artifice? Again: it was due to the reader to show him fairly how far the opinions recommended would carry him. There is no wish to disguise their tendencies, nor to withdraw them from such examination as will prove them erroneous, if they are so. Any homage which it is desired to render to his memory would indeed be sadly tarnished, were he to be spoken or written of in any spirit but that of an unshrinking openness like his own. Such also is the tone of the Catholic Fathers, and (if it may be urged without irreverence) of the Sacred Writers themselves. Nothing, as far as we can find, is kept back by them, merely because it would prove startling: openness, not disguise, is their manner. should not be forgotten in a compilation professing This Nothing simply to recommend their principles. therefore is here kept back, but what it was judged would be fairly and naturally misunderstood: the insertion of which, therefore, would have been virtually so much untruth. Lastly, it may perhaps be thought, of the correspondence in particular, that it is eked out with unimportant details, according to the usual mistake of partial friends. The compilers, however, can most truly affirm, that they have had the risk of such an error continually before their eyes, and have not, to the best of their judgment, inserted any thing, which did not tell, indirectly perhaps but really, towards filling up that outline of his mind. and character, which seemed requisite to complete the idea of him as a witness to Catholic views. It can hardly be necessary for them to add, what the name of editor implies, that while they of course concur in his sentiments as a whole, they are not to be understood as rendering themselves responsible for every shade of opinion or expression. It remains only to commend these fragments, if it may be done without presumption, to the same good Providence which seemed to bless the exainple and instructions of the writer while yet with us, to the benefit of many who knew him: that "being dead," he may "yet speak," as he constantly desired to do, a word in season for the Church of God: may still have the privilege of awakening some of her members to truer and more awful thoughts than they now have of their own high endowments and deep responsibility. The Feast of the Purification, 1838. [This Journal may fitly be introduced by the following letter, addressed, by its writer, as if to some correspondent, but really intended for R. H. F. himself. The date is 1819 or 1820.] Sir, I HAVE a son who is giving me a good deal of uneasiness at this time, from causes which I persuade myself are not altogether common; and having used my best judgment about him for seventeen years, I at last begin to think it incompetent to the case, and apply to you for advice. From his very birth his temper has been peculiar; pleasing, intelligent, and attaching, when his mind. |