2 tt 2 it 2 (t 2 t( 2 t( 2 a 2 a CO py- LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS Mr. J. Smith Brennan . . Wilmington, Del. . . . i copy. Mr. J. J. Darlington . . . Washington, D. C. . . Dr. J. D. Morgan .... Washington, D. C. . . Dr. Daniel B. Clarke . . Washington, D. C. . . Mr. F. O. St. Clair . . . Washington, D. C. . . Mr. W. F. Byrns .... Washington, D. C. . . Mr. James H. Clarke . . Washington, D. C. . . Mr. Wilberforce Fames . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. N. Power New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Richard H. Clarke . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. John A. O'Brien . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Elijah Woodward . . New York, N. Y. . . Dr. J. T. O'Connor . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Gustave Gumprecht . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Moritz Ellinger . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. M. J. McKenna . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Sylvester L. H. Ward New York, N. Y. . . Mr. James E. Duross . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Joseph H. Fargis . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Michael Griffin . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. William Allen . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Myles J. Tierney . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. M. W. Gaston Hawks New York, N. Y. . . Colonel E. C. Machen . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. John H. Nagle . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Marcus J. McLoughlin New York, N. Y. . . Mr. William H. Down . . New York, N. Y. '. . Mr. Bryan P. Henry . . . New York, N. Y. . . Mr. Fred'k W. Longfellow New York, N. Y. . . THE END 229 'A V V :i y r. ^ '1 = t^-. v' vO o .0^ c " ' ^ ^^ 'V -^^ %^ ^ \V^ <- ^^ o ^ ^ >!:-. nX ^ V> 9- ^ * ^ > vO ,v * \0 <" nT^ . ^ <: ,. -<., "^. c^ c;:i~ '^ ■^A • » -^ .V <. ^ •' « ^ ^c .^" .-^ -^-h. ■^ ^ ^. ^^ " '■ /■ V' ( <;' U^' •/» 0'^ r ^. / C' .^:^ ■% cf*. •V « ^'^ %# .s-'; -^ r^ .-^ .0^ .S -r^ '^r^' :f * ' ^ ^ ^^ S *> * ? "/ o o 0^' ^5 -n^. .^ ^ '^ .-^^ *<-^'' -f / Y. ^ V.c^. ^^. .# A^ ,5 'V ■•>. '-P". "^f>