Beginning with this issue of THE PARISH MONTHLY, each month a short sketch of some noted artist and his work, with one or two reproductions, will be given for the instruction of our young readers.

The cover cut this month is also one of Carlo Dolci's.

Carlo Dolci was born in Florence, May 25, 1616, and died there, January 17, 1686. He was one of a great number of talented young men who studied painting in the school of Mateo Roselli in his native town. He apparently had no ambition to paint great historical paintings or huge frescoes. His best known works

are comparitively small pictures of madonnas and saints. All his pictures are remarkable for their grace and delicacy. Always he chose as his model for the madonna a pretty young woman and for the child a beautiful babe. He painted a number of madonnas greatly resembling each other, the painting here reproduced being generally regarded as his masterpiece. Dolci especially excelled in painting the hands of his subjects, though many of his madonnas as well as magdalenes and representation of the Mater Dolorosa have passionate admirers who consider him at least the equal of the great painters of sacred subjects who flourished a century or

NEW VATICAN ART GALLERY. Pope Pius X. inaugurated recently a new Vatican picture gallery on the ground floor of the palace near the Belvedere courtyard. The gallery comprises six halls in which are gathered

the Vatican's collection from the thirteenth century downward, increased by additions from the Lateran Palace.

The pictures were scattered hitherto. Many of them were accessible only to artists with special permits. They can now be appreciated collectively in well lighted and appropriately decorated surroundings. The cost of carrying out the work was more than $60,000, which was defrayed entirely by the Pope.

The ceremony was private, only the Cardinals, members of the papal court and diplomats accredited to the Vatican attending. The Pope on leaving his apartments entered a gala carriage in the garden, crossed the Via Fondamenta and alighted at the gallery, where Prof. da Chiardi, the director, received him and accompanied him. through the rooms, explaining the arrangements.

The Pope remarked upon the appropriateness of the date of the opening, it being the anniversary of the birth of Raphael.

-Men who are generous in every other way should not be mean in a matter so vital as religion.

It is the solemn teaching of history, no less than that of our reason and experience that without religion, there is no strong and stable morals; and without morals. no social organism, however mightv in material achievements, will prosper and endure.

TO THE HOUSE OF TRUTH BY THE ROAD OF RECREATION*.

The cloud of falsehood that has so

long hidden the true history of mediæval England has in these latter days been gradually disappearing before the light of the ever increasing knowledge of the period. A knowledge born of historical, antiquarian and archæological research, conducted largely by non-Catholic scholars whose love of truth was paramount to their inherited dislike of all things Catholic, or more truly, the ridiculous phantoms which they believed to be

Catholic. No field of medieval endeavor had received greater attention from these prejudiced, yet, withal, truthful seekers after facts, than the dramatic and poetic activity displayed intervening between the Angevin atby the English people during the time tempt to usurp the ecclesiastical pre

rogatives and the Tudor apostasy. The inquiry into the dramatic side of the subject has indeed yielded a rich harvest, and made plain why England was called in the Middle Ages "Merry England;" moreover, has demonstrated beyond contradiction that the Church was the protector, promoter and sanctifier of the drama.

The Church in its great mission to fallen humanity has ever recognized that the nature of man required relaxation and intervals of rest, and the popular dramatic recreation is a legitimate means by which to obtain the same, hence that it is right to indulge in honest theatrical amusement at fitting seasons. The Church could not do less, in view of the fact that she allowed plays to be given within the walls of her temples, and placed upon her altars, for the veneration and example of the faithful, play-actors, men who were done to death for their faith, such as S. Corneillus. S. Genes,

*Everyman, with other interludes, including eight Miracle Plays. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 12 mo. Cloth 40 cents; Leather 70 cents.

S. Pelagius, S. Porpherus, S. Sylvain, S. Ardalion and S. Gelasius.

The first dramatic performance in England, mere interludes, were given

with the full sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities, and as the histrionic art developed, the Church guided it along the pathway of religious instruction, making it an instrument with which to draw men from sinful to righteous living.

The stories illustrated in the English medieval plays were largely drawn from the Bible, and were called Mysteries, or from the lives of the saints, and then they were called Miracles, and towards the end of the Middle Ages a new form of drama came into being in which the characters were no longer individuals, but abstractions, setting forth some theological or moral truth, and these plays were called Moralities. These Mysteries, Miracles and Moralities were often given in cycles and usually during the joyous seasons of the liturgical year: Christmas, Easter, Whit suntide and Corpus Christi, and within their respective octaves. The performers were members of the various guilds, (the trade unions of the day), each craft giving a play which had some kind of relationship to their particular trade, for example: in the York Pageant of 1415, the play having to do with the story of the building of the Ark was given by the Guild of Shipwrights, the play of the adoration of three kings by the goldsmiths, and the marriage at Cana by the vin

ters.

The common people of England were so fond of these religious pageants that the first Protestant Bishops, finding it almost impossible to suppress them, attempted to bring them in line with the so-called new learning, but it was no use, as they were too Catholic to be successfully altered, so they at last prohibited them altogether, but this once again proved that good often comes out of evil, for this prohibition was "the begetter"

of the greater literary dramas of Shakespeare and his fellows.

