After the rupture of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the French Republic, Mgr. Montagnini remained in Paris unofficially as the representative of the Pope. He was charged with a special mission,-to bring to bear all possible quasi-diplomatic influences on public characters, to work secretly in the interests of the Church in her struggle with the Government, and to report regularly to the Vatican on his labors. He lived in the Rue de l'Elysée, under the shadow of the palace of the President of the Republic, and his house was a centre for all the lieutenants of the Vatican policy. As M. Clemenceau has said, Deputies before a debate in the Chamber used to go to Mgr. Montagnini and say: "To-day I am going to make a speech. What must I say?"

Priests, too, took instructions from him, and these instructions were quite incompatible with the observance of the law of the land. The attention of the Government was attracted to the Rue de l'Elysée, and a judicial action was begun. The Government did not think that because Mgr. Montagnini was a priest he was above the law of the country in which he chose to live. His papers were seized, but in the seizure there was discrimination. The archives, or diplomatic papers proper, which had an acknowledged sacrosanctity as having belonged to a properly accredited diplomatic representative, were not read. All papers of this kind were handed over to the Austrian Embassy in keeping for the Vatican. The only papers which were read and translated recorded the unofficial intrigues of Mgr. tagnini himself was expelled from of diplomatic relations. Mgr. Montagnini himself was expelled from France. It is not clear why, when diplomatic relations were broken off in 1905, the Vatican did not take the ordinary course of putting its archives un

der seals and entrusting them to the Ambassador of a foreign Power. The French Government provided for the safety of their own archives in Rome in this way. However, the Vatican seems to have suffered nothing by its omission. No papers of the former Nuncio were seized. The whole matter was debated in the Chamber on March 20th of this year, when M. Ribot, speaking for Roman Catholics, admitted that the Government had a right to expel Mgr. Montagnini, but described the seizure of papers as not only unnecessary, but as an example of mœurs déplorables. On the next day the Committee of Inquiry into Mgr. Montagnini's papers was appointed.

Upon the appointment of the Committee the French and the Vatican Press began a campaign of recrimination. The Vatican, speaking through its inspired organs, threatened counterrevelations. One would think that these organs must have been seriously alarmed before undertaking to prove that the French Government had asked the Pope to use his power to advance French interests at certain foreign Courts, or, having failed in that, had deliberately stirred up Anti-Clerical feeling in Italy, and also in Spain, by the promise of concessions in Morocco. If those charges have any foundation, now would be a good time to produce them in detail. M. de Narfon in his articles in the Figaro says that it would be childish to contend that the Holy See did not interfere in French affairs after the rupture, but he argues that the intervention did not exceed the limits of propriety. He believes that the French Government will gain nothing in the end by their diplomatic poaching. At the same time, he deprecates Mgr. Montagnini's "unfortunate habit" of recording private conversations. As to these unfortunate habits, our readers will be

able to say whether they agree with M. de Narfon's considerate judgments after reading a summary of them. One of the principal figures in the documents is M. Piou, a Clerical Deputy and the president of the so-called Action Libérale, which is the organization of militant Roman Catholics. M. Piou, it appears, bought three Paris newspapers. A telegram from Cardinal Merry del Val urges Mgr. Montagnini to do all he can to secure the election of M. Piou at Rennes. Cardinal Merry del Val writes to thank M. Piou for a keg of old brandy, and suggests that the Pope would welcome one too. Mgr. Montagnini gives particulars of several needy politicians whose services might be enrolled for suitable remuneration. M. Clemenceau, he says, is greatly in want of money, and he has heard from a good source that it would be possible to come to an arrangement with him, but an enormous sum would be necessary. That note is dated 1905, before M. Clemenceau took office. The papers contain no reference to the journey to Rome of Madame X, who was said to have gone there on behalf of the Government, but was not received at the Vatican; but they allude to other secret envoys alleged to have been sent by the Government after the rupture. At the elections Mgr. Montagnini shows himself opposed to the Deputy Abbé Lemire, well known all over France as a devout priest and a good Republican. He also states that M. Berteaux. the ex-Minister for War, quarrels with his family on religious matters, and that his wife, son, and daughter once refused to dine with a relative of M. Combes. He calls the president of the Sillon, the Republican Roman Catholic organization (which is trying to apply the principles of the late Pope Leo XIII.), a "revolutionary." He calls the Bishops who are for trying to apply the Separation Law "submission

ists." So the extracts go on, with numerous reports of conversations with foreign diplomatists and other traits piquants.

