224 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



mogony being discredited on all hands, by the abandon- 

 ment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a poem, 

 not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is forever 

 beautiful: in the latter aspect it has been, and it will con- 

 tinue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge 

 its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than 

 ours, to physical, and even in our own "free" age to 

 moral, violence. 



No incident connected with the proceedings at Belfast 

 is more instructive than the deportment of the Catholic 

 hierarchy of Ireland; a body usually too wise to confer 

 notoriety upon an adversary by imprudently denouncing 

 him. The "Times," to which I owe a great deal on the 

 score of fair play, where so much has been unfair, thinks 

 that the Irish Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in a 

 recent manifesto, adroitly employed a weapon which I, at 

 an unlucky moment, placed in their hands. The antece- 

 dents of their action cause me to regard it in a different 

 light; and a brief reference to these antecedents will, I 

 think, illuminate not only their proceedings regarding Bel- 

 fast, but other doings which have been recently noised 

 abroad. 



Before me lies a document bearing the date of Novem- 

 ber, 1873, which, after appearing for a moment, unaccount- 

 ably vanished from public view. It is a Memorial ad- 

 dressed, by Seventy of the Students and Ex-students of 

 the Catholic University in Ireland, to the Episcopal Board 

 of the University ; and it constitutes the plainest and brav- 

 est remonstrance ever addressed by Irish laymen to their 

 spiritual pastors and masters. It expresses the profound- 

 est dissatisfaction with the curriculum marked out for the 



