against the Government, and waging ceaseless war upon every legislative effort to escape from the theocratic theory. Furthermore, in France, unlike England, there are conflicting political factions with their deep-going differences of opinion touching the form of government: Bonapartists, Royalists, Nationalists, Plebiscitaries, and Clericals, all anxious to destroy parliamentary government, and at times conspiring against it. In France the Catholic Church, according to the Premier, is not content with perfect freedom of action; she aspires to domination; she is not willing to stop short of supremacy over other religious communions.

The Concordat, a "secular Convention," not only confers certain privileges on the Church, but imposes certain specific obligations and limits the Church's liberty of action. The Church has made full use of all the privileges and advantages given to it under the Concordat, but has not discharged any of the corresponding obligations; and it is not only the right but the duty of the Government to compel the Church by all legal means to discharge the obligations which it has failed to meet. These breaches or violations of contract between the Church and the State have been many and deliberate; and the Premier declares that the entire Catholic clergy, "from the Pope to the curé," are permeated by a determination to evade the restrictions of the Concordat. It has sometimes been said, by way of justifying these aggressions, that the French Government has confounded, under the name of the Concordat, the diplomatic Convention signed by Papal and French plenipotentiaries, with the Organic Articles to which the Pope was not a party; but as the text of the diplomatic Convention provides for and authorizes the Organic Articles, which are regulations to give effect to the compact, and it has always been acknowledged that the Concordat would never have been ratified by the French Chamber without the Organic Articles, it is futile to endeavor to separate the Convention from the Articles, by the force of which alone it became operative as law. Both the Convention and the Organic Articles appear in the

French Legal Code under the common head "Loi du 18 germinal an 10," and every attempt to bisect the Concordat has been rejected by successive French Governments. On the other hand, the Catholic clergy, by insisting on this interpretation of the relations between the Church and the State, for a century have kept up one long series of controversies respecting the interpretation of the Concordat.

The Premier declares that there is not a single article imposing an obligation on the Church which has not been transgressed at every turn, and that the Republic has been compelled to defend itself continuously from clerical attack. The supremacy of the civil authority and its independence of religion and dogma form one of the fundamental ideas of the Republican constitution, one in direct antagonism to the Catholic doctrine of authority. It was the violent antagonism of the French clergy to the Republic that evoked Gambetta's phrase, "Le Cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi ;" and the Premier declares that Clericalism is found at the bottom of every agitati n and intrigue from which the Republic has suffered during the past thirty-five years; and that it is because of this continuous, unrelenting, and irritating opposition to the fundamentals of republican government that the Republican leaders have come to the determination to emancipate civil society from clerical influence by confining the priest to the Church.

To accomplish this involved both legislative and social change. Nominees of the Clerical party occupied conspicuous positions in every department of Government; schools were founded in competition with the State schools in all country towns and chief rural communes; female religious Orders were greatly multiplied, and education everywhere was saturated with hostility to republicanism. It was idle to attempt to revive Revolutionary legislation against the Orders, and out of the question to apply it even to those that were unauthorized. The Chambers, which represented popular feeling at the time, would not have authorized such a policy. Jules Ferry felt himself unable to deal directly

with the Orders, and therefore secularized the curriculum of the public schools. The Orders succeeded in gradually kill ing lay competition, and the rising generation in France became impregnated with their spirit. It became the conviction of the Republican leaders that, in order to save the Republic, drastic action must be taken at once; ten years later, M. Waldeck-Rousseau declared, it would be too late. M. Combes affirms that the policy pursued by him was simply the application and extension of the policy laid down by M. Waldeck-Rousseau and given effect by the Law of Associations. The purpose of that legislation was to withdraw the youth of France from an education incompatible with republican ideals, and in order to do this the chief clerical weapon, the teaching, preaching, and trading Monastic Orders, have been destroyed. The Concordat is silent as regards Religious Orders, and no phrase of it can be interpreted as a weapon against the Law of Associations. The Premier narrates at great length the history of the rise of these Orders since the Concordat, and the gradual but thorough way in which they secured permanency, influence, and finally almost control of primary education. gives several instances of what he regards as flagrant violations on the part of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics of the obligations of the Church under the Concordat, and narrates a series of events indicating, in his judgment, antagonistic hostility to republican institutions which finally convinced him and his associates that the only solution of the conflict was the final separation of Church and State. He declares that this is inevitable by reason of the fundamental conflict between the dogmatic teaching of the Church, as expounded in the Syllabus, and the governing principle of the French Republic; that this separation will be a mutual emancipation of the Church and State calculated to serve alike the interests of religion and of the State; and that the suppression of about five hundred teaching, preaching, and commer

