exile and suffering, another papal bull (of | sight we can gain into their loftiest conEugenius IV., in 1431) warning all au- ceptions, and (unless the preponderance thorities, spiritual or lay, against disturb- of opinion concerning the authorship of ing the brethren's pious and beneficent activity.

the "Imitatio Christi" be in error) the one enduring embodiment of these. The half century which followed was Mount St. Agnes was for seventy-two that of the most vigorous advance of the years the home of Thomas Hamerken, of institution. Its settlements were to be Kempen (a tranquil little town formerly found spreading from Holland and Fries-in the archbishopric of Cologne, now in land to Flanders and Brabant, and even extending beyond the Netherlands into Rhenish Germany; and, more sparsely, into other parts of the empire. But these remoter foundations were mostly of later date and inferior importance, nor was it more than a pleasant form when (at Cologne in 1475) the emperor Frederick III. appointed the brethren his and his successors' vicars and chaplains forever. Perhaps, on the other hand, something of the spiritual influence exercised by the brethren in that part of the Netherlands where they were most numerous, may be accounted for by the exceptional need which in this period arose for its exercise. From 1456 to 1496 the see of Utrecht was held by David of Burgundy (the halfbrother of Charles the Bold), who was said to have done only one good deed during the whole course of his episcopate. Al ready, however, in this second period the institution of the brotherhoods was-in accordance with an almost inevitable law tending to merge itself in the general monastic system of the Church of Rome. It has been noticed how, so soon as two years after the death of Groot, a monastery of Regular Canons in connection with the Brotherhood of the Common Life, and following the rule of St. Augustine, had been established at Windesem, near Zwolle, and how not long afterwards a second convent of the very simplest kind had been opened on Mount St. Agnes, a little height pleasantly rising out of the "bush near the same city, and watered at its base by a stream supplying the fish which formed so important a necessary of life in these as in other convents. By the year 1340 there were already in existence not less than forty-five monastic establishments of the same kind and origin; and in the period just described this number had nearly trebled. The convent at Windesem, however, always remained the institution in chief, and after it the whole body of these convents in the Netherlands and in Germany were called the Windesem Congregations.

"

It is, however, to the second and humbler foundation of Canons Regular of the Common Life that we owe both what in

Rhenish Prussia, which at the present day has little to recall the memory which makes it illustrious, unless it be the humane consideration which is paid in it to the inhabitants of its principal edifice, an asylum for the deaf and dumb). Seventytwo years-from his arrival there in 1399, in the twentieth year of his life, to the day of his death! "Blessed is he who has lived well in one and the same place, and made a happy end." The writer of these words was of humble birth, a handicraftsman's son; and it seems to have been the force of example which attracted him into the life of which his own career was to become a lasting type. For the names of several other natives of Kempen occur among the brethren or the canons of the Common Life, and Thomas's own elder brother John, who had become a canon at Windesem, and was afterwards the first prior of the convent at St. Agnes, had preceded him on his way, on which a younger brother named Gobelinus seems afterwards to have followed him. Thomas spent six years as a scholar, and one as a brother, at Deventer, residing during the last in the Florentius house, to whose founder and inmates he has erected an imperishable monument. Florentius, who had enabled him to go through his preparatory studies, acquiesced in his desire to devote himself to a monastic life; and thus, after not less than seven years of probation at St. Agnes, he was in 1406 admitted as a regular member of the convent. "It is no small matter," he writes, "to dwell in a monastery, or in a congregation, and to live therein, without reproof, and to persevere faithfully till death." Doubtless the good Thomas had his part in the trials incident to the inner life of all small communities, as well as in troubles of greater outward importance. He shared the three years' exile of his brother canons on the occasion of the episcopal troubles in 1425. After he had held the office of sub-prior in the convent, he lost it—perhaps in consequence of this very flight on shipboard; and was subsequently appointed to the post of steward the "office of Martha," as he calls it. He was ultimately again made

cious method of multiplying books, in which so many of them had found a main support, as well as a distinctive badge of their Common Life. The centre of both intellectual and spiritual effort was certainly no longer in the Low Countries; and though, when the day of the Reformation had arrived, Luther did his utmost to attest his warm admiration of the spirit and the practice of the brotherhoods, it was hard indeed for them to choose their side - harder than either for purely ecclesiastical foundations on the one hand or for purely academical bodies on the other. So their side was in very many instances chosen for them; in Protestant States their establishments were swept away, in Catholic their educational functions passed into the hands of the Jesuits; while the brethren's and canons' and analogous sisters' houses became convents of the ordinary type. Concerning

