CATHOLIC CHARMS.* 'furs is a very painful book. Nothing can

be more painful to earnest men, men who can see the grandeur in Roman Catholi- cism, than to read a record of the religious feeling wasted on the trivial and feeble superstitions of charms and amulets, which even Catholics would admit are not of the essence of religion, and may be ruinous to the piety of those who interpose them between themselves and the care of God. What is the difference between those amulets and pagan charms ? M. Parfait quotes a passage from Du Chaillu's Equatorial Africa which might almost have served as the text of his book. Among the negroes, writes the distinguished traveller, the fetishes, mondas, or grigris (the words are identical in meaning) "inspire a blind faith. They are generally worn around the neck or the body. Each grigri has a special virtue. One preserves you from disease, another emboldens the heart of the huntsman or the warrior ; this cures barrenness, that causes milk to abound in the breast of the mother. An enchanted leopard's skin hung to a warrior's belt renders him invulnerable by the lance ; if he wears an iron chain about his neck he is bullet-proof. Should the charm happen

• to fail, the faith of the believer is not shaken." Yet every one of these fetishes has its exact counterpart in the Ultramontane Arsenal of Devotion. A girdle of St. Joseph, a scapulary of Mount Carmel, secures the possessor against disease and death. The wearer of a fac-simile, duly blessed, of a certain garment of the Virgin preserved at Chartres, need fear neither iron nor steel, so that in case of a duel the combatant who is provided with this infallible buckler "should give his adversary notice of it, as the odds are no longer equal." It is recorded that at Novara a pious soldier, before going into action, "seized his scapulary and fastened part to each arm, then put into his mouth a medal which he always wore, saying, "If I die, -I will die in the arms of Mary." Needless to say that of all his company be alone re- mained unwounded. The girdle of St. Joseph, and several other Catholic amulets, are certain specifics against barrenness and the perils of child-birth. In a word, the chief difference between the fetishes of the negro African and the amulets of the French Catholic is that the latter are by far the more elaborate. The principle is absolutely the same in both cases.

Before giving a few specimens of the contents of the book before us, we must speak briefly of its scope and method. It is a selection, verified with the most precise references and furnished with a running commentary by M. Parfait, from many of the most popular works of the new Ultramontane propaganda,—

• Vtirsenta de ia Devotion: Notes pour Bet rir a i'metoire des Superstitions. Par Paul Parrs, Pens; Dome:.

works which have the sanction of bishops and archbishops, cardinals, and the Pope himself. A list of documents to be consulted, which is given at the end of the book, will enable the reader, if his curiosity impel him, to carry his researches further.

But this revelation of their nature will probably suffice him. The student of politics will find here the explanation, though not the justification, of the bitterness with which so many liberal and large-minded Frenchmen oppose "freedom of education" in the Jesuit sense. Or if the reader believe, with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that a transformed Catholicism can alone secure the moral and religious future of mankind, this book will be to him a sore discouragement, as showing how far, and increasingly farther, is the Catholic Church from any likelihood of such transformation, and how her present course must infallibly alienate from her more and more the most religious and the most enlightened minds. But if he take it up with no such hopes, he will find it a perfect preserve of legends, all the more piquant because they are, in great part, a survival or revival of the beliefs of past ages, while wholly wanting in the naiveté and unconsciousness of the traditional miracles of St. Dunstan or St. Thomas of Canterbury. The cynic will speedily detect in them the ring of false metal, and will recognise between them and their medieval prototypes the same difference as exists between the self-con- scious airs of grown-up simplesse and the fresh simplicity of a child. M. Parfait is fully justified in describing his book as " Notes to Serve for the History of Superstitions," and when that history comes to be written, not the least curious of its pages will be filled with the vagaries of nineteenth-century Ultrainontanism. His title was suggested by a little work compiled by a Jesuit father, and entitled Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the Triumph of the Church and of France, now in its sixty-first edition. In it "the work of the Sacred Heart" is represented as a crusade, and the new crusaders have the Crucifix for their standard, the image of the Sacred Heart for their buckler, the scapulary for a breast- plate, the medal of the Immaculate Conception for a decoration, and the chaplet for their artillery.