He

cial orders was the logical consequence of the Republican policy of the last thirty years, forming an integral part of the system which affirms the supremacy of the State, with uniform neutrality in legislation and the application of equal liberty to all.

This authoritative statement brings out clearly the fundamental issue in France; it is not a question of religion, but of education. In this country, where Catholics and Protestants are equally loyal to free institutions and to the American spirit, it is not difficult to understand the perplexities of the Republican leaders. It is a great misfortune that many French ecclesiastics have been so blind to the movement of the age, and so out of sympathy with the political aspirations of the French people. Pope Leo XIII. understood that the age of monarchy for France had passed, and saw that the Church could not bind itself to a dying system. The French Clericals lacked his statesmanlike insight and foresight, and have precipitated a fight in which they are certain to be beaten. In thus arraying a great religious organization against free government they have unfortunately confirmed the idea, fostered by many French radicals, that religion itself is reactionary, and given a new impulse to the forces which are opposed to all religion. They have also made possible a drastic policy which has undoubtedly involved great hardship and injustice. At bottom, however, the issue is fundamental, and the supporters of republican institutions in France had to face the alternative of taking education out of the hands of the Church or of building up a great and dangerous opposition to the Republic. Every Church is concerned with moral education; no Church has any concern with politics. The attempt to deal with political affairs has been the bane of the' Roman Catholic Church for centuries. The French ecclesiastics may well study the attitude of the Church in this country and adopt its wise and patriotic policy.

"H

ERE'S to your very good health and to your family's, and may you all live long and prosper." No words are more familiar to the American play-goer of two generations. Just how often Mr. Jefferson has uttered them in his great rôle of Rip Van Winkle no one knows, for the actor himself lost count years ago of the number of times he had played the part.

The Spectator was once present at an unusual performance of Rip which he has never seen chronicled. Mr. Jefferson had often wondered if his acting would interest the blind and the deaf; if they would be able to follow the story of the play and be moved by its pathos and its humor-the blind from what they heard and the deaf from what they saw. Just before his company broke up for the season, some eighteen years ago, Mr. Jefferson engaged Niblo's Garden, and through the Charity Commissioners of New York invited the children of the blind and deaf institutions of the city to a grand gala matinée. The members of the company gave their services, and a few of Mr. Jefferson's friends were asked to witness the experiment.

The Spectator remembers his first sight of that great array of children as he looked out from his seat in a box through the semi-darkness of the unlit theater; in one place a mass of blue uniforms, up yonder in the gallery rows of white-collared boys, down in the orchestra chairs a crowd of little girls in brown dresses. And then-just before the curtain went up-came a message from Mr. Jefferson. The Charity Commissioners had thought he must have made a mistake in inviting blind and deaf children to a theatrical performance, and they had sent only children with nothing the matter with them!

So the experiment was a failure, and, so far as the Spectator knows, Mr. Jeffer

son never had a chance to learn whether the blind and the deaf would appreciate his acting. But the children that day had a treat.

Before the publication of his autobiography most of Mr. Jefferson's associates were of the stage. He came of a long line of actors. He was "Jefferson the Fourth," and at the Players in Gramercy Park, New York, hangs an old play-bill of David Garrick as Hamlet, with that Jefferson who was "Jefferson the First," our player's great-grandfather, as the King. His mother was an actress; he was "born in a theater;" his play-room was the stage. He made his first entrance as the child in Pizarro" at the age of three, and a year later he began to "act," doing a little song and dance as a miniature "Jim Crow."

