which numbered their inmates by thousands, while from their gates Apostles went forth to every country in Europe. Ruins, instinct with life, like the grave of Eliseus, tell of these Irish missionaries from Iona and Lindisfarne to Luxeiul and St. Gall and Bobbio, where, in the year 615, nearly two centuries after the mission of St. Patrick, his great son, St. Columbanus, finished his career in the Italian Fatherland of his faith.

In conclusion, it will not be out of place to refer to the way in which ridicule has fastened on the name of the Apostle of Ireland, and created a sort of prescription against the St. Patrick of former days. This is mainly to be attributed to the fact that, in modern times, he has been pre-eminently the patron and representative of that form of Catholicity which, as it borrows little or nothing from art or literature, and lives only in the hearts of the poor and simple, is regarded as fair game for the sneers of the unbeliever. "Hath any of the rulers believed in him, or of the Pharisees? But this multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed." Time, however, has proved that the faith of the Irish people in their Apostle is as logical as it is enduring; and ridicule, which seemed for a season to triumph over truth, has returned with avenging bitterness on its originators.

ART. IV.-CHURCH AND SCHOOL IN MAURITIUS.

ON

N the fourteenth of September 1841, an English mail ship to Mauritius sailed into the harbour of Port Louis. Among the groups of passengers who stood on her deck, gazing with the intense interest of new comers to a strange land, was one that would attract the notice of a Catholic-a small band of priests of various nationalities and mostly young, who had come to devote their lives to the spiritual welfare of this distant island, and in their midst the figure of a Bishop, an Englishman in the prime of life, who had come to work with them and to rule and guide their labours. The last named was the Right Rev. Dr. Collier, O.S.B., the newly consecrated Bishop of Milevius i.p.i., and appointed Vicar Apostolic of Mauritius, and one of the most distinguished prelates who have been sent to rule the affairs of this island diocese. One of the priests was, like the bishop, an English Benedictine, others were seculars, and one other, finally, was a Père Laval of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, a Frenchman, who will figure pro

minently in the wonderful missionary incident we are going to relate.

We begin the story of the Church in this island from the date of Bishop Collier's arrival, not because the Church was then first introduced into the island, but because the date marks an era in her history. That fourteenth of September was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a day, surely of most happy omen for the arrival of a Christian Missionary; and the omen has been marvellously verified in the facts of the bishop's career. Those facts which are to be briefly narrated will show the truth of an assertion made by a well-informed priest, competent from long years of work here to speak as he did: "Bishop Collier's arrival," he writes, "opened an era glorious and fruitful, the benefits of which still live with us. The bishop gathered energetic and zealous priests from France, Belgium, and Ireland, who shared with him the glorious task of transforming the island."

A glance backwards at the earlier spiritual history of the island will show how it came to need transformation. It has been related in a former article* that when the French inhabitants of the colony surrendered to the English in 1810, they stipulated for the preservation of their religion. It goes without the saying that that religion was the Catholic; they were Frenchmen. It unfortunately does not follow that their religion was in the vigour of health, or indeed that it showed itself notably in any Catholic life. A large portion of the French emigrants who had flocked to Mauritius during the eighteenth century left their country during the prevalence of Voltairian doctrine and spirit. They had not lost their faith, but many of them had learned to scoff at it, and to regard its practices with indifference if not with a sentiment worthier of their teacher. Indeed so slow are worldly growths to be quite uprooted, traces of this indifference and want of genuine Catholic feeling may still be found in contrast with the more zealous and praiseworthy spirit that generally prevails. The emigrants had come too, firstly and before all, to make a home and a fortune for themselves in the new-found colony: it is not be marvelled at, therefore, that the care of riches effectually choked the seed of religion and knowledge.

Then came the great Revolution, so destructive of faith and piety in France. It was scarcely less so in this, then French colony. Perhaps the readiness with which these Frenchmen in their far distant homes in the Indian Ocean, with their own special interests and cares, and separated by the immeasurable

* DUBLIN REVIEW, January, 1880, p. 1.

sea from the interests and cares of Frenchmen in France, sympathized with the revolutionary doings in Paris, and imitated them here, will be considered by English readers as somewhat remarkable. But they did respond with enthusiastic fervour to every new phase of revolutionary progress, and did their best to travesty gigantic events on their own narrow stage. When in 1790 a vessel arrived from France bringing intelligence of the great power usurped by the National Assembly, and the officers and crew had landed each adorned with the tricolour cockade, the flames of a sympathetic revolution burst forth and quickly spread. "Liberté, egalité, fraternité," were bandied from mouth to mouth by men who would have abhorred all three things in their true interpretation. We shall see a striking proof of this. A Jacobin Club was established, and named the "Chaumière ;" a guillotine was erected in a public square of Port Louis, and to complete the admiring imitation of the mother country, noisy patriots paraded the streets, shouting sedition, defying the laws, and terrifying the officials and governing power on the island. The Mauritians, however, discriminated strangely in their servile imitation. When "egalité" was interpreted at Paris to include God, and worship of Him as a Superior Being was forbidden, then, indeed, the colonists were in admiring accord, and promptly closed churches, abolished the Sunday, banished priests, and tried to forget God: but when, again, later, the same "egalité" was interpreted at Paris to exclude slaveholding, the colonists demurred! The decree of the General Convention abolishing slavery in every French dependency was received with indignation; a proclamation of independence was seriously mooted, and finally the Colonial Assembly passed a resolution forbidding the execution of any law emanating from France unless it had been previously examined and sanctioned.

