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.dt The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. 25, by Various
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.h1
<xxl>The Catholic World, Vol. XXV</xxl>
.sp 4
.nf c
<xxl><B>The Catholic World.</B></xxl>

<xl>A Monthly Magazine Of General Literature And Science</xl>

<xl>Vol. XXV.</xl>

<xl>April, 1877, To September, 1877.</xl>

New York:
The Catholic Publication Society Company,
9 Barclay Street.

1877.
.nf-
.pn iii
.sp 4
.h2
CONTENTS
.sp 2

Alba’s Dream, #443:albap1#, #621:albap2#, #735:albap3#

Along the Foot of the Pyrenees, #651:pyrenees#

Among the Translators, #721:translators#

Ancient Music, Prose and Poetry of, #395:ancient#

Anglicanism in 1877, #131:anglicanism#
.sp 2
Catacombs, Testimony of the, #205:catacombs#

Christendom, The Iron Age of, #459:ironage#

Cluny, The Congregation of, #691:cluny#

College Education, #814:college#

Colonization and Future Emigration, #677:colonization#

Congregation of Cluny, The, #691:cluny#

Copernican Theory, Evolution and the, #90:evolution#

Count Frederick Leopold Stolberg, #535:stolberg#
.sp 2
Destiny of Man, Doubts of a Contemporary on the, #494:doubts#

De Vere’s “Mary Tudor,” #261:tudor#

Divorce and Divorce Laws, #340:divorce#

Doubts of a Contemporary on the Destiny of Man, #494:doubts#
.sp 2
Echternach, The Dancing Procession of, #826:dancing#

Emigration, Colonization and Future, #677:colonization#

English Rule in Ireland, #103:englishrule#

Eros, The Unknown, #702:eros#

European Exodus, The, #433:exodus#

Evolution and the Copernican Theory, #90:evolution#
.sp 2
France, The Political Crisis in, and its Bearings, #577:crisis#

French Clergy during the late War in France, The, #247:frenchclergy#
.sp 2
Gothic Revival, The Story of the, #639:gothic#
.sp 2
How Percy Bingham Caught his Trout, #77:trout#
.sp 2
Ireland, English Rule in, #103:englishrule#

Irish Revolution, The True, #551:trueirish#

Iron Age of Christendom, The, #459:ironage#
.sp 2
Jane’s Vocation, #525:jane#

Job and Egypt, #764:job#

Judaism in America, The Present State of, #365:judaism#

Juliette, #667:juliette#
.sp 2
Lavedan, The Seven Valleys of the, #748:lavedan#

Lepers of Tracadie, The, #191:lepers#

Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, #56:irishp1#, #218:irishp2#, #377:irishp3#
.sp 2
Madonna-and-Child, The, a Test-Symbol, #804:madonna#

Marshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists, #558:macmahon#

“Mary Tudor,” De Vere’s, #261:tudor#

Millicent, #777:millicent#
.sp 2
Nagualism, Voodooism, etc., in the United States, #1:voodoo#

Nanette, #270:nanette#

Natalie Narischkin, #32:natalie#

Nile, Up the, #45:nilep1#, #236:nilep2#
.sp 2
Pan-Presbyterians, The, #843:presbyterians#

Phil Redmond of Ballymacreedy, #591:redmond#

Political Crisis in France and its Bearings, The, #577:crisis#

Pope Pius the Ninth, #291:pius9#

Pope’s Temporal Principality, The Beginning of the, #609:temporal#

Presbyterian Infidelity in Scotland, #69:infidelity#

Present State of Judaism in America, The, #365:judaism#

Prose and Poetry of Ancient Music, #395:ancient#

Prussian Chancellor, The, #145:chancellor#

Pyrenees, Along the Foot of the, #651:pyrenees#
.sp 2
Revolutionists, Marshal MacMahon and the French, #558:macmahon#

Romance of a Portmanteau, The, #403:portmanteau#
.sp 2
Sannazzaro, #511:sannazzaro#

Scotland, Presbyterian Infidelity in, #69:infidelity#

Seven Valleys of the Lavedan, The, #748:lavedan#

Shakspere, from an American Point of View, #422:shakspere#

Six Sunny Months, #15:sunnyp1#, #175:sunnyp2#, #354:sunnyp3#, #478:sunnyp4#

Stolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, #535:stolberg#

Story of the Gothic Revival, The, #639:gothic#
.sp 2
Tennyson as a Dramatist, #118:tennyson#

Testimony of the Catacombs, #205:catacombs#

The Beginning of the Pope’s Temporal Principality, #609:temporal#

The Dancing Procession of Echternach, #826:dancing#

The Doom of the Bell, #324:bell#

The European Exodus, #433:exodus#

The Romance of a Portmanteau, #403:portmanteau#

The True Irish Revolution, #551:trueirish#

The Unknown Eros, #702:eros#

Tracadie, The Lepers of, #191:lepers#
.sp 2
Up the Nile, #45:nilep1#, #236:nilep2#
.sp 2
Veronica, #161:veronica#

Voodooism, Nagualism, etc, in the United States, #1:voodoo#
.sp 2
POETRY.
.sp 2
A Thrush’s Song, #689:thrush#

A Vision of the Colosseum, #318:colosseum#

A Waif from the Great Exhibition, #101:waif#

Ashes of the Palms, The, #142:ashes#

Aubrey de Vere, To, #676:toaubrey#
.sp 2
Birthday Song, A, #523:birthday#

Brides of Christ, The, #420:bridesp1#, #556:bridesp2#, #701:bridesp3#
.sp 2
Cathedral Woods, #665:cathedralwoods#

Colosseum, A Vision of the, #318:colosseum#
.sp 2
Dante’s Purgatorio, #171:purgatorio#
.sp 2
From the Hecuba of Euripides, #353:hecubap1#, #550:hecubap2#

From the Medea of Euripides, #638:medea#
.pn iv
.sp 2
Higher, #456:higher#
.sp 2
Italy, #745:italy#
.sp 2
Magdalen at the Tomb, #637:magdalen#

May, #246:may#

May Carols, Two, #217:carols#

May Flowers, #189:mayflowers#
.sp 2
Papal Jubilee, The,  #289:jubilee#

Pope Pius IX., To, #363:topiusix#

Purgatorio, Dante’s, #171:purgatorio#
.sp 2
St. Francis of Assisi, #11:francis#
.sp 2
The Ashes of the Palms, #142:ashes#

To Aubrey de Vere, #676:toaubrey#

Translation from Horace, #854:horace#

Wild Roses by the Sea, #338:wildroses#
.sp 2
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
A Question of Honor, #716#

An Old World as seen through Young Eyes, #143#
.sp 2
Beside the Western Sea, #718#

Bessy, #720#

Biographical Sketches, #717#

Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Marylanders, #573#
.sp 2
Carte Ecclésiastique des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique, #288#

Childhood of the English Nation, The, #284#

Christ, The Cradle of the, #281#

Christopher Columbus, The Life of, #572#

Classic Literature, #280#

Code Poetical Reader, The, #287#

Complete Office of Holy Week, The, #144#

Comprehensive Geography, The, #144#

Consolation of the Devout Soul, The, #286#

Cradle of the Christ, The, #281#
.sp 2
Discipline of Drink, The, #575#

Dora, Bessie, Silvia, #720#

Dr. Joseph Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, #285#
.sp 2
Ecclesiastical Law, Elements of, #860#

Edmondo, #720#

English Nation, Childhood of the, #284#

Essays and Reviews, #429#
.sp 2
Geometry, Elements of, #860#

God the Teacher of Mankind, #720#

Golden Sands, #430#
.sp 2
Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, #288#

Hofbauer, Ven. Clement Mary, Life of, #432#, #572#
.sp 2
Known Too Late, #576#
.sp 2
Lady of Neville Court, The, #432#

Legends of the B. Sacrament, #574#

Libraries, Public, in the United States of America, #855#

Life of the Ven. Clement Mary Hofbauer, #432#, #572#
.sp 2
Magister Choralis, #430#

Marylanders, Distinguished, Biographical Sketches of, #573#

Musica Ecclesiastica, #144#
.sp 2
Paradise of the Christian Soul, The, #576#

Philip Nolan’s Friends, #719#

Priesthood in the Light of the New Testament, #713#

Problem of Problems, The, #282#
.sp 2
Reply to the Hon. R. W. Thompson, #719#

Report of the Board of Education of the City and County of New York, #715#

Roman Legends, #718#
.sp 2
Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, #285#

Sidonie, #574#

Songs of the Land and Sea, #720#

Spirit Invocations, #576#

Summa Summæ, #288#
.sp 2
The Catholic Keepsake, #720#

The Little Pearls, #718#

The Pearl among the Virtues, #720#

The Story of Felice, #720#

The Wonders of Prayer, #718#
.sp 2
Why are We Roman Catholics? #288#
.pn 1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 145.—APRIL, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=voodoo
NAGUALISM, VOODOOISM, AND OTHER FORMS OF CRYPTO-PAGANISM IN THE UNITED STATES.
.sp 2
When the Almighty introduced
the children of Israel into the
Promised Land he enjoined the
utter extirpation of the heathen
races, and the destruction of all belonging
to them. But the tribes
grew weary of war; they spared,
and their subsequent history shows
us the result. The Chanaanites became
in time the conquerors and
made the Hebrews their subjects
politically and in religion. The
paganism learned on the banks of
the Nile had become but a faint
reminiscence in the minds of the
descendants of those who marched
out under Moses and Aaron; but
the worship of Baal and of Moloch
and of Astaroth overran the land.
A long series of disasters ending
with the overthrow of their national
existence, and a seventy years’ captivity,
were required to purge the
Hebrew mind of the poison imbibed
from the heathen remnant.
Then all the power of the Alexandrian
sovereigns failed to compel
them to worship the gods of Greece.
<i>Omnes dii gentium dæmonia</i> is a
statement, clear, plain, and definite,
that we Catholics cannot refuse
to accept. Modern indifferentism
may regard all the pagan worships
as expressions of truth, and the
worship of their deities as something
merely symbolical of the operations
of nature, not the actual
rendering of divine honors. But to
us there can be no such theory. The
worship was real and the objects
were demons, blinding and misleading
men through their passions and
ignorance. The very vitality of paganism
in regaining lost ground,
and in rising against the truth,
shows its satanic character.

The experience of the Jewish
people is reproduced elsewhere.
When Christianity, beginning the
conquest of Europe with Greece
and Italy, closed its victorious career
by reducing to the cross the
Scandinavians and the German
tribes of Prussia, later even than the
conversion of the Tartaric Russians,
there was left in all lands a
pagan element, on which the arch-enemy
based his new schemes of revolt
and war upon the truth. We
of the Gentiles, whether from the
.pn +1
sunny south or the colder north,
bear to this day, in our terms for the
divisions of the week and year, the
names of the deities whom our heathen
ancestors worshipped—the demons
who blinded them to the
truth. The Italian, Frenchman,
and Spaniard thus keep alive the
memory of Jupiter, Mercury, Mars,
Venus, and Saturn; the German
and Scandinavian tribes of Tuisco,
Woden, Thor, Freya, and Sator.
Janus opens the year, followed by
Februata, Juno, and Mars; Maia
claims a month we dedicate to
Mary, and which the Irish in his
own language still calls the Fire of
Baal—Baal-tinne.

Earth and time even seem not
enough; we go, so to speak, to the
very footstool of God, and name
the glorious orbs that move in celestial
harmony through the realms
of space, from the very demons who
for ages received from men the
honors due to God—from Jupiter
and Saturn, Venus and Mars, Juno
and Ceres, Castor and Pollux, and
the whole array of gods and demi-gods.

And it is a strange fact that the
only attempt made to do away
with these pagan relics was that of
the infidel and bloodthirsty Revolutionists
of France, pagan in all
but this.

We bear, as it were, badges of our
heathen origin—tokens, perhaps,
of the general apostasy which, as
some interpreters hold, will one
day behold the Gentile nations renounce
Christianity, when the number
of the elect is to be completed
from the remnant of the Jews.

In the heresies, schisms, and revolts
against the church the pagan
element appears as an uprising, an
attempt to retrieve a defeat by
causing an overthrow of the victorious
church even where a restoration
of the old demonic gods seems
in itself hopeless. The German
tribes and those of Scandinavia, receiving
the faith later than the Latin
and Celtic races, revolted from
the church while the remembrance
of pagan rites and license was still
fresh. The so-called Reformation
was essentially gross and sensual,
and none the less so because the
Christian influence made the absolute
rejection of God for a time impossible,
and compelled it to borrow
tone, and expression, and the
outer garb of Christianity. Vice,
in its open and undisguised form,
would have shocked communities
that had tasted of Christian truth.
The arch-enemy was subtle enough
to meet the wants of the case, and
to present what would appear to
the sixteenth century as true, as
shrewdly as he presented the grosser
forms to earlier minds gross
enough to accept them. But, it
may be said, it is going too far to
make all heresies diabolical; yet the
church so speaks. If, in the prayer
for the Jews on Good Friday, it asks
that God would remove the veil
from their hearts, that light might
shine in upon the darkness, we cannot
but observe that when the petitions
arise for those misled by
heresy, the church speaks of them
as souls deceived by the fraud of
the devil. The New Testament is
full of allusions to this war of the
arch-enemy: he is held up as one
who will come to some as a roaring
lion, terrifying and alarming; while
to others he comes as an angel of
light, plausible and Heaven-sent, as
it were, raising up false teachers
whose reasonings would, were that
possible, deceive even the elect.
And St. Paul tells us that our
struggle is not with flesh and blood—not
with the men who are but instruments—but
with the spirits of
.pn +1
darkness who are the prime movers.

The war waged took different
forms. In the north sensualism
and the grosser forms of self-indulgence
were the revolt against the
spirit of mortification, of self-conquest
and control. It required and
had no aid from the imagination,
art, poetry, music. But at the
south the old pagan classics, imbued
with the religion of Greece
and Rome, became the literature of
the new Christian world and exercised
a steadily-increasing pagan
influence. In the French Revolution,
and in the modern less bloody
but as deadly Masonic war, we see the
old pagan ideas and thoughts come
as if spontaneously to the surface.
From the reverence for all connected
with the old pagan worship down
to pagan cremation we see the revival,
less gross, less sensual than
in the north, idealized by the conception
of beauty in form and color,
with all the allurement of symmetry
to win the eye, the ear, the imagination.
That ancient art and the
ancient classics have been a potent
instrument in weakening the Christian
spirit, and in paganizing the
learned and the young whom they
train, is admitted, and attempts are
made to counteract the influence.

Our country was settled by communities
more or less imbued with
all the Old-World paganisms, some
of which shot out into new and
strange forms, generally of the
northern type, hiding sensualism
under a cloak of religion, as in the
Oneida community and the Mormons,
the latter going directly into
the ancient pagan channel in their anthropomorphic
conception of God.

But besides this pagan element—the
more insidious because scarcely
suspected by most, and which
many even now would treat as
absolutely null for evil—the country
was, in its aboriginal inhabitants,
utterly pagan; and within our limits
the remnant of those nations and
tribes which now represent the
original occupants are to a very
great extent as pagan as they were
three centuries ago. Even where
tribes have been converted to Christianity,
and been for a long series
of years under Christian teachers,
a pagan element often remains,
nurtured in secret, and heathen rites
are practised with the utmost fidelity
by many who keep up the semblance
of being faithful worshippers
of the true God. This crypto-paganism
is termed by the Spanish
writers in Mexico nagualism, and,
from its secret character, formed
one of the greatest afflictions of
the missionaries, eating out the
very heart of the apparently flourishing
tree planted by the toil and
watered by the blood of the earlier
heralds of the Gospel.

Another pagan element came
with the negro slaves—barbarous
men torn from Africa, without culture,
imbued with the most degrading
superstitions of fetichism, and
believers in the power of intercourse
with the evil spirits whom
they dreaded and invoked. In the
utter disregard of their moral welfare
which prevailed in the English
colonies, no attempt was made in
colonial days to eradicate their pagan
ideas and to instil Christian
principles; on the contrary, efforts
were actually made to prevent their
instruction and baptism, from an
idea that Christianity was incompatible
with a condition of slavery.

In time the negro slaves and their
descendants imitated externally the
religious manner of their white masters,
but their old fetichism was
maintained, with the invocation of
evil spirits and attempted intercourse
.pn +1
with them. The more Christianity
in any form penetrated among
these people, the more this pagan
element assumed a secret character,
until it became, as it is in our
day in the West Indies and the
South, under the name of vaudoux
or voodoo worship, the secret
pagan religion of the negro and
mixed races.

Another pagan element—which
cannot be called cryptic, because
it meets the full meridian blaze of
day, as though it were a thing entitled
to existence and protection
without limit or check—is the Buddhic
worship of the Chinese, with
perhaps the less debasing ancient
paganism of that nation. Temples
arise and pagan worship is carried
on before hundreds of altars, chiefly
on the Pacific slope. This, with
the degraded morals of the heathenism
it represents, forms a question
difficult to solve, and exciting
grave attention not only in California,
but in other parts of the country.

The facility with which Mormonism
has gained hundreds of thousands
of votaries to its monstrous
doctrines, and the difficulty under
our system of laws of counteracting
its influence, leaving its suppression
simply to the general condemnation
it receives from the public
opinion of the country, convince
all thinking men that it is a great
and serious danger to the well-being
of our country in the future. It
lies between the unchecked, uncensured
paganism of the Chinese in
California and the heathenism of
the wild Indian tribes, the nagualism
of the New Mexican Pueblos,
and, still further east, the voodooism
of the negro. Who can foresee the
fearful creation of evil that the
Prince of Darkness may form out
of this material ready to his hand?
Buddhism overran nations of various
origin, civilization, and mode of
life—the lettered Chinese, the nobler
Japanese, the wild Tartar; it has
adaptability, as seen in its assuming
external Christian dress and ideas,
taken from early envoys of the faith.
Mormonism shows a vitality and a
power of extension that none who
remember its origin could, at the
time it arose, have believed within
the limits of possibility. The voodoo
mysteries permeate through a
population numbered by millions.
If nagualism and Indian paganism
exist only among tribes rapidly
hurrying to extinction, these tribes
have shown in some cases recuperative
power, and, fostered by the
stronger heathen elements, may revive
sufficiently to be a source of
mischief. It may be said that, except
in the case of the Mormons,
this element is confined to inferior
races—the Mongolian, negro, and
Indian—and cannot affect the mass
of the American people; but this
is really not the fact, as in almost
every case whites living near the
inferior races do actually imbibe
some of these pagan superstitions
and become believers in them and
in their power, while the spread of
the so-called spiritualism through
all classes in this country shows at
once a vehicle for the propagation
of any form of diabolism that may
rise up with dazzling powers of
attraction.

The influence of crypto-paganism
on the whites can be seen in our
history. The New England settlers
made comparatively short work
of the native tribes, who were in
their eyes Chanaanites not to be
spared. But though they slaughtered
the men, women were saved,
and not always from motives that
will stand too close a scrutiny. Indian
women became slaves in the
.pn +1
houses of the New England colonists.
If there was any outward
conformity to Christian usage, most
of them remained at heart as heathen
as ever. The Indians of almost
every known tribe avowedly
worshipped the Spirit of Evil.
North and South missionaries found
the natives acknowledge and justify
this practice. As a rule they
admitted a Spirit of Good, but,
as they argued, being inherently
good, he could do only good to
them, and need not be propitiated;
whereas the Spirit of Evil continually
sought to injure men, and must
necessarily be propitiated to ward
off the intended scourge. This
adoration of the Evil One, and the
attempt to propitiate him, win his
favor, and do his will, the Indian
slaves bore with them in their bondage.
What New England witchcraft
really was—diabolic, delusion,
or imposture—has never been settled.
No sound Catholic divine
versed in mystic theology has ever,
to our knowledge, marshalled and
sifted the facts, and the evidence
cited to support them, in order to
come to any reasonable theory in
the matter. New England of the
seventeenth century firmly believed
it diabolical; New England of the
nineteenth century as dogmatically
decides that it was delusion or imposture;
but, unfortunately, neither
seventeenth-century nor nineteenth-century
New Englandism can be
deemed a very safe guide, and each
is condemned by the other and
admits its liability to err, although
both had the same energy for forcing
their opinions for the time
being on all mankind.

But, whatever the real character
of New England witchcraft was,
one thing is certain: Indian crypto-paganism
was at the root of it.
Tituba, the Indian servant of Samuel
Parris, the minister of Salem,
practised wild incantations and imbued
the daughter and niece of her
master with her whole system of
diabolism. The strange actions of
the children excited alarm. Tituba
was arraigned as a witch and confessed
her incantations; but the
devil protects his own. Witchcraft
trials began, and Tituba and her
fellow Indian slaves, who must have
quaked for the moment, saw themselves,
not punished, but used as
witnesses, until more than a hundred
women were apprehended and
most of them committed to prison.
It did not end there. The gallows
was to play its part. Nineteen
were hanged, and one Giles Corey
was pressed to death. If Tituba
invoked her demon to avenge his
fallen votaries in her tribe, she was
gratified by beholding the victorious
whites murder each other at
her instance. Neither Tituba nor
any other of the Indians, though
they avowed their intercourse with
the fallen spirits, was tried or condemned
for witchcraft. What took
place in the Parris household took
place in hundreds of others where
Indian slaves were kept, as in our
time in the South. Thousands of
children have there been imbued
by their negro nurses with the
pagan obeah and voodoo superstitions,
as doubtless on the Pacific
slope many a mother is horrified to
find her child’s mind filled with the
grossest heathenism by the Chinese
servant, and fondly hopes she has
disabused her little one, when, in
reality, the faith and the terror then
implanted in the child’s susceptible
mind will last through life,
burned into the very soul by the
vivid impression produced.

A Catholic may say that the
grace of baptism will protect many
from this evil; but, alas! to how
.pn +1
many thousands of families in this
land is baptism a stranger! In them
there is nothing to check the insidious
progress of evil.

The Huron nation was converted
to Christianity by the early Catholic
missionaries, and the Iroquois were
induced by them to abandon the
worship of their evil spirit Tharonhyawagon,
or Agreskoue, whose name
even seems to be unknown to the
present so-called pagan bands, who
worship the God of the Christians,
but with strange heathenish rites.
The vices prevalent among the
Hurons of Ohio, nominal Catholics
in the last century, show that secret
worship of evil spirits still prevailed.
All know how the medicine-men
have maintained their ground
among the Chippewas, Ottawas, and
other Algonquin tribes on the borders
of the great lakes, although
Catholic missionaries began their
labors among them two centuries
ago. Whenever for a time Catholicity
has seemed to gain a tribe,
any interruption of the mission for
a brief period seems to revive the
old diabolism. There are medicine-men
now with votaries as earnest
as any whom Dablon, Marquette,
and Allouez tried to convert
in the seventeenth century. But
data are wanting for a full consideration
of the subject as to these and
other northern tribes.

Of the nagualism in the Texas
tribes after their conversion by the
Franciscan missionaries we have evidence
in the life of Father Margil,
a holy and illustrious laborer in that
field. The tribes among whom he
and his compeers labored have vanished,
but the Pueblo Indians of
New Mexico still remain. The
succession of missionaries became
irregular; no bishop visited those
parts to confirm the converts; the
revolutions following that which
separated Mexico from Spain almost
utterly destroyed the Indian missions
of New Mexico. Then the
nagualism which had been evidently
maintained from the first by a few
adepts and in great secrecy became
bolder; and these tribes, whose conversion
dates back nearly three centuries,
revived the old paganism of
their ancestry, mingled with dreams
of Montezuma’s future coming,
taught them by the Mexican Indians
who accompanied the first
Spanish settlers.

Father Margil once asked some
Indians: “How is it that you are so
heathenish after having been Christians
so long?” The answer was:
“What would you do, father, if enemies
of your faith entered your land?
Would you not take all your books
and vestments and signs of religion,
and retire to the most secret caves
and mountains? This is just what
our priests, and prophets, and sooth-sayers,
and nagualists have done to
this time and are still doing.” Experience
showed, too, that this worship
of the evil spirit assumed the
form of various sects, some imitating
the Catholic Church in having
bishops, priests, and sacraments,
which they secretly administered to
consecrate their victims to Satan
before they received the real ones
from the hands of the missionaries.

All those who have studied at all
the pueblos of New Mexico describe
to some extent the nagual
rites, some of which are indeed
hidden under the veil of secrecy in
their estufas, but others are more
open and avowed.

Colonel Meline, after noting the
execution of two men accused of
witchcraft and sacrificing children,
says of the Pueblos generally “that
they are more than suspected of
clinging to and practising many of
.pn +1
their ancient heathen rites. The
estufa is frequently spoken of as
their heathen temple.”[#]

.fn #
Meline, <i>Two Thousand Miles on Horseback</i>,
pp. 225-226.
.fn-

A report addressed to the Cortes
in Spain by Don Pedro Bautista
Pino in 1812 says: “All the pueblos
have their estufas—so the natives call
subterranean rooms with only a
single door, where they assemble to
perform their dances, to celebrate
feasts, and hold meetings; these are
impenetrable temples where they
gather to discuss mysteriously their
good or evil fortunes, and the doors
are always closed on the Spaniards.

“All these pueblos, in spite of the
sway which religion has had over
them, cannot forget a part of the
beliefs which have been transmitted
to them, and which they are careful
to transmit to their descendants.
Hence come the adoration they
render the sun and moon, and other
heavenly bodies, the respect they
entertain for fire, etc.”[#]

.fn #
<i>Noticias.</i>, pp. 15, 16.
.fn-

“The Pueblo chiefs seem to be
at the same time priests; they perform
various simple rites by which
the power of the sun and of Montezuma
is recognized, as well as the
power (according to some accounts)
of the Great Snake, to whom, by
order of Montezuma, they are to
look for life. They also officiate in
certain ceremonies with which they
pray for rain. There are painted
representations of the Great Snake,
together with that of a misshapen,
red-haired man declared to stand
for Montezuma. Of this last there
was also in the year 1845, in the
pueblo of Laguna, a rude effigy or
idol, intended, apparently, to represent
only the head of the deity.”[#]

.fn #
Bancroft, <i>Native Races</i>, iii. 173, 174.
.fn-

Others portray their setting up of
idols or mementos of their national
deities, and surrounding them with
circles of stones, repairing to the
spot regularly to pray.

The Pueblos thus show, after nearly
three centuries of Catholic instruction,
almost ineradicable elements
of heathenism.

Of the real interior life of other
tribes we know comparatively little:
but by the example of so-called
prophets who arise from time to
time in one part or another, giving
new life to the old heathenism,
borrowing some idea from Christianity,
and using their new creed as
a means to excite a great national
feeling, we see clearly that in the
Indian mind the old worship, though
dormant and concealed, has still a
power and mastery.

To this deep-rooted feeling the
Mormons have appealed, and succeeded
in drawing large numbers
within the circle of their influence.
Almost all the Indian wars are
stimulated by some prophet promising
victory and the triumph of the
old Indian beliefs.

The Cherokees have embraced
many usages of civilization, and
the Choctaws approach them. The
Chickasaws, the other great tribe
in Indian Territory, retain more of
their old manners. In all these
tribes Protestantism has gained a
hearing and has a few church members;
but there are strong pagan
parties, and even among the Christian
part there is undoubtedly a
strong old heathen element beneath
an outward conformity to Christianity.
It was strongly urged on
Congress a few years since to erect
this tract into a recognized territory
of Oklahoma, with a government
like that of other Territories, preparatory
to its admission as a State.
The outbursts of savage fury between
factions in the tribes, however,
made men hesitate to give
autonomy to them.
.pn +1

Investigation will, we think, show
that crypto-paganism largely controls
this mass of native Indians,
and is the great obstacle to their
improvement. It is, however, confined
to themselves, and we do not
find that even in New Mexico the
whites of Spanish origin have, during
their long residence near the
pueblos, adopted to any extent the
heathenish usages of those tribes.
The isolation of the nations in Indian
Territory has also prevented
any great external influence.
Thus this Indian crypto-paganism,
though wide-spread and unbroken,
seems doomed, unless taken
in hand by some master-spirit.

The voodoo worship of the negroes
shows greater vitality and
diffusiveness. The slaves taken in
early times to St. Domingo came
from all parts of Africa, some from
the fiercest tribes addicted to human
sacrifices and cannibalism.
They brought over their demonic
worship, and by their force of character
propagated it among the negroes
generally. It became the
great religion of the slaves, was
secretly practised, and exercised a
very powerful influence. As a secret
society, with terrible forms of
initiation and bloody rites, it became
a power in Hayti, and has
caused more than one revolution.
Cases of the offering up of infants
in sacrifice, and devouring the victims,
were exposed a few years since,
and numbers were arrested. Some
were put to death, but the power
of the organization was unbroken,
and Soulouque, if we are not mistaken,
was said to have owed his
power to the voudoux.

St. Domingo was part French
and part Spanish, and in time voodooism
spread from the French
portion of the island, where it
seems to have originated, to the
Spanish division, and thence to
Cuba.

In this latter island it exists to
this day, and has found votaries
among the whites. A recent French
traveller—Piron—describes a fearful
scene which he witnessed in the
house of a lady whom he never
would have suspected of any connection
with so monstrous a sect.
A naked white girl acted as a voodoo
priestess, wrought up to frenzy
by dances and incantations that
followed the sacrifice of a white
and a black hen. A serpent, trained
to its part, and acted on by the
music, coiled round the limbs of the
girl, its motions studied by the votaries
dancing around or standing
to watch its contortions. The spectator
fled at last in horror when the
poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic
fit.[#]

.fn #
Piron, <i>L’Ile de Cuba</i>, pp. 48-52.
.fn-

While France held St. Domingo
and Louisiana the intercourse between
the two colonies was constant,
and voodooism took root on
the banks of the Mississippi soon after
its settlement. The early historian
of Louisiana, Le Page du
Pratz, says: “The negroes are very
superstitious and attached to their
prejudices and to charms which
they call grisgris. These should
not be taken from them or spoken
about; for they would think themselves
ruined, were they deprived of
them. The old negro slaves soon
disabuse them.”[#]  These old negroes
were scarcely, it will be confessed,
apostles to convert idolaters.
In fact, their influence extended
only to inducing the new-comers
to practise their rites and use the
symbols in secrecy.

.fn #
<i>Hist. de la Louisiane</i>, i. p. 335.
.fn-

Le Page du Pratz himself, in defeating
a negro plot to massacre the
colonists at New Orleans as the Indians
.pn +1
had done at Natchez, found
that they attributed their defeat to
his being a devil—that is, possessing
one more powerful than their own.
The voodoo rites have been kept
up in Louisiana from the commencement,
and the power exercised
by the priests and priestesses of
this horrible creed is very great.
Working in secret, with all the terrors
of mystery and threats of bodily
harm, it is just suited to the negro
mind, and has spread over
much of the South. As in Cuba
and St. Domingo, the white children
in many cases learn of it from their
negro nurses, and the weak, as they
grow up, never shake off its hold
on their imagination. Human sacrifices
are certainly offered in their
infamous rites, and the escape of
an old negro doomed to the sacrificial
altar drew down upon the
voodoos the police of New Orleans
only a few years ago.

The Abbé Domenech[#]—whom we
should hesitate to cite, were not his
accounts here in conformity with
numerous others—represents voodooism
as having not only spread
through Texas, but into Mexico
where, in a depraved border community,
its horrid rites and secret
poisonings are carried on. His
details as to the mode of worship in
New Orleans—the nudity, the use
of serpents, the dances—correspond
with the accounts given from Cuba.
Reports from Mobile attest its existence
there with similar features.

.fn #
<i>Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico.</i>
.fn-

Where voodooism prevails it has
not only its adepts and votaries,
but a large class who, full of terror,
buy at exorbitant prices from voodoo
priests charms against its
spells.

The late war has given the negroes
opportunities for education
and a future, but the new prosperity
has not broken the power of
voodooism. Of a thing kept secret
and hidden, which many will deny
and more be ashamed of, it is not
easy to get precise data or details.
Yet from time to time revelations
are made attesting its vitality. A
negro member of the Louisiana
Legislature, and a minister in one of
the Protestant denominations, was
reported within a few years as undergoing
certain rites to free himself
from the spell of a voodoo
priestess. We may therefore easily
infer that the negroes, being not
only self-governing, but governing
the whites in many parts by force
of numbers, are not likely to be influenced
so much by whites as by
the crafty and aspiring among themselves.
They will concentrate, and
in their concentration this voodoo
power cannot but increase and all
vestiges of Christianity disappear.
The field upon which it can work—the
vast colored population of
the South—is ready for it. Some
may think the whole matter a shallow
imposture that will soon die
out before the effulgence of newspapers;
but it really shows no signs
of decline, and, if no cases have
been unearthed which show such
frightful enormities as those in
Hayti, it is certainly attended with
ceremonies which, for their very
indecency and pampering of the
worst vices, should cause it to be
rooted out, even by those who
would regard the direct worship of
the devil as something with which
the state cannot interfere.

Open the map of the United
States, and see how a band of
country from the Atlantic to the
Pacific is thus permeated by heathenism.
In the Southern States
the voodoo worship; New Mexico
and Indian Territory with nagualism;
.pn +1
Utah with Mormonism; California
with Buddhism. Throughout
this tract the church planted
there from one to three centuries
is still weak, and, except in California,
is not gaining ground with
any rapidity. Everywhere Catholic
influence is less potent than
others. The very climate, enervating
and disposing to ease and
indulgence, seems to lend power to
systems that gratify the passions
which the church teaches her
children to mortify and control.

It looks as though the Prince of
Evil were seeking to form a kingdom
for himself, combining all the
elements for his evil spirits to carry
on the war of conquest. St.
Jude represents Satan as endeavoring
to secure the body of Moses,
doubtless to lead the Jews into
idolatry and make them worship
him. If he tried to induce even our
Lord to fall down and worship him,
we cannot wonder that he should
try to induce weak men to do so.
St. Paul constantly represents to
us our struggle in life as a war
against the evil spirits. St. Ignatius,
in the “Exercise of the Two
Standards,” pictures Satan as arrayed
against our Lord with all his
hosts. The battle seems to take
actual form, and we should be prepared
for it. In this battle we have
powerful auxiliaries placed at our
command, in the persons of the
angelic powers, and though the
church, through her whole liturgy
and offices, reminds us of their ministry
and invokes their aid,[#] we
seem to be forgetful of their existence,
and go into the fight unaided
by forces at our command—forces
never defeated, and ready to meet
our call. What wonder that we
are often worsted? Our books of
devotion give a single prayer to
our guardian angel. Few think
beyond this. The angel guardians
of the country, of our city, of our
church, our home, of our family, of
those committed to our charge, are
all fighting for us, earnestly if we
seek their aid. St. Michael, the
guardian angel of the Jewish nation,
defeated Satan’s attempt to
use the body of Moses for his wicked
designs. So in our day the
greater manifestation of diabolical
agencies should lead us to ask God
to send his angels to our aid. The
parents, in training and protecting
from evil the children given to
them, have mighty coadjutors in
the angels of these very children,
the teacher in those of his scholars,
the pastor in those of his flock.
There may be saints to whom we
have a special devotion; but in
the angels we have powerful spirits
directly deputed by God to aid us,
and whose duty it is, as it were, to
combat by our side against the enemies
of salvation.

.fn #
Thus in the Mass she asks that the offerings be
carried on high by the angels; in the Asperges,
and Complin she begs God to send down his angels
to cherish, guard, and protect all within the
building; in the Itinerary she calls St. Raphael especially
to protect all who travel; in the baptismal
service she asks God to send an angel to guard
the catechumen and lead him to the grace of baptism;
in Extreme Unction, to give all dwelling, in
the house a good angel guardian; the Commendation
of the Departing Soul is a constant appeal to
the holy angels; and the prayer after death asks
that the departed soul may be received by the holy
angels and brought to Paradise, her real country.
She even asks that an angel be deputed to
guard the grave.
.fn-

But we are not giving a devotional
treatise: or attempting to
propose any new form. Our country
is dear to us, and, although it
were too sanguine to hope that in
the days of any now living the
true faith will reach such a point
that its influence will be marked
on the public mind and heart, we
cannot be insensible to the apparently
formidable gathering of heathen
elements in a section of country
.pn +1
where the very climate seems to
lend them new force in building up
a great empire of paganism.

A new impulse has been given to
our Indian missions, which, owing,
doubtless, to causes easy of explanation,
have never received from the
Catholic body at large in the United
States the moral and temporal aid
they so richly deserved. In fact, the
missionaries labored on, almost ignored
and forgotten, so that an attempt
was made through the instrumentality
of the federal government
to crush them out altogether.
This has roused Catholics to an interest
in them, and this interest
should be kept up. By prayer, by
alms, by direct aid, we must help
the missionaries and their coadjutors,
the devoted religious women
in the missions, to fight the good
fight, and root out, so far as lies in
us, the paganism of the Indian
tribes, where still avowed or cloaked
under an external show of Christianity.

On another paganism, that of
the Chinese, and on that of the
Mormons, we cannot apparently
act yet directly, but we can meet
them by prayer, and in the regions
infected Catholics should exercise
the utmost vigilance that this pagan
influence should never enter their
households, lest their children, if
not themselves, may at last imitate
the wisest of kings, not in his wisdom,
but in his idolatry.

The great and festering sore of
voodooism afflicting the negroes
calls for all our zeal, as Catholics,
to help the bishops and clergy in
the South, and the English society
which has entered this field, by
prayer, by material aid, by earnest
and sustained efforts to preserve
the purity of faith among colored
Catholics. The Church in the
Southern States, crippled by the
disasters of the late war, is entirely
unable to cope single-handed with
the new duty imposed upon it by
the altered condition of affairs.
She appeals to us, and as Catholics
we cannot remain deaf to her call.
.sp 4
.h3 id=francis
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
O love! you lay the volume by
  That held you like a holy chime—
<i>Life of St. Francis</i>—with a sigh
  Which says: “That was a pleasant time
In old Perugia’s mountain-town
On the Umbrian valley looking down—
  Flushed like an Eden in sublime
Environment of mountains vast;
  And do not you, as I, recall
What, morn and even, and first and last,
    Attracted most of all?
.pn +1

“The peaks of Apennine we knew
  By heart—the many-citied land
Where-through the infant Tiber drew
  A thousand streams in silver band,
Filled with the murmur of the pines
That told the olives and the vines
  They heard the sea on either hand.
But, kindled on its lofty cape,
  A light-tower to that inland coast
O’er waves of greenwood, corn, and grape,
    What object charmed us most?

“Assisi seated in the sun!
  All round from Monte Sole’s height
The insistent fascination
  Of its white walls enthralled our sight.
And moon and starlight on its slope
Showed but a dimmer heliotrope.
  We watched it many a mellow night:
Once when a warrior comet came,
  And flashed, in high heaven opposite,
A sheathless sword of pallid flame.
    Drawn from out the infinite.

“To sweet St. Francis’ native town,
  Alas! we made no pilgrimage;
Nor to St. Mary’s, lower down,
  His Portiuncula hermitage.
We knew but by its star-like shine
The splendors of Assisi’s shrine,
  In mystic triple stage on stage.
It only asked one summer’s day—
  How strange it seems in you and me!—
That narrow vale of Umbria
    Made severance like the sea.”

O gentle wife! I cannot tell
  To wistful eyes of retrospect
What <i>dolce far niente’s</i> spell,
  In that midsummer, caused neglect;
What imp, procrastination hight,
Seduced us when we meant no slight.
  In life, all paradox and defect,
Easy is difficult—the friend
  Next door to visit—duties small,
To be done any day, that end
    In not being done at all.
.pn +1

“How can this trite philosophy
  Console me in my great regret?”
Nay, love, look not so tearfully,
  And we will find some comfort yet.
What figure, think you, in those streets
The gentle, loving youth repeats,
  Singing his gay French canzonet?
Doth either temple’s sumptuous pride
  Suit stone and crust for bed and board,
And bridegroom joyful in his bride—
    The poverty of our Lord?

O brown serge holier than the cope!
  Was mystery veiled in long-sleeved gown?
And awful was his girdle-rope?
  Were skirts that swept his ankles brown?
Bore he, in hands and feet and side,
The five wounds of the Crucified?
  Did high God send his seraph down,
On the lone mount, to imprint such sign?
  His brethren wondered, overawed;
Yet not even this made more divine
    That sweet-souled man of God!

O happy swallows! circling skim
  And twitter o’er the gray church-towers.
He called you sisters; ye with him
  Chirped sweetly when he sang the Hours.
And ye, his brothers innocent,
With whom he talked where’er he went,
  Play, lamb and leveret, in the flowers!
Wise foolishness and melting ruth—
  That move deep chords, O love! in you—
Born of child-instincts, or a truth
    He and the angels knew!

“O Sun, my brother above all!
  Stars, Sister Moon, in praise accord.
Chaste, humble, useful, precious, full,
  O Sister Water, freely poured!
Robust and jocund, strong and bright,
O Brother Fire! illume the night.
  Live tongues of beauty, praise the Lord!
O Brother Wind! thy wonders weave
  In clouds and the blue sky above,
Wherefrom all creatures life receive,
    And weave them all of love.
.pn +1

“Confess the Lord, O Mother Earth!
  Through whom so beautiful thou art.
To herb, fruit, flower, he giveth birth
  And color from Love’s eyes and heart.
Serve God!” he sang. His sermons good,
Dear to shy creatures of the wood,
  Could even to bole and branch impart
Their glowing sense: a conscious soul
  Kin to his own in all things moved.
His monument is grand—the whole
    Creation that he loved.

O Life, that sought to imitate
  The one pure type, its perfect Chief,
By its own purity separate
  As is the dew-drop on a leaf,
Which yet doth from its luminous veil
A glory to the flower exhale!
  Close sympathy with no touch of grief!
Let fair Assisi on its slope,
  An unremote yet reachless star,
Lend to our hearts another trope,
    So near and yet so far.

O Poet, who in faltering rhyme
  First wove the Tuscan into song!
O poem and miracle sublime,
  Thyself, in Dante sweet and strong!
To his fourth circle of Paradise,
To the King-splendor of the skies,
  Dost thou, the elder seer, belong.
Thee “Sister Death” hath glorified;
  And what an image we have won:
Through kindled mists of mountain-side,
    Assisi in the sun!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.h3 id=sunnyp1
SIX SUNNY MONTHS. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. | CHAPTER XI. | A MORNING WITH ST. PETER.
.sp 2
As the day approached for their
visit to the crypt of St. Peter, Mr.
Vane absented himself very much
from the house, and the last day
was spent entirely away, from early
in the morning till late in the evening.
They understood that he was
to make his First Communion with
them, but asked no questions, leaving
him entirely free, and he gave
no explanation. The Signora and
the two daughters made a Triduum
for him in the mornings; and so
deeply did they feel the event for
him that they looked forward to
their own Communion almost as if
it were to be their first, and lived
as though in retreat for two or three
days.

“I feel,” Bianca said, “as if I
had been having clandestine interviews
with some one outside the
house, and that now papa were going
to invite him home, and make
a feast in his honor. Dear papa!
how very good he is; how much
better than his daughters!”

She would have been quite shocked
and alarmed had any one told
her that she entertained such a sentiment,
but there was, in fact, in
her heart an undercurrent of pride
in her father’s piety, and a feeling
that the Lord would certainly be
particularly pleased with him.

At length the day dawned, the
sweet bells of Santa Maria Maggiore,
the slipshod bells of Sant’
Antonino, all the bells in hearing,
ringing their three, four, five, and
one out of the white silence of the
aurora.

The Signora smiled to hear,
through the open doors, Isabel start
awake at the sound, and exclaim in
her clear voice: “The angel of the
Lord declared unto Mary.”

“I really must not have such a
preference for Bianca,” she said to
herself, “especially now when Bianca
has a lover. Isabel is very
honest and earnest.”

The Alba turned to a rosy silver,
the silver deepened to gold, the north
and west were Tyrian purple, and
the sun was on the eastern horizon,
painting the long lines of the aqueducts,
and the billows of the Campagna,
and the towers, high roofs,
and cupolas of the city with a fiery
pencil. A flock of goats pattered
by in the street, to be milked at
the doors; hand-carts piled with
fruit were dragged slowly in from
some garden near the walls; three
men walked slowly past, in single
file, with large baskets on their
heads piled with rich flowers. The
perfume of them came up to the
window as the Signora leaned out.
A wine-cart came slowly down from
the Esquiline piazza, laden high
with small barrels and half and
quarter barrels, brought in by night
to the Roman shops from cool grottoes
in the Castelli Romani, set
here or there on the beautiful mountains
that were now a velvety blue
under the eastern sky. At the back
of this cart was perched high the
.pn +1
little white dog, with his nose on
his paws, and his eyes half shut,
but all ready to start up with a
sharp bark if any one but looked
hard at his precious load. In front,
under the side awning, slept the
driver. The horse dreamed along
through the morning, and the little
bunch of bells slung to the cart
jingled softly as they went.

“It is certainly earth, but a most
beautiful earth,” the Signora thought,
sighing with content, as she went
out to fasten the girls’ veils on for
them.

“There is no need of putting on
gloves,” she said, seeing Isabel
drawing hers on. “Didn’t you
know, child, that one should not
wear gloves when going to Communion?”

“Live and learn,” said Isabel,
and took her gloves off again. “I
have had a doubt on the subject,
but I never knew.”

“Another little item you may not
know,” the Signora said. “The
<i>canonico</i> being a bishop, you have
to kiss his ring before receiving.
He will himself touch it to your
lips after he has taken the Host in
his finger and thumb to give you.
When I first came here, I was embarrassed
by many of these customs,
which everybody here takes
for granted, you know.”

Nothing could be pleasanter than
Mr. Vane’s manner that morning—serious
and quiet, but less grave,
even, than usual. Seeing Isabel’s
eyes fixed anxiously on him while
the Signora spoke, he smiled and
said: “I am glad your education is
not quite finished, my dear. I am
still more ignorant, and you must
all teach me. I wish, Signora, that
you would be so good as to stay
by me this morning, so that, if I
should be in doubt, I may look at
you. I think you would be more
correct and prompt than the children
here.”

“Certainly,” she said, “I will be
near you.”

The porter had sprinkled and
swept the stairs just before they
went down, and the place was
shaded, fresh, and cool. Carlin
was whistling to his baby while his
wife prepared breakfast—a whistling
as soft and clear as the song of a
bobolink. The other birds adopted
him, and answered him back from
the garden, a little surprised, it may
be, at the length and smoothness
of his carol. The air was so richly
scented with orange-flowers that
one might almost have thought
worth while to bottle it, and there
was a rustling sound, exquisitely
cool and pervading, of falling water.
In a shady corner near the door of
the porter’s room was a tiny brazier
with a handful of glowing coals
in it, and over this Augusto was
making his early cup of coffee. Out
doors everything shone with a golden
color—the light, the houses, the
streets—and in that frame the sky
was set like a gem, so blue that it
could be compared to nothing, and
nothing could approach it.

They did not look about as they
drove slowly through the city, but,
leaning back silent, had a mingled
sense of Rome and heaven.
It was impossible for any of them
to imagine anything more perfect,
or to ask for any addition to
their happiness. Earth and heaven
had united to bless them, and
every gift of earth worth the taking
was theirs. To have been sovereigns
would have oppressed them;
to have had millions at their disposal
would have been a care and
annoyance. They had enough,
and their cup was running over.

The narrow streets were beginning
to stir as they passed, and
.pn +1
some were dim, and all were in
shade. Not a ray of sunshine
touched them, except in the piazzas,
till they reached the bridge of Sant’
Angelo. Then all was light, for
the sun shot straight on through the
Borgo, and all the piazza of St.
Peter’s was in a blaze. They were
almost faint with the heat as they
walked up the ascent; but in a few
minutes they were inside the sacred
door, where, before entering,
summer and winter meet to give the
kiss of peace on the threshold, and
the one quenches her fiery arrows,
and the other warms his frosty
breath.

Not a person was in sight as they
went in, but they heard, faintly and
far away, the mingled voices of the
choir coming and going. The circle
of ever-burning lamps twinkled
like a constellation before them,
and invited their steps. Half way
up they paused before the chapel
of the Blessed Sacrament, which is
an exception to the cheerful grandeur
of St. Peter’s. For this dim
chapel gives a sense of remoteness
and mystery, and the inner chamber,
from which the eyes can see no outlet,
seems to lead to some edifice
still more vast; as though St.
Peter’s were life and day, but here
was the way to death and night, yet
a way not gloomy and dreadful, but
only solemn and mysterious. The
Baptistery is merely dark, and produces
no such impression.

When they reached the bronze
statue, the ladies kissed the foot
and passed on, but Mr. Vane stood
thoughtfully there for some time
before following. And even then
he did not pay the accustomed
homage to the venerable image.
His soul had saluted it, may be; but
he was of a different sort from
those who have the act of reverence
always ready, whether the
heart move or not; who will kiss
the relic between the kisses of the
shameless, and touch what is holy
with lips that have just lied, and
which are prompt to lie again.
This man’s outward devotion was
ever the blossom of a plant that
grew in his heart, and filled it so
that the act was an overflowing.

Marion was already waiting for
them at the grand altar. They
recognized each other silently, and
seated themselves on the steps to
wait, being early. The Signora
placed herself beside Mr. Vane,
and, noticing that he drew a deep
breath, and looked about with a
glance that took in their position
there in the centre of that immense
cross, she pointed upward
where the dome, glorious with light
and color, rested on the legend
that had turned the face of the
world: “<i>Thou art Peter, and on
this rock I will build my church. And
I will give thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven.</i>” The legend ran in
a circle of gigantic letters rimmed
with gold, and the circle and the
dome were as the ring and mitre of
the church let down from heaven,
and hovering in air over the ashes
of the first pontiff.

A Mass was being said at the
altar directly before them, at the
end of the south transept, but not a
sound of it reached them. They saw
indistinctly the priest, and the mosaic
crucifixion of St. Peter over the altar.
They heard the <i>coro</i>, now swelling
loudly in a brave, manly chant
as the whole chapter joined, now
sinking in a cadence, now fine with
a boy’s clear treble. The bronze
canopy above them glittered in
every gilded point, the twisted columns
that supported it soaring like
flame and smoke entwined. The
wreath of lamps about the confession
was as bright as the ever-burning
.pn +1
flames within them, and the
polished marble answered them
back, blaze for blaze. Below—a
frozen prayer—knelt the guardian
statue, its face turned to the screen
behind which rest the relics of St.
Peter. Two or three persons, entering
the church, looked small as
mice down the nave, and intensified
the sense of magnificent solitude
about them. All this light
and splendor seemed so independent
of, so superior to, human presence
that human beings appeared
to be only permitted, not invited, to
come. It was a temple for the invisible
God.

“There is no outward difference,”
the Signora said to Mr.
Vane, “between Catholicity and
Protestantism which strikes me
more than our ways of going to
church, and the reasons for going.
Protestants go to hear a man talk,
and the man goes to talk to them.
The affair is a failure if either is
missing; for the minister needs the
people, and the people need him.
On the contrary, one person alone
in a Catholic church may accomplish
a perfect act of worship.
When the priest has offered up a
Mass, though no one assist, the
world is better for it; and when a
worshipper has prayed all alone in
the presence of the Blessed Sacrament,
he has performed a supreme
act of piety. There is all the difference
between the dwelling-house
of God and the house where people
go to talk about God.”

“I always felt as if there were
too much wind in Protestantism,”
Mr. Vane said.

Presently a little company appeared
coming out of the sacristy—two
boys in white <i>cotte</i>, the <i>canonico’s</i>
chaplain and another priest, also
in <i>cotte</i>, and, lastly, monsignor the
<i>canonico</i> himself, in a purple silk
soutane of a color so bright that it
was almost red. They passed across
the basilica toward the pier of Veronica,
and paused there at the altar-rail
till the Signora and her friends
joined them. A pleasant salutation
was exchanged, and the Signora
managed to whisper to the <i>canonico</i>
that Mr. Vane was to make his
First Communion that morning.
The beautiful face of the prelate
brightened with a pleased surprise,
and he turned again and cordially
offered his hand to the new convert,
who, to the delight of the ladies,
bent and kissed the ring on it.

Then the boys lighted their wax
tapers, and the party went in behind
the altar, down the narrow
stair, and through the circling corridor,
and found themselves in the
heart of St. Peter’s.

This chapel is a tiny place in
comparison to the church above,
but capable of accommodating
many more than the five who are
permitted to visit it at a time. Two
persons could kneel abreast at each
side of the central passage, and four
or five ranks, may be, might find room.
The end next the screen, visible in
the confession from above, is open,
the altar being at the upper end, and
the whole has not a ray of daylight.
From this chapel one can look back
and see through the screen Canova’s
marble pontiff, and the ring of golden
lamps on the railing of the confession,
and, perhaps, some worshippers
kneeling outside the sanctuary
which one has had the privilege of
entering. Directly overhead are
the grand altar and the dome.

The Signora took a <i>prie-dieu</i> near
the altar, motioning Mr. Vane to a
place beside her; the sisters knelt
behind them at either side the chapel;
and Marion, quite apart, and
behind the rest, leaned in a chair
and hid his face in his hands. He
.pn +1
had been surprised into the situation,
and, though he had tried sincerely
to do his best, was still a
little alarmed by it. Shaken out
of his usual artistic mood, which
regarded first what appeared, and
then peeped inside from without, he
found himself suddenly whirled into
the centre, where, either from darkness
or from too much light—he
knew not which—he could not see.
It was one of those moments of fear
in persons who communicate seldom
but sincerely, which presently
give place to the most perfect reassurance
and peace.

The Mass was over. Monsignor
laid aside his vestments, and knelt
at a <i>prie-dieu</i> reserved for him; his
chaplain placed a book on the desk
before him, and withdrew, and there
was silence.

The church could do no more
for them. She had brought them
to St. Peter’s tomb, and given them
the Bread of angels.

It was impossible that the mind
should not shake off the present
and go back to the time when the
dust in the shrine before them
lived, and moved, and spoke, and
when the invisible Lord in their
breasts was the visible Lord in the
flesh, teaching, persuading, and suffering.
The Lord in their hearts
said to the apostle in the shrine:
“Wilt thou also go away?” And
the apostle answered him: “Lord,
to whom shall we go?” And again
Peter said: “Lord, thou shalt never
wash my feet.” And Jesus answered
him: “If I wash thee not, thou
hast no part with me.” The Lord
in their hearts was he who stood
in the palace of the high-priest,
bound and smitten upon the cheek,
and Peter, standing by, denied that
he knew him. The pallid lamps
shone on the face of the Master
turned for one reproachful look,
and the red light of the coals burned
up, as if the very fire blushed, in
the face of the cowardly follower.
They saw the seaside, where the
risen Lord stood and called, and
Peter, no longer a coward, but on
fire with love and joy, flung himself
into the sea to go to him. And
yet again, in this memory which
had become a presence and a voice,
the Lord spoke to Peter: “Lovest
thou me?” And Peter answered
him once, and again, and, grieving,
yet again: “Thou knowest that I
love thee.” And Jesus said to him:
“Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”

O perfection of power and of
obedience; for within this hour,
which memory, unrolling again her
shrunken scroll, showed to be eighteen
centuries distant—within this
hour both the sheep and the lambs
had been fed!

“I feel as though I had a garden
in my heart,” Marion said to the
<i>canonico</i> as they went up into the
church again.

The two were walking slowly
and last, and in speaking Marion
bent and kissed the prelate’s hand.

The hand held his a moment
closely, and the <i>canonico</i> replied:
“Where the Tree of Life is, there
is always a garden.”

This conversation they had
listened to between the Master
and Peter followed them down
the church, whose splendors seemed
rather like virtues made visible
than like any work of the hands of
man. If they should ever be so
lost and ungrateful as to leave
this fold, to whom, indeed, should
they go? And unless the Lord
washed them from their sins, surely
they could have no part with him.
They still saw the lessening vision
of the high-priest’s dim and solemn
house as they passed down the
church and out through the first
.pn +1
portal; then the second fell behind
them, and an Italian summer day
caught them to its glowing breast.

“It seems to me,” the Signora
said, “as if we had just been ordained,
and were being sent out as
missionaries. Of course you go
home to breakfast with us, Marion,”
she added.

“I was thinking of Fra Egidio
this morning,” said Bianca softly,
as they drove home through the
hot sunshine. “He used to say,
instead of 'I believe in God,’ 'I
<i>know</i> God.’”

“That blessed Fra Egidio!”
struck in Isabel, who had lately
been reading about him. “He
used to go into ecstasies, papa,
whenever he heard the names of
God or of heaven. And when he
went into the street, sometimes people
would call out, 'Fra Egidio,
paradiso! paradiso!’ and instantly
he would be rapt into an ecstasy,
and perhaps be lifted up into the
air. Why doesn’t some one go into
ecstasies now at the thought of
heaven?”

“Nobody prevents you, my dear,”
her father said. “If you will be so
lost to the world and so given to
God that the mere hearing his
name will lift you from the earth,
so much the better.”

“You are quite right, papa,” she
answered gently. “I had better look
to myself.”

He smiled and laid his hand
tenderly on hers.

“I was particularly pleased with
the account of the interview between
Fra Egidio and St. Louis,”
the Signora said. “The king came
incognito to visit the ecstatic, and
went to the convent in Perugia
where he was living. Fra Egidio,
knowing supernaturally that he was
there, and who he was, went out to
meet him. They fell on their knees
on the threshold, and embraced each
other, and, after remaining for some
time in that silent embrace, rose and
separated, without having uttered a
word. That was truly a heavenly
meeting.”

Their attention was here attracted
to a clergyman who walked slowly
along the shady side of their
street, accompanied by his chaplain.
This prelate, the patriarch
of Antioch, was of a venerable
age, and wore a long beard. He
alone, perhaps, of all the prelates
in Rome, appeared in the street
with the distinguishing marks of
his rank—the chain and cross, the
red-purple stockings, sash, and buttons,
and the green tassel on his hat.

A little boy on the sidewalk
caught sight of him, and instantly
snatched his cap off and ran to
kiss the patriarch’s hand. The
action was perfectly natural and
simple, and performed with a charming
mixture of reverence and confidence.

“How pretty it is!” exclaimed
Isabel. “And there is another.”

A little girl had left her mother’s
side, and run also to kiss the patriarch’s
hand as he passed. No idea
seemed to have entered her curly
head that she was approaching too
nearly a grand personage, or that
he would be annoyed or interrupted
by her homage, any more than a
crucifix or a picture of Maria Santissima
would have been.

“The Roman clergy have the
sweetest manners with the poor,”
the Signora said; “and the highest
dignitaries, when they are in public,
are approached with a facility which
I found, at first, astonishing. I recollect
going to St. Agatha’s, the
church of the Irish College, to the
Forty Hours, shortly after I came
here. It is in a populous neighborhood,
as you know, and the streets
.pn +1
swarm with children. A clergyman
came into the church and knelt at
a <i>prie-dieu</i> just in front of me.
There were a dozen or so children
wandering about, and presently they
collected at this <i>prie-dieu</i>, and, sitting
on the step or standing at the
desk, almost leaning on the priest’s
shoulder, they stared at the people
and whispered to each other. I
expected to see him send them
away or go away himself; but he
only put his hands over his face
and remained immovable. I had
almost a mind, for a minute, to go
and speak to the children, but, fortunately,
did not. After a while,
nervous, impatient Yankee though
I am, with a passion for an orderliness
which strikes the eyes, I began
to see the beauty and true piety of
this gentle behavior, and to find
something more edifying in that
priest who suffered the little ones
to come near him, and near the
Lord, than I should have found if
he had gone into an ecstasy before
the Blessed Sacrament. It was the
sweetest charity. Indeed, much of
that which seems to us to be cowardice
in the Romans is nothing
but a spirit of gentleness fostered
by religion. They are non-combatants.
The church found them
a fiery and warlike people, constantly
committing deeds of violence,
fond of conquest, and impatient
of control, and she has subdued
them to children. If they are too
submissive to usurpation, that is
better than the other extreme.
The lion has become the lamb,
and the lamb is ever the victim.
And now here we are at home.”

Annunciata and Adriano had conspired
to make the breakfast as festal
as possible, and had succeeded
perfectly. But for the light west
wind that fluttered in at the still
open windows, the air of the rooms
would have been too fragrant; and
but for the long morning fast and
drive, the breakfast would have
been too profuse. It was, in fact,
both breakfast and dinner, it being
nearly noon when they sat down;
and they sat two hours talking before
they separated. Just before
they rose from the table Annunciata
came in, bearing a large dish
covered with green leaves, a smile
of triumph on her face. She placed
the dish in the centre of the table,
and looked at her mistress.

“<i>Brava!</i>” exclaimed the Signora.
“Now, children, do you recognize
that leaf?” lifting one from
the dish, and holding it up between
a thumb and finger. “Do you
know what tree grows a hand for
a leaf? Do you see the shape?”

“'In the name of the prophet,
figs!’” quoted Isabel.

“Yes, the first figs of the season,
and perfect; just soft enough to
flatten on the plate and against
each other, yet firm; and, withal,
sweeter than honey. You should
see the woman who brings them to
me—a rosy, russet creature, with
eyes as black as sloes, and pounds of
gold on her neck and hands. That
gold she wears always. It is their
way. She has four gold chains,
one hanging below the other, and
each bearing a medallion. Through
these shines a large gold brooch.
Her earrings are immense hoops,
and she wears gold rings on every
finger, piled up to the joints. She
was once so ill that they thought best
to give her Extreme Unction, and,
when the priest came to administer
the sacrament, he found her lying,
pale and speechless, but with all
her rings and lockets on. These
people do not value stones, but
they glory in pure, solid gold.”

“Might it not be their dowry?”
Mr. Vane asked.
.pn +1

“Very likely; sometimes it certainly
is. Sometimes the dowry is
in pearls, and a <i>contadina</i> will have
strings and strings of them. I am
told, however, that the common
people in Rome have a saying that
pearls are for butchers’ wives. I
don’t know why, and one has been
pointed out to me as owning half
a dozen strings of them. They are
not a good investment, however,
for they are easy to spoil and
easy to steal. A very safe and
sensible way for providing a girl’s
dowry exists in one of the towns
near Rome. All along the river-bank
is level land divided into
small lots. When a girl is born,
the father buys one of these, if he
is able, and plants it full of a sort
of tree that grows rapidly, and is
much used for certain kinds of
wood-work. While the girl grows
her dowry grows; and when she
marries, the trees are cut down and
sold. I have often wished that
American fathers of families would
make some provision for their
children when they are born, setting
aside a sum, if it should be
ever so small, to increase with their
years, and be a help in giving them
a start in the world. It seems a sin
that parents should bring a family
of children into the world, all dependent
on one life, and, if that
life be cut off, be thrown out helpless
and unprovided for. How often
we see, by the death of a father
whose labor or salary maintained
his family in comfort, the whole
family plunged in distress and left
homeless! How would Bianca,
here, like to have her dowry in
pearls?”

“She has a mouth full of them,”
said Marion hastily. He could
not bear that his lady should be
thought in want of a dowry, when
she was a fortune in herself.
“And those are not her only jewels.”
He reached, and, taking
her hand, gathered together the
little pink finger-tips like a bunch
of rosebuds. “She has ten rubies
fit for a crown,” he said, and touched
his lips to the clustered fingers,
while the girl laughed and blushed.

Mr. Vane seemed to be struck
with a sudden recollection. He
put his hand to his forehead and
considered, then rose from his
chair. “Wait a minute,” he said,
and went into his own room, where
they heard him opening his trunk,
and searching about in it. Presently
he returned with a tiny morocco
case. “It is the merest chance in
the world that I did not leave this
in America,” he said. “I did not
dream of bringing it. Bianca’s mother
left a pair of ear-rings for the
girl who should marry first.”

He opened the case and took
them out—two large, pear-shaped
pearls, of exquisite lustre, hanging
from a gold leaf, on which a small,
pure diamond glistened like a speck
of water.

“And you could have such a
treasure with you, and never say
anything about it!” the Signora
exclaimed. “O the insensibility
of men! And these girls never saw
the pearls before!”

She fastened the jewels in the
pretty ears they were destined for.
“These are two gems you forgot
in your enumeration, Marion,” she
said. “And, by the way, how fitting
it is that, when the ears are
shells, there should be pearls hung
in them!”

“I’m glad you think them so
pretty,” Mr. Vane said with compunction.
“I really never did
think of them before. Perhaps it
was very stupid of me.”

“On the contrary, it was very
.pn +1
wise of you, papa,” Isabel said.
“They are a great pleasure to us
all now; but if we had known of
them, I should now feel as if they
had been taken away from me.”

“When you are engaged, you
shall have a pair as pretty, if they
are to be found,” her father said.

They drank Bianca’s health;
and, the talk still running on gems,
Marion told an incident of a ring
which a friend of his had lost in the
snow, in some part of Germany, as
he stood looking down on the town
from a hill outside. Several months
afterward, going to the same spot,
he saw the ring at the top of a little
plant. The first sprout had come
up inside it as it lay on the ground,
and, growing, had lifted it, till it
stood almost a foot high, glistening
round the green stem.

“What a disappointed little plant
it must have been when its gold
crown was taken off!” the Signora
said regretfully.

“It no doubt grew better without
it,” Mr. Vane replied. “Besides,
the ring did not belong to it.”

It was the tiniest little intimation
of a correction, and the Signora
was highly pleased. He saw
the smile with which she received
it, and was content. Nothing can
express more kindness than a gentle
reproof, and nothing can show
more affection than to take pleasure
in such a reproof.

When they had separated, the
Signora went into the kitchen to
give a private and special commendation
to Annunciata for her well-doing
that morning, and to glance
at that part of her domain. She
never omitted this word of praise,
and the faithful servant counted
herself well paid for any pains
she could take when she had been
assured that what she had done had
given pleasure.

This Roman kitchen was as little
as possible like the New England
kitchen. Closets and pantries there
were none; the single stone walls
did not admit of them. Two large
cases of covered shelves took their
place. Instead of the trim range
with its one fire-place, was a row
of five little furnaces, over each of
which a dish could be set. A sheet-iron
screen extended out over these,
like the hood of a chaise. All the
side of the chimney, where it extended
into the room, shone with
bright copper and tin cooking vessels,
hanging in rows. Underneath
were two baskets, one with charcoal,
another with <i>carbonella</i>—the
charred little twigs from the baker’s
furnaces, that can be kindled at a
lamp. One of the furnaces still
had a glow of coals within it, and
near by was the feather fan that had
been used to kindle and keep it
bright. The brick floor was as clean
as sprinkling and sweeping could
make it. They never wash a floor
in Rome, and only the fine marbles
and mosaics ever get anything better
than that sprinkling and sweeping.
The one window looked across
the court to the Agostinian convent
attached to Sant’ Antonino,
and to the little belfry with the two
bells that never could be made to
strike the right number of times,
and into the garden of the <i>frati</i>,
where rows of well-kept vegetables
were drinking in the sun as if it
were wine.

This kitchen was quite deserted,
except for the cat, who was standing,
with a very mild and innocent
expression of countenance, close to
the closed door of a cupboard
where meat was kept. She glanced
calmly at the Signora, and walked
away slowly and with dignity.

“Where is Annunciata, Signor
Abate?” inquired the Signora.
.pn +1

The cat turned and mewed with
great politeness, but in an interrogative
tone, as who should say, “I
beg your pardon?”

And then a splashing and bubbling
of water from without reminded
the <i>padrona</i> that her handmaiden
was washing that day—was “at
the fountain,” as they express it.

“Why should I not go down for
once and see how it seems there?”
she thought. “After all, this girl
is dependent on me, lives with me,
serves me in everything, is at my
call night and day, and I do not
touch her life except at certain
points—the table, the cleanliness
and order of the house, and the errands
she does for me outside. I
don’t know much about her, after
all.”

She opened a door that she had
never passed in the years she had
lived in that apartment, and descended
a narrow stone stair that
wound in a steep spiral, lighted at
each turn by a small hole pierced in
the outer wall. Down and down—it
seemed interminable, but was, in
reality, two stories and a half. The
landing was in a dim store-room a
little below the ground level, and
used as a cellar. From this a passage
and door led into a small court
enclosed between an angle of the
house and a high wall, like a room
with the ceiling taken off. Here a
spout of water flowed into a double
fountain-basin, where the girl stood
washing and beating linen on the
stone border. As she worked,
steadily, and too much absorbed to
see her mistress standing near her,
tears rolled down her face, and
dropped one by one on the clothes
in her hands.

The Signora looked a moment,
astonished and shocked. Was this
the girl who had come and gone
from early morning cheerfully at
her bidding, and who had smiled
as she served the table within half
an hour? She stood awhile looking
at her, then quietly withdrew,
and, going up-stairs again, rang a
hand-bell from the window. Annunciata
came up immediately, quite
as usual, with no sign of tears in
her face, except a slight flush of the
eyelids, and made her usual inquiry:
“<i>Che vuole?</i>”—What does she wish
for?

“I have several things to say,”
her mistress replied. “I came out
first to thank you for having given
us such a beautiful breakfast.
Everything was well done. I forgot
you were at the fountain.”

The smile came readily, and with
it the ready word: “It pleased her?”—always
the ceremonious third person.

“And now I want to ask you
something,” the Signora went on
kindly. “Sit down. If you do
not like to tell me, you need not.
But I should be very sorry if you
had any trouble, especially anything
in which I could help you, and did
not let me know. You have been
crying. Are you willing to tell me
what is the matter?”

The girl looked as startled as if
she had been caught in a crime, and
began to stammer.

“If it is something you do not
want to tell me, I will not say any
more about it,” her mistress went
on. “You have a right to your
privacy, as I have to mine. But
if there is anything I can do for
you, tell me freely.”

There was a momentary struggle,
then the tears started again, and
all the story came out. Annunciata
had received, three days before,
news of the death of her only
brother, who had died of fever in
some little town a day’s journey
from Rome, and was already buried
.pn +1
when she learned first that he was
sick.

The Signora listened with astonishment
and compunction. For
three days this girl had gone about
with a bitter grief hidden in her
heart, missing no duty, submitting,
perhaps, to a little fault-finding now
and then, and weeping only when
she believed herself unobserved,
and all the time, while she suffered,
ministering to and witnessing the
pleasures of others.

“My poor girl, why did you not
tell me at first?” she asked gently.

“Oh! why should I?” was the
reply. “You were all so happy
and you could not bring the dead
back.”

“I could have sympathized with
you, and given you a few days’
rest,” the Signora said. “I would
not have allowed you to work.”

“It was better for me to work,”
the girl replied, wiping her eyes.
“I should only have cried and
worried the more, if I had been
idle.”

There seemed nothing that could
be done. That class of poor do
not adorn the resting-places of their
dead, or the Signora would have
paid the cost; they do not wear
mourning, or, again, she would have
paid for it; and this girl had no
family to visit and mourn with. In
her brother she had lost all. The
only service possible—and that she
accepted gratefully—was to have
Masses said for the dead. That
settled, the Signora dismissed her
to her work again, and shut herself
into her chamber, but not to sleep.

“O the unconscious, pathetic
heroism of the suffering poor!” she
thought. “Where in the world
have I a friend who would cover
such a grief with smiles rather than
disturb my pleasure? Where in
the world does one see such patience
under pain and hardship as is shown
by the poor? They sigh, but they
seldom cry out in rebellion. They
accept the cross as their birthright,
and both they and we grow to think
that it does not hurt them as it
would hurt us. How clearly it
comes upon me now and then, why
our Lord lived and sympathized
with the poor, and why he said it
would be so hard for the rich to
enter heaven!”

She was looking so serious and
unrefreshed when the family gathered
again that they at once inquired
the cause, and she told them.

“I feel as though I must have
been lacking in some way,” she
concluded, “or a servant who has
been with me so long, and who has
no nearer friend in the world than
I am, would have come to me at
once with her troubles. If the relations
between servants and employers
are what they should be,
the servants should go to the master
or mistress with all their joys and
sorrows, just as children go to their
parents. I have been thinking that
there is one reason why, the world
over, people are complaining of
their servants. They have contented
themselves with simply paying
their wages and exacting their
labor. There has been no sympathy.
The association has been simply
like that of fish and fowl, instead
of that of the same creatures
in different circumstances.”

“I have always thought that in
America,” Mr. Vane said. “There
is not a country in the world, probably,
where families have been, as
a rule, more disagreeable toward
their servants, and servants so
troublesome, in consequence, to
their employers. But I believe it is
very seldom that a good mistress or
master does not make a good servant,
so far as the will goes.”
.pn +1

Seeing her still look downcast and
troubled, he added: “You should
not reproach yourself. It is rather
your kindness toward this girl which
has won such a devotion from her.
If you had lacked in kindness and
sympathy toward her, she would
have been far more likely to have
shown her trouble, and made it an
excuse for not attending to her
work as usual.”

“Do you think so?” she asked,
brightening; and thought in her
own mind, “How very pleasant it
is to be reassured when one is distressed
about things!”

And then later, when they heard
Annunciata in the kitchen, the sisters
went out and spoke each a
kind and pitying word to her,
touching her hard hand softly with
their delicate ones; and when she
came in later to perform some service,
Mr. Vane had also a word of
sympathy. But, greatest comfort
of all, the Signora and Bianca went
up to the Basilica and arranged
that a Mass should be said the next
morning for the dead, and Annunciata
was told that she should go
with them to hear it.

That evening the servants were
instructed to deny the family to
every one but Marion, and, when
the sun was low, they all went out
on the <i>loggia</i> to see the night
come in, and breathe the sweet
freshness that still came with it.
For it is only in dog-days that the
Italian nights are too warm for comfort,
and not always then. The great
heat comes and goes with the sun.

As they went into the <i>loggia</i>,
there was a rustling noise in the
garden underneath, and out from
the trees leaning against the wall
flew clouds of sparrows, and dispersed
themselves in every direction.
It would appear that every
twig must have held a bird.

“I am sorry we have disturbed
their nap,” Mr. Vane remarked.
“How disgusted they must be with
our curious nocturnal habits!”

They did not wish to talk, but
only to think and see, and speak a
word as the mood took them. The
miraculous shadow of St. Peter still
hovered above their spirits. They
sat in silence, receiving any impression
that the scene might make.

Flocks of birds flew in from the
seaward, all hastening to some
nest or tree-home, their bodies
clear and dark, their swift wings
twinkling against the topaz sky.
The evening star, at first softly
visible, like a diamond against another
gem, began to grow splendid,
while the glowing west changed by
imperceptible degrees to a silvery
whiteness, and took on an exquisite
hint of violet, as if it thought,
rather than was, the color. The
flowers disappeared in masses of
dark green, the gray towers and
roofs deepened to black, the pure
air was delicious and beaded with
coolness, like a summer drift
sprinkled with snow. The <i>Ave
Maria</i> began to sound here and
there, echoed from one church to
another. Now and then some bell,
besides the Angelus, rang out with
a festal clangor for five minutes,
a musical chorus coming in from
the southward.

“What a grand procession of
saints walk for ever through the Roman
days!” the Signora exclaimed.
“It would be something dazzling
to the mind, if one could live
on a central height, and hear the
bells announce the different <i>festas</i>
as they come, singly or in groups,
and know who and what each saint is.
For example, this evening we hear
from the Aventine the rejoicing announcement
that to-morrow is the
<i>festa</i> of St. Alexis in his church, and
.pn +1
from another church is called out
the name of St. Leo IV., and from
another St. Marcellina, the sister
of St. Ambrose, and twelve martyrs
will be celebrated in another church.
If we should go to-morrow to either
of those, we should find them adorned,
sprinkled with green out into
the very street, High Mass or Vespers
going on, and the relics exposed
on the altars. To-morrow night
other bells will ring in other saints
and martyrs. The night after, from
a church in Monte Citorio will
come the call, <i>Ecco</i> St. Vincent
of Paul! and the secular missions
and the Sisters of Charity will be
doing their best in his honor,
and there will be cardinals, and
pontifical vespers, and a panegyric.
Four or five churches will celebrate
their special saints the next day, and
the next will be St. Praxides, on
the Esquiline here; and the day after
we shall be invited to pay our
respects to St. Mary Magdalen.
And then on to St. James the Great,
which will be a great day; and the
day after comes St. Anna, the mother
of the Blessed Virgin; and, a
little later, St. Ignatius marches by.
What it would be to set the world
aside, sit aloft on some tower there,
listen to the announcements rung
out from belfry after belfry, meditate,
and look with the eyes of faith
on what comes! What faces of
young maidens, delicate spouses of
Christ, bent like clusters of living
flowers to listen to the voices that
praise them, turned again heavenward
to ask for blessings on their
clients! What queenly women incline
their crowned heads, when
the Sacrifice goes up in their name,
to see who of those who offer it is
worthy and sincere! What glorious
men, strong and shining, gaze down
into the battle-field where their triumph
was won, to read in the upturned
faces of the combatants how the
fight goes, and who needs their aid!
I sometimes think that the saints
look only when they are called by
name, but that the Blessed Mother
looks always. It is the mother who
goes after the child who forgets,
and watches over it while it sleeps.”

