And two small crumpled rose-leaves wet with rain;

Such for her cheeks: but O, now for her hair,

What sunbeams cast such shadowiness, and where?

But for her eye. I think some woodland elf

Laughed in that looking-glass to see himself.

And when she sighed in dreams, a drowsy wren

Hopped her sweet mouth into from off her chin,

And in her throat entwined a tiny nest Wherein to pipe the song a wren knows best . . .

Lo! then, the house where dwells, 0, who can say

A soul still winking at the break of day;

From those bright starry windows still to peep

And shut those shutters when 'tis time to sleep;

To op'n those scarlet doors, and learn to cry

How sweet a "you," how wonderful an "I"!

On December 13, 14, 15, or 16 last, according to the district, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Reformed Church, and the Jewish Faith, was finally disestablished in France. In obedience to the Pope's Encyclical Gravissimo officii munere of August 10, the Roman Catholic Church in France has nowhere formed "Associations of Worship," the only ecclesiastical bodies to which, according to the law of December 9, 1905, which came into force from four to seven days later, devolution of property held by the Church under the Concordat is possible. It has been said and repeated that the Pope's aggressive move in August, which his Holiness has steadily and well followed up since then, was a fatal blunder. Was it? If the Vatican wants solid peace with the Third Republic, and a rooted status for the Church of Rome in France, it was. But does the Vatican want anything like a National French Church and a quiet life with the French Government? If the last Encyclical had bidden, instead of forbidding, the French Church to form "Associations of Worship," these by now would be in working order and in lawful, permanent, and almost independent enjoyment of all lands, buildings and revenues held under the Concordat. Bishops and priests would be living on in their palaces or cottages as before; there would have been nothing fateful about the dates of December 13 to 16; there would be no outward sign of disestablishment to the popular mind; and from August to now, we should hardly have heard or spoken, read or written about Church and State in France. The fateful dates have passed; the churches remain open as before: is not this a win for the Vatican? Church versus State, or State

versus Church, according to the standpoint, in France has kept Government, Press, and café debaters busy for four months and a half; they are yet at it, and will be at it for an indefinite time: is that no score for the Vatican? Bishops are removing out of their palaces and priests out of their cottages, but it would be a detestable state of things if they had no grievance, even of their own making. When the Government carries the new Bill by which may be abolished the temporary four or eight year pensions (never the annuities of superannuated priests), their grievances will grow. If the Government closed the churches, which is unthinkable, grievances would grow to martyrdom, devoutly wished by some leaders for their followers.

The French Government neither would nor durst use what seems to be its legal right to close the churches after the expiry of the year during which the Act required the Associations of Worship to be formed, and Rome knew it, and traded upon the knowledge. All along, from August to December, the French Government's hand has been forced by the Pope's move. The Church in France has likewise been coerced by the Pope's move. The bishops had accepted the law, and their flocks were perfectly ready, without a shade of hesitancy, to follow them; the Encyclical forbade acceptance, and bishops and flocks have obeyed with a passivity never before equalled by the French Church. Is not that also a triumph for the Vatican? The Pope's move has been masterly-in its way.

The strange history of Church and State in France during the past four months all turned exclusively on the Pope's move, and has registered its po

tency. If the French Government did play a few fairly good countermoves, they were only countermoves, and from then to now the Vatican has been leading the game. The abrupt attack which has given Rome the upper hand-for the present-was admirably sudden and swift. No Napoleonic decision at the height of battle ever amazed foes as much-and friends alike. The majority of the Bishops had ingeniously and diligently elaborated, down to the minutest details, a deft and pleasing scheme of "canonical" associations, which fitted neatly in both with the laws of Cæsar and with the divine constitution of the Church; and, good easy men, they waited complacent and confident. Cæsar, for his part, basked in the same secure equanimity; the Government was taking its holiday with an easy conscience and satisfied trust in the morrow. The Encyclical came out, and the horrid explosion blew up the Bishops' pretty handiwork and the Government's dream of a quiet life. The sight of both parties amid the wreckage was piteous. The unfortunate Minister of "Public Instruction and Public Worship" affected jauntiness, energy, and cool strength by turns. M. Briand gave interviews and made statements one after the other, and constantly contradicted himself. He has since said that he purposely aired conflicting views to feel the public pulse. The various public parties, except one, were for several days dumb with amazement. When they spoke it was with weak voices, little, piping, plaintive voices that strove to be sweet and soothing. The one exception had instantly begun to roar in exultation: Here is a Pope! When will come such another? Beelzebub is defied, the Devil has found his match. If martyrs be wanted, here are their naked breasts; "When the blood of women and children shall have flowed, then France will become Catholic

