The late Archbishop of Baltimore was an admirable type of a class of Catholics, hitherto containing but a small number of individuals, though not without considerable influence and importance in the history of the American Church. Those of our faith who have risen to the highest distinction in this country, either in the sacred ministry or in literature, have rarely been what we may call indigenous Catholics. By birth or by race they have either not been Catholics or not been Americans. Immigration and conquest are still the main dependence of the young church of the United States. What sort of fruit its own will be, when it comes into full bearing, the world has hardly had a chance to judge. Abp. Spalding may be taken, however, as a specimen. His ancestors for several generations were American, and, so far as the record goes, they were never anything but Catholics. They came from England to America in the early days of the Maryland colony, and were possibly among the two hundred families brought over by Lord Baltimore in 1634. They lived for nearly a century and a half in St. Mary's County, and thence Benedict Spalding, the grandfather of the Archbishop, moved to Kentucky in 1790. Benedict was the leader of a little colony of Catholics who left their native state to seek their fortunes together in the wilds of what was then the far West.
They settled in the valley of the Rolling Fork River, in Central Kentucky, not far from Bardstown, where another offshoot from the Maryland church had established itself a few years before. There Martin John Spalding was born, May 23, 1810.
"Kentucky," says his biographer, "was in that day covered with dense forests and tangled woods. There was scarcely a place in its whole territory that might be dignified with the name of village, and the only roads were the almost untrodden paths of the forest, on either side of which lines of blazed trees showed the traveller the route from point to point.
"The forests were filled with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with cane and briers, which the intertwining wild pea-vine wove into an almost impenetrable network; so that, in certain parts, the only way of getting from place to place was to follow the paths worn by the migrating buffalo and other wild beasts. The Indian still hunted on the 'Dark and Bloody Ground,' or prowled about the new settlements, ready to attack them whenever an opportunity was offered. It has been stated on good authority that, from 1783 to 1790, fifteen hundred persons were killed or made captive by the Indians in Kentucky, or in migrating thither.
"In 1794, the Indians appeared on the Rolling Fork, and killed a Catholic by the name of Buckman. This produced a panic in the little settlement, which caused many Catholics to move for a time to Bardstown, where the population was more dense. But Benedict Spalding remained at home, and the Indians disappeared without committing further outrage.
"The early emigrants to Kentucky had to endure all the hardships incident to pioneer life. Even the ordinary comforts were not to be had in the wilderness in which they had taken up their abode, and they not unfrequently suffered the want of the most indispensable necessaries. To obtain salt, they had to go to the Licks, travelling often many miles through a country infested by savages. They dwelt in rudely constructed log-cabins, the windows of which were without glass, whilst the floors were of dirt, or, in the better sort of dwellings, of rough hewn boards. After the clothing which they had brought from Virginia and Maryland became unfit for use, the men, for the most part, wore buckskin and the women homespun gowns. The furniture of the cabins was of an equally simple kind. Stools did the office of chairs, the tables were made of rough boards, whilst wooden vessels served instead of plates and chinaware. A tin cup was an article of luxury. The chase supplied abundance of food. All kinds of game abounded, and, when the hunter had his rifle and a goodly supply of ammunition, he was rich as a prince. This was the school in which was trained the Kentucky rifleman, whose aim on the battle-field was certain death. The game was plainly dressed and served up on wooden platters, and, with cornbread and hominy, it made a feast which the keen appetite of honest labor and free-heartedness thought good enough for kings."