The flocks of sparrows that had
fled at their approach, weary of
waiting for them to go away, after
peeping and reconnoitring the situation,
began to come back and
flutter in under the foliage again.
For a few minutes the trees stirred
all through with them, as if with a
breeze; then the little heads were
tucked under the tired wings, and
they all went to sleep, and, perhaps,
dreamed.

The family smiled and hushed
themselves, not to disturb their rest.
Each heart was softly touched by
the nearness of so many tiny
sleepers. Peace seemed to float
silently out from under the thronged
branches and laden twigs of
those motionless trees, in which no
passer-by would have detected a
sign of life.

“I think,” the Signora said softly
after a while, “that when the
priest comes next Holy Saturday
to bless my house, I would like to
have him bless these trees too, that
no net or trap may be thrown over
them by night, and no rifle be fired
into them by day. The trees and
their tenants belong to my household.”

“Your house is blessed every
year?” Mr. Vane asked.

“Yes. On Holy Saturday the
priest goes round through every
parish, a little boy with him bearing
holy water, and blesses all the
houses, if the people desire it. The
custom is, too, to have ready on a
table a dish of boiled eggs, an ornamented
loaf of cake, and a plate
.pn +1
of sausages. These are blessed, to
be eaten Easter Sunday. I am not
sure, but I fancy that the custom is
a remnant of times when the Lenten
fast was, perhaps, more strictly and
universally observed than now.
Now, whether from a deterioration
of health or of faith, very few persons
consider themselves strong
enough to observe the regulations
perfectly. Modern civilization seems
to be very weakening in every
way.”

“I am inclined to think that
good comes, or will come, out of
all these changes and seeming failures,”
Mr. Vane observed. “If the
races have become weaker physically,
their passions have also become
weaker; and it may be that, in order
to tame them, it was necessary
to reduce their physical strength.
We do so sometimes with wild animals.
Perhaps when we shall have
learned better how to live, and, after
running the circle of follies, grown
soberer and wiser, the increasing
vitality will go more in the intellectual
and spiritual ways than it did
before. I am hopeful of the human
race, from the very fact that it is so
uneasy about itself. The audacious
boldness of some nations seems to
me to spring from desperation rather
than confidence. There is no
confidence anywhere. Fear rules
the world. Everywhere strong, or
even desperate, remedies are proposed,
and philanthropic doctors
abound.

.pm verse-start
“Malgré les tyrans,
Tout réussira,”
.pm verse-end

sing the communists; and I believe
that things will come out right in
spite of every difficulty, and be
more secure because of the difficulties
past. When we shall have
looked about in vain in every other
direction, we shall at last learn to
look upward for the solution. But
excuse me for talking so long in this
beautiful silence. Your Easter
eggs were not meant to hatch such
a sermon, Signora.“

They rose, presently, to go into
the house, and, as they loitered slowly
along the passages, Mr. Vane remarked
to the Signora: “I observe
that the natural direction of your
eyes is upward.”

“Is it?” she asked. “Come to
think of it, I believe you are right.
It is always cramping for me to
look down. I recollect that, when
I was a child, if I dropped my eyes
on being a little embarrassed, it
was almost an impossibility for me
to raise them again.”

Going in past the kitchen, they
found Adriano in chase of a cockroach
that had dared to show itself
there, and they stopped to learn
the result, feeling that it interested
them. It was not successful, and
the man rose from his knees very
much vexed.

“These <i>bagarozzi</i> don’t know
what Ascension day is nowadays,
or they would hide themselves,” he
said.

Mr. Vane asked what connection
there was between <i>bagarozzi</i> and
Ascension day, and the servant-man,
albeit a little ashamed of having
committed himself to tell a story, explained:

“When I was young, it was a
custom among the Roman boys, on
the vigil of the Ascension, to go
down into our cellars, or those of
our neighbors, and catch as many
<i>bagarozzi</i> as we could. When evening
came, we fixed to the back of
each one a bit of wax taper, melting
the end to make it stick. Half
an hour or so after <i>Ave Maria</i> we
marshalled our bugs, lighted the tapers
on their backs, and sent them
off in a procession. While they
.pn +1
went we sang a song we had. It
was a pretty sight to see the little
tapers scampering off through the
dark.”

“Why! I should think it would
have scorched them!” Bianca exclaimed
with surprise.

The man laughed at her simplicity.
“Who knows?” he said, with
a shrug. “They never came back
to tell us.”

Isabel inquired what the song
was to which this novel procession
marched.

The man laughed again and repeated
the doggerel:

.pm verse-start
“'Corri, corri, bagarone;
Che dimane è l’Ascensione;
L’Ascension delle pagnotte:
Corri, corri, bagarozzi.’”
.pm verse-end

Which might be rendered: “Run,
run, my noble roach; for to-morrow
is Ascension day—Ascension
day of the little loaves. Run,
roach, run.”

“What demons of cruelty children
can be!” remarked Isabel as
the family went on.

Adriano laughed as he looked
after them. “How queer these
<i>forestieri</i> are!” he said. “They
want to see everything and know
the name of everything. The signorine
here ask me the name of
every tree and flower in the garden,
and every bird and bug that moves.
How should I know? My niece,
Giovannina, says there’s an English-woman
going about getting the
poor old women to tell her fables,
and ghost-stories, and all sorts of
nonsense; and they say that she
prints it in a book. They must be
in great need of books to read.
Then the <i>padrona</i> will stand and
look at the moon as if she never
saw nor heard of it before, and expected
it to drop down into the
garden and break into golden <i>scudi</i>.
I saw her one day this spring, on
<i>Monte Cavallo</i>, stand half an hour
and stare at the sky, just because
it was red where the sun went
down. The sky is always red when
the sun sets in clouds. Two or
three <i>signori</i> thought she was stopping
to be noticed, and they walked
about her, and one of them
leaned on the railing close to her,
staring at her all the time, and by
and by spoke to her. I went up
behind her, but she didn’t know I
was there. She hadn’t seen any
one till she heard the man say good-evening
to her. You should have
seen the way she looked at him.
Then she caught sight of me. 'Adriano,’
she said, 'I’ll give you a
hundred lire to fling that fellow
over the terrace head first.’ I told
her that it would cost me more
than a hundred lire to do it. She
put out her lips—I suppose she
thought I was a coward—and muttered
a word in English. Then
she said to me, as she turned her
back on the man, loud enough for
him to hear: 'How dare such
rascals come up when the sun
shines!’ But she wouldn’t let me
walk beside her, but made me follow
her all the way home. And
she was so mad that, when I started
to say something as we reached
the door, she stopped me. 'When I
want you to speak, I shall ask you
a question,’ she said.”

“The Signora is very kind,” Annunciata
said.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t,” the
man replied dogmatically. “But
it doesn’t become ladies to go into
the street alone, nor to stop to look
at anything, nor to glance about
them.”

The girl did not reply. She had
been trained in the same opinions,
and did not know how to combat
them. But sometimes it seemed
to her that the streets and the public
.pn +1
places were for women as well
as for men to see, and that a woman
should not be a prisoner because
she had not a carriage or a servant
to attend her. Moreover, she sympathized,
in her simple way, with
many of the Signora’s tastes. To her
the song of the birds they fed with
crumbs from the windows was a
sort of thanks, and she regarded
them as little Christians; and now
and then, when she looked at the
sky, something stirred in her for
which she had not words—a pleasure
and a pain, and a sense of being
cramped into a place too small
for her. She could not express it
all, and did not quite understand
it. But there was just enough
consciousness to make Adriano’s
<i>pronunciamiento</i> rankle a little. The
inner ferment lasted while she polished
the knives and her companion
blacked carefully a pair of
boots; then she burst forth with
an expression of opinion which astonished
even herself, for it sprang
into speech before she had well
seen its meaning—an involuntary
assertion of nature. “I believe
that women should settle their own
business, and men settle theirs,”
she said. “I haven’t seen the man
yet that knows enough to teach the
Signora how she ought to behave
nor what she ought to do; and
many’s the man she could teach.
Men are poor creatures. Women
can’t do anything with them without
lying to ’em. That’s what
gives them such a great opinion of
themselves, because most women
flatter them when they want to get
anything out of them.”

“<i>Ma, che!</i>—well, to be sure!” exclaimed
Adriano. It wasn’t worth
arguing about. He merely laughed.

Meantime, gathered in the <i>sala</i>,
the family made plans for the coming
days while they waited for supper.
Bianca, seated at the piano,
was trying to recall a fragment of
melody she had heard a soprano of
the papal choir sing at a <i>festa</i> not
long before. “The cadence was so
sweet,” she said. “It was common—a
slow falling from five and sharp
four to four natural—but the singer
put in two grace-notes that I never
heard there before. He touched
the four natural lightly, then sharped
it, then touched the third and
slid to the fourth. It was exquisite,
and very gracefully done. His
voice was pure and true, and the
intervals quite distinct.”

“I asked his name,” Isabel said,
“and was disgusted to hear a very
common one, which I have forgotten.
A beautiful singer ought to
have a beautiful, birdy-sounding
name.”

“He can make his own name
sound 'birdy,’ if you give him time,”
Mr. Vane said. “Take Longfellow
as an example. There couldn’t be
a more absurd name. Yet the
poetry and fame of the man have
flowed around it so that to pronounce
the name, Longfellow, now
is as though you should say hexameter.”

And then what were they to do,
and where were they to go to-morrow,
and the day after, and the day
after? They ran over their life
like a picture-book which was so
full of beauties they knew not which
to look at first. All felt that they
were laying up sunny memories for
the years to come—memories to be
talked over by winter evening fires
in their country across the sea;
memories to amuse and instruct
young and old, and to enrich their
own minds. And not only were
they furnishing for themselves and
their friends this immense picture-gallery
and library of interesting
facts and experiences, but they were
.pn +1
expanding and vivifying their faith.
They were making the personal acquaintance,
as it were, of the saints,
and seeing as live human beings
those of whom they had read in
stories so dry as to make them seem
rather skeletons than men and women.
To enter the chamber where
a saint had prayed, had slept, had
eaten, had yielded up his last breath;
to stand in some spot and think:
“Here he stood, on these very stones,
and saw faces of heaven lean over
him, and heard mouths of heaven
speak to him; or here, when such
temptations came as we weakly
yield to or weakly resist, he fought
with prayer, and lash, and fasting”;
to look at a hedge of rose-bushes,
and be told: “Here, when he was
tempted, a man, weak as other men,
flung himself headlong among the
thorns”—this was to waken faith and
courage, and make their religion,
not an affair of holidays and spectacles,
and communions of once a
year, but of every day, and of private
hours as well as of public.

“Half our Roman holiday is
gone,” Mr. Vane said, “and for at
least four weeks of the other half
the heat will allow us to do little or
nothing. I recommend you girls
to treasure all your little pleasures,
and keep an exact account of them.
The more fully you write everything
out, the better. These diaries
of yours will probably be the most
interesting books you could have
after a few years.”

“I am trying to forget all about
America,” Isabel said, “to fancy
that I have always lived here, and
always shall live here, and to steep
myself as much as possible in Italian
life, so that, when I go back, I
may see my own country as others
see it, but more wisely. It seems
to me that a country could be best
judged so by one who knows it
well, yet has been so long withdrawn
from it, and so familiar
with other modes of life, as to see
its outlines and features clearly.“

“You are right,” Marion said.

“I never knew how beautiful, how
more than beautiful, American nature
is till I had seen the famous
scenes of Europe. One-half the
superiority is association, and half
the other half is because attention
has been called to them by
voices to which people listened.
Our very climate is richer. Here
nobody knows how beautiful the
skies can be. They like sunshine,
and rainy weather is for them
always <i>brutto tempo</i>. The grandeur
of a storm, the exquisite beauty of
showery summer weather and of
falling and fallen snow, they know
nothing about. They endure the
rainy season for the sake of the
crops, scolding and shivering all the
time. To watch with pleasure a
direct, pelting, powerful rain would
never enter their minds; and if
they see you gazing at the most glorious
clouds imaginable, it would
be to them nothing but <i>curioso</i>.
We do not need to go abroad for
natural beauty.”

It was getting late and time
to say good-night. A silence fell
on them, and a sense of waiting.
Then Mr. Vane said: “We have
made a Novena together for the
communion of this morning. May
we not once more say our prayers
together in thanksgiving?”

No one replied in words; but
the Signora brought a prayer-book
and arranged the lamp beside Mr.
Vane. He obeyed her mute request,
and for the first time, as head
of the family, led the family devotions.
Then they took a silent
leave of each other.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=natalie
NATALIE NARISCHKIN.[#]
.sp 2
.fn #
<i>La Sœur Natalie Narischkin</i>, <i>Fille de la Charité
de S. Vincent de Paul</i>. Par Mme. Augustus
Craven. Paris: Didier et Cie., 35 Quai des Augustins.
.fn-

The name of Narischkin is in
Russia like the name of Bourbon in
France, Plantagenet or Stuart in
Great Britain. The mother of
Peter the Great was a Narischkin,
and her baptismal name was Natalie.
The family have always esteemed
themselves too noble to accept
even the highest titles, regarding
their patronymic as a designation
more honorable than that of
prince. Madame Craven has just
added to the list of her charming
and extremely popular works a new
one, which is a companion to the
<i>Sister’s Story</i>, by writing the biography
of a lady of the Narischkin
family who was a Catholic and a
Sister of Charity. Natalie was a
friend of Alexandrine and Olga de
la Ferronays. The narrative of her
early life retraces the ground, familiar
to so many, over which we have
delightfully wandered in company
with the fascinating group of elect
souls, whose passage over the drear
desert of our age has been like the
waving of angels’ wings in a troubled
atmosphere.

It seems scarcely correct to call
Natalie Narischkin a convert. Her
parents belonged to the Russian
Church, and of course she was taught
to regard herself as a member of
the same. They resided, however,
always in Italy, and Natalie was
accustomed, in her childhood and
youth, to associate freely with Catholic
children and young people, and
to accompany them to the churches
and convents where they were wont
to resort. Russian children receive
infant communion, beginning with
the day of their baptism, several
times a year until they attain a proper
age for confession, when there
is a careful preparation and a solemn
ceremony for the first adult communion,
as with us. They are confirmed
immediately after baptism.
We are not told anything about
Natalie’s receiving either infant or
adult communion, but it is to be
presumed that she was made to follow
the usual practice, since there
are Greek churches in Venice and
other Italian cities. Her early associations
were much more numerous,
strong, and tender with the
church of Italy and France than
with the estranged church of her
own nation. There was no difference
in faith between herself and her
Italian and French companions to
make her sensible that the religion
in which she was bred was different
from the one in whose sacred rites
she was continually taking part, at
whose altars and shrines she frequently
and devoutly worshipped.
Even the peculiar ceremonies and
forms of the Sclavonic and Greek
rites were less familiar to her than
those of the Latin rite. The only
barrier between herself and her
Catholic companions which could
make Natalie sensibly feel a separation
between them was her exclusion
from participating in the sacraments
administered by Catholic
priests. This separation between
priests and people professing the
same faith, offering the same Sacrifice,
administering and receiving
the same sacraments, could only
.pn +1
puzzle and surprise the mind of a
child; but it requires a more mature
understanding and complete
knowledge to appreciate the obligation
of renouncing all communion
with a schismatical sect, however
similar it may be to the true church.
While Natalie was a child some of
the little boys and girls with whom
she played, particularly one little
boy who became afterwards a martyr
in China, used to assail her with
controversy. Her older friends
were more judicious, and waited
patiently until her ripening intelligence
and expanding spiritual life
should prepare her for a more complete
work of grace and a more perfect
understanding of Catholic doctrine.
In the instance of Madame
Swetchine we see how much
study and thought are necessary
to produce in the mind of one
who has grown up to maturity under
the influences of the Russian
Church a firm intellectual conviction
that organic unity under the
supremacy of the Roman See is
essential to the being of the Catholic
Church, and not merely the condition
of its well-being and perfection.
In Madame Elizabeth Gallitzin
we discern how, in another
way, national prejudice, and traditional
hostility to what is regarded
as anti-Russian, caused in her bosom
a violent struggle against reason
and conscience, even though the
Catholic religion was that of her
own mother. The case was wholly
different with Natalie Narischkin.
She did not think about the question
of controversy at all, and was
free from the national prejudices of
a Russian. Her mother took no
pains to instil them into her mind,
or to place any obstacle in the way
of the Catholic influences around
her. She grew up, therefore, a
Catholic, with only an external
barrier between her inward sentiments
and their full outward profession.
The interior cravings of
her spiritual life were the chief and
real motive prompting her to pass
over this barrier and find in the
true church that which the broken,
withered branch could not give.
The requisite theological instruction
in the grounds of the sentence
of excision by which the Russian
hierarchy is cut off from Catholic
communion was a subsequent matter,
and not at all difficult to one who
was, like Natalie, intelligent, candid,
and full of the spirit of the purest
Catholic piety. There was really
nothing in the way except the authority
of her mother, whose chief
motive of opposition was the fear
of the emperor’s displeasure. When
this obstacle was removed, Natalie
easily and without an effort leaped
over what was left of the external
barrier.

We have anticipated, however,
what belongs to a later period of
her history. And going back to
the time of her childhood, we will
let Madame Craven herself describe
the situation in which she was
placed while she was growing up
into womanhood. It will be noticed
that Madame Craven speaks in
the plural number, indicating that
Natalie is not the only young Russian
to whom her remarks apply.
This will be understood when we
explain that her sister Catharine
sympathized with her in all her religious
feelings, though she delayed,
on account of her dread to encounter
the opposition of her family,
until a much later period her own
formal abjuration.

.pm letter-start
“The entire childhood of these young
girls had been passed at Naples, and
they had been there environed by impressions
which nothing in their Greek
faith, no matter how lively it might have
.pn +1
been, could counteract. The adoration
of Jesus Christ, the veneration of the
Holy Virgin and the saints, faith in the
power of absolution and the real presence
in the Blessed Sacrament, were the
grand and fundamental doctrines which
they had imbibed with their mother’s
milk. Brought up at a distance from
their own country, they might almost
have believed themselves to be in the
centre of their own religion, living as
they were within the bounds of that great
church which possesses all the gifts
claimed by their own, with the added
power of distributing and communicating
them to all, without distinction of
place, language, nation, or race. It is
difficult to comprehend how any Russian
whose soul is imbued with piety, on returning
to his own country after having
been brought up abroad, can find himself
at ease in the bosom of Greek orthodoxy.
In truth, it appears to us
that the limits of a national church must
seem very suffocating to any one who
has felt, even for an instant, the pulsation
of that universal life in the heart of
the Catholic Church which is unconfined
by mountains, rivers, or seas, which
is contained within no barriers of any
kind whatever, and bears the name of
no particular nation, because it is the
mother of all nations collectively.
Therefore no one ever has been or ever
will be able to fasten any denomination
of this sort upon the only church who
dares affirm that she alone possesses the
truth in all its completeness. At the
first view one would say that every
church ought to make this claim under
the penalty of being deprived of any
reason for its existence. It is nevertheless
true that only one loudly proclaims
it; and those who hate as well as those
who love the Catholic Church alike declare
that she is a church in this respect
singular among all others. Thus has she
preserved through all ages a designation
expressive of the idea realized in herself,
and will preserve the same for all
coming time! A multitude of her children
have separated themselves from
her, yet none of them have succeeded in
despoiling her of the glorious title which
suffices to make her recognized everywhere
and by all. As for other churches
or sects, when it is not the name of
some man or nation which they substitute
for her name, it is some kind of
term or epithet which, even when it
aims at giving a semblance of antiquity,
betrays novelty in the very fact that it is
necessary to employ it in order to be
understood; and this is true in our own
day just as much as it was in the time
of St. Augustine. The overwhelming
force of good sense and all the laws of
human language determine <i>that words
express what they designate</i>! At this day,
as well as at that earlier period, neither
friends nor enemies will ever give this
grand name of CATHOLICS to any except
those to whom it really belongs,
and the same good sense proclaims as
an indubitable fact which is that church
whose children these are.

“Natalie had remained a long time
without paying any attention to this controversy.
She belonged all the while to
the Catholic Church by all her pious
habitudes, by all her childlike affections,
finally and chiefly by the bond of the
true sacraments which the Greek Church
has had the infinite privilege of preserving,
and which form a tie between ourselves
and the Greeks whose value cannot
be too highly estimated—a tie so
powerful that even in one case where it
is only imagined to have a real existence
(<i>i.e.</i>, with those Anglicans who persuade
themselves that a chain wanting a
multitude of links has not been broken)
it has served in our days more than
ever before to awaken in their hearts a
sentiment inclining them to a nearer
sympathy with our own. Belief in the
truth of the words of Jesus Christ and
in his real presence on the altar, the
adoration and love of our Lord, the
search after those who have possessed
in the highest degree this faith and love,
have opened the way by which a great
number of souls have come to prostrate
themselves before the tabernacles of the
Catholic Church who had been previously
outside of her visible fold, and had belonged
to her only by virtue of their
good faith and love of truth.

“With how much greater reason must
one who belonged to the Greek Church
have felt herself closely united to those
whose faith was professed and whose
practices were approved in respect to
such a great number of points by her
own church, which has even ventured to
adopt the counsels of perfection and to
speak of the '<i>spiritual life</i>’ and of
'<i>Christian perfection</i>,’ after the manner
of Catholics!

“But it is just here that she betrays
.pn +1
her weakness; for when it is a practical
question of undertaking and nourishing
this spiritual life, where can she go to
seek the living words, the sermons, the
books, the apostolic men whom she requires?
Where and from what source
can one draw the vital force of this true
and daily life, of this <i>living</i> life, if I may
hazard the expression, always similar to
itself, yet unceasingly renovated like the
seasons of the year? Where can this
vivifying influence be found, except in
that same Catholic Church which, although
it makes the mind bend under
the necessary and salutary yoke of authority,
never permits uniformity to engender
tediousness, and possesses in its
completeness that deposit a part of which
the Greek Church suffered to escape on
the day when it broke the bond of unity?
Since then, although apparently rich, she
has remained empty-handed; and while
the Basils, the Athanasiuses, the Gregories,
the Chrysostoms, and the numerous
other holy and immortal doctors have had
immortal successors in the Occident, the
church of the Orient, once queen of eloquence
and science, has become mute;
and her children know not to-day whether
she can speak or even write, since it is not
given to them to hear her any more break
silence; and, if they would warm up their
piety by holy reading, and give their
minds the sustenance they require, they
are forced to have recourse to the Catholic
Church, since it is there alone they
can find their necessary aliment. Truly,
we cannot help thinking that if the barrier
which separates Greeks from Catholics
were not upheld by hatred, it must
fall down in an instant. This hatred is
something which has no argument whatever
in its justification, and which accepts,
in behalf of the church which it
covers as a shield of defence, the very
conditions of death, immobility and silence,
in lieu of a living existence.

“However this may be, and whatever
more might be said on this vast and interesting
subject, it cannot in any case
be disputed that the divergences existing
between us and the great Greek Church
have nothing in common with those which
separate us from Protestantism. Protestantism
has tampered with and altered
all our articles of faith, demolished the
Christian mysteries most sacred to belief
and dear to affection. It has retained
neither the intercession of the saints, the
worship of the Blessed Virgin, the sacraments
of penance and the Holy Eucharist,
nor the veneration of holy images.
In fine, apart from the belief in the merits
of our Saviour, of which every manifestation
is severely restrained, there is
nothing in common between Protestants
and ourselves.[#] On the contrary, we may
say, in respect to the Greeks, that for the
simple faithful the difference between
them and ourselves is invisible, because
they have retained so many things which
assimilate their religion to ours, as affecting
the mind, the heart, and even the
senses. Therefore, for many among them,
the barrier does not become sensible until
they find themselves disposed to pass
over it in order to satisfy the inward need
which they experience of participating
in the riches of that other church, which
seems so like their own, yet differs from
it in possessing really what the other offers
in a vain semblance.

.fn #
Our Protestant readers will excuse, we trust, a
want of precise accuracy in some of these expressions,
very easily accounted for by the fact that
Madame Craven is a Catholic Frenchwoman, to
whom all the various phases of Protestantism are
confused in one vague and indistinct form.
.fn-

“What, then, must be the sentiments
of a sincere, fervent, simple, and upright
soul, already bathed in the light which
radiates from the great mysteries of the
faith, and touched by the infinite love
of Jesus Christ revealed in them, when
it discovers the nature of the obstacles
which lie in her path?

“She finds all the articles of her faith
more solemnly affirmed; all the practices
which her piety demands more numerous
and accessible; confession, absolution,
communion—all is there; and must
she refrain from satisfying her thirst for
them?

“Is it credible that a soul thus thirsty
for truth, faith, and love should be much
disposed to recoil from the difficulty of
accepting one word more in the confession
of faith,[#] or of recognizing the head
of the <i>universal</i> church as the head of the
church in the East as well as of that in the
West? Again, is it credible that she will
shrink back from the political obstacle,
the greatest and most formidable of all—the
only one, in fact, which she will find
pain in overcoming and need courage to
surmount?

.fn #
Filioque.
.fn-

“Such were the thoughts which importuned
the mind of Natalie when she
left Brussels, at the end of February, 1843,
.pn +1
in order to return with her sisters to Paris,
having resolved to ask the consent of her
mother to her becoming a Catholic, and
fully expecting that this permission
would not be withheld.“
.pm letter-end

Natalie’s father died when she
was fifteen years old. Evidently
he had not felt any hostility to the
Catholic Church, for he was a great
admirer of the Jesuits. Madame
Narischkin was not prejudiced, as is
shown by the fact that she never at
any time was averse to the perpetual
intercourse kept up by her family,
and especially by Natalie, with
the most cultivated and devoted
Catholics of Europe, such as the
La Ferronays family, and never
hindered her daughters from attending
all kinds of services in Catholic
churches. She undoubtedly looked
on the Greek and Catholic
churches as essentially identical
with each other, and therefore
could not see any reason for passing
from the communion of the one
to that of the other. She supposed
that her daughter’s reasons were
rather sentimental than conscientious.
She naturally felt unwilling
to have her take a step which would
prevent her from ever again receiving
communion at the same altar
with the other members of the family.
And she was, moreover, decidedly
opposed to any act which
would expose the family to the emperor’s
displeasure. It is not to be
wondered at, then, that she positively
refused permission to Natalie
to be received into the Catholic
Church. Natalie was at this time
twenty-three years of age, perfectly
well educated, and fully instructed
in the grounds of the distinctive,
exclusive claim which is made by
the Roman Church upon the obedience
and submission of all baptized
Christians. She was competent to
decide for herself, and in possession
of a complete right to act according
to her conscience. It was thought
proper, therefore, by the priest who
was her spiritual director, and by
her friends of the La Ferronays
family, that she should be privately
received into the church at Paris.
An accident frustrated their plan,
and Natalie was obliged to leave
Paris with her mother without having
accomplished her intention.
The nuncio and other priests of
high position at Paris, when they
were informed about the matter,
disapproved of the course which M.
Aladel had advised, and reproved
severely the ladies who had been
concerned in the unsuccessful attempt
to put it in execution.

Natalie accompanied her mother
and sisters to Stuttgart, and a few
months afterward to Venice. At
her mother’s desire she had several
conferences with a Greek priest,
which served only to strengthen
her in her well-formed and solid
convictions. Nevertheless, she delayed
her formal reception into the
Catholic Church, waiting for a more
favorable opportunity to accomplish
this great desire of her heart.
This opportunity came very soon,
but in a way which was unexpected
and, to her affectionate heart, most
painful. During the summer of
1844 her mother was suddenly taken
ill and died. The marriage of
her two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth—both
of whom had been some time
before betrothed, the first to M. de
Valois, the second to the Baron de
Petz—was delayed for a year on account
of this sad event, and the
whole family was invited by M.
Narischkin’s elder brother Alexis
to return to Moscow and reside
during the year of mourning in his
house. Under these circumstances,
Natalie resolved to act for herself,
and she was accordingly received into
.pn +1
the Catholic Church on the 15th of
August, although none of her family
were made acquainted with the fact.
She accompanied her brother and
sisters to Moscow, where they met
with the most affectionate reception
from their uncle and their other relatives.
Nothing occurred to make
any disclosure on her part necessary,
until the time came for all the
members of the family to make
their Easter communion. In Russia
this religious act, and all the
preparations for it, are performed
with so much publicity that it was
impossible for Natalie to escape
from it without observation. All
the members of the family received
the communion together at the
same Mass, with the single exception
of Natalie, who was nevertheless,
as usual, present with the others,
and observed the sad and serious
look with which her uncle regarded
her, as she remained in her
place while all the rest of his family
approached the altar to receive the
sacrament. She now felt that the
time had come when concealment
was no longer possible, and naturally
feared that a severe trial
awaited her. It turned out, however,
quite differently from what
she had expected.

After their return from Mass her
uncle sent for her, and in a most
kind and paternal manner remonstrated
with her on her omission of
so grave and sacred a duty as the
fulfilment of the precept of Paschal
communion, which he attributed
to indifference and tepidity, demanding
of her, in a most affectionate
manner, the reason which had
induced her to abstain from communion.
He added, at the same
time, that he would much rather
see her a Roman Catholic than indifferent
to the obligations of religion.
Natalie had listened to him
with downcast eyes, in silence and
trepidation. At these last words—prompted,
perhaps, by some secret
suspicion that her residence abroad
had actually been the occasion of a
change in her religion, and spoken
with evident emotion and sadness—she
opened her heart, and gave her
venerable uncle a full and unreserved
account of her conversion
and of all the motives which led
her to leave the communion of the
Greek Church. When she looked
up timidly, at the close of her recital
to await her uncle’s answer,
she saw his eyes filled with tears
and fixed upon her with an expression
of tenderness which banished
all fear from her heart, and left upon
it an indelible impression of
love and gratitude. He opened
his arms to embrace her affectionately,
and assured her of his protection
and unalterable kindness.
Her maternal uncle, Count Strogonoff,
a man whose religious character
was both ardent and severe, and
who was a thorough Russian of the
old type in all his principles and
sentiments, when he was informed
of the truth, acted towards her in
precisely the same manner, and
even took pains to distinguish her
from her sisters by special marks
of affection. All her nearest relatives
were informed of what had
occurred, but the strictest secrecy
was enjoined in respect to all others,
for reasons which are obvious
without any explanation. The only
great trial which Natalie had to
encounter, now that she was relieved
of the pain and anxiety of keeping
her secret from her nearest relatives,
was the privation of all
opportunity of going to Catholic
churches and receiving the sacraments.
Under the circumstances
this was a privation she was compelled
to endure patiently, and during
.pn +1
the year she passed at Moscow
she was only able to make one
short visit, in company with some
young friends, to the French chapel,
on Holy Thursday, which was
three days after the memorable interview
with her uncle.

At the expiration of the year of
mourning the young Narischkins
returned to Italy for the nuptials
of Mary and Elizabeth, and Natalie’s
uncle arranged for her permanent
residence with the latter, in
order that she might be free to
practise her religion without any embarrassment
to herself or her family.
She accordingly bade a final farewell
to Russia, and with her temporary
sojourn in her native country
the great trial of her life was also
terminated. We can easily imagine
with what joy she again revisited
Italy, which had been the home of
her childhood; and on the occasion
of this return Madame Craven’s
genius has inspired her to write
one of her happiest and most beautiful
passages, which we cannot refrain
from translating, although without
any hope of preserving the delicate
aroma of the original.

.pm letter-start
“We do not believe there is a person
in the world who has once lived in Italy
who does not cherish in his inmost soul
the desire of returning there once more,
or feel, when he again looks upon its
beautiful sky, that wherever his native
land may be, he has really come back to
his own true country. For its beauty belongs
to us as much as to those whose
eyes behold it from the day when they
are first opened to the light in infancy.
It is no more their peculiar possession
than it is our own; for to both alike it is
only an irradiation from that supreme
and essential beauty which is our common
heritage and assured patrimony. This is
doubtless the reason why we can never
see the faintest reflection of this splendor
of the eternal beauty without experiencing
a sensation which causes the heart to dilate
with joy and at the same time to repose
in the tranquil security of possession.
It seems to us that attentive reflection
on what passes within us will show
that, whatever degree of admiration any
object of this world may awaken in our
minds, even if it approaches to <i>ecstasy</i>, it
is very rarely the case that we feel a positive
<i>surprise</i>. Even if one who had never
seen the glorious light and splendor of a
happy clime were suddenly transported
from the icy regions of the polar circle to
the charming shores of the Bay of Naples,
there is a latent image in the depths of
the human heart, the original of which
external things are the copy, whose presence
makes one feel, even at the first
glance on the sublime spectacle of the
outward world, that all belongs to him
and exists within his soul.

“This reflection suggests another.
We shall doubtless experience something
similar to this when we escape from this
sphere of shadows and images and emerge
into the region of eternal reality. Certainly
our hearts will then be opened to receive
those unknown enjoyments 'which
eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor
hath it entered into the heart of man to
conceive.’ Nevertheless, I think it is allowable
to suppose that, as we shall see
the poor human form clothed in Jesus
Christ with all the glory of the divinity,
so we shall also find the reality of all
those shadows which in this lower world
charm our eyes and fascinate our hearts.
Happy will it then be for those who have
not suffered themselves to be captivated
by these shadows, when they are able to
exclaim in a transport of ineffable happiness:
'Behold at last those objects
too beautiful and too transitory to be
loved on the earth by our souls, because
they must either suffer the loss of these
or be lost themselves! Here they are—real,
substantial, enduring, transfigured,
unfading! We have found all those
things which we desired and sought for,
and amid all these possessions is our
eternal abode!’”
.pm letter-end

Natalie found a very pleasant
home with her brother-in-law, the
Baron de Petz, during the next
three years. It does not appear
from the narrative whether he was
a Catholic or a Greek in religion.
He was certainly a most kind and
affectionate brother, and her sisters
were always loving and considerate,
.pn +1
so that no alienation ever separated
the hearts of her near relatives from
her own so long as they lived. We
shall see presently how noble and
tender was the conduct of her brother
Alexander. And we anticipate
the regular order of events in order
to mention in this connection another
near relative, Prince Demidoff,
whose affection for Natalie
was extraordinary, and who acted
with singular and admirable generosity
not only toward herself, after
she had become a Sister of Charity,
but also to other members of the
same congregation. While he was
residing in Italy he established a
spacious hospital at his own expense,
which he confided to the
care of these religious. At Paris
he authorized Sister Natalie to
draw on him without limit, at her
own discretion, for charitable purposes.
It is extremely delightful
to witness and record actions of
this kind, so honorable to human
nature, and showing what a high
degree of intellectual and moral
refinement, as well as how much
of a truly Christian and Catholic
spirit, is to be found among a certain
class of the ancient Russian
nobility. And what a contrast do
they present to the ignoble persecutions,
the mean and petty defamations,
to which so many even of
those who attempt to assume the
guise of Catholics have descended
in respect to converts in England
and the United States. We do not
forget, however, that there are many
instances among ourselves of a similar
conduct to that of the Narischkins,
as there are doubtless others
of an opposite kind in Russian
families under similar circumstances.

Natalie Narischkin, in the midst
of the splendors, gayeties, and most
refined enjoyments of the world,
during the period of her peaceful,
happy youth, ere the severe trials
of life had cast their shadow upon
her spirit, had been pious, reserved,
pearl-like in her purity of character,
always aspiring after Christian
perfection. After she had begun to
participate in all the spiritual advantages
thrown open to her by
her Catholic profession, her distaste
for the world and attraction for the
spiritual life increased rapidly, and
an inclination toward the religious
state gradually matured into a certain
and settled vocation. Her
friends made some opposition for
a time, though not so much as is
frequently encountered in the bosom
of pious Catholic families.
Her brother Alexander examined
carefully her reasons and motives,
and, being convinced that she was
acting with prudence and deliberation,
gave his free consent and the
promise of his assistance in carrying
out her intention, accompanied
by the singular request that she
would leave the choice of an order
to his decision. She had made no
choice herself, and when her brother
selected the Congregation of
the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent
de Paul, she was quite satisfied.
In fact, she had a predilection for the
Convent of the Rue de Bac in Paris,
which had been one of her places
of favorite resort in former years.
Her brother discussed the whole
matter with M. Aladel, a Lazarist
priest of Paris, and Natalie conferred
not only with him but with
several other experienced directors,
who concurred in approving her
vocation as a Sister of Charity.
Here, accordingly, she entered, in
her twenty-eighth year, and here she
worked and suffered, as one saint
among a thousand others, in an
institute where heroism is as common
as the ordinary virtues are elsewhere,
.pn +1
and sanctity is the universal
rule. During her religious life, which
had twenty-six years of duration, she
was first the secretary of the superior-general,
and afterwards the superior
of a small community in the
Faubourg St. Germain. She died
in 1874.

The narrative of Natalie’s religious
life, enriched as it is with
copious extracts from her letters
and numerous personal anecdotes,
is interesting and edifying
as it is presented in the pages of
Madame Craven’s biography. No
doubt an English translation will
soon place it within the reach of
all our readers; and as it is precisely
just one of those histories which
is spoiled by condensation, we will
not attempt to give it in an abridged
form. Leaving aside, therefore,
all further personal details, we shall
confine our attention to that one
aspect of our subject which has the
most general interest and importance—viz.,
the position and attitude
of the members of the national
church of Russia in reference to
the Catholic Church. As an illustration
of this topic we have presented
the history of the conversion
of a Russian lady of high
birth and education—one specimen
of a number of equally choice
souls whom the Russian Church
has produced but has not been
able to retain, and who are, we
trust, the precursors of all the people
of their nation in returning to
the bosom of Catholic unity. Although
Natalie Narischkin had lived
so very little in her own country,
she was nevertheless an ardent and
patriotic Russian in her sentiments,
and of course, as a well-instructed
and devout Catholic, had very much
at heart the religious welfare of
her own nation. Among all the
illustrious Russian converts, Count
Schouvaloff, who became a Barnabite
monk, was the most zealous in
promoting the great work of the
reconciliation of the Russian Church
to the Holy See. Madame Craven
tells us how enthusiastic Natalie
was in her interest in the cause
which this good man consecrated
by the oblation of his own life as a
sacrifice for its success—a sacrifice
which he offered in obedience to
the counsel of Pius IX., and which
was accepted by God.

.pm letter-start
“When Father Schouvaloff—who, like
herself, was a Russian, a convert, and devoted
to the religious life—had given a
definite form to this desire, and had founded
an association of prayers in aid of
this object which all Catholics were invited
to join, there was not a single person in
the world who responded more fervently
to this appeal than Sister Natalie.
The desire of propagating the truth, natural
in the case of all who have embraced
it, is particularly strong in those who
have come from the Greek Church. To
see the fatal barrier which separates the
Eastern from the Western Church fall
down, and to hear henceforth these two
communions designated only by one
common name: <i>The Church!</i>—no one
else can comprehend the ardor of this
desire in the hearts of those Russians
who are animated both by the love of the
truth and the love of their country.

“While we are on this topic we cannot
help remarking how surprising are
the tentative advances toward union between
the Greek Church and Protestantism
which we have recently witnessed.
Such an alliance the clear mind of Natalie,
even before her conversion, rejected
with repugnance as impossible and absurd.
Does not, in fact, the most simple
reflection suffice to demonstrate that
by uniting herself to the Catholic Church
the Greek Church would preserve the
traditions of her venerable antiquity together
with the august dogmas which she
holds, and would, at the same time, in
ceasing to be local and becoming universal,
recover the power of expansion and
evangelization which she has lost by her
schismatical isolation? In this case she
might be compared to a princess of high
lineage regaining, by a return to the bosom
.pn +1
of the family to which she belonged,
the royal rank from which she had fallen.
But, in truth, to make a union with Protestantism
would be for her the worst of
misalliances, for she would then resemble
a princess marrying a <i>parvenu</i> and
with the utmost levity renouncing all
the rights of her high birth and illustrious
descent.”
.pm letter-end

Some of our readers may find it
difficult to understand the anomalous
position in which the Russian
Church stands, so completely different
from that of any of our Western
sects, and requiring only the
one act necessary for its corporate
reunion to the Catholic body for its
rectification, and yet so completely
severed from the true church in
its actual state that it is not a
branch, a limb, or any kind of part
or member of the same, but only
a sect, completely outside of the
universal church. Some Catholics
may suppose the Russian Church in
a worse condition than it is in reality.
They may not understand
that its priesthood and sacraments
are any better than those of the
English or Scandinavian churches,
which have an outward form of
episcopal constitution. Or, if better
informed on this head, they may
ascribe to it heresy, and regard
some of its differences of rite and
discipline as vitiating essentially
the Catholic order. On the other
hand, these misapprehensions being
set aside, and the likeness of the
Russian Church to the Catholic
Church clearly understood, they
might find it difficult to perceive
that essential difference which, as
Madame Craven remarks with truth,
is to most of the Russian laity invisible.
Still more will a Protestant
having a tincture of Catholic
opinions and sentiments fail to see
why a member of the Russian
Church should be convinced of
the imperative obligation of abjuring
the Greek schism and passing
over to the communion of the Roman
Church.

The question of heresy is easily
settled by the way of authority.
We have only to inquire, therefore,
whether the Holy See has ever condemned
the adherents of the schism
begun by Photius and renewed by
Michael Cerularius, of heresy as well
as schism, and whether the standard
authors in theology consider them
as heretics in view of their ecclesiastical
position and in virtue
of general principles, although no
formal judgment has been pronounced
by the Holy See. It is
certain that no such formal sentence
has ever been pronounced by
the Holy See. The Nestorian and
Monophysite sects of the East have
been formally condemned as heretical.
But the <i>soi-disant</i> Orthodox
Church likewise condemns these
and all other heretical sects condemned
by the Roman Church before
the time of the schism. At
the Council of Florence the Greeks
were not judged to have professed
any heresy, the Council of Trent
was specially careful to abstain
from any such condemnation, and
the Council of the Vatican equally
refrained from it. The same is
true of all the official pronouncements
of the popes. In the exercise
of practical discipline, when it
is a question of reconciling Greeks,
whether they are in holy orders or
laymen, they are treated as schismatics,
but not as heretics. Theologians
also, in treating of the
doctrine of the several national
churches in communion with the
schismatical patriarchate of Constantinople,
which they hold in
common as their profession of faith,
regard it as orthodox, conformed
to the doctrine of the Catholic
Church, and consequently free
.pn +1
from any mixture of heresy. The
only doctrines in regard to which
any one could suppose the Greek
Church to be heretical are the procession
of the Holy Spirit from the
Son, and the supreme, infallible
authority of the Pope. The Greek
Church has never, by any solemn,
synodical act, denied the procession
of the Holy Spirit from the Son.
The omission of the <i>Filio-que</i> from
the Creed is not in itself equivalent
to such a denial, and the Roman
Church has never required the
Orientals to insert it as a condition
of communion. Neither has
the Greek Church ever by any
solemn act denied the supremacy
and infallibility of the Pope. The
liturgical books, and specifically
those of the Russian Church, contain
abundant testimonies to the
Catholic doctrine on this head.
The heretical doctrines of individuals,
whether prelates, priests, or
laymen, are therefore their own
personal heresies, and not the doctrine
of the public formularies of
faith, which remain just what they
were at the time of the separation.
The only conciliar decrees of a
dogmatic character which have
been enacted since that time by a
synod which could be regarded as
representing the so-called Orthodox
Church are those of the Synod of
Bethlehem, in which the principal
heresies of Protestantism are condemned.
There is only one essential
vice, therefore, in the constitution
of the Russo-Greek Church
which needs to be healed, and that
is its state of rebellion against the
See of Peter. The one act of abjuring
the schism implies and involves
in it the recognition of all
the decrees of the Holy See and
of œcumenical councils during the
period which has elapsed since the
rebellion of Photius, by virtue of
the doctrine of the infallibility of
the Catholic Church which the
Greek Church professes.

Any Catholic can understand
from this explanation how completely
different is the position of
the people of Russia who belong
to their national church from that
of the Protestants of Western Europe
and the United States. They
have the Catholic faith explicitly
taught to them, and believed as
firmly as it is by ourselves in all
those things which relate to the
great mysteries of religion and its
practical duties and devotions.
They hold implicitly, so long as
they are in good faith, all that
the Catholic Church believes and
teaches, although they are ignorant
of the full and complete doctrine
of the centre of unity and chief
source of authority in the church.
They have bishops and priests
whose ordination is valid, the sacrifice
of the Mass, the seven sacraments,
the fasts, feasts, ceremonies,
and outward forms of worship
which they had before the schism.
In fact, as Mrs. Craven remarks,
the difference between their church
and the Catholic is invisible to the
eyes of the majority, and, if they
were to-day to be restored to their
ancient union with the universal
church, there would be no perceptible
change in their customs. There
are differences in discipline and
ritual between the Latin and the
various Oriental rites, but it is a
fixed maxim of the Roman Church
not to require the Eastern Christians
to adopt the discipline and ritual
of the Western church in matters
which are not essential, when
they are received into her communion.

These things being as they are,
it becomes naturally somewhat
difficult to those who have not
.pn +1
carefully studied the question to
understand why it is a strict obligation,
and necessary to salvation,
for a member of the Greek Church
who discovers that it is in a state
of schism to abjure its communion.
We can see, in the case of
Anglicans believing in nearly all
Catholic doctrine so far as even to
acknowledge the primacy of the
pope and desire a corporate reunion
with the Catholic Church,
that, so long as they believe in the
validity of their own orders and
other sacraments, it is very hard for
them to realize that they are not
in the communion of the true
church. They generally find their
ground of security give way under
their feet by their loss of confidence
in the validity of their ordinations.
But it is not easy to convince
them that, apart from this
essential defect in their church,
and apart even from the question
of its heretical doctrine, the mere
fact of schism makes an ecclesiastical
society, no matter how much
it resembles a church in outward
appearance, as really a mere sect
as amputation makes the most
perfect and beautiful hand a mere
piece of dead matter. A mere collection
of bishops, priests, and baptized
persons, professing the true
faith, administering and receiving
the true sacraments, is not a portion
of the Catholic Church, if the
organic, constitutive principle of
lawful mission and jurisdiction is
wanting, which gives pastoral authority
to the persons who possess
the episcopal and sacerdotal character,
and thus makes the collection
of people under their rule a <i>lawful</i>
society, under <i>lawful</i> pastors, and
under the supreme rule of the <i>Chief
Pastor</i>, who is the Vicar of Christ.
It is not enough, therefore, for a
person to profess the faith and receive
the sacraments in order to
keep fully the law of Christ. It is
necessary to profess the faith in
the external communion of the
lawful pastors, and to receive from
them, or priests whom they have
authorized to minister within their
jurisdiction, the sacraments. Bishops
and priests who exercise their
functions in a manner contrary to
the law sin by doing so, and those
who communicate in their unlawful
acts also sin, and thus both
parties profane the sacraments and
incur the censures of the church.
Nevertheless, if they act in invincible
ignorance and good faith, they
are excused from sin and escape
the censure. And, in case of necessity,
the church even dispenses
from her ordinary laws. Any
priest is authorized to administer
sacraments in any place, to any
person not manifestly unworthy,
in case of necessity. So, also,
one may receive the sacraments
in a similar case from any priest,
if there is nothing in the act
which implies a direct or tacit
participation in heresy, schism,
or manifest profanation of sacred
things.

The Russian clergy and people,
we must suppose, are generally in
good faith, and therefore innocent
of any sin in respect to the schism
of the national church. There is,
therefore, no reason why they
should not administer and receive
the sacraments worthily, so as to
receive their full spiritual benefit,
and thus sustain and increase the
living communion with the soul of
the church and with Christ which
was begun in them by baptism.
The external irregularity of their
ecclesiastical position cannot injure
them spiritually when there is no
sin in the inward disposition or intention.
Moreover, it is morally
.pn +1
and physically impossible for the
Russian clergy and people, generally,
to alter their position. They
are, therefore, really placed in a
necessity of administering and receiving
the sacraments without any
further and more direct authority
from the Holy See than that which
is virtually conceded to them on
account of the necessities of their
position. Since the church always
exercises her power, even in inflicting
censures and punishments, for
edification and not for destruction,
we may suppose that she tolerates
the irregular and disorderly state
into which they have been brought
by the fault of their chief rulers,
so long as it is out of their power
to escape from it, and are not
even aware that the irregularity
exists.

It is plain, however, that every
one who knows that the Russian
hierarchy is destitute of ordinary
and legitimate authority, and has
the opportunity of resorting to the
ministry of lawful Catholic pastors,
is bound, under pain of incurring
mortal sin and excommunication, to
comply with this obligation. The
excuse of ignorance and good faith
is no more available after the law
is made known. The reason of
necessity ceases as soon as recourse
is open to the authority which has
a claim on obedience. The censures
pronounced on the authors
and wilful adherents of schism take
effect as soon as one knowingly
and wilfully participates in and
sustains or countenances rebellion
against the supreme authority of
the Catholic Church.

The position of the Russian
Church is utterly self-contradictory
and untenable. By a special mercy
of divine Providence it has been
kept from coming to a general and
clear consciousness of the fundamental
heresy, which lies latent in
the Byzantine pretence of equality
to the Roman Church, from which
the schism took its rise. The immobility
which has characterized it,
and to which the privation of all
authority independent of the state
has greatly contributed, has kept it
from committing itself to any formal
heresy. It has broken its connection,
but it has not run off the
track or fallen through a bridge.
We cannot suppose that it will long
remain stationary on the great road
along which the march of events,
the progress of history, is proceeding.
It seems to be awaiting the
propitious moment when, reunited
to the source of spiritual power, it
shall again move on in the line of
true progress. When this event
takes place, we may safely predict
that the name of Natalie Narischkin
will be honored in Russia together
with that of Alexander
Newski, the special patron of the
imperial family; and that the empire
will be filled with convents of
the Daughters of Charity, the countrywomen
and imitators of her
who, more illustrious by her virtue
than by her descent, was appropriately
named “The Pearl of the
Order.”
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=nilep1
UP THE NILE. | III.
.sp 2
We had a letter of introduction
to the Governor of Assouan from a
person we had never seen. It came
about in this way: Ali Murad, our
consul at Thebes, sent by Ahmud
a letter to his friend, the governor of
Edfoo, asking him to give us a letter
to his excellency at Assouan. This
letter, worded in the usual extravagant
style of the Orient, stated that
the dahabeeáh <i>Sitta Mariam</i> contained
a party of distinguished travellers
who were in high favor at
Cairo, and should everywhere be
received with the greatest kindness
and attention. His excellency was
a fine-looking negro, well dressed
in European style, patent-leather
boots, fancy cane. I looked at
first for eye-glasses, but on second
thought concluded that this was
too much to expect from him. He
came on board to visit us, accompanied
by his secretaries and servants,
very pompous and haughty in his
bearing towards the crew, polite—nay,
almost obsequious—to us.
Head sheik of the cataracts is on
board; a deal of talking by every
one at the same time; no one listening;
a lull; governor lights a
fresh cigar; secretaries, servants,
and crew roll cigarettes; Reis Mohammed
appears with the certificate
of tonnage. There is no fear of
obliteration or erasure in this; no
danger of wearing out or the characters
fading by lapse of time. It
might have belonged to the pleasure
barge of antiquity-hidden Menes
or one of the corn-boats of
the Hyksos. It was a bar of solid
iron three inches wide, four long,
and half an inch in thickness.
Deeply-cut figures showed the boat
to be of 380 ardebs burden. An
agreement was finally entered into:
Ahmud was to pay the sheik nine
pounds and ten shillings to take the
boat up and down the cataracts, exclusive
of backsheesh. Out of this
the governor received two pounds
and ten shillings as his commission.
This making arrangements for ascending
the cataracts is the most
serious drawback to the pleasure of
a Nile voyage. True, the dragoman
undertakes this, but the howadjii are
present and witnesses of the altercations,
the loud talking, and the great
noise and confusion attendant upon
it. We being such distinguished travellers
on paper, and the governor being
impressed with that fact, our contract
was entered into with less confusion
than is usually incident to this
arrangement. Four sheiks or chiefs
of the cataract control the proceedings.
This office is hereditary,
and formerly they were despotic in
the exercise of their power. Twenty
English or American sailors could
take a boat up the cataract in one-third
the time it took nearly two
hundred natives to perform that
office for us. But no dragoman
would dare incur the enmity of
these powerful sheiks by attempting
the ascent without their permission.
Their power is somewhat curtailed
now by orders from the viceroy, so
that instead of, as heretofore, extorting
as much as possible from
the frightened dragoman, their prices
are regulated by a fixed tariff—so
much for every hundred ardebs.

.pn +1
We are now fairly started on the
ascent; it is early in the morning,
and a light breeze is blowing from
the north. The head sheik is on
board. What an appropriate name
he has! Surely his father was a prophet
and foresaw the future life of his
son—Mohammed Nogood! Not the
slightest particle of good did he do.
He squatted on a mat, smoked his
pipe, and took no heed of what
passed around him. Old Nogood,
as we called him, was with us for
three days, and during that time he
never opened his mouth unless to
grumble, and never raised his hand
except to remove the pipe from his
mouth, being too lazy even to light
it; a sailor performed that onerous
duty for him.

We sailed through narrow, tortuous
channels against a rapid stream
to the island of Sheyál at the foot of
the first bab or gate. The first cataract,
as it is termed, is a series of
five short rapids on the eastern
shore, where the ascent is made, and
one long and one short one on the
western shore. These rapids are
called gates. We stopped at the foot
of the first. Three finely-built Nubians,
<i>in puris naturalibus</i>, save turbans
on their heads, came sailing
down the turbulent and surging
waters astride of logs. Borne on
with great velocity, they seize hold
of our boat as they reach it, in a
moment are on deck, their heads
bare, the turbans girded around
their loins. “Backsheesh, howadjii!”
They deserve it for this feat.
It made the howadjii shudder to see
them in these raging waters. An
impromptu row now springs up between
our pilot and old Nogood.
The boat is aground, and more help
is needed to push it off. Here is
the dialogue, as translated by
Ahmud:

Pilot (old man with gray whiskers,
costume soiled and tattered coffee-bag):
“O Mohammed Nogood!
send some of your people to move
the boat.”

Old Nogood: “O pilot, you jack-ass!
why do you not attend to the
helm and mind your business?”

Intense excitement on board, during
which the pilot swears by Allah
and the Prophet that he will not
stay on the boat after such an insult,
and goes off in high dudgeon.
The howadjii, having locked up
everything portable below stairs,
are seated on the quarter-deck enjoying
the scene in a mild manner,
and waiting to see what will come
next. The prospects of being kept
here for an indefinite time are delightful.
The head sheik is angry
and the pilot has disappeared. But
the silver lining of the dark cloud
soon shines out. The second sheik
takes command, and Nogood’s son
comes aboard as pilot—very unlike
his father, a hard worker and a quiet
sort of man. We are ready to start
now, but where are the men to pull us
up? None can be seen. The river
is here filled with broken and disjointed
rocks—small islets. A great
fall was here once, no doubt; hence
the rapids now. The sheik throws
two handfuls of sand in the air.
Immediately from all sides, like the
warriors of Roderick Dhu, rise the
Shellallee. From behind every rock
come forth a score or more. Three
long ropes are made fast to the
boat. A hundred men take hold
of two; the third is turned two
or three times around a rock, the
end being held by a dozen men.
This rope is gradually tightened as
the boat moves up, to hold it in
case the others should break. By
the united help of the wind and this
struggling mass of naked humanity
we move slowly up the first gate, not
ten yards long. In the same manner
.pn +1
we pass the second and third
gates. Our friends the log-riders
are useful to us now. Plunging into
the boiling, seething waters, that
rush with such force it seems impossible
for man to struggle against
them, they make ropes fast to this
rock; now they detach them, and,
taking the end between their teeth,
swim to another and make fast
again. Picture to yourself such
a scene, if you can. I cannot describe
it satisfactorily to myself.
Hear, if you can, nearly two hundred
men all shouting at the same time,
giving orders, suggesting means, no
one listening, no one obeying, each
acting for himself—Old Nogood
alone seated quietly on the deck
smoking his pipe; our boat possessed
by four score of these black
Shellallee, half-naked, running to
and fro, shouting and yelling, but
doing nothing to help us. Pandemonium
itself could scarce furnish
such a scene of confusion. Babel
was a tower of silence compared
with this discord. After passing
the third gate we sailed into a quiet
haven and moored there for the
night. It was only three <sc>P.M.</sc> But
they are five-hour men here, commencing
work at ten and stopping
at three. We were kept waiting all
the next day, as two other boats
were ahead of us, and they took
them up first. On the third morning
we left our moorings and sailed
under a fresh breeze about one
hundred yards up the stream to the
fourth gate. The fourth and fifth
are in reality but one continuous
rapid; but as a stoppage is made
when half-way up to readjust the
ropes, the natives divide it into two
gates. The water rushes here with
great rapidity—more so than in the
other gates, as these are narrower.
A stout rope was made fast to the
cross-beams of the deck on the
starboard bow, and the other end
carried around a rock some distance
off. Owing to some mistake
there was no rope on the port side.
The men were pulling on a rope carried
directly ahead, when it suddenly
parted; the boat swung around to
starboard and struck a rock with
great force, knocking off several
planks six inches thick and seven
feet long. They were picked up
by the felluka, which floated around
promiscuously, manned by five
small boys. These planks were
carved in scroll-work, and painted
in bright colors. Reis Mohammed
had carefully bound straw around
them before starting, so that they
might not even be scratched. He
clenched his teeth and swore like a
trooper; the only words intelligible
to us were “Allah,” “Merkeb,”
“Mohammed.” Reis Mohammed
Hassan, Nogood’s successor, was
standing on the awning piled up
on the front of the quarter-deck.
Every one else began to shout, gesticulate,
and run around to no purpose;
but he, shouting while he undressed,
threw off his gown and
turban, and, with his drawers on,
jumped overboard, swam to a rock
on the port side, and made fast a
rope. A Nubian, attired in a girdle,
now waded out into the rapid
as far as he was able, and a rope
was thrown him from the rock
against which the boat rested.
After three attempts he caught it
and made it fast some distance
ahead. A fourth rope was carried
ashore and seized hold of by sixty
men. We were then pulled into a
narrow pass, through which the
water dashed like a mill-race, and
so narrow that the boat grazed the
rocks on either side. For a moment
we remained stationary; the
next the strong wind and the
efforts of the men overcame the
.pn +1
force of the current, and we moved
slowly on. Shortly after we reached
the head of the rapids, the ropes
were withdrawn, the Nubians left
us, and we sailed gallantly up to
Philæ the beautiful.

We are now in Nubia, among a
different race of people. We have
passed the cataract. Hear the concise
account given by the father of
travellers concerning this ascent:
“I went as far as Elephantine,”
he says, “and beyond that obtained
information from hearsay. As
one ascends the river above the
city of Elephantine the country is
steep; here, therefore, it is necessary
to attach a rope on both sides of a
boat as one does with an ox in a
plough, and so proceed; but if the
rope should happen to break, the
boat is carried away by the force
of the stream.” This land of Cosh
is very different in appearance from
the one we have just left. The
hills are mostly of granite and sandstone,
and they approach nearer
the river. In some parts the mere
sloping bank, not more than ten
feet, can be cultivated in a perfectly
straight line; on its top the
golden sands meet the growing
crops. The river is filled with sunken
rocks. Had we struck here, it
might have been serious, unlike
running on the sand-banks in the
lower country. Reis Dab, our new
pilot, knew the river well and kept
a sharp lookout; so on we sailed
day after day without stopping.
There are no printed newspapers
along the Nile, but the natives have
a cheap, primitive method of journalism.
They need no expensive
press, no reporters to search far and
wide for news. As soon as another
boat appears in sight all is excitement
on board. When we come
within hailing distance the journals
are exchanged as follows: Far
away over the waters comes a voice
from the approaching boat: “How
are you all? Who are you? All
well?”

“We are dahabeeáh <i>Sitta Mariam</i>,
Father H—— and party on board.
Who are you?”

“How is Mohammed? Fatima
has a sore foot. Ali has gone up
the river on a corn-boat.” And thus
they go on telling all the news.
“How many boats up the river?
What is going on further down?”
The shouting is kept up until the
boat passes out of hearing. When
we reached Syria, in April, our dragoman
there, who had never been
in Egypt, knew all about our movements
on the Nile. They were
communicated from one to another
simply by word of mouth, and finally
reached his ears.

It is a bright, beautiful moonlight
evening. The glittering constellations
are reflected deep down in
the calm waters beneath us, so distinctly
that they seem to have fallen
there. Not a ripple disturbs
the surface of the water, scarce a
breath the stillness of the air. It
is a gala night. Ahmud has distributed
candles and hasheesh to
the crew. They have illuminated
the deck and are playing, singing,
and dancing. Reis Ahmud, with a
sober face, beats the drum, his
whole soul seemingly concerned in
his occupation. Abiad has the
tamborine, a pretty one, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl. He has been
smoking hasheesh—his favorite pastime.
His eyes are closed, his head
sways backwards and forwards as
he sings; he seems to pour out his
very life’s spirit in the song. The
rest of the crew group around,
squatted on the deck, joining in the
chorus. Reis Mohammed sits
apart; he is fishing. Ahmud, Ali,
Ibrahim, and the Nubian pilot look
.pn +1
on. Now they become excited;
the hasheesh is working on them.
Louder, still louder the singing.
Abiad surely will not live long; he
must be in Paradise now. His soul
is going out piece by piece from
his lips. The funny little old cook
jumps up, puts a wooden spoon in
his belt for a pistol, some sugar-cane
stalks for swords and daggers.
He is a Bedouin. More uproarious
the shouting, intermingled with catcalls.
He dances the war-dance
of the nomadic sons of the desert.
The howadjii have come out now;
they are interested in this strange,
picturesque scene. The excitement
is at its height. A lighted
candle is placed upon a small stick
and put in the river; the current
carries it down still burning.
There is not wind enough to blow
out the flame, and as it floats onward
it looks like some will-o’-the-wisp
or fairy spirit of the waters
reposing serenely on their bosom.
The second stage of the hasheesh
now comes on; one by one they
quiet down. Soon Abiad falls
asleep; some of the others follow;
a strange stillness succeeds this hilarious
uproar. To-morrow will
come the reaction, and for a few
days they will do but little work.

We have had great trouble to
keep our birds. We have now preserved
some seventy specimens,
from the small black chat to the
large crane. The rats will carry
them off. So now we suspend
them from the centre of the ceiling.
The same rat never carries away
two birds. I cannot identify each
particular rat, and yet I am morally
certain of the truth of the above
proposition. The skin, when taken
off the bird, is covered on the inside
with a heavy coating of arsenical
soap containing a large amount of
arsenic, enough to cut short the
career of at least one rat. So if
they did carry off our birds, we had
the satisfaction of knowing that the
birds carried them off in turn. We
have been very anxious to kill a
crocodile; they are very scarce below
the first cataract, but as soon
as we passed Philæ we promulgated
the following general offer: To
the first man who points out a crocodile
to any of the howadjii we will
give a half-sovereign. If the pilot,
or any one in his stead, brings us
within reasonable shooting distance,
we will present him with one pound;
if we kill and secure the crocodile,
we will make presents all around.
This offer kept them on the alert.
Every eye was strained to see the
first crocodile—and it takes a practised
eye to discern one; for to the
uninitiated they appear to be logs
of wood lying on the sand. Early
on the morning of January 15 the
pilot came to us with eyes aglow
and pointed out a timsah (crocodile).
We were tied up on the
west bank, and the reptile was lying
on a sand-bank near the eastern
shore. There was considerable
difference of opinion among the
crew, many of them insisting that
it was not a timsah. “But,” asks
the pilot, “what is it, then? There
are no rocks on the sand-banks; it
can scarcely be a log, for these are
rarely met with in this part of the
river.” A council of war was held,
and a plan of attack was determined
on. Mr. S—— and I, with Ali, the
pilot, and four sailors, crossed the river
to the sand-bank about half a mile
below the spot where slept the timsah
in blissful unconsciousness of
the fate awaiting him. Bent almost
to the ground, we crawled cautiously
along. When we had proceeded
about a quarter of a mile we found,
to our disgust, that the bank upon
which we were was separated from
.pn +1
the bank on which lay the timsah
by twenty yards of water of some
depth. The pilot now asked us to
fire, but the distance was too great,
and we began to be suspicious.
The timsah did not move; it was
almost too quiet to be real. Mr.
S—— and I placed ourselves in the
bow of the boat, covered the object
with our double-barrelled guns,
and ordered the sailors to pull directly
towards it. For a few moments
the excitement was intense.
At the first movement of the timsah
four bullets would have shot forth
on their death-errand. Nearer and
nearer we came. A moment
more, and Abiad jumps from the
boat, and with a loud shout rushes
up the bank and catches hold of
the supposed timsah. “Come here,
O Reis Dab!” cried he, “and skin
your timsah. Stop, I will do it for
you.” And he holds up to our astonished
eyes a sheepskin. How
crestfallen was the pilot, and how
the others joked him! It was a
chicken-coop covered with a sheepskin,
containing three putrid chickens,
which had fallen from some
dahabeeáh, and, carried by the current
on the bank, became embedded
there, and was left high and
dry when the waters receded.

We have a number of pets on
board: a live turtle, a soft-shelled
fellow, in color like the mud of its
own Nile; a hawk who does not
reciprocate our friendship, and
snaps at us when we go near him;
six chameleons—what strange creatures
these are! We have had
some twenty of them at different
times. As far as we could observe,
they ate nothing, and yet throve
well as long as we were in their
own latitudes. As we returned towards
the north they died one after
the other. The chameleon is formed
somewhat like a lizard, about
eight inches in length. Their feet
look like a mittened hand—that is
to say, a large toe corresponds to
the thumb, and the rest of the foot,
being solid, appears like the hand
enclosed in a mitten. They have
very large heads compared with
their bodies, and eyes like a frog.
They change their color, and, under
my own observation, made the
changes from light green to yellow,
black, brown, blue, and dark green.
We would tease them sometimes,
and, when irritated, yellow spots
would appear over their bodies, and
they would try to bite us as we
placed our fingers in their large
mouths. Their favorite pastime
was to climb to the top of a palm
branch fastened in the deck; here
the first one would remain. The
second would hang from the tail of
the first, and the third support himself
from the second in the same
manner. In this position they
would remain for hours. If another
one wanted to reach the top of
the branch, he would crawl deliberately
up the backs of the others,
who regarded this conversion of
themselves into public highways
with perfect indifference. Sometimes
one of them would roam
away and be lost for a day or two,
and then be accidentally found in
the centre of a basket of tomatoes
or on the summit of the main-yard.

On January 17 I strolled into
a small village. The houses consisted
of four walls of sun-dried
clay with a small opening for a
doorway; some few had palm
branches stretched from wall to
wall—apologies for roofs. As I
walked on I met a group of young
girls; one was reclining on the
ground, while the others were dressing
her hair. This operation is a
very tedious one, and is not repeated
.pn +1
oftener than once a month. The
hair, which falls to the shoulders,
is twisted into numerous braids, the
ends of which are fastened with
small balls of mud; and to complete
the toilet oil is poured over the
head. The hair being black and
coarse, and the oil giving it a glossy
appearance, it presents the effect
of braided black tape. Although
many of these girls had beautiful
eyes and handsome features, yet
the howadjii never cared to approach
too near them; for the oil
runs down in little streams from
the crown of their heads to their
feet, and their faces appear as if
polished with the best French varnish.
Our young Nubian cook left
us here. This is his home, and he
will remain here until we return.
He is only twenty years of age, and
has not seen his wife for three years.
So he takes out of the hold some
bracelets, a dozen or two made of
buffalo horn, all for his wife, and
she will wear them all at the same
time, half on each arm. How her
eyes will brighten when she sees
those bright tin pots and those
robes, green, yellow, blue! Surely
Suleymán must love his dark-eyed,
oily-faced wife. From Assouan to
Wady Sabooa, about one hundred
miles, no Arabic is spoken. Thence
to Wady Halfa it is spoken in many
towns. When we pass through a
town the whole population turn out
<i>en masse</i>, preceded by a leader, who
carries on his shoulder the town
gun, an old flint-lock musket, generally
marked Dublin Castle, carried,
mayhap, at Yorktown or Brandywine.
A barrel of great length
is secured to the stock by six or
seven brass bands. Powder is
scarce, and the first demand—the
gun being put forward to show the
need—is always the same: “Barood
ta howadjii” (Powder, O howadjii!)
We used cartridges altogether, and
sometimes, when they were particularly
green, we imposed upon
them in this way:

Scene, the river-bank. Howadjii
has just fired and brought down a
bird. Large numbers of Nubians
surround him. Gunman comes
forward: “Barood ta howadjii.”
“Mafish barood ta Wallud” (I
have no powder, O boy!) “See these
green boxes” (showing cartridges).
Wallud looks attentively at them.
“Inside each is an afreet [spirit or
devil]; we put this in the end of
the gun, point it at the bird, 'Imshee
y afreet’ (Go, O spirit!), then
off he flies and kills the bird.” This
ruse was successful two or three
times; they looked with awe upon
the green boxes, and made no further
demands. Often, however, a
shout of derision followed this recital.
They knew what cartridges
were as well as we did. Reis Ahmud
pointed out the first real timsah,
and received the promised half-sovereign.

On January 19, 1874, at three <sc>P.M.</sc>,
we made fast beneath the ever-open
eyes of the giant guardians of rock-hewn
Ipsamboul. To my mind Ipsamboul,
or Aboo-Simbel, is the
most interesting temple on the Nile,
not even excepting majestic Karnak;
for most of the other temples
are built in the same manner in
which the edifices of the world have
been constructed from the earliest
ages down to the present time, by
stones cut and squared, placed one
upon another and held together by
clamps, cement, or other means.
True, the style and shape in which
these stones are cut and arranged
differ very much in Egypt and in
Greece, in ancient and in modern
times; but the taking of numbers
of small pieces, and, by joining them
together, forming a whole, is common
.pn +1
to them all. Aboo-Simbel is
not constructed in this way. The
side of the mountain facing the
river was cut to form a right angle
with the surface of the plain, and
made smooth and even as a wall,
save some projections purposely
left at regular distances, and which
afterwards were shaped into gigantic
figures of victorious Rameses;
a small hole was pierced into this
surface a few feet above the ground;
it was made larger, and carried in
further and further full two hundred
feet, its roof seemingly upheld
by Osiride columns. A similar gallery
was cut on either side of this
main one. Transverse galleries
crossed these, leading to rooms ten
in number, and all this cut out
of the solid rock, no cement, no
clamps, not a joint anywhere—a
huge monolithic temple. The inside
of the roof is perfectly regular
in its lines, with a smooth, even
surface; the outside is the rugged
mountain top. Surely this was the
way to build for immortality.

This style of building, although
rare, is not confined to Egypt alone,
but was most probably copied from
it. I have since seen it in the
Brahmin caves of Elephanta in
Bombay harbor, and on a small
scale in the tombs of the Valley
of Josaphat. The temple faces the
river and stands close to the bank.
As we approach we are struck by
the magnitude of the four colossal
figures of Rameses II. They are
seated on thrones, and the faces
that remain are quite expressive.
The height without the pedestal is
sixty-six feet; the forefinger is three
feet in length. Father H——, Madam,
and I seated ourselves comfortably
on the big toe, and, as I looked
upwards into that gigantic face, I
thought of the myriads of events,
marking epochs of time, that had
happened in the great world outside
since first the sculptor’s hand
had changed the rugged mountain
side into these semblances of their
warrior-king. The overturner of
his dynasty, the illustrious Sesac,
had led the victorious Egyptians
into the very heart of the Holy
City, and carried off from the Temple
the golden shields which Solomon
had there hung up. Cambyses
had marched with thundering
tread, laying waste on every
hand with fire and sword from
Pelusium to Thebes, making this
once mighty kingdom a province
of far-off Persia. Greece rose from
a handful of half-savage shepherds
to be the focus of intellect, art, and
science, around which clustered
the shining lights of the world. Alexander
overran the whole of Western
Asia, and established in the
Delta his mighty race of Macedonian
emperors. Rome was founded,
sat on her seven hills the
proud mistress of the world, fell,
and was swallowed up in the rush
of succeeding generations. Christianity,
starting from its humble
Judean home, spread from sea to
sea, from the peasant’s hut to the
royal palace, revolutionized the
world, civilized nations, and, encircling
the globe, led back its proselytes
to unfold its sacred truths
to the descendants of its apostles.
Mohammedanism carried its
bloody and relentless arms over
the vast plains of Asia, through the
fruitful valley of the Nile, to the
centre of Continental Europe, and
was driven back, tottering and
gradually receding, to its Eastern
cradle. The great republics of
the middle ages lived their short
span of power, and were lost in
the mighty empires that absorbed
them. A new world was discovered,
and new governments founded
.pn +1
therein. And during all this, unshaken
by war or tempest, unmoved
by change or revolution, these giant
figures gazed with never-closing
eye upon the swift-flowing river at
their feet. Those who give themselves
the trouble to inform the
world that a perfectly unknown
person has visited a monument, and
that that unknown person has mutilated
it by inscribing his name
thereon—a reprehensible practice
unfortunately so common in Egypt—may
study here the earliest known
inscription of this kind. On the
leg of one of the figures is cut in rude
characters the following inscription
in Greek: “King Psamatichus
having come to Elephantine, those
that were with Psamatichus, the
son of Theocles, wrote this. They
sailed and came to above Kerkis, to
where the river rises ... the Egyptian
Amasis. The writer was Damearchon,
the son of Amoebichus,
and Pelephus, the son of Udamus.”
This was written at least six hundred
and fifty years before Christ,
and the scribblers, desirous of
cheap notoriety, are as unknown as
their numerous followers who now
disfigure the monuments of the
world.

