Every one agrees that “business is bad”; but how many give themselves the trouble to look for the causes of this persistent stagnation? Some are distressed, others astonished, by it. The calmer observers—those who are not dismayed beyond measure by a deceptive view from the bank of the river of fortune—seek for comparisons in the crises of 1837, 1848, and 1866.

A gifted writer, who conducts with deserved success a technical magazine of our country, the “Monitor of Material Interests” (Le Moniteur des Intérêts Matériels), has examined this interesting subject in a series of remarkable articles. M. George de Laveleye—who must not be confounded with his relative, the professor at Liege—maintains that the present crisis is not transient. He attributes to it a permanent character. If the reader will follow attentively the summary that we are about to give of the argument of M. De Laveleye, he will not be too alarmed at his conclusion.

Generally, these crises have had the effect of rarefying the capital by which the great industrial enterprises were fed; these, then, deprived of the food which enabled them to live, seemed to hesitate; then they shook and fell. But to-day what do we see? Entirely the reverse. Money, floating capital, unused funds, are more abundant than ever; the cash-boxes overflow; the large banks literally sweat with gold; and this excess, this plethora of unemployed capital causes the public funds to advance and the price of money to decrease. It is business that is wanting; it is the employment of capital that is in default.

Whence comes this accumulation of savings and this inertia of capital, and how does it happen that new and tempting enterprises do not attract it, notwithstanding its apparently low price? M. De Laveleye thus instructs us:

“All these tempests,” says he, speaking of the crises of 1837, 1848, 1857, and 1866, “which reproduced themselves at almost equal intervals, were periods of settlement which marked the impatience of the industrial speculation over-excited during a period of forty years; each time that it had abused credit, each time that there was a disproportion between the engagements entered upon and the available resources, industrial, commercial, and financial Europe received a warning; credit vanished suddenly; there was a series of commercial or industrial failures; there was a violent contraction in the stock exchanges and in business; there was a slackening of new enterprises or of those already in hand; there were more losses than one could reckon. But at each of these momentary and transitory crises a remedy was very quickly found. Thus we had free trade and the upward movement of commercial relations; we had the play of free joint-stock companies; we had the war of secession, which, from a European point of view, was a powerful derivative; finally, during this long period we had the discovery of gold and silver mines, coming annually to swell the stock of metal at the disposal of business and of speculation. Thus these crises were not of long duration. It sufficed to let the overworked market have time to assimilate the stocks of paper or of merchandise from which it suffered, to re-establish the equilibrium between the current debts, circulating capital and credit, and immediately industrial and commercial Europe resumed her progressive march; the new enterprises which presented themselves obtained public favor; the warning was forgotten; the play of credit renewed itself; and after a period of enforced quiet, which never exceeded three years, we felt vibrating anew that febrile activity which, in forty years, has caused a veritable transformation of the world.”

This was always the course of these crises in the past. To-day there is nothing like this; on the contrary, “if there be a disproportion between undertakings and resources, it is absolutely the reverse of that which marked the preceding crises: the undertakings are almost null, and the resources are exaggerated.”

Why? Because the present crisis is not merely a transitional crisis: it is a permanent, final one; the origin of the evil from which the industry and the commerce of Europe suffer is to be traced to other causes than those commonly attributed to it. The true origin of the crisis, says M. De Laveleye, is the withdrawal of capital from the operations in which it had been employed, and the inactivity and unproductiveness to which it has been since doomed. At the beginning of the crisis of 1873 a general panic was produced among the lenders, whose confidence was profoundly shaken, and they exerted themselves all at once to realize their money. The bankers and the money-lenders of Europe were seized, by a unanimous accord, with a desire to have their capital, or that which remained of it, in their hands—“to see their money again,” as M. De Laveleye says. They realized their foreign securities; they retired en masse from the industrial enterprises in which they were engaged abroad; and, above all, they cut off credit. The countries and the establishments which lived on credit and on outside capital saw their resources cut off and suspended their activity, believing, however, that the crisis would be only temporary. The three principal lending countries—England, France, and Holland—realized their money, at the price of heavy losses on more than one occasion; and, under the influence of the panic, they contented themselves with keeping it under lock and key in their cash-boxes. From this resulted a great and rapid decline in the rate of interest. Bank paper fell to one per cent., and the lenders upon short bills, with incontestable securities, got but a half per cent. This was the result of the return of the capital drawn back from the foreign countries to which it had been lent; the capitalists had but one ambition: they wished to be certain that their money was running no risk whatever.