Martin was sent to a school kept by a Mr. Merrywether in a log-cabin near the Rolling Fork, and soon distinguished himself by his proficiency in mathematics. He learned the whole multiplication table in a single day when he was eight years old. At the age of eleven, he entered S. Mary's College, near Lebanon, Kentucky, being one of the first students enrolled in that institution; and by the time he was fourteen, he was acting as teacher of mathematics, and was famous throughout the country as the boy-professor. From S. Mary's he went, at the age of sixteen, to the theological seminary at Bardstown, then under the personal direction of Bp. Flaget and his coadjutor, Bp. David. Francis Patrick Kenrick was one of the professors in this home of learning and piety, and soon became Mr. Spalding's intimate friend. F. Reynolds, afterwards Bishop of Charleston, was there, and the Rev. George Elder, founder of S. Joseph's College, was another of the little company. Mr. Spalding remained at Bardstown four years, dividing his time, according to the system pursued in several of our American seminaries, between the study of theology and the instruction of boys in the college which formed a part of the institution. He paid no more attention to his favorite science of mathematics, and never developed the extraordinary powers in that branch of learning of which he had given such evidences in boyhood; but his aptitude for theology was so marked, and his personal character so amiable, that Bp. Flaget determined to send him to Rome to complete his studies at the Propaganda. It was a long and rather difficult journey in those days. He set out in April, 1830, and did not reach Rome until August. On the way, he visited Washington and Baltimore, and made the acquaintance of some notable persons, of whom he makes interesting mention in his letters of travel. He seems to have been strongly impressed by the Rev. John Hughes, afterward Archbishop of New York, whom he met in Baltimore; and he writes with patriotic ardor of the venerable Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, whose "good-will and benediction" it was his fortune to receive on the eve of departure from his native land. Our young Kentuckian, as might have been supposed from his ancestry and education, was an enthusiastic lover of his country. "I am sure," he wrote some time afterwards from Rome, "that my attachment to the institutions of my country has been increased by my absence from it." Nothing could exceed the warmth of his enthusiasm for the sacred city and all its religious associations; but he never forgot his home, and, like most of his countrymen who have been educated under the shadow of the Vatican, he came back as ardent an American as he went away.
After completing his studies with brilliant success, and sustaining a public defence of two hundred and fifty-six propositions in theology, church history, and canon law against the most formidable adversaries Rome could send to the encounter (a highly interesting description of which intellectual tilt is given by Bp. England), he returned to Kentucky with the title of doctor, and was made pastor of the Cathedral at Bardstown and professor of philosophy in the seminary. His keen appreciation of the peculiar needs of the American Church is illustrated by the zeal with which he immediately entered into the scheme of his associates in the seminary for the establishment of a Catholic periodical. The S. Joseph's College Minerva, to which he became the principal contributor, was a monthly magazine, which lived for about a year, and was then succeeded, in 1835, by the weekly Catholic Advocate, of which Dr. Spalding was chief editor, with Fathers Elder, Deluynes, and Clark for his assistants.
"With Americans, Dr. Spalding used to say, newspaper reading is a passion which amounts to a national characteristic. In the Propaganda the American students were proverbial for their eagerness to get hold of journals, whether religious or secular. Now, he argued, this craving must be satisfied. If we do not furnish our people with wholesome food, they will devour that which is noxious. He believed the American people to be frank, honest, and open to conviction. Their dislike or hatred of the church he ascribed to misapprehension or ignorance of her history and teachings. Hence he believed that if the truth were placed before them plainly, simply, and fearlessly, it could not fail to make a favorable impression upon them. He therefore thought that to the Catholic press in the United States had been given a providential mission of the greatest importance.
"Americans have not time, or will not take the trouble, as a general thing, to read heavy books of controversy. Comparatively few Protestants ever enter our churches, and, even when there, everything seems strange, and the sermon intended for Catholics most frequently fails to tell upon those who have not faith. And yet we must reach the non-Catholic mind. 'The charity of Christ urges us.' Apathy means want of faith, want of hope, want of love. Besides, the church must act intellectually as well as morally. If it is her duty to wrestle ever with the corrupt tendencies of the human heart, to point to heaven when men seek to see only this earth, to utter the indignant protest of the outraged soul when they would fain believe themselves only animals, it is not less a part of her divine mission to combat the intellectual errors of the world. We observe in the history of the church that periods of intellectual activity are almost invariably characterized by moral earnestness and religious zeal. On the other hand, when ignorance invades even the sanctuary, and priests forget to love knowledge, the blood of Christ flows sluggishly through the veins of his spouse, and to the eyes of men she seems to lose something of her divine comeliness. Indeed, there is an essential connection between the thoughts of a people and their actions, especially in an age like ours; and, if we suffer a sectarian and infidel press to control the intellect of the country, our words will fall dead and meaningless upon the hearts of our countrymen."