Over the entrance is a statue of
the god Ra (Sun), to whom Rameses
offers a figure of truth. We
enter a grand hall supported by
eight Osiride pillars, pass through
it to a second of four square pillars
which leads to the <i>adytum</i>. A
number of small chambers are
found on both sides of the main
hall, and the interior of the walls is
covered with intaglio figures and
hieroglyphics. At the end of the
<i>adytum</i> are four figures in high relief.
There is but one opening to
the temple—the entrance door—through
which alone light can enter.
As the first rays of the morning
sun were peeping over the Arabian
hills, we climbed the steep
bank and entered the temple. A
flood of golden light poured in,
searching every corner, lighting up
the figures at the end of the <i>adytum</i>
full two hundred feet from the entrance.
It seemed as though mighty
Ra, as each morn he rose to shower
his beneficence upon the world,
looked first with soul-melting tenderness
upon the home where he
would love to linger; slowly he
moves on, and with a last fond,
longing look he leaves it in darkness
till he return next morn.
Bats swarm now in its gloomy
chambers, and dispute the right of
entrance with the howadjii. Alongside
the large temple is a smaller
one of the same description. A
night or two after this we had an
altercation on board wherein Reis
Mohammed met his match. It
was about nine o’clock on a beautiful
moonlight night. We were sailing
before a light breeze, when suddenly
the boat struck a rock. Reis
Mohammed winced as though it
were himself grating on the rock,
and, rushing up to the Nubian pilot
who was at the helm, swore by Allah
that he would beat him with a stick.
The pilot was not at all intimidated.
He said in a quiet way that he was
sorry, but reminded the irate captain
that he was now in his—the pilot’s—country,
and that if he struck
him he would call out to his people
on the bank, who would come
aboard and kill the captain. This
ended the affair. On January 22
Ahmud brought a beautiful little
gazelle on board, for Madam to
play with, as he said. She named
it Saiida, and it soon became a
great favorite with us all. At four
<sc>P.M.</sc> of the same day we reached
our destination and tied up at Wady
Halfa, a long-stretched-out line
.pn +1
of mud-built houses on the east
bank. We had travelled seven
hundred and ninety-eight miles in
forty-one days, including stoppages.
A two hours’ donkey-ride over the
sands of the desert, and we reached
the Ultima Thule of Nile travellers—the
rock of Abooseer, overlooking
the second cataract. This is much
more wild, rapid, and turbulent than
the first, and, excepting when the
Nile is at its greatest height, is impassable.
Almost every traveller
who has been here has left his mark
upon this rock—a custom which is
to be approved here; for no beauty
is defaced, but a register of travellers
is kept which possesses interest
to their friends who may subsequently
visit this place. There
were six dahabeeáhs there on our
arrival, four of them flying the
United States flag. We made our
presents to the men. They brought
us in safety up the Nile; will they
do the same going down? So we
gave Reis Mohammed one pound,
Reis Ahmud ten shillings, one
pound each to Ali, Ibrahim, and
the cook; and two pounds and
ten shillings to be divided among
the crew. While we were lying at
Wady Halfa the crew prepared the
boat for the downward voyage.
They took down the trinkeet or large
yard from the foremast, and placed
in its stead the smaller one from
the stern. There are three modes
of progression in descending. If
there be no wind at all, the men
row, five oars on each side; but
when the surface of the stream is
ruffled by the slightest breath of
wind, the men immediately stop rowing,
and the boat drifts down with the
current. If the wind blow from the
south—which is very unusual during
the winter—we sail, using, however,
only the small balakoom, swung,
as I have said, from the mainmast.
Some of the planks of the deck are
taken up, and an inclined plane made
by resting one end of a plank against
the cross-beams on a level with the
floor of the deck, and the other
touching the bottom of the hold.
In rowing the men start from the
top of this inclined plane, and, walking
backwards down it, make five
distinct movements in each stroke.
As their feet touch the hold they
sit down and pull out the stroke.

On January 25, at one in the
morning, we left Wady Halfa on
the homeward voyage. Ahmud requested
us to permit him to bring
a slave on the boat. He told us
that he had no children, and that
he had seen a very fine little boy
of nine years whom he could purchase
for seventy dollars. His request
was refused. We spent an
hour or more one beautiful moonlight
night seated on the sand beneath
the colossi of Aboo-Simbel.
We engaged a celebrated hunter
to assist us in crocodile-hunting—Abd-el-Kerim,
slave of the god, a
Nubian with a huge flat nose. The
dress of this man of prowess was
not elaborate, consisting of a skull-cap
and a pair of drawers. He carried
the flint-lock musket which I
have before described. The lock
was carefully bound up in a piece
of cloth. We moored the dahabeeáh
on the west bank about four
miles below Aboo-Simbel. We
then rowed about a mile up the
river in the small boat, and landed
on a sand-bank. Abd-el-Kerim
constructed a crocodile of sand—head,
tail, legs, and all. We had
laid a systematic plan of attack.
At sunrise the next morning we
were to conceal ourselves behind
the sand timsah and wait the coming
of the natural ones, thinking
that they would take our sand-constructed
reptile for one of the family,
.pn +1
and go quietly asleep alongside
of it. I rose before the sun the
next morning, but Kerim did not
make his appearance until eight
o’clock—he called it sunrise—when
the sun was pretty well up in the
heavens, and the day began to grow
warm. As I stood on the forecastle
waiting for him, two Polish dahabeeáhs
hove in sight. I knew
the party on board; they were distinguished
naturalists who were
collecting specimens for the museum
at Warsaw. They hunted
in the most thoroughly systematic
manner. The young count,
who was not as deeply engaged
in the study of natural history
as the others, spent an evening
with us a week or two afterward,
and told us a very amusing story
about the rest of the party. They
were anxious to secure a certain
species of bird. After consulting
their books and putting together
the general knowledge they possessed
concerning the habits of this
bird, they established as a positive
fact that the said bird would appear
on the banks of the Nile at ten
o’clock to perform his morning ablutions.
So at half-past nine they
went out to meet him, but, to their
intense astonishment, he did not appear
until half-past eleven—overslept
himself, no doubt, not being
aware of the distinguished company
awaiting him. They have been in
a great state of excitement ever
since, said our young friend, endeavoring
to study out the cause
of this strange proceeding, as they
termed it, of the bird being one
hour and a half behind time. As I
watched the boats came on, and
our sand timsah caught the eye
of their dragoman. He rushed
down-stairs, woke up the howadjii,
who soon appeared on deck. Telescopes
were levelled, and, having
satisfied themselves that it was a
crocodile, they jumped into the
small boat and made straight for it.
Two of them were in the bow with
their rifles cocked covering the timsah.
The greatest care and caution
were observed. Only a small
portion of the heads of the men
were visible above the gunwale, and
occasionally I could see the dragoman
wave his hand as a signal of
caution. Finally they stepped on
the bank, cautiously approached,
saw the deception, and in quick
haste retired in evident disgust. I
enjoyed this scene all the more as
it partially recompensed me for the
failure of my first attempt at shooting
a crocodile.

About half-past eight Kerim and
I concealed ourselves behind the
sand timsah, lying flat on our backs.
Besides his old flint-lock, which
would do good service, we had two
double-barrelled guns loaded with
heavy balls, and a six-barrelled revolver.
I lay in this position for
two hours, not even daring to indulge
in a cough, which I was sorely
tried to repress, and even breathing
as quietly as possible. Kerim
touched me and told me to peep
over the back of the timsah; I did
so, and saw ten crocodiles, some
swimming in the water and others
on the banks, but none near enough
to shoot at. I then turned on my
face and lay down again. Almost
immediately an enormous crocodile
stepped out of the water on the
bank where we were, within ten feet
of us, but seemed to be frightened
at something and immediately
plunged in again. About two
o’clock Kerim turned over, and in
so doing spied a flask protruding
from my pocket. He took it out,
offered it to me, and said, “Take a
drink!”—a delicate hint that he
wanted some himself. He did not
.pn +1
refuse when I offered it, but, filling
the cup with twice as much as an ordinary
drink, he swallowed it down,
rolled his eyes, and ejaculated,
“Taib” (good). We found it would
be of no avail to wait longer here,
so we called the felluka and rowed
very quietly a short distance down
the stream to a bank upon which
two timsahs were lying asleep; at
the other end were some rocks.
We crept over the rocks until we
reached the one nearest the reptiles.
At least one hundred yards still
separated us from them. Resting
my gun on a rock, I took careful
aim, fired, and saw the ball strike
the side of one of the crocodiles;
but its only effect was to hurry him
into the river, otherwise he paid no
attention to it. We concluded to
give up crocodile-hunting now, so
we sailed on. At one point a little
below this I counted thirty-eight
sawagi in sight at one time. These
sawagi (singular sagéar) are to
Nubia what the shawadeefs are to
Egypt. They are of Persian origin,
and consist of an endless chain, to
which are attached buckets made
of burnt clay. The chain passes
over a wheel at the top, which
is made to revolve by another
wheel driven around by buffaloes.
These wheels are of wood and
never greased. Their creaking
and straining are music to the
owner’s ears, who in some instances
will travel many thousand
miles riding the buffaloes round
the well-worn circle of their own
loved sagéar.
.sp 4
.h3 id=irishp1
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. | FROM THE FRENCH.
.sp 2
<sc>July 28, 1869.</sc>

Lord William is in England,
and baby Emmanuel in vain asks
for “papa.” What a beautiful
child he is! My Guy is very handsome
also, and I am proud of him.
Johanna yields up to me all her
prerogatives, and, were it not that
he resembles Paul, I could persuade
myself that he is quite my own, my
dear godson.

Berthe intends to go to Lourdes,
to obtain from Mary Immaculate
the cure of her daughter. Poor
mother! she deceives herself; the
child cannot remain in this world,
and the day approaches when we
shall say, Yesterday the bird was in
the cage, but is now flown hence!
This morning Anna and the sick
girl were leaning over my balcony,
looking at the blue sky, over which
light clouds were flying. “How
beautiful the sky is!” said Anna.
“Very sweet, very beautiful, very
good,” answered Picciola, joining
her hands. “The beauties of nature
are admirable, but—” “Kiss
me, dear, and don’t look up to
heaven in that way; one would
think you were going there!” “The
truth is that I shall go soon; dear
Anna, pray God to comfort my
mother!” Anna flew into the
room: “Madame, O madame! is
this true that Madeleine is telling
me?” And she was sobbing. Picciola
covered her with kisses, saying:
“Why will no one listen when I
speak of my happiness?” When
Anna was more calm I sent her to
her mother, and said to my darling:
.pn +1
“Then let us talk about heaven together.”
“But, aunt, it grieves you
also. Yet I, although the pain of
those I love goes to my heart—I
feel in myself an indescribable gladness.
Oh! if you knew how I
thirst for heaven.” “And who
tells you that you are going to leave
us, dear child? Our Lady of
Lourdes will cure you.” “If you
love me, do not ask me this; I must
not be cured,” she murmured, with
a sort of prayerful expression. What
do you think about this child, dear
Kate?

Our thoughts are much taken up,
as you may imagine, with the Council
and with Ireland. Adrien has
read to us from a goodly folio,
come from the Thebaid of our
<i>saint</i>, the most sinister predictions
with reference to the present time.

Good-by for a little while; I
slip this note into Margaret’s envelope.
.sp 2
<sc>August 1, 1869.</sc>

St. Francis of Sales used to
say: “People ask for secrets that
they may advance in perfection;
for my own part, I know of only
one: to love God above all things,
and my neighbor as myself.” And
Bossuet, that other great master of
the spiritual life, said: “Give all to
God, search to the very depths,
empty your heart for God; he will
know very well how to employ and
to fill it.” This is what Gertrude
has done, who just now quoted
these two thoughts to console me.
Alas! yes, I cannot resign myself
to see her depart, this enchanting
soul, so worthy of love.
“Remember,” Gertrude said to me,
“that God undertakes to give back
everything to those who have given
him all. I perceive many sacrifices
for you, dear Georgina; be worthy
of God’s favors, for suffering is one
of these.” And she quitted me.
She lives so near to God that every
word she utters seems to me an
oracle, and now I am afraid. O
poor soul!—a reed bending to
every wind.

“Turn thee to Him who comforts
and who heals.” Help me,
dear Kate! René, Margaret, and
Marcella agree in diverting my attention,
but the blow has been given!
O my God! If a whole family might
but enter heaven all at the same time!
if there were no tears of departure!
I communicated this morning, and
promised our adorable Jesus in the
Blessed Eucharist to sacrifice my
heart to him.

Berthe, Raoul, and Picciola set
out to-morrow for Lourdes; we
have not ventured to dissuade the
poor mother from this idea. I had
a foolish longing to follow them,
but I saw in this a first sacrifice,
and offered it to obtain courage.
If, however, Mary would be pleased
to cure her! They will make a
novena there, and not return until
the 16th. What a long time without
seeing her!

Our country neighbor has installed
himself, and yesterday paid us
his first visit. My mother gave
him a more than amiable reception.
We all thanked him for the care
with which he had attended Anna,
who threw her arms round his neck
with the greatest simplicity. Marcella
replied gracefully to the civilities
of the good doctor, who accepted
an invitation to dinner.
My mother finds him very well bred.
He is fifty years of age, very tall,
with an open and expressive countenance,
most extensive learning,
skill, wit, fortune, and above all
<i>faith</i>; he is thus in every way
worthy of my friend. René has
explained this to me, and has ended
by requesting me to favor this
marriage.
.pn +1

Margaret, on leaving me this
evening, whispered in my ear:
“Dear, will our fair Roman be insensible?
The aspirant belongs <i>to
the very first quality of nature’s noblemen</i>.”

Good-by, dear Kate; pray much!
.sp 2
<sc>August 6, 1869.</sc>

Picciola is at this moment at the
miraculous Grotto. Impossible to
turn my thoughts away from this
child; I see her everywhere. Nevertheless,
I cannot complain of any
want of distractions; we are out
continually. Three days ago M.
de Verlhiac (the doctor) gave us a
princely reception in his <i>divor</i>.
What life! what gayety! Marcella
is very pensive and seeks to be
alone. Margaret raves about the
doctor, and will have him at all our
parties; Anna can no longer do
without him, my mother likes his
conversation, the gentlemen seize
upon the slightest pretext for going
to the <i>Blue Nest</i>—the name given
by Margaret to the dismantled
manor of M. de V. You see, dear
Kate, all is for the best. Your advice
is not, however, useless to me.
Oh! how well you have realized
what Marcella is to me. But I am
not so selfish as to place my affection
in the way of her happiness,
and I shall know how to make the
sacrifice. M. de V. requested
an interview with me yesterday.
I had remained alone with my
mother, who feared to take so long
a drive, and it was in her presence
that I received our new neighbor.
He appeared greatly embarrassed—he,
who is so fearless! At last,
after a great deal of circumlocution,
he related how he had become
acquainted with our dear
Italians; how much he felt interested
in the pretty invalid, whom he
had attended with truly paternal
solicitude; how the desire had
arisen in his heart to become the
father of this attractive young creature;
and how we had unknowingly
destroyed the fragile edifice
of his dreams by carrying away
from him Mme. de Clissey and her
daughter. Their sojourn of last
winter had convinced him that without
this union he could not be happy.
Marcella had answered his
proposal by a refusal, which he
does not know how to explain.

My mother looked at me, and M.
de V. continued: “I know not, madame,
whether I am mistaken, but I
am persuaded that you have some influence
on this determination which
crushes my life. Madame de C. does
not wish to separate from you.”
I was much moved by this confidence,
and so much the more because
my mother, who had formerly
been acquainted with the mother
of the good doctor, had told me
that morning that she looked forward
to this union with pleasure.
I promised to do <i>my duty</i>. This
conversation lasted three hours.
M. de V. is really a remarkable
man, and I cannot understand
Marcella’s singular behavior. Margaret
advises me to speak to her
about it; but I think it more prudent
to wait. The pretty little
Anna unconsciously enlightened
me somewhat. This morning, in
my room, she was caressing her
mother and saying: “Why, then, are
you so cold to this good doctor, who
likes you so much and who is so
like papa? If you knew how affectionately
he kisses me!” Marcella
blushed and spoke of something
else.

Dear Kate, my heart is full; M.
de V. has only one dream after
that of marrying my friend, which
is to settle at Naples. It would
then be a permanent separation!
.pn +1
“You are in your spring-time, my
daughter,” my mother said to me;
“beware of the autumn! The lightest
breath then carries away by degrees
our happiness and our hopes.”

God guard you, dearest!
.sp 2
<sc>August 9, 1869.</sc>

The doctor has become our habitual
companion. He loves poetry,
“this choice language, dear to
youth and to those whose hearts
have remained young”—another
connecting link with Marcella.
“But they are made for each other,”
says Margaret. This southerner
shivers at the most delicate breeze
of the north. “Good friend, what
will you do in winter?” exclaims
Anna on seeing him hermetically
enfolded in a mantle lined with fur
when he arrives of an evening.
“Dear, I shall do as the swallows
do.” “Bah! you will not go
to Athens.” “And why not, if
you will go with me?” “Oh! I do
not travel without my mother.”

This fragment of conversation
shows you that M. de V. is
always driving at the same point.
Every one rivals the other in extolling
the loyalty, the learning, the
distinction of the doctor. He must
be immensely rich, for he throws gold
with open hands among our poor,
builds up cottages, gives work to
all. Gertrude says: “There is in
this man an apostle and a Sister of
Charity.” Marcella never utters a
word about our dear neighbor, but
appears to suffer when others speak
of him. Yesterday Margaret wanted
to get my mother to promise
that we should spend the summer
of 1870 in England. “Will you
not come also, monsieur?” The
handsome countenance of the doctor
darkened, and he answered briefly:
“Who can promise?” “Oh! <i>do</i>
promise, good friend,” exclaimed
Anna; “you told me you wished
not to leave me!” “Anna, will
you water my verbenas?” tranquilly
asked Marcella. The child
bounded into the garden.

Berthe writes to me every day.
The horizon is dark there; the
poor mother perceives the full
truth.

<i>A Dieu</i>, Kate; may he alone be
all to us!
.sp 2
<sc>August 16, 1869.</sc>

René has written to you, dear
sister; thus you know how my time
has been occupied. Oh! what a
beautiful procession. What singing!
What decorations! A corner
of Italy in Brittany, to believe
the good doctor, who has valiantly
paid with his person.

Picciola is here. I have just
been to kiss her under her curtains.
This pilgrimage has produced a
double benefit: it gave the poor
parents a few days of hope, and the
Immaculate Virgin has caused them
to understand all. “She belongs
to God before she belongs to us.”
Are not these truly Christian words
the acceptance of the sacrifice?
And Picciola: “How sweet it would
have been to die there, dear aunt!
But I am very happy to see you
again.” O my God!

Margaret is expecting Lord William.
Can you picture to yourself
the aspect of our colony—our
numbers, the noise and movement,
the joyous voices calling and answering
each other, the animation,
the eagerness, of this human hive?
Our Bretons say they wish we were
here always.

Edith writes often. Lizzy is
somewhat silent; the saintly Isa is
too much detached from earth to
think of us in any way except in
her prayers. My letters to Betsy
have produced an unexpected effect,
thanks to your prayers; this
.pn +1
good and charming friend assures
me that going to holy Mass and
visiting the poor help her marvellously,
and that now the days appear
too short.

Yesterday we were talking on
the terrace—talking about all sorts
of things. The word <i>ideal</i> was pronounced.
“Who, then, can attain
his ideal?” exclaimed M. de Verlhiac.
“Life almost always passes
away in its pursuit; an intangible
phantom, it escapes us precisely at
the moment when it seems within
our grasp.” “It is, perhaps, because
the ideal does not in reality
exist on earth,” said Gertrude. “The
Christian’s ideal is in heaven!”
Whereupon the meditative Anna
cried out: “Oh! if only the good
God would make haste to put us
into his beautiful heaven all together,
the <i>south</i> and the <i>north</i>!
You would not feel cold up there,
good friend!” “Then will the angels
place us thus by families?”
asked Alix timidly. “Hem! hem!
the house is large,” said the doctor;
“and, for my part, I see no
inconvenience that this 'corner of
Italy in Brittany’ would suffer by
arranging itself commodiously there
on high.”

At this moment Adrien took up
a newspaper and read us a fulmination
in verse against the centenary
of Napoleon, by a writer whose
independent pen “is unequalled in
freedom and boldness,” according
to the ideas of some. M. de V.
disapproves strongly: “Cannot a
man be of one party without throwing
mud at the other? May not the
sufferings on St. Helena, the torture
more terrible than that of the
Prometheus of antiquity, have been
accepted by God as an expiation?
How far preferable would a little
Christian moderation be to all this
gall so uselessly poured out into
the public prints! And what do
they attain, republicans or royalists,
after so many words and so
much trouble? Great social revolutions
arrive only at the hour
marked by Providence.” “At all
events,” said Johanna, “it is this
much-boasted printing which enables
us to read so much that is
good and so much that is hurtful.”
“O madame! Writing, printing!
What favors granted to man! What
feasts for the understanding and
the heart! The genius of evil has
known how to draw from these admirable
sources the means of perdition;
what is it that man has not
turned against God? But the divine
mercy is greater than our offences,
and the Christian’s life ought
to be a perpetual <i>Te Deum</i>. Providence
pours out in floods before
us joys, favors, enjoyments without
number, as he scatters flowers in
the meadows, birds in the air, angels
in space; he has given us poetry,
this eternal charm of the earth:

.pm verse-start
“'Langue qui vient du Ciel, toute limpide et belle,
Et que le monde entend, mais qu’il ne parle pas.’”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Language which comes from heaven, limpid and beautiful,
And which the world understands, but does not speak.
.fn-

You perceive, dear Kate, that I
want to make you acquainted with
the doctor. But good-night.
.sp 2
<sc>August 22, 1869.</sc>

Well, dearest, the marriage is arranged.
Let me, however, first
speak to you about Picciola. She
is an angel! She invariably forgets
herself, and thinks only of the happiness
of others. It is she who organizes
our festivities. Dear, delicious
child! Thérèse and Anna
know not how to show her tenderness
enough. I forget what day it
was that Marcella said to me: “I
.pn +1
think that now I need not be any
longer uneasy about my child’s
health; there has been no change
since that beneficial winter.” Picciola
was by me. I looked at her;
her eyes shone with a singular
brightness, and she said almost involuntarily,
and so low that I alone
heard her: “Oh! she will be no longer
ill.“ Marianne was right: there
is a mystery in this, and I want to
know what it is. I shall question
Mad; she will not resist me. I
have entreated the doctor to cure
her, and his answer was: “Who can
arrest the flight of the bird?“ Thus
all is in vain; and yet, in spite of
myself, I have moments of wild
hope. What a large place this child
has taken possession of in my
heart!

M. de V. had placed his interests
in my hands; it was therefore
your Georgina herself who renewed
his <i>proposal</i>. At the first
word Marcella, much moved, formally
refused, begging me to speak to
her of something else. Then we had
a long explanation. This dear and
excellent friend did not want to
separate herself from us, out of
gratitude! And she was sacrificing
her heart; for the devotedness and
high character of M. de V. inspire
her with as much sympathy
as respect. It needed all my eloquence
to convince her. In accepting
she secures her daughter a
protector; the increase of her fortune
will allow her still more latitude
for the exercise of her benevolence.
I know that she loves Italy,
and dreams of seeing it again, which
would be impossible were she to
remain with us; by refusing she
crushes out the life of M. de V.,
etc., etc.

By way of conclusion I drew her
into my mother’s room, where we
also found René and Edouard, and
all four of us together succeeded in
obtaining her <i>consent</i>. All, then, is
well as regards this matter. Anna
is in a state of incomparable joy, as
the old books say. We are all happy
at the turn affairs have taken, but
each in our different degrees. And
you, dear Kate? Ah! news of Ireland
and again of Edith: Mary is
not well. Poor Edith! Good-by,
dearest; René calls me, and I must
send to the post.
.sp 2
<sc>August 25, 1869.</sc>

Yesterday’s <i>fête</i> was admirable,
according to the doctor, who is a
good judge. How impatient he is
to carry off Marcella from us! The
wedding is fixed for the 20th of
September, and the same day the
happy couple are to start for Italy.
Thus I have not even a month in
which to enjoy the society of this
delightful friend, so truly the sister
of my soul, whom God gave me almost
on the grave of Ellen. I busy
myself with her about the preparations.
Gertrude, the austere Gertrude,
sets out to-morrow for Paris
with Adrien and M. de V., whom
she will direct in the choice
of the <i>corbeille</i>. Don’t you admire
that? Marcella is calm, serious,
but also, she owns to me, profoundly
happy.

There will be no more meeting
again, I foresee plainly; they will
<i>cast anchor</i> down there, but our
spirits will be always united before
God. Margaret greatly rejoices in
the happiness of our dear Roman.
Lord William arrived yesterday,
and joyous parties are going on.
The <i>little</i> angel of the good God is
always on the point of taking her
flight.

.pm verse-start
<i>Ah! mon âme voudrait se suspendre à ses ailes
          Et la garder encore!</i>[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Ah! my soul would fain cling to her wings, and
keep her still!
.fn-
.pn +1

René procures me the most agreeable
surprises. There has never
yet been the least shadow of a
cloud between us. You say well,
dearest, that with him I shall have
happiness everywhere; why, then,
should I have hesitated to procure
a like happiness for Marcella? I
did not tell you that about a year
ago this dear friend lost nearly the
whole of her fortune, which was in
the hands of a banker? Happily,
we were the first to hear of it, and
have concealed the disaster. Gertrude
desired to join us in this
hidden good work, and I have with
all my heart paid the half of the
amount. I am still more glad now
to have done so. Hitherto the interest
has been sufficient, but, lest
the secret should be discovered,
Gertrude undertook to arrange the
matter with her banker. As it is a
considerable sum, we are selling
our carriages and one of René’s
farms, lest it should make too much
difference to our poor; my mother
is surprised, but asks no questions.
We shall try to live without carriages—so
many people live happily,
and yet always go on foot! I am
certain that you will approve of
this, dear Kate. Marcella is too
proud to consent to marry M. de V.
without any fortune of her own.
René is delighted with this arrangement;
I believe that he also is in
love with the poverty of St. Francis.
Oh! how good God is to us! All
my kisses to you.
.sp 2
<sc>August 28, 1869.</sc>

Read yesterday some pretty
things on Montaigne. The author
of the <i>Essays</i> loved “with a particular
affection” poetry, “in which it is
not allowable to play the simpleton.”
Marcella presented me with
a charming poem on Friendship.
Oh! I know very well that her warm
affection is mine. Listen to this
passage taken from a dramatic
story which has come into Brittany:
“There are redeeming souls, born
for salvation. In the path of the
divine Crucified One walk silent
groups whose mission is to suffer
for those who enjoy all the good
things of life, to weep for those who
sing at feasts, to pray for those who
never open their lips in prayer. A
large number of these mysterious
flowers which perfume the King’s
House are even unconscious of their
destiny. They follow it, without
asking what end is answered by
their solitude, and to what purpose
are their tears.”

You write to me too deliciously,
dear Kate! It is very kind of you
to ask after the two <i>adopted</i> little
girls. They have been claimed
by a relation, and left us after having
remained a week. This fresh
eclogue could not have had a better
ending. The dear children
write to Picciola. They are happy;
their relative gave us a most favorable
impression.

Yesterday a long walk with Margaret,
who loves our heaths, our
fields of broom, our reedy places,
our customs, and who is always
ready when there is a good work to
be done. My mother is not well—“The
effect of old age,” she says.
Would that I could keep away all
pain from that dear head! Mme.
Swetchine says: “All the joys of
earth would not assuage our thirst
for happiness, and one single sorrow
suffices to fold life in a sombre
veil, to strike it throughout with
nothingness.” How true this is!

St. Augustine is one of René’s
patrons; you may imagine whether
we have not prayed to him very
much. Gertrude writes to me:
“Here are some lines which I commend
to your meditations: 'All
.pn +1
passes, all vanishes away, all is carried
away by the river of Eternity.
The most sacred and sweet affections
we see broken, some by absence—that
sleep of the heart—others by
a culpable inconstancy; many, alas!
by death. The days of our childhood,
the years of our youth, the
friendships begun in the cradle, the
more serious attachments of riper
age, the affections of home, the
bonds formed at the altar—all are
touched, withered, annihilated by
the inexorable hand of time.’ Dear
Georgina,” continues Gertrude,
“all lives again, all arises from its
tomb, all becomes again resplendent
with God! Hope, then! <i>Excelsior.</i>”

Lord William has brought us a
most interesting book—<i>Our Life in
the Highlands</i>, by Queen Victoria.
What soul! What heart! Why is
she not a Catholic? My poor Ireland,
when wilt thou recover thy
freedom? O Ireland! <i>patria mia!</i>

Thérèse regrets Anna’s approaching
departure, but she is courageous.
The <i>babies</i> do not take it
in the same way, and Marguérite
told Anna plainly: “All that you
may say to me is of no use. I
know Italian, mademoiselle: <i>Chi
sta bene, non si muove.</i>”[#] I had to
preach for an hour before I could
persuade Marguérite to consent to
apologize to the dear little Italian,
who cried so much at being accused
of inconstancy. These little
people!

.fn #
“He who is well off stays where he is.”
.fn-

Good-by, dear Kate; Picciola
sends you a kiss.
.sp 2
<sc>August 30, 1869.</sc>

I have just been telling the children
the beautiful story of St.
Felix and St. Adauctus, as the
charming imagination of Margaret
had arranged it at the convent.
How they listened to me. On
turning round I was taken by surprise:
René was there! You know
that I like to be alone when fulfilling
the functions of <i>professor</i>—a title
which I usurp from the good <i>abbé</i>,
whose charity frequently takes him
from home. “Are you displeased?”
asked <i>my brother</i>. <i>Displeased!</i> But
he and I are altogether one—one
and the same soul. Picciola makes
profound observations thereupon.
Margaret tells me that she said to
her: “The soul ought in this world
to be with God as Uncle René is
with Aunt Georgina, and as you
and Lord William.” Margaret was
delighted with this comparison.

Letter from the saintly Isa; one
might call it a song of heaven.
“O charming felicities which I
find in this paradise of intelligence
and friendship, incomparable joys
of the religious affections, delights
of the sensible presence of Him who
is my all, how dear are you to me!”

Picciola is sleeping in an easy-chair
two steps from me. She
seems to have scarcely a breath of
life left. I questioned her as discreetly
as possible; she understood
immediately: “Later, aunt, I will
tell you.”

What! have I not told you
about my six children? The eldest
has been taken as <i>femme de chambre</i>
by Margaret, the second occupies
the same post for Anna, and Thérèse
claims the third. The youngest
go to school. Johanna wished
to take charge of them, but I said,
“No, thank you”; she has a family
and I am free. René wants to talk
business to you. I give up my
sheet of paper to him. May God
be with us!
.sp 2
<sc>September 5.</sc>

Only a fortnight more to enjoy
the presence of Marcella! The
<i>travellers</i> are home again. The
.pn +1
<i>corbeille</i> is splendid; but the pious
projects of M. de V. are still
more so. Did I tell you that he
had been connected with M. de
Clissey, in a journey the latter took
to Naples? M. de C. loved
Marcella then, and spoke only of
her. He was on the eve of a dangerous
expedition. “Promise me,”
he said to M. de V., “that in case
of my death you will marry her!”
M. de V. promised. This is
like the tales of knight-errantry.
M. de Verlhiac was unable to be
present at his friend’s marriage,
and, as he was at that time of an
adventurous turn of mind, he went
away to New York and had no
news of the De Clisseys. It was
only on Marcella’s account that
he settled temporarily at Hyères.
You see, this is altogether a romance,
but in the best taste possible.
M. de V. told us all this
after his proposal had been accepted.

All France is interested in the
Council; we are praying for this
intention. What times we live in,
dear Kate! The church is on
the eve of terrible trials, say the
<i>seers</i>.

Picciola wishes to write to you;
but will her poor little hand have
the strength to do so? Oh! how
touching she is in her serenity.
She communicates with great fervor
twice a week.

Lizzy, the happy Lizzy! has a
son! <i>Gaudete et lætare!</i> I rejoice
in her joy! Edith is ill; Mistress
Annah says seriously so. Always
a shadow!

Farewell, dearest. I have quantities
of things to attend to. A thousand
kisses.
.sp 2
<sc>September 10, 1869.</sc>

M. de Verlhiac overwhelms us
with presents—no means of refusing
them. Marcella appears very
happy, although as the time of departure
approaches there is an occasional
shade upon her brow.
The health of M. de V. cannot accommodate
itself to Brittany, and
the <i>Blue Nest</i> was only a pretext.
My mother is purchasing this well-named
habitation, to sell it when
an opportunity offers. Since we
have launched out so strongly in
good works, no one allows superfluities.

Gertrude saw Karl, who sighs
for the day when he shall offer up
at the altar the true and spotless
Victim. I love what you tell me of
your thoughts on seeing our sister.
Ah! dearest, all that God does he
does well; great sacrifices suit
great souls.

My mother gives <i>fêtes</i>—to us,
you understand. But what <i>fêtes</i>!
What a large share is left for the
poor! What a still larger part
given to God! Lucy, the amiable
Lucy, gives herself unheard-of
trouble for our pleasures. Gertrude
gracefully lends herself to
our passing follies, to which her
dark toilet makes a contrast. I
asked her two days ago if she did
not sometimes regret the luxuries
to which she was accustomed. “Regret,
Georgina! Listen to Ludolph
the Chartreux: 'The Christian is
happy, for, whatever may be his
poverty, he has always in himself
wherewith to buy the pearl and the
treasure; no other price is asked
but himself.'”

Sarah is in Spain, whence she
sends me magnificent descriptions
of the Pyrenees. “When
will you come and gather roses on
the banks of the Mancanares?”
asks my lively friend.

Picciola is asking for me. You
would be uneasy. May God have
you in his keeping!
.pn +1
.sp 2
<sc>September 18, 1869.</sc>

René has replaced me in my assiduous
correspondence—I have so
much to do! Will these words
make you smile? Nothing, however,
is more true; in our hive every
bee has its share of work. M. de
V. can no longer keep himself
quiet; Marcella weeps at the
thought of going away for ever.
René mentions the possibility of
our again visiting Hyères, and I
want to persuade the future couple
to give their solemn promise to go
thither. It seems as if a part of
my heart were going to leave me.

The Bishop of —— will bless
the marriage. Oh! would that I
could put off this date. It is so
sweet to have them here, these dear
friends and the charming little
Anna! Good-by, Homer! Good-by,
our studious hours, our intimate
conversations, our so perfect friendship!
<i>Her</i> room will remain furnished
just as it now is; I shall
make it a museum of souvenirs.
You know that I have taken the
portraits of all three. They wished
for copies; so you see why I was
too busy to write to you. Only
two days more—two days: what is
that?

My mother is very thoughtful on
my account. For my sake she
dreads this departure, this great
void; but René is at hand, so ingeniously
good and devoted, so attentive,
so fraternal! Dearest,
pray that <i>they</i> may be happy!
.sp 2
<sc>September 21, 1869.</sc>

<i>She</i> is gone! These two days
have passed away like a dream. I
cannot bring myself to realize this
idea. Oh! what difference there is
between the apprehension and the
reality, from the expectation of sorrow
to sorrow itself! But <i>she</i> will
be happy! How beautiful she was;
Anna so graceful, and all three so
affectionate! I am now counting
the hours until I receive a letter.
I am going to occupy myself—study
with René, pray with Picciola,
meditate with Gertrude. And Margaret—oh!
I must make up to her all
the time given to Marcella, whom
she regrets almost as much as I do.

Picciola occupies me, and very
much. She has felt this separation
exceedingly, being very fond of
Anna. Good-by till to-morrow,
dear Kate; I feel myself incapable
of writing.

22d.—A word from Mme. de Verlhiac—a
greeting written yesterday
morning in the carriage. They go
farther and farther away. How
could I flatter myself that I should
be able to keep for myself alone
these two Italian flowers? Gertrude
has asked me to aid her in a
singular operation: the accounts
of all her farmers have to be clearly
arranged. Adrien does not like
these commonplace details. He
found yesterday in the woods a
little fellow of six years old, roguish
as an elf, his hair a tangled bush,
his face, hands, and feet alarmingly
dirty. “Will you take charge of
this child for an hour?” René
asked me, as he had letters to write
to his brother. What trouble I
had to make the little savage clean!
Margaret acted as currier; I was
quite alone, dreaming of the past.
This awoke me, I can assure you.
When he was <i>white</i>, I went to find
Johanna, who gave me a whole suit
of clothes. This little wilding was
the torment of his mother; we are
going to tame him. As a beginning
I have put him to school. He is
enchanted to see himself so <i>fine</i>,
and looks at himself as if he were a
relic. At the same time he is
greedy, untruthful, obstinate, lazy—all
vices in miniature.
.pn +1

We are going to-morrow to the
town; this always amuses the <i>babies</i>.
Happy age, when every little change
is a festivity! If you knew what
a strange sensation I experienced
this morning on entering the drawing-room
and not finding the two
dear faces so long visible there!
I thought I should have wept or
cried out—it would have done me
good—but Gertrude began to converse
with me, and the feeling passed
away.

I never talk to you now either
about my godson or the beautiful
Emmanuel; it is very remiss. Both
are charming and do not make
much noise. Dear little beings!
And the day will come when they
will be our protectors, these two little
nestlings whose warblings are so
charming a harmony to our ears.
I wish you could hear Margaret
say, “My son!” This word has in
her mouth such a penetrating sweetness!

Dear Kate, may God be with
us!
.sp 2
<sc>September 28, 1869.</sc>

Can it possibly be true? Père
Hyacinthe quits his convent and in
some sort separates himself from
the Roman Catholic Church. The
bad newspapers vie with each other
in their applauses, while the good
ones groan. Louis Veuillot energetically
blames. Pride has much
to do with this great fall. Let us
pray that he may come back, this
apostle who has lost his way! Another
star fallen!

Picciola daily grows weaker, and
I now know, alas! why she is dying.
I would fain give the account
with her touching simplicity, but
this charm belongs to her alone.

This morning I was in her room;
she has not got up since the 22d.
“Are you alone, aunt?” “Yes,
dearest.” “Because I have something
to say to you. I have to ask
your pardon.” Poor angel! “My
life was my own, was it not, aunt?
I could give it away?” “And why,
then, did you give it away, my
child?” “Aunt, do not be so distressed.
You love Mme. Marcella
very much, and Anna also. Well!
last year, at Orleans, during the
winter, Anna had the fever. The
doctor came; he examined her a
long time, and it was I who conducted
him to the door. I asked
him if my little friend was very ill.
'She is consumptive, this beautiful
child, and will not be cured without
a miracle.’ I was very much
struck, but did not show it in any
way, and from that day I offered
all my prayers for her recovery.
The day of my First Communion,
O aunt! I was so happy. The
good God had given me everything.
I tried to find a sacrifice to offer to
him, and I had nothing but my
life; so I asked him to take this
in exchange for that of Anna. I
felt at the same moment that I was
heard, that my prayer would be
fully granted. Oh! how happy I
was. But, my poor dear aunt, I see
you so sad that I am almost sorry;
but then you have other nieces, and
Mme. Marcella has only one daughter.
Do you forgive me?”

My God! my God! Can you
understand, Kate, what I felt?
“My mother must not know of
this,” continued the gentle victim,
after a long effort. “You will comfort
her, dear aunt! Oh! it is so
consoling to die for others. I have
a confidence that I shall go to
heaven. Monsieur le Curé has
told me not to be afraid. I have
always suffered ever since my First
Communion; but my cross was not
heavy like that of our Lord! Oh!
I long so for heaven. On earth
it is so difficult to keep one’s self
.pn +1
always in the presence of God; we
shall see him on high. Aunt, what
joy it is to die!”

Berthe came into the room, from
which I hastened precipitately to
hide my tears. I felt thoroughly
overcome. What self-devotion!
What angelic desires! I told all
to René, who had already his suspicions:
Anna had so delicate a
chest, while our Mad’s constitution
was so strong. God has accepted
the exchange. Poor Berthe! When
she received Marcella with so sisterly
a welcome, how little she imagined
that with her death entered
our dwelling! I am proud of Picciola—but
I weep!

Ah! dear Kate, let us bless God
for all.
.sp 2
<sc>September 30, 1869.</sc>

I live as in another world since
this revelation. “The holy angels
will come and take me,” said Picciola.
Margaret, Berthe, Thérèse,
Gertrude, and I succeed each other
in watching by her. “All my body
is broken!” she exclaimed in her
delirium; otherwise, never a complaint.
She prays, and likes to hear
singing; she is full of tenderness.
I have no news of Edith. Anna
has written from Lyons.

Pray for those who remain, dear
Kate!
.sp 2
<sc>October 1, 1869.</sc>

She has received the last sacraments;
her room exhales the perfume
of incense. We are all there,
whispering prayers.

<i>2d October.</i>—She is in heaven!
“Dear angels, thanks, I come!”
And her soul fled away. Oh!
how I suffer. I loved her too
much! I write to you near to
<i>her</i>—near to <i>her</i> who is no longer
there. I could have wished to follow
her when the <i>abbé</i> said: “Go
forth from this world, Christian
soul!”

Did you know her well, this flower
of heaven whose fragrance was so
sweet; this soul, open to every noble
sentiment; this exceptional understanding,
which assimilated everything
and was ever advancing?

My mother is well-nigh broken
down; Berthe is kneeling, and still
kissing this brow so pure, these
eyes whose gaze we shall behold
no more.

Raoul and Thérèse weep together;
Gertrude occupies herself in
attending to the sad details; and
as for me, I would pour upon this
paper all the desolation of my heart.

Shall I have the courage to paint
her thus—inanimate—dead? O
my God! it is, then, true? That
caressing arm will never again pass
itself round my neck. That beloved
voice will no longer resound
in my ears. That aërial footstep will
no more reveal her presence. She
is gone! She was full of life, and
freely, voluntarily she has accepted
death and has left us alone.

Kate, how shall I pray, how shall
I bless God? If you knew how I
loved her!
.sp 2
<sc>October 12, 1869.</sc>

I am beginning to rise up. For
ten days I have been in a state
of delirium. I saw Madeleine constantly
by me, spoke to her, told
her to wait for me—that I did not
wish to live without her. René
was in despair; but his prayers and
yours have been heard. A strange
calm has succeeded to the disorder
of my thoughts; I have the certainty
that Picciola and Edith have
entered into everlasting rest. Yes,
Edith! How did I learn that she
was dead? I do not know, but
René saw that I knew it and no
longer sought to hide it from me.
Adrien leaves us to-day to go and
bring hither Mary and Ellen, and
also Mistress Annah, who is wanted
.pn +1
by Margaret. They compel me to
stop. I love you.
.sp 2
<sc>October 20, 1869.</sc>

I am still weak, dear Kate, but
my soul is strengthened. Let us
love God, let us love God! I went
at noon to the cemetery, to the beloved
grave. René accompanied
me. Oh! how he also loved her. How
sweet she was when she spoke of
him! Raoul has taken Berthe and
Thérèse into Normandy for a fortnight;
their intense grief made him
anxious. It is all like a dream; but,
alas! <i>she</i> is no longer here. Let us
so live that we may rejoin her!

A friend of René’s gave Edith
the comfort of embracing her son;
our dear friend’s will is addressed
to me. René is utterly opposed to
the young girls being brought up
with us, and we shall no doubt place
them at the Sacred Heart. René
is right: no one could ever take the
place of Picciola in my heart.

Margaret and Gertrude have
been angels of consolation to me.
How shall I ever repay their tenderness!
Ah! it is good to be so
loved. Let us always love each other
in Jesus, dear Kate!
.sp 2
<sc>October 25.</sc>

The orphans are come, very
touching in their mourning garments.
The good Mistress Annah
has grown ten years older. Edith
died the death of a saint! How
painfully this word death sounds
in my heart!

My mother does not wish that
Berthe should see <i>them</i> here; the
generous Adrien offers to accompany
them, but Margaret solicits
this privilege, with the secret intention,
we believe, of paying the
first year’s expenses. Kind Margaret!
I should like to have
kept these children, but in every
point of view it is impossible.
René fears that I may love them
too much—and you also, dear
Kate. Thus it is decided that they
are to leave us on the 5th.

I send you the <i>journal</i> of the
last days of Edith; Mistress Annah
wished to give me this consolation,
sweet and bitter at the same time.
Dear old friend! what good care
we are going to take of her. I
should like to have her here. Karl
will be made a priest on Christmas
Eve; we shall therefore be in Paris
towards the 10th of December.
For how long? I do not yet know.
My mother has changed very much
since our <i>angel</i> is no longer here.
O Christ! O Saviour! O Sovereign
Friend of our souls! take compassion
on our sorrows.

Johanna is here, by me, with my
beautiful godson on her knees,
smiling and playing with him in a
thousand ways. Oh! how sweet was
Picciola in this same place. Alix
and Marguérite come every minute
to talk to me, to amuse me. Margaret
occupies herself in reading to
me serious and absorbing things;
but—I constantly see <i>her</i>, my little
dove that is flown away.

Marcella is at Naples; the letter
of mourning reached her there. She
does not know what her daughter’s
life has cost us, nor will she ever
know it. Ah my God! who would
have believed that?

Send me your good angel, dear,
beloved sister!

TO BE CONTINUED.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=infidelity
PRESBYTERIAN INFIDELITY IN SCOTLAND.
.sp 2
The people of England, as his
Eminence Cardinal Manning is fond
of saying, never abandoned the
Catholic faith; it was torn from
them by violence. The people of
Ireland were made of sterner stuff;
they clung to the faith, successfully
resisting the pitiless persecutions to
which they were subjected. But
the people of Scotland joyfully received
the new gospel and took it
into their hearts with zealous ardor.
In England the sovereign imposed
the new religion upon the people,
and they submitted to it; in Ireland
the whole authority of the
civil power, exercised in the
most cruel forms, was exhausted in
vain attempts to compel the apostasy
of the people. In Scotland
the people apostatized by their own
motion and the Reformation there
was essentially a popular movement.
The late Archbishop Spalding, in
his <i>History of the Protestant Reformation</i>,
says that the Reformation
in Scotland spread from low to high;
that it “worked its way up from
the people, through the aid of the
nobles, through political combinations
and civil commotions, to
the foot of the throne itself, and,
after having gained the supreme
civil power and deposed first the
queen-regent and then the queen,
it dictated its own terms to the new
regent and the new sovereign; and
thus, by the strong arm, it firmly
established itself on the ruins of the
old religion of the country.” The
true explanation of the fact that the
Reformation in Scotland was a
popular movement is to be found in
the words of a Protestant writer[#]
quoted by Archbishop Spalding:
“Scotland, from her local situation,
had been less exposed to disturbance
from the encroaching ambition,
vexatious exactions, and fulminating
anathemas of the Vatican
court” than other countries; that is
to say, the authority of the Holy See
for a long time prior to the Reformation
had been scarcely felt in Scotland;
the wise and wholesome provisions
of the canon law had fallen
into disuse; the civil power
had thrust its own creatures into
benefices and bishoprics; and the
people had become disgusted by
“the scandalous lives, ostentatious
pomp, and occasional exactions of
the unworthy men who had been
thus unlawfully foisted into the
bishoprics and abbeys.”

.fn #
Thomas McCrie, minister of the Gospel, Edinburgh.
.fn-

In England and Ireland the influence
and authority of the popes
had not been thus disregarded; the
church there had been kept tolerably
pure, and the affection of the
people had not been alienated by
the faults and crimes of prelates
and priests. In Ireland to-day,
after three hundred and thirty-six
years of Protestant assaults upon
the faith, Catholic truth remains as
firmly as ever rooted in the hearts
and exemplified in the lives of the
people. In England the effects of
the retention of Catholic tradition
are still to be seen: some of the
great fasts and festivals of the
church are observed as legal holidays;
marriages are not solemnized
.pn +1
at a later hour than that which
formerly was fixed for the celebration
of the nuptial Mass; and respectable
Protestants, belonging to
the Nonconformist societies as well
as to the Established Church, abstain
from marrying or giving in marriage
during Lent.[#] But in Scotland
the “blessed Reformation” swept
away all these “rags of Popery”; it
had full course to run and be glorified;
and it made such thorough
work that, for example, only within
the past few years has even the most
modest recognition of Christmas day
as a festival been permitted. The
Scottish Reformers, having burned
the religious houses, stripped and
disfigured the churches, and driven
the priests from the land, set up the
Bible as their fetich, and ordained
that it should be worshipped in
conformity with the precepts embodied
in certain creeds and confessions
of faith which they framed
to suit themselves. For three hundred
years the Scottish Presbyterians
have been the most ardent
Protestants in the world, and have
boasted most loudly of their devotion
to, and their implicit faith in,
the written Word of God. This,
and this alone, contained in itself
all that was necessary for salvation;
and it were better that a man should
never have been born rather than
that he should take away from, or
add one word to, what was written
in this book. God had not on the
day of Pentecost called into being,
by the power of the Holy Spirit, a
body commissioned “to teach all
whatsoever he had commanded until
the consummation of the world”;
he had simply caused a book to
be written. “In the books of the
Old and New Testaments,” they
declared in their “Standards,”
“the revelation of God and the declaration
of his will are committed
wholly unto writing ... and
they are all given by inspiration of
God to be the only rule of faith and
life.” This has been the nominal
faith of the Scotch Presbyterians
ever since the dawn of the Reformation,
and it is their nominal faith
to-day. It has long been difficult,
however, for the admirers of Scotch
Presbyterianism to reconcile the fact
that they were at once “the most
Bible-loving and whiskey-loving
people on the face of the earth”;
that their sexual immorality was
threefold that of the English,
and tenfold that of the Catholic
Irish; and that marriage among
them had become divested of
every form of religious sanction.
Close observers of what was going
on in Scotland had, indeed,
from time to time perceived evidences
of the existence and extension
of a curious phase of scepticism
among the people—a hypocritical
and speculative scepticism.
The leading journal of the country
had for many years, with great skill
and with the evident approbation
of its constantly-increasing circle
of readers, devoted itself to the
stealthy inculcation of rationalism
and of secularism in education. In
private, and sometimes in public,
leading members of the various
branches of the Presbyterian Church
had indulged in covert sneers at this
or that article of faith, and every
attempt to reprove or punish these
heresies by the discipline of the
church resulted in failure. Events
have now occurred which reveal in
a startling manner the extent to
which infidelity has made conquest
of the Scotch Presbyterian ministers,
.pn +1
and which show that those
among them who still care to profess
their adherence to their standards
of faith are unwilling or afraid
to attempt either the correction or
the expulsion of their atheistic brethren.

.fn #
Moreover, the favor with which that parody of
Catholic ceremony and Catholic truths known as
ritualism has been received in England, especially
among the common people, is an evidence of the
imperfect manner in which the Reformation there
has done its work.
.fn-

A new edition of the <i>Encyclopædia
Britannica</i> has lately been published,
the article “Angels” and the
article “Bible” in which work were
written by Professor W. R. Smith,
of the Free Church College of
Aberdeen. Both these articles contained
statements which, in the moderate
language of the official report
before us, and from which we
shall quote, “awakened anxiety in
the minds of ministers and members
of the church.” The affairs
of this college are managed by a
committee, who are authorized to
“originate and prosecute before the
church courts processes against any
of the professors for heresy or immorality,
according to the present
laws of the church.” On the 17th
of May last this committee “had
their attention called” to these
writings of Professor Smith; on the
19th of September they appointed
seven of their number—Mr. Laughton,
Principal Rainy, Principal
Douglas, Sir Henry Moncreiff, Professor
Smeaton, Dr. Gould, and
Professor Candlish—to consider
the two articles, and to report to
the committee what action, if any,
should be taken upon them. On
the 17th of October the sub-committee,
two members dissenting, reported
that they did not find it
necessary to say anything about
Professor Smith’s views concerning
“angels,” but that it would be advisable
in the first instance to ask
the professor if he had any explanation
or apology to offer respecting
his article upon the Bible. On
the 14th of November the committee
received a communication from
Professor Smith not at all in the
nature of an apology; and on the
17th of January—eight months having
been taken for consideration of
the matter from the commencement—the
committee made their report,
which is addressed to the General
Assembly of the church. They state
that “after carefully examining the
article 'Bible,’ and considering with
attention the explanations which
Professor Smith has been good
enough to furnish,” they have not
found in the article sufficient ground
“to support a process for heresy”—a
conclusion from which one member
of the committee, Dr. Smeaton,
dissents, as will appear, with good
reason. It is true, the committee
go on to say, that Professor Smith’s
statements relating to “the date,
authorship, and literary history”
of certain books and portions of
books in the Bible not only “differ
from the opinions which have been
most usually maintained in our
churches,” but are “such as have
been maintained by writers who
treat the Scriptures as merely human
compositions.” But the committee
magnanimously decline to
“assume that this circumstance is
of itself a ground either of suspicion
or complaint,” inasmuch as
“much liberty of judgment should
be maintained.” They confess,
again, that they “have observed
with regret that the article does
not adequately indicate that the
professor holds the divine inspiration”
of the Bible, and that he does
not “adequately state the view of
the Bible taken by the Christian
church as a whole.” “A clear note
on this point” was much needed,
but the professor would not give it,
and “the committee are compelled
to regard this feature of the case
with disapprobation,” since it would
.pn +1
have been so easy for the professor,
by “a single sentence or clause of
a sentence, at successive stages of
his argument,” to have “prevented
the injurious effect which the committee
deprecate.” The professor
gave “decided opinions in favor
of some of the critical positions
maintained by theologians of the
destructive school,” and he consistently
refrained from blowing hot
and cold, as the committee wished
him to do, “by showing decisively
that he did not agree with their destructive
inferences.” But since,
in his communication to the committee,
Professor Smith “admits
direct prediction of the Messias in
the Old Testament,” and receives
three of the four gospels as “authentic
and inspired,” the committee—Professor
Smeaton again
dissenting—did not think it wise to
prosecute him for heresy on these
points. They stumbled sadly, however,
in their attempts to explain
why they resolved to acquit him
of flagrant heresy in the expressions
of his views “with respect to portions
of the Pentateuch, and more
particularly to the Book of Deuteronomy.”
It would be bad enough,
they say, had Professor Smith contented
himself with maintaining
that the Book of Deuteronomy in
its present form could not have
been written, for philological reasons,
until eight hundred years after
the death of Moses. But this
would not necessarily prove that
the author of the book was not inspired
and did not faithfully record
the history as it occurred. Professor
Smith did worse than this; for
he affirmed “that instructions and
laws which, in the Book of Deuteronomy,
appear as uttered by
Moses, are certainly post-Mosaic,
and so could not, as a matter of
fact, have been uttered by him.”
Professor Smith, say the committee,
holds:

.pm letter-start
“1. That various portions of the Levitical
institutions, to which a Mosaic authorship
is assigned in the Pentateuch,
are of later date, having come into the
form in which they are exhibited only by
degrees, and in days long subsequent to
the age of Moses. This is held to be established
by discrepancies between different
parts of Scripture, which are held
to arise when the Mosaic origin is assumed.

“2. In particular, the Book of Deuteronomy,
in portions of it which, <i>ex facie</i>,
bear to be the record of utterances by
Moses, makes reference to institutions
and arrangements much later than his
time.

“3. This is to be accounted for by assuming
that some prophetic person, in
later times, threw into this form a series
of oracles, embracing at once Mosaic
revelations, and modifications, or adaptations
which were of later development;
all together being thrown into the form
of a declaration and testimony of Moses.

“4. That, viewed especially with reference
to the literary conceptions and
habits of that time and people, the method
thus employed was legitimate, and was
such as the divine Spirit might sanction
and employ. It was designed to teach
that the whole body of laws delivered
were the fruit of the same seed, had received
the same sanction, and were alike
inspired by the Spirit which spake by
Moses.

“5. The sub-committee do not understand
the professor to mean that this involved
any fraud upon those to whom
the book was delivered. It was given
and taken for what it was; however, it
may subsequently have been misunderstood,
in the professor’s view, in so far
as it came to be believed to be an ordinary
historical record of actual Mosaic
utterances.”
.pm letter-end

The committee found themselves
“obliged to regard this position
with grave concern.” They did
not feel willing to admit the force
of the evidence which Professor
Smith relied upon as establishing
the non-Mosaic character of some
of the Deuteronomic laws; and
.pn +1
“the hypothesis of inspired personation
applied to such a book as
Deuteronomy” appeared to them
“highly questionable in itself and
in its consequences.” This is stating
the case very mildly, especially
as they go on to say that the so-called
“explanations produced by
Professor Smith in his statement
have not relieved the apprehensions
of the committee,” but, on
the contrary, have rather served
“to make more evident the stumbling-block
for readers of the Bible
arising from a theory which represents
a book of Scripture as putting
into the mouth of Moses regulations
that are at variance with institutions
which the same theory supposes
him to have actually sanctioned.”
This theory is “liable to
objection and is fitted to create
apprehension.” It ascribes to the
author of the book “the use of a device
which appears unworthy and
inadmissible in connection with the
divine inspiration and divine authority
of such a book as Deuteronomy.”...
“The admissions that
the statements of the book regarding
Moses are not true in the obvious
sense will operate in the way
of unsettling belief.” The committee
are compelled to admit that
the article is “of a dangerous and
unsettling tendency.” Nevertheless,
they declare that they cannot and
will not exercise the rights and discharge
the duties of their office by
instituting a process against Professor
Smith for heresy. He has
written a most heretical, dangerous,
and really blasphemous article, and
has caused it to be published in a
book of the highest character and
of the most extensive circulation.
But they have “a cordial sense of
his great learning,” and he has been
good enough to say that although
he has proved that the Holy Spirit
lied in certain portions of Deuteronomy,
and lent himself to the
perpetration of a fraud in other
portions, still he can accept the
book “as part of the inspired record
of revelation, on the witness of our
Lord and the <i>testimonium Spiritus
Sancti</i>”—the testimony of the same
Holy Spirit to whom he has imputed
the crimes of falsehood and of
fraud! Therefore they declare that
they find no fault in Professor
Smith other than that of being a
little too free in the utterance of
his opinions, and, accordingly, they
decide to let him go.

From this free and easy deliverance
four members of the committee
dissented, but on different grounds.
One of them thought that Professor
Smith’s views respecting angels
were as “destructive” and as full
of “negations” as were his statements
concerning the Bible, and
that he should have been arraigned
for heresy on this ground. Another—Professor
Candlish—was of
the opinion that there was no
“ground in the articles for concern
about Professor Smith’s views”;
and a third—Mr. Whyte—insisted
that, instead of indulging in “timid
and cautious” blame, the committee
should have expressed their real
feelings of approbation, and given
utterance to “a hearty and grateful
acknowledgment of the goodness of
God to their church in the succession
of eminent theologians and
teachers he was raising up among
them,” and of whom Professor
Smith was the chief! The fourth
dissentient was Dr. Smeaton, of
whom we have already spoken, and
who, save the member who was distressed
about Professor Smith’s
opinions respecting angels, seems
to have been the only orthodox person
upon the committee. An appendix
to the report sets forth the
.pn +1
reasons for his dissent at great
length, but their purport may be
given in a few words. The finding
of the committee was “wholly inadequate
to the gravity of the offence”;
Professor Smith had offered
no retractation of his heresies,
and he should have been arraigned
at the bar of the church. It is absurd
for the committee to avow
“regret and grave concern” at the
expression of heresy by a luminary
of the church, and then to “accept
a mere profession of loyalty as a
sufficient reason for abstaining from
further action.” He exposes the
inconsistency of the committee’s
statement that the professor’s views,
while “injurious,” “destructive,”
and “naturalistic,” are still compatible
with the belief that the book
which he declares to be a forgery
was inspired by the Holy Ghost.

.pm letter-start
“I hold,” says Dr. Smeaton, “that
the doctrine of inspiration and Professor
Smith’s views are irreconcilable, and
that this will be evident if, for example,
we take account of his theory of Deuteronomy
or of his conception of the Song
of Solomon. The view which he propounds
as to the origin of Deuteronomy
is that it is a fictitious personation of
Moses by another man, in the unspeakably
solemn position of professing to receive
and communicate a divine revelation,
and that the book was not composed
until many centuries after Moses’
death. The point at issue is not alone
the age and Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy,
but whether this book of Scripture
is supposititious, and whether it was
after a great interval of time composed
and put into the mouth of Moses by another.
This fraudulent personation-theory
is the lowest depth of criticism; for,
as has often been said, the mythical
criticism had still this redeeming point,
that it did not impute to the writers conscious
fabrication. The supposititious
or personation-theory, on the contrary,
is not in keeping with the character of an
honest man, and wholly inconsistent
with that of an ambassador from God;
and the attempt to exculpate the writer
who is said to have put his words into the
mouth of Moses, on the supposition that
it was well known at the time, only
widens the sphere of the fraudulent deception,
and makes the receivers of the
book act in collusion with the writer in
his crime. This theory, which I never
expected to encounter in Scotland, overlooks
the important fact that, in the very
book to which such an origin is ascribed,
we find the repeated condemnation of
false prophets, of false testimony, and of
adding to, or diminishing from, the Word
of God; and we must therefore suppose
the writer practising deception while exposing
falsehood in every form. Professor
Smith must make his choice between
the reception of the book as an inspired
revelation, with all that it purports to be,
as written in the time of Moses, and as
the work of Moses, or reject it altogether
as a fraud and entitled to no respect.
There is no middle way. He cannot
maintain its fictitious origin, and yet assert
its inspiration. However convenient
it may be for a speculative theologian
to oscillate between the two ideas, as
the necessities of a daring criticism may
suggest, the notion of a fabricated prophetic
programme or of an inspired forgery
will be regarded by the general community,
as it has always been regarded by
me, as no better than the very quintessence
of absurdity. The robust common
sense of mankind scouts the possibility
of the combination. For my
part, I could not stultify myself before
the church and the world by allowing
such an incoherent and self-contradictory
juxtaposition of terms. But such a
theory, if it could be endured for a moment,
would, it is evident, render inspiration
incapable of vindication or defence.
And the enemies of revelation, I
believe, could desire no more effective
weapon in their warfare than the power
to proclaim that a Christian church permitted
a theological teacher to represent
any one book of Scripture as an inspired
fabrication. But the question
forces itself on our minds: If one book
may be so described, what is to be the
limit of this license, and how far is the
concession to be extended in the way of
giving a chartered right to similar caricatures
of the sacred oracles? I am obliged
to add that, in my judgment, Professor
Smith’s treatment of the Book of
Deuteronomy is tantamount to dropping
it from the inspired canon. And the
.pn +1
same thing may be said of his mode of
representing the scope and purport of
the Song of Solomon, to which he denies
the spiritual sense, and all that allusion
to the communion between the Bridegroom
and the Bride which the church
of all ages—notwithstanding the wayward
tendencies of a few individual
writers—has always regarded as immediately
connected with its divine origin;
for no reason can be shown for its inspiration
and canonical rank if it is to be interpreted
on the low exegetical conception
that it is an earthly love-poem. It
will not do to say that this is a dispute
about the authorship of a book, and that
the authorship of a book is of small moment.
I have already stated how much
more is involved. But the references to
the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy,
not only by Peter and Paul (Acts iii. 22;
Rom x. 6; x. 19), but by the Lord Jesus
Christ himself (Matt. xix. 8), are so express
and definite that the denial of that
one accredited fact tends to shake the
inspiration of many other books of Scripture
which explicitly assert or imply it.
In conclusion, I regret that the committee,
fettered by the interpretation which
they have put upon their functions, have
not sent up with their report a strong
recommendation to the Assembly to deal
effectually with the negative and destructive
opinions brought to light in Professor
Smith’s articles as wholly inconsistent
with our recognized doctrines, and
contrary to the genius of every Reformed
Presbyterian church. This is the first
instance that has occurred in any Scottish
church of an attack on the genuineness
of any book of Scripture on the
part of an office-bearer within the church.
And the question now raised, and which
must be decided one way or other, is
whether the negative criticism, with the
rationalistic theology which uniformly
goes along with it, is to claim a legitimate
position within the pale of the Free
Church of Scotland? To that I cannot
consent. The Continental churches,
having neither our spiritual independence
nor our Scriptural discipline, can be
no guide to us in this matter. Under the
control of the state, they are obliged to
allow all manner of latitudinarian opinions,
and have ceased to put forth any ecclesiastical
testimony on great questions.
We have what they want, and are bound
to call the spiritual independence and
Scriptural discipline, which are our distinctive
privilege, into active exercise or
the side of the divine authority of Scripture.
Unfaithfulness or weak concession
at this juncture would allow two
classes of professors, students, and
preachers antagonistic to each other, and
end in the long run, as all such false alliances
must end, in an ultimate separation
between the rationalistic and evangelical
elements, as incapable of existing
together. Any man of long views, or
who has looked into the history of the
church, must see this; and, therefore, in
the exercise of that inherent authority
which we possess, the church must at
once nip these opinions in the bud, and
do so effectually. On one point I have
not the shadow of a doubt. An attack
on the genuineness and authority of
Scripture, whether dignified by the title
of the higher criticism or prompted by
the lower scepticism, ought never to be
permitted within the church on the part
of any office-bearer. We can keep criticism
within its proper limits, and this
occasion may have been permitted to occur
that we may show to other churches
how we can act in the exercise of our independent
jurisdiction.”
.pm letter-end

These bold and true words of Dr.
Smeaton had no effect upon the decision
of the committee; and, so far
as that decision goes, it must now be
taken for granted that it is <i>not</i> heresy
for a minister of the Presbyterian
Church to teach that portions of
the Holy Scriptures are fictitious,
supposititious, fraudulent, and deceptive.
By the same decision the
Free Church of Scotland has “rendered
inspiration incapable of vindication
or defence,” and has placed
it within the power of the enemies
of revelation to say that a Christian
church permits a theological
teacher to represent Scripture as
an inspired fabrication. It might
have been expected, however, that
this decision would have been received
with horror and consternation
by the Bible-loving laity of
Scotland. The very contrary has
proved to be the case, and the only
reproof which the committee seems
.pn +1
to have received is in the nature
of a reproach for their weak affectation
of disapproval of Professor
Smith’s heresies while really sympathizing
with them. The ministers
of the Free Church of Scotland
are wholly dependent upon
the laity for their support, and the
control of the laity over them is
far-reaching, if it be not absolute.
The decision in the case of Professor
Smith would have been different
had not the laity of the church
long since ceased, in a great measure,
to cherish that reverence for
the written Word which distinguished
their ancestors. The Edinburgh
<i>Scotsman</i> expresses its belief that
there will be “very extensive satisfaction”
at the decision of the
committee, and confidently assumes
that “it will ultimately become the
collective judgment of the Free
Church.” Dr. Smeaton, it says, is
the one member of the committee
belonging to the old orthodox party
in the church—“a party whose
diminishing numbers entirely preclude
the possibility of any view
springing out of their turn of
mind successfully asserting itself
against the influence of the majority
that has enjoyed so long and
mollifying an experience in turning
closed into open questions.” Open
questions! The inspiration and
authenticity of the Bible have become
an open question among the
Scotch Presbyterians, with the probability
that it will soon be decided
by a verdict against the book.
The <i>Scotsman</i> ridicules the committee
for pretending to regard Professor
Smith’s position with “grave
concern” while they themselves
“substantially sympathize with
him,” or else know that so many
of the people agree with him that
to prosecute him for heresy would
be dangerous.

Nor is it the Free Church of
Scotland alone which has thus, to
all appearance, lost its faith in the
Scriptures and in the “Standards.”
The Rev. David Macrae, of Gourock,
one of the most talented and
popular ministers of the United
Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
declared recently in the presbytery
of that body that he and very
many—almost all—of his fellow-ministers
had ceased to believe, and
in some cases to preach, the traditional
creed of the church. He,
for one, was henceforth resolved to
be honest, and was determined no
longer to profess what he had ceased
to believe, but the majority of
his brethren, he thought, would
continue for some time to be hypocrites.
“The relation of the clergy
to the Standards was not an
honest one,” he said; “the professed
was not the actual creed of
the church; our church is professing
one creed while holding, and
to a large extent preaching, another.
I am determined to strike a
blow, even though it should be my
last, to liberate the church I love
from the tyranny of a narrow creed
and the hypocrisy of a professed
adherence to it.”

The lapse of the Scotch Presbyterians
into infidelity may seem to
be a startling event, but it was inevitable.
If the Bible could have
saved them, they would have been
safe; but the Bible in itself never yet
saved any one, for God did not ordain
that it should be written and
preserved for that purpose. The
Bible, indeed, points out the way to
salvation; it is a finger-post directing
men to the gate of heaven, but
it is not that gate itself, nor even
the key which opens it. All non-Catholic
sects are certain, sooner
or later, to lead their adherents to
that pit of perdition on the brink
.pn +1
of which the Scotch Presbyterians
now seem to be standing—the blind
lead the blind, and both fall into
the ditch. The Catholic Church
in Scotland is small and weak; it
is only within a very few years that
her growth there has been at all
perceptible, and the hierarchy has
not been re-established there since
it was swept away by the Reformation.
But the rapid decline of
Scotch Protestantism into practical
infidelity may have a favorable
effect upon the interests of the
church. The really pious of the
people—and there are many such—may
now begin to turn their eyes
towards the living Teacher of
God’s word, and listen to her unerring
voice; and when they enter her
fold they can say that they have
abandoned the church of their fathers
in order to return to the
church of their forefathers.
.sp 4
.h3 id=trout
HOW PERCY BINGHAM CAUGHT HIS TROUT.
.sp 2
One lovely evening towards the
end of the month of June, 187-, an
outside car jingled into the picturesque
little village of Ballynacushla.
The sun had set in a flood of
golden glory; purple shadows wooed
midsummer-night dreams on crested
hill and in hooded hollow; a perfumed
stillness slept upon the tranquil
waters of the Killeries, that wild
but beauteous child of the Atlantic,
broken only by the shrill note of
the curlew seeking its billow-rocked
nest, or the tinkle of the sheep-bell
on the heather-clad heights of Carrignagolliogue.
Lights like truant
stars commenced to twinkle in
lonely dwellings perched like eyries
in the mountain clefts, and night
prepared to don her lightest mourning
in memory of the departed
day.

The rickety vehicle which broke
upon the stillness was occupied by
two persons—a handsome, aristocratic-looking
young man attired in
fashionable tourist costume, and the
driver, whose general “get-up”
would have won the heart of Mr.
Boucicault at a single glance.

“That’s a nate finish, yer honner,”
he exclaimed, as, bringing a wheel
into collision with a huge boulder
which lay in the roadway, he decanted
the traveller upon the steps
of the “Bodkin Arms” at the imminent
risk of breaking his neck.

The “Bodkin Arms,” conscious
of its whitewash and glowing amber
thatch, stood proudly isolated. Its
proprietor had been “own man” to
Lord Clanricarde, and scandal whispered
that a portion of the contents
of “the lord’s” cellar was to be
found in Tom Burke’s snuggery behind
the bottle-bristling bar.

The occupant of the car was
flung into the arms of an expectant
waiter, who, true to the instincts of
that remarkable race, had scented
his prey from afar, and calmly
awaited its approach. This Ganymede
was attired in a cast-off evening
dress-coat frescoed in grease; a
shirt bearing traces of the despairing
grasp of a frantic washerwoman; a
necktie of the dimensions of a window-curtain,
of faded brocade; and
waistcoat with continuations of new
corduroy, which wheezed and chirruped
with every motion of his lanky
frame. His nose and hair vied in
richness of ruby, and his eyes
mutely implored every object upon
.pn +1
which they rested for a sleep—or a
drink.

“You got my note?” said the
traveller interrogatively.

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir.” Of
course they had it. The post in the
west of Ireland is an eccentric institution,
which disgorges letters
just as it suits itself, and without
any particular scruple as to dates.

“Have you a <i>table d’hôte</i> here?”

This was a strange sound, but
the waiter was a bold man.

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir! Would
you like it hot, sir?”

“Hot! Certainly.”

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir! With a
taste of lemon in it?”

“I said—Pshaw! Is dinner
ready?” said the traveller impatiently.

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir; it’s on the
fire, sir,” joyously responded the relieved
servitor, although the fowls
which were to furnish it were engaged
in picking up a precarious
subsistence at his very feet, and the
cabbage to “poultice” the bacon
flabbily flourishing in the adjoining
garden.

“Get in my traps and rods”—the
car was laden with fishing-tackle
of the most elaborate description.
“Have you good fishing here?”

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir—the
finest in Ireland. Trouts lepping
into the fryin’-pan out of the lake
foreninst ye. The marquis took
twoscore between where yer standing
and Fin Ma Coole’s Rock last
Thursday; and Mr. Blake, of Town
Hill—more power to him!—hooked
six elegant salmon in the pool
over, under Kilgobbin Head.”

“I want change of a sovereign.”

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir—change
for a hundred pound, sir. This way,
sir. Mind yer head in regard of
that flitch of bacon. It gave Captain
Burke a black eye on Friday,
and the county inspector got a wallop
in the jaw that made his teeth
ring like the bell in the middle
o’ Mass.” And he led the way into
the hotel.

The charioteer, after a prolonged
and exciting chase through several
interstices in his outer garment, succeeded
in fishing up a weather-beaten
black pipe, which he proceeded
to “ready” with a care and gravity
befitting the operation.

“Have ye got a taste o’ fire,
Lanty Kerrigan?” addressing a
diminutive personage, the remains
of whose swallow-tailed frieze coat
were connected with his frame
through the medium of a hay-rope,
and whose general appearance bore
a stronger resemblance to that of a
scarecrow than a man and a brother.
“I’m lost intirely for a <i>shough</i>.
The forriner [the stranger] wudn’t
stand smokin’, as he sed the tobaccy
was infayrior, but never an offer
he med me av betther.”

“Howld a minnit, an’ I’ll get ye
a hot sod.” And in less than the
time specified Lanty returned with
a glowing sod of turf snatched from
a neighboring fire.

“More power, Lanty!” exclaimed
the car-driver, proceeding to utilize
the burning brand. “Don’t stan’
too nigh the baste, <i>avic</i>, or she’ll be
afther aiting yer waistband and
lavin’ ye in yer buff.”

“What soart av a fare have ye,
Misther Malone?” asked Lanty,
now at a respectful distance from
the mare.

“Wan av th’ army—curse o’
Crummle an thim!—from the barrack
beyant at Westpoort.”

“Is it a good tack?”

“I’ve me doubts,” shaking his
head gravely and taking several
wicked whiffs of his <i>dhudheen</i>.
“He’s afther axin’ for change, an’
that luks like a naygur.”
.pn +1

“Thrue for ye, Misther Malone!
Did ye rouse him at all?” asked
the other in an anxious tone. He
expected the return of the “forriner”
and was taking soundings.

“Rouse him! Begorra, ye might
as well be endayvorin’ to rouse a
griddle. I’m heart scalded wud
him. I soothered him wud stories
av the good people, leprechauns,
an’ banshees until I was as dhry as
a cuckoo.”

“Musha, thin, he must be only fit
for wakin’ whin <i>you</i> cudn’t rouse
him, Mickey Malone.”

“I’d as lieve have a sack o’ pitaties
on me car as—” He stopped
short and plunged the pipe into his
pocket, as the object of the discussion
suddenly appeared upon the
steps.

“Here is a sovereign for the car
and half a sovereign for yourself,”
exclaimed the young officer, tossing
the coins to the expectant Malone.

“Shure you won’t forget the little
mare, Captain?”

“Forget her? Not likely, or you
either, Patsey.”

“Ye’ll throw her a half a crown
for to dhrink yer helth, Major?”

“Drink my health? What do
you mean?”

“Begorra, she’d take a glass o’
sperrits wud a gauger, Curnil; an’
if she wudn’t I wud. Me an’ her is
wan, an’ I’ve dacent manners on my
side, so I’ll drink yer honner’s helth
an’ that ye may never die till yer
fit.”

“That sentiment is worth the
money,” laughed the traveller,
tossing the half-crown in the air
and disappearing into the hotel.

“Well, be the mortial frost, Misther
Malone,” cried Lanty Kerrigan
in an enthusiastic burst of admiration,
“but yer the shupayriorest
man in Connemara.”

Percy Bingham, of the —th Regiment
of the Line, found Westport
even more dreary than the Curragh
of Kildare. From the latter he
could run up to Dublin in the evening,
and return next morning for
parade, even if he had to turn into
bed afterwards; from Westport there
was nothing to be done but the summit
of Croagh Patrick or a risky
cruise amongst the three hundred
little islands dotting Clew Bay.
“<i>Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate</i>”
was written upon the entrance
to the town. All was dreariness,
dulness, and desolation, empty
quays, ruined warehouses, and
squalid misery. The gentry, with
few exceptions, were absentees, and
those whom interest or necessity
detained in the country spent
“the season” in London or Dublin,
returning, with weary hearts
and empty pockets, to the <i>exile</i> of
their <i>homes</i>, there to vegetate until
spring and the March rents, wrung
from an oppressed tenantry, would
enable them to flit citywards once
more. To Bingham, to whom London
was the capital of the world,
and the United Service Club the
capital of London, this phase in
his military career was a horrid
nightmare. Born and bred an Englishman,
he had been educated to
regard Ireland as little better than
a Fiji island, and considerably worse
than a West African station; and,
filled to the brim with Saxon prejudice,
he took up his Irish quarters
with mingled feelings of disgust
and despair. An ardent disciple
of Izaak Walton, he clung to
the safety-valve of rod and reel,
avenging his exclusion from May
Fair and Belgravia by a wicked
raid upon every trout-stream within
a ten-mile radius of the barracks,
and, having obtained a few
days’ leave of absence, arrived at
Ballynacushla for the purpose of
.pn +1
“wetting his line” in the saucy little
rivers that joyously leap into
the placid bosom of the land-locked
Killeries.

