United States has a sufficient number of natural and political advantages to warrant a reasonable degree of pride in her patriotic sons; but it is the merest absurd exaggeration to claim for her that she has reached the climax of national perfectibility, or that she has "the brainiest men, the cleverest women, the smartest boys, and the prettiest girls in the universe.”

Now, the surest cure for national vanity is foreign travel. Even a liberal education and the wide reading which it supposes cannot fully supply the lack of actual contact with the inhabitants of other lands than ours, or rid us completely of prejudices, misconceptions, and false opinions concerning the millions of people beyond our own territorial boundaries. What used to be called the Chinese cast of mind, a stupid contempt for everything beyond the wall of their celestial empire, is bound in some degree to characterize the untravelled, the stay-at-homes-even the clerical stay-athomes. To cite a common case: Father Johnson is a clever and energetic young priest, acting as curate in a city parish. He was born in a rural district, attended college in his own State, and pursued his theological studies in a seminary some two hundred miles from his home. His travels thus far in his career have not carried him to more than two or three States immediately adjoining his own. In his parish work he comes in contact with a number of foreigners of different nationalities, all of them day-laborers, and most of them illiterate, if not ignorant. Now, Father Johnson presumably knows, theoretically, or he ought to know,

that these working men and women cannot be looked upon as fairly representative of the civilization or culture attained by the respective races to which they belong, any more than the rowdies and "toughs" of New York or Chicago are representative of American culture; yet his impressions and views of each of these races as a whole are safe to be colored, or rather sadly discolored, by his observation of the unrepresentative individuals with whom he is familiar. The proof is, that a few years hence when the young priest visits the homelands of these foreigners, he will find himself astonished at the evidences of prosperity and culture and eminence in literature and art and science that greet him on every side. We have occasionally heard youthful American clerics, otherwise sane enough, oracularly setting forth the inferiority of Frenchmen and Italians and Spaniards with a supercilious air that would have been merely ludicrous had it not been pathetic. Without being at all conscious of the fact, they belonged to the class of whom Rabelais says: "They seem to have lived all their life in a barrel and to have looked out only at the bung-hole."

To many priests of course, as to many laymen, travelling assumes the guise, not of a pleasant recreation or an opportunity for broadening one's culture, but of work pure and simple, an integral part of their appointed vocation. Preaching missions and retreats, attending conventions of a dozen different varieties, assisting at Eucharistic Congresses, lecturing in behalf of some religious or social cause-these and the like occasions or cir

cumstances necessarily entail a considerable amount of journeying to and fro, both in one's own country and not infrequently in other lands as well. Such quasi-compulsory travelling is not invariably a delight; often indeed, especially to the elderly cleric who has outlived the youthful love of adventure, it is an unmitigated nuisance. In some cases, no doubt, the essential difference between travelling for pleasure and travelling on business is much the same as the distinction made by the philosophical small boy between fun and work: "Fun is work that you haven't got to do, and work is fun that you've got to do." A little sane optimism, such as should characterize all clerics, not only makes a virtue of necessity but knows how to transform a task into a pleasure, a necessary journey into a delightful outing.

As for the personal behavior, deportment, usual practice, or general conduct most congruous to the travelling priest, opinions thereon will probably differ as widely as do individual characters and temperaments. Every one will admit that a cleric's attitude towards his travelling companions may sin in either of two ways: it may be too indiscriminately hail-fellow-well-met, or too reserved, standoffish, and repellent. The proper attitude lies, as all will agree, midway between these extremes; and, on the whole, there is perhaps less danger of a priest's manifesting undue affability than of his holding himself too much aloof from those into whose company circumstances have thrown him. Apropos of sociability or friendliness in travellers, there is in one of Scott's novels a paragraph

which, apart from its autobiographical interest, is worth while thinking about. "For ourselves," writes Sir Walter, "we can assure the reader-and perhaps if we have ever been able to afford him amusement, it is owing in a great degree to this cause that we have never found ourselves in company with the stupidest of all possible companions in a post-chaise, or with the most arrant cumbercomer that ever occupied a place in the mail-coach, without finding that, in the course of our conversation with him, we had some ideas suggested to us, either grave or gay, or some information communicated in the course of our journey which we should have regretted not to have learned, and which we should be sorry to have immediately forgotten." Substitute smoking-car and steamer-deck for post-chaise and mail-coach, and the foregoing will serve as an accurate account of the experience of many a traveller, clerical and lay, since Sir Walter's time, of every traveller indeed who combines with ordinary culture a modicum of practical philosophy and cheerful common sense. Civility in one's intercourse with travelling companions, readiness to be addressed by and to converse with those in whose society we are to make a journey of hours or days, a geniality that knows how to dispense on occasion with the formality of a ceremonious introduction-these are qualities which, if not natural to a priest, should in our opinion be acquired by him if he is desirous of either deriving full benefit from his travels or improving the opportunities of doing good which his travelling affords him.

It may be quite unnecessary, but it can do no harm, to remark that one of the dangers of travelling, at least for the laity, is a tendency to consider one's self more or less emancipated from the strict letter of the law regulating the correctness and moral propriety of one's normal life. Even the clergy, perhaps, or at least the younger members of that body, may profitably take to heart the lesson conveyed in the following paragraph from a secular moralist: "There is nothing that a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them." Needless to say, the doctrine set forth in this quotation conflicts in no way with what has been asserted above concerning the advisability of a travelling priest's showing himself affable and courteous. His conscience and good habits are not at all involved in his avoiding brusqueness or churlishness of manner, or in his cultivating pleasantly genial relations with the circle in which for the time being he is moving.

A question sometimes discussed in connection with our subject is the relative advantage or dis