In the front rank of the weapons here enumerated are "pious waters," and foremost among these are the waters of Lourdes and of La Salette, with their monthly Annals, chronicling strange miracles of healing. These waters, besides curing paralysis, fevers, cholera, and so forth, raising the dead to life, bringing children into the world, and enabling the dying, like Falstaff, to make a good end, possess one quality which should render them very popular in this examiner-ridden country :—

" A very large number of young people attribute to the protection of Our Lady of Lourdes their success, sometimes unhoped for, in examina- tions. The pupils of a great Catholic college had'oome there to com- mend themselves in a very special manner; they had even dipped their pens in the miraculous fountain. The first twenty-two who presented themselves all passed, and several with honourable mention."

Medals, statues, and statuettes of St. Joseph, and prayers to the holy patriarch are also found more efficacious in such cases than the most successful "coach."

The superstition which attaches to water from the Jordan a special value for baptismal purposes is not wholly unknown in

exalted circles in this country. But there is no need to go so far afield, for Mgr. Gaume, protonotary apostolic, has lately re- habilitated the old-fashioned holy-water, which, as our readers are doubtless aware, is specially efficacious in cases of "possession."

Here is his pathetic lament over the neglect with which it was long regarded :— " Every year what is called the beau monde, and which I have the bad-taste not to find such, hastens, when the season is come, to leave the towns and their pleasures, and goes off to spend part of the slimmer at the waters. Sea-wa6rs, waters of Vichy, of Barr6ges, of Mils, of Bourbonne, of Plombieres [a cut, M. Parfait half hints, at M. Veuillot, of the Univers], of Ems, of Baden, waters purgative, sulphareoua, ferrugineous, it knows them all, it esteems them all. To all it runs, and runs again ; only the most salutary, holy-water, is neither known, nor sought after, nor employed."

Whatever be the origin of holy-water—and the author indulges In a somewhat remarkable piece of exegesis on the subject—cer- tain it is that tenants of haunted houses, unsuccessful anglers, passengers caught in a storm without umbrellas, the victims of a plague of locusts or caterpillars, of potato-blight or vine-disease, soldiers about to face a storm of bullets, the owners of tables that will insist on pirouetting, and of chairs under which the Enemy of Souls has secreted himself, will find it to answer all their require- ments. There is a superfine variety brewed by the Jesuit fathers, and called the holy-water of St. Ignatius, which is of extraordinary

virtue in epidemics. At Bruges, during a terrible outbreak of cholera, more than fifty casks were blessed in one week and set &broach in the streets, with truly magical results. A few drops

sufficed to put to shame all the efforts of the most renowned physicians. Indeed, the medical profession on its own ground generally comes off very badly in comparison with the ecclesiasti- cal. "Is the Church less skilful," asks Mgr. Gaume, with an air of triumph which is, under the circumstances, perfectly justifiable, "is the Church less skilful than the Academy of Medicine ?" It should be added that all these waters are for external or internal application, as preferred, and that faith is by no means neces- sary on the part of the patient.

Pictures of sacred subjects are but little less efficacious. The shop-windows of religious publishers in French towns are full of grotesque pictures of all manner of hearts—the Sacred Heart, and the hearts of Mary and Joseph. A stranger cultus still threatens to spring up—that of the " Immaculate Bowels of Mary "and of the Divine Hands. But at present hearts are more in vogue. We must find room for one instance of the miraculous effects of a mere picture. A sick man lay dying, his extremities were already cold, when the happy thought occurred to his son of fetching a simple portrait of Pius IX., with his signature "lithographed only

"Scarcely had Charles placed the portrait of the Pope on the breast and lips of his father, who could no longer swallow even water, when suddenly the dying man awoke from a sleep which seemed to be his Wit. Some hours after, to the great surprise of every one, Charles ex- cepted, he wakes tip, asks for something to eat, and devours two wings of a chicken, and on his asking for a third, the astonished servant replied, Monsieur, ii n'y en a quo deux dans In bête."

