Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 25 Context of Macaulay's perfected New Zea- lander, in his essay on Ranke’s History of the Popes, tarag. 3. There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work.of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when cam- eleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphi- theatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yester- day, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned -Napoleon in the 19th century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the 8th; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight. of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when coinpared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisi- tions in the New World have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendancy extends over the vast countries which. lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than. a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all the other Christian sects united amount to 120 millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dom- inion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical estab- lishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian. eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. Macaulay, who read and remembered every- ‚ thing and who never pretended to be original, must have been familiar with other anticipa- tions of his famous sentence. He must have known Mrs. Barbauld's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a poem in which she writes of a youth from the Blue Mountains or Ontario's Lake’’ who views the ruins of London. Particularly must he have remembered the blank verse of Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) on Britain a Thousand Years Hence,” in which occur these lines :— O’er her marts, Her crowded ports, broods silence; and the cry Of the low curlew, and the pensive dash Of distant billows, breaks alone the void. Even as the savage sits upon the stone That marks where stood her capitols, and hears The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks From the dismaying solitude. As all the poets copy one another, Shelley stole Kirke White’s bitterns, while Macaulay passed them by as having no prose value. He harked farther back to Wilcocks in his Roman Conversations (1792-94), wherein he read of “foreigners 2000 years hence sailing up the Thames in search of antiquities,” passing through some arches of the broken bridge,” and viewing ‘‘with admiration the still remain- ing portico of St. Paul's. One year earlier, in 1791--Масаціау would remember—Volney, in the second chapter of Les Ruines, dreams that some day оп the banks of the Seine, the Thames, ог the Zuider Zee”, a traveller may seat himself on silent ruins and bemoan in solitude the ashes of nations and the memory of their greatness. And Mac's unfailing mem- ory will remind. him that in 1774, seventeen years before Volney's book appeared, Horace Walpole warned Sir Horace Mann that аї last some curious traveller would ‘‘visit Eng- land and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's. Lewis DRUMMOND, S.J.

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24. LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW and arguing rashly, asevents havesince proved, from. the body to the mind, he prophesied for them a commercial success which has never even reached the embryonic stage. With his New Zealanders he had more facts to back him: for in 1838 their country had already had twenty-four years' experience as a progressive British colony. Hence the tone of his prophecy is more hopeful. Two years more and he was ready for that perfect picture which, with its almost poetic cadence, sings its way into our memories. [Read again the italicized words at the end, emphasizing the marked iambic accents.] Note, by the way, how much shorter this finished product is than the two preceding attempts. The first contained 127 words; the second, 53; the third 60; the fourth and best, only 39; but not one of these 39 words can be altered with- out marring the effect. Then consider what an appropriate and sonorous ending it provides for a long passage written in the full maturity of his unrivalled talent for broad historical contrasts. To be sure, the underlying prin- ciple, enunciated at the outset in these words, “There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving ofexamination as the Roman Catholic Church,” is ridiculously wrong and absurdly illogical. The undeniable facts which he marshals in such a brilliantarray ought to have made Mac- aulay suspect that the Catholic Church is not “а work of human policy, but a marvel of Divine Providence. Nevertheless, the art of the picture, crowned with its unforgettable conclusion, irradiates the souls of all those who, having received the true faith, know that it must be lived to be understood. Well and good, I hear some learned liter- ary critic object, ‘‘but what if this famous New Zealander was not an original idea? What if Macaulay copied from Shelley? This is a serious objection. Let us examine it. The con- cluding paragraph of Shelley's dedication of Peter Bell the Third, to Thomas Brown, Esq., is as follows: “Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from them; and in the firm expecta- tion that, when London shall be an habitation | of bitterns; when St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic com- mentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians, I remain, dear Tom, yours sincerely, MICHING MALLECHO.” At first sight, I admit, there is here in Shelley, as well as in Macaulay, the desolate aspect of London; some of the words even—St. Paul's, a London bridge, ruins, and broken arches—are exactly the same in both. Granting, for the nonce, that one of the two writers has pla- giarized the other, the culprit cannot be Shel- ley and must therefore be Macaulay. Not Shelley, because he died in 1822, two years before Macaulay wrote his first forecast of England made desolate. In order to find out whether or not Macaulay could have seen the Shelley passage before writing his own finished picture we must compare dates. Shelley’s widow wrote a ‘‘Postscript in the Second Edi- tion, 1839,” of her late husband’s works and announced therein the first publication of Peter Bell the Third. Her postscript is dated No- vember 6, 1839. This, therefore, is also the approximate date of the first publication of Shelley's humorous Dedication to Thomas Brown, the conclusion of which has just been read. Now, remembering that Macaulay’s perfected New Zealander appeared in October, 1840, we see that he had ample time—at least eight or nine months—to read Shelley's fore- cast and to take from it a lesson in startling imagery. Very likely, then, he did borrow from it six words, St. Paul's, bridge, ruins and broken arch. The whole thing may be summed up in this way. Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is dated by Shelley himself December 1, 1819, five years before Macaulay wrote of a ruined civilization; but Shelley's work was not printed till the end ot 1839, twenty years after it was written. Then Macaulay saw that four expressions, contain- ing six words, in Shelley's rather long and unpolished effusion—it contains over one hun- dred words—would suit his own definite, clear- cut picture. So he borrowed them, and, in borrowing them, lifted them into impassioned prose and made them immortal.