The Catholic press of America was then in its infancy, yet Catholic controversies were assuming a great importance. The Hughes and Breckinridge discussion was raging in Philadelphia. Protestantism, alarmed apparently at the rapid progress of the American Church, was everywhere assuming an attitude of aggression, and the country was on the eve of one of those periodical outbursts of anti-Catholic bigotry which seem fated to disturb every now and then the course of national politics. Dr. Spalding was fully sensible of the wants of the day. He wrote frequently to the Propaganda of the condition of the American Catholic press and his efforts to extend its influence and direct its attacks. His pen was incessantly busy. Though he was personally one of the most amiable and peaceful of men, he allowed no assault upon the faith to pass unnoticed; and his life for some years was almost an incessant battle. The Advocate, the United States Catholic Magazine, the Catholic Cabinet, the Metropolitan, were all enriched by his contributions. He was one of the editors of the Metropolitan for several years, and, after the death of the Advocate, he founded the Louisville Guardian, for which he continued to write until it was suspended in consequence of the troubles of the civil war. Dr. Spalding well knew that, next to a newspaper, his countrymen loved a speech. He resolved that this passion also should be turned to the advantage of the church. Bp. Flaget had removed his cathedral from Bardstown to Louisville, and Dr. Spalding, being called thither as vicar-general in 1844, began a series of popular evening lectures with the co-operation of the Rev. John McGill, afterward Bishop of Richmond. So great was the interest aroused by these discourses, and so great the crowd of Protestants who flocked to hear them, that the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist preachers of the city united in a "Protestant League," to counteract the influence of the priests by a series of lectures on the abominations of Popery. The result, of course, was exactly the reverse of what they expected. The weekly throng at the cathedral became greater than ever. The lectures assumed a more distinctly controversial character. The Catholics were roused to greater ambition. For three years Dr. Spalding continued his lectures every Sunday evening during the winter months, composing thus the essays which he afterwards revised and published under the title of Evidences of Catholicity. In a very short time he was recognized as one of the foremost Catholic apologists of the day, holding very nearly the same position which Bp. England had occupied before him, and in which the late Abp. Hughes was so highly distinguished in Philadelphia and during the earlier part of his career in New York. Dr. Spalding, however, was less of a polemic than either of those great men. His comprehension of the popular wants amounted almost to an instinct, and he felt that the objections to the church which were then commonest rested rather upon historical and political than doctrinal prejudices, and that the great work of the Catholic apologist was to dispel the ignorance of Protestants respecting the faith of the middle ages, the alliance of church and state, the influence of the Papacy upon civilization, and the harmony between Catholicity and republicanism.
"An American, he knew his countrymen, and admired them; a Catholic, he loved his religion, and was convinced of its truth. That, in his person, between faith and patriotism there was no conflict, was manifest. He loved his country all the more because he was a Catholic, and he was all the sincerer Catholic because no mere human authority was brought to influence the free offering of his soul to God's service. He accepted with cheerful courage the position in which God had placed his church in this young republic, and he asked for her, not privilege or protection, but justice, common rights under the common law; and such was his confidence in God, and in the truth of his cause, that he had no doubt as to the final issue of the struggle of religion, free and untrammelled, with the prejudices of a people who, however erroneous and mistaken their views might be, were still fair-minded and generous. Admiring much in the past, he still did not think that all was lost because that past was gone. Let the old, he thought, the feeble, the impotent complain; those to whom God gives youth and strength must act; and the church is ever young and ever strong. God is infinite strength, and of this attribute, as of his others, his spouse participates. If the latest word of philosophy, both in metaphysics and natural science, is force; if the old theory of inertia has been dropped, since the power of analysis has shown that everywhere there is action, motion, force, let it be so. The church, too, is strength. She has a force and an energy of her own. Daughter of heaven, she has brought on earth some of that divine efficacy by which all things were made. Christ is the strength of God, and from his cross he poured into the heart of his spouse, together with his life-blood, his godlike power....