We may give an extract from a letter written by Cardinal Merry del Val to the Archbishop of Lyons as an example of the direct intervention of the Vatican in elections. We quote the translation published in the Times:

Eminence, - your whole attention is called to the capital importance of the next political elections in France. On that account, in order to have an easy conscience before God and man, it is necessary to employ every means that can improve them, even if those means happen to be a little energetic. Now the Holy See has been informed that the League of French Women, having its headquarters at Lyons, independently of the good works which form the principal object of its zeal, intends also to occupy itself with the next elections not only by collecting money, which is praiseworthy, but by distributing it to candidates of its choice, which cannot be approved of. In fact, the tactics to be observed in the next elections were pointed out to M. Dechelette (at that time Vicar-General of Lyons and to-day Auxiliary Bishop of that diocese), and require agreement and co-ordination among all the anti-Bloc forces. Thus, if the League chooses its own candidates and supports them with the money collected, it will introduce confusion in the electoral struggle, and in reality will do more harm than good in the Catholic camp. In order to avoid this it is necessary that your Eminence should persuade the ladies that it is a good thing to collect money, but it should be handed to your Eminence with every confidence, you promising them that you will employ it exclusively for electoral purposes in the manner that you may judge most prudent and most advantageous."

M. Clemenceau has written two mordant letters to the editor of the Figaro about the references to himself. It is impossible to imagine a Prime Min

ister in England thinking it necessary to write to a newspaper to deny such charges, but M. Clemenceau's letters are at all events brilliantly effective. In the first he denies explicitly that he ever sent an informal missionary to the Vatican, and in the second he discusses the statement of Mgr. Montagnini that M. Piou had declared to him that M. Clemenceau could be bought. M. Piou immediately after the publication of the article containing this statement denied that he had ever made it. M. Clemenceau points out that if M. Piou tells the truth, the appointed mouthpiece of the Pope in Paris was a liar. Further, he dissects the insinuation that he had granted an interview to M. Piou to consider terms of negotiation with the Vatican. He had met M. Piou at luncheon at the house of a common friend, and they had discussed nothing but indifThe Spectator.

ferent matters. Finally, we must mention the passage in which Mgr. Montagnini reports a conversation with Sir Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador. There is nothing of any consequence in this report, nothing that would be in the least to the Ambassador's discredit if he had said it. The "safest" men in the world have often said infinitely more incautious things in conversations that were meant to be private. But we must remark that we doubt whether the Ambassador spoke with even the moderate degree of freedom with which the diarist credits him. "I am much pleased with your intelligent zeal,” writes Cardinal Merry del Val to the Vatican agent; "try to listen well, to report everything, and to talk little." We cannot say how the last injunction was obeyed, but the two others were certainly acted upon to admiration.

In the life of every prophet there comes a supreme crisis when he has to fling away his past, wipe off all trivial, fond records, and cut himself loose from old interests and delights, because an inward fire consumes him, or savage indignation tears his heart. Against that crisis he may struggle as he will. He may plead unclean lips and unfitness for the task; he may hide himself in the wilderness, or take ship for Tarshish. It is all in vain. The still, small voice pursues him; the fire kindles; land and sea conspire to drive him along a grim and lonely road. He may think his journey will be as brief as it is unpleasant; he may hope for a speedy return, and suppose the past is not irretrievable; he may even imagine that with one hand he can retain a hold on things that were

so pleasing-things, that he will enjoy again in grateful satisfaction when once this sharp battle is over. But he will never return; he may let all those dear delights alone for ever; the zeal of the Lord will eat him up.

These thoughts arise as we examine the new volume of the great edition of Ruskin's work-as noble a monument as was ever raised by the devotion of scholars and disciples-which begins the series of "Fors Clavigera." It brings us to the supreme crisis in Ruskin's life. He was over fifty, and at the height of his fame. For nearly thirty years his power had been recognized. The leading minds of the coun try were his friends; his innumerable admirers were eloquent in his praise; the University he loved had bestowed on him the work and honor he most

desired. He knew the secret beauty of skies and mountains and of rivers. Like the old king, he had spoken of trees, from the cedar trees to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; he had spoken also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes; and his sentences in beautiful language were a thousand and five. He had penetrated the recesses of noble history, and the finest arts of word, and color, and marble, and gold, and bronze, and living stone stood always about his mind, like women passionately loved. To him, if to any man, life seemed to hold a cup full of fine flavors. But the cruelty and sorrow of the world gave him no peace. The misery of the poor and the stupidity of the powerful entered into his soul. Unwillingly, the fire was kindled, and cruel rage urged him whither he had no wish to go.