There were at that time only about 59,000 inhabitants on the island, and of these no less than 49,000 were slaves: a dangerous place one would think, in which to shout liberty and equality, unless the cry were honest. Equality was surely as good a plea for the release of chained slaves, as it was for the murder of the old noblesse and the confiscation of their property. But the mere proposal to release the Mauritian slaves brought the revolution in the island to a standstill; there was deep alarm and apprehension lest the slaves should catch an echo of the dreadful cry, and be inspired by it to free themselves. The recent horrors at St. Domingo were talked of as justifying measures of repression, and slavery went on. It is a grim satire on the meaning of moral cries in the mouths of a mob. After this, demagogues left the street platforms and went home to their slaves;

the Jacobin Club was deserted by degrees, and finally the one guillotine was taken down unstained with blood, and the passions of the crowd grew gradually cool.

Buonaparte having, in 1802, re-established by law the trade in slaves, and thus set the fears of masters here at rest, the news of his election as Consul for life was received by the island "with the greatest transports of joy." The revolution being now a thing of the past, the island again followed the example of France: churches were re-opened, priests returned, and people generally were once more at "liberty" to be good if they chose. But unfortunately the evil spirit that had been evoked, would not be banished so easily, and the worst effects of the movement lived on. Men did not come back to church simply because the doors were opened, and for the first forty years of this century the general air of the Christian community was not one of zealous piety; freemasonry was common among the upper classes of men, and indifference and neglect prevailed. For the most part it was thought religion enough to receive Christian baptism at one end of life and Christian burial at the other-more especially if the interval were made honourable by amassing a fortune from a sugar estate. This, it need hardly be said, was the more general and apparent condition of things. That it was by no means absolutely universal, that there were still not a few zealous Catholics, and that much of the neglect arose from want both of opportunity and of the incitement of higher example rather than from want of generosity and good disposition, will be abundantly proved by the rapidity with which people responded to the call to better things when it came.

Up to the time of the Revolution (from 1712 to 1820), the island had been exclusively served by the French Lazarist Fathers. At least one of them had dared to remain during the excitement of the Revolution, in spite of the decree of banishment, and several returned at once to the different churches when the fury of the storm had abated. These zealous missionaries were the founders of the first parishes and churches on the island; Grand Port, Pamplemousses, Moka, Flacq, and others. They left the island entirely on the arrival of the first English Vicar Apostolic, Mgr. Edward Slater, O.S.B., in 1820. In 1874, however, at the solicitation of the present bishop, Dr. Scarisbrick, some of these Fathers returned to aid in the work here. One of them at his earnest request came more especially to work for the conversion of the poor Chinese spread in such numbers through this colony. Père Glau, who after ten years of labour in China had retired from ill-health, was the first to come in 1874, and had in the year of his stay here

succeeded in instructing and baptizing some thirty Chinamen. But there are numerous and serious difficulties in the way of a large measure of success, chiefly the many and frightful vices of the Chinese themselves, and their contented devotion to the care of earthly things. Another Father of the same Order continues the Chinese mission-but the utmost zeal and energy is discouraged before the immovable indifference of these Orientals. Intermarriages of Chinamen with Catholic Creoles are frequent -of course the Chinaman has to be instructed and baptized, and when, as sometimes happens, he becomes a Catholic really, he is a very good one, but for the most part he never practises the religion he has been taught. He will, however, take pride in being able to send his wife to Mass richly dressed, and is far from offended when passers-by remark how grand Madame Chinois looks. As a rule these marriages are happy ones for the wives. It is remarkable that whatever may be his own vices, the Chinaman looks for a virtuous wife; hence he is shrewd enough never to marry an Indian woman. But this is digressing from our main purpose.

*

One event had immediately preceded the coming of Dr. Collier, which it would have been natural to suppose, had only rendered the moral condition of the colony a degree worse than before. In 1839, as has been related the negro slave population had been emancipated. Almost suddenly and without any previous discipline, more than 65,000 slaves, of a nation proverbially void of foresight and self-control, were abandoned to the difficult task of self-government and self-support. How they fared in the latter respect is not now our concern; we shall presently be interested in learning how they were aided in the former by the Catholic missionaries.

We have said that a small band of priests accompanied Dr. Collier in 1841; he found a few others already at work in his new diocese. But he soon saw that if the state of religion was to be changed, he had need of a much more numerous body of zealous and self-sacrificing labourers, and he at once courageously faced the long voyage back again to Europe, to gather, if he could, recruits for the arduous work. His quick glance had also taken in another need of his charge-that of a good Catholic education for the young. He sent from Europe in 1844 three more priests, one of whom was the Abbé Mazuy, who, like Père Laval already mentioned, became a leader of

* DUBLIN REVIEW, January, 1880, p. 12. The explanation was then omitted that after the unattached apprentices had been freed on Feb. 1, the period still remaining for those attached to the soil was made to cease by a Proclamation of March 11, and slavery then entirely ceased.