again." But the bulk of the Catholic world felt little enough like roaring. What had to be done and done at once was to wriggle somehow out of a hideously false position. The majority of the Bishops made wry faces at home, though they smiled in public. Their position was peculiarly painful; the Encyclical not only ignored their own brilliant and industriously devised scheme of canonical associations, while generally condemning the principle of such associations altogether, but by clever sophistry proclaimed the agreement of the Pope's decree with the unanimous resolution of the Bishops' conference, omitting to record that this unanimous decision in condemnation of the Disestablishment Law was followed by the elaboration of the very scheme which reconciled in practice that law with canonical law, and thus making the Bishops out to be in unanimous agree ment with a verdict of condemnation against their own enterprise. The worst was that the scheme in question, drawn up at the conference held privately in May last, was not made known by an indiscretion until after the Encyclical, by when the Bishops had advertised their agreement with the Pope's ruling. They were thus completely stultified, and shown to have been compelled to eat their words, condemn themselves, declare unworkable a law with which they had themselves devised a workable arrange ment, and feign that the Encyclical exactly answered their wishes, because it said it did, when it did precisely the contrary.

The Bishops bore up beautifully under this extraordinary combination of ordeals; not one grumbling word has come from them in public. The Catholic flock had naturally smaller ground for grumbling than its shepherds, but the position of some of its leaders was awkward. M. Brunetière, Count Albert de Mun, Baron Denys Cochin, and

twenty others had signed an open letter pointing out how the law could be accommodated for the Church: the Encyclical, ignoring them absolutely, declared that there could be no accommodation with the law. They were dumb for days, then all suddenly spoke up to recant and acknowledge that Rome could not accept a law which they had themselves proved acceptable. I was unable to induce the late M. Brunetière after the Encyclical even to refer to his previous views. The order was for total submission to Rome, and it was obeyed; one could even harp again on the "perinde ac cadaver" of the Jesuits which French anti-clerical writers have quoted once a week for a quarter of a century.

It was strange to watch men of some intellectual distinction, such as Count Albert de Mun, writing with equal facility in support of the Encyclical, after having written in support of opinions which the Encyclical exactly contradicted. But was not this precisely the greatest success for the Vatican and the best proof of the potency of the Pope's move? Never before has the Vatican met with such lamblike submission in France. Under the Monarchy the French Church was not afraid of remonstrating with the Vatican; under the Third Republic not one authoritative voice has been uplifted even in humblest protest. A strong, clear, and sensible open letter to the Pope, stating fairly and squarely the case for acceptance of the law from the French, not the Roman, point of view, was published in the Temps by “a group of Catholics," but has unhappily remained anonymous. A former secretary of Pio Nono has tried to start a Gallican Church, but the associations of Catholic worship registered so far are only eighty-two in number; they consist of rebellious Catholic laymen and a few priests at loggerheads with their bishops, and they not only must be schismatical, but probably are no legal

associations of worship, since such by Article IV. must "conform to the rules of general organization of the faith," which presumably include obedience to the Pope. Thus dissentient voices have been insignificant; Rome can claim with only a shade of exaggeration that Catholic France has uttered one voice, that of obedience. How then can Rome call the Pope's move a blunder? Such an act of domination, never before known in modern France, was worth to the Vatican the price-which the Vatican does not pay; it was worth the loss of palaces by French Bishops and cottages by French Priests, and worth Notre Dame, Chartres, Beauvais, Reims, Amiens, the claim of absolute ownership over which, made by the Pope, would have raised a laugh in the France of Louis XIV., and which those who love their stones would prefer trusting entirely to the Fine Arts department of the anti-clerical French State, than entirely to Ecclesiastical Chapters.

