THE CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC PRIEST. * THESE Confessions profess to
be the autobiography of a Hun- garian Romanist priest, and to narrate a series of actual adven- tures, and real sufferings, the latter being caused, as he says, by his priestly character, though in reality by his weak and unprin- cipled nature. In a book which aims at pointing some general moral by large and general views of life, the fact of its being a real or fictitious narrative is of secondary consequence to the reader, whatever it may be to the writer's veracity. The Con- fessions have none of this breadth and purpose, unless it be in painting the Catholic Hungarian gentry as not so much devoid of religious feeling as of all sense of religious propriety, insensible to the nature of a vow, and as unconsciously corrupt as Europe at the dawn of the Reformation, yet superstitious withal. The life of this Catholic priest was, we should trust, peculiar to himself— standing alone in its dreamy weakness, its sentimental rascality, and its utter insensibility to what is right or honourable, at least as understood in this country. It, therefore, becomes of great im- portance to be assured whether we are dealing with the facts of a real and varied though utterly resultless career, and with feelings and motives, which though perverted and contemptible are still real ; or whether we have before us the mere inventions of a clever litterateur, with an ill-regulated mind. This point we cannot un- dertake to settle ; but it is involved in much doubt. The book iswrit- teninthe autobiographical form, butthe writer'snameis suppressed; it obviously could be traced if he really was, as it is said he was, (page 36,) ' grand almoner " to Georgey in the Hungarianin- surrection. The " editor " vouches in his preface that it is a " true tale," but he avoids the guarantee of his own name ; in the more public narratives there is occasionally internal evidence of literary reproduction; both the preface and the closing sum- mary of the hero's career have a strong resemblance to the auto- biography. As a matter of opinion we think the priest and his confessions are very much of a romance ; and if so the fictitious character of the narrative ought to have been clearly avowed. The matter of the book consists of two portions not very se- parable in the narrative, but quite independent in their nature. One part tells the personal story of the writer ; and, unless it may be held to illustrate the superstition with which the indelible character of the priest is regarded in some Romanist countries, while the violation of the proprieties and duties of the order are overlooked, there is nothing in it to excite interest or to read a lesson. The " priest" is so poor and mean a character—se unprincipled, and at the same time, so silly in his conduct —so perpetually and whiningly attributing to fate the trou- bles he brings upon himself, that the reader can take no interest in him. In youth he is deeply in love with a cousin; but as he is going to be a priest that affair is extinguished, though it does not seem that his family would have felt his refusal more than other families feel the refusal of any member to follow the line of life for which he has been educated. Plunging into the Hungarian revolt, the Priest pays little heed during his campaigning life to even the decencies of his calling. When after a sojourn as an exile in Lorraine he finally reaches Paris, he squanders all his money in leading la vie de Bohene- " If I had been wild in the camp of Georgey, I was far more so at Paris ; and feeling as happy as I could be. I forgot that I had the misfortune to be a priest." Money, however, goes fast in the gay city ; the Hungarian man of pleasure soon found his purse empty, and then he again undertakes the duties of a priest
• The Confessions of a Catholic Priest. Published by Chapman.
in a church whose doctrines he by this time disbelieved, and whose laws he disregarded. Subsequently he throws off the riesthood ; becomes engaged to the daughter of a liberal and tepublican French manufacturer, a M. R---; and though he refuses the assistance of his future father-in-law, or the offer of a „,,at in the firm, on a point of honour, he spunges upon a certain gadarr. , a former comrade in the Hungarian war, and an exile like himself. His mother refuses her consent to the match with Mathilde R— on the superstition connected with a priest al- ready alluded to, and her son to frighten her undertakes the management of a mercantile speculation to Melbourne. Hitherto, whatever may be thought of the broad truth or particular veracity of the " Confessions,' they exhibit a familiar acquaintance with Continental life. The voyage to the diggings ; the sojourn there, and a subsequent trip to San Francisco, Panama, and New Or- leans, on the way back to France, have so little probability in their origin, and the incidents are so evidently concocted with an eye to the final catastrophe, that the novel shows out distinctly. Returning minus an arm and with shattered health, our Catholic priest releases Mathilde, and finally poisons himself, because a married " coquette " has duped him into the notion that she loved him. At every possible opportunity for moralizing he attributes the consequences of his misconduct to his position as a priest. With how much truth may be read in his own account of his ordination, just after he has parted with his first love.
