neys were very great. Father Brock, the superior, soon followed Father Altham to the grave; he died on the 5th of June, 1641, sinking under the heavy cares and hardships of the missionary life.

Father White continued his labors with redoubled zeal and activity, and with extraordinary results. In one of his excursions, which were generally by water, he was caught in the ice and compelled to remain. Availing himself of this opportunity he visited Potomac town and there established a mission. During a stay of two months among the Potomacs he converted their chief and many of his warriors, and three chiefs and many of the braves of the adjacent tribes. At Potopaco, the site of the present village of Port Tobacco, all the inhabitants were converted to the faith. The frequency of wars between the various tribes presented great obstacles to the advancement of the gospel. In consequence of Indian hostilities Father White was a second time recalled to St. Mary's. But he did not remain idle. He made frequent excursions up the Patuxent about the year 1642, and among the converts thus gained were the queen of Patuxent town and her mother.

In these excursions, which were performed in an open boat, the missionary was generally attended by an interpreter and a servant or lay-brother of the society. Two rowed while the third steered. They carried with them the altar-stone, vestments, wine and holy water; besides these a variety of articles both fanciful and useful as presents for the natives, some scanty provisions for themselves, and the necessary hunting and cooking utensils. Whenever they failed to reach an English settlement or Indian village before dark, they tied their canoe to the shore and spent the night in the woods, lying around a large fire, which was generally built by the Father, while his two companions went forth to hunt some game for their supper.

In his "narrative" Father White relates the circumstance of a wonderful cure of an Anacostan Indian, a Christian, who accidentally fell into an ambush of the Susquehannas, and fell pierced through with a spear. Father White found the heroic Anacostan weltering in his blood and sinking in death, still chanting, with more than Spartan valor, the death song of the forest. The wounded Indian with his friends joined the good Father in supplicating heaven, and humbly and devoutly made his confession in preparation for death. Having applied to his wound a relict of the Holy Cross, and given some directions for his funeral, Father White departed in his frail canoe to administer the last consolations of our holy religion to one of his catechumens then lying at the point of death. While returning the next day, as he supposed to perform the funeral service over the corpse of the Anacostan, he saw two Indians approaching him in a canoe, and as they approached, to his astonishment he recognized one of them to be the same Anacostan, who was now plying the oar with his wonted power. Jumping into the Father's boat the Indian threw off his blanket, and exhibited the scars of the healed wound of the day before. Father White called upon all who had witnessed the miraculous cure, to praise God for his merciful interposition, and used this circumstance powerfully to confirm the faith of the new converts and to bring others to the knowledge of the true God.

Father White's missions were in a flourishing condition, when suddenly in 1644 the cry of war and rebellion scattered the fond hopes of this zealous friend of God. Claiborn and Ingle having raised the standard of insurrection and invaded the province, Father White and the other missionaries were seized by a band of ruthless soldiers, subjected to most cruel imprisonment, and sent in irons

to England to be prosecuted as "popish priests and Jesuits." The sufferings he endured in his London prison were exceedingly great. Though worn out in health by the sufferings and hardships of ten years of missionary life along the banks of the Patuxent and the Potomac, and borne down by old age and imprisonment, Father White never relaxed his usual austerities and penetential observances. Twice a week he fasted on bread and water, as he had been accustomed to do for many years. The keeper of his prison was greatly surprised at his austere course of life, and one day said to him, "What! at your age, almost eighty, wasted by fatigues and hardships, you do not relax your fastings on bread and water! If you continue in that manner you will not be strong enough to stand up under the gallows at Tyburn." The holy man replied, "You must know that my fastings give me strength to bear all kinds of suffering for the love of Jesus Christ." So reduced was Father White by his imprisonment and fasting, that he appeared to his gaoler to be eighty years old, when in fact he was but about sixtynine. He was finally banished from his native country. Again turning his paternal eyes towards his dear children in America, he earnestly petitioned his superior to permit him to return to Maryland. Some of his companions succeeded in getting back to St. Mary's after the suppression of the Claiborn rebellion and the restoration of the proprietary government of Lord Baltimore, but this happiness was never enjoyed by Father White. Unable to resume his apostolic labors among his beloved Piscataways, he next turned his attention again to his own countrymen, and after a few months of exile this intrepid soldier of the cross ventured to return in the face of the penal laws of the land, to England, under an assumed name, as is supposed. The secrecy which he and his friends were compelled to observe, has deprived us of all account of his labors in England, which lasted however about ten years. He was so infirm towards the end of his life that he could scarcely walk, and his death was daily expected. But Father White foresaw and foretold the day and hour of his death. He used to say, "my time is not yet come, my time shall be on the feast of St. John the Evangelist." Accordingly on that festival, being the 27th of December, 1656, O. S., corresponding to the 6th of January, 1657, N. S., though feeling no worse than usual he insisted on receiving the last sacraments in the morning, and about sun-set of the same day he breathed his last at London in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

It would be difficult to find in history a character more pure or more beautiful than that of Father Andrew White. Religion alone can show such results as this; by birth a man, by grace and faith and love an angel. With his profound learning he united the simplicity of a child. His greatest happiness was to commune with the untutored children of the forest. His life, though varied, active and laborious, was as devout and austere as an anchorite. He was a true disciple of a Loyola, a worthy brother of a Xavier. One inspiration filled his whole soul and guided all his actions, "To the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls."