Of the three hundred or more of these English mediæval plays that

have been saved from the iconoclasm of the Reformers there is no one of them more interesting than the Morality entitled Everyman. This simple play proved to be a tragic masterpiece when it was recently produced on the New York stage by a company of skilled actors. The author, whoever he may have been, understood his art and was a dramatist of more than ordinary ability. ordinary ability. The editor of the last edition of the play believes him. to have been a priest, whether or not he was a churchman is of little moment, it is enough that he was a man of profound imagination and of the tenderest human soul conceivable." He viewed the soul of Everyman from the stronghold of belief, hence to him human life was not a dark riddle, but a house of probation, a novitiate for that higher life of everlasting joy for which Everyman was created.

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The following lines from the opening words of the Morality will give a clear idea of the subject and object of the play:

Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet, Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep,

When the body lieth in clay.
Here shall you see how Fellowship and
Jollity,

Both Strength, Pleasure and Beauty,
Will fade from thee as flower in May.
For ye shall hear, how our heaven king
Calleth every man to a general reckon-
ing:

There is every reason to think that the religious drama in England, if its development had not been interrupted, would in the end have outranked in beauty and genius the wonderful productions of the Spanish theatre, for we cannot doubt that an Auto Sacramentale written by Shakespeare would have surpassed those of Calderon, noble and beautiful as they are, for the Bard of Avon was the greater poet.

HIGHER EDUCATION FOR
WOMEN.

One of the most remarkable papers read at the Catholic Educational conference held at Cleveland, O., was by Rev. Thomas Ewing Sherman, S. J., entitled, "Remarks in Aid of the Higher Education of Catholic Women. in America."

Father Sherman said in part:

Be it understood from the start that I am in full sympathy with the Empress of Germany in her clever enumeration of the four things a woman really rejoices in. "Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche," a happy saying paraphrased in our tongue by, "Husband, home, church, kitchen." But while the homely arts are in every way to be encouraged, surely our sisters must have food for thought.

The club movement which has taken so strong a hold on all women of leisure, the reading school guilds, the summer schools north, east and south, largely frequented by women, all are so many signs of the times, and call for our direction and encouragement. These things indicate the intellectual thirst which is to be slaked at fountains, pure or tainted as the case may be. While Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Smith and other Protestant institutions hold out all the attractions and inducements of a college curriculum to our American women; while Michigan, Wisconsin and Chicago and other universities are equally open to both sexes, we Catholics must look to our fountains of learning and see that they flow as full and free as those not under church auspices and control.

Now comes the pertinent question. If woman is to continue to play her providential part in the upbuilding and sustaining of Christian civilization, if Catholic mothers are to inspire, mould and form great characters, for the battle of life in our age and country, our women must have means to train their minds as we train ours. A glance at the obverse side of the picture will render this need the more conspicuous. Who can measure the

power of evil of a George Eliot who teaches the gospel of pessimism in the homely phrase of rarest rhythmic power, pouring out the fountains of her soul before the base shrine of a vague humanitarianism; what is she but a Christian genius marred in the training?

Has not Mrs. Humphrey Ward done more to make the agnostic position respectful and respected than a dozen masculine pens? Does not the unspeakable Corelli exalt the senses to such a height as to tear the soul from the moorings of reason, with such a sweep of imaginative fervor as to carry shoals of the young and giddy and not a few maturer minds on the wings of the winds of passion?

Is not the wide, wide sweep of Christian Science, the most appalling error since the days of the Gnostics and Manicheans, due to one woman's cunning in availing herself of the American's lack of clear thought, accurate definition and logical process in all that regards the fundamental problems of good and evil, right and wrong, life and death, which have ever vexed the soul of man demanding some theoretical as well as practical solution?

As a little logic, a little sound philosophy would have saved all these women from the demon's snares, so will a little logic save millions of victims from like poisonous vaporings.

A movement in favor of the higher education of women began at Oxford about the year 1865. The initiative came from a body of women organized there for the purpose, and gradually extended throughout that conservative university. About the same time London opened its degrees to women. At present there are some 225 women in attendance at Oxford. Though not of. ficially recognized as students, they are admitted to nearly all honor courses of lectures.

It should be understood, however, that the relations between the men and women students are quite unlike those existing at most universities.

They have separate colleges and separate tutors, and the fact that they attend the same lectures no more constitutes an acquaintance than attendance at the same church would do. In some subjects they are no no doubt thrown together, but speaking generally, such intercourse as they have depends on private introductions. There are definite rules as to the chaperonage, and the students are expected to conduct themselves like ordinary young ladies. Anything like fastness is strongly discouraged by public opinion.

If a university as staid and conservative as Oxford has overcome the obstacles to co-education and opened its courses of study to women, there would seem to be every reason to expect that before long our greater American universities may be induced to follow the same example by adopting the same precautions as Harvard has already done.

Radcliffe College at Harvard repre

sents a greater advance even than that effected at Oxford. Under the same board of regents as the university and subject to like conditions and requirements, the women students at Radcliffe can gain the ordinary academic degrees just as other members of the university.

This is as it should be.

To sum up, the movement in favor of the higher education of Catholic women, in accord as it is with the best principles of our religion, and with the practice of the ages and the nations in which Catholicity flowered. and fruited under the most favorable conditions, is so much part and parcel of the tendency of the times that to stand against it would be little else than stupidity on the part of Catholic leaders; rather should we proudly place ourselves in the fore front of so hopeful a cause.

With classic lore added to nature's facility, volubility, feminine acuteness of perception becomes wisdom.