sub-prior, having in the interval held the been done. In general, the advance of appointment of master of the novices; the Renascence in Germany had overand some of the discourses are preserved taken the efforts of the brotherhoods and in which he encouraged the piety of his their schools, to which in its beginnings it charges, among other things by the narra- had owed so much. In particular, the tion of "modern instances," which have printing-press, which they only here and perhaps escaped the notice of those good there took into their service, was beginProtestants who claim Thomas as a pre-ning to supersede their own less efficacursor of the Reformation. But it is not his theology which I can here pretend to discuss. In it he was a child of his times, and his writings breathe the particular atmosphere in which they were produced; the secret of the influence of his genius lies in the enthusiasm of his personal devotion. At one time he enforces his new yvwlɩ σεAUTÓV: "This is the highest and most profitable lesson, truly to know and to despise ourselves." Át another, he can thus directiy point the way to his ideal: "This is the reason why there are found so few contemplative men, because there are few who know how to separate themselves wholly from perishable and created things. For this a great grace is required, which may raise the soul and bear it above itself." Thus in him the contemplative side of the Common Life, to which the active is ministrant, is consummately shown forth. But the tranquillity which he seems to typify the earlier part of this period of decay we is not that of a repose obtained without effort, or enjoyed unbroken. The conscientious steward, the laborious copyist, the much-sought preacher, the rigorous ascetic, in his threescore years and twelve of retirement led a life which was no dream; "In all things," he was wont to say, "I have sought rest, but I have found it nowhere save in hexkens ende box-resolved to bring up for a monastic life. kens" (in nooks and in books).

Thomas a Kempis belongs in the greater part of his life to the second period in the history of the brotherhoods, though he is the historian of the first. He had never known Groot, and Florentius had been the paternal friend of his boyhood; and when he fell asleep himself after his long day's work, both Gerard and his friends had long passed away, though it was still nearly two centuries before the piety of a remote brotherhood bore their remains to their last resting-place at Emmerich. About the time of Thomas's death that decline in the vigor and usefulness, though not as yet in the outward prosperity, of the institutions may be said to have begun, of which their modern historians have sufficiently traced the causes. These may, perhaps, not unfairly be summed up in the fact which institutions, like individuals, are so slow to recognize the best of their work had

possess a very curious piece of evidence (of which a quite unfair use has been made) in a letter addressed by Erasmus to the pope's secretary, and intended for the ear of the pope himself. In it he tells the story of two young men whom, on their being left orphans with a small property, their designing guardians had

When they were old enough to be sent to those schools "which are now called universities," the guardians fearing the secular influence of such a place upon their wards, determined to place them in an es tablishment of those Fratres Collationarii "who nowadays are to be found any and everywhere, and who gain their living by teaching boys." The principal purpose of these brethren, continues Erasmus, is to break the spirit of their best pupils, and to mould them into fit subjects for a monastic life. The Dominicans and Franciscans declare that without these seminaries their own orders would soon perish from inanition. "For my part," he adds, "I believe that these institutions may contain some honest men; but as they all suffer from lack of the best authors, and in their obscurity follow their own usages and rules of life, without comparing themselves with any one but themselves, I do

E

E

A. W. W.

From The Kaffrarian Watchman.

not see how they can be liberal educators | ber that "there is a great difference be-
of youth; and at all events the fact speaks tween the wisdom of an enlightened and
for itself, that from nowhere issue forth devout man, and the knowledge of a well-
young men with scantier scholarship and read and studious clerk."
with viler manners." The younger of the
two brothers knew more than his teachers
did, one of whom he roundly described as
the most unlearned and boastful monster
on whom he ever set eyes. "And such
they very often entrust with the care of
boys. For their teachers are not chosen
according to the judgment of learned men,
but by the fiat of the patriarch, who very
often knows nothing of letters." The
writer then relates how one of the two
young men, after "losing two years or
more in one of these houses, was easily
persuaded to take the vows in one of the
establishments of those brethren who re-
joice in calling themselves canons; while
the other was with greater difficulty
drawn into a net of the same kind, which
was kept so tight over him that he could
only hope to escape from it through the
intervention of his Holiness.

INFLUENCE OF FORESTS UPON STREAMS.
THE above is the topic of one of the
sections of a very interesting report upon
forestry, prepared by Dr. F. B. Hough,
under the direction of the United States
commissioner of agriculture. Dr. Hough
collects the facts in support of his line of
argument from a variety of sources, and
we shall here avail ourselves of his labo-
rious industry and make use of his exam-
ples to show the "influence of forests
upon streams." "Mr. James Brown, of
Sterling, Scotland, a standard authority
upon forestry (runs the report), "in
speaking of the effect of tree-planting upon
moisture, says: I have frequently been
surprised to find (on examining woods
which had been planted some ten or
twelve years, all the land under which had
been considered dry at the time the plan-
tation was made) wet spots, spreading
wider and wider every year, and some of
them even beginning to throw out runs of
water; thus proving that under the shade
of the trees the larger portion of the moist-
ure of the land is retained, and therefore
accumulates in spots, according to the
nature of the subsoil.'" Then reference
is made to a volume, entitled "Influence
des Forêts sur les Climats et les Sources,"
and published at Montpelier in the year
1874, which contains an account of cer-
tain observations prosecuted by one M.
Jules Maistre de Villeneuvette during a
period of eighteen months in a wooden
basin and in one that had been cleared,
but otherwise similar in soil and condi
tions. The former, with an area of seven
hundred and seventy hectares, delivered
one hundred and ten litres of water very
regularly: the other, with 6,786 hectares,
The brethren of Deventer and their had a drainage of only ten or twelve litres
foundations took no part, so far as I know, a second, and was very irregular. He
in any endeavor to heal the breach which found the temperature in the open fields
the Reformation had effected. But Cath- at least 10° C. above that in woods.
olics and Protestants alike may acknowl-noticed that, in the southern region, the
edge the efforts of men who helped to cultivation of cereals is becoming more
teach the modern world to love books uncertain and less profitable, and that the
without ceasing to love what is better
than books, and who (though educational
reformers in their generation) did not lose
sight of the maxim of one of their num-