Of course the French State as little dreamt of closing their doors as of moving their stones. Another thing of which it had never dreamt was the Pope's move, having passed a fair part of the Disestablishment Law precisely with the support of the Right in both Houses to satisfy the Catholic minority.

The Government was undoubtedly staggered by the resolution to deprive the French Church of millions of property for the sake of a demonstration of principle. Apparently this was the one move which the Government had not foreseen and it proved the least easily answerable. The Government has replied abundantly, each time differently. At first the cue was "let the law take its course," and Olympian serenity. The Press at once jumped to the conclusion that on December 11, or thereabouts, every church would be closed in France and that mass would be said in barns, and the Lanterne al

ready thanked Providence, or its anticlerical equivalent, for such a Pope. Several anti-clerical politicians declared that the Disestablishment Law, had it been accepted by Rome, would have proved far too liberal, but, being resisted, was excellent in the consequences which resistance entailed. This standpoint has now receded. The tune to which extreme anti-clericals sang in ecstatic unison has died away. Many variations led up to the Clemenceau theme, "Me minister, not a church in France shall be closed," thenceforward the leit motiv. On it M. Briand composed two monumental speeches, between which M. Viviani, Minister of Labor, sang of the "splendid gesture" with which "we have quenched lights in the sky which none will relume"; the second of M. Briand's orations answering with the soothing counter-subject on an "a-religious," not an irreligious, State policy, whereupon the perverse M. Clemenceau in an incidental phrase before the Senate blithely said that he agreed with M. Viviani. But these were ornaments; the leit motiv remained, and has remained, unchanged.

Through vicissitudes. the position of Church and State up to the fateful dates of December had worked out thus: for one year a legal sequestrator would hold the Churches in trust for the State or the Communes to which they would finally belong at the expiry of that period, unless associations of worship were formed in the interval, to which, however, devolution of property would be no longer compulsory as before December 13, but optional at the will of the Government; ecclesiastical property other than religious edifices definitely reverted to the State or the Communes (or in some cases to private owners), from December 13 to 16; in sacred edifices religious worship would continue exactly as before provided that the priest declared once a year his intention to hold therein public services

on stated dates, in compliance with the law of 1881 on public meetings. This arrangement had been reached through successive "interpretations" of the law, by "administrative regulations" issued by the Council of State, and by circulars from the Government department of Public Instruction and Worship. It is very doubtful whether any expert in law could have foretold the arrangement from the sole text of the Act. The beauty of the latter seems to be that "interpretations" can make it mean a great many things. The arrangement had been obviously prompted solely by the Pope's move in August. The possibility of no associations being formed appears never to have been foreseen by the authors of the Act or of its amendments on either side of the Houses. The Pope played his move; clearly Catholics could not on that account be forbidden to pray in the churches of their forefathers: hence the "interpretation" of the law, which could not have been more liberal. But the Government (while M. Clemenceau, and especially M. Briand, had no inclination to oppression) could not help being liberal under the circumstances, and that the Vatican knew. The Pope has manoeuvred in such a way that the Government gets as little credit as possible for its liberalism. Had the Vatican allowed the formation of the associations of worship, the liberalism of the law would have equally appeared, but the Government would then have been the superior, generous party in the argument. The Pope may not be that now, but his Holiness has proved the cleverer politician.

Yet in the long run who will pay the piper, for some one must? Surely not the French State. After all if the Pope has scored off the French Government, it is rather a hollow gain; the Government stands to lose little. It will not be much hurt because the Pope has annoyed it exceedingly for four