“So my dinner is ready <i>at last</i>,”
exclaimed Bingham pettishly. A
good digestion had waited two
mortal hours on appetite.

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir!” replied
the waiter. “A little derangement
of the cabbage, sir, lost a few minutes,
but” cheerily “we’re safe and
snug now anyway. There’s darling
chickens, sir! Look at the lovely
bacon, sir! Survey the proportions
of the cabbage, sir!” And rubbing
his napkin across his perspiring
brow, he gazed at the viands, and
from the viands to the guest, in alternate
glances of admiration and
respect.

“Have you a <i>carte</i>?”

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir—two of
them; likewise a shay and a covered
car.”

“A wine carte, I mean.”

“No, sir; we get the wine from
Dublin in hampers.”

Percy Bingham forgot that he
was not in an English inn where
the waiters discuss vintages and
prescribe peculiar brands of dry
champagne.

“What wines have you?”

“We’ve port wine, sir, and sherry
wine, sir, and claret wine, sir, and
Mayderial wine, sir,” was the reply,
run off with the utmost rapidity.

“Get me a bottle of sherry!”

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir.”

In a few minutes the gory-headed
factotum returned with the wine,
and, uncorking it with a tremendous
flourish of arm, napkin, head, and
hair, deliberately poured out an
overflowing glassful of the amber-colored
fluid, and drained it off.

“What the mischief do you mean?”
demanded the young officer angrily.
“I wanted for to make <i>certain</i>
that your honner was getting the
right wine.” And placing the bottle
at Percy Bingham’s elbow, he somewhat
hastily withdrew.

The gallant warrior enjoyed his
chicken and bacon and “wisp of
cabbage.” The waiter had made
his peace by concocting with cunning
hand a tumbler of whiskey-punch,
hot, strong, and sweet, which
Bingham proceeded to sip between
the whiffs of a Sabean-odored Lopez.
Who fails to build castles upon the
creamy smoke, as it fades imperceptibly
into space, wafting upwards
aspirations, wishes, hopes, dreams—rare
and roseate shadows, begotten
of bright-eyed fancy? Not
Percy Bingham, surely, seated by
the open casement, lulled by the
murmuring plash of the toying
tide, gazing forth into the silent
sadness of the gray-hooded summer
night. He had lived a butterfly
life, and his thoughts were of
gay parterres and brilliant flowers.
“Of hair-breadth 'scapes i’ the imminent
deadly breach” he knew
nothing. His game of war was
played in the boudoir and drawing-room;
his castle was built in
May Fair, his châtelaine an ideal.
The chain of his meditation was
somewhat rudely snapped asunder
by an animated dialogue which had
commenced in some remote region
of the hotel, and which was now
being continued beneath the window
whereat he reclined. The
waiter had evidently been engaged
in expostulating with Lanty Kerrigan.

“Don’t run yer head against a
stone wall, Lanty <i>avic</i>. Be off to
Knockshin, and don’t let the grass
grow under yer feet!”

“Faix, it’s little ould Joyce wud
think av me feet; it’s me back he’d
be lukkin for, an’ a slip av a stick.
Sorra a step I’ll go.”
.pn +1

“Miss Mary must get her parcel
anyhow.”

“Let her sind for it, thin, av she’s
in sich a hurry.”

“An’ so she did. Get a lind av
a horse, Lanty.”

“Sorra a horse there’s in the
place, barrin’ an ass.”

“Wirra! wirra! She’ll take the
tatch off the roof; the blood of
the Joyces is cruel hot.”

“Hot or cowld, I’m not goin’ three
mile acrass the bogs—-”

“<i>You</i> could coax it into two be
manes av a sup, Lanty.”

“Sorra a coax, thin. Coax it yerself,
sence yer so onaisy.”

“What’s the row?” asked Percy
Bingham from the window.

“It’s in regard to a parcel for
Miss Joyce, yer honner,” replied
Lanty, stepping forward.

“And who is Miss Joyce?” said
Percy, intensely amused.

“O mother o’ Moses! he doesn’t
know the beautifullest craythur in
the intire cunthry,” exclaimed Lanty,
hastily adding: “She’s the faymale
daughther av ould Miles Joyce,
of Knockshin beyant, wan av the
rale owld anshient families that kep’
up Connemara sence the times av
Julius Saysar.”

“And you have a parcel for her?”

“Troth, thin, I have, bad cess to
it! It kem up Lough Corrib, an’
round be Cong, insted of takin’ the
car to Clifden, all the ways from
Dublin, in a box as big as a turf
creel. It’s a gownd—no less—for a
grate party to-night; an’, begorra,
while <i>it’s</i> lyin’ here they’re goin’ to
stay at Frinchpark.”

“It’s too bad,” thought Bingham,
“to have the poor girl sold on account
of the laziness of this idle
rascal. Her heart may be set upon
this dress. A new ball-dress is an
epoch in a young girl’s existence,
and a ball dress in this out-of-the
way place is a fairy gift. <i>Hinc illæ
lachrymæ!</i> How many hopes
cruelly blasted, how many anticipated
victories turned into humiliating
defeat. If it were not so late—By
Jove! it shall <i>not</i> be.” And
yielding to a sudden impulse, Percy
Bingham ordered Kerrigan to start
for Knockshin.

“It’s five mile, yer honner, an’—”

“There is sixpence a mile for
you. Go!” And in another instant
the parcel-laden Lanty had taken
to the bog like a snipe.

Percy Bingham attacked his
breakfast upon the following morning
with a gusto hitherto unknown
to him. “I wonder did that girl”—he
had forgotten her name—“get
the dress in time? I hope so. How
fresh these eggs are! I wonder if
she’s as pretty as that ragamuffin
described her? These salmon cutlets
are perfection. I must have a
look at her, at all events. 'Pon my
life! those kidneys are devilled to
a grain of pepper. This ought to
be a good trout day. One more
rasher. By George! if the colonel
saw me perform this breakfast, he’d
make me exchange into the heavies.”

Lighting a cigar and seating himself
upon a granite boulder by the
edge of the inlet, the purple mountains
shutting him in from the world,
he proceeded to assort his flies and
to “put up” his casts.

“Musha, but yer honor has the
hoighth av decoys!” observed Lanty
Kerrigan, touching the dilapidated
brim of his caubeen, and seating
himself beside him. There is a
masonry amongst the gentle craft
which levels rank, and “a big fish”
will bring peer and peasant cheek
by jowl on terms of the most familiar
intercourse.

“Yes, that’s a good book,” said
Percy, with a justifiable pride in his
.pn +1
tone. The colors of the rainbow,
the ornithology of the habitable
globe, were represented within its
parchment folds. “This ought to
be a good day, Lanty.”

“Shure enough,” looking up at
the sky. “More betoken, I seen
Finnegan’s throut as I come acrass
the steppin’-stones there below.”

“Finnegan’s trout! What sort
of a trout is that?” asked the
officer.

“Pether Finnegan was a great
fisher in these parts, yer honor.
Nothin’ cud bate him. He’d ketch a
fish as shure as he wetted a line, an’
no matther how cute or cunnin’, he’d
hav thim out av the wather before
they cud cry murther. But there
was wan ould throut of shupayrior
knowledge that was well fed on the
hoighth av wurrums an’ flies, an’ he
knew Pether Finnegan, an’, begorra,
Pether knew <i>him</i>. They used
for to stand foreninst wan another
for days an’ days, Pether flappin’
the wather, an’ th’ ould throut
flappin’ his tail. 'I’ll hav ye, me
man,’ sez Pether. 'I’ll have ye, av
I was to ketch ye in me arms like
a new born babe', sez he. 'I never
was bet be a man yet,’ sez he, 'an’
be the mortial I’m not goin’ for to be
bet be a fish.’ So he ups, yer honor,
an’, puttin’ a cupple o’ quarts o’
whiskey in his pockets for to keep
up his heart, he ups an’ begins for
to fish in airnest an’ for the bare
life. First he thried flies, an’ thin
he thried wurrums, an’ thin he
thried all soarts av combusticles;
but th’ ould throut turned up his
nose at the entirety, an’ Pether seen
him colloguerin’ wud the other
throuts, an’ puttin’ his comether on
thim for to take it aisy an’ lave
Pether’s decoys alone. Well, sir,
Pether Finnegan was a hot man an’
aisy riz—the heavens be his bed!—an’
whin he seen the conspiracy for to
defraud him, an’ the young throuts
laffin’ at him, he boiled over like a
kittle, an’ shoutin’, 'I’ll spile yer
divarshin,’ med a dart into the river.
His body was got, the bottles was
safe in his pockets, but, be the mortial
frost, th’ ould throut got at
the whiskey an’ dhrank it every
dhrop.”

“I must endeavor to catch him,”
laughed Percy Bingham.

“Ketch him!” exclaimed Lanty
indignantly. “Wisha, <i>you</i> wudn’t
ketch him, nor all the fusileers an’
bombardiers in th’ army wudn’t
ketch him, nor th’ ould boy himself—the
Lord be betune us an’
harm!—wudn’t ketch him. He’s as
cute as the say-sarpint or the whale
that swallied Juno.”

“What do the trout take best
here?” asked Bingham, whose preparations
were nearly completed, his
rod being set up and festoons of
casting-lines encircling his white
felt hat.

“Wurrums is choice afther a
flood; dough is shupayrior whin
they’re leppin’ lively; but av all the
baits that ever consaled a hook
there’s non aiquail to corbait—it’s
the choicest decoy goin’. A throut
wud make a grab at a corbait av
the rattles was in his troath an’ a
pike grippin’ him be the tail.”

Lanty Kerrigan was told off as
cicerone, guide, philosopher, and
friend.

“I suppose I am safe in fishing
these rivers. No bailiff or hinderance?”
asked Percy Bingham of
the landlord of the “Bodkin
Arms.”

“There’s no wan to hinder you,
sir; so a good take to you,” was the
reply. “I hope ye won’t come
across old Miles Joyce, for if ye do
there’ll be wigs on the green,” he
added under his breath as he turned
into the bar.
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
          A cook it was her station,
          The first in the Irish nation.
Wud carvin’ blade she’d slash away to the company’s admiration,
.pm verse-end

sang Lanty Kerrigan, prolonging
the last syllable—a custom with his
class—into a kind of wail, as he
merrily led the way through a narrow
mountain pass, inaccessible save
to pedestrians, in the direction of
the fishing-ground. It was a sombre
morning. Nature was in a meditative
mood, and forbade the prying
glances of the sun. The white
mists hung like bridal veils over hill
and dale, mellowing the dark green
of the pine-trees and the blue of
the distant Atlantic, occasionally
visible as they pursued their zigzag,
upward course. A light breeze—“the
angler’s luck”—gently fanned the
cheek, and the sprouting gorse and
tender ferns were telling their rosaries
on glittering beads of diamond
dew.

“This is Lough Cruagh, yer
honor, an’ there’s the boat; av ye
don’t ketch the full av her, it’s a quare
thing.” The lake, a pool of dark-brown
water, lay in the lap of an
amphitheatre of verdureless, grim,
gaunt-looking mountains. It was a
desolate place. No living thing
broke upon the solitude, and the silence
was as complete as if the barren
crags had whispered the single
word “hush” and awaited the
awful approach of thunder. A road
ran by the edge of the lake, but it
was grass-grown and showed no
sign of traffic, not even the imprint
of a horse’s foot.

“Now she’s aff,” cried Lanty, seizing
the oars. “Out wud yer flies, an’
more power to yer elbow.”

The sport was splendid. No
sooner had his tail-fly touched the
water than an enormous trout
plunged at it with a splash like that
of a small boy taking a header, and
away went the line off the reel as
though it were being uncoiled by machinery—up
the lake, down the lake,
across the lake; now winding in,
now giving the rod until it bent like
a whip; now catching a glimpse of
the fish, now fearing for the line on
the bottom rocks.

“If the gut howlds ye’ll bate him,
brave as he is,” exclaimed Lanty
Kerrigan in an ecstasy of apprehension.

The fish was taking it quietly—<i>il
faut reculer pour mieux sauter</i>—preparing
for another effort. Percy
Bingham wiped the perspiration
from his brow; his work was cut
out for him.

“Now’s the time for a dart o’
sperrits,” said Kerrigan, dexterously
shipping his oars and unfastening
the lid of the hamper. “Ye won’t,
yer honner?”—Bingham had expressed
dissent. “Well, begorra,
here’s luck, an’ that it may be good,”
pouring out a dropsied glassful and
tossing it off. “That’s shupayrior,”
with a smack; “its warmin’ me
stomick like a bonfire! Whisht!” he
added in an alarmed whisper, “who
the dickens is this is comin’ along
the road?”

A mail phaeton, attached to a
pair of spanking grays, came swiftly
and silently along the grass-grown
causeway. An elderly, aristocratic-looking
man was driving,
and beside him sat a young and
beautiful girl. “Be the hokey!
we’re bet; it’s ould Miles Joyce
himself,” cried Lanty Kerrigan.

“Is that Miss Joyce, the young
lady to whom you took the box
last night?” asked Percy somewhat
eagerly.

“Och wirra! wirra! to be shure
it is, an’ that same box is our only
chance now.”

“Pull nearer shore, Lanty,” said
the young officer, who was very
anxious for a stare. “Good style,”
.pn +1
he muttered. “Tight head, delicious
plaits, Regent Street hat—<i>ma
foi!</i> who would think of meeting
anything like this in a devil’s
punchbowl? Pull <i>into</i> shore, man,”
he testily cried.

“Shure I’m pullin’ me level
best.”

“Not <i>that</i> shore, you idiot. Pull
for the carriage.” Lanty was straining
in the opposite direction.

“Are ye mad, sir?” whispered
Kerrigan. “I wudn’t face ould
Joyce this blessed minit for a crock
o’ goold.”

The carriage drew up, and the
driver in an authoritative voice
shouted: “Bring that boat here.”

“We’re bet; I tould you so,”
gasped Lanty, reluctantly heading
the boat in the direction of the
carriage. A few strokes brought
them to the beach.

Percy Bingham raked up his eye-glass
and gazed ardently at Mary
Joyce, who returned the stare with
compound interest. Irish gray
eyes with black, sweeping lashes,
hawthorn-blossoms on her brow,
apple-blossoms on her cheeks, rose-buds
on her lips, purple blood in
her veins, youth and grace and
modesty hovering about her like a
delicious perfume.

“May I ask by whose authority
you are fishing here?” Mr. Joyce
was pale, and suppressed anger scintillated
in his eyes. There are a
great many things to be done with
impunity in Connemara, but poaching
is the seven deadly sins rolled into
one. “Thou shalt not fish” is the
eleventh commandment. Bingham
felt the awkwardness of his position
at a glance, and met it like a gentleman.

“I cannot say that I am here by
any person’s authority. I am stopping
at the 'Bodkin Arms’—”

“Och murther! murther! howld
your whisht,” interposed Lanty in a
hoarse whisper.

“Silence, fellow!” cried Bingham.
“I am stopping at the 'Bodkin
Arms,’ and, upon asking the proprietor
if there was any hinderance
to my fishing, he replied that there
was none. I ought, perhaps, to have
been more explicit with him.”

“Av coorse ye shud,” interrupted
Lanty.

“And I can only say”—here he
stared very hard at Mary Joyce—“that
it mortifies me more than I
can possibly express to you to be
placed in this extremely painful position.”

“Do not say one word about it,”
said Mr. Joyce in a courteous tone.
“With the proprietor of the 'Bodkin
Arms’ I know how to deal, and
with you too, Lanty Kerrigan.”
Lanty wriggled in the boat till it
rocked again. “But as for you, sir,
all I can say is that I regret to have
disturbed your fishing, and I wish
you very good sport.” And he bowed
with haughty politeness.

“I thank you very much for your
courtesy,” bowed Bingham, who had
by this time landed from the boat,
“but I shall no longer continue an
intruder.” And seizing his rod, he
snapped it thrice across his knee
and flung it into the lake.

It was Mary Joyce’s bright eyes
that led him to this folly—he wanted
to be set right with her.

“Oh! how stupid,” she exclaimed,
starting to her feet.

“Thrue for ye, miss,” added
Lanty—“two-pound tin gone like a
dhrink, an’ an illigant throut into
the bargain.”

“A wilful man must have his
way,” said Mr. Joyce; “but I hope,
sir, that you will afford me an opportunity
of enabling you to enjoy
a day’s sport in better waters than
these.” And lifting his hat, he waved
.pn +1
an adieu as the fiery grays plunged
onwards and out of sight.

And Mary Joyce! Yes, that charming
little head bent to him, those
sweeping lashes lifted themselves
that the glory of her gray eyes
might be revealed to him, the rose-bud
lips had dropped three perfumed
petals, three insignificant little
words, “Oh! how stupid”; and
these were the first words in the
first chapter of Percy Bingham’s
first love.

He found the following note
awaiting him at the hotel:

.pm letter-start
“<sc>Knockshin</sc>, June 28.

“Mr. Joyce will be happy if Mr.
Bingham will take a day on Shauraunthurga—Monday,
if possible—as
Mr. J. intends fishing upon that
day. A salmon rod and flies are at
Mr. Bingham’s disposal.

“—— <sc>Bingham, Esq.</sc>”
.pm letter-end

Percy Bingham sent a polite acknowledgment
and acceptance, and
wished for the Monday. It was
very late that night when the warrior
returned to his quarters. He
had been mooning around Mary
Joyce’s bower at Knockshin.

“What Masses have you here,
Foxey?” asked Bingham of the
waiter, whose real name was Redmond,
but to whom this appellation
was given on account of the color
of his hair.

“The last Mass is first Mass now,
sir. Father James is sick, and Father
Luke, a missioner, is doing duty for
the whole barony.”

“Is Mr. Joyce, of Knockshin, a
Catholic?” This in some trepidation.

“Yes, sir, <i>of</i> course, sir—wan of
the ould stock, sir; and Miss Mary,
his daughter, sir, plays the harmonicum,
sir, elegant.”

“What hour does Mass commence?”

“That’s the first bell, sir, but
they ring two first bells always.”

Percy Bingham belonged to a
family that had held to the faith
when the tide of the Reformation
was sweeping lands, titles, and
honors before it. He fought for the
Catholic cause when it became
necessary to strike a blow; and as
he was the only “popish” officer in
the regiment, his good example developed
into a duty.

Just as he arrived at the church
door the Joyce carriage drew up.
Mr. Joyce handed out his daughter.
The gray eyes encountered those
of the young officer, who lifted his
hat. Such a smile!—a sunbeam on
the first primrose of spring.

“I was glad to get your note,
Mr. Bingham. Could you manage
to come over to breakfast? Military
men don’t mind a short
march.” And Mr. Joyce shook
hands with him.

“Am I to have the pleasure of
hearing Miss Joyce’s harmonium
to-day?” asked Percy.

“No; Miss Joyce’s harmonium
has a sore throat.”

Poor Bingham struggled hard to
say his prayers, to collect his wandering
thoughts. He was badly
hit; the ruddy archer had sent his
arrow home to the very feathers.
He humbly waited for a glance
as Miss Joyce drove away after
Mass, and he got it. He was supremely
happy and supremely miserable.

The “missioner,” a young Dominican,
very tall and very distinguished-looking,
crossed the chapel
yard, followed by exclamations
of praise and admiration from <i>voteens</i>
who still knelt about in picturesque
attitudes: “God be good
to him!” “The heavens open to
him!” “May the saints warm him
to glory!” while one old woman,
.pn +1
who succeeded in catching the
hem of his robe, exclaimed enthusiastically:

“Och, thin, but it’s yerself that
knows how to spake the word o’
God; it’s yerself that’s the darlint
fine man. Shure we never knew
what sin was till ye come amongst
us.”

Percy Bingham found Knockshin
a square-built, stone mansion,
with a “disinheriting countenance”
of many windows, surrounded
by huge elms containing
an unusually uproarious rookery.
A huge “free classic” porch surmounted
a set of massive steps,
supported by granite griffins grasping
shields with the Joyce arms
quartered thereon. A lily-laden
pond, encircled by closely-shaven
grass sacred to croquet, stood opposite
the house, and a pretentious
conservatory of modern construction
ran along the greater portion
of one wing.

The gallant warrior, regretting
certain London-built garments reposing
at Westport, arrayed himself
in his “Sunday best,” and, being
somewhat vain of his calves,
appeared in all the woollen bravery
of Knickerbockers and Highland
stockings.

Miss Joyce did the honors of the
breakfast-table in white muslin
and sunny smiles. Possessing the
air of a high-born dame, there was
an Irish softness, like the mist on
the mountains, that imparted an indescribable
charm to all her movements,
whilst a slight touch of the
brogue only added to the music of
a voice ever soft, gentle, and low.

Percy, who could have talked like
a sewing-machine to Lady Clara
Vere de Vere, found his ideas dry up,
and, when violently spurred, merely
develop themselves in monosyllables.
He had rehearsed several
bright little nothings which were to
have been laid like <i>bonbons</i> at her
feet. Where were they now?

She knew some men in the service—Mr.
Poynter in the Rifles. Did
he know Mr. Poynter, who danced
so well, talked so charmingly, and
was <i>so</i> handsome? Yes, he knew
Poynter, and hated him from that
moment. Did he know Captain
Wyberts of the Bays, the Victoria
Cross man whom she had met at
the Galway Hunt Ball? He knew
Wyberts, and cursed the luck that
placed no decoration upon <i>his</i> tunic
but a silken sash.

“By the way, you <i>must</i> be the
gentleman who interested himself
in my toilet on Friday night.
Lanty Kerrigan spoke burning
words in your favor, if <i>you</i> are the
<i>preux chevalier</i>. Are you?”

“I assure you, Miss Joyce, I
didn’t know who you were at the
time, when the blackguards seemed
lazy about your parcel.”

“If you had known me, would
that have made any difference, Mr.
Bingham?” she asked laughingly.

“It would.”

“In what way?”

“I would have thrashed Lanty
Kerrigan and have brought the
parcel myself.” He threw so much
earnestness into this that the red
blood flushed up to the roots of
Mary Joyce’s rich brown hair. “I
must see to my tackle,” she said in
a confused way.

“Are you an angler, Miss Joyce?”

“Look at my boots”—a pair of
dainty, dumpy little things such as
Cinderella must have worn on
sloppy days when walking with the
prince, with roguish little nails all
over the soles crying, “Stamp on us;
we like it,” and creamy laces fit for
tying up bride-cake.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Percy
Bingham, and that was all he was
.pn +1
able to reach at that particular moment.
He thought afterwards of
all he could have said and—didn’t.

A walk of half a mile brought
them to the Shauraunthurga, or
“Boiling Caldron,” whose seething
waters dashed from rock to rock,
and boiled in many whirlpools as it
rushed madly onwards to the wild
Atlantic.

What did Bingham care about the
fishing? Not a dump. He stood
by <i>her</i> side, set up <i>her</i> cast, sorted
<i>her</i> flies, spliced the top joint of <i>her</i>
rod, and watched with feverish anxiety
the eccentric movement of
<i>her</i> gorgeous decoy, as it whirled
hither and thither, now on the peat-brown
waters, now in the soap-suds-like
foam.

“<i>Bravissima!</i> Splendidly struck!”
he cried with enthusiastic delight—he
felt inclined to pat her on the
back—as the young Galway girl,
with “sweet and cunning” hand,
hooked her fish with the <i>aplomb</i>
and dexterity of a Highland gillie.
“Give him line, plenty of rope, and
mind your footing!”

“A long hour by Shrewsbury
clock” did Mary Joyce play that
salmon. Her gloves were torn to
shreds, her hat became a victim
to the Shauraunthurga, her sheeny
hair fell down her shoulders long
below her waist, her boasted boots
indicated eruptive tendencies, but
the plucky girl still held on. “Let
me alone, please,” she would cry
as her father or Bingham tendered
their services; “I’m not half-tired
yet.” The color in her cheeks, the
fire in her eye, the delicate nostril
expanded, the undulating form—the
British subaltern saw all this,
and almost envied the fish, inasmuch
as it was her centre point of
interest.

“The landing-net! Quickly! I
have him now!”

Percy Bingham darted forward,
caught his foot in the gnarled root
of a tree, and plunged headforemost
into the boiling waters. An expert
swimmer, he soon reappeared and
swam towards the bank, still grasping
the net. Finding his right arm
powerless, and having succeeded in
gaining footing, he placed the net
beneath the fish, which with a
bound sprang clear, and, breaking
the line that Miss Joyce had slackened
in her anxiety for the safety
of her guest, was, in an exhausted
condition, floundering down the
stream, when Percy, by a supreme
effort, clasped it fiercely in his left
arm and flung himself on to the
bank.

“<i>Your</i> fish after all. But you
look ill, Mr. Bingham—dreadfully
ill,” cried the agitated girl. “Your
arm—”

“Is broken,” he said.

Assisted by Mr. Joyce and his
daughter, and with the fractured
limb in a sling constructed of
handkerchiefs and fishing-line, poor
Bingham returned to the house.
He fought bravely against the
pain, and attempted one or two
mournful jokes upon the subject
of his mishap; but every step was
mortal anguish, and he expected to
feel the serrated edges of the bones
sawing out through his coat-sleeve.

“I must insist upon being permitted
to return to my hotel, Mr.
Joyce,” said Percy Bingham when
they had arrived.

“If you want <i>every</i> bone in your
body broken, you’ll repeat that again,
Bingham. Here is a room ready
for you, and here, in the nick of
time, is Doctor Fogarty.”

“I cotch him at the crass-roads,”
panted the breathless messenger
whom Mr. Joyce had despatched
in quest of the bone-setter.

“A broken arm, pooh hoo! And
.pn +1
so it is—an elegant fracture, pooh
hoo! You did it well when you
went about it. Lend me your
scissors, Miss Mary, and tear up a
sheet into bandages. I’ll soon set
it for him, pooh hoo! Ay, wince
away, <i>ma bouchal</i>; roar murdher,
and it will do you good, pooh hoo!
Some splints now. Fell into the
river, pooh hoo! After a salmon.
You landed him like a child in
arms. I forgive you, pooh hoo!
I’ve room for the fish in me gig,
and broiled salmon is—pooh hoo!
That’s it; the arm this way, as if ye
were goin’ to hit me. Well done,
pooh hoo! <i>Ars longa est</i>; so is your
arm—an elegant biceps, pooh hoo!
Now, sir, tell me if there’s a surgeon-major
in the whole British army,
horse, foot, and dragoon, that could
set your arm in less time, pooh
hoo?” and the doctor regarded the
swathed and bandaged limb with
looks of the profoundest admiration.

“I shall want to get to barracks—”

“Ne’er a barracks will ye see this
side of Lady Day; so make your
mind easy on that score, pooh hoo!
Keep in bed till I see you again,
pooh hoo! I’ll order you something
to take about bed-time, but
it <i>won’t</i> be whiskey-punch, pooh
hoo!” And the genial practitioner
pooh-hoo’d out of the apartment.

How delightful is convalescence—that
dreamy condition in which the
thoughts float upwards and the
earthly tenement is all but etherealized!
Percy Bingham, as he reclined
upon a sofa at an open window,
through which the perfume of
flowers, the hum of summer, with the
murmur of the rolling Shauraunthurga,
stole like strains of melody,
lay like one entranced, languidly
sipping the intoxicating sweets of
the hour, forgetful of the past,
unmindful of the future. The
events of the last few days seemed
like a vision. Could it be possible
that he would suddenly awake and
find himself in the dismal walls of
his quarters at Westport, far, far
away from chintz and lace and
from <i>her</i>? No; this was <i>her</i> book
which lay upon his lap; that bouquet
was culled by <i>her</i> fair hands; the
spirited sketch of a man taking a
header spread-eagle fashion was
from <i>her</i> pencil and must be sent
to <i>Punch</i>. She was in everything,
everywhere, and, most of all, in the
inner sanctuary of his heart.

He had not seen much of her—a
visit in the morning like a gleam
of sunlight; a chat in the gloaming,
sweet as vesper-bell; occasional
badinage from the garden to his
window, and that was all. How
could he hope to win her, this
peerless girl, this heiress of the
“Joyce country,” whose gray eyes
rested upon mead and mountain,
lake and valley, her rightful dower?
He sickened at the thought. Had
she been poor, he would woo, and
perhaps—It was not to be. He
had tarried till it was too late; he
had cut down the bridge behind him,
burned his boats, and he must now
ford the river of his lost peace of
mind as best he might.

Days flew by, and still the young
officer lingered at Knockshin.
Like the fairy prince in the enchanted
wood, he could discover no
exit. Croquet had developed into
short strolls, short strolls into long
walks, long walks into excursions.
His arm was getting strong again.
Mr. Joyce talked “soldier” with
him. He had been in the Connaught
Rangers, and went through pipe-clay
and the orderly book with the freshness
of a “sub” of six weeks’
standing. Mary—what did she
speak about? Anything, everything,
.pn +1
nothing. Latterly she had
been eloquently silent, while Percy
Bingham, if he did not actually,
might have fairly, counted the beatings
of his heart as it bumped
against his ribs. They spoke more
at than to each other, and when
their eyes met the glance was withdrawn
by both with electrical rapidity.
It was the old, old story.
Why repeat it here?

“Mary, Jack Bodkin, your old
sweetheart, is coming over for a few
days’ fishing,” exclaimed Mr. Joyce
one morning upon the arrival of
the letter-bag.

Miss Joyce blushed scarlet—a
blush that will not be put off; a
blush that plunges into the hair,
comes out on the eyelids, and sets
the ears upon fire—and Percy Bingham,
as she grew red, became deadly
white. The knell had rung, the
hour had come.

“This is from the colonel,” extending
a letter as he spoke, the
words choking him, “and—and I
must say good-by.”

“Sorry for it, Bingham, but duty
is duty. No chance of an extension?”
asked Joyce.

“None, sir.”

And <i>she</i> said not a word. There
was crushing bitterness in this. Mr.
Bodkin’s arrival blotted out <i>his</i> departure.
Would that he had never
seen Knockshin or Mary! No, he
could not think that, and, now that
he was about to leave her, he felt
what that severance would cost
him.

The car was waiting with his <i>impedimenta</i>,
and he sought her to say farewell.
She was not in the conservatory
or drawing-room, and as a last
chance he tried the library. Entering
noiselessly, he found Mary Joyce
leaning her head upon her hands,
her hands upon the mantel-piece
and sobbing as if her heart would
break.

“I beg your pardon!” he stammered.
“Is—is—anything the—”

“A bad toothache,” she burst in
passionately, without looking up.

What could he do? What could
he say?

“I—I—do not know how to apologize
for—for—intruding upon your
anguish”—the words came very slowly,
swelling, too, in his throat—“but
I cannot, <i>cannot</i> leave without wishing
you good-by and thanking
<i>you</i> for the sunniest hours of my
life.”

“You—you are g-going, then?”
without looking round.

“I go to—to make room for
Mr. Bodkin.”

She faced him. Her eyes were red
and swollen, but down, down in
their liquid depths he beheld—something
that young men find
once in a lifetime. He never remembered
what he did, he never
recollected what he said, but the
truth came out as such truths will
come out.

“And to think that you first
learned of my existence through
the medium of a pitiful ball-dress!”
she said, glowing with beautiful happiness.

.tb

“I shall not require the car,”
said Percy Bingham an hour later,
throwing Lanty Kerrigan a sovereign.

“Bedad, ye needn’t have tould
me,” exclaimed Lanty with a broad
grin. “I seen yez coortin’ through
the windy.”
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=evolution
PROF. YOUMANS <i>v.</i> DR. W. M. TAYLOR ON EVOLUTION AND THE COPERNICAN THEORY.
.sp 2
The <i>Popular Science Monthly</i>, conducted
by Mr. E. L. Youmans, labors
hard (December, 1876) to support
the assertion made by Professor
Huxley that evolution is already
as well demonstrated as the Copernican
theory. This assertion had
been refuted by the Rev. Dr. William
M. Taylor in a letter to the
New York <i>Tribune</i>, and it is against
a portion of this letter that Mr.
Youmans strives to defend Mr.
Huxley’s evolutionary views. We
ourselves have given a short refutation
of Professor Huxley’s lectures
on evolution,[#] and we had no intention
to revert to the same subject;
but since opposite writers are
unwilling to acknowledge defeat,
but pretend, on the contrary, that
their opponents do not make a
right use of logic, it may be both
instructive and interesting to inquire
what kind of logic is actually
used in this controversy by the evolutionists
themselves.

.fn #
See <sc>The Catholic World</sc> for February, 1877,
page 616.
.fn-

“It is significant,” says Mr. Youmans,
“that nearly all the divines
who have spoken in reply to
Prof. Huxley commit themselves
to some form of the doctrine of
evolution.” This statement is not
correct. Divines admit, as they
have ever admitted, the development
of varieties within the same
species; but the pretended evolution
of one species from another they
have never admitted, and they do
not look upon it as admissible, even
now. There may be some exception,
for divines are still human
and may be imposed upon by false
science; but the truth is that those
among them who have replied to
Prof. Huxley never meant to “commit
themselves” to any form of the
doctrine of evolution as presented by
him. They admit, as Mr. Youmans
remarks, “that there is <i>some</i> truth
in it”—which is by no means
strange, as false theories have often
been evolved from undeniable
facts; but they raise “a common
protest against the idea that it contains
<i>much</i> truth,” which shows
that these divines were quite unwilling
to commit themselves to the
doctrine. Hence it is plain that,
if the conduct of these divines is
“significant,” it does not signify
a yielding disposition, but the contrary.

Prof. Huxley had said that the
evidence for the theory of evolution
is demonstrative, and that it is
as well based in its proofs as the
Copernican theory of astronomy.
“This,” says Mr. Youmans, “is
thought to be quite absurd. It is
said that Huxley may know a great
deal about animals and fossils, but
that obviously he knows very little
about logic. His facts being
admitted, a great deal of effort has
been expended to show that he does
not understand how to reason from
them.” We agree with the critics
here alluded to, that Prof. Huxley’s
assertion concerning the demonstrative
character of his proofs is “quite
absurd.” As to his knowledge of
logic, there might perhaps be two
opinions; for a man may know logic,
.pn +1
and make a wilful abuse of it;
but it is more charitable to assume
that his illogical conclusions proceed
from ignorance rather than
malice. After all, we are not concerned
with the person of the professor,
but with his lectures; and,
whatever logic he may know, his
lectures are certainly not a model
of logical reasoning. The passage
which Mr. Youmans extracts from
Dr. Taylor’s letter, and which he
vainly endeavors to refute, is as follows:

.pm letter-start
“Indeed, to affirm, as he [Prof. Huxley]
did, that evolution stands exactly
on the same basis as the Copernican
theory of the motions of the heavenly
bodies, is an assertion so astounding
that we can only 'stand by and admire’ the
marvellous effrontery with which it was
made. That theory rests on facts presently
occurring before our eyes, and treated
in the manner of mathematical precision.
It is not an inference made by
somebody from a record of facts existing
in far-off and pre-historic, possibly also
pre-human, ages. It is verified every
day by occurrences which happen according
to its laws. But where do we see
evolution going on to-day? If evolution
rests upon a basis as sure as astronomy,
why do we not see one species passing
into another now, even as we see the
motions of the planets through the heavens?...
We know that astronomy is
true, because we are verifying its conclusions
every day of our lives on land and
on sea. We set our clocks according to
its conclusions, and navigate our ships
in accordance with its predictions; but
where have we anything approaching
even infinitesimally to this, with evolution?”
.pm letter-end

Mr. Youmans remarks that the
author of this passage is said to
be a man of eminence and ability.
“That may be,” he adds, “but he
certainly has not won his distinction
either in the fields of logic, astronomy,
or biology.” To prove this,
he makes the following argument:

.pm letter-start
“When a man undertakes to state the
evidence of a theory, and gives us proofs
that equally sustain an opposite theory,
we naturally conclude that he does not
know what he is talking about. This is
very much Dr. Taylor’s predicament. In
trying to contrast the evidence for evolution
with the demonstrative proofs of the
Copernican theory, he cites facts that
are not only as good, but far better, to
prove the truth of its antagonist, the
Ptolemaic theory.”
.pm letter-end

Our readers will probably ask
how it is possible to prove that a
thing is black by the very facts
which prove, even better, that the
thing is white? That certain facts
may be insufficient to prove either
the one or the other of two opposite
theories every one will admit;
but that facts which are good to
prove the movement of the earth
are even better to prove its immobility,
is what Mr. Youmans alone
has the privilege of understanding.

Dr. Taylor, in his argument
against Prof. Huxley, assumed the
truth of the modern astronomical
theory, and said that this theory
was proved by facts presently occurring
before our eyes; which is
not the case with the hypothesis of
evolution. But, as he did not mention
in particular those facts which
are considered to constitute the
most irrefragable proof of the theory,
his silence about them is interpreted
by Mr. Youmans as an
effect of ignorance. It is not our
affair to defend Dr. Taylor; but
we think that this interpretation is
unfair. The reverend doctor was
not writing a treatise of astronomy;
he was simply stating a known doctrine,
of which it was not his duty
to make the demonstration. On
the other hand, even if we admitted
that the reverend doctor knows
but little of astronomy, we do not
see that this would weaken his argument;
for, whether he knows
much or nothing in this branch
.pn +1
of science, it remains true that the
Copernican theory is proved “by
facts presently occurring before our
eyes”—which is not the case with
the hypothesis of evolution. It is
to this truth that Mr. Youmans
should have given his attention, if
he desired “to win any distinction
in the field of logic”; but his peculiar
logic shrank from this duty,
and prompted him to prefer a gratuitous
denunciation of his opponent.

Mr. Youmans pretends that Dr.
Taylor “talks as if the Copernican
theory is something that anybody
can see by looking up in the sky.”
Dr. Taylor’s words do not admit
of such a nonsensical construction.
The Copernican theory, he
says, “rests on facts presently occurring
before our eyes, and treated
in the manner of mathematical
precision.” This obviously means
that the Copernican theory is based
on both observation and calculation.
Now, surely Mr. Youmans
will not maintain that we can find
mathematical formulas and make
astronomical calculations by simply
“looking up in the sky.”

He goes on to say that the Ptolemaic
theory was the fundamental
conception of astronomy; that it
guided its scientific development
for two thousand years; that it
was based on extensive, prolonged,
and accurate observations;
that it was elucidated and confirmed
by mathematics; that it was
<i>verified</i> by confirming the power
of astronomical prevision; and
that the planetary motions were
traced and resolved on this theory
with great skill and correctness,
elaborate tables being constructed,
which represented their irregularities
and inequalities, so that their
future positions could be foretold,
and conjunctions, oppositions, and
eclipses predicted.

These and similar remarks of the
scientific editor would tend to
prove that the Congregation of the
Holy Office had very good and
substantial grounds for condemning
the heliocentric theory, and
that Galileo was a visionary; for
the theory which he impugned was
“confirmed by mathematics,” and
“verified by confirming the power
of astronomical prevision.” We
are quite sure, however, that this is
not what Mr. Youmans intended to
prove; and yet it does not appear
why he should fill a column of his
magazine with such a panegyric of
a defunct theory. We concede—and
the fact has never been disputed—that
astronomy owes an immense
debt to the ante-Copernican
investigators for their careful
observations and laborious calculations;
but we do not see how this
has anything to do with Dr. Taylor’s
criticism. Had the reverend
doctor denied that there was any
real knowledge of astronomy before
Copernicus, his critic might have
been justified in trying to enlighten
him about the merits of the Ptolemaic
astronomers; but Dr. Taylor
had not committed himself on
this point, and therefore had no apparent
need of being enlightened
on the subject. The information,
consequently, which Mr. Youmans
volunteers to offer him is superfluous,
not to say impertinent, and, inasmuch
as it professes to be an argument,
is a complete failure; for it
aims at proving what no one has
ever denied.

But the scientific editor in giving
his needless information commits
another blunder, which we
could hardly expect from a man of
science, by affirming that the Ptolemaic
theory “was elucidated and
confirmed by mathematics.” Mathematics
confirmed nothing but the
.pn +1
order and quality of the phenomena,
and the law of their succession.
Before Kepler and Newton no
mathematics could decide whether
the sun revolved around the earth
or the earth around the sun. Astronomical
phenomena were known,
but this knowledge was a knowledge
of facts, not of their explanation.
The Ptolemaic hypothesis
was not inconsistent with the facts
then observed, but it was <i>assumed</i>,
not <i>verified</i>. If such a theory had
been verified, its truth would be
still recognized, and the Copernican
theory would have had no
chance of admission. But evidently
it is not the theory that has
been verified, but only the apparent
movements of celestial bodies.
Thus “the elaborate tables” by
which the future positions of the
planets could be foretold prove
indeed the accuracy of ancient astronomical
observations and calculations,
but they are no evidence
that the geocentric theory was correct.

Mr. Youmans informs us, also,
that “Copernicus did not abolish,
but rather revised, the old astronomy.”
If the words “old astronomy”
are taken to express merely
the knowledge of celestial phenomena,
we have nothing to reply; but
if those words be understood to
mean the Ptolemaic theory, the assertion
is ridiculous. Indeed, Copernicus,
as Mr. Youmans says,
“simply recentred the solar system”;
that is, he simply put the
sun, instead of the earth, in the
centre of the planetary orbits. Nothing
but that. But who does not
see that to give a new centre to the
solar system was to suppress the
old centre, and therefore to <i>abolish</i>
the geocentric theory? Why Mr.
Youmans should labor to insinuate
the contrary we cannot really understand.
Dr. Taylor, against
whom he writes, had said nothing
concerning either the personal
views of Copernicus or the old system
of astronomy, but had simply
maintained that the so-called Copernican
theory, as mentioned by
Prof. Huxley, and as understood
by all—that is, as perfected by Kepler,
Newton, and others—stands
to-day on such a basis of undeniable
facts that we can no longer
hesitate about its truth. This
statement might have been contradicted
two centuries ago; but we
fancy that it ought not to give rise
to the least controversy on the
part of a modern cultivator of science,
however much determined to
find fault with his opponent.

Dr. Taylor had said, as we have
noticed, that the Copernican theory
“rests on facts presently occurring
before our eyes.” Mr. Youmans
answers: “So does the Ptolemaic
theory; and not only that, but, if
the test is what occurs before our
eyes, then the Ptolemaic theory is
a thousand times stronger than the
Copernican.” If this answer expresses
the real opinion of Mr. Youmans,
we must conclude that he
alone, among physicists, is ignorant
of the fact that terrestrial gravitation
is modified by the centrifugal
force due to the rotation of the
earth, and that this fact is established
by experiments which “occur
before our eyes” when we
make use of the pendulum in different
latitudes. What shall we say
of the aberration of light? Is not
this phenomenon a proof of the
movement of the earth? Or does it
not “occur before our eyes”? Mr.
Youmans may say that these facts
do not occur before all eyes, but
only before the eyes of scientific
men. But Dr. Taylor had not
maintained that all the facts connected
.pn +1
with the Copernican theory
occur before all eyes; and, on the
other hand, Foucault’s pendulum,
even though oscillating before unscientific
eyes, makes visible to the
dullest observer the shifting of the
horizontal plane from its position
at a rate proportional to the sine
of the latitude of the place, thus
showing to the eye the actual
movement of our planet. It is
true, therefore, that the Copernican
theory “rests on facts presently
occurring before our eyes.”

But, if the Copernican theory is
so obvious, “why,” asks Mr. Youmans,
“did the astronomers of
twenty centuries fail to discern it?
Why could not the divines of Copernicus’
time see it when it was
pointed out to them? And why
could not Lord Bacon admit it a
hundred years after Copernicus?”
The <i>why</i> is well known. The Copernican
theory was at first nothing
more than a hypothesis; and its
truth, even after Kepler and Newton,
was still in need of experimental
confirmation. Had Lord Bacon or
the divines of Copernicus’ time
seen what we see with our eyes in
Foucault’s experiment, there is little
doubt that they would have recognized
at last the truth of the new
theory. But let this suffice about
the certitude of the Copernican
theory.

The second part of Mr. Youmans’
article regards the theory of evolution.
This theory assumes that the
immense diversity of living forms
now scattered over the earth has
arisen from gelatinous matter
through a long process of gradual
unfolding and derivation within the
order of nature (that is, without
supernatural interference) and by
the operation of natural laws. Mr.
Youmans says that this theory “is
built upon a series of demonstrated
truths.” This assertion would have
some weight, if such a building had
not been raised in defiance of logic;
but we have already shown that
Prof. Huxley’s <i>Three Lectures on
Evolution</i> teem with fallacies most
fatal to the cause he desired to uphold.
Hence, while we admit that
“demonstrated truth” is a very solid
ground to build upon, we maintain
that not a single demonstrated truth
can be logically alleged in support
of the theory of evolution. But let
Mr. Youmans speak for himself:

.pm letter-start
“It is a fact accordant with all observation,
and to which there never
has been known a solitary exception,
that the succession of generations
of living things upon earth is by reproduction
and genetic connection in the
regular order of nature. The stream
of generations flows on by this process,
which is as much a part of the settled,
continuous economy of the world as the
steady action of gravity or heat. It is
demonstrated that living forms are liable
to variations which accumulate through
inheritance; that the ratio of multiplication
in the living world is out of all proportion
to the means of subsistence, so
that only comparatively few germs mature,
while myriads are destroyed; that,
in the struggles of life, the fittest to the
conditions survive, and those least adapted
perish. It is a demonstrated fact
that life has existed on the globe during
periods of time so vast as to be incalculable;
that there has been an order in its
succession by which the lowest appeared
first, and the highest have come last,
while the intermediate forms disclose
a rising gradation. It is a demonstrated
truth of nature that matter is
indestructible, and that, therefore, all
the material changes and transformations
of the world consist in using over and
over the same stock of materials, new
forms being perpetually derived from old
ones; and it is a fact now also held to
be established that force obeys the same
laws. All these great truths harmonize
with each other; they agree with all we
know of the constitution of nature; and
they demonstrate evolution as a fact, and
go far toward opening to us the secondary
question of its method.”
.pm letter-end
.pn +1

These are, according to Mr. Youmans,
the “demonstrated truths”
on which the theory of evolution
has been built, and which, according
to the same writer, “demonstrate
evolution as a fact.” We
think, on the contrary, that the only
fact demonstrated by this passage
is the blindness (voluntary or not)
of a certain class of scientists. A
cursory examination of it will suffice
to convince all unprejudiced men
that such is the case.

That the stream of generations
flows on “by reproduction and genetic
connection in the regular order
of nature” is indeed a fact accordant
with all observation, and
to which there never has been
known a solitary exception; but all
observation proves that the regular
order of nature in generation is
confined within the limits of the
species to which parents belong.
This precludes the possibility of
drawing from this fact any conclusion
in favor of evolution.

That living forms “are liable
to variations, which accumulate
through inheritance,” is <i>not</i> a demonstrated
fact. We see, on the
contrary, that all such accidental
variations, instead of accumulating,
tend to disappear within a few generations,
whenever they cease to be
under the influence of the agencies
to which they owe their origin. But
let us admit, for the sake of argument,
that all living forms are liable
to variations which accumulate
through inheritance; then we ask
whether all such variations are confined
within the limit of each species,
or some of them overstep that
limit. If they are confined within
that limit, the fact proves nothing
in favor of the evolution of species.
If, on the contrary, any one says
that they overstep that limit, then
the fact itself needs demonstration;
for it has never been observed.
Therefore to argue from this fact
in favor of evolution is to beg the
question. We have no need of
dwelling on Mr. Youmans’ statement
that the ratio of multiplication
in the living world is out of all
proportion to the means of subsistence,
so that only comparatively
few germs mature, while myriads
are destroyed. The statement is
true; but it has nothing to do with
the theory of evolution. That, in
the struggles of life, the fittest to
the conditions survive, is another
fact which does not in the least
bear out the theory. For the fittest
among animals are those which
enjoy the plenitude of their specific
properties, and which, therefore,
are best apt to transfuse them into
their offspring whole, unmixed, and
unimpaired.

We are told, also, that life has existed
during periods of time so vast
as to be incalculable. This we admit.
But then, in the succession
of life, there has been an order, “by
which the lowest appeared first, and
the highest have come last, while
intermediate forms disclose a rising
gradation.” This, too, we may admit,
though not without reservations;
for Prof. Huxley himself
confesses that numerous intermediate
forms do not occur in the order
in which they ought to occur
if they really had formed steps in
the progression from one species to
another; for we find these intermediate
forms mixed up with the higher
and the lower ones “in contemporaneous
deposits.” But, even
supposing that the lowest forms
precede the highest, what evidence
would this be in favor of evolution?
The order of succession may indeed
prove that the lower forms
existed before the higher forms
were created; but it does not show
.pn +1
that the lower forms are the parents
of the higher. This is merely assumed
by the evolutionists as a
convenient substitute for proof;
that is, they first assume that evolution
is a fact, and then conclude
that the fact of evolution is established.

Lastly, that matter is indestructible,
and that therefore all the material
changes and transformations
of the world consist in using over
and over the same stock of materials,
is a doctrine which has no
special bearing on the question.
When a new individual of any
living species is generated, its organism
is indeed formed out of old
matter; but this had no need of
demonstration. What our evolutionists
ought to show is that new
individuals of a certain species
have been generated by individuals
of some other species; and this
surely cannot be shown by a recourse
to the indestructibility of
matter. That matter is indestructible
is, however, a groundless assertion.
For though natural forces
cannot destroy it, God, who has
created it, and who keeps it in existence,
can always withdraw his
action, and let it fall into its primitive
nothingness. And as to the
so-called “fact” now also held to
be established, that “force obeys
the same laws”—that is, that force
is indestructible, and that new forms
of force are perpetually derived
from old ones—we need only remark
that the theory of transformation
of forces, as held and explained
by our advanced scientists, is
but a travesty of truth, and an impotent
effort to upset the principle
of causality. Neither statical nor
dynamical forces are ever transformed.
Indeed, they have no form
attached to them. What our modern
physicists call “transformation
of force” is nothing but the
change of one kinetic phenomenon
into another—that is, a succession
of modes of movement of various
kinds. Now, modes of movement
are modes of being, not of force,
though they are the measure of the
dynamical forces by which they
have been produced. The force
with which any element of matter
is endowed is constantly the same,
both as to quality and as to quantity.
Its exertion alone, owing to
a difference of conditions, admits
of a higher and a lower degree of
intensity. As we do not intend at
present to write a treatise on forces,
we will only add that the forces of
matter are exercised on other matter
by transient action, but cannot
perform immanent acts calculated
to modify their own matter. If
they could do this, matter would
not be inert. Hence animal life,
which requires immanent acts, cannot
be accounted for by the forces
of matter. And therefore, whatever
our scientists may say about the
conservation of energy and the
transformation of forces, they have
no right to infer that animal life
can be evolved out of matter alone;
and they have still less right to pretend
that such is “the fact.”

What shall we say, then, of Mr.
Youmans’ assertion that the alleged
reasons “demonstrate evolution as
a fact”? We must say, applying
Dr. Taylor’s words to the case, that
the assertion is “so astounding
that we can only 'stand by and admire’
the marvellous effrontery with
which it has been made.” A man
of Mr. Youmans’ ability can scarcely
be so ignorant of logic as not to
see that his reasons demonstrate
evolution neither as a fact nor as a
probability, and not even as a possibility;
but when a man succeeds
in blinding himself to the existence
.pn +1
of a personal God, and substitutes
nature in the place of her Creator,
we need not be surprised if his
logic turns out to be a clumsy attempt
at imposition.

Dr. Taylor had asked why we
do not see one species passing into
another, even as we see the motions
of the planets through the heavens.
The question was pertinent; for
Prof. Huxley had maintained that
“evolution rests on a basis as sure
as astronomy.” Mr. Youmans answers:
“To this foolish question,
which has nevertheless been asked
a dozen times by clerical critics of
Huxley, the obvious answer is that
what requires a very long time to
produce cannot be seen in a very
short time.” We think that the
question was not <i>foolish</i>, and that
the answer of Mr. Youmans is a
mere evasion. For, if evolution is
a fact, we must find numerous
traces of it not only in the fossil
remains, but also in the actual economy
of nature. If the bird is
evolved from the lizard, there must
be actually among living creatures
a numerous class of intermediate
forms, some more, others less developed,
exhibiting all the stages
of transformation through which
the lizard is gradually developed
into a bird. Thus, because the
acorn develops into the stately oak,
we find in nature oaks of all the
intermediate sizes; and because babyhood
develops into manhood, we
find in nature individuals of all intermediate
ages. In like manner,
if the evolution of one species from
another is not a fable, we must find
in nature specimens of all the intermediate
forms. Dr. Taylor’s
question was, therefore, most judicious.
That Mr. Youmans’ reply
to it is a mere evasion a little reflection
will show; for the length
of time required for the process of
transformation would only prove
that the intermediate forms must
remain longer in existence; whilst
the fact is that such forms do not
exist at all.

“There has been much complaint,”
says Mr. Youmans, “that
Prof. Huxley undertook to put the
demonstrative evidence of evolution
on so narrow a basis as the
establishment of the genealogy of
the horse; but this rather enhances
than detracts from his merit as a
scientific thinker.” Here the case
is misstated. Had Prof. Huxley
really demonstrated evolution by
the genealogy of the horse, no one
would have complained that the
basis was too narrow; but as it became
manifest that the basis was
not only narrow but questionable,
and that it afforded no evidence
whatever of evolution, it was thought
that it required a “marvellous effrontery”
on the part of Prof. Huxley
to maintain before the American
public that the genealogy of
the horse gave “demonstrative evidence”
of evolution. This is the
reason why there has been so much
complaint. Prof. Huxley simply
insulted his audience when he asked
them to believe that evolution
was a demonstrated fact.

Mr. Youmans tells us that the
vital point between Prof. Huxley
and his antagonists is the question
of the validity of the conception
of order and uniformity in nature.
“Prof. Huxley holds to it as a first
principle, a truth demonstrated by
all science, and just as fixed in
biology as in astronomy. His antagonists
hold that the inflexible
order of nature may be asserted
perhaps in astronomy, but they deny
it in biology. They here invoke
supernatural intervention.” This
statement is utterly false. There is
no question about the order and
.pn +1
uniformity of nature; and it is not
to Prof. Huxley or to modern science
that we are indebted for the
knowledge of this uniformity either
in astronomy or in biology; the
world has ever been in possession
of this indisputable truth. The
real question between Prof. Huxley
and his antagonists is that nature,
according to the professor, is independent
in its being and in its
working, and has an inherent power
of fostering into existence a series
of beings of higher and higher specific
perfection, from the speck of
gelatinous matter even to man;
whereas nature, according to the
professor’s antagonists, and according
to science, revelation, and common
sense, is not independent either
in its being or in its working,
and has no inherent power of forming
either a plant without a seed
or an animal without an ovum of
the same species. If Prof. Huxley
had had any knowledge of that part
of philosophy which we call metaphysics,
and which our advanced
scientists affect so much to despise
because they cannot cope with it,
he would have seen the absurdity
of his assumption; and if Mr. Youmans
had consulted the rules of
logic, he would not have said that
the “uniformity of nature” was
with Prof. Huxley a “first principle”;
it being evident that uniformity
clashes with evolution, which
is a change of forms.

The last argument of the editor
of the <i>Popular Science Monthly</i> in
behalf of evolution is as follows:

.pm letter-start
“Obviously there are but two hypotheses
upon the subject—that of genetic
derivation of existing species through
the operation of natural law, and that of
creation by miraculous interference with
the course of nature. If we assume the
orderly course of nature, development is
inevitable: it is evolution or nothing.
If the order of nature is put aside and
special creation appealed to, we have a
right to ask, On what evidence?...
There is no evidence. There is not a
scintilla of proof that can have a feather’s
weight with any scientific mind....
Has anybody ever seen a special creation?”
.pm letter-end

We answer, first, that even if it
were true that “there is no evidence”
in support of the <i>creation</i>,
it would not follow that there is
any evidence, either scientific or
of any other kind, in support of the
<i>evolution</i> of one species from another.
Indeed, in spite of all the
efforts of “advanced” thinkers, we
have not yet been furnished with
“a scintilla of proof that can have
a feather’s weight” with a philosophical
mind; on the contrary, we
have been informed by no less an
authority than Mr. Huxley that
“no connecting link between the
crocodile and the lizard, or between
the lizard and the snake, or between
the snake and the crocodile, or between
any two of these groups,” has
yet been found—a fact which, if
not destroyed by further discoveries,
is “a strong and weighty argument
against evolution,” as the professor
confesses. Hence it is evident that
the existing palæontological specimens,
far from proving the theory,
form a strong and weighty objection
against it. The consequence
is that, even if we had no evidence
of the creation of species, it would
yet be more reasonable to accept
creation, against which no objection
can be found, than to accept
evolution.

But we are far from conceding
that the creation of species is unsupported
by evidence of a proper
kind. Mr. Youmans may laugh at
the Bible; but we maintain that the
Biblical record constitutes historical
evidence. He may also laugh
at philosophical reasoning, for his
.pn +1
mind is too “scientific” to care for
philosophy; but we believe that
philosophical evidence is as good,
at least, as any which can be met
with in the <i>Popular Science Monthly</i>.
Animals have a soul, which elicits
immanent acts; they know, they
feel, they have passions; and, if we
listen to some modern thinkers,
they have even intelligence and reason.
Now, matter is essentially inert,
and therefore cannot elicit immanent
acts. Hence animals are
not mere organized matter; and
accordingly they cannot be evolved
from matter alone. Their soul
must come from a higher source;
it must be created. Science has
nothing to say against this; it can
only state its ignorance by asking:
“Has anybody ever seen a special
creation?” Of course nobody has;
but there are things which are seen
by reason with as great a clearness
as anything visible to the eye; and
this is just the case with creation.
On the other hand, why should
Mr. Youmans pretend that creation
must be seen to be admitted, when
he admits evolution, though he has
never seen it? If seeing is a condition
for believing, why did he
treat as <i>foolish</i> Dr. Taylor’s question
concerning the passing of one
species into another? Why did he
ask: “Has the writer ever seen the
production of a geological formation?”
Surely, if evolution were
proved to be a fact, we would admit
it, without having seen it; but, since
it is creation, not evolution, that
has been shown to be a fact, we
are compelled to admit it, even
though nobody has had the privilege
of seeing the event.

When Mr. Youmans declares that
“there is not a scintilla of proof”
(in favor of special creations) “that
can have a feather’s weight with
any scientific mind,” he evidently
assumes that no scientific mind has
existed before our time; which is
more than even Huxley or Darwin
would maintain. But infidel science
is equally blind to the scientific
merit of its antagonists, and to
the blunders which it is itself daily
committing. Thus Mr. Youmans,
no doubt to show that he has a
“scientific mind,” speaks of the derivation
of species “through the
operation of natural law”—a phrase
which has no meaning; for law is
an abstraction, and abstractions do
not operate. Nor is it more “scientific”
to assume that the creation
of species was “a miraculous interference
with the course of nature”;
for the course of nature required
the creation of species, just as it
now requires the creation of human
souls for the continuance of humanity;
and God cannot be said
to have interfered with the course
of nature by doing what nature required
but could not do. Is it any
more “scientific” to write <i>Nature</i>
with a capital letter? Of course,
if there is no God, nature is all,
and atheists may write it <i>Nature</i>.
Mr. Youmans does not tell us
clearly that there is no God; but
he shows clearly enough that to his
mind <i>Nature</i> is everything; which
is, in fact, a virtual denial of a personal
God. If we were to inform
him that nature is only a servant
of God, he would perhaps ask, “On
what evidence?” And because we
would be unable to point out a
chemical residuum or a geologic
formation wherein God could be
made visible to him, he would conclude
that “there is no scintilla
of proof that can have a feather’s
weight with a scientific mind.”
He then assumes that in the orderly
course of nature the evolution of
species is “inevitable.” It did not
occur to his scientific mind that
.pn +1
before making such an assertion, it
was necessary to examine how far
the powers of nature extend; for
he might have discovered that matter
is inert, and that it was a great
blunder to assume that inert matter
produced animal life.

He further supposes that when
special creations are appealed to,
“the order of nature is put aside.”
He therefore pretends that the order
of nature would not allow of
the creation of plants and animals,
evidently because it was nature’s
duty to perform without extrinsic
intervention all those wonderful
works which we attribute to the
wisdom and omnipotence of the
Creator. We maybe unscientific;
but we defy Mr. Youmans to show,
either scientifically or otherwise,
the truth of his assumption. To
tell us that the evolution of life
from dead matter was within the
order of nature, without even attempting
to prove that nature had
a power adequate to the task, is
just as plausible as to tell us that
Prof. Huxley has created the Niagara
Falls or that Mr. Darwin has
painted the moon. And yet the
author of such loose statements
airs his scientific pretensions and
speaks of “scientific minds”!

We have no need to follow Mr.
Youmans any further; for what he
adds consists of assumptions cognate
to those we have already refuted.
“Genetic derivation,” he
says, “is in the field as a real and
undeniable cause”—which is an
open untruth. “Has anybody seen
a special creation?” This is irrelevant.
“Do those who believe
in a special creation represent to
themselves any possibility of how
it could have occurred?” Probably
they do, if they have read the
first chapter of Genesis. “Milton
attempted to form an image of the
way the thing was done, and says
that the animals burst up full-formed
and perfect like plants out of
the ground—'the grassy clods now
calved.’ But clods can only calve
miraculously.” Quite so; but we
must not be afraid of miracles,
when we cannot deny them without
falling into absurdities. “Nature
does not bring animals into
the world now by this method, and
science certainly can know nothing
of it.” Yes; but there are many
other things of which infidel science
is ignorant. And yet we fancy that,
when animals have been once created,
even infidel science might
have discerned that their procreation
no longer required “the grassy
clods to calve.”

But enough. We conclude that,
so far from being possible, so far
from being probable, so far from
being proved, the hypothesis of
the origin of animal forms by evolution
is simply unthinkable; it is
a violation not only of the order
of nature, but of the very condition
of thought and of the first
principle of science, which is the
principle of causality. When will
our scientific men understand that
there is no science without philosophy?
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=waif
A WAIF FROM THE GREAT EXHIBITION, PHILADELPHIA, 1876
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“Their store-houses full, flowing out of this into that.

“They have called the people happy that hath these things: but happy is that people whose God is
the Lord.”—Ps. cxliii.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
I.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
With face storm-lined and bronzed, no longer young,
  That seemed as if its soul’s dim life had grown
  On lonely farm, in rugged inland town
Lying, a narrow world, bleak hills among,
A stranger gazed amid the wealth and glare
  Of all the nations’ gathered industry
  Where rose the light, symmetric tracery
Of Munich’s altars worked in colors fair;
Where good St. Joseph with the lilies stood;
  And soft-eyed martyr with her branch of palm,
  And full, sweet lips smiling with happy calm,
Seemed beaming witness 'mid the multitude
Of glittering toys and earth’s huge, unworked store,
Of nobler purpose man’s life resting o’er.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
II.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Here stretched its naked arms the blessèd Rood,
  Whose desolation eloquent below
  God’s Mother sat in soundless deeps of woe,
Her sad knees holding all her earthly good.
Here stood the stranger with a look intent
  Wherein no light of recognition woke,
  As if he read in some strange-lettered book.
Then, asking what these unguessed figures meant,
An answer came: “Our Lord, dead 'neath the Cross.”
  “Ah! yes, and that is Mary, I suppose—
  The Mother.” Ah! what wondering thoughts uprose
To die in silence, winning so some loss,
Perchance, unto two lives. Sweet Mother, pray
That soul accuse not mine on judgment day!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
III.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
So strange and sad the simple question seemed;
  As if on those far hills God’s voice had built,
  Upon those souls for whom his blood was spilt
Some shadow rested, amid which scarce gleamed
The mournful splendor by his dark Cross thrown:
  As if stern life grew but more hard and bare,
  Missing the presence of the Maiden rare
Whose God made her unstained flesh his own;
Who held him on her arms a helpless child,
  With love no mother ever knew before;
  Holding, when Calvary’s dread hours were o’er,
The Man of Sorrows where her Babe had smiled—
Her arms the cradle of the Almighty One,
Her arms His spotless shroud, life’s labor done.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
IV.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Alas! such faith to men denied who grope
  Half in a fear begotten not of love,
  Half in cold doubt, seeking all things to prove,
To none hold fast, with whom divinest hope
Holds naught more excellent than earth’s to-days;
  For whom in vain doth Israel’s lily bloom,
  With its white sunshine lighting hours of gloom,
Shining 'mid thorns that seek to crush its grace—
So dimming the broad rays of love divine
  With earthly shadow cast on earthly things
  That folded keep their gift of heavenly wings,
Lest, soaring, they lose sight of lesser shrine
Lest, heart so kindling with the Spirit’s fire,
Feet lowly tread that eyes be lifted higher.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
V.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Slow turning through the glimmering aisles to range,
  Amid the hum the loitering footsteps wrought
  I lost the questioning face, but not the thought
Of that dim life, to which the night seemed strange
Of Calvary’s God, to whom all life is owed—
  That clouded life wherein Faith’s pure sunshine
  Casts faintest gleam of its strong light divine
That strengthens soul, makes fair the daily load.
Far down the hall full notes of organ poured,
  And broke in song strong voices manifold;
  Glad alleluias all exultant rolled,
As if proclaiming on each soaring chord:
“Happy the people of this wealth possessed!”
Nay, Happy they whom God the Lord hath blessed.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=englishrule
ENGLISH RULE IN IRELAND.
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
The present condition of a people
is the latest phase of a life that
has run through centuries, in all
the events of which there may be
traced the relation of cause and
effect, and whose continuity has
never been interrupted, though at
times the current may seem to
leave its channel, or even to disappear.
The past never dies, but
with each succeeding moment receives
a fuller existence, survives
as a curse or a blessing. The passion
which urges the human mind
back to ages more and more
remote, until the gathering darkness
shuts out even the faintest
glimmer of light, is not mere curiosity,
nor even the inborn craving
for knowledge; rather is it the
consciousness that those ancient
times and far-off deeds still live in
us, mould us, and shape our ends.
We were with Adam when he
plucked and ate the forbidden
fruit, and that his act should work
in us yet, like a taint in the blood,
seems to be a postulate of reason
not less than a truth of tradition
or revelation. The cherishing of
great names, the clinging to noble
memories, the use of poetry, music,
sculpture, painting, architecture, or
any art, to give form and vividness
to glories, heroisms, martyrdoms,
are but the expression of this
consciousness that the present is
only the fuller and more living
past. No vanity, much less scorn
or hate, should prompt any one to
lift into the light the glory or the
shame of a people’s history. As
we tread reverently on the ground
where human passions have contended
for the mastery, we should
approach with religious awe the
facts which have made the world
what it is.

There are many persons, who
certainly have no prejudices against
the Irish people, many true and
loyal Irishmen even, who strongly
object to the prominence given to
the sorrows and sufferings of Ireland.
They would have us forget
the past and turn, with a countenance
fresh and hopeful as that
of youth, to the future. Sydney
Smith, full of English prepossessions
but an honest lover of liberty, who
labored as earnestly and fearlessly
as any man of his generation in behalf
of the wronged and defenceless,
could not restrain his impatience
when he thought of the
fondness with which Irishmen cling
to old memories and sacred associations.
In his opinion the object
of all government is roast
mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout
constable, an honest justice, a clear
highway, and a free chapel. “What
trash,” he exclaimed, “to be bawling
in the streets about the Green
Isle, the Isle of the Ocean, the
bold anthem of <i>Erin go bragh</i>! A
far better anthem would be, Erin
go bread and cheese, Erin go cabins
that will keep out the rain,
Erin go pantaloons without holes
in them.”

This may be very well, but we
are persuaded that there is not an
abuse or an evil in Ireland to-day
.pn +1
which has not its roots in the remote
past, or which can be understood
or remedied without a knowledge
of Irish history.

The bold anthem of <i>Erin go
bragh</i>, which so provoked Sidney
Smith, is the thread that leads us
through the labyrinth. It is because
the Irish are not English that
England is neither able nor willing
to treat them justly; and if she
has rendered herself guilty of the
greatest social crime in all history,
it is because she has clung for centuries
with terrible obstinacy to a
policy which left the people of
Ireland no alternative between denationalization
and extermination.
When in England the national spirit
dominated and absorbed the religious
spirit, the Irish, who had
so long maintained their separate
nationality, adhered with invincible
firmness to the old faith. This
was imputed to them as a crime,
and became the pretext for still
more grievous persecutions. If
they were resolved to be Irish and
Catholic, England was not less resolved
that they should be outlaws
and beggars. They were to have
no bread or potatoes, or cabins that
would keep out the rain, so long as
they persisted in singing the bold
anthem and acknowledging the supremacy
of the pope. The history
of Ireland is in great part the history
of her wrongs; for a long time
to come, doubtless, it will be a history
of suffering; and if those who
write of her find that they are placing
before their readers pictures
of death, exile, persecution, beggary,
famine, desolation, violence, oppression,
and of every form of human
misery, they are but describing
the state to which her conquerors
have reduced her.

But there are special reasons for
dwelling upon the wrongs of Ireland.
For three hundred years the
Irish people themselves and their
faith have been held responsible,
wherever the English language is
spoken, for the crimes of England.
The backwardness of Irish industry,
and the seeming want of energy of
the people in improving their condition,
are habitually imputed by
statesmen and public instructors to
a peculiar indolence and recklessness
in the Celtic race, fostered and
encouraged by what is supposed to
be the necessary influence of the
Catholic religion.

The Irish are probably not more
Celtic than the French, who assuredly
are not excelled in thrift and industry
by any other people. There is no
country more Catholic than Belgium,
nor is there anywhere a more prosperous
or laborious people. Irishmen
themselves, it is universally admitted,
are hard workers in England,
in the United States, in Canada, in
Australia—wherever, in a word, the
motives which incite men to labor
are not taken from them; and yet
the popular prejudice on this subject
is so flattering to Anglo-Saxon
and Protestant pride that it remains
in the public mind like a
superstition, which no amount of
evidence can affect. In a former
article we have attempted to trace
some of the causes to which the
poverty and misery of Ireland must
be attributed, and we shall now
continue the investigation. During
the three centuries immediately following
the Conquest the country
was wasted by wars, massacres, and
feuds, carried on by the two armed
nations, which fiercely contended
for the possession of the soil. The
Anglo-Norman colony, entrenched
within the Pale, and receiving constant
supplies of men and money
from the mother-country, formed a
kind of standing army, ever ready
.pn +1
to invade and lay waste the territories
still held by the native population.
The Irish people, in self-defence,
and also with the hope
of driving the invader from their
shores, turned their whole attention
to war. All the pursuits of peace
were forgotten, and the island became
a camp of soldiers, who, when
not battling with the common enemy,
turned their swords against one another.
In such a state of society
no progress was possible. Then
came three centuries of religious
wars to add more savage fierceness to
the war of races. Under Elizabeth,
James I., Cromwell, and William of
Orange the whole country was confiscated.
The Catholics were driven
from their lands, hunted down,
their churches and monasteries
were burned or turned over to
Protestants, their priests were martyred
or exiled, their schools closed,
their teachers banished, their nobles
impoverished; and to make this
state of things perpetual the Penal
Code was enacted. To this point
there was complete harmony between
the home government and
the English colony in Ireland. But
England has rarely poured out her
treasure or her blood for other
than selfish and mercenary motives.
She therefore demanded, as the
price of her assistance in crushing
the Irish Catholics, that the commerce
and industry of Ireland
should be sacrificed to her own interests.
The House of Commons
declared the importation of Irish
cattle a public nuisance. They
were then slaughtered and salted, but
the government refused to permit
the sale of the meat. The hides
were tanned. The importation of
leather was forbidden. The Irish
Protestants began to export their
wool; England refused to buy it.
They began to manufacture it; an export
duty, equivalent to prohibition,
was put on all Irish woollen goods.
They grew flax and made linens;
England put a bounty on Scotch
and English linens, and levied a
duty on Irish linens. Ireland was
not allowed to build or own a ship—her
forests were felled and the timber
sent to England. The English
colonies were forbidden to trade
with her; even the fisheries were
carried on with English boats manned
by Englishmen. By these and
similar measures Irish commerce
and industry were destroyed. Nothing
remained for the people to do
but to till the soil. In this lay the
only hope of escaping starvation.
But they no longer owned the land;
it was in the hands of an alien aristocracy,
English in origin and sympathy,
Protestant in religion. The
Catholic people, without civil existence,
were at the mercy of an oligarchy
by whom they were both
hated and despised. These nobles
owed their titles, wealth, and power
to the violence of conquest, and, instead
of seeking to heal the wounds,
they were resolved to keep them
open. In France and in England
the Northmen were gradually fused
with the original population. They
lost their language, customs, almost
the memory of their cradle-land.
Even in Ireland a considerable portion
of the Norman conquerors became
Irish—<i>Hibernis hiberniores</i>.
But this partial assimilation of the
two races was effected in spite of
England, who made use of strong
measures both to prevent and punish
this degeneracy, as it was termed.
Had the union between the Irish
and the Normans not been prevented
by this violent and interested
policy, a homogeneous people would
have been formed in Ireland as in
England, and the frightful wrongs
and crimes of the last seven hundred
.pn +1
years would not have been
committed.

But the interests of England demanded
that Ireland should be kept
weak and helpless by internal discord;
and she therefore used every
means to prevent the fusion of the
two races. The “Irish enemy,”
ever ready to break in upon the
settlements of the Pale, was the
surest warrant of the loyalty of the
English colony to the mother-country,
whose assistance might at
any moment become essential to its
very existence. The native population,
on the other hand, was held
in check by the foreigner encamped
in the land. Had the Irish and
the English in Ireland united, they
would have had little trouble in
throwing off the yoke of England.
It was all-important, therefore, that
they should remain, distinct and inimical
races. All intercourse between
them was forbidden. Their
inter-marriage was made high treason.
It was a crime for an Englishman
to speak Irish, or for an Irishman
to speak English. The ancient
laws and customs of the Irish were
destroyed, and they were denied
the benefits of English law. As
yet the English and the Irish professed
the same religious faith; but
now even this powerful bond of
union was broken. Enemies on
earth, they looked to no common
hope beyond this life. Three centuries
of persecution and outrage
followed, during which the Catholic
Irish were reduced to such a
state of misery and beggary that
the only thing which remained in
common between them and their
tyrants was hate.

Here we have come upon the
well-spring of all the bitter waters
that have deluged Ireland. The
country is owned and governed by
a few men who have never loved
the country and have always hated
the people. Throughout the rest
of Europe, even in the worst times,
the interests of the lords and the
peasants were to some extent identical.
They were one in race and
religion, rendered mutual services,
gloried in a common country, and
shared their miseries. The noble
spent at least a part of the year on
his estates, surrounded by his dependants.
Kind offices were interchanged.
The great lady visited
the peasant woman in her sickness,
and the humanities of life were not
ignored. Elsewhere in Europe the
great land-owners, whether lay or
ecclesiastical, were, with rare exceptions,
kind to the poor, indulgent to
their debtors, willing to encourage
industry, to advance capital for the
improvement of the land, and thus
to promote their own interests by
promoting those of their tenants.
The privileged classes were not
wholly independent of the people.
If they were not restrained from
wrong-doing by love, they were often
held in check by a salutary
fear.

