It ought not to be so much our practice to denounce bad books as to point out good ones. To say that a book is immoral is to increase its sale. But the more good books we put into the hands of our boys, the greater preservative powers we give them against evil. Here is a bit from the Kansas City Star which expresses tersely what we have all been thinking:

“The truth is that it is not the boys who read ‘bad books’ who swell the roll of youthful criminality; it is the boys who do not read anything. Let any one look over the police court of a busy morning, and he will see that the style of youth gathered there have not fallen into evil ways through their depraved literary tendencies. They were not brought there by books, but more probably by ignorance of books combined with a genuine hatred of books of all kinds. There is not a more perfect picture of innocence in the world than a boy buried in his favorite book, oblivious to all earthly sights and sounds, scarcely breathing as he follows the fortunes of the heroes and heroines of the story.”

It depends, of course, on what kind of a story it is. A boy may be a picture of innocence; but we all know that many a canvas on which is a picture of innocence is much worm-eaten at the back. If the book be a good one, a boy is safe while he is reading it—he can be no safer. If it is a mere story of adventure, without any dangerous sentiment, a boy is not likely to get harm out of it. It is the sentimental—not the honest sentiment of Sir Walter or Thackeray—that does harm to the boy of a certain age, but more harm to the girl. A boy’s preoccupation with his book may not be always innocent. It is a father’s or mother’s duty to see that it is innocent, by supplying the boy with the right kind of books. This, in our atmosphere, is almost as much of a duty as the supplying him with bread and butter. A father may take the lowest view of his duties; he maybe content with having his son taught the Little Catechism and with feeding and clothing him. However sufficient this may be among the peasants of the Tyrol, it does not answer in our country. The boy who cares to read nothing except the daily paper or the theatrical poster has more chances against him than the devourer of books. The police courts show that.

The parish library, as a help to religious and moral education, comes next to the parish school; it supplements it; it amplifies its instruction: it carries its influence deeper; it cultivates both the logical powers and the imagination. Give a boy a taste for books, and he has a consolation which neither sickness nor poverty nor age itself can take from him. But he must not be left to ramble through a library at his own sweet will. There are probably no stricter Catholics among our acquaintance than were the parents of Alexander Pope, the “poet of common-sense” and bad philosophy; and yet their carelessness, or rather faith in books merely as books, led him into many an ethical error.

There is no use in trying to restrict the reading of a clever American boy to professedly Catholic books in the English language. He will ask for stories, and there are not enough stories of the right sort to last him very long. He will want stories with plenty of action in them—stirring stories, stories of adventure, stories of school life, of life in his own country; and we have too few of them. And it requires some discrimination to square his wants with what he ought to want. But that discrimination must be used by somebody, or there will be danger.

Nevertheless, the boy who rushes through Oliver Optic’s stories, and Henty’s and Bolderwood’s, is not likely to be injured. They are not ideal books, from our point of view. He may even read Charles Kingsley’s boisterous, stupid stuff; but if he is a well-instructed boy, he will be in a state of hot indignation all through “Hypatia” and the other underdone-roast-beefy things of that bigot. Kingsley, with all his prejudice, though, is better for a boy than Rider Haggard. There is a nasty trail over Haggard’s stories.

There is some comfort in the fact that the average boy is too eagerly intent on his story to mind the moralizing. What does he care for Lord Lytton’s talk about the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in “The Last Days of Pompeii”? He wants to know how everything “turns out.” And in Kingsley’s “Hypatia”—which is so often in Catholic libraries—he pays very little attention to the historical lies, for the sake of the action. Nevertheless, he should be guarded against the historical lies. Personally—I hope this intrusion of the ego will be forgiven—I had, when I was a boy and waded through all sorts of books, so strong a conviction that Catholics were always right and every one else wrong, that “Hypatia” and Bulwer’s “Harold” and the rest were mere incentives to zeal; I thought that if the Lady Abbess walled up Constance at the end of “Marmion,” that young person deserved her fate.