The result of all this was that, in every instance where they lived on borrowed capital, industrial works were stopped and all sorts of enterprises were cut short. On the other hand, a plethora of capital was produced among those who had realized, and who could no longer find means to employ their funds with profit. This is the explanation and the first characteristic of the present crisis—the accumulation of capital and the low price for the use of money.

The accumulation is general; but it is principally in the rich countries, like England and France, that this excess was produced. The same phenomenon, however, also showed itself in Austria, Italy, Sweden, etc.—countries which live in part upon foreign capital. On the other hand, the countries which depended entirely upon this capital—Turkey, Egypt, Peru, etc.—were crippled, as they were deprived of the resources which credit had previously placed at their disposal.

Thus, then, nothing happened as in the preceding crises, and from 1873 to 1877 all has been new, the phenomena themselves and their causes. There would be reason for surprise and bewilderment at this if one did not admit, with M. De Laveleye, that only now has ceased the industrial and speculative movement which has led Europe for forty years to send her money abroad. New employments for capital are very nearly exhausted; new sources of riches have been exploited as much as they can be. The movement of the last forty years, especially active since 1851, is not merely arrested for a moment to resume its march once more, as in the previous crises; it is definitely terminated.

The design of the past movement was the economical furnishing of Europe and of the world: and this equipment is completed, or nearly so. But in giving proof of this assertion and seeking for its justification, M. De Laveleye supplies a very clear account of the direct and specific causes of the crisis through which we are passing.

“Western Europe,” he says—“and by this generic expression we mean Europe rich in capital and feeding great foreign enterprises—Western Europe has made a rude return upon herself. She has retaken her money; she has made an inventory of what she possessed abroad, and she shows herself solicitous to preserve, to keep by her, this scattered wealth. The first element of the force of progress, then, is in default; the money is wanting; it is hidden; it is refused. Concurrently, what have the borrowing countries done since 1873? They have abandoned the game and ceased an impossible struggle, which consisted in paying to Western Europe a revenue which was not produced by the soil or by practicable enterprises. They have become bankrupt, and the crisis in their government funds has opened the eyes of the two champions. Each perceived that he was ruined: the borrower by becoming indebted without sufficient motive; the lender not only by lending his capital upon illusory guarantees, but by receiving finally only a part of it, under the form of arrearages.”

This is the second cause. As for the third:

“It is the depreciation of silver, due to the incapacity and the improvidence of the Western states, which imagined they could make a good stroke of political economy by allowing one of the agents of circulation to debase itself.

“Principal possessors of the stock of gold these states have obeyed an egoistic thought in seconding the movement for a single metal as currency—gold; a movement which had for its first effect an increase in the relative value of their metallic circulation. But they took no note of another very grave consequence of this disturbance of equilibrium.

“When a nominal money submits to variations in value as great as those which have been noted in silver, it becomes provisionally inapt for its functions. Commercial enterprises, based upon this metal, become extremely dangerous, and are no longer attempted by those who wish to operate only with the security attached to studied and matured plans. But all the commerce with the East is based upon silver, which, for these countries, is the nominal money. When the value of silver, and, following it, the course of exchange, became subject to oscillations of ten and fifteen per cent., there was no longer any security for international commerce. The cost of despatching and of selling raw material or manufactured goods could no longer be precisely fixed; and the most careful merchant became a speculator in spite of himself. He then stopped, and by that very act he added to the difficulty of the situation. The fall in the value of silver broke the charm exercised by the constant augmentation of the stock of metals put at the disposal of international enterprises.

“This is the third element in the advance of progress which has disappeared in its turn; and we may thus sum up:

“1. The lenders are not willing, provisionally, to enter upon new schemes.

“2. The borrowers, weary or feeble, are incapable of giving birth to new illusions.

“3. The monetary crisis has added its action to these two negative elements.

“So that to-day, after proper deliberation, people decide to do nothing; or, at least, to do nothing under the former conditions of international enterprises.”

But is it admissible that we shall do nothing henceforth, and that the present situation will prolong itself indefinitely? No, assuredly; and, so far as this goes, M. De Laveleye recognizes with every one that the stagnation of business cannot endure, that a reaction is inevitable, and that it will come in its time.

“But,” he hastens to add, “this return to activity will not be produced at all in the form known and hoped for by those who have seen the revivals of speculation after the crises of 1837, 1857, and 1866; and this for the logical reason that the industrial, commercial, financial, and speculative activity of the middle of this century has had for its base and aim the economical furnishing of the world (l’outillage économique du monde), and that this furnishing is very nearly completed.

