growth, while in the former it was incident to the deadness of an art whose development had long since been arrested. The difference is something like that which exists between the pictures of Giotto and those on a pack of cards.

Just below the twenty-fifth parallel and on the left or western bank of the Nile there stands, in the mud built village of Edfu, the great temple of Horus (Apollo). Though many of the faces of the reliefs on its walls have been, as in many another temple, scratched out by the early Coptic monophysites, this majestic edifice is probably the best preserved antique building in the world. Though built under the Ptolemies, it is entirely Egyptian in character, and the Grecian monarchs are represented triumphing over their foes or communing with the gods of the land after the same manner as their more ancient predecessors at Thebes and Abydos. The temple was freed by Aug. Mariette from the rubbish in which it was buried, but the inward pressure of the débris outside had been so great as to give a dangerous list to the massive girdle wall on its eastern. side and to several of the columns. The crest of the wall was as much as 80 centimetres out of the perpendicular. At the time of our visit the silent fellahin, whose fathers perhaps had built their mud hovels on the top of the buried temple, were busy taking down and resetting the huge blocks of which the columns are composed, their work being directed by the distinguished Italian Orientalist, Mr. Bar-Santi. This work of readjusting large portions of such a gigantic edifice must involve very considerable expense, and the tourist who sees the reconstruction going on is consoled to think that the $6.25 paid for his pass ticket to the Antiquities of Upper Egypt is not likely to lie by for very long.

The temple of Edfu is not a ruin. Of the repairs which it is undergoing actual addition form but a secondary part. When a new door, taller than many a two-storied house, is fitted into the ancient doorway the whole building will probably present most of the salient features which it possessed in the days of the later Ptolemies. On the outer face of the girdle wall is related the history of its construction. From the various inscriptions we learn that from the foundation stone to the finishing touch the temple was 180 years in the building (237-57 B. C.)—a period of growth worthy of its prolonged existence. For this latter we have to thank the kindly dust of the Nile, which in alliance with the dry desert air has stood out in defense of the past and saved many an Egyptian monument from the tooth of time.

Just above the twenty-fourth parallel, where the pent-up waters of the Nile make a great artificial lake, the many templed Island of Philae, the Pearl of Egypt, may be seen standing against a back

ground of palm trees out of the flood by which it is partly submerged. The beauty of the scene is intensified if the traveler contrives to arrange his visit towards sunset. The object which first arrests his attention is the Kiosk or temple of Trajan, with its slender and graceful columns surmounted by floral capitals, in which the usual Egyptian massiveness has given way to the more delicate proportions of the Grecian style. After being rowed through the columns the tourist may land at the temple of Isis and visit the other buildings which stand out at various heights above the level of the water. The feeling uppermost in his mind will be one of melancholy at the thought that this noble pile of ruins is doomed, sooner or later to destruction. It has been said by some engineers that the temples might have been underpinned with iron beams and lifted up to a dry level at moderate expense. However true this may be, it is too late to make the experiment now, and the destruction of Philae will be remembered as a deed which has helped much to mar the triumphs of modern engineering.

A row of some four miles from Philae to the barrage of the Nile brings us to a scene of very different interest. Here old Father Nile, after ages of alternate niggardliness and profusion, has at length been taught a lesson in economy and keeps his gifts locked up for seasonable distribution. After a "Hip, hip, hurra!" from our Nubian boatman we disembark in the full moonlight onto the deserted dam at its eastern end. The thickness of the structure sloping down on our left is hidden by the water, while on the right, beneath the sheer face of the wall, lies the former bed of the river. The broad expanse of the Nile has come to an abrupt pause at the seemingly thin partition and lounges sulkily upon the barrier, like a giant confined within his own castle, who looks forward to the day when he may burst forth suddenly from his restraint and ravage the land that has grown prosperous by his captivity.

At first all is silent, but a walk of some distance along the crest of the dam brings us within hearing of the water which forces its way through the sluices near the left bank of the river. Soon the barrier begins to tremble, and when we see the principal outlet we are able to form a vivid idea of the power of the pent-up waters on the one hand and on the other the massive strength of the masonry which controls their flow. The innumerable bags of cement piled up along the embankment are a sign that the victory over the straining flood is not yet complete. The rush of the water has already worn the bearings of the sluices, and sloping "aprons" of cement have been found necessary in order to ease off the sudden spurt. The expense of this necessary tinkering will not be very great, and when the work is finished the dam will probably be able

to bear a further addition to its height and withstand a still greater pressure of the water. Every additional foot of water in the lake. above the dam means a wider area of distribution and greater prosperity for Egypt.

A donkey ride by moonlight across the desert from the barrage to Assuan is an experience not soon to be forgotten. Though it is some two hours after sunset the vigorous little beasts seem eager for their run and need no encouragement or direction from their attendants. These latter interfered only when we reached the town and when the mention of the hotel for which we were destined was not a sufficient clue to the animals themselves.

We had, unfortunately, no time to visit Elephantine, an island just opposite the town of Assuan and the furthest point reached by Herodotus in his travels. After saying Mass at the church of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart and breakfasting at the hotel, we had to hurry off to the railway station and start on the hot and dusty railway journey to Cairo.