This state of mind, however, ought not to be generally cultivated; a discriminating taste for reading should. Do not let us cry out so loudly about bad books; let us seek out the good ones; and remember that it is not the reading boy that fills the criminal ranks, but the boy that lives in the streets and does not read.

There should be a few books on the family shelf—books which are meant to be daily companions—the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,” something of Father Faber’s, “Fabiola” and “Dion and the Sibyls,” and some great novels.

People of to-day do not realize how much the greatest of all the romancers owes to the Catholic Dryden. Sir Walter Scott, in spite of frequent change in public taste, still holds his own. Cardinal Newman, in one of his letters, regrets that young people have ceased to be interested in so admirable a writer. But there is only partial reason for this regret. Sir Walter’s long introductions and some of his elaborate descriptions of natural scenery are no longer read with interest. Still, it is evident that people do not care to have his works changed in any way. Not long ago, Miss Braddon, the indefatigable novelist, “edited” Sir Walter Scott’s novels. She cut out all those passages which seemed dull to her. But the public refused to read the improved edition. It remained unsold.

It is safe to predict that neither Sir Walter Scott nor Miss Austen will ever go entirely out of fashion. Sir Walter’s muse is to Miss Austen’s as the Queen of Sheba to a very prim modern gentlewoman: one is attired in splendid apparel, wreathed with jewels, sparkling; the other is neutral-tinted, timid, shy. But of all novelists, Sir Walter Scott admired Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. He said, with almost a sigh of regret, that he could do the big “bow-wow” business, but that they pictured real life.

Nevertheless, while Miss Austen is not forgotten—in fact, interest has increased in her delightful books of late years—Sir Walter Scott’s novels are found everywhere. Not to have read the most notable of the Waverley Novels is to give one’s acquaintances just reason for lamenting one’s illiberal education.

The name of Sir Walter Scott naturally suggests that of Dryden, from whom the “Wizard” borrowed some of the best things in “Ivanhoe”—and “Ivanhoe” is without doubt the most popular of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. That picturesque humbug Macaulay, who could sacrifice anything for a brilliant antithesis, has done much harm to the reputation of Dryden. He gives us the impression that Dryden was a mere timeserver, if a brilliant satirist and a third-rate poet. Some years will pass before the superficial criticism of Macaulay shall be taken at its full value. Dryden was honest—honest in his changes of opinion, and entirely consistent in his change of faith. No church but that of his ancestors could have satisfied the mind of a man to whom the mutilated doctrine and bald services of the Anglican sect were naturally obnoxious. Of the charge that Dryden changed his religious opinions for gain, Mr. John Amphlett Evans, a sympathetic critic, says that, if Dryden gained the approval of King James II., he lost that of the English people. Dryden understood this, for he wrote:

If Scott, through ignorance or carelessness, misrepresented certain Catholic practices, he never consciously misrepresented Catholic ideas; and, as a recent writer in the Dublin Review remarks, he showed that all that was best and heroic in the Middle Ages was the result of Catholic teaching. This was his attraction for Cardinal Newman. This made him so fascinating to another convert, James A. McMaster, who had an inherited Calvinistic horror of most other novels. Scott, robust and broad-minded as he was, could understand the mighty genius and the great heart of Dryden. He was the ablest defender of the poet who abjured the licentiousness of the Restoration—mirrored in his earlier dramas—to adopt a purer mode of thought. Although Dryden was really Scott’s master in art, Sir Walter did not fully understand how very great was Dryden’s poem, “Almanzor and Almahide.” If Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” or Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso,” or Milton’s “Paradise Regained,” or FÉnelon’s “Telemachus” is an epic, this splendid poem of Dryden’s is an epic, and greater than them all. It is from this poem, founded on episodes of the siege of Granada, that Sir Walter Scott borrows so liberally in “Ivanhoe.”