"I will endure it no longer quietly," he cries in the first letter of "Fors":

For my own part, I will put up with this state of things, passively, not an hour longer. . . . I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly. Therefore, as I have said, I will endure it no longer quietly.

Of course, all his friends, all his reviewers, all the thousands who expected from him only more and more of those beautiful disquisitions upon pictures and poetry and nature, were shocked and indignant at the change. Of course, they joined the startled cowards who thought Ruskin was all right as long as he stuck to his arts, and did not desert the province of a literary man for the practical affairs in which business is business, or for the political affairs in which compro

mise is the breath of life. "Why cannot you go on with your proper work?" they kept asking him. "That is your business; why can't you mind it and be happy?" Once, from Venice, he answered them:

I would fain please you, and myself with you; and live here in my Venetian palace, luxurious; scrutinant of dome, cloud, and cockle-shell. . . . But, alas! my prudent friends, little enough of all that I have a mind to may be permitted me. For this green tide that eddies by my threshold is full of floating corpses, and I must leave my dinner to bury them, since I cannot save. . . . This green sea-tide! -yes, and if you knew it, your black and sulphurous tides also - Yarrow, and Teviot, and Clyde, and the stream, for ever now drumly and dark as it rolls on its way, at the ford of Melrose.

To such as sneered at him for bringing "sentiment" to the decision of commercial and international affairs, he gave a sterner answer, as in that overwhelming passage of self-defence in the forty-first letter:

Because I have passed my life in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have labored always for the honor of others, not my own, because I have lowered my rents, and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I never disobeyed my mother, because I have honored all women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil; therefore, the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for a bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the "effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin."

Against himself the struggle was harder. It is true that for ten years

before he began the issue of "Fors" his mind had been turned to the injustice and false doctrine of modern labor, and in those years he had written the three textbooks of a new economy. For that matter, the roots of all his later teaching may be traced in one of his boyhood's essays on Westmoreland cottages, just as Tolstoy, whom indignation and pity have driven along a similar road, gave the forecast of his future rebellion in his earliest imaginative works. But in "Fors" the final separation from that' rich and many-colored past is made-though unwillingly, and with much looking back, and with hopes of return. began these letters," he writes, "as a bywork to quiet my conscience." And again, he sighs that for the strife he "must leave this spiritual land and fair domain of human art and natural peace." And again, speaking of his St. George's Guild, he says: "That it should be left to me to begin such a work is alike wonderful and sorrowful to me."

"I

He reminds one of Hamlet-the Hamlet whom Goethe compared to a costly vase in which a tree had been planted; the roots expand, the vase is shattered. Like Hamlet when he meets the friend of student days, or goes back to dramatic criticism, or turns his hand to those dozen or sixteen lines as in the days when poetry seemed important, so Ruskin throughout these letters returns now and again with delight to the finest themes of his early manhood's pursuit. Intermixed with flashing strokes in the controversies upon housing, and clothing, and wages, and interest,

The Nation.

and the Paris Commune, and the Billingsgate fish supply, we have vistas into the vanishing realms of exquisite criticism and tender reminiscence, of noble history and beautiful coinage, of myths, and pictures, and mountains. But he was himself conscious of the unhappiness that always lies in compromise. He could endure no longer either the misery of the world or its beauty. Torn between them, he went his way sorrowful. "I have no peace," he writes, "still less ecstasy."

So the roots expanded; the costly vase was broken. But the gain far surpassed any possible loss. To that inspired sense for beauty which he appeared to abandon we owe the characteristic power of his indignationthe admixture of rage and irony with a tenderness as of one who, seeing his city, weeps over it. Swift has been called the spirit of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. If Ruskin had the spirit of Swift, it dwelt in the "sober landscape and austere" of his early Italian masters. Out of the treasury of a full life and vivid knowledge he poured all its wealth for the cause that possessed him. Outward results are slow, but at least the self-complacency and deliberate acquiescence in hideous wrongs against which "Fors" led the attack, have been seen to stagger, and, at the worst, it was "Fors" that gave us an example stronger than eloquence. "Every man feels instinctively," Ruskin writes, "that all the beautiful sentiments in the world count less than a single lovely action." His action was a difficult sacrifice, and for its difficulty it counts the higher.