A few days in Egypt does not give any one the opportunity of forming trustworthy opinions about its inhabitants. The impression, however, which we received was that of a happy, industrious and law-abiding people among whom one might be at least as safe on a dark night as in many a more civilized community. As long as his religious fanaticism is not roused the Egyptian seems to be a very tractable member of the human species. Recent events seem to show that though he hates the Turk as the worst of tyrants, he will be ready if called upon to fight for the Head of Islam, however bad, against any Christian ruler, however good. Much as he would regret to have to make the choice, he would have no hesitation in making it.

Malta.

JAMES KENDAL, S. J.

2 Herodotus II., 29.

CALVIN AND THE AUTHOR OF "THE PRINCE."

A

FEW years ago Mr. John Morley published a monograph on "Machiavelli," in the course of which he argued that a theocracy was an impossible form of government. The nearest approach to the establishment of one was made in Geneva by John Calvin, he postulated, and there in the end the experiment had proved a failure, as it was bound ultimately to do. In reviewing Mr. Morley's essay in the Catholic World the present writer pointed out to the distinguished author and statesman that such an experiment had been tried in other places with perfect success, and referred to the case of the Jesuit settlement in Paraguay as one in point. A copy of the publication which contained the criticism was sent to Mr. Morley, and he courteously thanked the writer for having it forwarded; but so far he seems not to have made any use of the enlightenment. No doubt he will do so in due time, if he live, for Mr. Morley is too scrupulous a man to ignore correction when courteously made and with no other object than the ascertainment of historical truth.

There was never a more signal success in the experiment of inducting uncivilized tribes into the ways of orderly living and the knowledge and practice of Christianity than the settlement of Paraguay by members of the Jesuit Order. Similar experiments were carried out in other regions of South America, but in a minor degree. In Paraguay the element of permanency seemed to have been won for the system, but the spirit of unrest and destruction that swept over the Southern colonies of Spain a century ago blighted the fair hope. It reversed the results of patient endeavor and persistent prayer carried on for many years by the devoted sons of St. Ignatius, and the Freemason now rules where for generations only the gentle rule of the religious was known.

Although not exactly a theocracy, as the Jesuit system in Paraguay might be called a theocracy under a civil overlord-the rule of the Franciscans in California toward the close of the eighteenth century might well be considered by Mr. Morley. In the admirable "History of the Franciscan Missions" left us by the lamented Mr. Byran J. Clinch there is much that would certainly give a man of his bent of mind great satisfaction as an experimental statesman and broadminded philanthropist. He himself is now dealing, as Secretary for India, with many problems in the government of rude tribes and besotted religious beliefs hoary with age; and the story of how the religious orders of the Catholic Church wrestled with those early troubles of the wilderness must have an interest for such a scholarly

statesman as he. There is no counterpart for it in the history of any other religious organization in the whole world.

This brief retrospect is suggested by the appearance of a new life of Calvin, as one of the "Heroes of the Reformation" series. The author is Williston Walker, Titus-street Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale University. Though he is an admirer of the reformer's, he has some embarrassment in the matter of establishing Calvin's claim to be a hero, and he seems to feel some diffidence as to the success of his labored attempt. Calvin had plenty of doubts but few convictions when the hour that marked the turning point in his career came. He was arrested and thrown into prison, in his native city, Noyon, on the nominal charge of having caused an uproar in the church there. But contemporaries of his have left a very different version of the offense which led to his arrest. It was declared by them to be one of that unmentionable class whose legal punishment at that time was death by burning. Historians of either inclining, Roman Catholic and Calvinistic, have investigated the accusation, and reject it. Lefranc and Doumergue, on Calvin's side, find no support for it; neither does Desmay or Le Vasseur, two Catholic clerical historians, contemporaries of Calvin and who wrote after his death. Two modern scholars, Kampschulte (Old-Catholic) and Paulus, likewise dismiss it as unworthy of credence. On the other hand, the story has the powerful support of such an authority as Cardinal Richelieu, as was found in a posthumous work of his published shortly after his death. The appearance of this work drew forth a defense of the reformer's character by Charles Drelincourt, published in Geneva, 1667. Calvin was charged, during his lifetime, with many crimes, including licentiousness and drunkenness. In that time of turmoil and excitement many charges were bandied about; and the reformers were just as liberal in the use of such weapons as other controversialists. But the specific charge that troubled Calvin's defenders then, and continues to trouble his defenders of to-day, was not one of that class. It was advanced by a contemporary of his, a Carmelite friar named Bolsec, who had been in apostasy for some years as a result of the reformers' propaganda, but who was ultimately received back into the Church. It was to the effect that an investigation into Calvin's early life, by one Bertelier, officially acting for the Genevan authorities, disclosed that he had been "convicted of heinous moral turpitude, the punishment of which was then death by fire, but that the Bishop of Noyon had commuted the extreme penalty into branding a fleur-de-lys with a red-hot iron, as a perpetual mark of infamy, on the future reformer's shoulder." Professor Walker sums up the historical evidence and declares Calvin acquitted. But it must not be forgotten that when