"Two days after our parting, I presented myself to the archbishop, and besought investiture as a priest. The old man had known me from my childhood, and his penetrating eye detected the difference between the feverish enthusiasm with which I threw myself into the priesthood, and the cheerful acceptance of a real vocation : he perhaps even guessed my mo- tives. He spoke to me like a friend, like a father, representing to me the solemnity of the engagement I was about to take, and entreating me not to bind myself hastily. "'I cannot refuse you investiture if you insist upon it,' he said, as he dismissed me; but take a fortnight to reflect seriously. Employ the time well, I conjure you : today "I will not hear anything, but if, when you return, you feel the slightest hesitation, tell me sincerely what distresses you, and if fear of grieving your parents prevents you from altering your first intentions, I promise to reconcile them to your change of purpose.' "
Whether a man who has entered into the most solemn en- gagements of any kind should be at liberty to dissolve them, and start in life as a novas horn°, is a very difficult question. The world, apparently from being unable to distinguish between conscientious motives, and interest, weariness, or change of mind, generally decides in the negative. This point, however, is not the question with our " Catholic priest." In defiance of advice he undertakes a function, and then without any real excuse breaks through all the laws to which he has bound himself, as well as those of common morality. The second and more extraneous portion of the matter, touch- ing upon public events and public characters, would be of some importance if we could be quite sure of the writer's opportunity to see what he describes, and to test the men whom he criticizes. Passages both on the Hungarian war, and on the French coup d'etat of December, seem a counterpart of what we have read be- fore ; and there is a want of individuality or particularity in some of the descriptions, as if a clever litterateur were generaliz- ing what he had read. These passing notices of Kossuth and Georgey are hardly of that kind, especially of Qeorgey.
" Towards the middle of March we recrossed the Tisza, and from Bicske to Romarom triumph marked our path. Seven victories in five weeks I we idolized Georgey, though I must say for myself that his habit of re- maining in the rear, and leaving the generals of division to command in battle, made me very impatient when I was obliged to remain at his side. One day especially, as we stood on the Castle of Leva, watching from afar the armies struggling at Vogy-Sar16, while our horses snorted with impa- tience, the calmness with which he remained the whole day, observing the battle through his glass, caused me a sudden shudder. I half-guessed the truth concerning this man, who is still a riddle to me. We (I speak of his suite) adored him though he often disgusted us by his cynicism, which he took not the least pains to disguise. We were at our ease with him, al- though dreading him so much that, when we surrounded him, laughing and jesting, he the gayest of the group—the general had only to reappear by a word or a look in order to cause a silence so deep that the fall of a pin would have made us start.
" My own individuality seemed to vanish for the time. I regained the conscience of it at the end of the war ; for till then I had such a love and admiration for Georgey, that Hived more in him than in myself. It can- not be denied that hepossessed an attractiveness nearly equal to the mag- netism of Kossuth. Even his cynicism had a charm, for he made himself appear so evil that no one believed him; and the idolatry of his soldiers placed, as it were, a halo on his dark brow, beautiful as that of the demon."
There are some sketches of French provincial life, before the exile went to Paris, tart and probably true.
" The details of provincial life revolted me by their meanness. In Hun- gary, at my father's, and in all the houses I visited, I had seen a generous hos dtality, an easy and unfettered existence, from which etiquette and elm were banished ; the doors of the mansion ever open to admit the guests, who, whether known previously or not were received with delight; and, in a moral point of view, I was used to see, despite an imperfect edu- cation, a mode of thought at once tolerant and sensible. In France, on the contrary, I found among the class of gentry, to which 1.ny mother's family belonged, a sordid attention to the material details of life—small matters assuming an undue importance—the society of neigh- bours, so easy in Hungary, destroyed by a hundred useless forms, by the necessity of returning the precise number of visits paid, and the continual struggle to outshine Monsieur or Madame Such-an-one in some external hluty. an intellectual point of view it was even worse. I had but to con- verse five minutes with any gentleman of the province to offend his preju- di
eels. I sought in vain for subjects I might lit discuss without causing scan- dal- They had so surrounded their intelligence (if God happened to have granted them any) with walls and ditches, that I must have taken them by storm; for these worthy inhabitants of Lorraine, nothing existed, even in
France, interesting to them. They considered every agricultural or politi- cal question from a provincial point of view. To mention the general in- terests of their country, when these did not accord with what they regarded as those of Lorraine, was a heresy, and all their ideas dated from the year one. If I hazarded any objection, I was told that not having been born in Lorraine, I could know nothing of the subject they were pulling to pieces—I will not say discussing, for the conversation consisted in an opin- ion advanced by one, to which the rest heartily adhered. I could not speak of literature, for one writer—the glory of France—was proscribed as a re- publican, another as an atheist, by these gentlemen, who hastened to con- demn in order to hide their ignorance : imbecility often loves to put on the guise of intolerance."
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