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26 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept. Oct. Oct. Oct. Oct. Jan. 8th 9th 14th 17th 18th 23rd 25th Diary for 1920-21 We return to Loyola three hundred strong by 9.15 p.m. Introduced to our professors and class begins. Regular order resumed. Baseball in full swing on the Campus. French tests for all except Philosophers. Intermediate and Senior Rugby practice. Many old forms replaced by promising new material. French classes begin. Rugby practice. Getting into shape for the first match. 29th to Oct. 3rd. Annual Retreat. 6th 9th 18th 20th 27th 30th 1st 9th. . 10th. . 11th. 13th. . 14th. 24th. 29th. First game of Rugby. Loyola Seniors 9; Westmount High School, 0. Seniors defeated by McGill on College Campus. Score 15-7. Thanksgiving Day. Full holiday. McGill again defeats our Senior team at McGill, score 35-2. Rain and electric storm. 4 .Another defeat оп the Campus. Donald College 5; Loyola 0. We retrieve our honour аё St Ann’s, Mac- . and return with a 6-4 victory over Mac- Donald College. Seniors leave for Ottawa with Fr. Mac- Donald and a few lucky supporters. Arrive back defeated 25-5. Grounds wet and muddy, so they say. Unusually large mail from Ottawa (from the boys' aunts). Intermediate defeat -Westmount High, 20-0. Junior Rugby Team defeat St. Leo' 5 on Campus; 15-4. Sanctuary Society and Choir süpper. - Sodality Day. Feast Conception. Banquet'at 6.30, followed by a very enjoyable and successful entertainment by members of 3rd Year High. ‘Loyola Senior Hockey, Team hold first practice on outdoor. rink. Officers of Snow-Shoe Club Movies. ‘elected. Open air rink in fine condition.-Look who was flooding it. No wonder. What's that ? Movies again ? Why yes, ої course.: Reading of notes for December. All leave for well-earned Christmas vacation. Senior Hockey Team wins first game from, St. Ann's in City League 6-3. Christmas holidays over. Back to College at 9.15 p.m. They told the Prefect they were glad to be back. Try-out for Junior Hockey: Team. Only two or three old players with us. 'They get busy and practice. Inter-class Hockey League starts. Second Year Arts suspected ої having Inter- mediate section. Seniors beaten in City League by Sham- rocks, 3—2. Mid-Term Repetition be- gins in all classes. juniors hold practice at Arena, fortified by the return of our last year'sgoaler, H. Decary. Another defeat for Victorias 4; Loyola 3. Juniors tie with McGill in Junior City League 3—3. Loyola Seniors. of Immaculate . Jan. 30th. 15th. 2nd. Jan. Feb. Feb. Feb. Feb. Feb. Feb. 5th. 8th. 10th. 12th. 26th. Mar. 3rd. Mar. 14th. Mar. Mar. 23rd. June 4th. June 11th. 12th. June June 1 3th. 16th. Loyola beats St. Laurent College ‘оп their own ice 5—4. Oral examinations begin. Full holiday in honour of Rev. Fr. G. Bradley, S.J., Prefect who takes his last yowe: M.—Juniors defeat Nationals Juniors tie with Catholic High 3—3. College Team goes to Ottawa and re- turns victorious 10—2. Loyola 3, Nationals 5, in Senior City. League. Juniors 1, Victorias 4. Juniors win from McGill in semi-finals. Score 5—4. Drive begun in aid of Starving Children of Hungary. Our big success this year. Forty minutes overtime against Lower Canada, score 3—3. Loyola now champion of the Junior City League loses to Lower Canada for Junior Championship of Quebec. Again ten minutes overtime. Never mind, Loyola, next time. Some fortunate people leave for home. Fr. Rector congratulates boys on their good will and success in the Drive for the Children of Hungary. Class begins again. We all receive birthday congratulations. Class Baseball League begins with ѕир- porters forall teams. Second Year High В will win the intermediate section. Annual public debate of the Arts course, with musical programme. Military Inspection from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. Old Boys beaten at Baseball 17—9. Sir Charles Fitzpatrick is guest of the College апа attends Physics Demon- stration by Third and Fourth Year Arts. P.M.—Inspection of College O.T.C. High School hold their Public Debate, with great success. Boxing Tournaments begin on Campus. ‘Kenneth Keating terrifies us all. McGill holds ` Interscholastic Track meet. Emmet Foy and Jimmie Hogan do great work. Loyola ‘High School: comes fourth out of thirty-eight schools with fifteen points. Closing exercises of month ої May. Procession and devotions in honour of B. V. M. Rev. Fr. Rector's Day. Donald and Rev. Fr. Hoffmann, S.J., ordained in College chapel. We con- gratulate them on this happy occasion, after their hard and prolonged years of study. 161 entries for Field day. Semi-finals and finals in boxing on the Campus Ashton Tobin wins championship over Suinaga. Rev. J. Mac- “Water, water everywhere Field Day postponed til] 15th. D. Walsh and P Suinaga win Tennis Tournament. Singles begin to-day The Review goes to press and this diary ceases. E.M.S. N. B -—Owing to a printers’ strike the printing of this 1921 issue of the Loyola College Review has been delayed nearly six months