“The base and the object of the former activity will no longer exist, or scarcely so. We must, then, wait for a profound modification in the form and conditions of this activity.

“This is why we have called the present crisis a permanent, a final crisis”—une crise définitive.

He goes on to give his reasons for this idea, that the economical furnishing of the world is finished, or so far advanced that henceforth we can expect no such development as we have seen in the past:

“In Holland the great works are done: the drains are continued; Amsterdam is connected with the sea; international communications are established.

“In Italy, in Spain, the great arteries are provided with iron roads, and the products of their working are notoriously below what one could reckon as remuneration upon the capital. The seaports, the mines, are sufficiently provided for in these countries; the towns, there as elsewhere, have their markets, their water and gas works, their new quarters, their tramways.

“As for the Pyrenees, they are crossed; the Alps also; and after the tunnel already made by Mont Cenis toward France, the road in construction through Saint-Gothard toward Germany, and the very sufficient pass through the Brenner toward Austria, industrial activity will no longer find any occupation in this quarter.

“In Russia the principal railroad lines are completed.

“The railway system of Prussia is finished, and in that country industry is so well furnished that she is murdered with her own tools; the means of production and of transportation are too vast, and in evident disproportion to the possible business of the country.

“Austria is supplied, and there it would be rash to go further.

“Turkey has railroads. It has been difficult enough to construct them; one does not speak of them willingly.

“The United States have borrowed enough from us to establish their system; it is compact and well provided with lines, even opposition lines. That country has regained its lost time; it is necessary to watch its steps now that it is furnished sufficiently to put itself in competition with the industry of Western Europe.

“The Isthmus of Suez is opened.

“The transatlantic cables are laid.

“The transformation in the merchant marine is three-fourths completed; the sailing ship has disappeared, or at least is relegated to the second place; the steamers have the principal trade.

“On whatever side we turn our eyes we see these accomplished results of the work of the last forty years. These results may not be always excellent from the financial point of view; many errors have been brought out, and by the side of some brilliant exceptions we must count a number of deceptions for the capitalists engaged, and for the governments which have become needy and insolvent. But, whatever may be the financial result, these lands have been stirred up and dug out; the blocks and the rails have been laid; the towns have been transformed; the distances have been shortened; the new apparatus has been given in profusion to the rich countries, in more reasonable limits to countries less open; everywhere what was strictly necessary has been done; often too much has been done.”

Here, very clearly expressed, is the result of the forty years of activity which we have had, and this result is really the end toward which tended the great industrial movement that, for so long a time, has held minds awake, has kept the dockyards, the workshops, the factories, the forges at work. This end is attained; we see it; and among the serious consequences of this fact is one which M. De Laveleye exposes with his usual lucidity:

“Thanks to the facilities of communication, to the new routes opened, to steam and to electricity, the conditions of commerce and industry are changed. There is no longer any place, as there was at the beginning of this century, for the boldness of the manufacturer or the trader, counting upon his skill as well as on his risk to obtain a large remuneration due to his audacity, to his special knowledge, and to his capital.

“Between the new and the old commerce and industry there exists the same difference as between the wars of the empire and the last campaigns of France and of Austria.

“The same causes have produced the same results. In war the cannon and guns of perfection, the railways and the telegraphs, the vast masses of men, have produced rapid campaigns, in which personal valor and the chances of war, going almost for nothing, contributed very little to the final result. In industry the same perfection of apparatus has changed the conditions of trade; and the masses of men are replaced by the abundance of circulating capital and the facility of the means of credit—two other products of this active period of forty years.

“Only, in war the final result places the vanquished at the mercy of his foe, who can, as it appears, dictate his laws; in industry and in commerce the final gain is not left arbitrarily to the swiftest or to the best equipped. He must content himself with little; he is forbidden to abuse the victory which, without this moderation, will not be long in escaping him.”

This is what we have come to; and from a purely economic point of view we can recognize, with the judicious writer who has furnished us with the process of the struggle, that the most certain consequences of all this will be the following:

.pm letter-start “There will be an excess of circulating capital, free from employment.

“Now, as long as this has not been the case the product of capital has been as follows:

“From three to four and a half per cent. on unquestionable securities of the first class.

“From four and a half to six per cent. on real estate security of the second class.

“From six to eight per cent. on loans and limited liabilities.

“From eight to ten per cent. and upwards on industrial, financial, and speculative ventures.