"Without entering into the complex and delicate question of the proper relations of the church and state, he accepted the actual position of the church in this country with thankfulness and without mental reservation. In this matter, he neither blamed the past nor sought to dictate to the future, but put his hand to the work which God had placed before him. He saw all that was to be done, and, without stopping to reflect how little he could do, he began at once to do what he could. Taking a moderate, and possibly a just, estimate of his own ability, he considered that his mission as a writer and public teacher demanded that he should be useful and practical rather than original or profound. Hence he neither wrote nor spoke for posterity, but for the generation in which he lived. His first aim was to remove the prejudices which false history and a perverted literature had created in the minds of his countrymen. The influence of the church on society, on civilization, and on civil liberty was wholly misunderstood; her services in the cause of learning, of art, and of commerce were ignored; her undying love for the poor and the oppressed were forgotten."
During the Know-Nothing excitement, which culminated after his elevation to the episcopate (he had been consecrated coadjutor to the Bishop of Louisville in 1848, and succeeded to the see in 1850), Bp. Spalding's course was remarkable alike for prudence, charity, and courage. He used all his influence during the riots in Louisville to restrain the pardonable anger of the Catholic population; and it is the testimony of one who knew him intimately that during those trying days, when Catholics were murdered or driven from the city, and houses were burned, and the mob was threatening to destroy the cathedral, "he manifested a more than usual peace of mind. He spent the greater part of his moments of leisure in the sanctuary in prayer, and seemed through communion with God to grow unconscious of the trouble which men were seeking to bring upon the church, and which he could not but feel most keenly." His only great share in the published controversies of the period was a discussion with the late Prof. Morse as to the authenticity of an anti-Catholic phrase attributed to Lafayette—a dispute which attracted a great deal of notice while it lasted, although, of course, the subject was not of permanent interest. This, we say, was his only direct share in the polemical literature of that day; but his collection of Miscellanea, which appeared in 1855, answered all the purposes of a formal discussion without assuming a controversial tone. The essays and reviews comprised in this book were written, says the biographer, in "a free, off-hand, straight-forward style, peculiarly suited to the American taste. They covered the whole ground of what was then the Catholic controversy in the United States, and, by facts resting upon unexceptionable testimony, by arguments which appeal at once to the good sense and fair-mindedness of the reader, and by the whole spirit and temper in which they are written, furnish a defence of the church, as against the attacks of her accusers, the strength of which could not be easily broken." Bp. Spalding had none of the ambition of a scholar or a man of letters. He cared nothing for literary reputation. He set no store by the graces of a polished style. He wrote for present effect, and not for future fame; and if his essays could be read and discussed while they were wet from the press, he had no particular desire that they should hold a place on the library shelves of posterity. Whatever he wrote had an occasional—we might almost say an evanescent—appearance, because his sole impulse in writing was some immediate want of the American church. His pen was powerful, because it was always employed on timely themes, and he had a wonderfully happy art of suiting his style to the tastes and capacities of his readers. With all his scholarship and culture, he spent no great pains upon learned research, simply because he knew that, under the circumstances in which he was placed, such pains would be wasted. His books, however, will long survive the generation for which they were written; and his History of the Protestant Reformation especially, though it is ostensibly nothing more than a caustic review of D'Aubigné and other Protestant writers, is universally esteemed as one of the most valuable works in American Catholic literature.
If Dr. Spalding's single-hearted devotion to the church was conspicuous in his literary labors, it was still more remarkable in the other incidents of his busy career. The story of his life is one long record of untiring effort to advance the glory of the church and extend her conquests. The question of education always engrossed a great deal of his care. Soon after his consecration, he went to Europe to obtain the services of some teaching brotherhood, and succeeded in securing a community of Xaverians; and in the pastoral address which, as promoter of the First Provincial Council of Cincinnati, he was deputed to write to the clergy and laity of the province (1855), he spoke with great earnestness of the need of parochial schools; and time after time he returned to the subject, denouncing the system of godless education, and urging the faithful to fresh exertions and more generous expenditure for the religious instruction of their children. One result of his opposition to the common-school system was a vigorous controversy with George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, in the course of which the bishop reviewed not only the Catholic position on the school question, but the whole dispute as to the bearing of Catholic principles upon the social and political conditions of the country. The foundation of the American College at Louvain was almost entirely his work. The American College at Rome found in him a firm and active friend. In the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore he proposed the establishment of a Catholic university in this country; and we certainly can never forget the affectionate interest which he manifested in the Catholic Publication Society, aiding it by his advice, his encouragement, and his earnest recommendation to the bishops and pastors of the country, and writing the first tract which appeared from its press.