One cannot altogether pardon the greatest fault of all Sir Walter made, the punishment of Constance in “Marmion.” But his theory of artistic effect was something like Macaulay’s idea of rhetorical effect. If picturesqueness or dramatic effect interfered with historical truth, the latter suffered the necessary carving to make it fit. It must be remembered, too, that Sir Walter Scott was not in a position to profit by modern discoveries which have forced all honorable men to revise many pages of the falsified histories of their youth and to do justice to the spirit of the Church.

Sir Walter Scott is always chivalrous and pure-minded. How he would have detested Froude’s brutal characterization of Mary Stuart, or Swinburne’s vile travesty of her! If his friars are more jolly than respectable, it is because he drew his pictures from popular ballads and old stories never intended in Catholic times to be taken as serious or typical. His Templars are horrible villains, but he never seems to regard them as villanous because they are ecclesiastics; he does not intend to drag their priesthood into disgrace; they are lawless and romantic figures, loaded with horrible accusations by Philippe le Bel, and condemned by the Pope—ready-made romantic scoundrels fit for purposes of fiction. He does not look beyond this.

Scott shows much of the nobility of Dryden’s later work. He does not confuse good with evil; he is always tender of good sentiments; he hates vice and all meanness; in depicting so many fine characters who could only have bloomed in a Catholic atmosphere, he shows a sympathy for the “old Church” at once pathetic and admirable to a Catholic. There is no novel of his in which the influence of the Church is not alluded to in some way or other. And how delightful are his heroines when they are Catholic! How charmingly he has drawn Mary Stuart! And the man that does not love Di Vernon and Catherine Seton has no heart for Beatrice or Portia. And then there is the grand figure of Edward Glendenning in “The Abbot.”

Dryden and Scott both owed so much to the Church, were so naturally her children, that one feels no ordinary satisfaction in the conversion of the one, and some consolation in the fact that the last words of the other were those of the “Dies Irae.”

Brownson and Newman are two authors more talked about than read in this country. In England Newman’s most careful literary work is known; Brownson’s work has only begun to receive attention. Newman has gained much by being talked and written about by men who love the form of things as much as the matter, and who, if Newman had taught Buddhism or Schopenhauerism, would admire him just as much. As there is a large class of these men, and as they help to form public opinion, it has come to pass that he who would deny Newman’s mastery of style would be smiled at in any assembly of men of letters. Brownson has not had such an advantage. He gave his attention thoroughly to the matter in hand; style was with him a secondary consideration. Besides, he wrote from the American point of view, and sometimes—at least it would seem so—under pressure from the printer. Newman was never hurried; Horace was not more leisurely, Cicero more exact. It would be absurd to compare Newman and Brownson. I simply put their names together to show that they should be read, even if other writers must be neglected, by Catholic Americans. I take the liberty of recommending three books as valuable additions to the home shelf:—Brownson’s “Views,” and the “Characteristics” of Wiseman and Newman.

Every young American who wants to understand the political position of his country among the nations should read three books—Brownson’s “American Republic,” De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” and Bryce’s “American Commonwealth.” But of these three writers the greatest—incomparably the greatest—is Brownson: he defines principles; he clarifies them until they are luminous; he shows the application of them to a new condition of things. There have been Catholics—why disguise the fact, since they are nearly all dead or imbecile?—who fancied that our form of government was merely tolerated by the Church. Brownson gave a death-blow to those ancient dragons of unbelief. Certain parts of this great work ought to be a text-book in every school in the country. And it will now be easier to build a monument to this profound thinker, as there is a well-considered attempt to popularize such portions of his books as must catch the general attention, for there are many pages in Brownson’s works which are hidden only because they suffered in their original method of publication.