The main, though by no means the only object of another class of amulets, rosaries, and chaplets—the chaplet being a

diminutive rosary—is to secure indulgences for yourself and the souls of departed friends. In the eyes of one pious author, writes M. Parfait, "each day of one's life is a cycle of four-and- twenty hours, which the wise man should employ exclusively in gaining indulgences,"—and this seems to us the most melancholy side of the whole business. The life which ought to be given to God is wasted in this miserable machinery for earning remissions from purgatory. Numerous chaplets are constructed with a view of gaining the greatest number of indulgences in the shortest possible time, and by a skilful selection of the tersest and most highly-privileged prayers, sixty years' immunity from the pains of purgatory may, it is alleged, be won in four minutes. The varieties of chaplets are infinite. Be- side the original rosary of St. Dominic, among the most effi-

cacious are those of St. Bridget (our readers may have that of St. Dominic Bridgetted), of the Seven Dolours, of the Seven Joys, of the Precious Blood, of the Five Wounds, of the Im- maculate Conception, of the Sacred Heart (consisting of five large grains, in honour of the Five Wounds, and thirty-three

small grains, "in honour of the thirty-three years during which Mary reigned here below in a visible manner over the Heart of her Divine Son "), of Pardons (conferring indulgences to the extent of 11,340 years and 235 days), of the Souls in Purgatory (98 years odd), of the Twenty-Six Japanese Martyrs (13,500 days), and so forth. But the queen of chaplets is the Apostolic, the wearer of which gains a plenary indulgence at one stroke. Beside its therapeutic and spiritual virtues, the chaplet, it is asserted, won the battle of Lepanto for the Cross against the Crescent.

The scapulary is as useful in most diseases as the chaplet. But it has one speciality—it is declared unrivalled as an extineteur. When a certain fire was at its height, the devout wearer of a scapulary approached, and hurled his amulet into the midst of the blaze, "at the same instant, a wreath of flames was seen to rise from the midst of the fire to a height of fifteen feet, then to fall back

on itself, die away, and be altogether extinguished. The next day the scapulary was found in the rubbish intact, and without any injury, although it smelt of fire." Each variety of scapulary, red, blue, white, and brown, has its special properties, and a plan, highly recommended by certain eeclesiastics, is to wear several, one on the top of the other, for it is alleged, " on n'est jamais trop riche en moyens de saint." The wearers of the scapulary of Mount Carmel are, we are told, delivered from purgatory by the Virgin

on the first Saturday after their death, and a pious writer affirms that the souls of the Brethren of Carmel have been seen on that day winging their flight towards heaven. Medals yield in importance to no class of charms. The Miraculous Medal, we are assured, "is worn, not only by Catholics, but also by indifferent Christians, obstinate sinners, impious men, Protestants, Jews, and even Turks," its speciality being the restoration of harmony in divided families. The medal of St. Joseph runs the scapulary hard, and one or more, it is declared, should always be placed in the founda- tions of a building. If one be introduced secretly under the pil- low of a sick Voltairean, he will speedily call for a priest, and die in the odour of sanctity. But even the medal of St. Joseph is in- ferior to that of St. Benedict, which derives its virtues from the

cross stamped upon it, and the sign of the cross—" the arm of precision against Satan and his angels "—with which it is familiarly associated. The virtue of this medal is "domestic

protection." It restores dead trees to life, extinguishes fires, pre. vents suburban villa residences from collapsing, cures horses and cows of pneumonia, brings to reason refractory fowls that will not lay, is an approved specific against drunkenness and family jars, against jibbing horses and a plague of fleas. For instance, we are

told—and there is not wanting a touch of pathetic simplicity about this story—how a medal of the glorious patriarch cured a cat of the mange :—

" The visitor advised her to plunge daily the medal of St. Benedict into the vessel of water which she was accustomed to place within the cat's reach for her to drink at. The lady objected that she had already thought of it, but that, in the fear of profaning a holy thing by employ- ing it for so low a use, she had abstained from doing so. The visitor replied that the virtue of the cross having rehabilitated the whole creation, it might be applied to all the beings hich are useful to man. 'Besides,' he added, 'God knows well that our intention is pare, and that we only desire His glory; if He approve us, He will cure the poor beast, if not, she will remain ill, and nothing else will come of it.' Thereupon he plunged the medal into the basin of water, and recom- mended the person to continue doing so till the animal was completely cured. A few days after, the mange had entirely disappeared."