The appearance of the delightful story of his life brought him before the public in a new light. He had never before written anything, but just from putting down on paper what was in him he produced a masterpiece. General Grant did the same, and the editors of the magazine in which both their works appeared say that practically no corrections or changes were necessary in the manuscript of Joseph Jefferson and of General Grant.

While the autobiography was under way, Mr. Jefferson used to think that he wanted it to appear as a "subscription book," in the glory of a gilt top, a halfmorocco back, a price of three dollars and a half, and an agent to talk about it. But he was persuaded to let the work come out first as a serial in a magazine, and he never regretted the success of the persuasion; for its publication there gave him at once a great literary audience. Then he began to be asked to speak before colleges and (Yale

gave him an LL.D.), and he loved to do it. His favorite way of beginning one of those charming personal talks was to say, after the long and hearty applause which was sure to greet him: "Ladies and gentlemen, you know a speaker always enjoys applause [then there was more of it], and for two reasons: first, because he likes to be appreciated, and, second, because it gives him a chance to think what he is going to say next." And that always brought out another round.

He liked to have the audience ask him questions, and his quickness at repartee and his keen wit never deserted him when he was on his feet. Sometimes, when he was not quite sure that he could think of enough for a speech, he would ask a friend to see that a few questions were distributed among the audience, so that, in case he began to halt, a query should surely be put to him. But they were seldom needed.

For a number of years Mr. Jefferson spent his winters-between the autumn and spring seasons of acting-at his plantation near New Iberia, Louisiana. To reach it one traveled by rail for about four hours from New Orleans, and then drove in a wagon for ten miles over a flat prairie. "Avery's Island," a tall mesa with a famous salt mine inside it, loomed up in the distance. Mr. Jefferson called his place “Orange Island." Other people called it "Jefferson's Island." It was an island in name only, although one crossed a bridge over a small stream to reach it. The house was a great hospitable Southern home, one-story, with piazzas nearly surrounding it. Here the Spectator visited him for the first time. The morning after the arrival of his guest, Mr. Jefferson asked him what he would like to do best.

fishing was done, and the days largely were given over to reading aloud from the autobiography upon which Mr. Jefferson was then at work, and to long walks through the woods, where the Southern moss hung its curtains of gray over the live-oaks.

In the morning Mr. Jefferson would sit on the piazza in a big wicker chair and read bits of the autobiography. Occasionally he would lay down the manuscript and tell a story, and the Spectator would say, "Now, you must put that in."

"And do you really think that would interest the public ?"

go.

And, after some argument, in it would

He was full of good stories. He could quote from Shakespeare as if he had played in every part-and, indeed, he had played in many. He had his own theories on the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy.

Was he ashamed

"Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, did he? And he was ashamed to own up to being a playwright? How about the sonnets? to be known as a poet? Perhaps it was not fashionable to be known as a playwright in the days of good Queen Bess; but no one had need to hide his poetical light under a bushel. No, sir; you may depend upon it, as the old joke says, if Shakespeare did not write his plays, they were written by another fellow of the same name." Later he elaborated this idea and wrote a poem on it, which he read before the faculty of Yale University.

of characters in which he was seen on the stage numbers fully one hundred. When the late Charles Mathews twitted Mr. Jefferson on playing only one part, he replied, "It is certainly better to play one part and make it various than to play a hundred parts and make them all alike." His art was so perfect that he played as if each time was the first. When he was asked a question on the

his future career. He began then to search for a part which he could make his own, and in his autobiography he tells how he was reading Irving's "Sketch Book" in an old barn during a summer vacation on a Pennsylvania farm, and how he found his part in "Rip Van Winkle." There had been half a dozen stage versions of the story played by as many actors for forty years, but Mr. Jef