“In the future and during a still indefinite period, which cannot fail to be long, very long, this scale must be modified by the excess of unemployed capital.

“Unquestionable securities will descend to three per cent., or below that; those of the second class will bring four and a half; men will be happy to make six per cent. in manufactures or production; finally, one can obtain eight per cent. only by running wild risks. There will be a general change in the rate of capitalization, in the sense of lessening the interest while increasing the amount of capital. Some exceptions—that is to say, some happy chances, some skilful personal strokes—may occur to confirm this rule. The general movement, however, will, we believe, be that which we have indicated.”

But what remains, then, to be done? Little of anything, if we wish to attribute to the revival of activity, which will come in its own time, only the sense and the direction which the movement has had until now. On the other hand, forced to admit that the human spirit has not at all gone to sleep, and that the inventive genius which the Master of all things in his goodness has bestowed upon his humble creatures has not in the least diminished, it is necessary also to confess that in the future it is the unknown which opens before us; and just as, before this century, people had not even thought of all the beautiful applications of heat, electricity, steam, and light which have made the material glory of our age and of an illustrious galaxy of savants, even so to-day we cannot say toward what end the efforts of humanity might tend to-morrow. One Being only knows it—he who knows all and sees all, he for whom the past, the present, and the future are but one, he who does not depend at all on time—God, in fact, the creator of all that has been, that is, and that shall be, the great dispenser of all good and of all progress; he who disposes of man at his will in one way or the other, often while the latter, in his folly, refuses to abase his blind presumption sufficiently to recognize him.

Let us, then, leave to the future that which belongs to the future, and let us hold ourselves, each one for his own account, ready to obey the impulse which it may please God to give us.

When the traveller who is visiting the beautiful localities of the Channel Peninsula quits the southern faubourg of Avranches—a picturesque little town built of sparkling granite—a road, marked by a succession of rapid declivities, brings him to the shore of a large bay formed by the sinking of the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Before him reaches, far away and out of sight, the flat extent of sands, furrowed by the rivers Sée, Sélunce, and Coësnon, whose silvery windings the eye can follow to a considerable distance. On the higher parts of these sands grows a fine kind of grass, the poa of the salt-meadows, and which, mingled with marine plants and sand-weeds, furnishes a favorite pasture for sheep. The lower and barren portion of the sands disappears twice a day beneath the tide, which at times spreads gently and caressingly over them, while at others it rolls foaming in with precipitate fury, as if eager to pass its appointed boundary. At high tide nothing is visible but an immense lake, partially engirdled with hills; and in the distance, like a pyramid of granite, sometimes from the bosom of the waves, sometimes from the expanse of sand, rises a nearly circular rock, laden with constructions of various kinds intermingled with vigorous vegetation, and crowned by large and lofty buildings.

This is the famous Mont Saint-Michel: au péril de la mer—in periculo mortis, as our fathers were wont to say in their strong and simple language, which, like nature, speaks in images.

The first time we saw St. Michael’s Mount was in sailing from Southampton to St. Malo, towards four o’clock one bright morning in June. The early sunshine lighted up the higher part of the rock, with all its wealth of natural and architectural inequalities, in one blaze of gold, while its base lay still in shadow. The only illuminated object, rising from a purplish haze, its brightness heightened by the blue of sea and sky, above, beneath, and around, it appeared rather like an ethereal vision than anything of earth.

Mount St. Michael! What memories are awakened only by the name, which is in itself a magical evocation of bygone centuries! Here, too, present realities still rival the memories of the past. With respect to its natural situation, as well as the share which human hands have had in its formation, there is about it much that defies comparison. It is at once a nest of legends, the home of religious thought, of prayer and meditation, as well as of learning and the arts. Mount St. Michael, being a monastery, a cathedral, and a fortress, is, in its triple unity, a summary of the three great elements of the life of France during all the poetic, heroic, and religious though stormy period of the middle ages.

Beaten into ruggedness by the storms of heaven, and discrowned of the golden statue of its patron archangel, the summit of the mount no longer springs upward into space with the same loftiness and lightness that used to strike so forcibly those who beheld it for the first time. The great human work thus seems as if arrested in its heavenward climbing; but, like other and grander majesties, St. Michael’s Mount has been uncrowned without undergoing any diminution of its glory, and it still presents its singular threefold aspect to the eye. On the western side the rock, stern and bare, seems to bid defiance to the hand of man; on the north a strong wall rises to the height of two hundred feet from base to battlements, strengthened with buttresses and flanked by bastions, pierced irregularly with pointed windows, and surmounted by a series of elegant arcades. To the south we find a rich display of architectural art, the exuberance of which is almost equalled by its caprice. Above all, and larger than all the rest, rises the church, with its forest of granite pinnacles and turrets overlooking the distant horizons of Normandy and Brittany, and, to use the language of the ancient chroniclers, imposing the fear of the archangel on the vast expanse of ocean—immensi tremor oceani.