After what we have said of his devotion to the church, and the enthusiasm with which he bent every energy to her service, it can hardly be necessary to explain with what dispositions he took his place in the Vatican Council. Strangely enough, however, his relations with that venerable assemblage have been somewhat misunderstood, and his biographer has been at commendable pains to remove all mistake and obscurity.
"Archbishop Spalding had always believed in the infallibility of the Pope. This belief was a tradition with the Maryland Catholics, fostered and rendered stronger by the Jesuit fathers, who for so many years were their only religious teachers. His fathers had taken this faith with them to Kentucky. It was the doctrine which he had received from Flaget and David. Neither the Catholics of Maryland nor their descendants in Kentucky were tainted with even a tinge of Gallicanism. Indeed, it may be affirmed that, as far as we have a tradition in this country, it is thoroughly orthodox. It is the special pride of the American Church that it has not only been faithful to the Vicar of Christ, but has ever had for him the tenderest devotion.
"'Thank God,' wrote Archbishop Spalding to Cardinal Cullen in 1866, just after the close of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore—'thank God, we are Roman to the heart.' The confession of faith of both the Plenary Councils of Baltimore is as full and complete on this point as it was then possible to make it. When, after the convocation of the Vatican Council, the question, whether or not it would be opportune to define the infallibility of the Pope, first began to be discussed, Archbishop Spalding inclined to the opinion that a formal definition would be unnecessary and possibly inexpedient. He thought that Gallicanism was dead, and that Catholics everywhere believed in the infallibility of the Holy See. Hence, he argued, there could be no necessity for a formal definition. He believed, too, that much time would be consumed in conciliary debate, in case the question of fixing the precise limits of Papal infallibility should be submitted to the fathers.
"These considerations led him to think that the most proper way of proclaiming the dogma of Papal infallibility would be to condemn all errors opposed to it; and this was his opinion when he went to the council. It was, however, merely an opinion, formed, as he himself felt, without a perfect knowledge of all the circumstances in the case, and one which, upon fuller information, he might see cause to change. He was not a partisan. He had in him none of the stuff out of which partisans are made. He was simply a Catholic bishop, who had never belonged to a party either in the church or out of it.
"On the 27th of March, 1869, eight months before the assembling of the council, he wrote as follows to a distinguished theologian who was at that time in Rome:
"'I believe firmly the infallibility of the Pope, but incline to think its formal definition unnecessary and perhaps inexpedient, not only for the reasons which you allege, but also on account of the difficulty of fixing the precise limits of doctrinal decisions. Where they are formal, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception, there is no difficulty. But are all the declarations of encyclicals, allocutions, and similar documents to be received as doctrinal definitions? And what about the decisions of congregations, confirmed by the Pope?'
"And again, in August, he wrote:
"'While maintaining the high Roman ground of orthodoxy, I caution much prudence in framing constitutions.'
"In both these letters, Archbishop Spalding seems to take for granted that a definition will be made; and he simply indicates his preference for an implicit rather than a formal definition.
"In August, 1869, two months before leaving for the council, he wrote to Cardinal Barnabo, giving his views on various subjects which he supposed would be brought before the fathers. One of these he designates as 'The Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff teaching ex cathedra.' 'I have not,' he says, 'the least doubt of this infallibility, and there are very few bishops who do doubt of it. The only question which may, perhaps, arise will relate to the utility, advisability, and necessity of making an explicit definition in the council. It will have to be considered whether a definition of this kind would not be likely to excite controversies now slumbering and almost extinct; whether an implicit definition—an amplification of that of the Council of Florence—which would define the dogma without using the word, would not be more opportune and of greater service to the cause of the church.