We must content ourselves with a bare mention of a host of other amulets. The girdles of St. Francis and St. Joseph, statues and statuettes of the Virgin and various saints, chains of St. Peter, each has its own special functions to fulfil. There is an absurd story telling how a watch with a broken main-spring was repaired (in a rather unworkmanlike manner) by being laid at the feet of a statue of St. Joseph. Cornets of St. Hubert which have touched the miraculous stole of the saint cure dogs of hydrophobia, pro- vided that one of the family recite, during nine consecutive days, five paters and ayes to the honour of God, of His glorious

Mother, and of St. Hubert. During all this time, the animal must be given every day, "before all other food, a piece of bread

blessed by a priest in honour of St. Hubert." The cast-off ward- robe of Pius IX. has not even waited for his canonisation. A fragment of his old cassock or a worn-out biretta is the most certain remedy yet discovered for diseases of the spinal marrow, and his stocking has wrought an instantaneous cure in a bad case of paralysis. Wax candles blessed on Candlemas Day, or lamps hung before an altar or image of the Madonna, disperse tempests, quell the rage of wild beasts, and even restore the

dead to life. Vows, the Agnus Dei, special prayers, novenas or prayers repeated for nine consecutive days, if possible in combi- nation with a few drops daily of water from the grotto of Lourdes, —all these are dealt with in special chapters. The following

conditional vow, addressed to St. Joseph, is typical :—

" You will not be angry if we make certain conditions with yen. Your statue shall not remain placed in the chapel, and shall even con- tinue veiled until our father's return; but also, if you bring him back as we hope, we will execute the following promises :—(l) The in- auguration of your statue shall be preceded by a procession; (2) two wax-tapers shall barn continually before your image in the chapel until the missionary's return; (3) a mass shall be celebrated in your honour one Wednesday in each month for a year ; (4) a thousand medals bearing your effigy shall be distributed ; (5) lastly, this fact shall be inserted in the Propagator."

The Propagator, it should be explained, is the organ of Father Huguet, who has a great veneration for St. Joseph. St. Joseph, in return, is a great patron of the Propagator, and regards a sub-

scriber to that paper as paying a compliment to himself. But in place of promises to their heavenly advocates, some suppliants employ threats, and apparently find them as efficacious :-

"' When I came to pray in your church for the conversion of my grandmother,' writes a devout believer to the cure of Notre Dame des Victoires, 'I followed the advice of the sub-director of the archiconfra- ternity ; I threatened our Lady of Victories to tell all my friends, if I was not heard, that I had implored her in vain. She did not leave me the trouble, for after my second prayer I obtained what I asked."

This believer was more successful than some of the devout, for we read of a prelate who prayed to Our Lady for twenty years before his request was granted. After this we are not surprised that one sick person only "triumphed over the apparent resistance of her celestial protector" during her seventeenth novena. Not content with addressing their prayers to all the Saints of the Catholic Pantheon, the faithful sometimes carry on a correspondence in form with their patrons. St. Joseph appears to get the lion's share of these letters, and some of his simpler correspondents express their readiness to grant him two or three days' law, considering the vast mass of petitions which reach him from all parts

of the world. A little boy writes to Mary :—

"My Good Mother,—In your honour I have deprived myself of dessert forty times, of a dish thirty times, of drink several times. I have suffered cold and insults for the love of you. I have kept silence, the modesty of the eyes. I have not put my hands in my pockets, by way of mortification, for the love of you."

Another correspondent, who had lost a valuable watch, applies successfully to "St. Joseph, inhabitant of the celestial country," begging him to help her in its recovery. Her postscript is very

quaint :—" P.S.—I forgot to tell you that the image of your august Spouse is engraved on this watch, and that I am confident that you will not be willing to leave this celestial image in impious hands."

Now, it seems to us that if M. Parfait has really read his authorities well, and not misdescribed the total effect of this

strange mass of superstition, he has introduced us to the most painful evidence of the religious decadence of Roman Catholicism that can be conceived. How is it possible to give the heart to God, when religion is thus turned into a mass of childish experi- ments on the efficacy of arbitrary charms which it is supposed that God or His creatures have instituted for the security of our pleasures and the extinction of our troubles ? Hardly one of the charms we have quoted involves any moral or spiritual act, and some of them are openly alleged to be as efficacious for securing childish enjoyments as for any better purpose. Quite apart from the intellectual arbitrariness of these superstitions, which appear to reduce the system of Nature to a world modelled on the prin- ciple of fairy-stories, is it possible that a Church which sanctions such a cultus as this can even hope to regain her former influence in a land which desires to worship God and to know God, and would rather suffer according to His will, than be saved from small trials by gambling after this fashion with so-called religious spells?