In ages long anterior to any of its architectural constructions, and before the Christian era, this rock, much loftier then than now, rose from the midst of a vast forest which extended from Coutances to the rocks of Cesembre beyond St. Malo. This forest of Scissey, or Chesey (Sissiacum), took its name from the goddess Sessia, who was invoked at the time of sowing, and worshipped as the protectress of the corn while in the ground. The rock itself was called Tomba, and also Belenus, the name given by the Gauls and Druids to their sun-god,^[13] and which was identical with Baal of the Phœnicians, Bel of the Assyrians, and the Apollo of the Greeks.

On Mount Belenus was a college of nine Druidesses, the eldest of whom, like the pythoness of Delphi, uttered oracles.^[14] The Romans, in the course of their conquests in Gaul, made Bel give place to Jove: Tomba Belenus became Mons Jovis and was sacred to Jupiter.

In the year 708 Mount Belenus, which until that period had formed a part of the mainland of Armorica, was suddenly detached from it by a terrible catastrophe which spread desolation over the country. The sea, flowing in with tempestuous fury, overpassed its limits, submerged the ancient forest, as well as the inhabited parts of the coast, and, except when the tide is out, made an island of the Mount.^[15] It was in this same year of 708, in the reign of Childebert II., that St. Aubert, the first Bishop of Avranches, in obedience to a vision built there a church dedicated to the Archangel St. Michael, and at the same time founded a monastery of clerks regular, who replaced the two or three hermits who had formerly lived in seclusion on the Mount.

This monastery acquired, later on, a fresh importance under the Dukes of Normandy. Duke Richard I. enlarged and made of it an abbey of the Order of St. Benedict. In 1002 or 1003, great part of the church and surrounding buildings being consumed by a fire which broke out, Duke Richard II. considerably enlarged as well as strengthened the foundation by the construction of the crypt, upon which the new edifice was raised. This crypt appears to be cut out of the solid rock, and is divided in two parts by a wall. Its low and vaulted roof is supported by massive pillars, round or square. A larger or grander subterranean vault does not perhaps exist, with its space of seventy metres in length by twelve in breadth, and its three aisles formed by about twenty pillars. The roof sustains the weight of two stories of building, the dormitory over the refectory, and the magnificent cloister over the Hall of the Knights.^[16]

The original church soon becoming too small to contain the numerous pilgrims who flocked thither, the construction of a new one was begun by the Abbot Raoul, who, in 1048, raised the four pillars and the arch of the great tower. The nave, and that part of the monastery called La Merveille, were built by his successor, Renaud.

It was in 1091 that Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, was besieged in the fortress of Mont Saint-Michel by his brothers Robert and William. After the expulsion of the wretched John from Normandy, Abbot Jourdain wishing to preserve the Mount to the kings of England, Philip Augustus sent against him Guy de Thouars, who, after a lengthened siege, being unable to take it, set in on fire. It suffered severely from another conflagration in 1350, when struck by lightning during a terrible storm. The liberality of Philip de Valois restored the church and monastery to more than their former splendor.

Early in the fifteenth century Abbot Jolivet surrounded the town with fortifications. The English, at this time invading France, besieged Mont Saint-Michel, but were repulsed by the brave d’Estouteville and his companions-in-arms, one hundred and twenty-nine in all, who successfully defended the post entrusted to them when the greater part of France had submitted to the conquerors.

During the religious wars Mont St. Michel was several times attacked by the Protestants. On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, July 22, 1577, a number of them, habited as pilgrims and concealing their weapons, were admitted without suspicion into the church, where, after hearing several Masses with great show of devotion, they divided into small groups, and, with an air of calm indifference, occupied different parts of the buildings, until, secure of their position, they murdered such of the guards as did not escape by flight or concealment, and then fell not only upon the garrison but on the monks, even massacring the priests who had been saying Mass for them.