"'Should the fathers deem it expedient to make a formal definition, its limits should be accurately marked, and, in the accompanying doctrinal exposition, statement should be made whether and how far, in the intention of the fathers, this infallibility should be extended to pontifical letters, allocutions, encyclicals, bulls, and other documents of this nature.'
"This letter affords sufficient evidence that Archbishop Spalding had all along contemplated the contingency of an explicit definition, and that he did not look upon it with any alarm. In fact, he held that a definition, either implicit or explicit, was necessary. If he did not, in the beginning, advocate a formal definition, he was still less in favor of abstaining from the unmistakable affirmation of the faith of the church on this point."
He expressed his views more fully in a postulatum drawn up after his arrival in Rome—a document asserting the infallibility of the Pope in the most unmistakable manner, but suggesting an implicit and indirect instead of an explicit and direct definition, because such a course would be likely to command "the approval of almost all the fathers, and would be confirmed by their quasi-unanimous suffrage." Soon after this memorial was drawn up, Abp. Spalding was made a member of the committee of twelve cardinals and fourteen prelates appointed by the Holy Father to consider all postulata before they were brought before the council, and he consequently refrained through delicacy from pressing the consideration of his own scheme; but it was energetically discussed in various quarters, and Abp. Spalding came to be looked upon as a leader of the so-called "third party," which was supposed to hold a position between the opportunists and the non-opportunists in the council. Meanwhile, it became evident to the archbishop that, to quote his own language, but two courses lay before the fathers—either to place themselves openly on the side of the Pope, or on that of the opposition; and he wrote a letter to Bp. Dupanloup, repudiating the false construction which had been placed upon his postulatum, and the false inferences drawn from it, and declaring himself emphatically in favor of the plainest possible definition of the doctrine. "When the history of the Vatican Council comes to be written," says an English author, "not many names will be written with more honor than that of the wise and prudent Archbishop of Baltimore; nor will any extra-conciliary document be recorded in future generations with deeper satisfaction or warmer gratitude than the letter in which Mgr. Spalding vindicated himself and his colleagues from all complicity with Gallican doctrines and intrigues." In a pastoral address to his flock, written immediately after the definition, the archbishop made a very clear statement of the doctrine, and pointed out some of its consequences. He answered the objection that it was in conflict with civil and political liberty, which he believed could flourish only under the shadow of the altar and the cross, and he reminded his people that the same theories of government upon which the American republic is founded were taught by the Catholic schoolmen three hundred years before Washington was born.
We have not attempted, in this brief survey of the character of the late Archbishop of Baltimore, to sketch the incidents of his episcopate—and, indeed, they were very few—or even to enumerate the most important works which occupied his busy brain. Our purpose has rather been to select from the valuable pages before us a few indications of those peculiar qualities of mind which made him pre-eminently a representative of the young and vigorous American Church, so strong in the faith, so ardent in attachment to the Holy See, so reverent of Catholic tradition, and withal so quick to adapt itself to the special wants of a free and growing country. We would gladly have paused for a little while over the attractive story of Bp. Spalding's early pastoral peregrinations through the primitive settlements of Kentucky, his charity, his gentleness, his love for children, the touching scenes when he visited the orphan asylums, in which he took such a tender interest, or the beautiful picture of the great preacher and prelate sitting humbly in the school-room with the little ones about his knees. All this would draw us too far away from our proper subject; but we must allow ourselves one extract from the few scattered passages in which the biographer has told us of his private life:
"I shall never forget the pleasant journeys which, when quite a small boy, I had the happiness to make with him. His merry laugh, that might have been that of a child who had never known a sorrow or a care, the simple and naïve way he had of listening to the prattle of children, the whole expression of the countenance showing a soul at rest and happy in the work which he was doing, are still present to my mind, like the remembrance of flowers and sunshine. And I remember, too, with what warmth, and reverence, and love he was received everywhere, and how his presence was never connected in my mind with anything morose or severe. Eyes that seemed to have looked for his coming grew brighter when he had come; and when he was gone, it was like the ceasing of sweet music which one would wish to hear always, but which, even when hushed, keeps playing on in the soul, attuning it to gentler moods and higher thoughts. He was full of human sympathies and human ways. The purple of the bishop never hid the man; nor did he, because he belonged to the supernatural order, cease to be natural. There was, indeed, a certain elegance and refinement about him which no one could fail to perceive, the true breeding of a gentleman; but withal he was as plain as the simplest Kentucky farmer. He rarely talked about learned things; and when he did, he did not talk in a learned way. He possessed naturally remarkable powers of adaptation, which enabled him to feel perfectly at ease in circumstances and companies the most dissimilar. There was not a poor negro in his whole diocese with whom he was not willing to talk about anything that could be of advantage to him. I remember particularly how kindly he used to speak to the old servants of his father, who had known him as a child. He had a special sympathy with this whole race, and I have known him, whilst Archbishop of Baltimore, to take the trouble to write a long letter to an old negro in Kentucky who had consulted him concerning his own little affairs.