Open a volume of his works at random, and you will find something to suggest or stimulate thought, to define a term or to fortify a principle. Read, for instance, those pages of his on the Catholic American literature of his time and you will have a standard of judgment for all time. And who to-day can say what he says as well as he said it? As to those parts of his philosophy about which the doctors disagree, let us leave that to the doctors. It does not concern the general public, and indeed it might be left out of consideration with advantage.

Brownson’s works are mines of thought. In them lie the germs of mighty sermons, of great books to come. Already he is a classic in American literature, and there is every reason why he should be a classic, since he was first in an untilled ground; and yet it is a sad thing to find that of all the magnificent material Brownson has left, the “Spirit Rapper,” that comparatively least worthy product of his pen, seems to be the best known to the general reader.

If one of us would confine himself to the reading of four authors in English—Shakspere, Newman, Webster, and Brownson—he could not fail to be well educated. The “Idea of a University” of Newman is a pregnant book. It goes to the root of the subtlest matters; its clearness enters our minds and makes the shadows flee. It cannot be made our own at one reading. There are passages which should be read over and over again—notably that on literature and the definition of a classic. If any man could make us grasp the intangible, Newman could. How sentimental and thin Emerson appears after him! Professor Cook, of Yale, has done the world a good turn by giving us the chapter on “Poetry and the Poetics of Aristotle” in a little pamphlet; and John Lilly’s “Characteristics” is a very valuable book. Any reader or active man who dips into the chapter on the “Poetics” will long for more; and, if he does, the “Characteristics” will not slake his thirst; he will desire the volumes themselves and drink in new refreshments with every page.

I have known a young admirer of “Lead, Kindly Light”—which, by the way, has only three stanzas of its own—to be repelled by the learned title of “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” but, in search of the circumstances that helped to produce it, to turn to certain pages in this presumably uninteresting work. The charm began to work; Newman was no longer a pedant to be avoided, but a friend to be ever near.

“Callista” amounts to very little as a novel; it is valuable because Newman studied its color from authentic sources. But “The Dream of Gerontius” is only beginning in our country to receive the attention due to it. It was a text-book in classes at Oxford long before people here touched it at all, except in rare instances. It is a unique poem. There is nothing like it in all literature. It is the record of the experience of a soul during the instant it is liberated from the body. It touches the sublime; it is colorless—if a pure white light can be said to be colorless. It is the work of a great logician impelled to utter his thoughts through the most fitting medium, and this medium he finds to be verse. In Dante the symbols of earthly things represent to us the mystic life of the other world. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, chief of the Pre-Raphaelites, imitated the outer shell of the great Dante—the sensuous shell—but he got no further. Newman soars above, beyond earth; we are made to realize with awful force that the soul at death is at once divorced from the body. Dante does not make us feel this. The people that Virgil and he meet are not spirits, but men and women with bodies and souls in torment. No painter on earth could put “The Dream of Gerontius” into line and color. Flaxman, so exquisite in his interpretation of Dante, would seem vulgar, and DorÉ brutal. None of us should lack a knowledge of this truly wonderful poem, which must be studied, not read. Philosophy and theology have found no flaws in it; humanity may shiver in the whiteness of its light, and yet be consoled by the fact that the comfort it offers is not merely imaginative, or sentimental, or beautiful, but real.

It is impossible to suppress the love of the beautiful in human nature. The early New Englanders, to whom beauty was an offence and art and literature condemned things—who worshipped a God of their own invention, clothed in sulphurous clouds and holding victims over eternal fire, ready, with the ghastly pleasure described by their divines, to drop these victims into the flame—were not Christians. Christians have never accepted the Grecian dictum that earthly beauty is the good and that to be Æsthetic is to be moral; but Christianity has always encouraged the love of beauty and led the way to its use in the worship of God.

Among Americans, Longfellow had a most devout love of the beautiful. And it was this love of beauty that drew him near to the Church. That eloquent writer Ruskin has little sympathy with men who are drawn towards the Church by the beauty she enshrines, and he constantly protests against the enticements of a Spouse the hem of whose garment he kisses. Still, judging from his ill-natured diatribe against Pugin, in the “Stones of Venice,” he had no understanding of the sentiment that caused Longfellow, when in search of inspiration, to turn to the Church.