This noble abbey had for more than a thousand years an existence worthy of its origin. Mingling in the religious and warlike history of France, it was simultaneously or by turns occupied by knights and monks; the abode of faith and courage; an advanced sentinel in the direction of England, and thus affording protection against the foes of this world and of the next, defending alike with the cross and with the sword, and held in veneration by the whole of Christendom.

During the ages of faith pilgrims came hither by thousands, from all lands, braving the danger of these treacherous sands, to invoke in this his sanctuary the prince and leader of the armies of heaven.

The sacrilegious impiety of modern times could no more spare St. Michael’s Mount than so many other holy and beautiful relics of the past which it has seen fit to mutilate or destroy. The First Republic suppressed the monastery, drove out the monks, demolished a portion of their church, changed the name of Mont Saint-Michel to that of le Mont Libre, or the Free Mount, and turned it into a prison!—doubtless in order to prove the suitability of its new appellation.

The first prisoners there were the priests of Brittany and Normandy. Prayer was thus at least not yet banished from its ancient abode. In 1811 Napoleon made of it a Maison de Réclusion, which, in 1818, became a Maison de Détention, and it was at the same time also a state prison. Rarely has any place seen more sad and strange vicissitudes. The chosen dwelling-place of those called to serve God in a religious life became the sink of every crime pursued and punished by society, and the population of Mount St. Michael was now recruited not from men who had received a holy vocation, but from courts of assize.

A decree of 1863, however, relieved it from this unworthy fate, alike saddening to Christians, archæologists, and poets, and Mont Saint-Michel, which now belongs to the see of Coutances, has been confided by the ecclesiastical administration to the charge of twelve priests of the Congregation of Pontigny in the diocese of Sens, who carry on the services in its church, receive the visitors drawn thither by the sanctity or historical interest of the place, and fulfil the office of preachers and missionaries to all the parishes of the Channel Islands. An orphanage for boys is now flourishing in the old barracks, and by its side are ateliers where painting on glass is carried on—a kind of painting (or staining, rather) which, more than any other, has a religious object. All this is, so far, a return to a better state of things, but the solicitude of its diocesan does not find it enough, feeling that, though much has been done, still the present is too unlike the past, and earnestly desiring to restore the abbey to its former splendor. And he will do it yet. Already the pilgrimages thither are renewed with a fervor worthy of ancient days.

Few things can be more beautiful and edifying than the holy festivities of which the most recent of these pilgrimages has just been the occasion, and which have left so deep an impression on those who took part in them, and who followed the imposing order of the successive religious ceremonies, stamped as they were with the character of dignity and grandeur which the Catholic Church has impressed upon her liturgy and worship.

From earliest dawn long bands of pilgrims, conducted by the priests of their respective parishes and preceded by their banners, began to enamel with picturesque groups the white monotony of the sands. On arriving at the Mount they formed into regular columns and slowly ascended the steep acclivity to the church. Towards nine in the morning the Mount presented a singular aspect, not unlike a gigantic ant-hill: the flights of steps disappeared under the long processions mounting them, while the ramparts were as if crenellated with the heads of the crowds watching for the arrival of the Bishop of Coutances and Avranches and the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux. An involuntary delay on the part of the bishops was for a time the cause of extreme anxiety. Anything may be feared from this dangerous bay, whose shifting sands change their direction after every tide, and engulf the late or unwary traveller in an abyss of mud. The first carriage had passed safely on to terra firma, but the wheels of the second were perceived to be sinking, and the horses, terrified at no longer finding any footing, were becoming so unmanageable that a fatal catastrophe would have been almost inevitable, had not the men of the place hastened to the rescue and succeeded by their prompt energy in dragging the carriage out of danger.

The two prelates presented themselves at the entrance gate as the clock of the great tower began to strike eleven, and were saluted by acclamations so enthusiastic that it seemed as if the whole Mount were bidding them welcome. They proceeded up the steep lane that winds upward between houses that look as if piled almost one upon another, and which date from three or four centuries back, low, square, and solid, and having for the most part only one story, plunging their foundations into the rock, and wedged, as it were, against each other, the better to resist the force of hurricanes and tempests. Here and there trees of thick foliage overshadow the narrow, winding ascent, which at intervals through some unexpected opening shows a vast horizon over the waters of the Channel, with its lovely islands, and the coast of France.

The procession reached in due time the threshold of the ancient abbey, and, after a few words of warm and respectful welcome spoken to the bishops by the reverend father prior, entered the church.