But nothing of all this was found
in Ireland, where the landlords
were in the unfortunate position of
having nothing to fear and nothing
to hope from the people. They
lacked all the essential conditions
of a native aristocracy. Their titles
were Irish, but all their interests
and sympathies were English.
They were the hired servants of
England, and they were not paid
to work for the good of Ireland.
They drew their revenues from a
country to which they rendered no
service; they were supported by
the labors of the people whom they
oppressed and hated; and they
rarely saw the land from which
they derived their wealth and titles,
but lived in England, where they
.pn +1
found a more congenial society,
and were not afflicted by the sight
of sufferings and miseries of which
they knew themselves to be the
authors. If the people, maddened
by oppression or hunger, revolted,
the Irish landlords were not disturbed;
for an English army was at
hand to crush the rebellion, which
was never attributed to its true
cause, but to the supposed insubordination
and lawlessness of the
Irish character. In England there
existed a middle class, which
bridged over the chasm that separated
the nobles from the peasants,
and which rendered the aristocracy
liberal and progressive by opening
its ranks to superior merit wherever
found; but in Ireland there were
only two classes of society, divided
the one from the other as by a wall
of brass. The authority of the
Protestant oligarchy over the Catholic
population was absolute, and
they contracted the vices by which
the exercise of uncontrolled power
is always punished. To the narrowness
and ignorance of a rural gentry
were added the brutality and
coarseness of tyrants. The social
organization prevented the infusion
of new blood which had saved the
English aristocracy from decay and
impotence, and the general stagnation
of political and commercial life
in Ireland had the effect of helping
on the degeneracy of the ruling
caste. Everything, in a word,
tended to make the Irish landlords
the worst aristocracy with which
a nation was ever cursed; and, by
the most cruel of fates, this worst
of all aristocracies was made the
sole arbiter of the destinies of the
Irish people, of whose pitiable
condition under this rule we have
already given some account.

We turn now to consider the
causes which have brought a certain
measure of relief to the people
of Ireland; and we must seek for
them, not in the good-will or sense
of justice of Irish or English Protestants,
but in circumstances which
took from them the power of continuing
without some mitigation a policy
which, if ruinous to the Irish
people, was also full of peril to
England.

It is pleasant to us, as Americans,
to know that the voice which proclaimed
our freedom and independence
was heard in Ireland, as it has
since been heard throughout the
earth, rousing the nations to high
thoughts of liberty, ringing as the
loud battle-cry of wronged and oppressed
peoples. The great discussions
which the struggle of the American
colonies awoke in the British
Parliament, and in which the very
spirit of liberty spoke from the lips
of the sublimest orators, sent a thrill
of hope through Irish hearts, while
the Declaration of Independence
filled their oppressors with dismay.
In 1776 we declared our separate existence,
and in 1778 already some of
the most odious features of the Penal
Code were abolished. “A voice from
America,” said Flood, “shouted to
Liberty.” Henceforward Catholics
were permitted to take long leases,
though not to possess in fee simple;
the son, by turning Protestant, was
no longer permitted to rob his father,
and the laws of inheritance which
prevented the accumulation of property
in the hands of Catholics were
abrogated. This was little enough,
indeed, but it was of inestimable
value, for it marked the turning-point
in the history of Ireland. A
beginning had been made, a breach
had been opened in the enemy’s
citadel. But this was not all that
the American Revolution did for
Ireland.

The sympathies of the Presbyterians
.pn +1
of the North went out to their
brethren who were struggling on
the other side of the Atlantic.
They also had grievances compared
with which those of the colonies
were slight; their cause was identical,
and the success of the Americans
would be a victory for Ireland;
if England triumphed beyond the
seas, there would be no hope for
those who, being nearer, were held
with a more certain grasp. Hence,
in spite of the bitter hate which in
Ireland separated the Protestants
from the Catholics, they were drawn
together by a common interest and
sympathy in the cause of American
independence. England’s wars, both
in Europe and in her transatlantic
colonies, were a constant drain
upon her resources, and it became
necessary to supply the armies in
America with the troops which were
kept in Ireland to hold that country
in subjection. General Howe asked
that Irish papists should not be
sent as recruits to him, for they
would desert to the enemy. The
best men were therefore picked
from the English regiments and
sent to America; Ireland was denuded
of troops; the defences of
her harbors were in ruins; and she
was exposed to the attacks of privateers.
Something had to be done,
and Parliament agreed to allow the
Irish militia to be called out. As
an inducement to Catholics to enlist,
they were promised indulgences in
the exercise of their religion, but
this promise aroused Protestant
bigotry, ever ready to break forth.
The plan was abandoned, and the
defence of the country was committed
to the Volunteers.

In the meanwhile Burgoyne had
surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga,
France had entered into
alliance with the colonies, and
French and American privateers
began to swarm in the Irish Channel.
The English Parliament, now
thoroughly alarmed, and eager to
make peace with the rebels, passed
an act renouncing the right of taxing
the colonies, and even offered
seats in the House of Commons to
their representatives. These concessions,
which came too late to
propitiate the Americans, served
only to embolden the Irish in their
demands for the redress of their
grievances. The Americans were
rebels, and were treated with the
greatest indulgence; the Irish were
loyal, and were still held in the
vilest bondage. This was intolerable.
To add to the distress, one
of the periodical visitations of famine
which have marked English
rule in Ireland fell upon the country,
and the highways were filled
with crowds of half-naked and starving
people.

Thirty thousand merchants and
mechanics in Dublin were living on
alms; the taxes could not be collected,
and in the general collapse
of trade the customs yielded almost
nothing. The country was unprotected,
and there was no money in
the treasury with which to raise an
army. Nothing remained in this
extremity but to allow the Volunteers
to assemble; for the summer
was at hand, and every day the privateers
might be expected to appear
in the Channel. Company after
company was organized, and in
a very short time large bodies of
men were in arms. The Catholics
also took advantage of the general
excitement. If the Protestants
were in arms, why should they remain
defenceless?

Never before had there been such
an opportunity of extorting from
England the measures of relief
which she would never willingly
consent to grant. The threatening
.pn +1
danger, however, had no effect upon
the British Parliament.

The Irish Parliament met in
1779, and the patriots, strong in
the support of the Volunteers who
lined the streets of Dublin, demanded
free trade. The city was
in an uproar; a mob paraded before
the Parliament House, and
with threats called upon the members
to redress the wrongs of Ireland.
Cannon were trailed round
the statue of King William, with
the inscription,“Free trade or this,”
and on the flags were emblazoned
menacing mottoes—“The Volunteers
of Ireland,” “Fifty thousand
of us ready to die for our country.”

“Talk not to me of peace,” exclaimed
Hussey Burgh, one of the
leading patriots. “Ireland is not
at peace; it is smothered war.
England has sown her laws as dragon’s
teeth, and they have sprung
up as armed men.” All Ireland
was aroused. The Irish, said
Burke in the English House of
Commons, had learned that justice
was to be had from England only
when demanded at the point of the
sword. They were now in arms;
their cause was just; and they
would have redress or end the connection
between the two countries.
The obnoxious laws restricting
trade were repealed and in the
greatest haste sent over to Ireland
to calm the tempest that was brewing
there.

The effect went even beyond expectation.
Dublin was illuminated,
congratulatory addresses were sent
over to England, and people imagined
that Ireland’s millennium had
arrived. But the consequences of
centuries of crime and oppression
do not disappear as by the enchanter’s
wand; and one of the evils of
tyranny is the curse it leaves after
it has ceased to exist. In the wildness
of their joy the people exaggerated
the boon which they had
wrenched from England; the sober
second thought turned their attention
to what still remained to be
done.

In 1780 Grattan brought forward
the famous resolution which
declared that “the king, with the
consent of the Parliament of Ireland,
was alone competent to enact
laws to bind Ireland.” The time
could not have been more opportune.
The American colonies were
in full revolt; Spain and France
were assisting them; England had
been forced into war with Holland,
and her Indian Empire was
threatening to take advantage of
her distress to rebel. In the
midst of so many wars and dangers
it would have been madness
to have provoked Ireland to armed
resistance, and Grattan felt that
the hour had come when the Irish
people should stand forth as one
of the nations of the earth; when
all differences of race and creed
might be merged into a common
patriotism, and Celt and Saxon,
Catholic and Protestant, present
an unbroken front to the English
tyrant. “The Penal Code,” he
said, “is the shell in which the
Protestant power has been hatched.
It has become a bird. It must
burst the shell or perish in it. Indulgence
to Catholics cannot injure
the Protestant religion.”

The Volunteers were, with few
exceptions, Protestants, and their
attitude of defiance made the English
government willing to place
the Catholics against them as a
counterpoise; and it therefore offered
no opposition to measures
tending to relieve them of their
disabilities. But, under Grattan’s
influence, the Volunteers themselves
pronounced in favor of the
.pn +1
Catholics by passing the famous
Dungannon resolution: “That we,
[the Volunteers] hold the right of
private judgment in matters of religion
to be equally sacred in others
as in ourselves; that we rejoice
in the relaxation of the penal laws
against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects;
and that we conceive
these measures to be fraught
with the happiest consequences to
the union and prosperity of the inhabitants
of Ireland.”

In February, 1782, Grattan again
brought forward a motion to declare
the independence of the Irish
Legislature, and again it was
thrown out. The Dungannon resolution
was then introduced, and it
was proposed to abolish all distinctions
between Protestants and
Catholics. But to this the most
serious objections were raised, and
it was found necessary to make
concessions to Protestant bigotry.
The Catholics were permitted to
acquire freehold property, to buy
and sell, bequeath and inherit; but
the penal laws which bore upon
their religion, and their right to
educate their children at home or
abroad, as well as those which excluded
them from political life,
were left on the statute-book. Fanaticism
was stronger than patriotism,
and the enthusiastic love of
liberty was again found to be compatible
with the love of persecution
and oppression. But this injustice
in no way dampened the ardor of
the Catholics for the national independence;
and when, on the 16th
of April, 1782, Grattan moved a
Declaration of Rights, inspired probably
by our own Declaration of
Independence, he was greeted with
as wild a tumult of applause by
the Catholics as by his Protestant
countrymen. “I found Ireland,”
he said, “on her knees. I watched
over her with an eternal solicitude.
I have traced her progress from injuries
to arms, and from arms to
liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of
Molyneux, your genius has prevailed.
Ireland is now a nation.
In that new character I hail her,
and, bowing to her august presence,
I say, <i>Esto Perpetua</i>!”

The overwhelming popular enthusiasm
bore everything with it,
and opposition was useless. “It is
no longer,” wrote the Duke of Portland,
the viceroy, “the Parliament
of Ireland that is to be managed or
attended to; it is the whole of this
country.”

In England the Whigs, who were
in power, felt how hopeless would
be any efforts to stem the torrent,
and they therefore yielded with
grace. Fox admitted that Ireland
had a right to distrust British legislation
“because it had hitherto
been employed only to oppress and
distress her.” Ireland had been
wronged, and it was but just that
concessions should now be made to
her. The day of deliverance had
come, and, amidst an outburst of
universal enthusiasm, Ireland’s independence
was proclaimed.

The Catholics were the first to
feel the benefits of this victory.
The two Relief Bills, introduced
into Parliament in their favor, were
carried. They were permitted to
open schools and educate their own
children; their stables were no longer
subject to inspection, or their
horses above the value of five
pounds liable to be seized by the
government or taken from them by
Protestant informers; and their
right to freedom of religious worship
was fully recognized. They
recovered, in a word, their civil
rights; but the law still excluded
them from any participation in the
political life of the country, and
.pn +1
they were still forbidden to possess
arms. Nevertheless, another step
towards Catholic emancipation had
been taken. Two other laws, beneficial
to all classes of citizens, but
especially favorable to the poor and
oppressed Catholics, date from this
time: the Habeas Corpus Act
was granted to Ireland, and the
tenure of judges was placed on the
English level.

Unfortunately, the social condition
of the country was so deplorable
that this improvement in the
laws conferred few or no benefits
upon the impoverished and downtrodden
people. But at least there
was some gain; for if good laws do
not necessarily make a people prosperous,
bad laws necessarily keep
them in misery. The landed gentry
and Protestant clergy continued
without shame to neglect all the
duties which they owed to their
tenants, whose wretchedness increased
as the fortunes of Ireland
seemed to rise. To maintain the
Volunteers the rents were raised,
and the poor peasants, already
sinking beneath an intolerable burden,
were yet more heavily laden.
The proprietors of the soil spent
their time in riot and debauch while
the people were starving. They
were the magistrates and at the
same time the most notorious violators
of the law. “The justices
of the peace,” says Arthur Young,
“are the very worst class in the
kingdom.”

The clergy of the Established
Church were little better. Like
the landlords, they were generally
absentees, and employed agents to
raise their tithes, in the North from
the Presbyterians, and in other parts
of the island from the Catholics.
“As the absentee landlord,” says
Froude, “had his middleman, the
absentee incumbent had his tithe
farmer and tithe proctor—perhaps
of all the carrion who were preying
on the carcase of the Irish peasantry
the vilest and most accursed.
As the century waned and life grew
more extravagant, the tithe proctor,
like his neighbors, grew more grasping
and avaricious. He exacted
from the peasants the full pound of
flesh. His trade was dangerous,
and therefore he required to be
highly paid. He handed to his employer
perhaps half what he collected.
He fleeced the flock and he
fleeced their shepherd.” “The use
of the tithe farmer,” said Grattan,
“is to get from the parishioners
what the clergyman would be
ashamed to demand, and to enable
the clergyman to absent himself
from duty. His livelihood is extortion.
He is a wolf left by the
shepherd to take care of the flock
in his absence.”[#]

.fn #
<i>The English in Ireland</i>, vol. ii. p. 453.
.fn-

In the midst of the general excitement
the Catholic peasants grew
restless under this horrible system
of organized plunder and extortion.
They banded together and took
an oath to pay only a specified
sum to the clergyman or his
agent. The movement spread, and
occasional acts of violence were
committed. All Munster was organized,
and a regular war with the
tithe proctors was begun. In the
popular fury crimes were perpetrated
and the innocent were often
made to suffer with the guilty. Yet
so glaring were the wrongs and so
frightful the abuses from which the
peasants were suffering that they
everywhere met with sympathy.
The true cause of these disorders
was social and not political. Misery,
and not partisan zeal, had
driven the Catholics to take up
arms. The cry of hungry women
.pn +1
and children for bread resounded
louder in their ears than the shouts
of the patriots. They were without
food or raiment, and in despair they
sought to wreak vengeance upon
the inhuman tyrants who had reduced
them to starvation. Even
Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare,
was forced to admit that the Munster
peasants were in a state of
oppression, abject poverty, and misery
not to be equalled in the world,
and that the landlords and their
agents were responsible for the degradation
of these unfortunate beings.

Ireland was still a prey to agitations,
hopes, and sufferings when
the French Revolution of 1789
burst upon Europe. The cry of
Liberty, equality, fraternity sounded
as revelation to the struggling patriots.
Hitherto they had contended
for freedom, in the English and
feudal sense, as a privilege and a
concession; they now demanded it
as an imprescriptible right of man.
The American Declaration had indeed
proclaimed that all men were
free and equal, or of right ought to
be; but this was merely a pretty
phrase, a graceful preamble, in a
charter which consecrated slavery
and inequality. In America there
were no privileged classes, and the
people had not groaned beneath the
tyranny of heartless and effete aristocracies;
the evils of which their
leaders complained, compared with
those which weighed down the European
populations, were slight, almost
imaginary. But in France Liberty
and Equality was the fierce
and savage yell of men who hated
the whole social order as it existed
around them, and who, indeed, had
no reason to love it. The spirit of
feudalism was dead, and its lifeless
form remained to impest the earth.
The nobles, sunk in debauch and
sloth, continued their exactions,
upheld their privileges, and yet rendered
no service to the state. Corruption,
extravagance, maladministration,
infidelity, and licentiousness
pervaded the whole social system.
France was prostrate with
the foot of a harlot on her neck,
and the people were starving. Little
wonder, when the torch was applied,
that the lurid glare of burning
thrones and altars, the crash of
falling palaces and cathedrals, should
affright and strike dumb the nations
of the earth—for God’s judgment
was there; little wonder that Ireland,
sitting by the melancholy sea,
chained and weeping, should lift her
head when the God of the patient
and the humble was shattering the
whitened sepulchres which enshrined
the world’s rottenness.

In Belfast the taking of the Bastile
was celebrated by processions
and banquets amid the wildest enthusiasm,
and the name of Mirabeau
called forth the most deafening
applause. The eyes of Ireland
were fastened on France; the cause
of the Revolution was believed to
be that of all oppressed peoples
who seek to break the bonds of
slavery. “Right or wrong,” wrote
an Irish patriot, “success to the
French! They are fighting our
battles, and, if they fail, adieu to
liberty in Ireland for one century.”[#]
Even the manners and phraseology
of the Revolution became popular
in Ireland. The Dublin Volunteers
were called the National Guard, the
liberty-cap was substituted for the
harp, and Irishmen saluted one another
with the title of citizen.

.fn #
Tone’s <i>Memoirs</i>, vol. i. p 205.
.fn-

Out of this French enthusiasm
grew the Society of “United Irishmen,”
which soon superseded the
Volunteers. The United Irishmen
.pn +1
made no concealment of their revolutionary
principles. They demanded
a radical reform in the administration
of Ireland, and threatened,
if this was denied, to break the bond
which held them united with England.
They openly proclaimed their
intention of stamping out “the vile
and odious aristocracy,” which was
an insuperable obstacle to the progress
of the Irish people; and to
accomplish this they invited the
French to invade Ireland. The
landlords, they said, show no
mercy; they deserve to receive
none.

However little sympathy the Catholics
might feel with men who
entertained such violent opinions,
they were their natural allies; and
the English government, following
its old policy of doing what is right
only under compulsion, hastened
to make concessions. From June,
1792, Catholics were admitted as
barristers; they were allowed to
keep more than two apprentices;
and the prohibition of their marriage
with Protestants was withdrawn.
In 1793, when France had
declared war against England, still
further concessions were made.
The penalties for non-attendance
at Protestant worship were abolished.
“On the eve of a desperate
war,” said Sir Lawrence Parsons
in the House of Commons, “it was
unsafe to maintain any longer the
principles of entire exclusion.”
The Catholics were admitted to
the franchise, but were not made
eligible to Parliament; they were
at the same time declared capable
of holding offices, civil and military,
and places of trust, without
taking the oath or receiving the
sacrament. This is the third
emancipation of the Catholics of
Ireland. The American Revolution
brought about the first, and
the independence of the Irish Parliament
the second.

In the meantime the crimes and
excesses of the French Republicans
had cooled the zeal of the
Irish patriots. The Catholics grew
suspicious of leaders who applauded
the assassins of priests and the
profaners of all sacred things. A
reaction had set in, and the English
government seized the opportunity
to order the people to lay down
their arms; and this order was
intentionally executed with such
cruelty as to provoke insurrections,
which, in the lack of leaders
and of any plan of action, were
easily suppressed. The agents of
the United Irishmen had, however,
succeeded in interesting the French
Republic in the cause of Ireland,
and in December, 1796, General
Hoche set sail for Bantry Bay with
fifteen thousand men; but the fleet,
scattered by a storm, was unable to
effect a landing. In August, 1798,
General Humbert disembarked in
Killala Bay at the head of fifteen
hundred men who had been drawn
from the armies of Italy and the
Rhine, but he found the Irish people
completely disarmed, and the
country in the possession of a powerful
English army. He nevertheless
pushed forward into the interior
of the island, routed an army of
four thousand men, and finally, when
his force had been reduced to eight
hundred, capitulated to Lord Cornwallis
at the head of thirty thousand.
A third expedition, sent out
in the month of September of the
same year, met with no better success.
The Rebellion of '98 had
blazed forth and had been quenched
in blood. That it was not unprovoked
even Mr. Froude confesses.

“The long era of misgovernment,”
he says, “had ripened at
.pn +1
last for the harvest. Rarely since
the inhabitants of the earth have
formed themselves into civilized
communities had any country suffered
from such a complication of
neglect and ill-usage. The Irish
people clamored against Government,
and their real wrong, from
first to last, had been that there
was no government over them;
that, under changing forms, the universal
rule among them for four
centuries had been the tyranny of
the strong over the weak; that from
the catalogue of virtues demanded
of those who exercised authority
over their fellow-men the word
justice had been blotted out. Anarchy
had borne its fruits.”[#]

.fn #
<i>The English in Ireland</i>, vol. iii. p. 348.
.fn-

During the violence of the conflict,
and in the heat of passion, both
the rebels and the British soldiers
committed crimes for which no
excuse can be offered; but the
horrible and deliberate brutality of
the English after the suppression
of the outbreak has never been
surpassed by them even in Ireland.
When at length the appetite for torture,
mutilation, and hanging palled,
the British ministry resolved
to suppress the Irish Parliament.
Nothing was to be feared from the
people, for their spirit had been
crushed; the lavish expenditure of
money in open and shameless bribery
overcame the scruples of their
Protestant representatives; and
thus, after a struggle of six hundred
and thirty-one years (1169-1800),
corruption triumphed where every
other means had failed. The
<i>Union</i> was declared to exist; but
Ireland was permitted to retain its
name, its institutions, laws, and customs,
subject, however, to the pleasure
of the imperial Parliament.

The Rebellion of 1803, which accomplished
nothing, and that of
1848, which met with no better fate,
close the fateful list of Ireland’s
wars.

Men have never fought in a juster
cause, and, had they triumphed, their
names would live for ever in the scroll
of the world’s heroes. They have
not bled in vain, if Irishmen will
but learn the lesson which their
failures teach. Not by arms, but
by the force of the holiest of causes,
is Ireland to obtain the full redress
of her wrongs. They only who are
her enemies or who are ignorant
of her history would wish to excite
her people to rebellion. That
England will grant nothing which
she thinks herself able to withhold
we know; but these periodical outbreaks
have invariably given her
an opportunity of strengthening
the grasp which political agitation
had forced her to relax. Wars
which lead only to butcheries are
criminal, and they destroy the faith
of patriots in their country’s triumph;
while defeat brings divisions
and feuds among those who
had stood shoulder to shoulder on
the field of battle.

After the Union Ireland relapsed
into a period of lethargic indifference
which might have been mistaken
for healthful repose. The Protestant
ascendency entered again
upon the beaten paths of tyranny
and oppression, and the Catholics
suffered in silence.

The obstinate bigotry of George
III. had prevented Pitt from fulfilling
the promise, made at the time
of the union of the two kingdoms,
to relieve them of their civil disabilities,
and the prime minister,
whose intentions were honest, withdrew
from the cabinet. But this
step, however it might exonerate
him from further responsibility in
the matter, brought no relief to
.pn +1
the Catholics; and as the sad experience
of the past had taught
them the hopelessness of resorting
to violent measures, they entered
upon the course of peaceful agitation
which, under the wise and
skilful direction of O’Connell,
compelled the British Parliament,
in April, 1829, to concede to them
the rights which had been so long
and so cruelly withheld.

“The Duke of Wellington,” said
Lord Palmerston, “found that he
could not carry on the government
of the country without yielding the
Catholic question, and he immediately
surrendered that point”; and
George IV. signed the act of Catholic
Emancipation with a shudder.

This great victory, important in
itself and its immediate results, was
yet more important as an evidence
of a radical change in the policy
henceforward to be followed in
seeking redress of Irish grievances.

For seven hundred years England
had been busy in efforts to form a
government for Ireland, and the result
was the most disgraceful failure
known in history. For seven hundred
years Ireland had rebelled,
plotted, invoked foreign aid, in the
hope of throwing off the galling
yoke; and after centuries of bloodshed
she found herself more strongly
bound to England. In the presence
of this great historical teaching
both nations seemed prepared
to pause and deliberately to examine
their mutual relations, and both
seemed to feel that the special objects
at which each had been aiming
were unattainable. The geographical
position of the two countries
renders their union inevitable so
long as either is able to subjugate
and hold the other in the bonds of
a common government. Had Ireland
been in condition to maintain
her independence, England, surrounded
by enemies, could never
have risen to the position which she
has held for centuries. The national
aspirations for power and dominion
could not be realized while Ireland
was permitted to retain her
separate existence, and her conquest
was therefore inevitable the
moment England felt herself strong
enough to undertake it; nor can
the wildest visionary seriously believe
that there is the faintest hope
that the connection between them
will ever be dissolved except in their
common ruin. So long as England’s
power remains, so long will she
hold Ireland with the unerring instinct
with which a vigorous people
clings to its national life; and should
England’s downfall come, there is
no good reason for thinking that it
would not be the knell of Ireland’s
doom. They have the same language,
the same fundamental principles
of government, the same commercial
and political interests; and
under these common influences the
differences and antagonisms which
still exist are likely to become
more and more inactive. The English
people are not without their own
grievances, which, in some respects,
are more serious than those of the
Irish—the consequences of feudalism,
which in England has been
able to resist more successfully than
elsewhere the social movements of
modern times. Henceforward Ireland
is the natural and necessary
ally of the more liberal and fair-minded
portion of the English people,
and she will co-operate most
efficiently in helping them to bring
about the reforms which are so
much needed.

For the perfect religious liberty
which can exist only after the disestablishment
of the Anglican
Church England will be indebted
to Ireland, whose people have already
.pn +1
compelled the British Parliament
to admit principles and adopt
measures which will inevitably lead
to the dissolution of the union between
church and state throughout
the whole extent of the empire.
The Irish land system must be sacrificed
as the Irish Church has
been sacrificed; and this will be
the first step towards a complete
revolution in the system of land
tenure throughout Great Britain.
The growing influence and increasing
number of English Catholics
will help greatly to create a more
cordial and genuine religious sympathy
between the two races of
these sister islands; and this sympathy
will be still further strengthened
when the church in England,
through the disestablishment and
disintegration of Anglicanism, shall
have gained a position and power
which will give to her special
weight in forming public opinion.
As the community of interests of
the two countries becomes more
manifest, political parties will cease
to be influenced by national or religious
prejudice, and will be constituted
upon principles which relate
to the social interests of the
people. England has already confessed
the radical error of her Irish
policy, and her leading statesmen
have admitted that the cause of its
failure lay in its viciousness—in the
fact that it wantonly violated the
rights and interests of the people
because they belonged to a different
race and held a different religious
faith. Her legislation was
unjust because it was narrow and
exclusive—favored a class and a
creed, and, in order to favor these,
repressed and crushed the national
energies. The government believed,
whether truly or falsely, that it
could rule Ireland only by fostering
divisions and feuds among her people;
and to do this it sought by
every means to intensify and embitter
the prejudice which separated
the English from the Irish, the
Protestant from the Catholic. With
this view Scotch and English colonies
of Protestants were planted in
Ireland, and, lest the intercourse
and amenities of life should soften
the asperity of religious bigotry, the
government took special care to
encourage the hatred which kept
them aloof from the natives, first
by local separations, and afterwards
by the social distinctions which
arose from the enforced poverty
and ignorance of the Catholic population.
The American Revolution
taught England, if not the iniquity,
the folly of this conduct; and from
1778 to the present day she has been
slowly receding from a course in
which she had grown old. She has
receded unwillingly, too, and with
hesitation, and has thus often increased
the discontent which she
sought to allay. Nations, like individuals,
find that it is hard to recover
from inveterate habits of wrong-doing.
The wages of sin must be paid;
repentance can save from death, but
not from humiliation and punishment.
Nor has England repented,
but she has entered in the way of
penitence; she has made some reparation,
but has not by any means
done all that must be done before
Ireland can be content. For nearly
half a century now—that is, since
1829—there has been, we believe, a
sincere desire to govern Ireland
fairly, chiefly, no doubt, because
English statesmen had come to see
that it was not possible to govern
her in any other way; but these
good intentions have been thwarted
by the constitutional repugnance of
the English people to apply strong
and efficacious remedies to social
disorders. Nowhere else among civilized
.pn +1
nations are ancient abuses
guarded and protected with such
superstitious veneration. Hence
the government thought to satisfy
Ireland by half-measures of redress,
and these it took so ungraciously
that they seemed to be wrung from
it, and not conceded with good-will.
Men are not grateful for
favors which are granted because
they can no longer be withheld.

Englishmen still forget that Ireland
has the right to be treated by
them not merely with justice, but
with generous indulgence. So long
as the root of the evil is left untouched
little will be accomplished
by pruning the branches. Ireland’s
curse is the system of land tenure,
founded on confiscation and organized
to perpetuate a fatal antagonism
between the proprietors and
the tillers of the soil. Irishmen
will be disaffected and rebellious so
long as the national prosperity is
blighted by a state of things which
leaves their country in the hands
of men who are happy only when
they are away from it.

Parliament has passed several
land acts, but it would seem that
they had been purposely so framed
as to produce no good results.
That it is possible to change the
land system of Ireland radically,
without doing injustice to any one,
is admitted, and various projects
by which this might be done have
been laid before Parliament. This
is not a question of tenant-rights;
it lies far deeper. Nor is there any
parity in this respect between England
and Ireland. In England the
land is owned by the people’s natural
leaders; in Ireland it is owned
by the people’s natural enemies.
This land question is far more important
than any question of Home
Rule; and if Parliament will but
give a proper solution to this problem,
Home Rule will no longer be
seriously thought of.

When landlordism vanishes from
Ireland, the day of final reconciliation
will be at hand. With it will
disappear the filibusters, revolutionists,
and Fenians, whose disturbing
influence in Irish politics is made
possible by the wrongs which the
English government has not the
will or the courage to redress.
There are other grievances than
the land system, but it will not be
difficult to do away with them
when the country shall have been
given back to the people. With a
free press, free speech, and an organized
public agitation sustained
and increased by the sympathies
and interests of the masses of the
people of England, it will be found
impossible to withhold much longer
from Ireland full and complete justice;
and nothing less will satisfy
her people.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=tennyson
TENNYSON AS A DRAMATIST.[#]

.fn #
<i>Harold</i>: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson.
Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1877.

<i>Queen Mary</i>: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson.
Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1875.
.fn-
.sp 2
Alfred Tennyson is to-day one
of the household gods of English-speaking
peoples. He has a place
in every library, a niche in every
memory, an echo in every heart.
He has unquestionably added a
new and brilliant page to the great
book of English literature. He has
set there something that was not
there before, and that is not likely
to fade away with time. Doubtless
there are men who would deny this.
There are literary Gorgons who
would, if they could, stare every
man into stone. There are critics
whose nature seems to distil venom,
and who find no sweetness save in
their own gall. To men of this
class the very fact of a man being
praised is in itself sufficient cause
for condemnation. Over and above
these there are probably some who
honestly dislike or do not care for
Tennyson. For such we do not
speak, but for the great mass of
English readers in whose estimation
Tennyson occupies a very
conspicuous, if somewhat undefinable,
position. By them he is
liked, and liked better than any
living poet; and, indeed, he has
given excellent reasons for being
so liked.

That there have been greater
English poets, even his most enthusiastic
admirers must allow;
that there have been few sweeter,
all who have read him and others
will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with
its twin-sister purity, is one of the
marked characteristics of Tennyson’s
verse. No man ever mistook
Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra,
a Jeremiah. He is not
heroic like Homer. Much of the
idyllic grace, but little of the real
massiveness, of Virgil he has. He
cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron,
or Shelley. He cannot scourge like
Dante, observe with the luminous
philosophy, the high inspiration of
Shakspere, or build up a mighty
edifice like Milton. He can do
none of these things. In some respects
he is perhaps less than the
least of these poets. He is a sweet
singer, made for sunshine and peace
and harmony; the poet of the happy
household over whose threshold
passes from time to time the sad
shadow of a quiet sorrow; not the
poet of despair, of wrath, of agony,
of the fiercer passions or tumultuous
joys, whose very excess is pain.

True it is that, as he sang in his
earlier days,

.pm verse-start
“The poet in a golden clime was born,
  With golden stars above;
Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
    The love of love.”
.pm verse-end

But he is not such a poet.
Never has he given voice to the
hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
or to that of which both of these
are born—the love of love. Whenever
he has attempted it he has
failed. He is too retiring, too domestic.
“With an <i>inner</i> voice” his
river runs, and we have to listen
with ears nicely attuned to catch its
whisper and its meaning. So inner
is it, indeed, that it is often obscure
.pn +1
and quite escapes the dull hearing
of ordinary men. His first volume,
published in 1830, is almost
fulsomely dedicated to Queen Victoria,
who is certainly not a heroic
figure, whatever else she may be.
It is a picture gallery filled with
Claribels and Lilians, and Isabels
and Madelines, and Marianas and
Adelines—all very sweet and delicate
and dainty, but not inspiring.
He sings to “the owl,” he dedicates
odes “to memory,” he lingers
by “the deserted house,”
chants the dirge of “the dying
swan,” and so on. In 1832 he enlarges
his gallery by the addition
of the lovely “Lady of Shalott,”
“Mariana in the South,” “Eleänore,”
and we come nearer to the
poet’s heart in “The Miller’s Daughter,”
whom he evidently prefers to
the haughty and much-abused
“Lady Clara Vere de Vere.”
Something, too, of his more marked
peculiarities show here in the
“Palace of Art” and that dreamy,
delicious poem, “The Lotos-Eaters.”
He is intensely English—an
admirable quality, be it remarked
<i>sotto voce</i>, in an English poet laureate.
He closes the volume with
some strong verses:

.pm verse-start
“You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease,
  Within this region I subsist,
  Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas?

“It is the land that freemen till,
  That sober-suited Freedom chose,
  The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;

“A land of settled government,
  A land of just and old renown,
  Where Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent....”
.pm verse-end

The intense difference between
the spirit here expressed and that
of his more immediate and brilliant
predecessors and countrymen, Byron
and Shelley and Keats, may possibly
account in some degree for the
hold which Tennyson has taken on
the English heart. He was a man,
too, who felt the throbbings of the
age and touched with skilful fingers
the pulse of Time. Though
anxious for the future, he was
troubled with no “Dreams of Darkness,”
or hollow-eyed despair, or
morbid imaginings. He realizes
change; he has hopes for a world
over which he sees a God ruling.
He sings boldly of “immortal
souls,” and knows no “first dark
day of nothingness.” He warns
the intelligence of his countrymen
to—

.pm verse-start
“... pamper not a hasty time,
  Nor feed with crude imaginings
  The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings,
That every sophister can lime.

“Deliver not the tasks of might
  To weakness, neither hide the ray
  From those, not blind, who wait for day
Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.

“Make knowledge circle with the winds;
  But let her herald, Reverence, fly
  Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.”
.pm verse-end

These lines are noble, true, and
Christian; and again:

.pm verse-start
“Meet is it changes should control
  Our being, lest we rust in ease.
  We all are changed by still degrees,
<i>All but the basis of the soul</i>.

“So let the change which comes be free
  To ingroove itself with that which flies,
  And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.

“A saying, hard to shape in act;
  <i>For all the past of Time reveals
  A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact</i>.

“Ev’n now we hear with inward strife
  <i>A motion toiling in the gloom—
  The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life</i>.

“A slow-develop’d strength awaits
  Completion in a painful school;
  Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States—

“The warders of the growing hour,
  But vague in vapor, hard to mark;
  And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.”
.pm verse-end

This was published in 1832, a
.pn +1
period when agitations about the
suffrage, and the Corn Laws, and
Catholic Emancipation—questions
that shook England to its foundations,
only to fix them deeper than
before—were rife or looming up
like awful spectres in the dim mist
of the future. Tennyson did not
dread them, though he realized
their vastness and importance.
Most certainly the verses just quoted
stamp him as a close observer of
events in those days and a man of
right moral balance, to whom might
with some measure of truth be applied
his own words:

.pm verse-start
“He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill,
  He saw thro’ his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
    An open scroll,

  Before him lay....”
.pm verse-end

Still, these nobler passages are
only fragments. He prefers his
quiet mood. In 1842 appeared the
first of his idyls, the “Morte d’Arthur.”
Here again the better nature
of the poet—a nature that we
are grieved to see apparently soured
and crossed, not softened and made
more venerable, by the hand of
Time—breaks forth in the grand
prayer of the dying king:

.pm verse-start
“If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
.pm verse-end

It was the Catholic instinct
breaking through the wall of prejudice
and false teaching which, in
centuries of separation from the
truth, have grown up around the
English heart, that gave voice to
this beautiful conception. Many
are the instances where non-Catholic
poets have leaped up to truths
of this kind which the whole force
of their training and education ran
counter to. It is, as it were, the
flash of inspiration coming on them
in spite of themselves and issuing
in music. The divinity of their art
has lifted them above all prejudice
into the sun-bright heaven. Thus
Byron sings to the Blessed Virgin
in strains that a saint might envy.
Unfortunately, the instances are
many also where men lifted up on
the heights of inspiration, or by the
deep yearnings of their own soul,
have, as it were, glanced into heaven
and seen the face of Truth, only to
fall back again to their lower level,
dazed and blinded by the very
glimpse that was revealed to them.
And we find them deny with their
own lips and actions what their
greater selves had announced.

It is not our purpose to enter into
an elaborate criticism of Tennyson.
That task has been done time
and again, and by pens infinitely
better fitted for it than ours. We
are only taking touches here and
there to bring out the poet in his
truest colors, in his best and his
worst lights, in order to add point
to the main purport of this article,
which is to show that Tennyson
has mistaken himself and his powers
in the <i>rôle</i> which he has thought
fit to assume in his later years. In
his earlier dreams he is full of high
thoughts and large aspirations.
“My faith is large in Time, and
that which shapes it to some perfect
end,” he tells us. He looks
forward longingly to “the golden
year.” He is possessed with the
spirit of Christian purity, and gives
constant expression to it, notably in
“St. Agnes” and “Sir Galahad.”
In “The Two Voices” he argues
down atheism. He lays bare the
.pn +1
grinning savagery of a wasted intellect
and debauched life, only to
punish it with the power of a man
who knows what virtue is and feels
it in his soul. He sometimes
catches those inarticulate murmurs
of the heart which breathe in feelings
rather than in words, where
feeling is too deep for words, and
they well out in song, as in the

.pm verse-start
“Break, break, break,
  On thy cold gray stones, O sea!”
.pm verse-end

while in the “In Memoriam”
the poet, stricken to the heart, has
given voice to that sorrow, and the
effect it has on our life, which most
of us have felt when some bright
intelligence has been taken from
our side, whose young years were
blossoming fair with promise of a
great and good future.

In all this he is excellent, perhaps
unsurpassed; in all that is sad, or
sweet, or picturesque, or naïvely
joyous our hearts are with him.
He stands alone in his dainty pictures
of scenery, of women, of certain
men. He touches the commonplaces
of the time with a magic
pencil. He beguiled the hard and
stubborn Saxon, which yielded reluctantly
even to the greatest masters
of English verse, into a music
it had never known before. He
built up fairy castles, and galleries
and cities of old time, and peopled
them with a fair array of Arthurs
and Launcelots, of Guineveres and
Elaines, of Merlins and Gawains,
whose very names were music, and
whose deeds were just such as befitted
scenes of witchery. He is,
moreover, a man of marked personality
and nationality in his writings.
He is an Englishman and nothing
else. He does not care to be anything
else or more; for he can see
nothing greater. All his scenery is
English; his characters are English;
his thoughts, feelings, and aspirations
English. Byron’s corsairs
and giaours and Childe Harolds
would fight as fiercely, frown as
darkly, sin as deeply, in any civilized
language as in English—in
warmer languages even better, perhaps;
Shakspere’s profound observations
and reading of character
would have reached the world
through any other channel as surely
as, perhaps more readily than,
through the English; some would
doubt whether Milton ever wrote
English at all. But all Tennyson
is English or nothing. His
dawns, his gloamings, his sunrises,
his sunsets, his landscapes, his
fens, his fogs, his smoke, his
moonlight and moonlight effects,
his winds, his birds, his flowers, his
reeds and rushes, his trees, his
brooklets, his seas, his cliffs, his
coloring, his ruins, his graveyards,
his walks and rides, his love of good
cheer, his hums of great cities, his
profound respect for the respectable,
are all English. He has the sturdy
English common sense and no small
share, as will be seen, of English
prejudice; and, though he feels
something of the movements of the
outer world, he has all the English
narrowness of vision. So that, while
his works will probably never become
a part of any other literature
than the English—for they would not
be understood elsewhere—they have
won their way into the English heart
for their very <i>homeliness</i>, if for no
higher reason. So long as this
English poet was content to sing to
us, we were content to listen, were
his lay sad or gay. He had been
singing all our life, and we were not
weary of his music, even though the
music was all pitched in much the
same key. We never tire of a familiar
voice that we love. But when
we would be roused and wrought
.pn +1
up by some martial strain, by
some great event, by one of those
movements that catch the heart of
a people and sway it and hold it
captive, by the “thoughts that
breathe and words that burn,”
Tennyson fails. Surely, for such an
Englishman as he, the death of the
Duke of Wellington ought to have
proved an inspiring theme. It is
true that as the years went on, and
the memory of Waterloo faded, and
the hero of Waterloo moved about
and took his part in civic affairs,
people (and people are ever
ready to weary of their gods, if their
gods are too near them and live too
long) began to clip and cut down
the gigantic proportions of the Iron
Duke’s colossal figure. Indeed, before
he died it is safe to say that
half England regarded England’s
hero as rather an ordinary sort of
person and a worthy but extremely
fortunate soldier. Still, death generally
brings back the liveliest memories
of deeds that are, or are thought
to be, great and good, and a true
poet’s song who believed all of Wellington
that Tennyson’s poem expresses
might well have been tipped
with fire when Wellington died.
Yet Tennyson’s funeral ode is poor,
tame; where not tame, forced; and,
like all such compositions, indefinitely
strung out. All his readers
know the opening:

.pm verse-start
“Bury the Great Duke
  With an empire’s lamentation,
Let us bury the Great Duke,
  To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior’s pall
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall!”
.pm verse-end

It is plain from the start that
he is writing for a public. This
great duke needs a capital G and a
capital D to impress duly that public,
the British (which is always
ready to be awed by capitals attached
to titles), with the great
duke’s immensity. There is something
of the heavy English undertaker
about this—a display, a forced
solemnity, a measured tread, a
sense of sham. The great duke is
lost sight of in the funereal trappings,
the crowd, and accompaniment.
See how Byron seizes on
the very heart of an event, and in a
few lines pictures for us the whole,
the before and after. He is describing
the greater man by whose
fall the great duke rose to fame:

.pm verse-start
“Tis done—but yesterday a king!
  And arm’d with kings to strive—
And now thou art a nameless thing:
  So abject—yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,
  And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscall’d the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend has fallen so far.”
.pm verse-end

This indeed is “the scorn of
scorn,” and the entire ode is replete
with it. Byron, who had
been a great admirer of Napoleon,
could not consent to his idol lowering
himself so far as to receive
his life from England. He could
not forgive himself for yielding to

.pm verse-start
“That spell upon the minds of men
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
  That led them to adore
Those Pagod things of sabre-sway,
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.”
.pm verse-end

“O civic muse,” cries Tennyson,

.pm verse-start
        “To such a name,
To such a name for ages long,
To such a name
Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-ringing avenues of song.”
.pm verse-end

Here lies the whole secret of the
ode’s comparative poverty. Tennyson
is by position, if not by profession,
“a civic muse,” and the
civic muse is never heroic or great.
It is more apt, like Turveydrop, to
be “a model of deportment,” especially
when it follows the advice of
Mrs. Chick and “makes an effort.”
.pn +1
This, for instance, is eminently
civic:

.pm verse-start
“Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London’s central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.

“Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.”
.pm verse-end

We hope that Wellington was not
“the last great Englishman.” If
so, English greatness must indeed
be “low.” But the thought is irresistible:
Is not the undertaker’s
hand again visible in all this? How
different is it from the sad, simple,
manly beauty of the lament of a
poet, whose name scarcely stands
in the list of English authors, for
one of those soldiers who gloriously
failed! Here is how Wolfe sings
of the burial of Sir John Moore:

.pm verse-start
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

“We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the glimmering moonbeam’s fitful light
And the camp-fires dimly burning.”
.pm verse-end

Again, is this a worthy echo of
“a people’s voice”?

.pm verse-start
“And thro’ the centuries let a people’s voice
In full acclaim,
A people’s voice,
The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people’s voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commander’s claim
With honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.”
.pm verse-end

What wearisome and forced repetition,
what commonplace allusions!
This is not Tennyson. The very
verse is burdened with its vulgar
prose, and halts and stumbles in
clumsy confusion meant for art.
And here is his description in the
same poem of the battle of Waterloo:

.pm verse-start
“Dash’d on every rocky square
Their surging chargers foam’d themselves away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Thro’ the long-tormented air
Heaven flash’d a sudden jubilant ray,
And down we swept and charged and overthrew.
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world’s earthquake, Waterloo!”
.pm verse-end

The best expression in it, the last,
is borrowed from Byron’s wonderful
description of the same battle:

.pm verse-start
“Stop! for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust!
<i>An Earthquake’s spoil</i> is sepulchred below!”
.pm verse-end

Again in Byron these two lines
tell the whole story, as does that
other,

.pm verse-start
“The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!”
.pm verse-end

So with Tennyson’s “War Songs”
and “National Songs,” published in
the edition of 1830 and wisely
omitted in later editions. They
are not much above the level of
many fledglings’ performances in a
like strain. They fall dull on the
heart:

.pm verse-start
  “There standeth our ancient enemy,
    Hark! he shouteth—the ancient enemy!
  On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;
    They stream like fire in the skies;
  Hold up the Lion of England on high
    Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.

<i>Chorus</i>: Shout for England!
          Ho! for England!
          George for England!
          Merry England!
          England for aye!”
.pm verse-end

Here are the chorus and full
chorus of his “National Song”:

.pm verse-start
    “For the French, the Pope may shrive ’em.
For the devil a whit we heed ’em:
As for the French, God speed ’em
    Unto their heart’s desire,
And the merry devil drive ’em
    Through the water and fire.
        Our glory is our freedom,
          We lord it o’er the sea;
        We are the sons of freedom.
            We are free.”
.pm verse-end

As Mr. Tennyson has been wise
enough—for shame’s sake, presumably—to
omit these and similar sorry
pieces from his later editions, it
may seem unfair to quote them
against him now. We quote them,
.pn +1
however, intentionally, to show that
there is a strong streak of English
narrowness and Protestant bigotry
in his nature which we were happy
to think dead, until within the last
few years it has cropped out again.
In 1852 there were probabilities of
war between England and France,
then under Louis Napoleon. Tennyson
thought to rouse his countrymen,
and the strongest appeal he
can make is to religious bigotry:

.pm verse-start
“Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;
The world’s last tempest darkens overhead;
      The Pope has bless’d him;
      The Church caress’d him;
He triumphs; may be we shall stand alone.
      Britons, guard your own.

“His ruthless host is bought with plunder’d gold,
By lying priests the peasants’ votes controll’d.
      All freedom vanish’d,
      The true men banish’d, etc.

“Rome’s dearest daughter now is captive France,
The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,
      <i>Would unrelenting,
      Kill all dissenting</i>,
Till we were left to fight for truth alone.
      Britons, guard your own.”
.pm verse-end

And this is the gentle Tennyson!
But we forbear from comment other
than the verses themselves suggest,
and turn at last to our more
immediate object.

Whatever fault may be found
here and there with Tennyson, one
thing is certain: his renown was
great and his fame established
chiefly by his earlier and better
works and by the peculiar characteristics
which we have attempted
to point out. The poet, however,
seems not to have been satisfied.
He was weary of the graceful path
by which he ambled gently up to
fame, and would seek by a new and
rugged road a higher place than
he already occupied in that temple
where are gathered the mighty
men who have wrought with the
pen monuments more enduring
than marble. In an evil hour he
tempted fate, and fate gave him a
severe warning. Weary of the minstrel's
lute which had charmed the
world, he would be what the poets
of old were thought to be—a <i>vates</i>,
an inspired prophet-and his vaticination
was <i>Queen Mary</i>.

As that drama has been dealt
with in these pages by another pen,
we shall not touch on it here more
than to say that never were the
minds of Tennyson’s countrymen
better prepared to receive and applaud
a work intended, as this
plainly was, to be an outcry against
Rome and a picture of one of the
fierce struggles between England
and Rome. Mr. Gladstone had
prepared the way and set all the
world warring on “Vaticanism.”
Tennyson could not have chosen a
better time for the publication of
his drama, and, were it a work of
power and passion, it could not
have failed to catch the heart of
the people. Never, on the other
hand, could he have chosen a better
time for a higher duty: that of, in
the words of his great master, still
in his right hand carrying gentle
peace “to silence envious tongues.”
If the drama failed, it failed in the
face of every incentive to success.

Fail it did. It was plain, even
to friendly critics, that the author
of <i>Queen Mary</i> was not a dramatist,
and so it was hinted generally in
the mildest possible terms. What
was the reason of the failure?

We have shown, we believe sufficiently,
that Tennyson failed
wherever he attempted to yoke the
passions. His hand was too weak
to curb them. His genius is reflective,
introspective, descriptive. It
has not the flash, the white heat of
inspiration. It is always Tennyson
who is singing, talking to, arguing
with us, describing for us. He is a
person, not a voice—a very pleasing,
scholarly, refined, and in the
main right-minded person—but he
.pn +1
is for ever giving utterance to his
own peculiar thoughts in his own
peculiar style. The highest form of
poetry, as of oratory, is not this. It
is that undefinable and truest expression
of feeling, of hope, of agony,
of despair, of wrath, of courage,
of any of the passions that lie
dormant in the human breast,
which at once elicits a responsive
echo from the heart of humanity, so
that we do not say, How sweet, how
tender, how strong is this man, but,
How true to nature is this thought!
Thus it is that the greatest poets
are the voices of all the world;
their works the inheritance of all
the world. In their highest heights
they belong to humanity, and to no
nation.

The dramatic we believe to be
the highest form of poetry, because
it alone attempts to portray life itself,
life in action; it is not a description,
however magnificently
done, of life. There lies between
it and all other forms of poetry the
difference that exists between the
painting of a hero and the hero
himself. The one is the man,
thinking, living, moving, breathing,
speaking his thoughts, doing his
deeds; the other after all is only
an image, more or less vivid, of him
on canvas. It may catch the color
of the eye, the expression of the
countenance, the texture of the
dress, the shape, the form; but at
the very best it is a picture, no more,
infinitely removed from the reality.

If this be a right conception of
the difference between dramatic
and all other kinds of poetry—and
it seems to us to be, although it
might need more elaboration to
impress it upon the reader’s mind—it
will be plain that the dramatic
poet needs nothing short of the
highest inspiration in order to
make him catch the very breathings
of men’s souls and throw them into
living forms, as truly as the master
actor loses his own personality
and lets it sink or become absorbed
utterly in the various characters he
portrays. No mere change of costume
will effect the metamorphosis
needed to impress the spectator
with the reality of the change in
character. In the same way no
clipping of a poem into acts and
scenes, and no allotting of certain
lines to certain different names, will
convert a descriptive poem into a
drama. All the world will at once
detect the fraud or the inherent defect.

A not uncommon phase of an
exasperated mind is to refuse to
recognize failure. Tennyson tried
again, rather hastily, and in the
same direction, with the satisfactory
result of making a more disastrous
failure than before. The blunder
of <i>Queen Mary</i> has been emphasized
in <i>Harold</i>. The first named
may have left some minds in doubt
whether or not its author could
construct a drama; the production
of the second has effectually set all
such doubts at rest. The critics
who in the first instance were kind
are in the second cruel. We have
rarely seen a more general and resolutely
contemptuous dealing with
the pretensions of any writer at all
than in the treatment which <i>Harold</i>
has received at the hands of critics
of every shade of opinion, English
as well as American.

<i>Harold</i> is simply narrative
throughout—spoken narrative, indeed.
A drama must be <i>act</i>.
Scenes prior to and leading up to
the Norman Conquest of England
are depicted with more or less
beauty of limning, but they are
loose, shifting, independent of each
other. There is no secret thread
to link the whole and give it a
.pn +1
unity of purpose and of plan, without
which there is no drama.
There are five acts. There might
have been fifty, or only two, or only
one, so far as the slow working of
the whole up to the catastrophe at
the conclusion goes. The first act
opens in London at King Edward’s
palace. Almost the first twenty
pages are occupied by various
characters in discussing the appearance,
meaning, and portent of a
comet. This is, of course, the old
stage trick used to knit the coming
horror with troubles in the air.
Shakspere uses it often, notably
in <i>Julius Cæsar</i>, but with him the
troubled elements obey the magic
wand of Prospero and minister to
man, and are but the accompaniment
of great events. Tennyson’s
comet is too much for his characters.
They puzzle themselves
about it until we grow tired of it
and its three tails.

After the comet has run its
course, the characters being brought
together to discuss it, Harold intimates
to the king his intention to
go to Normandy; the king warns
him not to go; then follows a lively
discussion on personal matters
between the queen, Harold, and
his brothers, which almost ends in a
fight; the comet or “grisly star”
is introduced again, and the scene
ends apropos of nothing in particular,
unless a hint of a coming plot
on the part of Aldwyth. The second
scene, the best in the drama,
is a very sweet piece of love-making
between Harold and Edith,
upon which Aldwyth again throws
her shadow, and the act ends. The
second act wrecks Harold at Ponthieu,
whence his transition to the
power of Count William of Normandy—or
Duke William, as we are
more in the habit of calling him—is
easy. Indeed, to a dramatist there
was no reason whatever for the first
scene of this act, as the story of
Harold’s capture might, if it were
necessary, have been told in a line
or two while Harold was actually
in the power of William. The rest
of this long act is taken up with
William’s compelling Harold to
swear, on the relics of the saints,
to help him to the crown of England.
The third act presents the
death of King Edward, who wills
the crown to Harold. The second
scene gives another piece of love-making
between Harold and Edith,
not so happy as the first, and announces
the invasion of Northumbria
by Tostig and Harold Hardrada.
The fourth act opens in
Northumbria. In the first scene
of it the factions of the rival chieftains
are put an end to by the marriage
of Harold with Aldwyth, and
thus the only attempt at a shadow
even of a plot is summarily disposed
of. The other scenes are before
and after the battle of Stamford
Bridge, and the act closes with
news of the landing of the Normans.
The fifth act opens on the
field of Senlac. Harold has a
dream in his tent, too like that of
Richard III. in conception. Stigand
describes the battle of Hastings
to Edith, and the death of
Harold. Here the drama should
have closed. Anything after it on
the stage would certainly come
tamely. But Tennyson cannot resist
the temptation to search for
the body of Harold, and with the
finding of it, the death of Edith on
it, and what in ordinary parlance
would be called William’s directions
for the funeral arrangements,
the play closes.

Such is <i>Harold</i>—narrative, narrative,
narrative throughout; very
excellent narrative some of it, but
no drama, no centre of interest
.pn +1
around which the whole is made to
turn. The misfortune about all historical
plays is that the reader begins
with a full knowledge of all
the circumstances, and to make
them dramatically interesting
needs a most skilful adaptation of
plot and counterplot, a slow unfolding
of events from some necessary
cause, a development of character,
a silent Fate, so to say, moving in
and out, and, in spite of all things,
shaping events to one great end, so
that, while we feel the consummation
impending, we yet know not
how, or when, or where, or by
what instrumentality it will come.
There is nothing of this in <i>Harold</i>.

It has been seen that Tennyson
has no great love for the Pope.
Indeed, if some of the lines quoted
represent the man, he has, of late
years at least, the heartiest hatred
for the Catholic Church. We cannot
help that, however much we
may regret it. We must take men
as they are, and, if Tennyson hates
the Pope, why let him hate him
and be happy. The Pope can exist
and rule the Catholic Church,
and be obeyed, revered, loved, and
honored by intellects as bright at
least as Mr. Tennyson’s, for all that
gentleman’s hate. A true dramatist,
however, sinks, or at least disguises,
all his private personal feelings
in depicting known characters
or types of character. This is only
to be true to nature, to art, and to
history. Where there is question
regarding the right reading of a
character or a period, a writer is of
course at liberty, after having consulted
respectable authorities, to
form his own estimate. Men who
lived in the eleventh century must
be true to their time. To make
such men think, argue, reflect,
question, doubt on most matters,
particularly on matters of faith,
just as do men of the nineteenth
century, is a gross solecism. It is
absurd and self-condemnatory on
the face of it. To make eleventh-century
Catholics speak of the
Catholic faith, and Rome, and the
pope after the fashion of the average
Protestant or infidel journalist
in these days, is absurd, not
to characterize such practice by a
harsher expression. This is what
Tennyson has gone out of his way
to do in <i>Harold</i>; and the only impression
with which we rise from
its perusal is that the writer detests
Normans and Catholics. Between
the Vere de Veres and the
Pope Tennyson has lost his temper
and his right hand has forgotten
its cunning.

The drama presents no character
of any special interest. Harold,
Edward the Confessor, and William
of Normandy, the three principal
personages, are much the same first
as last. In stage terms, William
may be set down as the “heavy
villain” of the piece, and a very
heavy villain he is; Edward the
Confessor as the “first old man”;
and Harold as the “walking gentleman.”
Edward is made—unintentionally
too, it would seem—one of
the silliest old men that ever walked
the boards. As for his sanctity,
imagine a saint speaking of himself
in this style:

.pm verse-start
                      “And I say it
For the last time, perchance, before I go
To find the sweet refreshment of the Saints.”
.pm verse-end

Saints, in the Catholic Church at
least, are not, as a rule, quite so
sure about finding “the sweet refreshment
of the saints.” Indeed,
they have far graver doubts on this
point often than sinners. But lest
some of his courtiers might feel
tempted to doubt the rapid transit
to heaven of a man so thoroughly
.pn +1
sure of his place beforehand, the
king informs them:

.pm verse-start
“I have lived a life of utter purity:
I have builded the great church of holy Peter:
I have wrought miracles.”
.pm verse-end

True, every word of it. But it
might have occurred to Mr. Tennyson
that Edward the Confessor was
mindful, at least, of that admonition:
“Let not thine own mouth, but another’s,
praise thee.” There never
was a saint, to our knowledge, so
fond of talking about himself, his
miracles, his good deeds, his place
here and hereafter. Listen to this
again:

.pm verse-start
“And miracles will in my name be wrought
Hereafter. I have fought the fight and go—
I see the flashing of the gates of pearl—
And it is well with me, tho’ some of you
Have scorn’d me—ay—but after I am gone
Woe, woe to England! I have had a vision:
The seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus
Have turn’d from right to left.”
.pm verse-end

The whole thing is incongruous.
It smacks rather of a converted
“brother” giving his “experiences”
and how he “got religion” before
a highly-wrought meeting of “Christian
workers.” Had the “devil’s
advocate” only caught scent of any
such expressions in the life of the
real Edward, it is to be feared he
would never have been canonized.
Saints are not in the habit of canonizing
themselves. The only thing
that occurs to us as on a par with Mr.
Tennyson’s picture of a saint is one
by Mr. William Cullen Bryant in a
short and remarkably silly poem recently
published by him. It is entitled
“A Legend of St. Martin,”
and the saint, while still in the flesh,
speaks as follows:

.pm verse-start
“Thus spake the saint: 'We part to-night;
<i>I am St. Martin</i>, and I give you here
The means to make your fortunes.’”
.pm verse-end

The author’s favorite churchman
is Stigand, who, whether Catholic or
heretic, no man who had read the
history of the time carefully and
honestly could by any possibility
hold up for admiration. Mr. Tennyson,
however, may consider himself
excused on points of historical accuracy,
inasmuch as he informs us in
his dedication that “after Old-World
records—such as the Bayeux tapestry
and the Roman de Rou—Edward
Freeman’s <i>History of the Norman
Conquest</i>,” and Bulwer Lytton’s
historical romance treating of the
same times, “have been mainly helpful”
to him “in writing this drama.”
But he cannot be excused for such
culpable negligence in searching
out authorities when attempting to
depict in a truthful manner a most
important historical epoch. Had
he taken the easy pains of going a
little deeper into history and authorities,
it would probably have
been better for himself and his
drama, or perhaps, with his evident
bias, he would not have written it at
all. He loves Stigand, a thoroughly
bad prelate, simply because
Stigand was against the pope. If
Tennyson selects his Catholic heroes
from all men who have been against
the pope, he will find his hands full
of very queer characters, some of
them worse than Stigand. Imagine
even Stigand saying, in the exact
tone of a modern unbeliever:

.pm verse-start
                “... In our windy world
What’s up is faith, what’s down is heresy.”
.pm verse-end

Certain modern Anglican prelates
and ministers, or any man who acknowledges
no unchangeable deposit
of divine truth, might speak in
just such a strain. The words, if
they mean anything, mean simply
that there is no such thing at all
as real faith or doctrine. Stigand
knew better than that. His peculiar
vice was a very English one—an
overdue and unscrupulous regard
for this world’s goods. This Catholic
prelate tells Harold of a sum of
.pn +1
money which he keeps concealed at
the other’s service, to be asked for
at his “most need,” in the following
eloquent style:

.pm verse-start
“Red gold—a hundred purses—yea, and more!
If thou canst make a wholesome use of these
To chink against the Norman, I do believe
<i>My old crook’d spine would bud out two young wings
To fly to heaven straight with</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Tennyson doubtless considers this
very English and spirited. Stigand
may have disliked the Normans,
and doubtless did. With all
our hearts! But this mode of expressing
his dislike is, in the mouth
of a Catholic and a prelate, surely
not in character.

Again he asks:

.pm verse-start
“... Be there no saints of England
To help us from their brethren yonder?”
.pm verse-end

As though a Catholic or Christian
could dream of the saints warring in
heaven or of affixing nationality to
sanctity! Tennyson’s Edward, with
a solitary gleam of intelligence, rebukes
him thus:

.pm verse-start
              “Prelate,
The Saints are one, ...”
.pm verse-end

yet immediately falls into the absurd
blunder he rebukes by adding:

.pm verse-start
  “But those (Saints) of Normanland
Are mightier than our own.”
.pm verse-end

While witnessing the battle of
Hastings Stigand cries out in an
ecstasy of admiration at Harold’s
prowess: “War-woodman of old
Woden!” Could any Christian man,
Catholic or non-Catholic, couple
a Christian warrior’s name with
the detestable deity of the pagan
North?

The character of Harold, too, is
incongruous. He is represented as
a most brave, wise, and honorable
man, incapable of fear or falsehood:
“broad and honest, breathing
an easy gladness.” He weakens
in many places. We cannot here
go into a historical inquiry respecting
the alleged oath of Harold
on the relics of saints to help William
to the crown of England.
Much is made of it by Tennyson;
so let us take all the facts for granted.
A man such as Harold is here
represented to be would rather have
died than taken the oath, if he never
meant to keep it. On the other
hand, once taken, and knowing it to
be false, we doubt whether the resolute
Saxon soldier would have
troubled himself much about the
matter. He acts as a coward
throughout while in William’s power.
A strong man would not rail in
secret at William for forcing him to
take an oath which the swearer knew
to be a lie. He would take it or not
take it with the best grace possible.
“Horrible!” exclaims Harold when
the relics on which he has sworn
are exposed. Harold was sufficiently
man of the world—a man who
had passed his life in camp and
court—to have uttered no such weak
cry. In the first place, if he swore
falsely, such an exclamation showed
at once that he never intended
to keep his promise. In the
second place, it would have been
perfectly plain to William that he
could place no reliance on the oath
of such a poltroon. The same failure
to apprehend the character of the
man is apparent in the womanish
tirade into which Harold breaks
after William has left him: “Juggler
and bastard—bastard: he hates
that most—William the tanner’s
bastard! Would he heard me!”
A moment before he might have
heard him, but Harold dared not
speak his thoughts. Certainly the
man who never lost a battle save the
one in which he lost all—the man
who conquered Wales, crushed the
.pn +1
terrible invasion of Harold Hardrada
and Tostig, braved his own
sovereign, seized on the English
throne with a grasp that only death
could shake off, and died so gloriously
on Hastings—never “played the
woman with his eyes and the braggart
with his tongue” in this poor
fashion. Here again speaks the
reader of modern infidel literature in
the mouth of the unspeculative soldier
of the eleventh century:

.pm verse-start
“I cannot help it, but at times
They seem to me too narrow, <i>all the faiths</i>
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye
Saw them sufficient.”
.pm verse-end

“<i>All</i> the faiths!” We wonder how
many “faiths” Harold knew of or
contemplated. Indeed, it seems to
us that Mr. Tennyson here speaks
for himself, and in a manner that
causes some suspicion of his having
lost something of his own earlier
and more robust belief. Harold
continues:

.pm verse-start
                    “But a little light!—
And on it falls the shadow of the priest;
Heaven yield us more! <i>for better Woden, all
Our cancell’d warrior-gods, our grim Walhalla,
Eternal war, than that the Saints at peace;
The Holiest of our Holiest one should be
This William’s fellow-tricksters</i>; better die
Than credit this, for death is death, or else
Lifts us beyond the lie.”
.pm verse-end

Which is heathenism and atheism
beautifully combined. He goes on,
still in his atheistic vein, when
Edith bids him listen to the nightingales:

.pm verse-start
“Their anthems of no church, how sweet they are!
Nor kingly priest, nor priestly king to cross
Their billings ere they nest.”
.pm verse-end

And again, when Gurth brings
news of the pope’s favoring William’s
cause, Harold laughs and
says of it:

.pm verse-start
“This was old human laughter in old Rome
Before a Pope was born, when that which reign’d
Call’d itself God—a kingly rendering
Of 'Render unto Cæsar.’”
.pm verse-end

Harold must have lately risen
from a perusal of Mr. Gladstone’s
pamphlet on <i>Vaticanism</i> when
he spoke thus, so we pardon his
aberration. That pamphlet is too
strong for weak intellects.

.pm verse-start
“The Lord was God and came as man—the Pope
Is man and comes as God,”
.pm verse-end

he continues, still in the Gladstonian
vein. He reminds Edith
that love “remains beyond all
chances and all churches”—a dictum
and doctrine that would be
strange even in a Protestant Harold.
“I ever hated monks,” he
says in another place, which may
account for his having founded
Waltham Abbey. He grows more
and more Protestant towards the
end, and the saintly relics over
which he was so terrified at having
sworn a false oath he terms the
“gilded ark of mummy-saints.”
And here is his final legacy to England:

.pm verse-start
      “... And this to England,
My legacy of war against the Pope
From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”
.pm verse-end

This is Tennyson’s legacy, not
Harold’s. It seems strange that it
should have fallen into careless
hands; not ours, but those of the
poet’s coreligionists. The fact is
that the world is growing weary
of little anti-papal tooters. Great
enemies of the papacy it applauds
and tries to excuse; but at the
mouthings of the little people it
yawns. If Tennyson has shown
anything in this as in his other anti-Catholic
effusions, it is that when
moved by rancor he can descend
to all the small bitterness of a common
and weak order of mind. We
cannot go further into an examination
of <i>Harold</i>, and, indeed, the
task is not worth while. He has
failed in the one character which,
.pn +1
to a true dramatic genius, offered
magnificent opportunities—William
of Normandy, who was perhaps
the greatest and the wisest
sovereign that England has as yet
known. A gallant soldier; a wary
yet bold and successful general; an
astute statesman; a lover of learning;
a resolute if severe ruler; a
man who could bide his opportunity,
then move on it with the flash and
fatality of the lightning, yet withal
a man of almost ungovernable
passions, with the old taint running
in his blood and through
all his successful life—this was a
character that it is as great a pity
Shakspere did not draw as that
Tennyson should have been rash
enough to attempt to draw. In
what ought to be the chief scene
of the play, the battle of Hastings,
there is no battle at all. The weak
device is resorted to of setting a
description of it as it proceeds in
the mouth of Stigand, who watches
the field from “a tent on a mound.”
Norman and Saxon, Harold and
William, are not brought together
for the final death-grip. Shakspere's
battle-scenes are more vivid
than those of any painter. They
illuminate history and print themselves
indelibly on the mind. Cut
the battle-scenes out of <i>King John</i>,
<i>Henry IV.</i>, <i>Henry V.</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>, <i>Julius
Cæsar</i>, <i>Henry VI.</i>, and you
mutilate the plays. Stigand’s description
of the battle of Hastings
might be dropped from <i>Harold</i> and
not missed. Why should not Harold
die as Hotspur dies, or as Macbeth,
or Brutus, or any of the others—his
face to the victorious foe,
the fitting ending of the tragedy?
Mr. Tennyson was not equal to the
task, either in this scene or at
Stamford Bridge. The last clash
and conflict of human passion he
can only look at from afar off and
reflect upon when it is over. He
cannot take it in hand and present
it. He would do well to retire from
the field where empires, and men
and events that make or unmake
empires, are the subjects of song,
and go back to the pretty scenery,
the calm truth, and the graceful
verse that have made his name
dearly loved and justly honored.
.sp 4
.h3 id=anglicanism
ANGLICANISM IN 1877, | AS AFFECTED BY THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.
.sp 2
We should feel inclined to apologize
to our readers for again introducing
the English Establishment
to their notice, were it not that
since, a year ago, we considered
Anglicanism in connection with the
“Old Catholic” conference at Bonn,
the increasing agitation within the
state church cannot but have continued
to attract the thoughtful attention
of those who, from the bark
of Peter, watch the weary tossing
of the Anglican craft and the
mutinous condition of a portion of
her crew.

Since the period to which we allude,
the fact that the whole tendency
of the Alt-Catholic movement
is rationalistic and anti-Christian is
beginning to be understood by all
really religious Protestants, and we
now see the better part of them
.pn +1
holding aloof from the movement,
and even the Ritualist journals
condemning whatever advances
were made towards it. The cause
is now advocated only by the Broad-Church
party, which distinguished
itself by its emphatic encouragement
of the apostate Loyson, one
of the apostles of the new sect,
who went last summer to London
to enlighten the English public on
ecclesiastical questions. On the
other hand, the High-Church movement
is, if anything, in the direction
of the Catholic Church, while Alt-Catholicism
is a distinct counter-agitation,
and thus anything like a
cordial fraternization between the
two is impossible. The attempts of
the High-Church party to obtain at
least as much as a recognition of
the validity of their orders from the
Orientals—attempts which were renewed
at the Bonn conference—have
again signally failed. One of the
“Unionist” leaders himself laments
that “the Oriental Church stands
entirely aloof from the Church of
England, sweepingly and roundly
condemns all its members, denies the
validity of their baptisms and ordinations,
and practically refuses to
aid them in any shape or form.”

There is no doubt that at the
present moment a tremendous
struggle has arisen in the Establishment
between the would-be Catholic
and the Protestant elements;
the latter not only pleading its
three centuries’ possession, but also,
and truly, declaring itself to be
the very basis and <i>raison d’être</i> of
the schism. This claim is urged
at the present time with a vehemence
and jealous irritation aimed ostensibly
at the “Romanizing practices”
of their brethren, but the venom of
which betrays itself to be especially
called forth by the ceaseless, active,
self-denying energy of these incorrigible
early risers—an irritation not
difficult to comprehend on the part
of those who, with all their professions
of Evangelical piety, have,
generally speaking, an exceeding
shyness of hard work, detest the
Counsels of Perfection in general
and the practice of self-denial in
particular, take up the pen much
more readily than the cross, and
prefer bridling their neighbor’s
tongue rather than their own.
Nevertheless, with regard to a certain
class among the Evangelicals,
and these the more earnest, it is
only just to say that their condemnation
of Ritualists and their practices
is sincerely a matter of principle.
They regard the one as the
guides and the other as the direct
means to “idolatry”—a term which
they have all their lives been taught
to consider as synonymous with
the Catholic religion.

When St. Edward the Confessor
lay on his death-bed in the palace
of Westminster, he foretold to his
queen, St. Edith, and to Stigand that,
in punishment for the sins of the
land, God would permit the enemy of
mankind to send a mission of wicked
spirits into it, who should sever the
Green Tree of Old England from its
root, and lay it apart for the space
of three furlongs; but that the tree
should after a due time return to
its root and revive, without the
help of any man’s hand. The
traditional interpretation of this
prophecy has been that the English
Church would be cut off for
the space of three centuries from
its parent stem, but that, after that
time, the severed church should return
to its ancient allegiance.

And what do we now see? Movement,
awakening, and life where for
three centuries have reigned the
gloom and chillness of the tomb.

From the time of Elizabeth
.pn +1
downwards not only the teaching
but the general aspect of what is
called the Church of England was
intensely anti-Catholic. A brighter
day first dawned for England when
she hospitably received and succored
the exiled priests of France.
The precious leaven of their holy
teaching and example never has
been lost. Later, in 1829, the emancipation
of the Catholics of the
British Empire, under George IV.,
marked a fresh epoch in the history
of the Catholic Church in England.
The discussions which attended the
passing of this act helped to increase
a knowledge of her tenets,
and prepared the way for their better
appreciation; besides which,
the restoration of some of the most
illustrious families of the realm to
their ancient and hereditary seats
in the House of Lords, together
with the admission of Catholics
into the Lower House, tended further
to the removal of many prejudices.
Since Newman and Pusey,
in 1833, recalled their brethren to
the study of the Fathers of the
church, many steps have been taken
in the Establishment in the direction
of the ancient paths—steps
which Catholics have noted with
interest and hope, though they perceive
that but too often men who
have been attracted towards the
truth rest apparently contented
with a bad imitation of its external
manifestations and a garbled or
“adapted” representation of its
doctrines, forgetting that truth distorted
ceases to be truth, and often
is a lie. They marvel also that the
invariable opposition of the pseudo-episcopate
does not help these
men, who are the present life of
their system, to see that their imaginary
“Catholicity” is wholly unauthorized
and unrecognized by
their ecclesiastical superiors, and
that the hierarchy of their church
is as consistently and persistently
anti-Catholic as the constitution of
that body itself. They are resisted
and condemned by their bishops,
and from their bishops they have
no appeal except to a lay tribunal
whose interference <i>in sacris</i> they
repudiate.

By the terms of a new Appellate
Jurisdiction Act, recently passed in
both Houses of Parliament, the jurisdiction
of the Privy Council has
been transferred to a new Court of
Appeal. It was then provided that
episcopal assessors should in future
sit on the bench with the lay judges;
and though it is by the latter that the
judgment is pronounced, the bishops
are allowed to make remarks
on what is passing. They are to
sit in rotation in the new court.
The two archbishops and the
Bishop of London are also to sit in
turn, <i>ex officio</i>, and the rest in quarternions,
beginning with the junior
four (Chichester, St. Asaph, Ely,
and St. David’s). It is impossible
to say what may be the results of
this equivocal assessorship, with regard
to which the London <i>Morning
Post</i> disrespectfully observes that
“the plan offers no security whatever
that the assessors shall be fit for
their office beyond the fact that
they are bishops”; calmly adding
that “since the purpose for which
their presence is required is the
imparting to the judges of a certain
kind and quality of information
when desired, it is a serious defect
to the scheme that it provides no
guarantee that the prelates who sit
shall possess any proper aptitude
for their position.”[#]

.fn #
The following from the London <i>Weekly Register</i>
may tend to show whether this doubt is
reasonable or otherwise: “The vicar of St. Barnabas,
Leeds, is fatigued with parochial work and
wishes to take a little rest. He asks his Lordship
of Ripon to let him name a clergyman who
shall take his duties for a few weeks or months.
His lordship replies that he cannot do so, because—but
the language is too episcopal to be misquoted:
'If there is truth in the reports which, from
time to time, appear in the public papers, you are
in the habit of breaking what you must know to be
the law.’ His Lordship of Ripon reads the papers,
and, finding it inconvenient to leave his palace at
Ripon and make a call upon a clergyman in Leeds,
he refuses leave of absence to that clergyman, on
account of newspaper reports.” The church-wardens
take up their vicar’s cause, and, in a very proper
“memorial,” represent the needs of his case to
his paternal diocesan. But all is useless. “The
law, the law,” says the bishop, and remains comfortably
in his palace, while he forbids his hard-working
vicar to take a holiday, though he does
not even condescend to specify his offence. And
yet the Anglican bishops do not apparently object
to a due amount of repose for themselves, if we may
judge from the fact that at the very time we write
there are no fewer than fifteen of the “missionary
bishops” of the Establishment who, after a few
years of absence, and even these years agreeably
diversified with visits to their friends in England,
have returned thither “for good,” and are now settled
with their wives and families in comfortable
rectories at home—an arrangement more convenient
for croquet-parties than “conversions.”
.fn-
.pn +1

Upon this another journal asks:
If it be true that Anglican bishops
are corporately incompetent as advisers
of lay judges, even on the
doctrines of their own particular
communion, of what use are they
at all? If they cannot, without the
aid of civilians, interpret the Articles,
why not make bishops of the
lay judges, instead of paying thousands
a year to each of these gentlemen,
who do not apparently know
their own business? In any case,
how Ritualists can remain, with satisfaction
to their consciences, in a
communion whose highest arbiter
is not even a sub-deacon, is perplexing
to any one who regards the
church as a divinely-instituted system.
We have been reminded by
<i>Presbyter Anglicanus</i> that it is a
necessary ingredient in any system
of discipline that the superior
should not be judged by the inferior,
the teacher by the taught; and
that the twelfth canon of the African
Code ordains that, “if a bishop fall
under the imputation of any crime,
he shall have a second hearing before
twelve bishops, if more cannot
be had; a priest before six, with
his own bishop; a deacon before
three—<i>according to the statutes of the
ancient canons</i>.” Again: “It was
a recognized principle in the primitive
church that the deposition of
an ecclesiastic required the intervention
of more bishops than were
needed for his ordination. The
Anglican bishops notwithstanding
their professions of regard for the
primitive church, are content that
a presbyter, ordained and instituted
by a 'bishop,’ should be deprived
by a layman. And they talk of
apostolic order!”