THIS is a strange question to ask, when England and our own country are ringing with the praises of this distinguished writer. Of the graphic character of his style, possessed of every note that can give fame, there can be no doubt, and it would be consummate folly to hint even at a denial of those qualities, which belong to a classical author, and which will no doubt make his works to be read with pleasure even by those, who do not admit the truthfulness of the conclusions at which he arrives. But with all our admiration for the beauties of his style, and none can have a greater, we may still be allowed to think that he does not possess or at least does not show himself to possess the characteristics of an historian. And in this judgment deliberately formed from a careful perusal of his works, the last with which he has honored the public has more than ever confirmed us. The history of the reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, is in our humble opinion a misnomer.

History, says a celebrated modern critic, is a faithful narrative of past events: or as the Roman orator expresses it in his own eloquent way: "Who is ignorant that the first law of history is not to dare say any thing false; the second, not to fear to say all that is true: that there may be no suspicion of favor or hatred in writing? These fundamental laws are known to every one." De Orat. II, 15. In another place he gives utterance to that well-known sentiment, which has now almost become proverbial: "History is the witness of times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the instructress of life, the messenger of antiquity." Ibid. The essential character therefore of history is fidelity, truthfulness. The historian does not, ought not, write for the amusement of his readers, this belongs to the romancer or the novelist, nor to convince them of the probability or possibility of his preconceived systems, this is the part of a philosopher or theorist. The whole duty, the only duty of the historian is to be truthful and impartial, not daring to distort the incidents nor thinking that he is more acquainted with the secret motives of his heroes than those incidents in their first and obvious bearing can warrant. Beauty of description, an order that shines, while it interests, are indeed important for the good writer, but for the historian they are matters of minor importance and are never to usurp the place, which belongs of right to truth. According to Polybius, if a work fails in this, it cannot be called a history.

It is very true that in the events, which the historian feels himself called upon to relate, there are found mixed up certain parties, who are most interested, as all parties are, in presenting their own claims to posterity in the most favorable light. From such parties, who are biased for their own acquittal from the wrongs that have been the consequences of their actions, the historian must keep aloof. He should be no partizan : he must be a judge, whose spotless ermine must be unstained by the dust of faction, and whose integrity must be proof against the bribe of popularity with the advocates of either of the contending parties, who are brought to the bar of his court.

Is Mr. Prescott such a judge? His last work will help us to decide. The witnesses, whom he has questioned for their testimony of the interesting period, which he had selected for the exercise of his talents, are almost without exception enemies to those against whom they are made to bear testimony, and those who are friends, are cited only where their words concurring with the sentiments of their adversaries, tend to give a value to the authority of these latter, which they do not of themselves possess. Thus in speaking of Mary of England, his VOL. IV.-No. 2.

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authorities are Burnet, Strype, Fox and Holinshed, who would be from the very nature of their connexions averse to grant any quarter to her, who so strenuously opposed the progress of their opinions during her reign, while the favorable documentary evidence, which Andrews and Cobbett had published, which no one has yet dared to answer and which prove his authorities unreliable are either ignored, as if they had no existence, or distorted in so uncandid a manner as to leave no favorable impression of the judge's charge, when he shall proceed to the summing up of the cause. This is the dark cloud that hung over her reign" and is a more obvious way of accounting for Mary's unpopularity, than the spirit of persecution, of which she is unjustly accused.