There is something unique in the beauty of this basilica which so nobly crowns the summit of Mont Saint-Michel, and of which the four extremities rest on four enormous arched vaults founded in the rock. It possesses all the essential parts of a great cathedral—nave, aisles, transepts, choir, and apse. The nave is Roman, the choir Gothic, and the aisles Moresque or Byzantine. Boldly cut in granite, the architecture is as remarkable as the site.

The nave was formerly two hundred and forty feet in length, but underwent an irreparable mutilation under the First Republic, when it was shortened by the cutting away of four of its eight transverse vaultings. It nevertheless remains singularly imposing—simple even to severity, but relieved by its triforium and a gallery with deep arcades. The collateral arches, which are somewhat narrow, have the horseshoe form usual in Arabian architecture; the transepts, like the nave, are Roman, but of more recent date; the choir, which is of the best period of flamboyant Gothic, very delicately sculptured, has in the clerestory a square window of remarkable richness; and in the apse, which is of granite, delicate lines of tracery spring upwards with exquisite lightness. On the keystone of its vaulted roof is the escutcheon of the abbey. The choir is surrounded by bas-reliefs representing the four evangelists, and a ship, symbolical of the church militant, tossing on an angry sea which cannot overwhelm her, guided as she is by an unerring pilot—Fluctuat, non mergitur.

The noble edifice had on this day received an additional decoration from the number and beauty of the banners there displayed, the principal of which was a large standard in the nave representing the archangel St. Michael victorious over the dragon. On the balustrade in front of the altar were hung the sword and banner of General Lamoricière, with his motto, In Deo spes mea. Within the balustrade were erected the two episcopal thrones. The chapel of St. Michael, which occupies the left arm of the cross, and in which is the statue of the archangel, was thickly hung with the banners of the different parishes represented in the pilgrimage. Among their mottoes were such as these: Quis ut Deus? Defende nos in periculo; Deo soli semper Honor; Deo et Patriæ, etc. Above these floated the banner of the Sovereign Pontiff. There is in the same chapel some rich tapestry, the work and offering of the ladies of Avranches—les Avranchines, as they are prettily called in the country.

In the chapel facing this one, and in the left arm of the cross, are the two crowns offered to the glorious archangel, the one by the Holy Father, the other by the faithful of France. The latter, resplendent with diamonds and other precious stones of great value, is to be used next year for crowning the statue of St. Michael.

High Mass having been sung by the Bishop of Bayeux, his right reverend colleague addressed the assembled multitude. Mgr. Germain, although one of the youngest members of the French episcopate, is also one of the most eloquent, and owes simply to his merit the rapidity with which he has risen to be chief pastor of one of the most religious dioceses of France. As chaplain of the Lycée of Caen, he quickly gained the hearts of the youth placed under his spiritual care; as curé of the Cathedral of Bayeux, he made his influence felt in the whole city; and now, as Bishop of Coutances and Avranches, the influence for good which has marked each step of his career finds a wider field of action, of which he does not fail to profit. With a few words from his discourse, which are a summary of the whole, we conclude:

“The days in which we live find the church still engaged in a warfare similar to that which St. Michael, the champion of God, sustained against the rebel angels. Still the same revolt continues, and man has learnt from Satan to declare, ‘Non serviam!’ As children of God and of his church, let it be our happiness, as it is our privilege, to obey. God and his church having an authoritative claim on our obedience, let us see that ours shall resemble that of the blessed angels, which is loving, intelligent, thorough, and prompt.”

The Life of Marie Lataste, Lay Sister of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart. With a brief notice of her sister Quitterie. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)

The history of the church is marked at intervals by the appearance of favored souls whose wonderful gifts of the supernatural order fully attest the holiness which our divine Lord has willed should be the pre-eminent attribute of his blessed spouse. These manifestations of sanctity in individual souls have, besides, a special reference to the wants of those times in which they appear. When rapacity and luxurious wastefulness characterized the upper classes of French society, Almighty God raised up St. Vincent de Paul, the grand apostle of charity, to rebuke men’s hardness of heart towards their poor and suffering fellow-creatures. So likewise, in an era of spiritual torpor and cowardice, he gave to the world that prince of spiritual warriors, Ignatius of Loyola, and his devoted band of spiritual heroes to awaken men from their lethargy. Our own times are a period of intellectual pride, of contempt for spiritual things, and a corresponding exaltation of the material order; and divine Providence has seen fit to confound this dangerous spirit by working great things through weak instruments, and by proposing new devotions which demand an increased exercise of faith. As there is nothing more opposed to the peculiar spirit of the world of to-day than devotion to the Real Presence, the Sacred Heart, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, so the church directs the attention of her faithful children to these objects of pious veneration with renewed fervor, and God himself attests her wisdom by many wonderful signs having reference to these three goals of spiritual life. No doubt it was with such intent that he bestowed those extraordinary favors on the simple peasant girl of Mimbaste, Marie Lataste, which, studied in the light of worldly philosophy, confound and bewilder, but which, viewed as part of God’s supernatural economy, cannot fail to edify and encourage the devout Christian.