The writer just quoted, who is
now safe in the Catholic Church,
described, just before his conversion,
the present condition of ecclesiastical
discipline in the Anglican
Church as follows: “The ecclesiastical
courts which survived
the Reformation and the great rebellion
have been ... abolished;
the bishop of each diocese has
ceased to be the ordinary of that
diocese, and the whole clergy of
the Church of England are rendered
amenable to, and are even directed
in their conduct of public
worship by, a layman, whose office
has been created in the year of
grace 1874 by the imperial Parliament,
and who, besides playing
the part of a pseudo-dean of the
Arches and principal of the Provincial
Court of York, is also to
be the national ordinary, the Parliamentary
vicar-general of the Establishment,
exercising jurisdiction
in every parish from Berwick-on-Tweed
to the Channel Islands.”
And this is the system to which
unquestioning, unrepining, absolute
submission is required of the clergy
by the bishops of the Anglican
communion.

Nor is this all; not only is it
now the case that secular law
.pn +1
courts decide what may or may
not be taught and practised in the
Anglican Church, but they also claim
to decide who shall and who shall
not be admitted to its rites and sacraments.
Lawyers are thus not only
the doctors and <i>ceremoniarii</i> of Anglicanism,
suspending or depriving
ecclesiastics at pleasure, but they
are also to be, in the last resort,
the stewards of Anglican sacraments.

A case was lately pending before
the Judicial Committee in which
the action of a “priest” in refusing
communion was reviewed and
judged by the court. A parishioner
of a Ritualist pastor having declared
that he did not find in the
Bible sufficient evidence for the existence
of evil spirits to incline him
to believe in the devil, the clergyman
prohibited his coming for communion
until he did believe in the
devil. The parishioner wrote a
complaint to the bishop, and the
latter took his part against his parish
“priest” and for the devil. The
matter being referred to the Judicial
Committee, the bishop’s verdict
was confirmed in favor of the
sceptical parishioner and of his Infernal
Majesty.

Nor can any individual cases of
this kind be matter of surprise
when we reflect to what the doctrinal
decisions of the supreme
courts of the Anglican Establishment
have, with the consent of her
entire episcopate, as expressed in
their famous “allocution” on the
Public Worship Act, pledged her
clergy. According to the final and
irreversible authority acknowledged
by that episcopate, the Church
of England holds, 1, that the doctrine
of baptismal regeneration is
an open question; 2, that it is an
open question whether every part
of every book of Scripture is inspired;
3, that there is no “distinct
declaration” in the formularies
of that church on the subject
of everlasting punishment, and that
the words “everlasting death” in
the exposition of the Lord’s Prayer
given in the catechism “cannot be
taken as necessarily declaring anything
touching the eternity of punishment
after the resurrection”;
4, that Anglican bishops are the
creatures of English law and dependent
on that law for their existence,
rights, and attributes.[#]

.fn #
See <i>Christianity in Erastianism</i>. A letter
to Cardinal Manning. By <i>Presbyter Anglicanus</i>.
.fn-

“The Church of England,” said
Dr. Stanley, the Protestant Dean of
Westminster, in a sermon recently
preached at Battersea, “is what
she is by the goodness of Almighty
God and of his servant Queen
Elizabeth.” If he had said, “of
Henry VIII. and his daughter,
Queen Elizabeth,” we could have
agreed with him, particularly as the
riper years of the Establishment
continue so suitably to fulfil the
promise of such parentage; but to
Catholics there is a revolting profanity
in classing together the goodness
of God with that of one of the
most implacable persecutors of his
church—a persecutor, not from
conviction of the justice, but the
iniquity, of her cause, and from a
persistent determination to extinguish
in her realm the ancient faith,
whose very existence was a condemnation
of the state religion arranged
by her father and Cranmer,
improved by her brother and his
Genevese assistants, and re-fashioned
to her own liking by herself.
The sentence pronounced by the
Protestant historian Chalmers upon
this powerful and unprincipled
queen is that “she was a woman
without chastity, a princess without
honor, and a sovereign without
.pn +1
faith”; and, as if by way of a satanic
parody on the vision of the Immaculate
Virgin in the Book of Revelations,
we see Elizabeth, the offspring
of an adulterous union, trampling
under her despotic foot the Bride
of Christ.

“The Church of England,” continued
the dean, “was, it is true,
a compromise,” and “he was not a
true son thereof who used it as a
weapon for promoting this or that
doctrine, but, <i>after the example of
Elizabeth</i>, and for the interests of
the nation, used it as a broad shield
under which he might work for
good,”[#] etc., etc. The sense of
which, in plain English, appears to
be that the said church prefers
general indifference to doctrinal
truth, the “interests of the nation”
to the glory of God, and the “example
of Elizabeth” to purity of
faith and life.

.fn #
Hentzner furnishes us, by the way, with a singular
testimony to Elizabeth’s “goodness” when,
among other things of the same nature, he tells us
that, in the latter years of her reign, executions for
high treason (this being the term applied to denial
of the royal supremacy in the church fully as
much as in the state) were so frequent that he
counted at one time on London Bridge no fewer
than 300 heads. She herself on one occasion pointed
out to the French ambassador the same ghastly
trophies adorning the gates of her own palace.
.fn-

But Dean Stanley represents one
only of the four principal sections
into which the Church of England
has divided itself; and however
complacently the “Broad” and
even “Moderate High” Churchmen
may regard the marshy nature of
the ground in which the foundations
of their faith, if faith it can be
called, are laid, and congratulate
themselves on the fact that it is
neither land nor water, but something
of both, there are earnest
men who have no fancy for being
amphibious, and who spare no
pains and toil to drain away the
stagnant waters from their morass,
in the sincere conviction that beneath
the miasma-breeding mosses
there lies, for those who dig deep
enough to find it, the imperishable
rock.

Of this number seems to be the
Rev. Arthur Tooth, vicar of St.
James’, Hatcham, who is now in
prison because he chooses to act upon
the principle of “no compromise.”
We honor a man who is willing
to suffer for conscience’ sake,
and to uphold the right of the
church to decide in ecclesiastical
causes, but at the same time we
cannot but feel that Mr. Tooth is
more conscientious than logical,
and that by his present opposition
he is breaking the solemn promise
and oath which, as a clergyman of
the state church, he took, at his ordination,
to a state-church bishop.

Mr. Tooth, on account of certain
ritualistic practices—<i>i.e.</i>, the use
of “Catholic” vestments, conducting
the communion service so as to
make it resemble as much as possible
Holy Mass, having “a crucifix
in the chancel, little winged
figures on the communion-table,
lighted candles on a ledge where he
had been ordered not to place them,
etc., etc.—was, by order of Lord
Penzance and with the approval
of his own bishop, Dr. Claughton
of Rochester, interdicted from officiating
again in the diocese. The
writ of inhibition was served him
on a Sunday morning before the
commencement of the service; he
not only took no notice of the writ,
but also on the following (Christmas)
day publicly resisted his substitute.
Canon Gee had been appointed by
the bishop to read the service in
the place of Mr. Tooth, but, on his
arriving at the church, the latter
gentleman, backed by about forty
of his male parishioners, met him
at the door and refused to allow him
to enter, upon which Canon Gee,
.pn +1
after protesting against this insubordinate
proceeding on the part of
his refractory brother, was forced
to retire. Having thus disposed of
the episcopal delegate, the vicar
proceeded to display an unusual
pomp in the ceremonial. Six splendid
banners were carried in procession,
on one of which was embroidered
the monogram of Our Blessed
Lady, surrounded by the words,
<i>Sancta Dei Genitrix</i>.” The church
was crowded to suffocation, partly
with worshippers, and also very
largely by people who had come
from curiosity, as was evident by
their behavior no less than by their
murmured expressions of ridicule
or indignation; a crowd, not only
of “roughs,” but numbering many
well-dressed people, had assembled
outside. On one occasion, the
14th of January, in particular, the
scenes both within and without
were disgraceful. “Inside,” we are
told, “there was a good deal of
fighting and scuffling, especially at
the lower end,” while outside the
crowd, besides breaking down the
fences, shouting “No popery,” yelling,
and in various ways demonstrating
their inclination to break
the laws as well as the parson did,
had they not been kept in some
abeyance by a strong body of three
hundred police, joined in singing
loudly the national anthem, vociferating
with especial emphasis and
vigor the line “Confound their
knavish tricks”—improved by some
to “popish tricks” in honor of the
occasion. Some time after the service
was over, so as to give the mob
time to thin, the sight of Mr. Tooth
issuing from the church under the
protection of “twenty stout policemen
of the F Division” had in it
something almost ludicrous to those
who reflected that all this commotion
arose from the fact of his
having spurned the “secular
arm.”

When, on the 20th of January,
the Rev. R. Chambers, who has
been appointed curate in charge of
the parish of Hatcham by the Bishop
of Rochester, went, accompanied
by the bishop’s apparitor, and,
producing his license, requested
Mr. Tooth to hand over to him
through the church-wardens the possession
of the church, the vicar replied
that he refused to take any
notice of the document or the application.
He was therefore committed
for contempt of court, and
is now lodged in Horsemonger Lane
jail.

It is not necessary to give more
than two portions of the very temperate
explanations with which Lord
Penzance has accompanied his judgment—namely,
those portions which
are aimed at the delusions supposed
to be most important in the controversy.
These delusions are, in
brief, 1st, that the new Public
Worship Act was an innovation
upon Anglican custom, and an invasion
of its rights; 2d, that
obedience should be rendered to
an ecclesiastical and not to a lay
superior. The answers of Lord
Penzance to these assumptions are,
substantially, as follows:

“1. It would be well if those
who maintain these propositions
were to read the statutes by which
the ritual of the Church of England
at the time of the Reformation was
enforced—I mean the statutes establishing
the two successive prayer-books
of King Edward VI. and
the prayer-book of Queen Elizabeth,
which regulated the ritual of
the reformed church for the first
hundred years after its establishment.
They would there find that
a clergyman departing in the performance
of divine service from the
.pn +1
ritual prescribed in the prayer-book
was liable to be <i>tried at the
assizes by a judge and jury</i> (the bishop,
<i>if he pleased</i>, assisting the
judges), and, if convicted three
times, was liable to be <i>imprisoned
for life</i>. The intervention, therefore,
of a temporal court to enforce
obedience in matters of ritual is at
least no novelty; the novelty, as
far as the Church of England is
concerned, is rather in the claim to
be exempt from it.

“2. But suppose this claim, for
the sake of argument, to be admitted;
what, then, are the ecclesiastical
courts to whose judgment the Ritualists
would be willing to defer?
Unless every clergyman is to settle
the form of worship for himself, and
there are to be as many forms of
worship as there are parishes in
the land, who is it that, in his
opinion, is to determine what the
rubrics of the prayer-book enjoin?—for
we suppose him to consider
himself bound by the directions
of the prayer-book. What is the
court to which he is willing to render
obedience? Is it the court of
his bishop? If so, he must surely
be aware that by the ecclesiastical
law of this country, as well before
the Reformation as since, an appeal
from the bishop’s court lies, and
has always lain, to the court of the
archbishop, this Court of Arches,
whose jurisdiction he now denies.
What question, therefore, is there
of a secular court, or an invasion
of the rights of the Church of England?[#]”
And the judgment passed
by Lord Penzance was contained in
the following words: “Applying
these powers as I am bound to do,
I have no hesitation in pronouncing
Mr. Tooth to be contumacious,
and in contempt for disobeying
the inhibition pronounced by this
court, and I direct the same to be
signified to the queen in chancery,
with a view to his imprisonment.”

.fn #
A writer in the London <i>Times</i> gives the following
answer to the ecclesiastical assumptions of Mr.
Tooth: “I will enumerate some of the acts on
ecclesiastical matters which have become law without
the consent of the priesthood, and which therefore
the present agitators bind themselves to disallow
and disobey: The act of Edward VI. on the
Sacrament, on Chantries, on Images, on Fasting;
the Acts of Uniformity, both of Edward VI. and
Elizabeth; the Act of Toleration; the act abolishing
the burning of heretics, under William III.;
the acts, both of Charles II. and William III.,
for the observance of Sunday; the various Marriage
Acts of William III., George II., and Queen Victoria;
the various acts both for the repression
and the relief of Roman Catholics during the same
range of time; the acts during the late and present
reigns against pluralities and against non-residence;
the acts suppressing the Irish bishoprics,
suppressing half the cathedral dignitaries in England,
and, finally, revolutionizing the Irish Church;
the act for abolishing the services drawn up by
Convocation for the political anniversaries of the
seventeenth century. These and many other laws,
many of them of unquestioned beneficence, most of
them of unquestioned obligation, all of them passed
by Parliament, and by it alone, must be set aside by
those who make it a point of conscience to disobey
any law which has been imposed on the church by
secular authority.”
.fn-

And now the strife of tongues
which preceded this climax was
comparative calm to that which at
present rages. All the winds of
Æolus, each trying which can blow
the hardest, seem let loose at once
in the distracted Establishment.
By the Ritualist party the confessor
for disobedience in Horsemonger
Lane jail is already dubbed “the
martyr, Tooth”; while another party
rejoices that, by the contumacy of
this “parson in revolt,” the state
church is “forced into a clear,
practical assertion of her old and
hitherto unquestioned right to restrain
and punish disobedient and
delinquent 'clerks.’” Further, the
London <i>Times</i>, dilating after its
own infallible fashion upon Mr.
Tooth and “his pranks,” dares to
aver that “to parade a banner calling
the Virgin Mary the 'Mother of
God’ is little less than sheer blasphemy.”
.pn +1

At a large meeting of the “English
Church Union” it became evident
that the changes in law procedure
produced by the Public Worship
Regulation Act are producing a
murmur in favor of “disestablishment”
within the Church of England
herself. One of the reverend
speakers at this meeting said that
“the issue had now merged from
one about the color of a stole to a
question of church and state,” and
the honorable chairman agreed that
“establishment might cost too
dear.” Archdeacon Denison declared
that this case of “dear
Arthur Tooth” would prove to be
“a life-and-death struggle with Protestantism,”
thus making the old
mistake of putting mere ritualism
in the place of the Catholic Church.
Canon Carter moved that “the
Church Union denies that the secular
power has authority in matters
purely spiritual,” upon which a
journal reminds him that, from the
days of the Reformation, it has been
one of the conditions on which the
state church enjoyed the emoluments
and privileges of establishment
that her clergy should perform
certain duties in a way laid down
by law. Whether, as in the case of
Mr. Tooth, they have or have not
done so is a matter which the law
leaves a particular court to decide.
If Mr. Tooth does not relish the
action of these tribunals, two
courses are open to him, and only
two. Either he may give up those
practices which they declare obnoxious
within the pale of the Established
Church, or he may leave the
Establishment and continue them
elsewhere. The latter step would
entail the sacrifice of the endowment,
or, as the Ritualists would say,
it would involve the guilt of schism;
in which case the whole matter resolves
itself into a choice of sins: the
clergyman must either commit the
sin of obeying Lord Penzance, and
so retain the endowment, or he must
commit the sin of “schism” and
fling the endowment away. Thus
the Church Unionists are by no
means logical in comparing their
present position to that of Chalmers,
Buchanan, Guthrie, Cunningham,
and other leaders of the Free
Kirk of Scotland previously to
1843; for these men gave up all
thought of state endowment, or
even of ministering in buildings dependent
on the state, and purchased
the independence of their ministrations
at the cost of all state temporalities.
This is a very different
matter from attempting to have the
temporalities and the independence
together.[#]

.fn #
Certain evicted Ritualists, however, do not appear
to be much affected by the measures taken to repress
them, if it be true that the Rev. R. P. Dale,
who has been suspended for three years, and his former
parish merged into another, takes the matter
very philosophically, and, in default of his own parish,
finds every Sunday in one place or another a complaisant
brother-clergyman, who lends him his church
and his pulpit, from which he braves the pseudo-episcopal
thunders.
.fn-

Another observation made by
Canon Carter was, though not in itself
more true, yet, for him, much
more to the point—namely, that “the
only persecution now carried on in
England is against the High-Church
party.” It is on this fact that the
Ritualists stand triumphant. They
can honestly plead that they, the
High-Church party, have done more
than all the other parties put together
for the revival of faith and devotion
in England. They can also
plead that they are men of education,
of courage and energy and
self-denying zeal, and that to them
is due whatever residuum is left of
Catholic sentiment and tradition
in the Establishment. The marvel
is that any of these really earnest
men should continue so blind to
their anomalous position.
.pn +1

On the same day that the English
Church Union held its assembly
a meeting of the ultra-Protestant
school took place at the Wellington
Hall, Islington, where about
one hundred and twenty clergymen
and laymen partook of breakfast,
after which they proceeded to deliver
themselves of a large amount
of the peculiar and incoherent insipidities
with which the readers of
the <i>Rock</i> must be painfully familiar.
One specimen will suffice, which, as
our readers will perceive, is not
lacking in the unctuous accusations
in which the “Evangelicals” are
apt to excel: “As in Germany,”
they said, “the Jesuits devoted all
their self-denying energies to opposing
the spread of the true doctrines,
so here in England there
was an able and resolute body of
men who opposed themselves to
the true principles of religion, and
who, by services rendered attractive
to the eye and ear, appealed by the
senses to the understanding. Many
of these men were no doubt sincere,
and were thus unconsciously doing
the work of Satan. This was the
powerful opposing force with which
the Evangelical body of the Church
of England had to contend.”

Now, we must beg leave to observe
that for these “Evangelical”
gentlemen to talk of Ritualists as
unconsciously doing the work of
Satan is simply absurd. Did not
the “beam in their own eye” blind
them, we would ask them to take a
glance backward and think of forty
years ago, when, through the length
and breadth of the land, they locked
up their churches from Sunday
afternoon to the following Sunday
morning, and sometimes even
longer; for the writer can recall
three villages (there may or may
not have been many more) in Leicestershire
alone where, less than
forty years ago, there was only one
service on the Sunday, and that alternately
in the morning and afternoon.
We have heard of the wag
who chalked on the church door
of an Evangelical rector, “<i>Le Bon
Dieu est sorti: Il ne reviendra que
dimanche prochain</i>.” And truly, if
the good God <i>did</i> come back, it
would not be, in many instances, to
find his house “swept and garnished.”

Forty years ago! Sitting in the
old family pew in the chancel of
A ... stone church, through the
long, monotonous sermons of the
worthy rector, whose favorite subjects
were “saving faith” and
abuse of popery, what a help it
was to patient endurance to watch
the merry, loud-voiced sparrows
fluttering in and out of the broken
diamond panes of the chancel windows,
through which long sprays of
ivy crept and clung lovingly up the
poor old walls, bare of everything
but whitewash, of the once Catholic
church—walls that the damp
of many an autumn and winter had
dyed with streaks of green, deeper
and brighter in hue than the faded,
ink-stained rag of moth-eaten green
baize that covered the rickety
wooden table standing where, in
old days, the most holy Sacrifice
had been offered upon a Catholic
altar. Childhood, before opportunities
for comparison have been afforded,
is not hard to please, and
we used to think that that verdant
chancel might have been in the
mind of the sweet Psalmist of Israel
when he sang, “The sparrow hath
found her a house, and the swallow
a nest, where she may lay her
young: even thine altars, O Lord
of Hosts!” And yet our worthy
rector (a rich pluralist with a
large family) was a kind-hearted,
easy, amiable man, and not in any
.pn +1
way addicted to the hunting and
drinking practices of certain of his
clerical neighbors; his house was
the perfection of refined not overloaded
luxury, and the well-kept
gardens of that most pleasant of
rectories were a paradise of smooth
lawns, gay parterres, and shady
shrubberies sloping down to the
banks of the winding Soar. The
rector led a mildly studious life
when in the country (for half his
year was spent in London), visited
much among the “county families,”
and shyly and rarely entered the
cottages of the village; but religion
in that village was well-nigh
dead. If amiable clergymen of
this stamp are not “unconsciously
doing the work of Satan” themselves,
they at any rate give Satan
plenty of time and opportunity to
do his own work himself among
their flock, and to do it very effectually,
too.

Yet it is the descendants of men
like these who are foremost in
groaning down and persecuting the
self-denying, hard-working clergy
who are always at their posts!
The preachers of sentiment are furious
against the upholders of the
necessity of dogmatic truth. The
idlers in family and social circles
are desperate against enthusiasts
who at least <i>try</i> to hear confessions
and to be priests. We cannot admire
the consistency of the Ritualists—for
unhappily it does not exist—but
the inconsistency of their
“Evangelical” accusers is simply
“the impeachment of energy by
twaddle.”

A correspondent of the London
<i>Times</i> calls attention to the fact
that while Mr. Tooth, who is perfectly
orthodox as regards the
creeds of the church, is prosecuted
for extremes in ritual, a brother
clergyman is allowed to preach
open infidelity from the pulpit unmolested.
“The Public Worship
Bill,” he writes, “has been passed
to repress crimes so grave as over-magnificence
in the services, but
does not deign to meddle in so
small a matter as that of vindicating
the Divinity of our Saviour,
which is fearlessly impugned in a
pulpit which the Bishop of London
himself has condescended to occupy.”

It is much to be doubted whether
the Anglican bishops, when they
obtained from Parliament the Public
Worship Regulation Act, had
the remotest idea of the tempest
which, Prospero-like, they were
summoning around them, but
which, unlike Shakspere’s magician,
they would be powerless to allay.
And if this is the result obtained
by the act just mentioned, a still
more recent one, the “Scotch
Church Patronage Act,” another
measure intended by Lord Beaconsfield
as an additional buttress to
ecclesiastical establishments, has
produced similar storms in the
North. It has led to proceedings
in connection with the “settlement”
of a parish clergyman at New Deer
in Aberdeenshire which recall the
furious battles between the “intrusion”
and non-intrusion parties that
split the Established Church of Scotland
into fragments thirty-four years
ago, and has besides almost succeeded
in uniting three-fourths of Scotland
into a solid disestablishment
phalanx. The Presbyterian Kirk,
moreover, in addition to subjects of
contention presented from without,
has certain characteristic squabbles
of its own. A question having recently
arisen on the subject of unfermented
wines in the celebration
of what is called communion, the
session has maintained that it “has
a right to change the elements of
.pn +1
communion, and in so doing is discharging
its proper functions.”
Why not? If local churches can
make their own doctrines, what, we
should like to know, is to hinder
them from making their own sacraments
as well?

Our object in this article has
been merely to sketch the present
condition of affairs in the English
Establishment; but as we have in
concluding taken a momentary
glance at Scotland also, we cannot
leave unnamed the Green Isle of
the West, whose centuries of suffering
and oppression have at last, we
earnestly trust, given place to times
of peace and long prosperity.

Should the reviving hopes of
many hearts be realized, and the
Green Tree of England’s ancient
church again spread its vigorous
branches over the land that was
once “Our Lady’s Dowry”; and
should the grand old northern abbeys,
Melrose, Jedburgh, Paisley,
and even, it may be, Iona, receive
again as in past ages their cowled
and consecrated sons, still England
and Scotland will have but
returned to the faith which Ireland
has never lost, and which no human
or Satanic power has been able to
wrench from her. No! For,
rather than let the cross be torn
from her bleeding embrace, she
suffered herself to be nailed upon
it.
.sp 4
.h3 id=ashes
THE ASHES OF THE PALMS.
.sp 2
<sc>The Disciple.</sc>
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“Are ashes scarce that palms must burn,
Those sweet memorials of the only day
Of triumph that thou hadst, my Prince,
  Upon this woeful earth?”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<sc>The Master.</sc>
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“All glory unto ashes, child, must turn,
Of which this deathly world can make display.
These ashes on proud heads convince
  Proud hearts of glory’s worth.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<sc>The Disciple.</sc>
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“If palms to ashes must,
So be 't. <i>I</i> still will live to praise,
  Though glory’s gage should burn.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<sc>The Master.</sc>
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“E’en thou art naught but dust.
The mark thy forehead bears betrays
  To what thou shalt return.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<sc>Ash Wednesday</sc>
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>An Old World as Seen through
Young Eyes; or, Travels Around
the World.</sc> By Ellen H. Walworth.
New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

Every school-girl who reads this book
will wish that she had an uncle who
would send for her one day, while she is
dreaming over her lesson-book, and invite
her to accompany him around the
world. This is what happened to Miss
Ellen Walworth in June, 1873, and the
volume before us is composed of the letters
which she wrote home during her
tour, and which were published as they
were received in an Albany newspaper,
attracting at the time considerable attention.
They are the production of a
school-girl of fifteen, but slightly altered
from their original form, and this makes
their peculiarity and their special interest.
The course of her travels was
through Scotland, Ireland, England, Belgium,
the country of the Rhine, Switzerland,
Italy, Egypt, China, Japan, and
home by way of San Francisco. The letters
are just what they should be—natural,
lively, juvenile descriptions of the
little incidents of travel and the scenes
witnessed, with the freshness and vividness
of letters written at the time and on
the spot to which each one successively
belongs. Two extremely interesting letters
of Father Walworth, written with
his well-known charm of style and minute
accuracy of statement, are included
in the collection. One of these contains
a description of the Coptic rite, the other
an account of the present state of the
mission in Japan, with many interesting
historical particulars. Our young folk
will find this a very entertaining volume,
and older people may read it with pleasure.
It is a book very creditable to
the young author, and also an evidence
of the kind of culture which is given to
young girls by the accomplished ladies
at Kenwood. We subjoin one specimen
of the style in which the letters are written,
not at all childish, although suffused
with a childlike gayety:

.pm letter-start
“I remember what dispute arose
among the passengers the day we went
down Lake Zurich. There were mountains
all around us, but from the end of
the lake towards which we were steering
rose quite a high range. Over their
summits the clouds extended up some
distance, and, strange to say, a succession
of peaks were to be seen above the
clouds, suspended, as it were, in the sky,
and having no connection with the peaks
below, except a close resemblance in
form. Their outlines were distinctly
marked against the clear blue sky, but
they had a strange, chalky, light appearance,
as if they could be blown away by
a breath. Some of the passengers said
they were merely unusual forms taken by
the clouds; others insisted that they
were a reflection of the peaks below—a
species of <i>Fata Morgana</i>. A few old Alp
frequenters, among them our friend of
the gravel acquaintance, ventured to assert
that they were real mountains, but
their idea was laughed down as ridiculous.
While the dispute was the hottest,
the wind, by a strange freak, dispersed
the clouds almost in an instant,
and we had before us one of the mighty
ranges of Switzerland, beside which our
mountains of the lake shore were mere
hillocks.

“From the foot of Lake Zurich we
took the railroad carriages for Ragatz
and Chur. This journey is among my
most vivid recollections of Switzerland:
for we were following the courses of the
valleys and streams through that wonderful
range of mountains that we had
seen from the lake. We twisted ourselves
into every possible position to
see the snow-capped summits directly
above us, and our fellow-travellers—English,
French, and Germans—became
so excited over the scenery that they
would call out to each other—for, though
the language might not be understood,
the gestures were unmistakable—and
they would rush from one side of the
cars to the other, even dropping down
on the floor, to get a sight from the car-windows
of the very tip-top of the mountains.
The enthusiasm seemed contagious;
there were haughty Englishmen,
stolid Germans, fashionable young ladies,
.pn +1
and confirmed dandies equally
forgetful of appearances. Indeed, as we
passed peak after peak, now clustered
together, now opening and showing
beautiful valleys between, or dark, shaded
chasms, the jagged rocks taking new
shapes and hues every instant, it was
like watching a grand and ever-varying
kaleidoscope.”
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Musica Ecclesiastica.</sc> A collection of
Masses, Vespers, Hymns, Motets, etc.,
for the service of the Catholic Church.
New York: J. Fischer & Bro.
.pm letter-end

Of this publication the Part 16
sent us, containing motets for singing
at the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,
is a collection well suited for use
at that function. But we must object
to the title of the general work, as neither
this nor any figured <i>music</i> can be sung
by ecclesiastics, as such, officiating in any
service of the Catholic Church. The
only melody properly styled <i>musica
ecclesiastica</i> is the Gregorian chant. Definitions
are always of grave moment.
Suppose that some one of our enterprising
publishers should present the public
with a manual of prayers such as the <i>St.
John’s Manual</i>, the <i>Key of Heaven</i>, or the
<i>Mission Book</i> under the title of “Manual
for the Clergy, consisting of prayers,
litanies, hymns, and other devotions
<i>for the service of the Catholic Church</i>”;
it is plain that it would not receive
the imprimatur of a Catholic school-boy.

Under a proper title we give our hearty
encouragement to the work which our
German Catholic brethren abroad and
here in the United States have within the
last few years pursued with such praiseworthy
zeal in the composition of music
for the use of our choirs, which, if we do
not think it to be the most suitable and
most consistent in tone with the letter and
spirit of the Catholic ritual, is decidedly
a vast improvement upon the sensual,
operatic style of music whose melodies
and harmonies have emasculated the devotion
and vitiated the taste of, we regret
to say, almost the majority of Catholics
in modern times.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Comprehensive Geography.</sc> Nos.
1, 2, and 3. New York: P. O’Shea,
37 Barclay St. 1876.
.pm letter-end

We are inclined to think that this
series is the best of the many which have
of late years been presented to the public,
and certainly do not know of any which
are superior to it in any respect except
in the department of physical geography;
and it is as complete even in this as it
could well be without an additional volume
specially devoted to that subject.

The feature which should particularly
recommend it to Catholics is the prominence
which it gives to facts connected
with religion. There is no branch of
study for the young in which it is so important
that religion should be prominent
as geography, with the exception, of
course, of history. Even the best text-books
hitherto published are perhaps a
little too reticent in this respect. The
desire to accomplish this object has in
the present work led to the introduction
of some rather unnecessary details; but
this is a fault on the right side.

We hope that this series will become
popular, as it deserves to be, in Catholic
schools.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Complete Office of Holy Week
according to the Roman Missal
and Breviary.</sc> In Latin and English.
New edition. Revised and enlarged.
18mo, pp. 563. New York:
The Catholic Publication Society.
1877.
.pm letter-end

This edition of <i>Holy Week</i> is a new
and corrected one; it is printed from
large type on good paper, and is well
and substantially bound. Moreover, it
is complete, containing all the offices of
the church from Palm Sunday to Easter
Tuesday, inclusive. This edition is the
only correct one now published in this
country. It has been carefully read by
persons competent to guarantee against
the gross blunders that are apt to
disfigure Catholic works of the greatest
importance. The price is so low
that the book is within the reach of
every one, thus enabling them to follow
easily the services of the church during
Holy Week.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 146.—MAY, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=chancellor
THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[#]
.sp 2
.fn #
<i>Two Chancellors, etc.</i> By Julian Klaczko.
Translated by Frank P. Ward. New York: Hurd
& Houghton.

<i>Pro Nihilo</i> and other pamphlets on the Arnim
question.
.fn-

M. Julian Klaczko is by birth
a Polish Jew and is a convert to
the Catholic Christian faith. He
was for a time employed in the
office of the Austrian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards
a member of the imperial parliament.
He has, however, generally been a
resident in France, where his numerous
essays on political topics have
been published, all of which have
attracted much attention and won
for their author a high reputation.
We have already, in our number for
last March, made some observations
on the career and policy of one of
the two chancellors, whose lives
and public actions, so far as they
had progressed at the time of its publication,
were sketched in the work
whose title is given below. This
work is one of the most interesting
political <i>brochures</i> of our time, and
we propose to continue in the present
article the review of it commenced
in our previous one, confining
our attention chiefly to the
chancellor of the German Empire.

Prince Bismarck has been characterized
by M. Thiers as “a savage
full of genius.” He is one of
Carlyle’s “heroes”—an expression
synonymous with that of the clever
French statesman, and denoting a
giant in whom is embodied intellectual
and physical force, irrespective
of any moral direction. To
this native strength, which has
remained through life to a great
extent rude and uncultivated, and
not in any way to a regular and
careful education, Otto von Bismarck
is indebted for the success
he has achieved. His studies were
finished on his entrance at the university,
and never resumed. It is
doubtful whether he ever passed
the legal examination required before
entering the civil service in
Prussia. Nevertheless, such a
man is always a sort of extraordinary
professor to himself. He has
read literature and studied men and
events. It is absurd to call such a
man uneducated; and, although he
does not possess the art of speaking
.pn +1
or writing according to rule, he is
able to use both his tongue and pen
with an original power which sometimes
rises to the highest level of
eloquence, and to coin expressions
which, once uttered, can never be
forgotten. We have quoted one in
our former article, about the “iron
dice of destiny,” and we will give one
more, which we think is unsurpassed
in the annals of modern speech:

.pm letter-start
“One of his most happy, most memorable
inspirations he suddenly drew one
day from the libretto of the <i>Freischütz</i>.

“In this opera of Weber, Max, the
good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a
cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and
immediately kills an eagle, one of whose
feathers he proudly sticks in his cap.
He then asks for some more cartridges,
but Robin tells him that they are 'enchanted
balls,’ and that, in order to obtain
them, he must surrender himself to
the infernal spirits and deliver his soul
to them. Max draws back, and then Robin,
sneering, tells him that he hesitates
in vain, that the bargain is made, and
that he has already committed himself
by the ball he made use of: 'Do you
think, then, that this eagle was a free
gift?’ Well! when in 1849 the young
orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had
to implore the Prussian chamber not to
accept for the King of Prussia the imperial
crown which the parliament of
Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying
out: 'It is radicalism which offers
this gift to the king. Sooner or later this
radicalism will stand upright before the
king, will demand of him its recompense,
and, pointing to the emblem of the eagle
on that new imperial flag, it will say:
<i>Did you think, then, that this eagle was a
free gift?</i>’”
.pm letter-end

The suggestion will doubtless
present itself immediately to the
minds of many of our readers that
the poetic myth of the <i>Freischütz</i> is
likely to be fulfilled in sober, actual
reality when the German imperial
drama is played out, and that Bismarck
will prove to have been the
Robin of William I. But this is an
anticipation, and we return to our
sheep and our young wolf. An
equally marked and well-known
trait of Bismarck’s style in speech
and writing is a cold, biting, ironical
humor, which often assumes the
outward guise of frankness, sometimes
ferocious, sometimes farcical,
but always dangerous and often
deadly when the master of the weapon
is wielding it in a real fight. The
general tone of his disposition is
contemptuous and misanthropical,
as of one who alternately sneers and
laughs at mankind in general, on
the whole despising the game of life,
yet going in for deep play with all
his soul when the chance presents
itself, for mere occupation and
amusement; just as he plunged into
the Burschen-life in his youth and
hunted bears at a later period in
Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy
in his character; as an
enemy he is relentless, and no gentle
or noble sentiments hamper his
progress in the way of his policy of
“blood and iron.” Yet there is a
most tender and devoted affection
manifested in his letters to his sister,
Malvina von Arnim—“Maldewinchen”;
so far as we know he has
been a kind husband and father;
there seems really to be something
genuine in his long friendship for
Prince Gortchakoff; and all the
world knows that he risked his life
to rescue a servant from drowning.
The impression we have received
from all we have ever read or heard
about him is, that his natural disposition,
like that of Napoleon, is generous
and noble, but, like his, has
been perverted by ambition.

His early life did not promise
any great achievements. He went
by the name of “Mad Bismarck,”
and was always restless, unsettled,
without steady application to any
definite aim. What his real inward
convictions are or have been, in religion,
.pn +1
philosophy, and the higher
sphere of political ethics, is very difficult
to determine, at least for us
who are at a distance; or even to
decide how far he has ever formed
and cherished any deep and settled
convictions at all. Practically, he
has been a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean,
a heathen and a materialist,
using all things and all ideas as so
many counters of no value except
for his own game. The opinions
which he professed at the outset of
his political career were those of
“the party of the cross,” that old-Prussian,
religious, monarchical,
conservative party represented by
the illustrious Baron von Gerlach,
which has been in opposition to the
administration of the chancellor, and
is now in a quasi-alliance with the
Catholic party.

.pm letter-start
“'I belong—' such was the defiant
declaration of Herr von Bismarck in
one of his first speeches in the chamber—'I
belong to an opinion which
glories in the reproaches of obscurantism
and of tendencies of the middle
age; I belong to that great multitude
which is compared with disdain to the
most intelligent party of the nation.’ He
wanted a <i>Christian state</i>. 'Without a religious
basis,’ said he, 'a state is nothing
but <i>a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a
sort of bastion in a war of all against
all; without this religious basis, all legislation,
instead of regenerating itself at the
living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed
about by human ideas as vague as changeable</i>.’”
.pm letter-end

What can be finer or truer than
this statement, in which the whole
of his own policy as chancellor of
the German Empire is condemned
in advance out of his own mouth?
In every important respect his avowed
opinions and political action
were diametrically opposite to those
of a later date. In fact, his bold
and even extravagant advocacy of
the cause of the house of Hapsburg,
at a moment when (1850) the attitude
of Prussia towards Austria was
most humiliating, was the first occasion
of launching him into the
career of foreign affairs. He was
sent, with much misgiving on the
part of the king and his minister, as
Prussian plenipotentiary to the Diet
of Frankfort; and here he began to
go to school to Prince Gortchakoff,
now commenced that world-renowned
friendship between these two
statesmen which has altered the
course of history and for whose <i>dénoûement</i>
we are at this moment intently
watching.

It would be idle to suppose that
these two men traced out beforehand
the common policy which
they have since pursued in concert.
It was impossible for any human
sagacity to foresee the conjunctures
which have since arisen, and have
furnished to Bismarck the opportunities
of which his genius has
availed itself to destroy and to upbuild
great political fabrics. They
could only plan, in general, the aggrandizement
of Russia and Prussia,
by the breaking down of the
traditional policy of coalition and
balance among the European powers.
All that we can see clearly
respecting the incipient working of
Bismarck’s mind at this period is,
that he contracted an aversion for
Austria, a contempt for the German
confederation, and a mean
opinion in general of the diplomats
who had the management of the
European state-craft. The idea of
a new era of absolutism in a few
great, conquering nations—an absolutism
“tinged with popular passions,”
or, according to his favorite
expression,“spotted with red”—dawned
on his mind and became
gradually more distinct. Some extravagant
projects were at times
bubbling in his restless brain, and
he often threatened to abandon the
.pn +1
career of regular diplomatic service
and go into politics “in his swimming-drawers.”
But when the
Prussian administration proposed
to him to go to Russia as resident
ambassador, with a view, as he
expressed it, of “putting him on
ice” to cool him down, he consented
to don a “bear-skin” instead
of the aforesaid habiliments
of a <i>sans-culottes</i>.

On the 1st of April, <i>his birth-day</i>,
1859, Herr von Bismarck arrived in
the capital of the Russian Empire,
of which his former colleague at
Frankfort was already the chancellor.
Among the Russians he was
extremely popular; for he took extraordinary
pains to make himself
agreeable to them, and seemed to
have turned himself into a Russian,
for the time being, in donning the
bear-skin. Notwithstanding his
outward hilariousness, he was inwardly
morose, dissatisfied with the
course which Prussian and European
politics were following, and
feeling himself condemned to honorable
exile and inaction. He
was once so severely ill through
chagrin that his life was in danger.
He said on his recovery that he
had gone “half-way to a better
world,” and expressed regret that
he had not completed the journey.
He thought of abandoning politics
altogether, and with difficulty overcame
his impatience sufficiently to
bide his time a little longer. Gortchakoff
said that Russia “did not
sulk, but meditated.” Bismarck
sulked and meditated. But meanwhile
the course of events was preparing
for him his opportunity.
The strange and mixed drama in
which Napoleon III., destined to
be its principal victim, was the
chief actor—whose critical moments
were Sebastopol, Solferino,
Sadowa, Sedan—was going on.
This great actor, once regarded as
a sphinx of political wisdom, but
now designated by no more honorable
title than the “dreamer of
Ham,” holds a conspicuous place
in the group of those apparently
and temporarily great men to
whom belongs the epitaph sadly
composed for himself by the expiring
Joseph II., Emperor of Austria:
“Here lies the man who
failed in all his undertakings.”
More than this, he is a signal instance
of that blind fatuity by
which those men who set themselves
to counteract the order of
divine Providence are seduced, as
the King of Israel was by the “lying
spirit” in the mouth of his
prophets, to ruin themselves and
become the executioners of divine
vengeance on their own persons.

If Louis Napoleon had had good
sense and moral principle enough
to imitate Charlemagne, he might
have confirmed his dynasty, established
France in solid power and
prosperity, and earned true glory as
a benefactor of Christendom. But
he was not “of the seed of those
men by whom salvation was brought
to Israel.” He aspired to imitate
Cæsar and Napoleon without possessing
their genius. He imitated
the profligacy of Cæsar in his
youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in
his old age. His early vices avenged
themselves in the pain and disease
which unmanned and incapacitated
him for action in the last
eventful crisis of his career. His
criminal alliance with Carbonari
and conspirators in his youth entangled
him afterwards in a mesh
which he had not courage, even if
he had the wish, to break. By his
alliance with the Turk he prepared
an enemy in Russia, who became
one principal cause of his final
downfall and the humiliation of
.pn +1
France, while he gained nothing
beyond a momentary prestige of
glory for his army. By his Italian
campaign, and his subsequent support
of Prussia against Austria, he
weakened the power which would
otherwise have befriended France
in her dire distress; and he built
up a kingdom which abandoned
and betrayed him, at the cost of incurring
the malediction which falls
on all betrayers and oppressors of
the Holy See.

By his greed of territory in annexing
Savoy he alienated for ever
his former ally, England. By the
war above alluded to and his miserable
Mexican <i>fiasco</i> he used up
the splendid army of France, and
was found <i>minus habens</i> when the
day of destiny came on him unprepared.
He deliberately fostered
the military and political increase
of Prussia, and then madly dragged
down upon France that terrible
power which, having first outwitted,
in the second place crushed him.

We have read of some one who
drew an enigmatical figure, in
which a crowned serpent is represented
twining from his tail upward
through a combination of four
letters S, and strangled by the upper
crook of the topmost letter. In
this figure is strikingly symbolized
the course of events in Europe from
the Crimean war to the Prussian
conquest. During Bismarck’s residence
in Russia, which followed
Sebastopol, came the day of Solferino.
The immediate effect of this
battle was an attempt to mobilize
the Prussian army, which disclosed
to the crown-prince, now Emperor
of Germany, its miserable condition,
and suggested to him the plan of
its entire reformation. This plan
he afterwards carried out, accomplishing
it with unprecedented rapidity
and skill by the aid of Von
Moltke and Von Roon, against the
violent opposition of the parliament
and the whole people. Thus was
Bismarck’s great instrument of making
force bring right under subjection
prepared for him in advance,
without his concurrence. The connivance
and concurrence of Russia
were already secured, most cordially
so far as further designs on Austria
were concerned, and at least
conditionally and passively in respect
to ulterior projects of improving
Prussia’s position.

The “Iron Count” is now about
to try the strength of his Thor’s
hammer on the head of the sphinx.
Bismarck is about to become the head
of the Prussian state, and try his
craft and strength in a contest for
supremacy with Louis Napoleon.
He was called home toward the end
of 1861 for consultation and to assist
at the coronation of King William,
and returned to St. Petersburg
only to close up the affairs of his
mission and take farewell. In May,
1862, he was at Berlin, and evidently
destined for the post of Chief
Minister. He was, however, <i>ad interim</i>
sent on the mission to Paris,
<i>to take the measure of Louis Napoleon</i>
and study more nearly the position
of European affairs, which all centred
at that time in the Tuileries.
We should rather say that he went
to Paris to <i>complete</i> these studies and
observations. Already, in 1858, he
had sounded the French emperor
in respect to his sentiments towards
Prussia, and found them most encouraging.
During the same year
Louis Napoleon had sent this singular
message by Count Pepoli to the
court of Berlin: “In Germany
Austria represents the past, Prussia
represents the future; in linking
itself to Austria Prussia condemns
itself to immobility; it cannot be
thus contented; it is called to a
.pn +1
higher fortune; <i>it should accomplish
in Germany the great destinies which
await it, and which Germany awaits
from it</i>.” Consider this language,
and then think of the prison of
Wilhelmshöhe and of the reflections
which must have passed through
the mind of the unfortunate dreamer
so rudely awakened by the thunder
of Von Moltke’s guns! King
William had had an interview with
Louis Napoleon at Compiègne, for
which Bismarck had aided him in
preparing, and it was partly the
result of this interview which had
determined him to call the bold
cavalier of the Mark to his side.
The dreamer’s vague and scheming
mind revolved vast projects of Pan-Latin,
Pan-German, Pan-Sclavonian
combinations, uniting the three
great races and the three great
churches, with their respective centres
at Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg,
in a triple alliance of universal
monarchies, to dominate the
world, to inaugurate a new era, to
bring on the millennium of civilization,
and to place the name of
Louis Napoleon at least on a par
with those of Moses, Alexander,
Julius Cæsar, Constantine, and
Charlemagne.

We have read in the autobiography
of some German philosopher
that in his youth he was ravished
with ecstasy in thinking of “<i>the
wheels of the eternal essences</i>”! The
visionary projects of this unfortunate
imperial seer remind us forcibly
of this boyish philosopher. While
he was letting France drift on towards
the <i>Où allons nous?</i> of Mgr.
Dupanloup, he was driving his imaginary
chariot, on the “wheels of
the eternal essences,” through airy
regions, casting an occasional undecided
glance on Belgium and the
frontiers of the Rhine. Bismarck
was not long in taking his measure,
and it appears that Prince Gortchakoff
had long since learned the
passes by which he could magnetize
him at pleasure. With his own
peculiar, knavish frankness, Bismarck
avowed his own objective
aim—the rectification of the Prussian
frontiers—and found it easy to
amuse the decaying emperor with
vague hints of compensation to
France by allowing the annexation
of Belgium and the territory on the
left bank of the Rhine. As for the
opinion which was formed respecting
Bismarck himself, at this time
and during the first period of his
administration, by the emperor and
the diplomats, it appears now
strangely comical. They could not
bring themselves to regard him as
serious, and were thrown completely
off their guard by his consummate
acting. As late as 1865, when he
visited the French emperor at Biarritz,
the latter, while listening to his
harangues during the promenades
which they took together on the
beach, would slyly press the arm of
Prosper Merimée, and even whispered
once in his ear: “He is crazy.”
M. Benedetti in the following
year told General Govone that he
considered Bismarck to be “a maniacal
diplomat,” adding that he
had <i>long known his man</i>, and had
<i>followed him up</i> for fifteen years.
There is something grimly amusing
in this play of the cat and the mice,
notwithstanding its tragical results
and the pity we must feel for the
victims who thought themselves so
extremely astute, but were lured on
by one deeper in craft than they
were, as easily as the meditative,
solemn bruin was enticed by Reynard
the fox to go after honey.

Bismarck left Paris, convinced of
three things as the result of his
studies: First, that Louis Napoleon
was a “great unrecognized <i>incapacity</i>.”
.pn +1
Second, that “liberalism
is only nonsense which it is easy to
bring to reason; but revolution is a
force which it is necessary to know
how to use.” Third, “that England
need not enter into his calculations.”
He returned to Berlin to
assume the office of Minister of Foreign
Affairs and commence the work
of rounding off Prussia. Austria
was the one decided antagonist
whom he had to meet in the critical
struggle for supremacy in Germany.
He was not afraid of her single
power unaided by allies, but he was
anxious to make doubly sure of the
neutrality of France and Russia.
Circumstances favored him most
remarkably in producing an alienation
between these two powers,
which was an efficacious preventive
of any amicable concord between
the two to check his plans, and in
persuading each one more decisively
to connive at them. The
Polish insurrection, encouraged by
France and Austria, embroiled Alexander
II. with Louis Napoleon,
and renewed all the former rancor
of St. Petersburg against Vienna.
Bismarck was cunning enough to
make secret preparations for taking
advantage of the insurrection, if it
proved too strong for Russia to
quell, by occupying Poland with
Prussian troops, and securing the
final disposition of the whole Polish
question for himself. At the
same time he so managed as to
strengthen the bond between himself
and Gortchakoff, and, in the
actual event, to bind Russia and
Prussia closely together by an open
common policy in respect to Poland.
Favored by fortunate circumstances,
by the co-operation of
military chiefs who showed a genius
in organizing and leading the Prussian
army which astonished the
world, by a fatuity in Louis Napoleon
and a complaisance in the
Russian chancellor beyond his
most sanguine expectations, he
played during the next four years,
like a Paul Morphy of politics,
four or five games at once with
masterly skill. King William of
Prussia and all the other rulers
and statesmen of Europe were but
pieces or pawns to be played with,
taken, or checkmated; and on the
day after the battle of Sadowa he
was really master of the situation.

The objective point at which
Bismarck aimed in the year 1862
was to make Prussia the most powerful
state in Europe and completely
independent of every other state
or coalition of states. For this
end it was necessary to destroy the
German <i>Bund</i>, to deprive Austria
of all power in Germany, to increase
the Prussian territory, and
to establish its hegemony in Germany.
All this was accomplished,
before the close of the year
1866, by means of the imbroglio of
the Schleswig-Holstein succession.
When Christian IX. succeeded to
the throne of Denmark, his right
to the succession in the duchies
was disputed, because it came
through a female line debarred
from inheriting by the ancient law
of Schleswig and Holstein. The
designs of Prussia upon these duchies
were, however, of a much earlier
origin, and had their birth from
the liberal party and its revolutionary
movements in 1848. In a
speech delivered in the Prussian
chambers, April 21, 1849, Herr
von Bismarck declared that the
war provoked in the duchies of
the Elbe was “an undertaking
eminently iniquitous, frivolous,
disastrous, and revolutionary.”
We will not pretend to determine
the question of the validity of
King Christian’s title, as between
.pn +1
himself and the people of the duchies.
It is evident enough, however,
that the matter was one which interested
all Europe, and ought to
have been calmly, justly determined,
in a manner consonant with the
interests of the kingdom of Denmark,
of the people of the duchies, of
the confederated states of the German
<i>Bund</i>, and of Europe. In fact,
the doubt respecting Christian’s title
was seized upon by Bismarck as a
mere pretext for absorbing the disputed
territory, <i>with its fine Baltic
sea-port of Kiel</i>, into Prussia. The
Prince of Augustenberg, the chief
claimant against Christian, had
been induced, a short time before
the accession of the latter to the
Danish throne, by the influence of
Bismarck himself, to sell his claim
on Holstein to the government of
Copenhagen. No sooner was the
old king dead than Bismarck declared
that this same prince was
the rightful duke. At a later period
he brought forward several
other claimants, that these rival
claims might neutralize each other.
How he cheated Lord John Russell;
how he used the German <i>Bund</i>
as a tool for his own purposes and
then scornfully pushed it aside;
how he drew Austria into a war
against Denmark, followed by a
joint occupation of the duchies,
and then commenced a quarrel
against her for their sole possession;
and how England, the declared
protector of Denmark, looked tamely
on while it was despoiled and
maimed, we have not time to relate
in detail. It was a great blunder
in France, England, and Russia to
permit what they could easily have
prevented. On the part of Austria
it was a stupendous and suicidal
folly to make itself an accomplice
in a conspiracy for destroying
the bulwarks of its own power.
This was soon made manifest, but
too late to escape the consequences
of a fatal blunder. Prussia being
ready for action, the <i>Bund</i> and the
claimants of the duchies were summarily
shoved aside. The question
of the right of succession in
the duchies was referred to a high
Prussian court for adjudication. It
was decided that <i>the King of Denmark
alone</i> had possessed the right
of sovereignty in Schleswig and
Holstein, and that, by the cession
which he had been forced to make
after being conquered in war, this
right was now vested in Prussia
and Austria. Austria was politely
requested to sell her share to Prussia,
which she declined to do, and
the next step was to wrest it from
her by force.

The dark intrigues—at the time
so hidden from sight and so almost
desperate, even in the view of the
“maniacal diplomat” who held their
threads in his hand and wove them
into a mesh around his victim—by
which Bismarck planned the ruin of
Austria, have since been fully disclosed.
With the government of
Victor Emanuel a strict and secret
treaty was contracted. At the
same time, and for several years after,
a correspondence was kept up
with Mazzini, looking to the overthrow
of Victor Emanuel in case
of any action on his part unfavorable
to the schemes of the arch-conspirators.
Arrangements were
made for fomenting an insurrection
in Hungary under the leadership
of Garibaldi. The neutrality
and connivance of Louis Napoleon
were secured by playing upon his
Italian sympathies and holding before
him vague expectations of compensation
for France.

Prince Gortchakoff lent an underhand
but most valuable help to
his friend all through, beginning
.pn +1
with the attack on Denmark. It
was Louis Napoleon, whose incapacity
and weakness were not yet
fully revealed even to Bismarck’s
keen eye, who was most feared and
distrusted. Enfeebled as he was
in respect to whatever capacity he
had really possessed in his prime,
and weakened as was the power
of France, yet, with the help of the
statesmen and soldiers who were at
his disposal, he still retained the
power of determining the main issue
in the politics of Europe, and
Bismarck knew it. He would not
stir in any decisive action until
well assured that he had mastered
the French emperor by his superior
craft. He had less difficulty
in this than he anticipated. Louis
Napoleon, like most other European
observers, overrated the military
strength of Austria, and underrated
the new Prussian army with
its almost untried leaders, Von
Roon and Von Moltke; which even
Bismarck himself somewhat distrusted
up to the last moment. The
French emperor desired and hoped
for the liberation of Venetia. But
he expected the defeat of the Prussian
army in Germany, and for himself
the <i>rôle</i> of a mediator, an umpire,
a general referee for settling
all things on the basis of a new
treaty of peace. He let Bismarck
play his game out, with what result
is known to the world. Although
victorious in Italy, Austria nevertheless
ceded Venetia to Louis Napoleon,
who handed it over to Victor
Emanuel. The victory of Sadowa
agreeably surprised the victor,
brought despair to the vanquished,
and astonished the world.
If all the other great powers had
not been alienated from each other,
and under a fatal spell of the arch-fiend,
Robin’s master, whose enchanted
balls had brought down the
Austrian eagle, they might have intervened
to prevent the grave ulterior
consequences of this fatal day
of Sadowa. If Louis Napoleon had
not been paralyzed and demoralized
to the extent of utter imbecility, he
might have interfered alone, and
successfully, in this his last opportunity
for saving his dynasty and
saving France. Nobody interfered.
There was a weak show of negotiations,
but Bismarck had his own
way in everything. Before the end
of the year 1866 his spoils were
all gathered in and safely garnered,
and the centre was shifted from
Paris to Berlin.

The area of Prussia had been increased,
by the annexation of Hanover,
Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort,
and the duchies of the Elbe,
from 108,000 to 135,000 English
square miles, and its population
from 19,000,000 to 23,000,000. It
was, moreover, the head of a North
German Confederation, and practically
had control of the South German
States, with the certainty of
having all Germany outside of Austria
to co-operate with it and follow
its lead in case of hostilities with
France. These were the “moral
conquests of Prussia in Germany”
which the king, as prince-regent,
had announced to the nation when
he assumed the reins of government.
This was the fulfilment of
“the federal obligations toward the
Emperor Francis Joseph,” so much
talked of at Potsdam, while the future
chancellor was hunting bears in
Russia. Such was the sequel of
the protest of Berlin against the
Piedmontese annexation. The prophecy
of Cavour was fulfilled: that
“Prussia would one day, thanks to
Piedmont, profit by the example
which had been given to it.”

The “Piedmontese mission of
Prussia,” vaunted by the French
.pn +1
democratic press, was well inaugurated
and pretty near fulfilment.
Louis Napoleon’s oracular sayings
about the “great destinies of Prussia”
proved to have something else
in them than “the stuff which
dreams are made of.” He had no
longer to utter the philanthropic
complaint: “<i>The geographical position
of Prussia is badly defined.</i>” It
was perhaps not quite perfect in
the opinion of Bismarck, but it was
certainly vastly improved, and destined
to a still further rectification
which had probably not been revealed
to the imperial dreamer.

Having disposed of his <i>first</i> accomplice
in the great scheme, gradually
matured during his sulky
meditations at Frankfort and St.
Petersburg under the tuition of his
master in diplomacy, Prince Gortchakoff—namely,
having put down
Austria—Bismarck proceeded with
his next plot: against his accomplice
in the one just successfully carried
into execution. Austria had been
lured on by the expectation of
sharing in the spoliation of Denmark,
defrauded of her portion of
the spoils, and stripped of a great
part of her original possessions, to
the advantage of Prussia. In like
manner Louis Napoleon was disappointed
of the acquisitions he
hoped to receive as a reward for
conniving at the spoliation of Austria;
he and his dynasty were overthrown
completely, and we trust
finally; France was humiliated to
the dust and compelled to ransom
herself from captivity by the price
of her treasure and her territory.
The disruption of the European
bond left France, as Austria had
been left, at the mercy of her perfidious
ally, converted into an open
and relentless enemy.

During the preliminaries of peace
at Nikolsburg, afterwards ratified
by the treaty of Prague, by which
the German hegemony of Prussia
was established, Bismarck persuaded
the French emperor through his
envoy, the unfortunate M. Benedetti—the
same one who knew his man
and followed him up so skilfully—that
“the reverses of Austria allowed
<i>France and Prussia to modify
their territorial situation</i>.” Hints
were thrown out about the Rhine
provinces and Belgium. After
Prussia had completed her own
modification of her territorial situation
for the time being, Bismarck
continued, while Prussia was taking
a rest and making all her political
and military arrangements perfect,
what he called his “dilatory negotiations”
with Louis Napoleon.
The latter was asking for compensations,
for which he had not stipulated
when he placed his services
at the disposal of his employer.
Mephistopheles qualified this demand
as a “policy of <i>pour boire</i>.”
You engage a <i>fiacre</i> in Paris, you
pay the stipulated price to the
driver, and he presents his hand
again, unless you anticipate him by
a voluntary gratuity, with the familiar
phrase: “Pour boire, monsieur,
s’il vous plaît!” If you are a good-humored
gentleman, you hand over
a few sous and he departs contented.
If you are gruff and parsimonious,
and show unwillingness to
comply with his polite request, he
will reiterate it with less deference
and civility. Whereupon, if you
are violent and profane, and have
sufficient command of the French
language to speak after the manner
of the <i>gamins de Paris</i>, you refer
him to a person beyond the “<i>Porte de
l’Enfer</i>.” The history of the secret
treaty of offensive and defensive alliance
between France and Prussia,
giving the aid of France to carry out
the further programme of Prussian
.pn +1
ascendency in Germany, and the
aid of Prussia to secure Luxembourg
and Belgium to France, signed by
France, though not signed, <i>only laid
up in her archives</i>, by Prussia, is well
known. A previous project of a
treaty ceding the Rhine provinces to
France was shown to the South
German plenipotentiaries and drove
them into a secret and strict alliance
with Prussia. The work of Nikolsburg
and Prague was completed,
the whole military force of North
and South Germany was at the
disposal of King William, and nothing
was wanting but a war with
France to make him emperor of
Germany, with Alsace and Lorraine
as additional provinces of his kingdom,
and all expenses paid by the
French treasury. Bismarck could
now drop the mask whenever he
pleased, and bully the unfortunate
emperor into the folly of trying to
expiate his past misconduct by
<i>baptizing himself in the fire</i> of Prussian
artillery and <i>mitraille</i>. This
dark and tragic act in the drama
of the Downfall of Europe is summed
up with consummate truth and
terseness in that little masterpiece
entitled <i>The Fight in Dame Europa’s
School: showing how the German
boy thrashed the French boy, and
how the English boy looked on</i>:

.pm letter-start
“Only one boy—his favorite fag—did
William take into his confidence in the
matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad
named Mark, not over-scrupulous in
what he did, full of deep tricks and
dodges, and so cunning that the old
dame herself, though she had the eyes
of a hawk, could never catch him out
in anything absolutely wrong. To this
smart youth William one day whispered
his desires [of annexing part of Louis’
garden] as they sat together in the summer
house smoking and drinking beer.
'There is only one way to do it,’ said
Mark. 'If you want the flower-beds, you
must fight Louis for them, and I believe
you will lick him all to smash. You
see, old fellow, you have grown so much
lately, and filled out so wonderfully, that
you are really getting quite formidable.
Why, I recollect the time when you were
quite a little chap!’ 'Yes,’ said William,
turning up his eyes devoutly, 'it has
pleased Providence that I should be
stout. Then, my dear Mark, what do
you advise me to do?’ 'Ah! that is not
so easy to say. Give me time to think,
and when I have an idea I will let you
know. Only, whatever you do, take care
to put Master Louis in the wrong.
Don’t pick a quarrel with <i>him</i>, but force
him, by quietly provoking him, to pick a
quarrel with <i>you</i>. Give out that you are
still peaceably disposed, and carry your
Testament about as usual. That will
put old Dame Europa off her guard,
and she will believe in you as much as
ever. The rest you may leave to me.’
An opportunity of putting their little
plot into execution soon occurred. A
garden became vacant on the other side
of Louis’ little territory [Spain], which
none of the boys seemed much inclined
to accept. It was a troublesome piece
of ground, exposed to constant attacks
from the town-cads, who used to overrun
it in the night and pull up the newly-planted
flowers. 'Don’t you think,’
said Mark one day to his friend and
patron, 'that your little cousin, the new
boy [Prince Hohenzollern], might as well
have that garden?’ 'I don’t see why he
should not, if he wants it,’ replied William,
by no means deep enough to understand
what his faithful fag was driving
at. 'It will be so nice for Louis, don’t
you see, to have William to keep him in
check on one side, and William’s little
cousin to watch him on the other side,’
observed Mark innocently. 'Ah! to be
sure,’ exclaimed William, beginning to
wake up, 'so it will; very nice indeed.
Mark, you are a sly dog.’ 'I should say,
if you paid Louis the compliment to
propose it, that it is such a delicate little
attention as he would never forget—even
if you withdrew the proposal afterwards.’
'Just so, my boy; and then
we shall have to fight.’ 'But look here,
won’t the other chaps say that I provoked
the quarrel?’ 'Not if we manage properly,’
was the reply. 'They are sure to
fix the cause of dispute on Louis rather
than on you. You are such a peaceable
boy, you know; and he has always been
fond of a shindy.’ So Dame Europa
was asked to assign the vacant garden to
.pn +1
William’s little cousin. 'Well,’ said she,
'if Louis does not object, who will be
his nearest neighbor, he may have it.’
'But I do object, ma’am,’ cried Louis.
'I very particularly object. I don’t want
to be hemmed in on all sides by William
and his cousins. They will be walking
through my garden to pay each other
visits, and perhaps throwing balls to
one another right across my lawn.’ 'Oh!
but you might be sure that I should do
nothing unfair,’ said William reproachfully.
'I have never attacked anybody.’
'That’s all my eye,’ said Louis. 'I
don’t believe in your piety. Come, take
your dear little relation off, and give him
one of the snug corners that you bagged
the other day from poor Christian.’
'Come, come,’ interposed the
Dame, 'I can’t listen to such angry
words. You five monitors must settle
the matter quietly among yourselves;
but no fighting, mind. The day for that
sort of thing is quite gone by.’ <i>And the
old lady toddled off</i> and left the boys
alone. 'I wouldn’t press it, Bill, if I were
you,’ said John, in his deep, gruff voice,
looking out of his shop-window on the
other side of the water. 'I think it’s
rather hard lines for Louis—I do indeed.’
'Always ready to oblige you, my dear
John,’ said William; and so the new
boy’s claim to the garden was withdrawn.
'What shall I do now, Mark?’ asked
William, turning to his friend. 'It
seems to me that there is an end of it all.’
'Not a bit,’ was the reply. 'Louis is
still as savage as a bear. He’ll break out
directly; you see if he don’t.’ 'I have
been grossly insulted,’ began Louis at
last, in a towering passion, 'and I shall
not be satisfied unless William promises
me never to make any such underhand
attempts to get the better of me again.’
'Tell him to be hanged,’ whispered
Mark. 'You be—no,’ said William, recollecting
himself, 'I never use bad language.
My friend,’ he continued, 'I
cannot promise you anything of the kind.’
'Then I shall lick you till you do, you
psalm-singing humbug!’ shouted Louis.
'Come on!’ said William, lifting up his
hand as if to commend his cause to Heaven,
and looking sanctimoniously out of
the whites of his eyes. 'Come on!’
shouted William, thirsting for more
blood. '<i>Vive la guerre!</i>’ cried poor
Louis, rushing blindly at his foe. Well
and nobly he fought, but he could not
stand his ground. Foot by foot and yard
by yard he gave way, till at last he was
forced to take refuge in his arbor, from
the window of which he threw stones at his
enemy to keep him back from following.
And when William, who talked so big
about his peaceable disposition, and declared
that he only wanted to defend his
'fatherland,’ chased him right across the
garden, trampled over beds and borders
on his way, and then swore that he would
break down his beautiful summer-house
and bring Louis on his knees, everybody
felt that the other monitors ought to interfere.
But not a foot would they stir.
Aleck looked on from a safe distance,
wondering which of the combatants
would be tired first. Joseph stood shaking
in his shoes, not daring to say a
word for fear William should turn round
upon him and punch his head again; and
John sat in his shop, grinding away at a
new rudder and a pair of oars. 'Come
and help a fellow, John,’ cried Louis in
despair from his arbor. 'I don’t ask you
to remember the days we have spent in
here together when you have been sick
of your own shop. But you might do
something for me, now that I am in such
a desperate fix and don’t know which
way to turn.’ 'I am very sorry, Louis,’
said John, 'but what can I do? It is no
pleasure to me to see you thrashed. On
the contrary, it would pay me much better
to have a near neighbor well off and
cheerful than crushed and miserable.
Why don’t you give in, Louis? It is of
no mortal use to go on. He will make
friends directly, if you will give back the
two little strips of garden; and if you
don’t, he will only smash your arbor to
pieces, or keep you shut up there all dinner-time
and starve you out. Give in,
old fellow; there’s no disgrace in it.
Everybody says how pluckily you have
fought.’”
.pm letter-end

The ingenious author has made
a mistake about Aleck and Joseph.
Aleck was in league with William,
and his threats alarmed Joseph and
kept him from interfering. Bismarck
had succeeded in reconciling
Gortchakoff to the sacrifice of
all the old friends and family connections
of Russia in Germany.
Moreover, he had in some way convinced
him so completely that it
was for the interest and future advantage
.pn +1
of Russia to ally itself
closely with Prussia, that he turned
a deaf ear to the advances of
France and Austria in reference to
the Oriental question, and gave a
strong moral support, which in case
of need he was ready to transform
into active military co-operation, to
his most iniquitous and oppressive
measures against France. M. Thiers
was convinced of this when Prince
Bismarck handed to him his Russian
portfolio and allowed him to
read at leisure thirty letters which
it contained, while he sat by quietly
smoking a cigar and enjoying the
chagrin and discomfiture of the
aged statesman. Besides this, we
must consider that England had a
reason for coolness towards France
in the unprincipled negotiations of
the French government respecting
England’s <i>protegée</i>, Belgium. And
at last, when England did wish to
interfere to obtain for France more
favorable conditions of peace, and
made propositions for concerted action
to St. Petersburg, it was Russia
which threw cold water upon
the plan and kept all Europe back
while William was finishing up his
quarrel with Louis. It cannot be
doubted that Bismarck had given
Gortchakoff to understand that,
when the proper time came, Prussia
would secure for Russia a fair
field and no interference for a decisive
and final effort to destroy
the European empire of the Turk.
Fuad-Pasha, said to have been one
of the greatest statesmen of Turkey,
while lying on his death-bed at
Nice dictated a political testament,
which was sent, after his mortal career
had closed, to his sovereign,
the sultan. In this document he
had said: “When this writing is
placed before the eyes of your majesty,
I will no longer be in this
world. You can, therefore, listen
to me without distrust, and you
should imbue yourself with this
great and grievous truth: that <i>the
empire of the Osmanlis is in danger</i>.
An intestine dissension in Europe,
and <i>a Bismarck in Russia</i>, and the
face of the world will be changed.”
The date of this document is January
3, 1869.

The conflict between Prince Bismarck
and the Catholic Church has
been treated of repeatedly in former
articles in this magazine. We will,
therefore, abstain from going over
that ground again. It has been
surmised that the policy of the Prussian
chancellor in respect to the
church has been dictated to him
by the necessity of satisfying the
demands of the radical-liberal party.
We cannot think that it is to
be accounted for simply on this
ground. The general idea and fundamental
principle of Bismarck has
been to destroy the community of
nations which was the remnant of
ancient Christendom, and raise up
an independent, self-subsisting, absolute,
and dominating German Empire.
It is an essential part of this
plan to destroy the principle of
unity and community centred in
the Holy See, and to make the emperor
absolute head of all churches
within the boundaries of his state.
The idea is wholly pagan and despotic,
and includes the subversion
of all right except that which is a
conceded privilege derived from the
sovereign will of the state. Not
only, therefore, is all international
right ignored by it, but every right
of municipalities, of orders, of legislative
and judicial bodies, of subordinate
members of the government,
of associations and individuals,
is suppressed and merged in
one paramount right of force, of
physical power—in a word, of tyranny,
the worst, as Plato long ago
.pn +1
taught, of all possible political organisms.

In perfect harmony with the
oppressive, persecuting policy of
Prince Bismarck toward the church
has been his conduct toward the
Prussian nobility, the legislative
chambers, and all those who have
in any way asserted their rights
against his despotic might. This is
illustrated in the case of the Count
Harry von Arnim.

We had intended to go more
deeply into the merits of this affair
than we now find our remaining
space will permit. Catholics have
little reason for cherishing amicable
sentiments toward this unfortunate
victim of a relentless persecution
under the forms of law. He
has been one of the most artful and
persistent enemies of the Holy See
among the statesmen of Europe.
The pamphlet <i>Pro Nihilo</i>, on account
of which, in great part, he
was condemned of treason by a
Prussian court, is sufficient, by itself,
to show that if he had been in
power he would have been more
dangerous than even Bismarck.
His cold contempt is more offensive
to Catholic feelings than the
violence of his successful rival.
Nevertheless, there is in him more
of honor, probity, veracity, and the
courtesy of a gentleman than is at
this day very common among diplomatists
of the “new era.” Besides,
he has been tricked, insulted,
ill-used, and all but crushed in
pieces by a cruel enemy, and therefore
we cannot help sympathizing
with him. There is something
deeply tragic in his story. The
gist of it lies in this: that he would
not be a blind, subservient tool in
the hands of the chief of the administration,
that he dared to think
for himself, and that the old Prussian
nobility had fixed their hopes
on him as a desirable successor to
the chancellorship, in case anything
happened to Prince Bismarck.
Hence the long, perfidious, and
in the end brutal warfare waged
against him by his unscrupulous
and relentless enemy, who has for
the time being triumphed, according
to his own maxim, <i>La force
prime le droit</i>. The Count von
Arnim is still, however, a formidable
antagonist. With the pen, on
the field of legal argument, in the
subtle tactics of diplomatic writing,
he is superior to his persecutor,
and master of a force dangerous
even to the man who can command
armies. He has a host of friends
and sympathizers in Prussia, of allies
throughout Europe. M. Benedetti
was not mistaken when he applied
the epithet “maniacal” to the
man who was called “mad” by the
friends and boon companions of
his youth. His madness is not
without method, and, like that of
Charles XII. of Sweden, has given
him a certain prestige of heroism
and success. On the day of Solferino
that prestige sat on the helmet
of Napoleon III. Sedan, Wilhelmshöhe,
and Chiselhurst were
still invisible in the future. The
career of Bismarck is not yet finished,
nor can the destiny which awaits
the empire he created be foretold.
It is reported that he has recently replied
to those who asked him whether
there would be war in Europe over
the Eastern question: “<i>The devil
only knows!</i>” He appears to regard
his Satanic Majesty as the
god of modern Europe and the supreme
controlling power in modern
politics. Formerly the name of
God was frequently on his lips, and
his thoughts spontaneously referred
all things to him. It was God who
decided battles and controlled the
destinies of nations. Men of great
.pn +1
genius cannot escape from their
clear and vivid intuitions of the
supersensible. One who has had
the insight and the sentiment of
the meanness of the world, and the
sole grandeur of eternal principles
of truth and morality, belonging to
a mind naturally great, cannot be a
complete dupe of the illusions by
which he deceives and subdues the
multitude. We can see this deep
melancholy of a mind which cannot
be satisfied with the trivialities of
life, and is restlessly yearning after
something greater, in all the wild
conviviality, restless scheming, audacious
enterprise, ironical sporting
in word and deed with all persons
and things held in awe and
regarded as sacred in the common
sentiments of humanity, in the
whole career of this Carlylean hero.
Satan, we have no doubt, has had
a great control over the rulers and
the politics of modern Europe.
Bismarck can see this, and has assuredly
not forgotten his own prophecy
of the results of the policy of
adorning one’s self with the feathers
of eagles which have been brought
down by the devil’s bullets. When
he says that “the devil only knows
whether there will be war in Europe,”
we hear Robin telling Max
that he has concluded an infernal
compact and must stand by it.
We know, however, that although
the devil knows his own plans, and
tries to guess at those of God, he
cannot fathom or thwart these plans
of one who is infinitely stronger and
wiser than he is, and has often before
made him catch himself in his
own mouse-trap. Bismarck is like
the legendary giant Christopher,
while he was in the service of the
demon, thinking him to be the
strongest master he could serve.
He has acted as if he supposed
that God had given up Europe to
the devil’s dominion, yet he betrays
his conviction in a hundred
ways that there is a stronger power
than the revolution or the anti-Christian
despotism “spotted with
red,” which is only biding its time.
He despises and sneers at his own
master, because he sees him wince
at the crucifix on the cross-road.
We think it quite probable that in
his secret soul he venerates Pius
IX., as did Mazzini, and is convinced
that if anything on earth is
great, true, and as enduring in the
future as it has been in the past, it
is the Catholic Church. His fear
of it, and his war <i>à l’outrance</i> against
it, show an estimate of its power
which can have no rational foundation
except in an unwilling, hostile
apprehension of its divine origin.
The shallow, clever Count von Arnim
is a cool, quiet sceptic. So,
we conjecture, is Prince Gortchakoff.
Bismarck is too deep for that
sort of smooth, placid incredulity.
He fears an ultramontane as children
are afraid of a bear under the
bed. He is afraid of Jesuits, afraid
of nuns, afraid of children singing
hymns in honor of the Sacred
Heart.

