admit of no remedy:  truly a life of labour with toil and fatigue, in comparison with which most lives are easy, though each has to bear in its measure the same stamp.  Pius X has borne the yoke of labour from his youth.  His predecessor took it up with an enthusiasm that burned within him, and accepted training in a service where the drudgery is as severe though generally kept out of sight.  The acceptance of it is the great matter, whatever may be the form it takes.

Spurs and bait, punishment and reward, have been used from time immemorial to set the will in motion, and the results have been variable—­no one has appeared to be thoroughly satisfied with either, or even with a combination of the two.  Some authorities have stood on an eminence, and said that neither punishment nor reward should be used, that knowledge should be loved for its own sake.  But if it was not loved, after many invitations, the problem remained.  As usual the real solution seems to be attainable only by one who really loves both knowledge and children, or one who loves knowledge and can love children, as Vittorino da Feltre loved them both, and also Blessed Thomas More.  These two affections mingled together produce great educators—­great in the proportion in which the two are possessed—­as either one or the other declines the educational power diminishes, till it dwindles down to offer trained substitutes and presentable mediocrities for living teachers.  The fundamental principle reasserts itself, that “love feels no labour, or if it does it loves the labour.”

Here is one of our Catholic secrets of strength.  We have received so much, we have so much to give, we know so well what we want to obtain.  We have the Church, the great teacher of the world, as our prototype, and by some instinct a certain unconscious imitation of her finds its way into the mind and heart of Catholic teachers, so that, though often out of poorer material, we can produce teachers who excel in personal hold over children, and influence for good by their great affection and the value which they set on souls.  Their power of obtaining work is proportioned to their own love of knowledge, and here—­let it be owned—­we more often fail.  Various theories are offered in explanation of this; people take one or other according to their personal point of view.  Some say we feel so sure of the other world that our hold on this is slack.  Some that in these countries we have not yet made up for the check of three centuries when education was made almost impossible for us.  And others say it is not true at all.  Perhaps they know best.