Longfellow’s love of the melodious, of the beautiful, of the symmetrical, led him into defects. He could not endure a discord, and his motto was “Non clamor, sed amor,” which, as coming from him, may be paraphrased in one word, “serenity.” His superabundant similes show how he longed to carry one thing into another thing of even greater beauty, and how this longing sometimes leads him to faults of taste.

But this lover of beauty—led by it to the very beauty of Ruskin’s Circe and his forefathers’ “Scarlet Woman”—came of a race that hated beauty. And yet he stretched out through the rocky soil of Puritan traditions and training until we find him translating the sermon of St. Francis of Assisi to the birds into English verse, and working lovingly at the most Christian of all poems, the “Divine Comedy.” It was he—this descendant of the Puritans—who described, as no other poet ever described, the innocence of the young girl coming from confession. But it was his love of beauty and his love of purity that made him do this. In Longfellow’s eyes only the pure was beautiful. A canker in the rose made the rose hateful to him. He was unlike his classmate and friend Hawthorne: the stain on the lily did not make it more interesting. His love of purity was, however, like his hatred of noise, a sentiment rather than a conviction.

The love for the beautiful leads to Rome. Ruskin fights against it, Longfellow yields to it, and even Whittier—whose lack of culture and whose traditions held him doubly back—is drawn to the beauty of the saints.

As culture in America broadens and deepens, respect for the things that Protestantism cast out increases. James Russell Lowell’s paper on Dante, in “Among My Books,” is an example of this. The comprehension he shows of the divine poet is amazing in a son of the Puritans. But the human mind and the human heart will struggle towards the light.

Longfellow was too great an artist to try to lop off such Catholic traditions as might displease his readers. In this he was greater than Sir Walter Scott, and a hundred times greater than Spenser. Scott’s mind, bending as a healthy tree bends to the light, stretched towards the old Church. She fascinated his imagination, she drew his thoughts, and her beauty won his heart; but he was afraid of the English people. And yet, subservient as Scott was, Cardinal Newman avows that Sir Walter’s novels drew him towards the Church; and there is a letter written by the great cardinal in which he laments that the youth of the nineteenth century no longer read the novels of the “Wizard of the North.” Scott cannot get rid of the charm the Church throws about him. He was not classical, he was romantic. He soon tired of mere form, as any healthy mind will. The reticent and limited beauty of the Greek temple made him yawn; but he was never weary of the Gothic church, with its surprises, its splendor, its glow, its statues, its gargoyles—all its reproductions of the life of the world in its relations to God.

Similarly, Longfellow was not a classicist. The coldness of Greek beauty did not appeal to him; he could understand and love the pictures of Giotto—the artist of St. Francis—better than the “Dying Gladiator.” When Christianity had given life to the perfect form of Greek art, then Longfellow understood and loved it. And he trusted the American people sufficiently not to attempt to placate them by concealing or distorting the source of his inspiration. No casual reader of “Evangeline” can mistake the cause of the primitive virtues of the Acadians. A lesser artist would have introduced the typical Jesuit of the romancers, or hinted that a King James’s Bible read by Gabriel and Evangeline, under the direction of a self-sacrificing colporteur, was at the root of all the patience, purity, and constancy in the poem. But Longfellow knew better than this, and the American people took “Evangeline” to their heart without question, except from some carper, like Poe, who envied the literary distinction of the poet. We must remember, too, that the American people of 1847 were not the American people of to-day; they were narrower, more provincial, less infused with new blood, and more prejudiced against the traditions of the Church to which Longfellow appealed when he wrote his greatest poem.

It is as impossible to eliminate the cross from the discovery of America as to love art and literature without acknowledging the power that preserved both.