We think he has some reason
to be afraid. The waters are
rising around him, and it is likely
that he will yet have to plunge into
them “in his swimming-drawers.”
“Sooner or later radicalism will
stand upright before the king, will
demand of him its recompense, and,
<i>pointing to the emblem of the eagle on
that new imperial flag, it will say:
Did you think, then, that this eagle
was a free gift?</i>”

“Without a religious basis a
state is nothing but <i>a fortuitous
aggregation of interests</i>, a sort of
bastion in a war of all against all;
without this religious basis all
legislation, instead of <i>regenerating
.pn +1
itself at the living sources of eternal
truth</i>, is only tossed about by human
ideas as vague as changeable.”
This is the great case of Bismarck
<i>versus</i> Bismarck. His renunciation
of his own principles, and maniacal
following of passion against reason,
is but a type of the conduct of Europe.
The modern Germany has
renounced and made war upon the
principles which were the foundation
of its old imperial greatness.
France has done the same; Italy has
done the same, with a worse and
more parricidal impiety. Europe has
done it, and the natural consequence
is “war of all against all.”
“La force,” says Lacordaire, “tôt
ou tard, rencontre la force.” “<i>A
house divided against itself cannot
stand</i>”; and such a house is the one
which Bismarck has built. The
Napoleonic fabric was overwhelmed
by the volcanic fires of Sedan. We
believe that there will be a Sedan
for the similar fabrics of Cavour
and Bismarck, for the whole structure
of modern European politics.
And where can be found these
“living sources of eternal truth”
at which “legislation can regenerate
itself”? Let us remind our
readers that the Encyclical and
Syllabus of Pius IX. were proclaimed
in 1864, between the epochs of
Solferino and Sadowa. We think
they will easily understand why the
Holy See condemned the principles
of “accomplished facts” and “non-intervention,”
and perceive to what
an abyss these principles have conducted
Europe. They will remember
that the date of the Council of
the Vatican is 1870, between Sadowa
and Sedan, and perceive the
import and reason of our conclusion,
that the source of regeneration
for Europe is the same source from
which European Christendom received
its birth and the life of its
youth and manhood. To quote
again from Lacordaire: “On n’emprissonne
pas la raison, on ne
brûle pas les faits, on ne déshonore
pas la vertu, on n’assassine pas la
logique.” That policy of which
Prince Bismarck is the great master
is the policy of fraudulence, perfidy,
violence, and tyranny. The
whole European apostasy and conspiracy
against the Holy See—the
centre of religious unity and political
equilibrium for Europe and
the world—is a revolt against reason,
history, morality, and the logic by
which the sequences of principles
and events are demonstrated and
applied to the concrete matter of
human destiny. These are indestructible
powers, and no artillery
can overthrow them or fraud pervert
their decisions. “<i>There is no
kingdom of hell upon earth</i>,” but
only a continuous resistance of the
infernal powers to the kingdom of
Jesus Christ, which from time to
time breaks out into a revolution.
And the same calm, historic record,
in which past Catholic historians
have narrated the successive
defeats of these revolutionary enterprises
will, in each new chapter
added by succeeding centuries,
continue the chronicle of similar
failures; placing the impartial mark
of indelible dishonor against the
names of all those who have sought
for greatness by fraud and violence.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=veronica
VERONICA | A LEGEND OF MÉDOC
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
<i>In fines terræ</i>
<i>Verba corum.</i>
.pm verse-end

Descending the river from Bordeaux
amid verdant isles, and between
shores that produce some of
the choicest wines of France, we
soon come, on the right, to Blaye,
with its chivalric memories of Orlando
and the fortress that makes
it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was
in the days of Ausonius, who says:

.pm verse-start
“Aut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum
Fert militarem ad Blaviam.”
.pm verse-end

At the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient
villa of St. Paulinus of Nola.
The Gironde soon becomes a sea.
The shore lowers and is on a level
with the waves. The poor hills of
Saintonge escape to the north, and
the white houses of Royan become
visible on the far-off shore. The
sea-gull flies over our head, tireless
as the ceaseless waves that feed
him. We see the white tower of
Cordouan at a distance framed in
a dazzling sea of blue and gold,
out of which it rises two hundred
feet above low tide, full of grace
and majesty, like an enchanted
castle. It is said to stand on the
remains of the ancient isle of Antros,
which Pomponius Mela, in the
first century, places at the mouth
of the Gironde. We cannot resist
the temptation to climb its three
hundred steps for the sake of the
wonderful view over fell and flood.
The foundation of this tower is lost
in obscurity. Even its very name
is a mystery. Some think it of
Moorish derivation, and that the
first light-house here was built by
the Saracens—a most ridiculous
supposition; for the Moors, though
they destroyed a great deal in
Aquitaine, certainly had no time
for building, whatever their taste
for architecture. Others say it was
due to Louis le Débonnaire, and that
he appointed a keeper to light a
beacon-fire and sound a <i>cor</i>, or
horn, night and day, to warn the
sailor of the perils of the coast;
but any one who ever heard the
noise of the tumultuous waves
breaking high against the cliff of
Cordouan can imagine the inefficiency
of the most vigorous lungs
in such violent storms as are proverbial
on the Bay of Biscay. The
poor keeper would have needed the
Horn of Thunder of the Armorican
legend, given St. Florentius by a
Norman chief to summon aid when
attacked by his piratical horde, or
the magic oliphant of Orlando, then
kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its
owner once blew so terrible a blast
that all the birds dropped dead in
the forests of Roncesvalles and it
was heard for twenty miles around.

The earliest historical knowledge
we have of a light-house here is
from a charter of the fourteenth
century, by which we learn that the
Black Prince built a tower on the
cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin,
kept by a hermit. In 1409 the
hermit’s name was Geoffroy de Lesparre,
who subsisted by levying
.pn +1
two <i>grossos sterlingorum</i> on every
vessel from Bordeaux laden with
wine—a toll that Henry IV. of England
authorized him to double.

As for the modern tower of Cordouan,
Louis de Foix was

.pm verse-start
“Le gentil ingénieur de ce superbe ouvrage.”
.pm verse-end

He was one of the architects employed
by Philip II. of Spain in
building the Escorial, and the inventor
of the mechanism by which
the waters of the Tagus were carried
to the highest part of the city
of Toledo. Some curious things
are related of this ingenious architect
while in Philip’s service. The
ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos,
seems to have placed confidence in
him; for he commissioned De Foix
to furnish him with a book heavy
enough to kill a man with a single
blow. The architect made one of
twelve tablets of stone, six inches
long and four broad, bound in steel
covers embossed with gold, which
weighed over fourteen pounds, and
might have had for its motto the
excellent <i>mot</i> of Callimachus on
the danger of weighty books. De
Thou relates the account of this
momentous tome, which is also referred
to in the list of Don Carlos’
expenses, and says De Foix told
him the idea was by no means an
original one of the prince’s, but
suggested by a similar volume improvised
in his grandfather’s time
by Don Antonio de Acuña, Bishop
of Zamora, who, confined in the
castle of Simancas for taking part
in the rebellion of the Comuneros,
covered a brick of the size of his
breviary with leather, and with this
volume of decisive theology killed
his keeper and made his escape.
Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked
the fate of the bishop, who was
overtaken by the keeper’s son and
hanged on the battlements of the
castle of Simancas. All who have
visited the Armeria Real at Madrid
will remember the armor of this belligerent
prelate.

De Foix also invented several
curious clocks for Don Carlos, who
seems to have inherited Charles
V.’s taste for chronometrical instruments.
Every one knows the
anecdote of the servant who, suddenly
entering the emperor’s room
one day, overthrew the table and
broke to pieces the thirty watches
on it. The emperor laughed and
said: “You are more successful
than I, for you have discovered the
only means of making them all go
alike.” Among these clocks of
complicated mechanism made for
the prince by De Foix was one in
the shape of an antique temple
adorned with columns, that indicated
the hours, days, months, and
other things.

Don Carlos, as if conscious of
the insecurity of his life, also ordered
De Foix to construct a machine
with pulleys and weights by which
he could himself open and shut his
chamber door while in bed, and
yet no one could enter the room
against his will. De Foix seems to
have been faithless to the prince;
for on the 18th of January, 1568—by
the king’s order, to be sure—he
stopped the movement of the
pulleys, unknown to Don Carlos,
whose chamber was thus opened
and he conveyed to prison. De
Thou’s account of this is confirmed
by the letter of an Italian at Madrid
written eight days after, in which
the door with its pulleys is mentioned.

Louis de Foix (or <i>sans foi</i>) is
said to lie beneath the tower he
erected; so we could not say:
“Light be the turf above thee!”
even had we been disposed.

Six or eight miles south of Cordouan
.pn +1
we came to Soulac, amid the
sand-dunes and salt marshes, with
its antique church of Notre Dame
de la Fin des Terres, held in great
veneration by the sailors of the
middle ages, and recently dug out
of the sands in which it had been
buried for one hundred and twenty
years. In fact, it had been partly
buried since the fourteenth century.
Few churches have so
strange a history as this. Tradition
attributes its original foundation to
the pious Veronica, on whose linen
veil the weary Saviour, on his way
to Calvary, left the impress of his
sacred face. It was strange to
come upon her traces on this distant
shore, and we took great interest
in hunting up all the local traditions
respecting her. Lady Eastlake
considers her <i>de trop</i>, both morally
and pictorially, and regards her
very existence as problematical;
but we who have so often met her
in the sorrowful <i>Via Crucis</i>, and
pondered on the touching lesson
she has left us, feel how utterly that
somewhat stringent author is mistaken.
Seraphia, Bernice, Beronica,
or Veronica—no matter by what
name she is called—is a being full
of reality to us. As to her identity
with the Syro-Phœnician woman of
the Gospel, we are disposed to say
with Padre Ventura: “It is not
certain the <i>hémorroïsse</i> was the same
as Veronica, but it is probable that
she who had the wonderful favor
of wiping the sweat and blood from
the divine face of our Saviour was
the same matron who touched the
hem of his garment with so much
courage and faith, and gave such a
testimony to his divinity.” Even
if the contrary were proved, this
would not affect the ancient tradition
respecting her apostolate in
France, which modern research is
far from shaking. Holy chroniclers
of the middle ages assert that Veronica
was not only an intimate
friend of the Blessed Virgin, but
one of the women whom Jesus
healed of their infirmities and who
consecrated themselves to his service,
following him in his round of
mercy, and aiding him with their
substance. The learned Lucas of
Bruges declares her positively the
Syro-Phœnician woman healed by
our Saviour, who, says Julian in
his chronicles, lived part of the
time at Jerusalem and part at Cæsarea
of Philippi. Eusebius says he
saw with his own eyes the monument
she erected at Cæsarea in
memory of her cure, on which she
was represented at the feet of her
divine Benefactor—a memorial destroyed
by Julian the Apostate.

A Polish poet, Bohdan Zaleski,
thus alludes to the traditional intimacy
of Veronica with the Holy
Family in lines full of graceful simplicity
in the original:

“Joseph and Mary have lost the
child Jesus at Jerusalem. Elizabeth
comes to tell them he has been
found. 'It must be either in the
Temple, then, or at Veronica’s,’ replies
Mary.

“The Holy Family go to visit
Elizabeth. Jesus, afar off, joyfully
hails the aged matron, as well as
Veronica, Martha, and Salome.

“Joseph makes the accustomed
prayer to thank God for his gifts.
Jesus breaks the bread and blesses
it. Veronica passes around the
basket and distributes the bread
among the guests.”

Pilgrims for centuries have mentioned
Veronica’s house as at the
corner of a street near the spot
where Jesus fell for the second
time under the weight of his cross.
She is said to have been the wife
of St. Amadour—the Zaccheus of
the Scriptures, who in early life,
.pn +1
says the legend, was in the service
of the Blessed Virgin. He had
watched over the childhood of
Jesus, and this was why he was so
joyful to receive him in his house.
After the Crucifixion he and Veronica
attached themselves anew
to the service of Mary, with whom
they remained till her glorious Assumption.
According to a lesson
in the breviary of Cahors—founded
on an old MS. of the tenth century
by Hugo, Bishop of Angoulême,
which Père Odo de Gissey, who
collected all the traditions respecting
St. Amadour, declares he had
seen—Saul, the persecutor of the
church, wished to force Amadour
and Veronica to return to the old
law. They were condemned to die
of hunger, but an angel of the Lord
mercifully delivered them from the
power of their persecutors and conducted
them to a bark, ordering
them to abandon themselves to the
mercy of the waves and land wherever
their boat should come to
shore, there faithfully to serve
Christ and his holy Mother.

One old chronicle says the demon
invoked the winds, swelled the
waves, and unchained the very
furies against the frail bark. Death
at every moment seemed at hand in
its most frightful form. But the
venerable matron, in the height of
danger, seized the sacred relics she
brought with her, and, raising them
to heaven, invoked the assistance
of God. Wonderful to relate, the
storm at once ceased, a favorable
breeze sprang up and brought the
boat safely to the western coast of
France to a place called Solac, in
face of the setting sun. Here she
built, as best she could, a church in
honor of the blessed and glorious
Virgin Mary, and deposited therein
with due honor the holy relics of
Our Lady she brought with her.

Bernard de la Guionie, a Dominican
of the thirteenth century, says
that, by a particular providence of
God, they brought with them many
precious relics of the Blessed Virgin,
such as her hair and shoes, and
even some of the <i>Sanctum Lac</i> that
nourished the divine Word. It is
generally believed this relic gave
the name of Solac, or Soulac, to the
place—<i>Solum Lac</i>, because the
other relics of the Virgin were distributed
among various churches.
This relic was not once considered
so extraordinary. It was not only
venerated in many parts of Christendom
as the symbol of the divine
Motherhood, but it became a symbol
of the supernatural eloquence
and sweet doctrine of several doctors
of the church. Every one who
has visited the magnificent gallery
at Madrid will remember Murillo’s
beautiful painting representing St.
Bernard deriving the food that lent
to his lips such sweet, persuasive
eloquence from the pure breast of
the gentle Deipara. The dignity
and grace of the Virgin in this
painting are something marvellous,
and take away everything that
might seem human from the subject.

We have all heard of the Grotto
of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock
of offence to so many scoffing tourists.
It is only those who have a
profound faith in the Incarnation
that venerate everything associated
with the divine Infancy. St. Louis
of France built the beautiful Chapelle
du Saint Lait in the Cathedral
of Rheims to receive the relic
that gave it its name. A like relic
was venerated in the church of
Mans in the time of Clovis. And
a vial was borne before the army
at the battle of Askalon, in 1224,
which reminds one of Rubens’s painting
at Brussels in which the Madonna
.pn +1
bares her breast before the
awful Judge, as if he could refuse
nothing at the sight of the bosom
on which he had so often been
pillowed, and where he had been
nourished. There is an old legend
of a similar vial of this sacred <i>laict</i>
being brought from the Holy Land
by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped
one day to repose by a fountain
near Evron, and hung the reliquary
on the hawthorn bush that overshadowed
him, and went to sleep.
When he awoke, the bush had
grown into a tree and the relic was
far beyond his reach. He tried to
cut the tree down with a hatchet,
but could make no impression on
the wood. Feeling an inward assurance
this was the spot where
Providence wished the relic to be
honored, he gave it to the bishop,
who built thereon a church, which
became known as Notre Dame de
l’Epine Sainte. The high altar enclosed
the hawthorn tree. François
de Châteaubriand, abbot of Evron
in the sixteenth century, gave this
church a beautiful reliquary of silver
gilt, in the form of a church, beneath
the dome of which was a
tube for the relic. Devotion to
this relic still exists at Evron.

But to return to Soulac. It is
not surprising the Syro-Phœnician
woman should come to this distant
shore. We know by Strabo that
the ancient Phœnicians and Carthaginians
came to traffic on this
coast, and even went to Great Britain.
Soulac was probably the ancient
Noviomagos spoken of by
Ptolemy. The old legend of Cénebrun
speaks of Veronica as <i>la Dame
Marie la Phénicienne</i>, who came
from the East under marvellous circumstances,
learned the language
of Médoc, and built a church beside
which God caused a fountain
of fresh, soft water to spring up out
of the salt shore for the cure of
tertian fevers so common in this
region. Moreover, it appears she
was in such constant relations with
the governor of Bordeaux, appointed
by Vespasian, that, to facilitate
the intercourse between Soulac and
the capital, a Roman road was constructed,
“very level and as straight
as a line—<i>rectissimum sicut corda</i>.”
If Vespasian had anything to do
with it, we may be sure it was
straight; for we know how, to rectify
a bend in the Flaminian Way,
he bored a tunnel through a rock a
thousand feet long.

It was at Bordeaux that Veronica
converted Benedicta, a woman of
distinguished birth, and the wife of
Sigebert, a priest of the false gods,
who, attacked by a cruel malady,
and hearing of the marvels wrought
by St. Martial, said to Benedicta:
“Go and bring the man of God;
perhaps he will take pity on me.”
St. Martial gave her the miraculous
staff of St. Peter, at the touch of
which Sigebert recovered the use
of his limbs. He at once proceeded
to Mortagne, accompanied by a
great number of soldiers and other
followers, all of whom were baptized
by St. Martial. At his return
to Bordeaux he overthrew all the
pagan altars, with the exception of
one, which St. Martial purified as a
memorial of the triumph of the true
faith. The inscription graven thereon
is still to be seen in the museum
at Bordeaux: <i>Jovi Augusto Arula
donavit. SS. Martialis cum templo et
ostio sacravit</i>—Arula gave this altar
to Jupiter Augustus. Martial consecrated
it with the temple and vestibule.

Benedicta continued to work miracles
with St. Peter’s staff, and
greatly contributed to the propagation
of the faith in the province.
She died in the odor of sanctity,
.pn +1
and was buried in the oratory of
St. Seurin at Bordeaux, where her
remains are still honored on the
8th of June.

Sigebert, whose name signifies
the powerful or courageous, became
the first bishop of Bordeaux, where
he is honored as a martyr under
the name of St. Fort. To his <i>sanctum
feretrum</i> at St. Seurin’s people
formerly went to take solemn oaths.

The foregoing reference of the
old chronicler to Vespasian reminds
us of the part Veronica is said to
have had in the destruction of
Jerusalem. A curious old play of
the middle ages tells us Vespasian
was afflicted with the extraordinary
inconvenience of a wasp’s nest in
his nose, and, after trying every
known means of dislodging it, sent
for the great Physician of the Jews.
Finding he had been put to death
by his own nation, he demanded
some of his followers, whereupon
Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea,
and Veronica are said to have gone
to Rome. The emperor expressing
a desire to see a portrait of Christ,
Veronica held up the <i>Volto Santo</i>
before him, at the sight of which
he was instantaneously healed. In
his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance
on the murderers of Jesus,
which led to the destruction of
Jerusalem. The connection between
this legend and the traditional
respect in which Veronica was held
by Vespasian’s representative at
Bordeaux is curious.

Some say it was Tiberius who
was cured of the leprosy by the
holy veil, which accounts for his
leniency to the Christians and his
placing a statue of Christ among
the gods. These legends, confused
by time, may be regarded as traces
left by Veronica at Rome, where a
constant tradition asserts she herself
brought the <i>Volto Santo</i>.

This precious relic must have
been in great repute to have been
placed at St. Peter’s in 707 by Pope
John VII. When removed to the
Santo Spirito, it was confided to
six Roman noblemen, each of whom
had one of the keys that gave access
to it. For this service they annually
received two cows at Whitsuntide,
which were eaten with great
festivities. In 1440 it was restored
to St. Peter’s, where it is preserved
in a chamber within one of the immense
piers that sustain the wondrous
dome. None but a canon
of the church can enter this chamber,
but the Vera Iconica is annually
exposed from the balcony. It
seems to have all the solemn gravity
traditional in the Greek representations
of our Saviour. Petrarch
respectfully speaks of it as the <i>verendam
populis Salvatoris Imaginem</i>.

Veronica’s statue is beneath—one
of the guardians that stand around
the tomb of the apostles. Perhaps
she came to Rome with St. Martial;
for there are traces of her wherever
he announced the Gospel. Else
remembers their visit, and says,
when they left its walls, they directed
their course towards Gaul.
Mende and Cahors carefully treasure
the shoes of the Virgin she
brought, and Puy has some of her
hair. St. Antoninus, Archbishop
of Florence, says that, according to
the ancient traditions of the churches
of Italy and France, Amadour
and his wife Veronica accompanied
St. Martial to Gaul. And St.
Bonaventure, the great Franciscan,
in the thirteenth century, in one of
his homilies, represents St. Veronica
in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave
visited by St. Martial.

St. Amadour embraced the solitary
life, and is believed to have
been the first hermit of Aquitaine.
His whole life is painted on the
.pn +1
walls of the subterranean chapel at
Roc Amadour, where he died. The
inscriptions attached to these frescoes
thus sum up the legend respecting
him:

1. Zaccheus, because he is small
and unable to see Jesus in the
crowd, climbs up into a sycamore-tree.
Jesus, perceiving him, says:
Zaccheus, make haste and come
down; for to-day I must abide at
thy house.

2. Zaccheus is Jesus’ disciple.
Veronica, his wife, becomes one of
Mary’s attendants. They are persecuted
for the faith, but an angel
comes to deliver them from the
prison in which they are confined.

3. An angel orders Zaccheus and
Veronica to put to sea and land at
whatever port the vessel shall enter,
there to serve Christ, and Mary his
holy Mother.

4. The vessel arrives on the
coast of Médoc at a place called
Soulac, where they live in fasting
and prayer. St. Martial visits them
and blesses an oratory they have
erected in honor of St. Stephen.

5. Zaccheus, at the order of St.
Martial, goes to Rome to see St.
Peter. St. Veronica remains in
the Bordelais country, where she
dies. Zaccheus returns to Soulac,
where he erects two monasteries
and retires from the world.

6. St. Amadour, in the year of
our Lord 70, chooses as his hermitage
and place of retreat a cliff inhabited
by wild beasts, since known
as Roc Amadour.

7. The inhabitants of the country
are almost savages. St. Amadour
catechises them and makes known
the religion of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

8. St. Amadour erects an altar
on the cliff in honor of Mary. This
humble altar, now so glorious, is
consecrated by the blessed apostle
Martial, who visits our saint several
times in his retreat.

9. St. Amadour, at the approach
of death, is transported before the
altar of Mary, where he expires.

Veronica herself is said to have
carried in her apron the turf or
clay which served to build the chapel
of Soulac. It was a mere cabin,
which, with the spring, was enclosed
in the church built at a later
period. This was probably destroyed
by the Normans when they ravaged
the coast of France to the terror
of the people, who doubtless
joined heartily in the verse then
added to the liturgy, beginning:

.pm verse-start
Auferte gentem perfidam
Credentium de finibus, etc.
.pm verse-end

According to the traditions of
Aquitaine, Veronica lived to a great
age, and, if already in the Temple
at the Presentation of the Virgin,
she must have been about a century
old at her death. She is believed
to have died about the year
70. She was, at first buried with
great honor at Soulac in the oratory
she had so signally endowed.
It was Sigebert, or St. Fort, who,
says tradition, went to Soulac to
pay her the last honors. It was
long the custom of the bishops of
the diocese, before taking possession
of their see, to visit her tomb,
and render homage to the venerable
traditions of the place. Her remains
were afterwards carried for
safety to Bordeaux, where her tomb,
of the Roman style, is still to be
seen in the crypt of St. Seurin.
She is said to have been of uncommon
stature, and this has been confirmed
by the recent examination of
her remains, so wonderfully preserved
amid the storms of so many ages.
Placed under the seal of the archbishops
of Bordeaux, and watched
over with religious care, a source
.pn +1
of miraculous grace, and the object
of popular veneration, they have
escaped the perils of wars and civil
commotions. Cardinal de Sourdis,
who opened her tomb in 1616, said
her festival had been celebrated in
his diocese from time immemorial
on the 4th of February.

Her remains were carefully examined
a few years since by a learned
anatomist, who not only declared
them of great antiquity, but said
the articulation of certain bones
showed the advanced age at which
she died. Thus science comes to
the aid of tradition. The popular
belief as to her majestic stature was
likewise confirmed by this examination.

Veronica’s oratory, probably destroyed
by the Normans, as we have
said, was afterwards rebuilt by the
Benedictines, but at what precise
time is doubtful. We only know
there was a monastery at Soulac in
1022, which became dependent on
that of Sainte Croix at Bordeaux.
In 1043 Ama, Countess of Périgord,
gave the lands of Médrin to the
monastery of <i>Sancta Maria de Finibus
Terræ, ob remedium animæ suæ
necnon parentum suorum</i>, to relieve
the poverty of the monks who there
served God and worthily fulfilled
their duty. An old Benedictine
chronicle says the devotion of the
faithful towards this holy spot increased
to such a degree that the
monks were soon enabled to build a
larger church, which they enriched
with much silver and many relics.
This was in the twelfth century.
This church, of the Roman style,
to which the Benedictines were partial,
enclosed the miraculous fountain
of St. Veronica, which had
always been in great repute, and
had an altar to her memory where
solemn oaths were administered as
at the tomb of St. Fort. Her statue
stood over the fountain, and, before
leaving the church, the devout, after
drinking of the water and bathing
their eyes, used to cross themselves
and make a reverence to “Madame
Saincte Véronique.”

This church was no sooner completed
than it began to be invaded
by the sands, which every year grew
higher and higher. The lateral
doors had to be walled up, and the
pavement raised three times to be
on a level with the sands without.
Veronica’s fountain was kept open,
but soon became a well. The monastery
and town finally disappeared
under the dunes in the latter part
of the thirteenth century. The
monks returned when the sands
were stayed. They found the
church filled to the chancel arch
and the capitals of the pillared
nave. They removed part of the
roof, raised the Avails, and so arranged
the church that it continued
to be used till devastated by
the Calvinists of the sixteenth century.
It was hardly repaired before
the sands besieged it anew and
soon buried it utterly, with the exception
of the top of the belfry,
which a boy could easily scale, presenting
a curious and picturesque
appearance on the lone shore.
Under Louis XV. the open arches
of this steeple became a kind of
light-house, and the pines sown by
Brémontier soon took root among
the arches of the church totally
hidden in the sands.

Tradition says Soulac was once
important as a port, and alive with
commercial activity. Henry III.
of England embarked at old Soulac
for Portsmouth about the middle
of the thirteenth century, which
shows how extensive have been the
sand deposits since. Once the
church was so near the water that
in great storms the foundations
.pn +1
were washed by the waves, though
built on a slight acclivity. It appears
by documents still preserved
at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748
covered the greater part of Soulac,
causing the loss of many salt
marshes and other sources of revenue.
Many other parishes on the
shores of Médoc have wholly disappeared.
The church of La Canau
was rebuilt three times before the
moving sands. Sainte Hélène has
transported hers ten kilometres,
leaving behind what is now an islet
with a few trees to mark the spot
where it once stood, still called by
the people Senta Lénotte, or Ste.
Hélenotte—that is, little St. Helen.

St. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called
in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in
Ligno—St. Peter on the Wood, or
Cross—said to have been originally
built by Zaccheus, or St. Amadour,
in memory of the martyrdom of the
apostle, which he had witnessed
at Rome, has been abandoned two
hundred years, and now lies under
the waves of the ocean.

Pauillac, sung by Ausonius in his
epistle to Théon:

.pm verse-start
“<i>Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret</i>,”
.pm verse-end

is likewise half-buried in the sands.

But to return to Soulac. The
thirteenth century was the most
glorious era in the history of Notre
Dame de la Fin des Terres. Its
popularity was at that time increased
by a terrible pestilence that visited
Médoc. The people had recourse
to prayer, and went in crowds
to the sanctuary of Soulac, vowing
to renew their pilgrimage annually.
The most noted of these pilgrimages
was that of Lesparre, a small
town which excited our interest by
its reminiscences of the English occupation
of the country. Its ruined
fortifications; the square tower,
sole remnant of the ancient castle,
and the church with its Saxon arches
and coarse sculpture—all bespeak
great antiquity. In the twelfth
century the castle and village
around it were held by Baron Eyquem,
a contentious lord, who liked
nothing better than a brush with
his neighbors. Perhaps it was this
quarrelsome turn of mind that recommended
the lords of Lesparre
so strongly to the favor of the English
sovereigns. Henry III. of
England summoned Baron Eyquem
to his aid at Paris. The
baron’s son also served the same
king with all the forces he could
muster, and Henry so counted on
his devotedness that, in 1244, after
promising to reward his services,
he commissioned him to aid by his
sword and counsel in repelling the
King of Navarre, who had invaded
Guienne. During the entire contest
between England and France
the Sires of Lesparre remained
faithful to the English; and when
the last hour of English rule in the
country sounded, the Baron de
Lesparre took the lead in an effort
to replace Guienne under its dominion.
He went secretly to England
with the lord of Candale and
several notable citizens of Bordeaux
to assure the king that the
whole country would rise in his favor
as soon as the banner of St.
George should be once more seen
on the Gironde. The English
eagerly responded by sending the
valiant Earl of Shrewsbury,

.pm verse-start
        “The Frenchman’s only scourge,
Their kingdom’s terror, and black Nemesis,”
.pm verse-end

to Bordeaux, but their last chance
was lost by the defeat at Castillon in
1453, in which the gallant old earl,
immortalized by Shakspere—doubly
immortalized—was slain. The
Baron de Lesparre was banished,
and the following year beheaded
.pn +1
at Poitiers for breaking his bounds.
Charles VII. of France then gave
the Seigneurie de Lesparre to the
Sire d’Albret, to whom in part he
owed the triumph of his arms.

Lesparre having lost two-thirds
of its inhabitants by a pestilence,
the remainder, in their terror, went
to prostrate themselves before the
altar of Notre Dame de la Fin des
Terres, and made a solemn vow to
return every year, if spared. The
account of this annual pilgrimage
reminds one of the caravans of the
desert. The pilgrims were divided
into two bands. A part were
mounted on horseback, preceded
by the cross-bearer and the <i>curé</i>;
the rest followed on foot with baskets
and sacks of provisions. The
four bells of Notre Dame de Lesparre
pealed joyfully out over the
marshes to announce their departure.
They stopped at every
chapel they came to, to salute its
tutelar saint by some hymn in his
honor, and then kept on their way,
chanting the litanies. Most of
these chapels were dedicated to
saints specially invoked in time of
pestilence; for every grief of the
middle ages left its record in the
churches. There was St. Catharine,
always popular in this region. Then
came St. Sebastian, now destroyed,
but which gave the name of La
Capère (the chapel) to a little village
we passed, and St. Roch still
standing at Escarpon. As soon as
the caravan came in sight of the
belfry of Soulac, on a height between
St. Vivian and Talais, the pilgrims
descended from their horses
to salute the Virgin on their knees.
Arrived at the holy sanctuary, each
one offered his candle streaming
with ribbons—a necessary adjunct
in all religious offerings in Médoc.
An enormous mass of these old
ribbons have been preserved at new
Soulac. After their devotions the
pilgrims went out on the seashore
to take their lunch. The next day
they returned to Lesparre in the
same order. This annual pilgrimage
was continued for five centuries,
which accounts for the vivid
recollections of it among the people.
Near the manor-house of the
Baron d’Arès, now buried in an immense
dune, flowed a fountain as
late as 1830, but since filled up,
where the pilgrims stopped to
quench their thirst, with the pious
belief that St. Veronica had brought
here a vein of the sacred spring
that flowed for the healing of the
people in her sanctuary.

Lesparre, once the capital of
Médoc, has now only about a thousand
inhabitants. From the tower
there is an extensive view over the
broad moor with its patches of yellow
sand, here and there an oasis
with a few vegetables, and perhaps
an acre or two of oats, barley, or
maize, which grow as they can. In
winter this vast heath becomes a
marsh. The water stands in pools
among the sand-hills. The peasant
shuts himself up with his beasts,
and warms himself by the peat-fire,
while the pools freeze and the
sands grow white under the icy
breath of the sea-winds.

St. Veronica’s Church, so venerated
in the middle ages, has within
a few years been dug out of the
sands and repaired. The miraculous
statue of Notre Dame de la
Fin des Terres has been restored
to its place on her altar, and, after
a silence of one hundred and twenty
years, the bell once more awakens
the echoes of the sand-hills, thanks
to the interest taken by Cardinal
Donnet in reviving a devotion to
this ancient place of pilgrimage.
Veronica is once more honored in
the place where she died—a devotion
.pn +1
that seems significant in these
times. Perhaps she comes to hold
up anew the bleeding face of
Christ for the healing of the nations.
The <i>Volto Santo</i> is said to
have turned pale a few years since
when exhibited at Rome. We may
well believe it, in view of all the
wounds since inflicted on Christ’s
Bride—the church. “O Veronica!”
cries Padre Verruchino, a Capuchin
friar, “suffer us, we pray thee, to
gaze awhile at thy holy veil for the
healing of our sin-sick souls!”

An old MS. of the thirteenth or
fourteenth century at Auch contains
the following sequence: <i>De
Sancta Veronica Memoria</i>, showing
how well our fathers in the faith,
even in those dark ages, knew how
to rise above every type and shadow
to the substance of things hoped
for. It is good to echo the prayers
of those earnest times.

.pm verse-start
Salve, sancta facies
  Nostri Redemptoris
In qua nitet species
  Divini splendoris,
Impressa panniculo
  Nivei coloris,
Dataque Veronicæ
  Signum ob amoris.

Salve, decus seculi,
  Speculum sanctorum
Quod videre cupiunt
  Spiritus cœlorum.
Nos ab omni macula
  Purga vitiorum,
Inque nos consortium
  Junge Beatorum.

Ave, nostra gloria,
  In hac vita dura,
Labili et fragili,
  Cito transitura.
Nos perduc ad patriam,
  O felix figura,
Ad videndam faciem
  Christi, mente pura.

Esto nobis, Domine,
  Tutum adjuvamen,
Dulce refrigerium,
  Atque consolamen,
Ut nobis non noceat
  Hostile conamen,
Sed fruamur requie.
  Nos dicamus: Amen.[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, in which
shines the image of the divine Splendor, imprinted
on a veil white as snow, and given to Veronica in
token of his love!

Hail, glory of the world, mirror of the saints,
whom the celestial spirits long to behold. Purify us
from the stain of every vice and bring us to the
society of the Blessed!

Hail, our glory, in this rough, uncertain life, so
soon to pass away! Lead us to our true country,
O blessed symbol! that with a pure heart we may
behold the face of Christ.

Be to us, O Lord! a sure help, the sweet refreshment
and consolation of our woes, that the efforts
of the enemy may not injure us, but that we may
enter into the fruition of true rest. Let us say:
Amen.
.fn-
.sp 4
.h3 id=purgatorio
DANTE’S PURGATORIO. | <i>CANTO FIFTEENTH.</i> | TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.
.pm verse-start
Between the third hour’s close and dawn of day,
  Much as appears of the celestial sphere
Ever in motion, like a child at play,
  So much appeared now of the sun’s career
To be remaining towards his western way.
  There it was evening; here the middle night;
And on our front, the rays directly beat,
  For we had circled so the hill that right
On towards the sunset we inclined our feet;
  When on my brows I felt a load of light,
.pn +1
Greater in splendor than before had been,
  And o’er my sense, as ’twere from things unknown,
A stupor stole; and of my palms a screen
  I made against the excess of light that shone.

As when from water or a mirror’s face
  The ray leaps upward to the opponent side,
Mounting in like mode as through equal space
  The ray descendeth, and with line as wide
From the direct line of a falling stone
  (As science shows, and art hath verified),
So did I seem, by some reflected light
  Before me there, to be so struck that fain
I would have suddenly withdrawn my sight.

“What is it, gentle Father, that in vain
  I shield my visage from, and still towards us
Seems as in motion?” He made this reply:
  “Marvel not if, as yet, the splendor thus
Of heaven’s bright household overpowers thine eye.
  This one is sent to ask men up the height;
Soon it shall be that to behold these things
  Will cause thee no dismay, but bring delight,
Even as thy soul due disposition brings.”
 Soon as we reached the blessèd angel’s side
He said, with glad voice: “Here you enter in
  By steps more easy than you yet have tried.”
We thence departed, and, ascending now,
  Heard <i>Beati Misericordes</i> chanted
Below, behind us, and, “Be joyful thou
  To whom to conquer in this pass is granted!”

My Master and myself in lonely mood
  Still mounting, I considered as I went
How I might gather from his word some good,
  And turned to him inquiringly: “What meant
That spirit of Romagna speaking so
  <i>Of partnership forbid</i>?” He made reply:
“Of his own worst defect he now doth know
  The torment; therefore, do not wonder why
Others he chides to make their penance less.
  Because you point your wishes at a prize
Where part is lost if it permit largesse,
  Envy’s bad bellows move your selfish sighs.
But if the love of the supernal sphere
  Heavenward exalted every wish of yours,
Your bosom would not harbor that low fear;
  For so much more as there they speak of Ours,
More love in that celestial cloister glows,
  And so much more of good each soul secures.”
.pn +1

“Now to be satisfied my hunger grows,”
  I answered, “and my mind is more in doubt
Than if no question I had asked of thee.
  How comes it, that a blessing parcelled out
More rich its many owners makes to be
  Than if a few possessed it?” He replied:
“Because thy mind its reasoning cannot stretch
  Beyond those things of earth to which ’tis tied;
Thou from true light dost only darkness fetch.
  That Good ineffable and infinite
Who dwells above there, runs to love as fleet
  As to a lucid body a ray of light,
And so much giveth as it finds of heat.
  Broad as the flame of charity may burn,
The eternal flame above it grows more great:
  And more their number is who heavenward yearn.
More for his love there are, and they love more,
  Like mirrors that each other’s light return.
Now, if thou hunger still, despite my lore,
  Thou shalt see Beatris, and sure, she will
Give unto this and every wish repose;
  Only may those five wounds remaining still,
That heal in aching, like the twain soon close.”

Whiles I was musing, and would fain have said,
  “Thou hast contented me,” I looked, and, lo!
To the next cornice we had come; here fled
  All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so!
For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be
  Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd
Met in a temple. I could also see
  That entering, 'mid those men, a woman stood
With sweet mien of a mother, saying: “Why
  Hast thou so dealt with us, my darling son?
Behold, in every place thy sire and I
  Have sought thee sorrowing.” Soon as she had done
This vision vanished, and I next beheld
  Another lady, with such drops besprent
As down the cheeks flow from a bosom swelled
  With scorn of some one and by anguish rent;
Saying: “If thou be ruler of the town,
  About whose name the gods had such a strife
And whence all knowledge gleams to give renown,
  Pisistratus! avenge thee on his life
Whose bold embrace hath brought our daughter down!”
  And her lord seemed to me benign and mild,
Answering with aspect that her fury stemmed:
  “What should we do to one that harmed our child,
If one caressing her be so condemned?”
  Next I saw people raging hot in ire,
.pn +1
Slaying a youth with stones, and shouting loud:
  “Martyr him! martyr him!” in tumult dire;
And I saw him drop down before the crowd
  Dying, but lifting, ere he did expire,
Looks that might win compassion for his foes;
  And with such eyes,—they seemed the doors of heaven!
Praying the most high Father that, for those
  Who wrought such wrong, their sin might be forgiven.

Soon as my mind that from itself had swerved
  Came back to true things that outside it lie,
I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.
  My leader then, who could perceive that I
Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,
  Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep
Thy footing straight, but more than half a league
  Hast moved, with faltering steps, as if by sleep
Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?”
  I answered: “O sweet Father! I will tell,
If thou wilt hear me, all that I have seen,
  While my limbs failed me and my strength so fell.”
And he replied: “Shouldst thou thy visage screen
  Beneath an hundred masks, I still could spell
Each slightest thought of thine, and read thy dreams.
  This vision came lest thou be self-excused
Thy heart from opening to the peace that streams
  From love’s eternal fount o’er all diffused.
I did not ask 'what ails thee,’ as men speak,
  Who look with mortal eye that cannot see
The soul without its body. Thou wast weak,
  And I, to strengthen, reprehended thee.
So men are wont dull servants to reprove
  That when their watch comes round are slow to stir.”

During these words we did not cease to move
  On through the evening, and attentive were
To look beyond us, far as vision might,
  Against the level sun’s o’erpowering rays;
And towards us, lo! a vapor, dun as night,
  Little by little growing on our gaze,
Deprived us of pure air and dimmed our sight,
  Nor was there shelter from the blinding haze.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=sunnyp2
SIX SUNNY MONTHS. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. | CHAPTER XII. | “TO BE, OR NOT TO BE.’
.sp 2
The Signora’s life in these days
was disturbed by a doubt that was
all the more troublesome because
she was obliged to solve it unaided,
and that without delay. What
should she do with Mr. Vane?

Advice could be of no use, even
if she had been willing to ask it.
He satisfied perfectly all the conditions
concerning which outward influence
could have weight with a
woman of character and refinement.
It is always possible to tell a woman
that she should not marry a
man, the reasons given being good
ones; but it is never possible to
tell her that she should marry him,
if she does not wish, however excellent
he may be. The question
with the Signora was, Should she
marry at all? She certainly did not
wish to marry. Was she willing?
Here came up a host of arguments
for and against, till she was as tormented
and uncertain as Hamlet.
If Mr. Vane would have consented
to spend his life in Rome and remain
her friend, without asking for
more, she would have been satisfied,
and have thought that her life
had gained by him a sweetness she
had never known, nor even thought
of. For she had not been conscious
of anything wanting, till his
companionship had taught her that
one niche in her house was vacant.
She contemplated the possibility
of marrying him only in order to
keep him near her, not because
she wished to change their relations.
But the choice was forced
upon her to lose him or to marry
him.

It was a choice between two
evils. Her life had been so exquisite,
so nearer perfect than any one
but herself could know, that to introduce
new and important interests
there was a dangerous experiment.
How much more likely they
would be to disturb than to complete
the harmony! And yet, how
pleasant was that masculine presence,
like a shady tree in the
midst of a sunny garden of flowers!
How pleasant the sense of
a superior physical strength and
manly sympathy ever near! How
pleasant the consciousness of constantly
pleasing one worth pleasing
by the thousand little feminine
ways and words, and by the very
being what she was, like a fragrant
rose set in a chamber, silent and
gracious. How many little pleasures
he gave her which a man
gives only to the woman he prefers
to all others! It seemed to her
she had never been well listened to
before. Then to see her do a favor
to any one, perform some graceful
little act that might pass unregarded
by others, even go about
her ordinary duties, gave him a
vivid pleasure. He appreciated
the very rose in her hair, the ribbon
at her throat, the bow on her
slipper. Little things: but it is
the little pleasures which make life
sweet, as the little displeasures may
.pn +1
do more than afflictions can to make
it bitter.

She watched to see what danger
there might be of certain small annoyances
which she had seen fretting
the course of many a married life,
and he came out triumphantly from
the ordeal. He did not hang for
ever about the house till the women
grew tired of him, any more than he
went to the opposite extreme of staying
away too much. He preserved
a respectful ignorance of household
affairs, in which he held that women
should be autocrats, and at
the same time listened with interest
to any details that might be
vouchsafed him, as to curious particulars
of a country he had never
visited, but which sent him important
supplies. He was habitually
polite to women, but never gallant,
and he would have given a civil reply
to a civil question proffered him
even by an infamous person; and
in the most private life, he dropped
only ceremony, never respect. As
far as personal habits went, he was
a man who might have been a hero,
even to his <i>valet-de-chambre</i>.

Point by point the Signora tried
him, and still found no defect which
could seem to indicate a disagreeable
habit or an intolerable opinion.
She could but laugh—a little nervously,
indeed—at her own perplexity.

“You dear soul!” she thought,
“why will you not do something
hateful and set my mind at rest?”

He would not. He was not even
guilty of the one fault that might
naturally have been expected of
him under the circumstances: he
had no appearance of hanging
upon her words and looks, as if
for some indication of a change of
intentions regarding him. She was
free to act herself perfectly, without
fear of misinterpretation. And
yet, in spite of his forbearance, she
felt that time was committing her,
and that she must soon either decidedly
prevent or decidedly receive
a renewal of his offer.

The Signora might easily be accused
by persons of little refinement
of being one who did not
know her own mind. On the contrary,
she was rather exceptionally
prompt and clear as to her requirements.
But she was past the age
when women usually marry in haste
to repent afterward at leisure; and
was, moreover, one of the comparatively
few women who are fitted by
their character to be friends to
men without marrying them. The
insidious sisterhood which ends in
wifehood or in mischief she saw
through and reprobated. “No man
can have a sister,” she was wont
to say, “other than the daughters
of his mother. But he may have a
friend. And no man has a right to
expect sisterly service and familiarity
from a woman not born his sister.
It is a snare.” As a friend,
she would never have charged herself
with the care of Mr. Vane’s
collars and cravats, advised him regarding
the most becoming cut of
his beard, nor performed the sentimental
service of “bathing his fevered
brow” when he had a headache,
though she might have done
all these things as a sister or a wife.

It was, altogether, a perplexing
and even painful situation, and the
Signora found all her pleasure disturbed
by that ever-present fear
of either throwing away a good
which she might afterward regret,
or committing herself to a state
of life which she might regret still
more. The weather added to her
annoyance. Summer had reached
its meridian heat rather prematurely,
the sun poured his rays down in
a torrent, and at noon the city was
.pn +1
like a martyr at the stake. The
nights began to lose their freshness
and be scorched about the edges;
the early stars, instead of shedding
dews, were like the coals left
in a half-swept oven; and the mornings
languished on the horizon.
It was a time for not only <i>dolce
far niente</i>, but <i>dolce pensar niente</i>.
Besides, people, being at this season
so shut up together, need to be at
ease with each other. There was
very little to call them out, few
friends left in town, and but few
<i>festas</i>.

On one of these days came the
<i>festa</i> of the Nativity of St. John
the Baptist, the vigil of which is
unique in Rome, being a real
witch’s holiday, according to popular
superstition. It is an ancient
belief among the people that on this
vigil the witches have liberty to go
about where they will; and, since
the world all goes to St. John Lateran,
the witches go there too. In
order to detect them it was the
custom to procure a stick with a
natural fork at the end. This fork
was placed under the chin, the two
prongs coming up over the jaws.
Looking at a person over it in this
wise, it could be known if he or she
were a witch. Moreover, since it
was believed that the witches would
take advantage of the absence of
the heads of the family to enter the
houses and do harm to the children,
the little ones being their
favorite prey, a new broom was
bought, and set, broom-end upward,
outside the door. Before
entering, the witch was obliged to
count every spill of the broom. As
a further precaution, some salt was
sprinkled on the threshold, and, in
case that should not prevent their
entering, these words were repeated
while sprinkling it: “Come tomorrow
to borrow salt of me.” The
witch who entered was constrained
to come and knock at the door the
next day, and ask the loan of a little
salt. For the further safe-keeping
of the children during the night,
the mothers hang some object of
devotion about their necks or bind
it around their bodies, and, when
they are about going to sleep, whisper
the <i>Credo</i> in their ear, repeating
every word twice, thus: “I believe,
I believe, in God, in God,” etc.

“What do they think a witch
would do to the children, if she
should enter?” we asked our Roman
informant.

“Take off the object of devotion
and touch them, or do something
to them so that they would die,”
was the reply. “A child that has
been touched by a witch pines
away to a skeleton, and dies, without
any one being able to find out
what ails it. I believe, and I do
not believe,” she said with a shrug.
“Who knows? The Scriptures tell
of evil spirits having power. Who
knows how it may be? My sister,
however, lived and died persuaded
that her only child was touched
by a witch, though it was not on
St John’s eve. She had been getting
her baby to sleep one day, when
a neighbor came and called her to
the door for some reason. She
went out, leaving the door open
and the baby in its cradle. When
she returned, there was an old woman
bending over the cradle and
talking to the child—an ugly, dirty
old creature, that she had never
seen before. My sister took fright
at once, and called out to her to go
away. 'I saw the door open and
heard the baby crying, and I came
in to soothe it,’ the old woman said.
My sister told her she had no right
to come in, and chased her away.
On the threshold the woman turned
and shook her finger. 'You
.pn +1
will repent this,’ she said. In fact,
the babe, which had been healthy,
and was just dropping peacefully
asleep, began to moan and cry, and
nothing could pacify it. My sister
examined and found that the little
devotion it wore had been taken
away. From that day the child
pined. She got nurses for it, she
tried everything possible, but nothing
helped it. Finally, she carried
it to the church of St. Theodore, in
the Roman Forum, where all the
mothers carry their sick babies.
The priest blessed it, but told her
that it was too late: the child would
die. And it did die. She tried
then one proof more. She took all
its clothes that it died in, and that
it had on when the witch touched
it, put them in a grate, and kindled
a fire under them. They burned
as if there had been gunpowder
among them. That was a sure
proof, they said. But for me,” continued
the story-teller, with another
shrug, “I believe, and I don’t believe.
<i>Chi lo sa?</i>”

It is curious to find how this
witch-idea is embodied in every nation,
and always with very nearly
the same features: old, ugly, child-hating,
powerful for petty malice,
but a slave to the most trivial spells,
repelling, disgusting—a fair representation
of the utter despicableness
and feebleness of evil.

At the first soft fall of twilight
the family of <i>Casa Ottant’Otto</i> stepped
into a carriage and drove out
to the Lateran by the roundabout
way of the Roman Forum. From
the Colosseum up to the church, all
about the church and palace, in a
part of the piazza, and the ends of
the streets leading to it, every nook
and door-way and every rod of
ground had its table or booth, some
lighted by a soft olive-oil lamp,
others clear and bright with petroleum,
others flaring with the red
light of a torch. Piles of cakes of
every shape and size, wine in bottles,
flasks, and jars, cones of the delicious
Roman lemons, that are so
juicy and fragrant, trinkets, scarfs,
knick-knacks of various sorts, covered
the tables and counters. Here
and there a more ambitious salesman,
probably a Jew, had erected a
little shop. Everywhere were pinks
and lavender. Each table and
counter held sprigs and bunches,
and men, women, and children went
about with their arms full of it. A
little crowd of these noisy venders
surrounded the carriage the moment
it stopped, and the ladies supplied
themselves with lavender for their
drawers, and bought large bunches
of red pinks, and each of them a
St. John’s bouquet. This bouquet
consists of a little white flower surrounded
by pinks, and outside four
sprigs of lavender. The lavender
for drawers is ingeniously done up.
A bunch is gathered with long
stems to the sweet gray seeds and
blue flowers, and a string is tied
close under their little chins. The
stems are then turned back to make
a cage for the cluster, and tied again
at the other end; and yet again
turned back and tied a third time,
so that only glimpses can be had of
the caged bloom; and all is lavender.

“We should have come to first
Vespers, if we wished to think of the
austere St. John,” the Signora said.
“The scene is simply picturesque
and beautiful at this hour, and will
be bacchanalian later. The world
doesn’t begin to come till twelve
o’clock, and at that time it will be
almost impossible to move for the
crowd, which does not disappear entirely
till daylight.”

They drove off toward Santa
Croce, and, turning there, stayed
.pn +1
awhile under the soft dusk of the
trees, looking back on the twinkling
lights and crowding figures, and talking
a little. The fiery half-ring of the
three days’ moon touched the tip of
a pine-tree in the west and kindled
it; the stars overhead seemed to be
melting out of their orbits in a glowing
rain; the air was full of a sweet
fragrance and delicately fresh.
Sounds of laughter and mingled
voices reached them now and then.
But all—the wafts of air, the sounds,
the radiating lights, the motions—were
so soft that the whole might
be a great picture which they half
imagined to be alive.

The Signora leaned back in her
seat and gave herself up to the
scene, mingling with it the ever-present
thought: What should she do
with this man who sat opposite her?
His face was turned to look back, so
that she saw the profile, a fine one.
She felt very feminine and weak
just then—not at all like taking care
of herself all her life long, being both
mistress and master of her house,
and her own adviser and support.
The spirit of strength, of an enthusiastic
liberty of effort and labor,
faded and fainted within her. They
could not live in such a scene. She
wanted to be taken care of. All the
insidious arguments of the sluggard
began to whisper themselves to her.
Of what use was this constant toil
and strain, which was but a daily
rolling up hill of a burden that every
night rolled down again? Of what
use the study, the thought, the self-denial?
All had seemed pleasant;
but, come to think of it, where had
been the repose? Had she ever
looked at a flower without, after the
first glance, studying how she should
present its beauties in words to
other eyes? Had she ever drunk
a sunset with all its color down into
her own soul, and left its glory there,
but speedily her pen must dip the
light of it up to shine on a page for
others to see? Whither had fled
the long, tranquil sleep, the calm
folding of the hands, the deep and
steady thought for thought’s sake?
There was no one in the world, it
seemed to her, who thought so
much of others as she did. She
analyzed her pains, her religious
emotions, her very temptations, for
them, and studied her own breathing
that she should be able to tell
them how they breathed. And
what was the return? Bread, and
not too much of that. She had
studied her art as the painter, the
sculptor, and the musician study,
making a science of it, and not one
in a hundred looked on it as any
more than an idle and facile play.
She had felt her way, by a natural
gift and an acquired power, into
the depths of souls, and had led them
out alive into the light; yet how
many an ignorant critic and shallow
moralist had set up his wooden or
card-paper model for her to follow!

How odd she had not known before
how tiresome it was! She had
at times felt tired, but to know that
all was tiresome, and vanity of vanities—that
had but just broken on
her. This soft and joyous scene,
usurping the hours of sleep, making
the work of the day to follow an
impossible thing to be done, and
finding its playground under the
stars—this was what had opened her
eyes. A careless laugh had done
it. She looked at Mr. Vane and
thought: “I hope he won’t ask me
to-night, for if he should I shall
certainly promise to marry him;
and I do not like cutting Gordian
knots with sudden resolutions. I
would rather untie this a little more
leisurely,” she considered, still looking
at him. “If I want honors and
favors, I could win more by giving
.pn +1
good dinners than by writing good
books. A dinner is more powerful
than an epic; for anybody can take
in a dinner, but everybody cannot
take in an epic. If I want friends
and the reputation of being amiable,
the good-natured complacency
of prosperous ease will go a great
deal further than the somewhat
over-earnestness of a serious life.”

She snatched her eyes and her
thoughts quickly away from the subjects
that occupied both, and began
to talk; for Mr. Vane turned, as if
aware of being observed, and looked
at her.

“I must have a little longer to
think,” she said to herself, with a
fluttering heart. “It will never do
to decide to-night.”

“If we are going to keep up our
character of a sober and orderly
household, we must soon be on our
way home,” she said. “The witches
are certainly abroad—I almost
see them—and we have no spell to
prevent their getting into our carriage.”

Mr. Vane had been holding his
breath for the last few moments.
He knew, without looking, what
eyes were on him, and almost knew
what thoughts were passing in the
Signora’s mind. He felt that his
fate was in the balance. The prize
seemed to be within his grasp; for
to hesitate, even, seemed to give
consent. At the first word he felt
that hope grow dim. Consent would
have lingered in that enchanted
scene, would have given itself up
to some ideal dream, forgetting the
flight of time. She was evidently
resisting, if not refusing.

“Let us take one turn round by
the wall and Santa Croce,” he said.
“Then we will go. I don’t think I
shall ever have another drive just
like this, and I would like to prolong
it a little.”

“Prolong it as much as you
please!” the Signora exclaimed,
with quick compunction. “I only
made a suggestion, which came
from habit. If you like to stay, I
shall be pleased.”

His voice, a little quickened and
a little deepened, had seemed to
have a touch of reproach in it, as
though he should say: “Think, at
least, a little of me!” But his answer
to her was quite friendly:
“You were right. We had better
not stay long. One turn will be
enough.”

They went on, the Signora fighting
now two forces instead of one—for
pity for him was added to pity
for herself. What a beautiful and
noble patience his life had shown,
and with what a sweet dignity he
had covered that painful thought
that he had never been first to anybody!

As they passed round near the
wall, approaching Santa Croce, the
trees hid all the lights from them.
The two daughters, one at either
hand of the father, leaned on his
arm and sighed with delight; Marion,
seated beside the Signora, leaned
forward to touch Bianca’s hand,
unable in that shadow to see her.
The darkness touched their faces
like a down, so thick and moist was
it, and so full of fragrance.

They came out before Santa
Croce, and, turning, went back as
they had come. More than one of
the company would have liked to
propose walking back along the
avenue, but did not venture to do
so. A few minutes brought them
to the piazza of St. John’s again,
and into the midst of a crowd of
eager buyers and sellers. Here and
there out of some dim corner a face
shone red in the flare of a half-shaded
torch, small figures ran and
danced across the lights, black as
.pn +1
<i>silhouettes</i>; the whole coloring was
Rembrandt.

Then home through the quiet
streets, where occasionally they met
a couple or a party, all going toward
St. John’s.

“It seems to me a kind of Santa
Claus time, except that it is hot
weather,” Bianca said when they
reached home. “I feel as though
somebody ought to come down the
chimney to-night.”

“By the way,” the Signora exclaimed,
“I have never introduced
you to my Santa Claus. How ungrateful
I am! I am going to tell
you my little story; for I am almost
sure that you four good people are
as ignorant of the genealogy of the
Santa Claus of Christmas fame as I
was when I came to Rome. If you
are wiser, then you can at least
hear how I was enlightened. When
I had been in Rome but a little
while, I made the acquaintance of
an elderly prelate, who was so kind
as to do for me many of those little
services which a stranger needs,
and was of the greatest use to me
in many ways. I seldom, almost
never, asked anything of him, but
it was constantly happening that he
offered some kindness at the very
moment it was needed. I never
went to visit a city new to me but
he introduced me to some influential
friend there, and I never heard
of a new old sight to see but he
could tell me how to gain the best
view of it. His kindness was so
pleasant and opportune that after a
while, without the least intention
of being disrespectful however, I
came to call him in my own mind
Santa Claus. His Christian name
is Nicholas. One day, while talking
with me, he asked if I had any
of the manna of St. Nicholas of
Bari. I replied that I did not even
know what it was. He looked at
me in astonishment, and explained
that it was a limpid substance like
water which had oozed from the
bones of St. Nicholas the Great,
without ceasing, for more than
fifteen hundred years, the saint having
been born somewhere late in
the third century; that every morning
the sacristan gathers it with a
sponge and preserves it in bottles;
and that the people of Bari and all
that region have so great a faith in
the saint and his miraculous 'manna’
that they use it for every malady.
He ended by promising to
send to his brother, an archbishop
somewhere in the south of Italy, to
procure a bottle of this precious
liquor for me. In a few days he
brought it. Here it is!” The
Signora brought from a little shrine
that closed with a door in the wall,
and displayed, a bottle filled with
what appeared to be the brightest
and most limpid water. “Monsignor
showed me a similar bottle that
he has had forty years,” she continued,
“and it was as pure and
bright as this—perfectly unchanged.
He had opened it, now and then,
to take out a few drops. Some
years ago he gave a bottle also to
the Holy Father, who keeps it beside
his bed on a little shelf. Here
is the picture of my saint.”

It was a quaint old print, copied,
doubtless, from a picture in the
church of St. Nicholas, in Bari, and
represented the sainted archbishop
standing on the shore, with the sea
and ships behind him. At his right
knelt a youth on the sands; at his
left three infants were rising out
of a tub, commemorative of two of
his miracles.

“After having given me this relic
of his great patron, Monsignor, full
of zeal for his honor and of pity
for my ignorance, began to tell me
something of his life, and how
.pn +1
knowing of an impoverished noble
family, driven to desperation by
need, and almost deciding to sell
the daughters to a life of vice, since
they had no money to marry them,
this young saint went slily by night,
and dropped a bag of gold in at the
window sufficient for a <i>dot</i> for the
eldest; and, after a while, in the
same manner, provided for the
others, the family rejoicing over
their escape and repenting of their
evil resolution. When Monsignor
had got so far with his story, I
broke out, 'Why, it is Santa Claus!’
And, sure enough, it was. The
great saint was no longer a stranger
to me. I had known, without
knowing, him all my life, from the
time when I had first read the wonderful
illustrated story-books of
Christmas, and seen my mother
hang my stocking in the chimney-corner
before taking me off to bed
on Christmas eve.”

The Signora was very glad to
have this little story to tell by way
of making an inclined plane to the
saying of good-night. Undercover
of it she escaped to her own room
without being entrapped into a
private interview, which she almost
suspected Mr. Vane of plotting.

Then they had a little expedition
for the morning to see the making
of tapestry in the great hospice of
St. Michael.

“If the weather and the time of
day were not so hot,” the Signora
said, “we would go a little further
on, to the scene of a miracle of
Santa Francesca Romana; but I
don’t believe we shall be able to do
so. A little way from the hospital
is the Porta Portese, and outside that
is the vineyard where that beloved
saint and her companions worked
one January day from dawn till noon,
without having anything to eat or
drink. They had forgotten to bring
provisions; and Francesca, when
she saw her companions suffering
from thirst, accused herself of having
neglected to provide for them.
She was then, you know, a mother-superior,
and these were her oblates.
Well, the youngest of them,
almost crying with thirst, begged to
be allowed to go to a fountain out
on the public road. The saint told
her to be patient, and, withdrawing
herself, began to pray: 'Lord Jesus,
help us in our need; for I have been
thoughtless in neglecting to provide
food for my sisters.’ 'She’d
much better take us home at once,'
said the poor little nun to herself.
And then Francesca, rising from
her knees, pointed to a tree around
which twined a vine loaded with
large clusters of grapes—just as
many clusters as there were poor
nuns to eat them. They had passed
this very tree again and again,
and seen the vine dead and withered
that very day. That same
Santa Francesca is one of the dearest
saints in the calender,” the Signora
said. “Though, to be sure,”
she added, “when we think over
their lives, each one seems to be the
dearest.”

“My idea of saintliness is always
associated with asceticism,” said
Isabel.

“If only the asceticism be not
sour, as it never is with the saints,”
responded the Signora with a sigh.
“About the most uncomfortable
company one can have is that of
a person who, we cannot doubt, is
virtuous in many ways, but who
looks upon one with an expression
full of suspicion and condemnation,
without seeming aware that in so
doing he has committed a sin
against charity which, according to
St. Paul, renders his other virtues
nothing. To my mind, one of the
first requisites of a Christian character
.pn +1
is to mind one’s own business.”

“Oh! I don’t mean asceticism
that goes only far enough to stir up
the bile,” Isabel said, “but that
which clears the heart, so that the
light of charity shines quite through
it and brightens every object it
looks upon.”

They were already on their way
to the asylum of St. Michael—that
immense establishment, which contains
a little world within itself,
where beauty and charity dwell
together; where the young find protection
and instruction, and the old
a refuge, under the same roof; where
music, sculpture, painting, and kindred
arts have made their home.
Here the poor, instead of being
swept away like dead leaves from
a garden, to decay in obscure disgrace,
slip, consoled and unashamed,
into the grave, like fallen leaves
that die in peace between the embracing
roots of the green tree they
once helped to adorn. The long,
arched corridors were fresh and
cool, the brilliant day entering only
in a tender light, or, here and there,
in some splash of gold that burned
only the spot it fell upon. Fountains
murmured in the courts, and
all the business of the place moved
with a subdued and leisurely action
which made work seem a pleasure.
It was not toil, but occupation—that
wise and healthy degree of
work which makes work possible
for many years, instead of crowding
the force of a whole life into a few
feverish days. There was not a
face which showed anxious and
nervous hurry. All were calm and
cheerful.

Our friends did not attempt to
see anything more than the tapestry-making
and mending, the first
in the men’s department, the last
done entirely by women and girls.
The two immense halls devoted to
these works, with the ante-chambers,
were completely hung with
old tapestries, making a softly
and richly-colored picture-gallery
of the whole place. In the manufacturing
hall upright frames held
the great squares of the warp, with
the design drawn or stamped carefully
on the closely-stretched
threads. Behind these sat the
weaver, working in the figures with
long spools of colored wools, pressing
down closely each stitch with
a little instrument he held in the
left hand. A score or more of
these bobbins hung at the back of
the tapestry, each to be caught up
and woven in in its turn. Across
the lower part of the carpet already
a yard was splendidly woven
of solid and brilliant color. In another
part of the hall hung a large
picture for a future weaving—a
balcony with a vine and figures—and
on a table under it were arranged
the myriad selected shades
and colors that composed it. Here
all in the work was brightly colored;
but when they went to the other
part of the building, where the
women were occupied in restoring,
it was like passing from dazzling
midsummer to a late October
day. The very light and atmosphere
of the place seemed different.
Stretched on large frames
laid out like country quilting-frames
were dim old tapestries with figures
of gods and goddesses, of
mythical heroes and heroines, or
of historical persons and events,
the fabrics all more or less ragged,
but inestimably precious. Girls
were grouped around these, mending,
directed by an artist. Hanging
on the walls were other tapestries
that had been repaired, and
so perfectly that it was impossible
to distinguish what part had been
.pn +1
restored without looking at the
wrong side of the work. Lying in
bunches and snarls on the work,
or hanging in long rows of varied
hues on the wall, were skeins of
wool, of every shade and color,
dim, dark, soft, or pallid, like colors
seen by night, by the stars, or
by the moon, or colors guessed at
by eyes half-blind or by eyes that
are dying. There was a suggestion
of tragedy in those old new
colors, as in sad or blighted faces
of children. And how much more
of interest and tragedy in the old
tapestries for which they had lost
all their brightness! Nothing else
is so interwoven with romantic possibilities
as old tapestry. Luxury,
which may have been regal,
clings to it, but it is the luxury of
olden times, when the beggar touched
the prince. Mystery and terror
are its companions; for who knows
who or what may sometimes have
been hidden behind that splendid
curtain? Lifting its fold on some
day of an age gone by, what white,
cold face might have been found
there between it and the wall, what
sliding figure of a hiding spy, what
twinkle of a dagger-point in the
dusky corner! And then what
pageants does it not suggest of the
times when life was a picture!

“It really takes one out of the
nineteenth century,” Mr. Vane said.

“The weaving of this tapestry,”
the Signora told her friends, “was
first taught here by a monk—I have
forgotten in the time of what pope.
This monk was a backslider and
ran away from his convent; after
being absent ten years he repented,
and came back to throw himself
at the feet of the Holy Father.
'Give me any penance, Holy Father,’
he said, 'and I will do it
gladly.’ The pope, rejoiced to
receive this prodigal, asked him
where and how he had passed the
ten years of his absence, and was
told that they had been spent in
the tapestry-works of Coblentz,
where he had learned all the art of
tapestry-making. 'Go, then, to St.
Michael’s,’ said the pope, 'and
teach them to make tapestry. That
shall be your penance.’ And so it
was done; and that is the origin of
the work in Rome. The story was
told me by a prelate who was formerly
director of St. Michael’s.”

It was too near noon when the
inspection was over for them to
go to Santa Francesca’s vineyard.
They could only hide themselves
in the large covered carriage, and
drive slowly home through the almost
silent streets. They sighed
with contentment when they reached
the doorway, where, through
the half-open valves, the floor
showed freshly sprinkled and all
the place cool and softly lighted.

Isabel glanced back into the
street. A sick beggar, who was at
his post on a doorstep of the opposite
convent so constantly that one
might well believe he had no other
home, leaned back and seemed to
sleep, his pallid face whiter than
the white stone it lay against. A
poor man slept in the shadow of
the garden wall above, lying flat on
his face on the pavement. Further
up, a woman, with two little children
clinging to her, sat on the
ground in the shadow, and ate her
dinner of a piece of bread.

“It seems to me,” the girl said
thoughtfully, as she followed the
others up-stairs, “that there should
be a perpetual thanksgiving society
which every one who has a home
or a roof to cover them should join.”

The Signora touched Isabel’s
arm affectionately and smiled in
her pretty, sober face. She found
this girl changing, or, rather, developing
.pn +1
into something nobler and
more serious than she had expected.

“There is a Perpetual Thanksgiving
Society in Rome, my dear,”
she said. “I am so glad you have
had the thought without having
heard of it. It is one of the most
beautiful societies in the world.
It has its meetings the third Thursday
of every month, at the Caravita,
a little church that used to belong
to the Jesuits. There is an instruction,
Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament, and afterward the
<i>Magnificat</i> is sung. The special
objects of the association are to
thank God constantly for the good
we receive through the Blessed
Sacrament of the altar, the Sacred
Heart, and by the intercession of
the Virgin Mary; and the special
festas of the society are Epiphany,
Pentecost, Corpus Domini, Sacred
Heart, Annunciation, Visitation,
Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin,
St. John the Evangelist, St.
Gertrude, St. Felix de Cantalice,
and Our Lady of Grace. The
loveliest thing of all is the practice
enjoined on the members of
making constantly the aspiration,
'Thanks be to God.’ I wish this
society were in every town in the
world. We beg, we are always
begging, and the showers are always
coming down. How beautiful
is the idea of a society which asks
nothing, but sends up a perpetual
<i>Deo gratias</i>, as the earth sends up
mists in return for the rain!”

“I shall join that society at once,”
Isabel said with decision.

The Signora laughed. “You
had better take off your bonnet and
have some dinner now,” she said.

“Your society pleases me very
much,” Mr. Vane remarked. “But
the most perfect act of thanksgiving
I know is that in the <i>Gloria</i>:
'We give thee thanks for thy great
glory.’”

There was a little moonlight reception
and tea-party that evening
out on the <i>loggia</i>. Clive Bailey
came to take leave before going
away for a few weeks into the country.
Mr. Coleman also had been
unexpectedly called to England on
business, and was so afflicted about
going that the Signora was vexed.

“I cannot bear to have a man
about who cannot get along without
me,” she said privately to Isabel,
“especially when I can get along
perfectly well without him. When
a man falls into that dependent and
moony state, he loses all his character
and becomes despicable. It
disgusts me the more, besides, because
it is usually the strong-willed,
driving women who have such masculine
appendages. I do hope I’m
not getting into that way. For
pity’s sake, tell me if I show
signs of it. I have seen ladies—I
recollect at this moment a lady,
clever, pretty, prompt, and circumscribed
in character, who makes
all her familiar gentlemen acquaintances
either hate her or serve her
like dogs. I’ve seen her take a
man whom I thought a very respectable
sort of person, with a mind
of his own, and, by dint of smiling
and scolding, rewarding him
promptly when he was good, and
punishing him promptly when he
didn’t obey, end by making a perfect
ninny of him. He couldn’t
brush his boots or tie his cravat
except just as she directed him; if
she was vexed with a person, he
didn’t dare be civil to them; if she
was reconciled to the same, he immediately
beamed upon them with
the most unconscious and imbecile
servility. Yet the two were not
lovers, and never dreamed of being
so, I presume, and both of them
.pn +1
would have been astonished, or
would have pretended to be astonished
and indignant, if one had
hinted that his firmness had been
nothing but starch, and she had
washed that out of him. I wouldn’t
be such a woman for the world. I
wouldn’t be a driving, positive woman
for anything. I wouldn’t be
a woman persistent in small things
for my eyes. Mr. Coleman makes
me feel as if I were growing so.”

“Nonsense!” Isabel laughed.
“It isn’t in you to be so. Mr. Coleman
needs change of scene, that is
all. He has been circling round you
so long that he has got dizzy.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s going off at
a tangent,” the Signora replied,
only half-reassured. “He certainly
would provoke me dreadfully, if
he were to go on in this way under
my eyes. Don’t let him come near
me this evening, and don’t give
him a chance to say good-by to
me. Take him quite off my hands—that’s
a dear girl.”

Isabel promised, and kept her
promise so well as to make of the
poor bewildered gentleman as nearly
an enemy as he was capable of
being to any one. He had another
source of disquiet, too, and that
was the exceeding politeness and
cordiality with which the Signora
treated the very cruel relative who
had come to take him away, and
whom he had brought up with him
that evening in the vain hope that
she would help him to escape. On
the contrary, she merely sealed the
compact.

“You are quite right, sir,” she
said. “These affairs of property
can so much better be attended to
in person than by proxy.”

“Besides,” replied the cousin, “a
man who has property in the country
has really some duties there.
He should spend a little of his money
for the benefit of the state, his
neighbors, and the church.”

He privately despised this city
of Rome, which he now visited for
the first time. Its dinginess, its
dirt, and its religion disgusted him.

“Church!” echoed the Signora
with calm inquiry. “I was not
aware that Mr. Coleman belonged
to any church.”

“He has certainly deteriorated
very much since he left England,”
was the rather sharp response,
“but our family are all Catholic.”

“Indeed!” she exclaimed, in
real surprise. “I have always understood
from Mr. Coleman that
his family belonged to the English
Episcopal Church.”

“We claim that to be the Catholic
Church, madam,” the gentleman
responded proudly. “Or, rather,
we claim the title for that older
branch of it which now restores the
ceremonies and beliefs it laid aside
for a while.”

“Oh! the family are Ritualists,”
said the Signora.

The gentleman drew himself up.
“The term does not describe us,” he
said. “We have a ritual, of course;
but that is not all. I consider the
title trivial and disrespectful.”

“I did not intend the least disrespect
in the world,” the Signora
made haste to say. “I merely repeat
the name I have heard. I
have always considered Ritualism
very—refined—and”—she seemed
to be laboriously seeking some words
of suitable praise—“and—delicate.
It has many beauties—and—in
short, is, it seems to me, an—eminently—lady-like
religion.”

Mr. Vane took pity on the Englishman,
who looked confounded,
as if not knowing whether to
believe his ears, which had heard,
or his eyes, which beheld, the perfectly
simple and courteous expression
.pn +1
of his entertainer. Mr.
Vane, without seeming to have
heard a word, introduced the subject
of property, on which men can
always talk unflaggingly for any
length of time.

The Signora gave her attention
to an enthusiastic Catholic lady, who
was making a pilgrimage of her
visit to Italy. This lady was one
of those charming Christians who
sometimes puzzle us a little. Her
whole life was given up to what
may be called religious pursuits.
She attended functions unceasingly,
and on every day was to be found in
the church dedicated to the saint
whose day it was. She visited relics,
shrines, and scenes of religious
events, and she did all with an
enthusiasm which expressed itself
in the most gushing manner. In
short, she luxuriated in religion.
She knew all about the lives of the
saints, and spoke of them with the
ease and familiarity of an intimate
friend. One could perceive by her
conversation that she believed them
to be particularly watchful over
her, and rather more ready to do
her favors than to attend to the
wishes of most others. She exhorted
people a little now and then,
gently, with the air of one who
knows. The whole manner of the
woman, in things religious, was that
of a favorite daughter in her own
father’s house, to which the world
at large was welcomed with a smiling
charity and hospitality. But
that others were there also in their
own father’s house, and equally beloved
by him, did not seem to occur
to her. The clergy and all religious
she admitted and gave precedence
to, seeking and admiring
them almost as she did the saints.
But, after them, she seemed to walk
alone; or rather, she entered with
them, and others waited a permission.
People in the laity, like herself,
were, in some mysterious manner,
assumed to be unlike her.
The silence of deep religious feeling
in others she treated as indifference,
and sometimes strove, with
seeming good intention, to stir up
the souls of those already more
deeply moved than herself. She
abounded in little devotions, little
pictures, little lamps and candles, a
multiplicity of pious knick-knacks,
enough to bewilder a person of
simpler tastes. She wore every
scapular, and all the medals she
could get, and her girdle was laden
with rosaries. By most people she
was called a very pious woman; by
many she was believed to be a
saintly woman. She certainly was
a fairly good woman and a nice lady
of religious tastes. But, looked at
by clear eyes, she was a little puzzling,
like some others of her kind.
One missed there a central virtue,
the sweet humility that makes little
of its own goodness, and the charity
which rejoices to see others beloved
and preferred. With such assumption,
one would have expected
these virtues. Looking so, moreover,
one suspected the existence of
a deep and pernicious pride. How
did she receive a word of exhortation
from an equal? Not as she
expected her own exhortations to
be received, certainly, but with an
expression of astonishment, mortification,
and even displeasure.
When did she sacrifice herself for
others, and say nothing about it?
when did she do an act of charity,
and conceal that she had done it?
when did she hesitate to obtain for
herself an advantage because it was
to be at the cost of another, unless
that other were a person in orders
or in religion?

The Signora looked at this lady,
and liked her, and admired her in
.pn +1
many ways, but she could not help
wishing that there were a little less
self-complacency in spiritual matters,
and a little more willingness to
sacrifice her own wishes and aims
at times. The thought would intrude
itself into her mind that it
was less a real, working Christian
that she beheld than a religious
sybarite. She could not say of her,
as a famous author has said of some
characters rather similar, that “their
celestial intimacies did not seem to
have improved their earthly manners,
and their high motives were
not needed to account for their
conduct”; but she was frequently
pained to perceive a striking discrepancy
between the profession
and the practice.