Marie Lataste was born in the department of the Landes in 1822, and died a lay sister of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in the year 1847; so of her it may be said that she compressed a long career of virtue into a brief compass of time, and earned by intensity of work the crown which is most frequently won by many years of laborious effort. No sooner had she made her First Communion than our divine Lord began to attract her most powerfully to himself as he exists in the sacrament of the altar. As a little girl she had been wilful and rebellious, and with difficulty was brought to study her catechism and the merest rudiments of learning. Indeed, her schooling never went beyond the art of reading and writing, so that the wonderful theological and ascetic knowledge which her letters disclose cannot be otherwise regarded than as revealed to her by God. After her First Communion a wonderful change was made manifest in her. Thenceforth her sole delight was to commune for long hours at a time with our divine Lord in the tabernacle, to converse familiarly with him, and to hold him for ever in her thoughts. She was never easy when other occupations kept her aloof from him, and when released from these she sped to him again with all the ardor which could impel a loving heart. Nor did our Lord fail to reward in a signal manner this intensity of devotion to the sacrament of his love. One day, towards the close of the year 1839, as Marie was repairing to the village church to perform her usual acts of adoration, a mysterious but irresistible force hurried her along; earthly objects faded from her view, the Spirit of God filled her soul, and when she entered the sacred edifice she beheld our Lord himself upon the altar, surrounded by his angels. “She did not,” the recital states, “see him at first with perfect distinctness. A thin cloud, like an almost imperceptible veil, appeared partially to conceal him from her sight.... At last Jesus descended from the altar and approached, calling her benignantly by name and raising his hand to bless her. Then she beheld him with perfect clearness in the brilliant light with which he was invested.” “From that moment,” she said, “the society of mankind has never ceased to be displeasing to me; I should wish to fly from them for ever and shut myself up in the tabernacle with him.” Thus did her interior life at once ascend to the highest plane of sanctity, and she, the poor, almost illiterate peasant girl, began to experience those intimate dealings and relations with our divine Lord which are usually deemed to be the prerogative of the greatest saints—of those in whom supreme holiness goes hand in hand with profound knowledge.

But it is a well-known characteristic of the divine economy to select feeble instruments for its higher operations and manifestations, and in this manner to confound human presumption and to put our pride of intellect to the blush. “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.” And if ever it pleased Almighty God to show forth his power through the humblest of his creatures, he seems to delight in doing so at the present time. He permits our philosophers to split hairs over the subtleties of evolution, to wander in perplexity through the mazy intricacies in which they have enveloped themselves, whilst he reveals the undreamt wonders of his wisdom to the lowly and simple-minded. Father Faber has happily designated a too common class of Christians as “viewy”—i.e., holding opinions which are but the reflection and expression of their petty egotism. Such was not the case with Marie Lataste; she was simplicity itself, and our Lord favored her accordingly. She sat at his feet as meek and docile a pupil as ever listened to the words of an instructor, and he poured into her heart the treasures of his wisdom. It is truly wonderful to read the profound sentiments with which her letters abound, and to reflect that she, a girl barely able to read and write, has given expression to the most abstruse and difficult points of dogmatic theology with correctness, clearness, and force, and has left behind her precepts for our spiritual guidance which savor of the wisdom and prudence of the most consummate masters of the spiritual life. Many things in her letters may appear strained because of the minuteness with which she describes her visions of spiritual things, unless they are scanned with the eye of faith. But both internal and external evidences of the genuineness of the apparitions with which she was favored, and of the absolute reliability of her statements, are so numerous that in the face of them to doubt is to question the validity of all human testimony. There can be no doubt that God has vouchsafed to our generation this beautiful picture of a soul thoroughly united to himself in order that our pride may be abashed, our faith strengthened, and our love for him, because of his manifold mercies towards us, increased. The style of the book is attractive, and whoever reads it cannot fail to reap a large share of edifying knowledge.

God the Teacher of Mankind: A plain, comprehensive explanation of Christian Doctrine. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger Bros. 1877.