A heated controversy has been going on in the Times
as to the] New Consols (2k) were on Friday 951 to 951.
accuracy of the picture in which Mr. Calderon, R.A.., represents St. Elizabeth of Hungary as absolutely naked before the altar on Good Friday. There is no doubt that the words of the Latin chronicler would admit such an interpretation; but there is also no doubt that we constantly use such words in English when we do not mean them to be interpreted quite literally. Montalembert, who had studied the mediaeval period as few men in Europe have studied it, certainly did not think that nudavit and nuda, as used of St. Elizabeth, were to be interpreted in any severer sense than that in which the same word is applied to the altar as stripped of all its ornaments; and we should be inclined to take Montalembert's authority on a question of this kind rather than that of heated con- troversialists on either side of the question. Professor Huxley's quotation shows apparently that, though stripped to her chemise, she was not absolutely naked, and the difference between the two is very great. On. Thursday, Dr. Abbott sent a letter to the Times in. which ho says very justly that it is not a question for grammarians, but one for those who have minutely studied the ecclesiastical history of the day, which is just what Montalembert did, though Dr. Abbott indicates that the persons he would trust are those who had "sounded the depths of the almost unfathomable absurdities, and, if there be such a word, the unnaturalnesses of which human nature, and especially woman's nature, is and always will be capable, when it is thoroughly subjected to ecclesiastical con- trol," That is true as to unnatural austerities, but we doubt its truth as to the kind of unnaturalnesses in which Dr. Abbott seems so anxious to believe. He takes occasion to lug in a fresh sneer at Cardinal Newman for his very just remark, that it is often right to show indignation at calumnies directed against your faith or Church, even where you do not happen to feel anger, since if you took them too tamely, the world would suppose that you did not resent the imputation. Does not almost every sensible man act habitually on that assumption ? Dr, Abbott has, wo will not say Cardinal Newman on the brain, but a very much distorted image of Cardinal Newman on the brain.
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