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Again, in all that relates to the Inquisition, that terrible bugbear of Protestant minds, his authority is Llorente, the destroyer of the records of the Holy Office, whose secretary he was, whose testimony should have been suspected from this very circumstance, even if no exception were made to it on account of his connexion with Joseph Bonaparte in his short-lived reign over the Spanish dominions. Then Puigblanch and the writers of the Orange party and the Protestant league in the Netherlands are made to parade their hostile and calumnious tirades against this "raw head and bloody bones," which they cast in the van of their insidious attacks against the civil as well as religious prosperity of their countrymen. Yet Mr. Prescott had no doubt heard of Balmes, whom he cites only to ridicule, and must in his extensive correspondence with the learned of Europe have heard of Mahul and Lanjuinais, editors of the Revue Encyclopedique of Paris, who did not consider their friend and colleague Llorente very worthy of credit, and of the learned and accurate Hefele, who judging Llorente from his own mouth, fixed an indelible stigma on his character as an historian, and in "the life of Cardinal Ximenes and the Ecclesiastical condition of Spain, from the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries," gave a most triumphant refutation of all that the bitterest enemies of the Inquisition could bring against its character. This reliance upon Llorente to uphold his condemnation of that institution is the more wonderful, when we consider that in the cause of Don Carlos, Mr. Prescott thus speaks of the quondam secretary's claims to confidence. "His omission to do this (viz. to acquaint his readers with the names or some particulars of the characters in that tragedy), may lead us to infer that he had not perfect confidence in it himself. At all events, it compels us to trust the matter entirely to his own discretion, a virtue, which those familiar with his inaccuracies in other matters will not be disposed to concede to him in a very eminent degree." (vol. ii, p. 572). The meaning of this is, that M. Prescott rests his own character for integrity and fair-dealing upon a witness, whose discretion is no ways reliable and whose inaccuracies are so great in other matters, that he cannot be trusted. M. Prescott sometimes hears his Bible read to him: did he ever hear the words: "Every beast loveth its like: so also every man that is nearest to himself?" Eccl. xiii, 19. Even the infidel Gibbon might have told him, that "we must not calumniate even Satan or the holy office:" (Decline and Fall, c. 54); yet in defiance of his own better information, for we know that he is better informed, he has continued to pander to the same juggernaut of prejudice, which made of his other works one-sided, although eloquent, caricatures of history.

Of a piece with this is his continual reference to Meteren, whom his countryman and co-religionist Reidanus (in præf. ad. Annal.) censures for his "calumnies, flatteries and dissimulation," and whom M. Prescott calls "respectable authority." (vol. ii, p. 163).

DeThou and Sismondi, M'Crie and Brandt, learned men indeed but enemies of that worst kind, that religious and national prejudices engender, are called in to swell up the ranks of his witnesses against Philip and his ministers. If these make a Nero of Philip, as De Thou and Meteren endeavor in citing that foolish document (vol. ii, p. 219), by which he was said to have condemned almost the whole nation to death for their treasonable practices, M. Prescott should have hesitated to admit the forgery or at least have opened his eyes to the worthlessness of their testimony. But in this as well as in the still more evident forgery of Alava's letter (vol. ii, p. 85), we have another proof how prejudice against the Catholic religion can swallow the most improbable stories. Of Brandt he might have recollected his own observation on much less important topics, vouched for by the Catholic Bentivoglio in his war of Flanders. "The Italian historian, he says, affects a degree of familiarity with the proceedings of this secret conclave (he is speaking of the conference in which the confederates debate the propriety of meeting force by force), by no means calculated to secure our confidence." Yet without a remark on the improbability of the information he can bear with Brandt's augur-eyed piercing through the thick walls of the prisons and describing the most secret tortures of the inquisition with a particularity, that even an eye-witness might envy. But" circumstances alter cases. In view of all this

we may without injustice apply to him, what a French critic wrote of Voltaire, whose character M. Prescott regards so much that he scruples not to follow his example. "The feeling of humanity ill-directed by an inexact and shallow criticism constantly degenerates into tolerably good declamations, which avail nothing for history, where passion and feeling must give place to intelligence." (Cousin Hist. de la Phil. II. lec). What else could we Catholics expect from such partiality but insulting epithets and injurious insinuations? When our own witnesses are not admitted to testify, at least in defence, and their rebutting evidence is rejected or ignored, we need look for no justice at M. Prescott's tribunal. The good old maxim of the common law, handed down as an heir-loom of liberty by our fathers, that "every man is to be supposed innocent until he be proved guilty," is to be reversed with us: our innocence is to be proved, our very name is sufficient evidence of guilt. And if we venture on the proof and the argument is too convincing, we are silenced by the "orthodox maxim: no faith is to be kept with heretics." (vol. ii, p. 49). Does not such conduct prove that he is himself more amenable to the imputation of bigotry and fanaticism than those he has so frequently condemned for those vices.

It is in consequence of this bigotry that he can see nothing in Philip's words or conduct sincere, while every thing in William of Orange is manly and open, when required. Yet of William he writes that he maintained spies at Madrid and Paris so many and so watchful that "not a word in public or private dropped from the king's mouth without its being faithfully transmitted to his ears," and he could descend to a mean double-dealing, as he did with the elector of Saxony and Philip before his marriage with the daughter of the former, and in a more conspicuous manner when under cover of a banquet he held a meeting of the discontented nobles in his own house and discussed with them the terms of a petition, which was to be presented to the regent, and in the council in which that petition was presented, by a contemptible quibble unworthy of an honorable man, treated as a 'calumny the report that he was the head of the confederacy. But any thing unfavorable to William of Orange, is like the Memoires de Granvelle, a doubtful authority:" even William's own words, we suppose, must fall under the same

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