"He frequently wrote to children ten or twelve years old, from whom he had received letters. In company where there were children, he never failed to devote himself to their amusement, even to the forgetfulness of the claims of more important persons. When at home, he usually passed the forenoon in writing, or in receiving those who called to see him on matters of business. After dinner, he spent some time in conversation, which he always enjoyed, then withdrew to his room to say vespers, with matins and lauds for the following day. In summer, he kept up an old Roman habit of taking a short repose in the afternoon. He would then walk out, calling in here and there to visit some school or convent, or to spend a few moments with some Catholic family. On the street, he would stop to greet, with a few pleasant words, almost every acquaintance he chanced to meet. Frequently he would remain to tea at the house of a friend, after which he returned to his room to write or read until the hour for retiring for the night arrived. The rule in his house was, that every one should be in at ten o'clock, when the door was locked. Apart from this regulation, he never interfered with the tastes or hours of the priests of his household. In the cathedral, he had his own confessional, and, when at home, he was generally found there on Saturday afternoon; and it was his custom to preach at the late Mass on Sunday."
The Rev. F. Spalding, to whom the task of writing this biography was committed by the archbishop's literary executor, had the advantage of a somewhat intimate knowledge of his distinguished uncle, and of free access to manuscript sources of information. He has done his work ably and conscientiously, with an accurate judgment of the salient points in the story, and no slight skill in the arrangement of his abundant materials. His style is simple and unaffected, and his whole book, from the first chapter to the last, is thoroughly readable; while, as a contribution to the ecclesiastical history of the United States, its value is of course very considerable.
As a biography of an able and successful prelate, whose career was most honorable and useful—of a man who was virtuous and holy from his childhood to his grave, and who has left a bright example of loyalty to God and the holy faith of Christ in a corrupt age—it is of greater value than any similar work which has hitherto been published in this country. This great and holy prelate is worthy to be classed among those noble and illustrious rulers of the church in past ages and the present whose history is an ornament to ecclesiastical annals. Apart from his career as a bishop in the administration of the important churches committed to his care, his share in the successful issue of the first session of the Vatican Council and in that most auspicious event, the definition of the infallibility of the Pope, entitles him to the perpetual remembrance, not only of the American Church, on which he reflected so much lustre, but of the Catholics of the world. The history of his pure and holy life, so highly marked by devotion, integrity, fidelity, and singleness of high purpose, and closing with a death so beautiful, ought to produce, as we hope it will, a powerful and stimulating effect upon the studious Catholic youth of our country.
It is a great good fortune to a man whose life is worth writing to find an affectionate, just, and skilful biographer. In this respect Abp. Spalding has been more fortunate than those other great ornaments of the American hierarchy, England and Kenrick; though we hope the lack may yet be supplied in the case of these two prelates. We have all along expected that this biography would become very soon one of the most popular, widely circulated, and useful books which has ever issued from the American Catholic press; and we feel confident that our expectation will not be unfulfilled.
[164] The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. By J. L. Spalding, S.T.L. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 8vo, p. 468.