Allowing a little for the pointedness of a style with which the pope had good reason to be "singularly delighted," allowing more for the burning hatred of monkery which animated Erasmus, we may see in this letter a picture probably true enough in many cases to the actual condition or growing tendency of the brethren and their conventual establishments. In other instances the convents began to take thought of worldly things, to push the practice of trade and industry, and to develop that love of property which seems almost inevitable in a corporate body, and of which the germs may perhaps be detected even at St. Agnes in its early days. As time went on, no new afflatus manifested itself, but there was a noteworthy tenacity in the Common Life even when its institutions had become nothing more than an insignificant branch of the conventual system of the diminished Church of Rome. As late as the year 1728 not fewer than thirty-four convents sent their representatives to a general assembly of the Windesem Chapter.

He

injuries by the Phylloxera upon the vineroots were more destructive." Then the report enlists in its service Mr. R. U. Piper, from whose work on the "Trees of

America" the following extract is made before the Royal Academy of Sciences at by way of ilustrating the return of water St. Petersburg in January, 1876, and for by restoring the woodland shade: "Within which also we are indebted to Dr. about one half-mile of my residence there Hough's report. “As a warning_examis a pond upon which mills have been ple, the author cites Palestine, Persia, standing for a long time, dating back, I Greece, Sicily, and Spain, which countries believe, to the first settlement of the town. are suffering in consequence of the devasThese have been kept in constant opera- tation of their forests. To this list may tion until within about twenty or thirty be added a portion of southern Russia, years, when the supply of water began to where one hundred and fifty or two hunfail. The pond owes its existence to a dred years ago there existed large forests, stream which has its source in the hills now changed into naked plains where the which stretch some miles to the south. hills are without water, and the popula Within the time mentioned these hills, tion is forced to settle in the valleys. We which were clothed with a dense forest, may also mention the Volga and the have been almost entirely stripped of Dnieper in southern Russia, where the trees; and to the wonder and loss of the forests around their sources have been mill-owners, the water in the pond has cleared to such an extent that in their failed, except in the season of freshets, middle and lower portions, where these and, what was never heard of before, the two rivers, so important to the commerce stream itself has been entirely dry. With- of Russia, pass through a wholly cleared in the last ten years a new growth of country, the high water reaches points wood has sprung up on most of the land never before attained when the upper forformerly occupied by the old forest, and ests were standing. Every one knows of now the water runs all through the year, the changes made yearly in the beds of notwithstanding the droughts of the last these rivers by these floods, and the confew years." Next a fact is mentioned in sequent inconvenience and even danger connection with the Ohio River. "About which these occasion to navigation. The 1871-72," runs the report, "the waters fact is also generally known that the deep sank lower than had been known before, gulfs which in summer and winter are and at Smith's Ferry, where the Pennsyl- without water, become wild torrents after vania line crosses, a ledge of rocks was heavy rains, and the melting of snows in laid bare that had not been seen before by spring, carrying with them acres of the the present inhabitants. On this surface, finest soil. We believe that these evils from fifty to one hundred feet and several would have appeared in less degree if the hundred yards long, inscriptions have country adjoining these rivers had not been made, such as are ascribed to a race been cleared of its woods." Nor does our which densely populated the country be- author in this section of his report fail to fore the advent of the recent Indian insist upon and to illustrate how the cuttribes. It is possible to conjecture that ting away of forests tends to produce the clearing of forests by an agricultural great irregularity in the rainfall and to race may have brought about the condi- bring about torrential rains, which run off tions now existing, a long interval of the surface of the ground from their very neglected culture and forest growth hav- impetuosity, and carry with them the best ing since intervened." Nine years ago at of the soil. As coal is brought more and a meeting of the International Congress more into ordinary and general use in this of Land and Forest Culturists held in country, and the consequent necessity to Vienna, it was shown that the Rhine, the burn wood as fuel is lessened, we may Elbe, and the Oder were all shallower hope to see some restoration of the forthan they had been in the past, and it was ests and of the seasons to something of pointed out that this was directly tracea- the regularity observed in regard to them ble to the destruction of forests. And for some years after the landing of the our last extract shall be from a paper read | British settlers.

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