“I have been to-day for the first
time to see Santa Maria degli
Angeli,” the lady said, in the gay
and pleasant way habitual to her.
“There seems to be no one left
there but a few old, old men. They
were in choir when I went to the
church, but I should never have
suspected it. I asked the sacristan
if there would be a Mass soon.
'After <i>coro</i>,’ he said. I asked when
<i>coro</i> would be, and he replied, looking
at me with some surprise, that
it was going on then. I had heard
a sound like a little company of
bumble-bees among the clover, but
that it had anything in common
with the great, ringing chorus of St.
Peter’s or the other great churches
I never dreamed. By and by choir
and Mass were over, and they all
came out. Such a group of dear
old Rip Van Winkles! They were
all tall, had long hair and long
beards of white, or streaked black
and white; they drooped in walking,
and their black and white robes,
not very fresh, gave me a strange
impression of antiquity and decay.
It must have been the color and
oldness of their clothes that made
me think of Rip Van Winkle. I
was quite ashamed of the thought.
More than one head among them
would have answered for a St. Jerome.
That dear St. Jerome!”
she added, drooping into pensiveness,
as if, in uttering the name, she
had been rapt away.

She recovered herself after an instant,
and came back smilingly to
the present. “You have no idea
what a devotion I have for St. Jerome,”
she said.

“I can quite understand it,” the
Signora replied. “His character
is one to inspire a great admiration
and reverence. Here in Rome one
becomes more familiar, in a certain
way, with the saints. One is so
much nearer their earthly lives,
their relics and their <i>festas</i> abound
so, and one comes so constantly
upon places which they have inhabited
or visited, that one has a sense
of shame and humiliation at coming
no nearer their virtues.”

The lady smiled. “I had not
thought of that,” she said. “I approach
the saints with all confidence
and simplicity.”

“That is a very pleasant feeling,”
the Signora said calmly, “and, to an
extent, may be a virtue. But do
you not think that we should have
also a feeling of awe in view of that
splendid faith of theirs, and of that
sublime constancy and ardent charity,
which led them to face torments
and death without flinching, while
our lives seem but a series of compromises,
and dispensations from
everything that does not agree with
our delicate and pampered natures?
It seems to me that, if we remember
the difference between our lives and
theirs, we shall almost expect that
when we approach their shrines
they will perform one miracle more,
and speak an audible reproof to us.”
.pn +1

The lady looked disconcerted
and a little displeased. But, some
one interrupting them, the subject
was dropped.

After they were gone Mr. Vane
displayed a letter he had received
that day from the prior of Monte
Cassino, inviting him and his family
to visit their monastery. This
clergyman had been on very friendly
terms with Mr. Vane in America,
where he had spent a good many
years, and now, hearing of his conversion,
was anxious to renew a
friendship which would have a
charm it had not before possessed,
and to welcome to a brotherhood
of faith one who had always been
kin to him by a community of generous
nature.

“He writes that we can stay a
few days on the mountain and see
everything there at our leisure,”
Mr. Vane said. “There is a house
outside the gate where you ladies
can stop, and I can have a bed inside.
What do you say to it?”

The invitation was accepted by
acclamation. Monte Cassino was
one of the places to see in Italy—a
gem of nature, religion, and art. Before
sleeping that night their plans
were made. They would put off
the visit a little, hoping for cooler
days, as the journey was one of five
or six hours. Meantime they had
a little trip to Genzano in view, to
see the <i>festa</i> of the Santissimo Salvatore.
And close upon them was
Santa Maria delle Neve.

To Be Continued.
.sp 4
.h3 id=mayflowers
“MAY-FLOWERS.”
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Dear Mother, on our country’s breast—
  Our country that is thine—
Our poets place as scutcheon flower
  Small argent stars that shine
With pallid light when scarcely wake
  The leaf-buds from their sleep,
When, nursing summer’s waiting bloom,
  The storm-stained leaves lie deep.

Fair, little stars that faintly gleam
  Like planets sunset-dimmed,
The dearer for their glory scant
  On barren heavens limned.
Pale May-flowers, whose stainless cheek
  Seems born of winter snow—
One rosy drop of living blood
  Flushing the veins below.

Whose faint-breathed perfume seems to rise
  Like prayer of anchorite,
The heart that pours its incense forth
  Low hidden from our sight;
.pn +1
Whose sweetness seems like nimbus pale
  Crowning some saintly head,
The light of self-forgotten life
  In holy odor shed.

Kind Mother, see, these little flowers
  Our land is given to wear,
When still the forest arches stand
  Of leafy tracery bare;
When still the heavens’ softened blue
  Grows dim with wind-swept snow,
And lonely-seeming Phœbe chants
  Disconsolate and low.

This precious bloom bears thy dear name—
  Though given unaware—
And in its gentle life we trace
  The gleam of thine more fair.
In France’s thoughtful land they give
  Bright flowers to be thine eyes,
Within their blue forget-me-nots
  Thy glance’s calmness lies.

Upon our matin blossom rests
  No depth of peaceful blue,
Yet breaks the rosy dawn of love
  Its cheek’s pure whiteness through.
Amid the darkened leaves it lies
  In blest humility,
A lowly handmaid of the Lord,
  Unstained of earth, like thee—

A hidden life e’er pouring forth
  An offering pure of prayer;
The sweet unconsciousness of grace
  Soft’ning the rude, bleak air.
The blood-stained heart the sword hath pierced
  The spotless breast within,
The quiet shining on a world
  Bitter and drear with sin.

A crown of stars that perfects all
  With heaven-won aureole—
Let France’s blossom claim thine eyes,
  Claim ours thy spotless soul;
Whose gracious blessing ever rest
  On this broad land of ours,
That not in vain her poets’ shield
  Be quartered with May-flowers.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=lepers
THE LEPERS OF TRACADIE.[#]
.sp 2
.fn #
This article is condensed from one which appeared
in the <i>Revue Canadienne</i>, by M. de Bellefeuille.
.fn-
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“Ah! little think the gay, licentious crowd,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround—
Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many pine! how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief! how many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind!”
.pm verse-end

—<sc>Thomson’s</sc> <i>Seasons</i>.

.pm letter-start
“In a rage, I returned to my dwelling-place, crying aloud: 'Woe unto thee, leper! Woe unto thee!' And
as if the whole world united against me, I heard the echo through the ruins of the Château de Bramafan
repeat distinctly: 'Woe unto thee!' I stood motionless with horror on the threshold of the tower,
listening to the faint tones again and again repeated from the overhanging mountains: 'Woe
unto thee!'”
.pm letter-end

—<sc>Xavier de Maistre.</sc>

On the low and miry land
forming the borders of the county
of Gloucester in New Brunswick,
fifty miles from Miramichi and
twenty-five south of Caraquet, between
a narrow river and the waters
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, stands
a little village. The situation it occupies
is dreary and sad to a degree.
On one side moans the gray
sea, on whose dull and turbid waters
rarely is seen a sail. On the
other stretches a long, low line of
coast, dotted at intervals by the
huts of the fishermen. The whole
landscape is painfully monotonous,
desolate, and mournful.
The cottages are mean in the extreme,
while the simple church is
without architectural merit. Afar
off frowns forbiddingly a large
building shut in by high walls.
In this melancholy spot the passing
traveller says to himself: “Is this
place accursed alike by God and
man?”

Accursed, alas! it has indeed
been by despairing lips and hearts;
for the building is the lazaretto of
Tracadie. Before the year 1798 no
register was kept of baptisms, marriages,
or burials in the parish.
Since that date, however, and up to
1842, Tracadie was under the care
of the <i>curés</i> of Caraquet, a neighboring
parish.

On the 24th of October, 1842, arrived
the first resident priest, M.
François Xavier Stanislas Lafrance,
who remained there until January,
1852. M. Lafrance has since died.
At Tracadie he was succeeded
by the present <i>curé</i>, M. l’Abbé
Ferdinand Gauvreau,[#] with whose
name the history of these poor lepers
must always be interwoven.

.fn #
The author writes: From this excellent and
faithful priest I have obtained the greater part of
my information on this subject. In addition, M.
Gauvreau has allowed me free use of his notes and
documents.
.fn-

Probably the most terrible chastisement
inflicted on a guilty people
is that known as leprosy. In ancient
times it was only too well
known, for it was then more frequent
than in our day. It made such
fearful ravages in certain parts of
the world that its very name was
whispered in accents of horror and
dread.

From time immemorial has this
scourge been looked upon as utterly
distinct from all other diseases;
more virulent in its effects; more
insidious in its approaches, and
.pn +1
above all by reason of the frightful
manner in which it distorts and
disfigures its victims.

Leprosy has probably been known
from the creation of the world. Nothing
in history leads us to reject
this idea, and, indeed, many interpreters
who have exercised their
talent on certain obscure passages
of Holy Writ have found no better
way of defining the terrible sign
with which God marked the fratricide
Cain than by supposing it to be
leprosy. The alarm that has always
been felt in regard to this most
loathsome disease arises not alone
from its hideous results, but also
from the conviction that has always
existed as to the absolute hopelessness
of cure.

Before the time of Moses leprosy
was well known. The first
mention made of it in Holy Writ is
in the fourth chapter of Exodus.
God, having chosen Moses to deliver
the Hebrews from the tyranny
of the Egyptians, orders him to
present himself before his afflicted
people and to announce himself to
them as their deliverer. Moses objected,
saying: “They will not believe
me, nor hearken unto my
voice; for they will say, The Lord
hath not appeared unto thee!”
Then the Lord, to convince Moses
of his divine mission, said unto him,
“Put now thine hand into thy
bosom,” and he put his hand into
his bosom; and when he took it
out, behold his hand full of leprosy,
white as snow—“<i>instar nevis</i>.”

Here, then, was leprosy easy to
recognize, since it had the whiteness
of snow. Let us not forget
this peculiar feature, for we shall
see it again later.

From this incident we see clearly
that the disease was by no means
unknown to Moses, because on seeing
his hand he said: “<i>Leprosam instar
nevis.</i>” Therefore we have a
right to believe that the disease existed
before Moses. To the support
of this opinion Dom Calmet, in his
<i>Biblical Dictionary</i>, cites Manetho
the Egyptian, Lysimarchus, Appian,
Tacitus, and Justin, who have
advanced the idea that the Jews
went out from Egypt on account
of the leprosy. Each one of these
historians narrates the events in his
own fashion, but all agree that the
Hebrews who left Egypt were attacked
by leprosy.

Not only does leprosy fasten on
mankind, but it clings to clothing
and to the stone walls of houses.
It is to be presumed, however, that
the leprosy brought by the Israelites
out of Egypt was not of this malignant
type; for Moses, by the order
of God, takes pains to mention another
and more virulent kind known
in the land of Chanaan, the promised
land of the Israelites.

In Leviticus, chapter xiii., we find
the following: “If there be a spot,
greenish or reddish, in the garment,
of wool or of skin, the garment
must be shown to the priest; and
the priest shall look on the plague,
and shut it up for seven days; and
if at the end of the time the spots
have spread, the priest will burn
the garment, for it is a fretting leprosy.
If the priest find, however,
that the spots have not spread, he
shall order the garment to be
washed; and, behold, if the plague
have not changed his color, and be
not spread, it is unclean: thou
shalt burn it in the fire.”

As to the suspected taint of leprosy
in their houses, let us see
their method of proceeding: “When
you be come into the land of Chanaan,
if you think there be leprosy
in the house, he that owneth the
house shall go to the priest, who
shall order the house to be emptied.
.pn +1
If the priest finds in the walls hollow
streaks, greenish or reddish, he
shall shut the house for seven days.
The priest shall come again the
seventh day, and shall look; and
if the plague be spread, the stones
shall be taken away, and cast into
an unclean place without the city.
Then the rest of the house shall be
scraped within and without, and
they shall pour the dust without
the city, and they shall take other
stones and put them in the place
of these, and other mortar to plaster
the house.

“And if the plague come again,
and break out in the house, it is a
fretting leprosy, and the house is
unclean and shall be destroyed.”

Thus it is seen that the leprosy
known to the ancients—this lamentable
scourge, “this eldest daughter
of death”—attacked in its fury not
man alone, but his clothing and the
very walls of his house. The primary
cause of an evil so malignant
and so wide-spread must for ever
remain a mystery. The learned
Dom Calmet, as commentator of
the Bible rather than as a physician,
offers a theory in his notes on Leviticus.
He maintains that the disease
is caused by a multitude of
minute worms. These parasites
glide between skin and flesh, gnawing
the epidermis and the cuticle,
and then the nerves, producing, in
short, all the symptoms that are remarked
in the beginning, the progress,
and the end of leprosy.
Dom Calmet concludes by saying
that “venereal diseases are but
forms of leprosy which were only
too well known to the ancients.” In
this century leprosy still exists in
some portions of Italy and in Norway
to a very considerable extent,
according to the reports of Drs.
Danielson and Boëk. It is still to
be met with in Turkey in the village
of Looschori—the ancient Mytilene
of the Ægean Sea—in the Indian
Archipelago, on the coast of
Africa, and in the West Indies. I
myself have seen it in Jerusalem
and at Naplouse, ancient Samaria;
at Damascus also, where there is a
lazaretto very poorly supported by
public charity. To Mr. Charles
A. Dana, one of the editors of the
<i>New American Cyclopædia</i>, the <i>maladie
de Tracadie</i> is not unknown; for
he says that leprosy exists in Canada
and in other portions of America.

But to return to the Scriptures:
Moses is not the only one of the
inspired writers who speaks of leprosy,
and more than once our blessed
Lord, on his journeys through
Judea, exercised his charity and
showed his goodness by curing lepers
who threw themselves at his
feet, entreating mercy. Job was
struck by the hand of God with
this scourge, and has described it
with marvellous beauty and pathos.
He was forsaken by his wife and
his friends in his humiliation and
suffering; they shrank from him,
saying that he must have committed
some fearful crime to have
drawn upon himself so heavy a
chastisement. A similar horror of
this disease existed among all nations.
In Pérsia no citizen infected
by it could enter a village or
have any intercourse with his fellow-creatures,
while a stranger was
driven pitilessly forth into the desert
(Herod., <i>Clio</i>).

Æschines, giving an account of
his sea voyage, states that, the ship
putting into Delos, they found the
inhabitants suffering from leprosy,
and the travellers hurried away in
fear and trembling, lest they themselves
should fall victims.

In Egypt Pliny[#] says that when
.pn +1
this evil attacked kings, it was
most unfortunate for their people;
for to cure them baths of warm
human blood were believed to be
efficacious.

.fn #
<i>Hist. Nat.</i>, l. xxvi. c. i. proem.
.fn-

In later days we find that lepers
have been the victims of most unjust
and cruel laws among almost all nations.
Thus, among the Lombards,
in 643, one law ordered not only that
lepers should be confined to isolated
localities, but declared them also
civilly dead, deprived them of
their property, and confided them
to the charity of the public. Several
provinces in France adopted
this law with some qualifications.
In certain localities even the posterity
of lepers were excluded—as at
Calais—from all rights of citizenship,
and in 757 an ordinance of Pepin
le Bref permitted divorce between
a healthy wife and leprous husband,
or a healthy husband and leprous
wife. Charlemagne augmented the
severity of laws already so hard.
He ordered lepers to live apart,
permitted them no social intercourse
whatever, and finally, as
their crowning misery, these unfortunates
saw themselves thrust on
one side by the church itself from
communion with the faithful.

At the time of the separation of
the lepers from family, home, and
friends, the church pronounced
over them the prayers for the dead.
Masses were said for the repose
of their souls, and, to complete
the mournful illusion, a handful
of earth was thrown upon their
bodies. They were forbidden to
enter any church or any place
where food was prepared, nor could
they dip their hands in a running
stream, nor accept food or anything
handed them, save with a fork or
the end of a stick. They were
compelled, moreover, to wear a
particular costume that could be
seen and recognized from afar off,
and, under threats of severe penalties
for disobedience, were ordered
to ring a little bell to announce
their coming. More recently, in
France, lepers herded together, in
secluded places, which were called
<i>léproseries</i>. In the year 1244 there
were throughout all Christendom
19,000 of these léproseries, and in
France alone 2,000.

There these poor wretched creatures
passed their desolate lives,
separated from the outside world,
without occupation or interest, save
that of watching the slow but sure
progress of their companions toward
the inevitable and horrible
death that was impending.

In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries, says Mgr. Gaume,
leprosy extended its ravages over a
large part of the world. The pestilence
attacked suddenly all parts
of the body at once, drying it up,
as it were; and, like the plague, leprosy
was unquestionably most contagious.
To receive the infection
it was but necessary to touch the
clothes or the furniture, or even to
breathe the tainted air; consequently,
every one fled in dismay at the
sight of a leper. They were driven
from the vicinity of towns, and they
were seen from afar wandering over
the fields and hillsides like living
corpses, while at a distance they
were compelled to signal their approach
by a rattle or bell. Abandoned
by the whole world, and a
prey to horrible sufferings, they
called on death to deliver them.

The King of France, anxious to
protect his subjects from exposure
to this disease, formed a complete
code of laws for lepers. “Every
person,” said M. Deseimeris in his
<i>Medical Dictionary</i>, “who is suspected
of leprosy must submit to a
thorough examination by a surgeon.
.pn +1
The suspicion confirmed, a magistrate
takes possession of the individual
to dispose of him according
to law. If he be a stranger, he must
be sent at once to the place of his
birth, bestowing first upon him,
however, the poor gifts of a hat, a
gray mantle, a beggar’s wallet, and
a small keg. The poor creature, on
arriving at his native village, must
carefully avoid all contact with his
fellow-creatures.” Even the church
rejects him. Each town or village
was compelled to build for his reception
a small wooden house on
four piles, and, after the death of its
inmate, the house, with all that was
in it, was consigned to the flames.

As the number of lepers was constantly
increasing, the erection of
so many of these small tenements
became a source of great expense.
It was therefore finally decided to
unite them under one roof, and give
them the name of a léproserie. In
this way their support became less
onerous, while their seclusion was
far greater, and their diet and medical
treatment was easier of regulation.

Louis VIII. published in 1226 a
code of special laws for the government
of léproseries. These laws
were intolerably severe. A leper
once incarcerated within the walls
of a lazaretto incurred the penalty
of death if he passed over the
threshold again; scaffolds were
erected where they could be seen
from the hospital, thus keeping this
fact ever in the remembrance and
before the eyes of the miserable inmates.

I have recounted these details to
demonstrate the utter horror with
which leprosy was regarded. It
must not be supposed that only the
ignorant and superstitious were
overwhelmed by foolish dread, or
that it was an idle prejudice, a
relic of barbarism; for in the nineteenth
century we witness the same
horror, and here on our own shores
encounter the same rigorous legislation.
We should also find the
lepers as uncared for, as shunned
and neglected, as they were of old,
were it not for the Catholic Church,
which, with its customary zeal in all
labors of charity and mercy, aroused
in the hearts of a humble priest
and a few weak nuns the wish and
determination to consecrate their
lives to the service of this most
miserable class of their fellow-creatures.

The first settlements on the Miramichi
River were made after the
treaty of Utrecht in 1718 by the
subjects of France—Basques, Bretons,
and Normans. Under the administration
of Cardinal Fleury
stringent measures were taken to
encourage and protect these colonies.
After a time, when their
prosperity seemed secure, a certain
Pierre Beauhair was sent from
France as intendant to rule and
arrange matters for the French
government. He erected a small
villa on a point of land that since
his death bears his name, at the
mouth of the northwestern branch
of the Miramichi River. The island
opposite l’Ile Beauhair was
strongly defended, and tradition
states that the intendant built within
the walls of the fort a foundry
for cannon, and other buildings for
the manufacture of munitions of
war.

During the summer of 1757 the
colony on the Miramichi suffered
much from the war between France
and England, which sadly interrupted
their traffic in fish and furs.
Consequently, the following winter
was one of great suffering, and many
of the colonists died of hunger.
Two transport ships, laden with provision
.pn +1
and supplies of all kinds,
were sent out by the French government
in 1758, but both vessels
were captured by the English fleet
then assisting at the siege of Louisburg.

While these colonies were enduring
suspense and starvation a
French vessel, called the <i>Indienne</i>,
from Morlaix, was wrecked at the
mouth of the Miramichi near the
“Baie des Vents”—a name now corrupted
into “Baie du Vin.” Tradition
states that this ship, before
coming to America, had traded in
the Levant, and that a large number
of bales of old clothes had been
taken on board at Smyrna. The
clothes were strewn upon the beach
after the vessel went to pieces, were
seized by the inhabitants, dried,
and afterwards worn. However
this may be, it is certain that from
that date arose a most terrible pestilence
among the Canadians, who
were already decimated by famine.
The first victim of this malady was
M. de Beauhair, and he, with eight
hundred others, it is said, were buried
at Point Beauhair. The survivors
abandoned Miramichi and
fled, some to l’Ile Saint-Jean—now
Prince Edward’s Island—and the
greater number settled along the
western coast of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, where they formed scattered
hamlets under the names of
Niguaweck, Tracadie, and Pokemouche,
combined in one parish—that
of Caraquet.

For eighty years, although it
was known that isolated instances
of leprosy existed in the different
colonies, they attracted little or no
public attention up to 1817, when
a woman named Ursule Laudry
died of the disease.

An account written by one of the
nuns of l’Hôtel Dieu attributes a
somewhat different origin to this
scourge. This good sister writes
that the disease was carried to New
Brunswick in 1758 by a ship from
the Levant; the vessel having made
the port late in the autumn, the
crew were paid off and dispersed,
many seeking a temporary home in
Caraquet. Unfortunately, this crew
was afflicted by a malady that was
unsuspected by any one. The colonists
were kind to the sailors;
the women washed their clothes
and in this way contracted the disease,
which was transmitted from
one to another and from father to
son, and in time acquired its peculiar
features. Hamilton Gordon,
the Lieutenant-Governor of New
Brunswick in 1862, has assigned a
similar origin to the malady in an
interesting pamphlet entitled <i>Wilderness
Journeys in New Brunswick
in 1862-3</i>.

.pm letter-start
“A vague and uncertain tradition exists,”
he says, “that somewhere about
a hundred years ago a French vessel was
wrecked on the coast of Gloucester or
Northumberland, and that among the
crew were some sailors from Marseilles,
who in the Levant had contracted the
hideous leprosy of the East, the veritable
elephantiasis Græcorum; however
this may be, it is beyond all question
that for many years a part of the French
population of these two counties has
been sorely afflicted by this mysterious
disease, or by one that closely resembles
it, and which may be, indeed, the form of
leprosy so well known on the coast of
Norway.”

“It is difficult,” says in his turn M.
Gauvreau, <i>curé</i> of Tracadie and chaplain
of the lazaretto, in a letter published
in the <i>Journal de Montreal</i>, November
30, 1859—“it is difficult to persuade
one’s self that this malady could be the
spontaneous generation of the locality
where it now exists. The geographical
position of Tracadie is on the sea-coast,
with the fresh currents of a river close
at hand, the waters of which are salt for
eight or nine miles above the mouth.
The soil in some portions is sandy, in
others clayey; in the vicinity are no
marshes, no stagnant water, consequently
.pn +1
no injurious malaria. These facts
seem to justify the opinion which I have
long held, and which as yet I see no
reason to change, that the poisonous
virus was not the growth of this spot,
but was brought here by some traveller.”
.pm letter-end

These traditions are, in the
main, probably correct as to the
origin of the scourge in this Canadian
village. The inhabitants of
other villages than Tracadie subsist
almost entirely on fish, are
equally poor, equally ill-fed and
insufficiently clothed, living in
the same damp and foggy atmosphere;
but it is only in Tracadie
or its vicinity that a leper is to be
seen. The inhabitants of Labrador
and Newfoundland eat fish almost
exclusively, and live amid similar
climatic conditions, paying no
more enlightened attention to hygienic
laws, and yet the “maladie
de Tracadie” does not attack or
decimate them.

From the date of the introduction
of this disease into the village
it increased slowly but steadily until
1817, when certain precautions
began to be taken; but not until
1844 did the authorities try any
active precautions. In that year a
medical board was organized, who
made a report of their investigations
to the government, and later
in the same year an act of the Provincial
Legislature was passed, renewed
and amended in 1850. It
authorized the lieutenant-governor
to establish a health committee.
This committee recommended
the erection of a lazaretto on l’Ile
de Sheldrake, an isolated spot in
the middle of the Miramichi River
eighteen miles above Chatham.
“Whoever was found to be unquestionably
tainted by the disease,”
says the article, “must be torn
from his family, using force if needful.
The husband must be taken
from his wife, the mother from her
children, the child from its parents,
whenever the first symptom of
leprosy declares itself. An eternal
farewell to all they hold most dear
must be said, and the poor creature
is sent to the lazaretto. It often
happens that a leper refuses to go
quietly; he is then dragged by ropes
like a beast to the shambles—for
none is willing to lay a finger upon
him. Often the unhappy beings are
driven with blows to the very door
of the lazaretto.” Things, of course,
could not long remain in this brutal
condition. The lepers, driven to
desperation by their physical and
mental sufferings, by a wild longing
for the liberty denied them, and
for the sight of their loved ones,
sometimes effected their escape.

An attempt was finally made to
ameliorate their condition, and in
1847 the lazaretto was removed to
the spot where it now stands, about
half a mile from the parish church
of Tracadie. A large tract of land
was here purchased by the government,
and the present building
was erected, surrounded by a wooden
wall twenty feet high, set thick
with nails to hinder the escape of
the lepers. The windows of the
lazaretto were barred heavily with
iron, and thus added to the melancholy
aspect of the building. The
lepers, weary of the revolting resemblance
to a prison, themselves tore
most of the bars away, and, when
the nuns arrived there they at once
ordered the remainder to be removed.

In 1868 the nuns from the Hôtel
Dieu of Montreal took possession
of the lazaretto of Tracadie. For
some few years a strong necessity
had been felt for the reorganization
of this institution. A wish was expressed
that it could be placed under
the care of the Hospital Nuns.
.pn +1
I have now before me a letter from
the Rt. Rev. James Rogers, Bishop
of Chatham, in which is given an
account, for the <i>Conseil Central de la
Propagation de la Foi</i> at Paris, of
the steps that had been taken up to
December, 1866:

.pm letter-start
“Since my first visit to the establishment,”
says the bishop, “I have always
thought that it would be most desirable
to place it under the care of the Sisters
of the Hôtel Dieu, who would watch over
the souls and the bodies of these sufferers,
whose number varies from twenty to
thirty. But so many great and pressing
needs claimed my attention—while my
resources were insufficient even for the
alleviation of physical suffering, and
also, perhaps, for the spiritual wants of
certain souls—I was compelled to postpone
my plans in regard to the lazaretto,
until my diocese could satisfy the religious
needs of its inhabitants by an increase
of the number of priests, and by
the erection of chapels in places where
they had long and earnestly been demanded,
and also by the establishment of
schools for the Christian education of
youth. Another obstacle to the immediate
execution of my intention was the
lukewarm approbation and co-operation
of the government. The total lack of
suitable lodging for the nuns, as well
as the uncertainty whether the Protestant
element which pervades our government
and our legislature would be willing to
grant us funds or permit us to make
needful preparations for the sisters to
take charge of the lazaretto—all conspired
as hindrances to my desires.

“Last spring I petitioned the government,
but political changes interfered,
and no steps were taken until now.
This is the reason why the worthy <i>curé</i> of
Tracadie continues to be the only priest
who administers the consolations of religion
to that portion of his flock so bitterly
afflicted.”
.pm letter-end

The steps taken by Bishop Rogers
seem to have been singularly
felicitous. He obtained from Bishop
Bourget the assistance of the
nuns of the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal,
and the government appears
to have regarded with favorable
eyes this regeneration of the lazaretto,
which produced in a very
brief period of time the best possible
results upon the patients. Abbé
Gauvreau draws a sad picture of
the state in which these poor creatures
lived before the nuns went
to their assistance. In a letter
dated April 28, 1869, addressed to
the mother-superior of the Hôtel
Dieu of Montreal, he says:

.pm letter-start
“I am absolutely incapable of describing
the state of abject misery in which
our poor lepers passed their lives before
the coming of the sisters. I can only say
that from the hour of their transfer from
l’Ile aux Bec-scies (Sheldrake) at the
entrance of the river Miramichi, discord,
revolt, and insubordination toward the
government, divisions and quarrels
among themselves, made the history of
their daily lives. The walls rang with
horrible blasphemies, and the hospital
seemed like a den of thieves.”
.pm letter-end

The Board of Health spared
nothing to make the lepers comfortable.
Good food, and abundance
of it, appropriate clothing, and careful
medical attendance were liberally
provided; but, in spite of these
efforts, the hearts of these poor creatures
were as diseased as their bodies.
Some of them revolted against
the summons of death, notwithstanding
the constant exhortations
of the chaplain, and even after their
last communion clung strongly to the
futile hope of life. Of this number
was one who had been warned by
the physician that his hours were
numbered and that a priest should
be summoned. His friends, and
those of his relatives who were
within the walls of the lazaretto,
implored him to prepare for death.
“Let me be!” he cried. “I know
what I am about!”

About nine o’clock in the evening
he begged his companions in
misery not to watch at his bedside,
and, believing himself able to drive
.pn +1
away Death, who was hurrying
toward him with rapid strides, insisted
on playing a game of cards.
The game had hardly begun, however,
when the cards dropped from
his hands and he fell back on his
bed. Before assistance could reach
him all was over.

With the arrival of the nuns a
new order of things began. Without
entering into a detailed account
of all the labors performed by the
sisters since their arrival, it is
enough to state that cleanliness and
order prevail and true charity shows
itself everywhere. The poor creatures,
who formerly revelled in filth
and disorder, now see about them
decency and cleanliness. They are
induced to be submissive and obedient
by the hourly example of the
sisters; their modesty and reserve,
their virtue and careful speech,
their watchful care and devotion,
their tender attention to the sick,
teach the inmates of the hospital
the best of lessons. It is easy to
imagine with what joy the poor lepers
welcomed the nuns who came
to consecrate their lives to this service,
and also to understand with
what affection and respect these
holy women are regarded.

.pm letter-start
“The enclosed grounds of the lazaretto,”
says Governor Gordon in his
<i>Wilderness Journeys</i>, “consist of a green
meadow three or four acres in extent.
Within these limits the lepers are
permitted to wander at their will. Until
recently they were confined to the narrowest
limits—a mere yard about the lazaretto.
I entered these dreary walls,
accompanied by the Roman Catholic
Bishop of Chatham, by the secretary of
the Board of Health, by the resident
physician, and by the Catholic priest of
the village, who is also the chaplain of
the institution.

“Within the enclosure are several
small wooden buildings, separated from
each other, consisting of the kitchen,
laundry, etc. A bath-house has recently
been added to these, which will be a
source of infinite comfort to the patients.
The hospital contains two larger halls—one
devoted to the men, the other to the
women. Each room has a stove and a
table with chairs about it, while the beds
are ranged against the wall. These halls
are both well lighted and ventilated, and
at the time of my inspection were perfectly
clean and fresh. At the end of
these halls is a small chapel arranged in
such a way that the patients of both
sexes are able to hear Mass without
meeting each other. Through certain
openings they also confess to the priest
and receive the holy communion.”
.pm letter-end

Many changes in the interior arrangements
of the lazaretto followed
the arrival of the sisters. The
patients and the nuns now hear
Mass at the same time. The male
patients occupy two rooms twenty-five
feet square, while similar apartments
above are reserved for the
females. The grounds of the lazaretto
have also been enlarged.

.pm letter-start
“Before giving the characteristics of
this appalling disease,” says Mr. Gordon,
“I wish to reply to a question
which you undoubtedly wish to ask:
How is this malady propagated? No
one knows. It seems not to be hereditary,
since in one family the father or
mother may be attacked, while the children
entirely escape. In others the children
are leprous and the parents healthy.
In 1856 or '57 a woman named Domitile
Brideau, wife of François Robichaud,
was so covered with leprosy that her
body was one mass of corruption. While
in this state she gave birth to a daughter,
whom she nursed—the mother shortly
afterward dying in the hospital. Meanwhile,
the child was absolutely healthy,
and remained until she was three years
of age in the hospital without any unfavorable
symptoms being developed.
The girl grew to womanhood and married,
and to-day she and her children
are perfectly healthy. Many similar examples
might be cited.”
.pm letter-end

This malady, then, can hardly be
contagious, since in one family husband
or wife may be attacked,
while the other goes unscathed.
There is now at Tracadie a man,
.pn +1
François Robichaud by name, who
has had three wives; the two first
perished of leprosy, the third is
now under treatment at the lazaretto—the
husband in the meanwhile
enjoying perfect health. In
one family two or more children
are lepers, while the others are untainted.
One servant-woman resided
for eight years in the hospital,
ate and drank with the patients,
yet has never shown any symptoms
of the disease. The laundress of
the institution lives under its roof,
and has done so for two years; she
is a widow, her husband having
died of the scourge, she being his
sole nurse during his illness. She
is in perfect health. It has also
happened more than once that persons
suspected of leprosy, and
placed in the hospital, after remaining
there several years and developing
no further symptoms, are discharged
as “whole.”

All the patients now in the hospital
agree that the disease is communicated
by touch, and each has
his own theory as to where he was
exposed to it—either by sleeping
with some one who had it, or by
eating and drinking with such.

I am strongly persuaded that this
disease, whatever may be its origin,
is greatly aggravated by the kind
of life led by the natives of Tracadie,
who are all fishermen or sailors.
Their food is fish, generally herring,
and their only vegetables turnips
and potatoes. Such is their extreme
poverty that there are not
ten families in Tracadie who ever
touch bread.

Let us follow Governor Gordon
into the lazaretto.

.pm letter-start
“At the time of my visit,” he says, “there
were twenty-three patients, thirteen men
and ten women. They were all French
and all Catholics, belonging to the lower
class. They were of all ages, and had
reached various stages of the disease.
One old man, whose features were distorted
out of all semblance to humanity, and
who had apparently entered his second
childhood, could hardly be sufficiently
aroused from his apathy to receive the
benediction of the bishop, before whom
all the others sank on their knees.

“There were also young people who,
to a casual observer, seemed vigorous
and in health; while, saddest of all sights
was that of the young children condemned
to spend their lives in this terrible
place. Above all was I touched by
the sight of three small boys from eleven
to fifteen years of age. To an inexperienced
observer they had much the look
of other children of their own age and
class. Their eyes were bright and intelligent,
but the fatal symptoms that had
sufficed to separate them from home and
kindred were written on their persons,
and they were immured for life in the
lazaretto.

“The greatest sympathy must naturally
be felt for these younger victims when
one thinks of the possible length of years
that stretches before them, hopeless and
cheerless; to grow to manhood with
the capacities, passions, and desires of
manhood, and condemned to live from
youth to middle age, from middle age to
decrepitude possibly, with no other society
than that of their companions in misery.
Utterly without occupations, amusements,
or interests, shut off from all outside
resources, their only excitement is
found in the arrival of a new disease-stricken
patient, their only occupation
that of watching their companions dying
before their eyes by inches!

“But few of the patients could read,
and those who could were without books.
There was evident need of some organization
that might furnish the patients
with employment. Both mind and body
required occupation. Under these circumstances
I was by no means surprised to
learn that in the last stages of the disease
the mind was generally much weakened.

“The suffering of the majority of the
patients was by no means severe, and I
was informed that one of the characteristic
features of the malady was profound
insensibility to pain. One individual
was pointed out to me, who by mistake
had laid his arm and open hand on a red-hot
stove, and who knew nothing of it
until the odor of burning flesh aroused
his attention.”
.pm letter-end
.pn +1

After Governor Gordon’s visit the
condition of the lepers was much
improved. The sisters taught the
young to read and employed them
in making shoes and other articles.

The investigations of Governor
Gordon, although made during a
brief inspection of the lazaretto, are
correct as far as they go, but are
far from complete. The Abbé
Gauvreau has been for eighteen
years chaplain of the hospital.
He has watched keenly the progress
of the disease in over a hundred cases.
He has noted every symptom
of its slow and fatal march. He
has been present at the deathbeds
of many of the lepers, and he recounts
with horror the terrible
scenes he has witnessed.

.pm letter-start
“Without wishing to impose my opinions
on you,” he says, “I cannot resist
the conviction that, apart from divine
will, this scourge of fallen man is a most
subtle poison introduced into the human
body by transmission or by direct contact,
or even, perhaps, by prolonged cohabitation.

“But whichever of these suppositions
is the more nearly correct, when once the
poison is fairly within the system its action
is so latent and insidious that for
some years—two, four, or even more—the
unfortunate Naaman or Giezi perceives in
himself no change either in constitution
or sensations. His sleep is as refreshing
and his respiration as free as
before. In a word, the vital organs perform
all their functions and the various
members are unshorn of their vigor and
energy.

“At this period of the disease the skin
loses its natural color, its healthy appearance,
and is replaced by a deadly whiteness
from head to foot. This whiteness
looks as if the malady had taken possession
of the mucous membrane and had
displaced the fluids necessary to its
functions. Without knowing if the
leper of the Orient possesses other external
indications, it is certain that in
this stage the malady of Tracadie is precisely
similar to the leprosy of the ancients—I
mean in the whiteness of the
skin. In the second stage the skin becomes
yellow. In the third and last it
turns to a deep red; it is often purple,
and sometimes greenish, in hue. In fact,
the people of Tracadie, like myself, are so
familiar with the early symptoms of the
disease that they rarely fall into a mistake.

“Only one death has ever occurred in
the first stage—that of Cyrille Austin.
All the other cases have passed on to
the second or third stages before death;
and, strangely enough, it has been remarked
by the patients themselves that
the treatment of Dr. La Bellois had
always a much better chance of success
during the third period than during the
second.

“At first the victim feels devouring
thirst, great feverish action, and a singular
trembling in every limb; stiffness
and a certain weakness in the joints; a
great weight on the chest like that caused
by sorrow; a rush of blood to the
brain; fatigue and drowsiness, and
other disagreeable symptoms which now
escape my memory. The entire nervous
system is then struck, as it were, with
insensibility to such a degree that a
sharp instrument or a needle, or even
the blade of a knife, buried in the fleshy
parts or thrust through the tendons and
cartilage, causes the leper little or no
pain. Some poor creature, with calm indifference,
will place his arm or leg on a
mass of burning wood and tar, and let it
remain there until the entire limb, bones
and all, is consumed; yet the leper feels
no pain, and may sleep through it all as
quietly as if in his bed.”
.pm letter-end

In another letter the abbé gives
the following example of this astonishing
insensibility:

.pm letter-start
“One of these afflicted beings who
died at the lazaretto, and to whom I administered
the last sacraments, lay down
to sleep near a hot fire; in his slumbers he
thrust one arm and hand into the flames,
but continued to sleep. The overpowering
smell of burning flesh awakened one of
his companions, who succeeded in saving
his life.”
.pm letter-end

One of the nuns says: “Since we
reached Tracadie two of the patients
have burned their hands
severely, and were totally unconscious
of having done so until I
dressed the wounds myself.” In regard
.pn +1
to this torpidity of the system,
M. Gauvreau remarks that it
is but temporary, but he knows not
its duration; and the nun adds that
the torpidity is not invariable with
all the patients, and with some only
in a portion of the body. In certain
individuals it is only in the
legs; in others, in the hands
alone; but all complain of numbness
like that of paralysis.

.pm letter-start
“By degrees,” says M. Gauvreau, “the
unnatural whiteness of the skin disappears,
and spots of a light yellow are to
be seen. These spots in some cases are
small and about the size of a dollar-piece.
When of this character, they appear at
first with a certain regularity of arrangement,
and in places corresponding with
each other, as on the two arms and
shoulders—more generally, however, on
the breast. They are distinct, but by
degrees the poison makes its way throughout
the vitals; the spots enlarge, approach
each other, and, when at last united, the
body of the sick man becomes a mass of
corruption. Then the limbs swell, afterward
portions of the body, the hands,
and the feet; and when the skin can bear
no further tension it breaks, and running
sores cover the patient, who is repulsive
and disgusting to the last degree.

“The entire skin of the body becomes
extremely tender, and is covered with an
oily substance that exudes from the pores
and looks like varnish. The skin and
flesh between the thumb and forefinger
dry away, the ends of the fingers, the feet,
and hands dwindle to nothingness, and
sometimes the joints separate, and the
members drop off without pain and often
without the knowledge of the patient.

“The most noble part of the being
created in the image of God—the face—is
marred as much as the body by this
fell disease. It is generally excessively
swollen. The chin, cheeks, and ears
are usually covered by tubercles the size
of peas. The eyes seem to start from
their sockets, and are glazed by a sort of
cataract that often produces complete
blindness. The skin of the forehead
thickens and swells, acquiring a leaden
hue, which sometimes extends over the
entire countenance, while in other cases
the whole face is suffused with scarlet.
The explanation of these different symptoms
may be found, of course, in the variety
of temperaments—sanguine, bilious,
or lymphatic. This face, once so
smooth and fair, has become seamed and
furrowed. The lips are two appalling
ulcers—the upper lip much swollen and
raised to the base of the nose, which has
entirely disappeared; while the under lip
hangs over the chin, which shines from
the tension of the skin. Can a more
frightful sight be imagined? In some
cases the lips are parched and drawn up
like a purse puckered on strings. This
deformity is the more to be regretted is
it precludes the afflicted from participation
in the holy communion. Leprosy—that
of Tracadie, at least—completes its
ravages on the internal organs of its
victims. It attacks now the larynx and
all the bronchial ramifications; they become
obstructed and filled with tubercles,
so that the unhappy patient can
find no relief in any position. His respiration
becomes gradually more and
more impeded, until he is threatened with
suffocation. I have been present at the
last struggles of most of these afflicted
mortals. I hope that I may never be
called upon to witness similar scenes.
Excuse me from the details. If I undertook
them my courage would give out;
for I assure you that many of you would
have fainted. Let me simply add that
these lepers generally die in convulsions,
panting for air; frequently rushing to
the door to breathe; and, returning, they
fling themselves on their pallets in despair.
The thought of their sighs and
sobs, the remembrance of their tears, almost
breaks my heart, and their prayers
for succor ring constantly in my ears:
'O my God! have mercy on me! have
mercy on me!’

“At last comes the supreme moment of
this lingering torture, and the patient
dies of exhaustion and suffocation. All
is over, and another Lazarus lies in Abraham’s
bosom!”
.pm letter-end

After the above vivid picture of
this loathsome disease we naturally
ask if the evil be such that no medical
skill can combat it with success.
The Hospital Nun in the infirmary
of the lazaretto tells us all that she
has yet learned upon this point.

In 1849 and 1850 Dr. La Bellois, a
celebrated French physician residing
.pn +1
at Dalhousie, treated the lepers
for six months and claimed to have
cured ten of them: T. Goutheau,
Charles Comeau, T. Brideau, A.
Benoit, L. Sonier, Ed. Vienneau,
Mme. A. Sonier, M. Sonier, Mme.
Ferguson, Melina Lavoie. “All the
above cases are now quite well, and
the treatment I adopted was entirely
for syphilitic disease, thus establishing
without any doubt the
nature of the disease” (extract from
La Bellois’ report, Feb. 12, 1850).

Meanwhile, from the report of the
secretary of the Board of Health—Mr.
James Davidson—we gather that
all the sick above mentioned returned
after a time to the hospital;
that they died there, with the exception
of three, of whom two died
in their own houses and the third
still lives. Of this one Dr. Gordon,
of Bathurst, says: “The disease is
slow in its progress, but it is sure,
and the fatal termination cannot be
far off.”

Dr. Nicholson undertook the
treatment at the lazaretto. By a
certain course of medicine, the details
of which he kept a profound
secret, and with the aid of vapors,
he wonderfully improved the physical
condition of the lepers, who in
many instances indulged sanguine
hopes of recovery. Unfortunately,
however, this physician suddenly
abandoned his profession, and, to
the sorrow of his former patients,
died three years later. The lepers
soon relapsed into their former
hopeless state, and since then no
change has taken place.

.pm letter-start
“On our arrival at Tracadie,” said
the sister, “we found twenty inmates of
the hospital, and since three more have
been admitted. These poor creatures,
being firmly persuaded that we could
cure them, besieged us with entreaties
for medicine, and were satisfied with
whatever we gave. At first I selected
three who had undergone no medical
treatment; these three were also the
only ones who suffered from contraction
of the extremities. The first, twenty-two
years of age, had been at the hospital
four years, and as yet showed the
disease only in the contraction above
mentioned, and in a certain insensibility
of the feet and hands. The second, fifteen
years old, had been in the hospital for
two years, his hands and feet were drawn
up, and he suffered from a large swelling
on the left foot. This young fellow is
very delicate, and suffers intensely at times
from spasms of the stomach. The third
case is a lad of eleven, who for two years
has suffered from the disease. His hands
are twisted out of shape, and his body is
covered with spots, red and white; these
spots are totally without sensibility. I
have administered to these patients the
remedies as prescribed by Mr. Fowle—<i>Fowle’s
Humor Cure</i>, an American patent
medicine. The first and second patient
experienced no other benefit from
this remedy than a certain vigor previously
unfelt. To the third the sensibility
of the cuticle returned, but the
spots remained the same. This in itself is
very remarkable, because in no previous
case have these benumbed or paralyzed
parts regained their sensation. To another,
a patient of twenty-two, I gave the
same remedy. For eight years he had
been a martyr to the virulence of the disease.
When we arrived at the lazaretto,
we found his case to be one of the worst
there. His nose had fallen in; the lips
were enormously puffed and swollen;
his hands equally so, and looked more
like the paws of a bear than like the
hands of a human being. The saliva was
profuse, but the effort of swallowing almost
futile. Soon after taking this same
medicine the saliva ceased to flow and
he swallowed with comparative ease.

“On the 23d of January he was, by the
mercy of God, able to partake of the holy
communion, of which he had been deprived
for four years. His lips are now
of their natural size, and he is stronger
than he has been for years. But the
pains in his limbs are far worse than they
have ever before been. I have also given
Fowle’s cure to all the patients who had
been under no previous medical treatment,
and invariably with beneficial results.
In some the tint of the skin is
more natural; in others the swelling of
the extremities is much abated; but the
remedy seems always to occasion an increase
.pn +1
of pains in the limbs, although it
unquestionably acts as a tonic upon the
poor creatures. In all of them the
mouth and throat improve with the use of
Fowle’s cure. And here let me say that
this disease throughout bears a strong
resemblance to syphilis. In both diseases
the throat, the tongue, and the
whole inside of the mouth are ulcerated.
In both diseases the voice is affected to
such a degree that it can hardly make
itself heard. They cough frightfully, and
some time after our coming a leper presented
himself for admission at our hospital
doors. The poor creature was covered
with ulcers and every night was
bathed in a cold perspiration. After he
had rested for a few days, I gave him a
powerful dose of <i>la liqueur arsenicale</i>,
which has since been repeated. The night-sweats
have disappeared, and the ulcers
are healed, with the exception of one on
the foot. His lips are still unhealthy,
but he is much stronger, and the spots
on his person are gradually disappearing.

“Two others, later arrivals have taken
<i>la liqueur arsenicale</i> and have improved under
its use. Suspecting that the origin
of this malady may be traced to another
source, and remembering the opinion of
Dr. La Bellois, I gave the bichloride
of mercury, in doses of the thirty-second
part of a grain, to the worst case in
the hospital. It is too soon, however,
to judge of its effects. The improvement
in no one of these cases is rapid,
but we trust that it is certain. We look
to God alone for the success for which
we venture to hope. I can find no statistics
which will enable me to give you
the number of victims that have fallen
under this dread malady of Tracadie. I
find, however, a letter from M. Gauvreau,
bearing the date of November 30, 1859,
that sixty persons perished from its ravages
in the previous fifteen years, and
that twenty-five of both sexes, and of all
ages, were then inmates of the lazaretto,
awaiting there the end of their torments.”
.pm letter-end

In 1862 Mr. Gordon said that he
saw twenty-three patients at the hospital,
and the Sisters of the Hôtel
Dieu found twenty there when
they reached the lazaretto, and
have since admitted three in addition;
it does not seem, therefore,
as if the “eldest sister of Death”
had relaxed her hold on this unhappy
village. Yet if the disease can
but be confined to this locality, wonders
will be achieved. Good care,
regular medical attendance, incessant
vigilance, with intelligent adherence
to hygienic laws, may eventually
cause its entire disappearance
from our soil. Let us hope
that the faithful sisters will succeed
in their good work; for we ourselves,
every one of us, have a personal
interest in it. Unfortunately, this
good result is far from certain, as
the Abbé Gauvreau desires us to
understand.

.pm letter-start
“One or more of these unfortunates,”
he says, “feeling the insidious approaches
of the disease, and shrinking from the
idea of the lazaretto, have at times secretly
escaped from Tracadie. They leave
Miramichi on the steamer, intending to
land at Rivière-du-Loup, at Kamouraska,
perhaps at Quebec or at Montreal. As
yet no ulcers are visible, nor, indeed, any
external symptoms which could excite
the smallest suspicion. On landing at
some one of the places mentioned they
procure situations in different houses,
and remain in them for a month or two,
perhaps, saying nothing all this time of
their symptoms to any one, not even to
a physician. They eat with their master’s
family, and, even if they take the greatest
precaution, they convey this poisonous
virus to their masters. When they have
reason to fear that suspicion is about being
aroused, they depart, but it is too late,
and they go to scatter the contagion still
further.

“The following instance came under
my own observation: A youth suffering
from this disease, and dreading the lazaretto,
went to Boston, where he secured
a position on a fishing vessel, hoping
that the sea air, with the medicines that he
would take, would effect his cure. He
soon found that these hopes were
groundless, and was obliged to enter
the hospital in Boston, where, in spite
of the care and attention bestowed upon
him by the physicians of the medical
school at Cambridge, he died, far from
friends and home.”
.pm letter-end

One naturally asks, with a thrill
.pn +1
of horror, whether, before the admission
of this poor creature to the
hospital, he did not transmit to his
shipmates the poisonous virus that
filled his own blood.

The total disappearance of this
disease—if such disappearance may
be hoped for—will be due exclusively
to the noble and untiring exertions
of the sisters. Tracadie
and its afflicted population would
not alone owe a debt of eternal
gratitude to these Hospital Nuns.
America itself would share this
feeling. With an example like this
of charity and self-abnegation before
us, we cannot cease to wonder at,
and to deplore, the narrow minds
of those persons who condemn the
monastic institutions of the church.
Let us compassionate all such; for
to them light is lacking, and they
have yet to learn the great truth
that the duty most inculcated by
the church, after the love of God,
is the love of our neighbors.
.sp 4
.h3 id=catacombs
TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO SOME OF THE SACRAMENTS.
.sp 2
In a former article,[#] whilst following
Mr. Withrow and other Protestant
controversialists through
their evasions and misinterpretations
of the evidence to be found
in the Catacombs on behalf of certain
points of Catholic doctrine
and practice, we pointed out that
prayers either <i>for</i> the dead or <i>to</i>
them were the only two articles on
which it would be reasonable to
look for information from the inscriptions
on the gravestones. We
said that these prayers were likely
to find expression, if anywhere, by
the side of the grave. As they
took their last look on the loved
remains of their deceased friend or
relative, the affectionate devotion
of the survivors would naturally give
utterance either to a hearty prayer
for the everlasting happiness of him
they had lost, or to a piteous cry for
help, an earnest petition that he
would continue to exercise, in whatever
way might be possible under
the conditions of his new mode of
existence, that same loving care and
protection which had been their
joy and support during his life; or
sometimes both these prayers might
be poured forth together, according
as the strictness of God’s justice,
or the Christian faith and virtues
of the deceased, happened to occupy
the foremost place in the petitioner’s
thoughts.

.fn #
<sc>The Catholic World</sc>, Dec., 1876, p. 371
Jan., 1877, p. 523.
.fn-

When, therefore, we proceeded in
a second paper to question the same
subterranean sanctuaries on another
subject of Christian doctrine—the
supremacy of St. Peter—we
called into court another set of
witnesses altogether: to wit, the
paintings of their tombs and chapels.
Exception has been taken
against the competency of these
witnesses, on the plea that they are
not old enough; they were not contemporary,
it is said, with those first
ages of the church whose faith is
called in question. To this we
answer that the objection is entirely
out of date; it might have been raised
twenty or thirty years ago, and
it might have been difficult at that
.pn +1
time satisfactorily to dispose of it.
Those were days in which writers
like M. Perrot in France could affect
to pronounce dogmatically on
the age of this or that painting,
solely on the evidence of its style,
without having first established any
standard by which that style could
be securely judged. There are
still a few writers of the same
school even at the present day,
such as Mr. Parker in England,
who assigns precise years as the dates
of these subterranean monuments
with as much confidence as if he
had been personally present when
they were executed, and (we may
add) with as wide a departure from
the truth as if he had never seen
the pictures at all. Such writers,
however, have but few disciples
nowadays. Their foolish presumption
is only laughed at; and it is not
thought worth while seriously to
refute their assertions. Men of intelligence
and critical habits of
thought are slow to accept the <i>ipse
dixit</i> of a professor, however eminent,
upon any subject; and all who
have studied this particular subject—the
paintings in the Catacombs—are
well aware that the question of
their antiquity has now been carried
beyond the range of mere conjecture
and assumption; it has
been placed on a solid basis of fact
through the indefatigable labors
of De Rossi. Those labors have
been directed in a very special way
towards establishing the true
chronology of the several parts of
the Catacombs; and when this had
been done, it was manifest to all
that the most ancient <i>areæ</i> were
also those which were most abundantly
decorated with painting,
whilst the areæ that had been used
more recently—<i>i.e.</i>, in the latter half
of the fourth or beginning of the fifth
century—were hardly decorated at
all. This gradual decline of the use
of pictorial decoration has been traced
with the utmost exactness through
the successive <i>areæ</i> of a single Catacomb;
six or seven tombs being
found thus decorated in the first
<i>area</i>, two in the second, one in the
third, none at all in the fourth; and
the same thing has been seen, with
more or less distinctness, throughout
the whole range of subterranean
Rome. Then, again, every casual
visitor to them can see for himself
that before the abandonment
of burial here—<i>i.e.</i>, before the year
410—many of the paintings were
already considered old enough to
be sacrificed without scruple to the
wishes of those who would fain excavate
new tombs in desirable sites.
Men do not usually destroy to-day
the paintings which they executed
yesterday; certainly they do not
allow the ornamentation which
they have just lavished on the
tombs of their fathers to be soon
effaced with impunity. We may be
sure, then, that those innumerable
paintings which we see broken
through in order to make more modern
graves must have been of
considerable antiquity at the time
of their destruction. Then, again,
it must not be forgotten that some
of these paintings were actually appealed
to as ancient testimony in
the days of St. Jerome, on occasion
of a dispute between that doctor
and St. Augustine as to the correct
rendering of a particular word in
his Latin translation of the Scriptures.
Finally, it is notorious
that the fine arts had rapidly decayed
and the number of their
professors diminished before the
days of Constantine—in fact, before
the end of the third century.

We cannot, however, pretend to
give in these pages even a brief
summary of De Rossi’s arguments
.pn +1
and observations whereby he establishes
the primitive antiquity of
Christian art in the Catacombs.
We can only mention a few of the
more popular and palpable proofs
which can be appreciated by all
without difficulty; and we will only
add that it is now possible, under
the sure chronological guidance of
De Rossi, to distinguish three successive
stages in the development
of painting in the Christian cemeteries,
the latest of which was complete
when the Constantinian era
began, and the first falls hardly, if
at all, short of even apostolic times.
This is no longer denied by the
best instructed even among Protestant
controversialists; they acknowledge
that painting was used by the
earliest Christians for the ornamenting
of their places of burial; only
they contend that it was done “not
because it was congenial to the
mind of Christianity so to illustrate
the faith, but because it was the
heathen custom so to honor the
dead.” The author of this remark,
however, has omitted to explain
whence it comes to pass that the
great majority of the paintings
which survive in the cemeteries
are more engaged in illustrating
the mysteries of the faith than in
doing honor to the dead.

But we must not pursue this subject
any further. We have said
enough, we think, to establish the
competency of these paintings as
witnesses to the ancient faith, and
we will now proceed to question
them concerning one or two principal
mysteries of the faith—those
that are called its mysteries <i>par
excellence</i>: its sacraments. We do
not doubt that, if duly interrogated,
they will have some evidence to
give. We say, if duly interrogated,
because it is the characteristic of
ancient Christian art to be eminently
symbolical; it suggested rather
than declared religious doctrines
and ideas, and it suggested them by
means of artistic symbols or historical
types, which must be inquired
into and meditated upon before
they can be made fully to express
their meaning. This is of the very
essence of a symbol: that it should
partly veil and partly manifest the
truth. It does not manifest the
truth with the fulness and accuracy
of a written historical description,
or it would cease to be a symbol;
on the other hand, it must not be
so obscure as to demand a sibyl for
its interpretation; it must have a
tendency to produce in the mind
of the beholder some leading feature
of the object it is intended to
represent. And where should symbols
of this kind be more abundantly
found for the Christian preacher
or artist than in the histories of the
Old Testament? Ancient Christian
art, says Lord Lindsay, “veiled the
faith and hope of the church under
the parallel and typical events of
the patriarchal and the Jewish dispensations.”

We need not remind our readers
that the principle of this method of
interpreting Holy Scripture has express
apostolic sanction; but few
who have not studied the subject
closely will have any adequate idea
of the extent to which it was followed
in the ancient church. We will
give a single example, selected because
it closely concerns the first
mystery of which we propose to
speak—the Sacrament of Baptism.

Tertullian, who lived at the end
of the second and beginning of the
third century, wrote a short treatise
on this sacrament. This treatise
he begins by bringing together all
that Holy Scripture contains about
water, with such minuteness of detail
that he is presently obliged to
.pn +1
check himself, saying that, if he
were to pursue the subject through
all Holy Scripture with the same
fulness with which he had begun,
men would say he was writing a
treatise in praise of water rather
than of baptism. From the first
chapter of the Book of Genesis to
the last of the Evangelists, and even
of the Apocalypse, he finds continual
testimony to the high dignity
and sacramental life-giving power
of this element. The Spirit of God,
he says, moved over it at the first;
whilst as yet the earth was void
and empty, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep, and the heaven
was as yet unformed, water alone,
already pure, simple, and perfect,
supplied a worthy resting-place on
which God could be borne. The
division of the waters was the regulating
power by which the world
was constituted; and when at
length the world was set in order,
ready to receive inhabitants, the
waters were the first to hear and
obey the command and to bring
forth creatures having life. Then,
again, man was not made out of the
dry earth, but out of slime, after a
spring had risen out of the earth,
watering all its surface. All this is
out of the first two chapters of Genesis;
and here he makes a pause,
breaking into that apology which
has been already mentioned. Then
he resumes the thread of his discourse,
but passing much more briefly
over the remainder of the Old
Testament. He notes how the wickedness
of the old world was purged
by the waters of the Deluge, which
was the world’s baptism; how the
waters of the Red Sea drowned the
enemies of God’s people and delivered
them from a cruel bondage;
and how the children of Israel were
refreshed during their wanderings
through the wilderness by the water
which flowed continuously from
the rock which followed them,
“which rock was Christ.” Then he
comes to the New Testament, and
briefly but eloquently exclaims: Nowhere
is Christ found without water.
He is himself baptized with it; he
inaugurates in it the first manifestation
of his divine power at the wedding-feast
in Cana; when he preaches
the Gospel, on the last and great
day of the feast, he stands and cries,
saying, “If any man thirst, let him
come to me and drink.” He sums
up his whole gift to man under the
image of a fountain of water, telling
the Samaritan woman that he has
living water to give, which shall become
in him that receives it a fountain
of water springing up unto life
everlasting. When he gives instruction
upon charity, he instances
a cup of cold water given to a disciple;
he sits down weary at a well
and asks for water to refresh himself;
he walks on the waves of the
sea, and washes his disciples’ feet;
finally (Tertullian concludes), “this
testimony of Jesus to the Sacrament
of Baptism continues even to
the end, to his very Passion; for,
when he is condemned to the cross,
water is not absent—witness the
hands of Pilate; nay, when wounded
after death upon the cross, water
bursts forth from his side—witness
the soldier’s spear.”

There may be something in this
symbolism that sounds strange to
modern ears; but we are not here
criticising it; we have nothing to
do with its merits or demerits, but
only with the fact of its general use—so
general that it was the one principle
of exegesis which every commentator
on Holy Scripture in those
days followed, and we have every
right to suppose that Christian artists
would have followed it also.
When, therefore, we find in the Roman
.pn +1
Catacombs (as, for example,
the other day in the cemetery of
San Callisto) a glass vessel, very
artistically wrought, with fishes in
<i>alto rilievo</i> swimming round it in
such a way that, when full of water,
it would have represented a miniature
image, as it were, of the sea, is
it a mere fanciful imagination which
bids us recognize in such ornamentation
a reference to holy baptism,
and conjectures that the vessel was
perhaps even made for the administration
of that sacrament? It may
be so; but we cannot ourselves
think so; we cannot at once reject
the explanation as fanciful; the
work of the artist corresponds too
exactly with the words of the theologian
to allow us to treat the coincidence
as altogether undesigned.
“We little fish are born,” says Tertullian,
“after the likeness of our
great Fish in water, and we cannot
otherwise be safe than by remaining
in the water.” And we seem to ourselves
to read these same words, written
in another language, in the beautiful
vessel before us. We read it also
in another similar vessel, which
looks as though it had come out of
the same workshop, yet was found
in an ancient cemetery at Cologne;
and in another of bronze, dug up in
the vineyard over the cemetery of
Pretextatus, that used to be shown
by Father Marchi in the Kircherian
Museum at the Roman College. In
all these instances we believe that
this is the best account that can be
given, both of the original design
of the vessel and also of its preservation
in Christian subterranean
cemeteries. However, if any one
thinks otherwise, we do not care to
insist upon our explanation as infallibly
certain. We will descend
into the Catacombs themselves, and
look about upon the paintings on
their walls or the carving on their
gravestones, and see whether baptism
finds any place there also.

And, first, we come across the
baptism of our Lord himself. We are
not now thinking of the subterranean
baptistery in the cemetery of
Ponziano, with the highly-decorated
cross standing up out of the middle
of it, and Christ’s baptism painted
at the side. For this is one of the latest
artistic productions in the Catacombs—a
work of the eighth or ninth
century possibly. We are thinking,
on the contrary, of one of the earliest
paintings in a most ancient part of
the excavations, in the crypt of Lucina,
near the cemetery of Callixtus,
with which, in fact, it is now united.
We shall have occasion to return to
this same chamber presently for the
sake of other paintings on its walls
having reference to the Holy Eucharist;
just here we only call attention
to the baptism of our Lord,
which is represented in the space
over the doorway. We do not
know of any other instance of this
subject having been painted in the
Catacombs besides the two that we
have mentioned, but it is quite possible
that others may be hereafter
discovered; but of baptism as a
Christian rite, veiled, however, under
its types and symbols, we have
innumerable examples.

Few figures recur more frequently
among the paintings in the Catacombs,
and none are more ancient,
than that of a man standing in an
open box or chest, often with a
dove, bearing an olive-branch in its
mouth, flying towards him. When
this was first seen after the rediscovery
of the Catacombs in the sixteenth
century, men set it down to
be the picture of some ancient bishop
preaching in a pulpit, and the
Holy Ghost, under the form of a
dove, inspiring him as to what he
should say, according to the legend
.pn +1
told of St. Gregory the Great and
some others. Nobody now doubts
that it was intended for Noe in
the ark; not, however, the historical
Noe and the historical ark—for
nothing could be more ludicrously
false to the original—but those whom
that history foreshadowed: Christians
saved by the waters of baptism
and securely housed in the ark
of the church. Some persons, who
seem to take a perverse delight in
assigning a pagan rather than a
Christian origin to everything in
the early church, account for the
difference between the Biblical and
the artistic representation of the
ark by saying that the Christian
artist did but copy a pagan coin
or medal which he found ready to
his hands. It is quite true that
certain coins which were struck at
Apamea in Phrygia during the
reigns of Septimius Severus, Macrinus,
and Philip the elder—<i>i.e.</i>, at different
periods in the first half of
the third century—exhibit on one
side of them a chest, with a man
and a woman standing within it,
and the letters ΝΩ, or ΝΩΕ, written
on the outside; and that these
figures were intended to be a souvenir
of the Deluge, which held a
prominent place in the legends of
Phrygia. It is said that the town
of Apamea claimed to derive its
secondary name of κιβωτός, or ark,
from the fact that it was here that
the ark rested; and it is quite possible
that the spread of Christian
ideas, gradually penetrating the Roman
world, and filtering into the
spirit even of those who remained
attached to paganism, may have
suggested the making of the coins
we have described; but it is certain,
on the other hand, that we can
claim priority in point of time for
the work of the Christian artists
in the Catacombs. The coins were
struck, as we have said, in the beginning
of the third century; the
earliest Christian painting of the
same subject is assigned to the beginning
of the second.

But whatever may be the history
of the forms under which Noe and
the ark are represented, there can
be no question as to their meaning.
We have the authority of St. Peter
himself (1 iii. 20, 21) to instruct
us upon this point; and Tertullian
does but unfold what is virtually
contained in the apostle’s words
when he says that the ark prefigures
the church, and that the dove
sent out of the ark and returning
with an olive-branch was a figure
of the dove of the Holy Spirit,
sent forth from heaven to our flesh,
as it emerges from the bath of regeneration.
And if we quote Tertullian
again as our authority, this
is not because he differs in these
matters from other Christian writers
who preceded or followed him,
but because he has written at greater
length and specially on that particular
subject with which we are
now engaged. St. Augustine, writing
two hundred years later, gives
the same explanation, and says that
“no Catholic doubts it; but that it
might perhaps have seemed to be a
merely human imagination, had not
the Apostle Peter expressly declared
it.” It is, then, from no private fancy
of our own, but simply in conformity
with the teaching of all the
ancient doctors of the church, that
we interpret this scene of a man
standing in an ark, and receiving
an olive-branch from the mouth of
a dove, as expressing this Christian
doctrine: that the faithful obtain remission
of their sins through baptism,
receive from the Holy Spirit
the gift of divine peace—that peace
which, being given by faith in this
world, is the gage of everlasting
.pn +1
peace and happiness in the next—and
are saved in the mystical ark
of the church from the destruction
which awaits the world. And if
the same scene be rudely scratched
on a single tomb, as it often was,
and sometimes with the name of
the deceased inscribed upon the
chest, we can only understand it
as denoting a sure and certain hope
on the part of the survivors that
their departed friend, having been
a faithful member of the church,
had died in the peace of God and
had now entered into his rest.

We pass on to another of the
Biblical stories mentioned by several
of the Fathers as typical of
baptism; and we will select as our
specimen of it a painting that was
executed about the very time that
Tertullian was writing his treatise
on that sacrament. It is to be seen
more than once on the walls of a
series of chambers which open out
of a gallery in the Catacomb of
San Callisto, not far from the papal
crypt. The first figure that greets
us from the wall on the left-hand
side as we enter these chambers
is Moses striking the rock and the
water gushing forth. Are we to
look upon this as a mere historic
souvenir of the Jewish legislator,
or are we to see in it a reference
to Christian baptism? The artist
in the present instance does not
allow us to doubt. Side by side
with it he has painted a fisherman,
and we need not be reminded who
it was that compared the work of
the Christian apostle to that of
fishermen; and immediately he adds,
with still greater plainness of speech,
a youth standing in the water,
whilst a man pours water over his
head. Finally, he fills the very little
space that remains on the wall with
the picture of a paralytic carrying
his bed, and it would be easy to
show that the Fathers recognized in
the pool of Bethsaida, to which
place this history belongs, a type
of the healing waters of baptism.
Was it possible for the Christian
artist to set forth the sacrament
more unequivocally? There is no
legend to interpret the painting,
but surely this is not needed. The
mystery is veiled, indeed, from all
who were uninstructed; but it was
perfectly intelligible to all the baptized;
it was veiled under types and
symbols taken partly from the Old
Law and partly from common life.

We need hardly say that this
same figure of Moses striking the
rock occurs in scores of other
places throughout the Catacombs;
but we have selected this particular
specimen, both because it appears
with a more copious <i>entourage</i> of
other symbols determining its sense
beyond all dispute, and also because
it is here brought, as we
shall presently see, into immediate
proximity with the other sacrament,
to which it is a necessary gate of
introduction—the Sacrament of the
Holy Eucharist. But before we
pass on to examine the symbols of
the Holy Eucharist, let us first inquire
whether there is anything further
about baptism to be gleaned
from the Catacombs—not now from
their paintings, but from their inscriptions.

We must remember that the
most ancient inscriptions were very
brief—very often the mere name of
the deceased and nothing more, or
a short ejaculatory prayer was added
for his everlasting happiness.
It is clear that we should search
here in vain for any mention of the
sacraments. By and by, when it became
usual to say something more
about the deceased, to mention his
age and the date of his death or
burial, or other similar particulars,
.pn +1
perhaps room might be found also
for saying something about his baptism.
Accordingly, there are not
wanting monuments of the fourth or
fifth centuries which tell us that
the deceased was a neophyte, or
newly illuminated—which means the
same thing: viz., that he had been
lately baptized—or that he had
lived so many months or years
after he had received the initiatory
sacrament of the Christian covenant.
Occasionally, also, a faint
reference may be found to another
sacrament—the Sacrament of Confirmation.
This was often, or even
generally, administered in olden
times immediately after baptism, of
which it was considered the complement
and perfection. “From
time immemorial,” says Tertullian
(<i>ab immemorabili</i>), “as soon as we
have emerged from the bath [of
regeneration] we are anointed with
the holy unction.” Hence it is
sometimes doubtful which sacrament
is intended, or rather it is
probable that it was intended to
include both under the words inscribed
on the epitaphs—the verbs
<i>accepit</i>, <i>percepit</i>, <i>consecutus est</i> (the
same as we find in the fathers of
the same or an earlier age), used for
the most part absolutely, without
any object whatever following them;
but in one or two cases <i>fidem</i> or
<i>gratiam sanctum</i> are used. An epitaph
of a child three years old adds:
<i>Consecuta est D. vi. Deposita viii.
Kal. Aug.</i> Another says simply:
<i>Pascasius percepit xi. Kal. Maias</i>;
and a third: <i>Crescentia q. v. a. xxxiii.
Accepit iii. Kal. Jul.</i> A fourth records
of a lady that she died at the
age of thirty-five: <i>Ex die acceptionis
suæ vixit dies lvii.</i>; to which we
append another: <i>Consecutus est ii.
Non. Decemb. ex die consecutionis
in sæculo fuit ad usque vii. Idas
Decemb.</i> This last inscription is
taken from a Christian cemetery in
Africa, not in Rome; but it was
worth quoting for its exact conformity
with the one which precedes it.
In both alike there is the same
distinction between the natural
and the spiritual age of the deceased—<i>i.e.</i>,
between his first and his
second birth. After stating the
number of years he had lived in the
world, his age is computed afresh
from the day of his regeneration,
thus marking off the length of
his spiritual from that of his merely
animal life.

A Greek inscription was found a
few years since on the Via Latina,
recording of a lady who had belonged
to one of the Gnostic sects
in the third century, that she had
been “anointed in the baths of
Christ with his pure and incorruptible
ointment”—an inscription
which probably refers to two separate
rites in use among the Gnostics,
in imitation of the two Christian
sacraments. Of a Christian
lady buried in Spoleto, her epitaph
records that she had been confirmed
(<i>consignata</i>) by Pope Liberius;
this, of course, belongs to the middle
of the fourth century. And we
read of a boy who died when he
was a little more than five years
old: <i>Bimus trimus consecutus est</i>—words
which were a veritable enigma
to all antiquarians, until the
learned Marini compared with them
the phrases of Roman law, <i>bima trima
die dos reddita</i>, <i>bima trima die legatum
solutum</i>, and pointed out that
as these phrases undoubtedly signified
that such a portion of the dowry
or legacy was paid in the second
year, and such another portion in
the third, so the corresponding
words in the Christian epitaph could
only mean that the deceased had
received something when he was
two years old, and something else
.pn +1
when he was three; and although
the particular gifts received are not
mentioned because of the <i>disciplina
arcani</i>, we can have no difficulty in
supplying baptism and confirmation.
De Rossi adopts this interpretation;
indeed, it does not seem
possible to suggest any other.

It seems, then, that there is not
much evidence to be derived from
the Catacombs as to the Sacrament
of Confirmation; that, on the contrary,
which has reference to the
Holy Eucharist is most precious
and abundant, and it is generally
to be found in juxtaposition with
monuments which bear testimony
to the Sacrament of Baptism. The
chamber in the crypt of Lucina
which gives us the oldest painting
of the baptism of our Lord gives us
also what are probably the oldest
symbolical representations of the
Holy Eucharist; and certainly the
chambers in the cemetery of San
Callisto, in which we have just seen
so many and such clear manifestations
of the Sacrament of Baptism,
contain also the most numerous
and the most perfect specimens of
the symbolic representations of the
Holy Eucharist carried to their
highest degree of development, yet
still combined with mysterious secrecy.
Before enumerating these
in detail it will be best to make
two or three preliminary remarks
helping to clear the way before us.
First, then, we may assume as
known to all our readers, both that
the doctrine about the Blessed Sacrament
belonged in a very special
way to the discipline of the secret,
and also that from the very earliest
times one of the most common
names under which our Blessed
Lord was spoken of was the <i>fish</i>,
because the letters which go to
make up that word in Greek were
also the initials of the words Jesus
Christ, Son of God, Saviour. And,
secondly, we must say a few words
about the different circumstances
under which a fish appears in the
artistic decorations of the Catacombs;
at least, of the different
kinds of feasts or entertainments
in which it seems to be presented
as an article of food. These feasts
may be divided into three classes:
First, the fish merely lies upon a table—a
sacred table or tripod—with
one or more loaves of bread by its
side, and not unfrequently with
several baskets full of bread on the
ground around it; secondly, bread
and fish are seen on a table, at which
seven men are seated partaking of
a meal; and, thirdly, they are seen,
perhaps with other viands also, at
a feast of which men and women
are partaking indiscriminately, and
perhaps attendants also are there,
waiting on the guests, pouring out
wine and water, hot or cold. Paintings
of this latter class have not uncommonly
been taken as representing
the <i>agapæ</i>, or love-feasts, of the
early church. But this seems to
be too literal an interpretation, too
much out of harmony with the symbolical
character of early Christian
art. More probably it was meant
as a representation of that wedding-feast
under which image the joys
of heaven are so often set forth in
Holy Scripture; and in this case
it is not necessary to suppose that
there was any special meaning in
the choice of fish as part of the food
provided, unless, indeed (which is
not at all improbable), it was desired
to direct attention to that mystical
food a participation in which
was the surest pledge of admission
to that heavenly banquet, according
to our Lord’s own words: “He
that eateth this bread shall live for
ever.” However, it is not necessary,
as we have said, to suppose
.pn +1
this; it is quite possible that in
these instances the fish may have
been used accidentally, as it were,
and indifferently, or for the same
reason as it sometimes appears on
pagan monuments—viz., to denote
the abundance and excellence of
the entertainment.

Paintings of the first class, however,
are much too peculiar to be
thus explained, neither is there anything
resembling them in the works
of pagan artists which could have
suggested them; and those of the
second class, we hope presently to
show, can only have been intended
to represent a particular scene in
the Gospel history. It is only with
paintings belonging to one or other
of these two classes that we need
concern ourselves to-day. And,
first, of the bread and fish when
placed alone, without any guests at
all. In the crypt of Lucina it appears
twice on the wall opposite
our Lord’s baptism, and in a very
remarkable form indeed. The fish
is alive and apparently swimming,
and he carries on his back a basket
full of loaves, in the middle of
which is a vessel of glass containing
some red liquid. What can
this mean? Nobody ever saw anything
like it in nature. We know
of nothing in pagan art or mythology
which could have suggested it.
Yet here it finds a place in the
chamber of a Christian cemetery,
and as part of a system of decoration,
other parts of which were undoubtedly
of a sacred character.
Is this alone profane or meaningless,
or does not rather its hidden
sense shine forth distinctly as soon
as we call to mind the use of the
fish as a Christian symbol on the
one hand, and the Christian doctrine
about the Holy Eucharist on
the other? The fish was Christ.
And he once took bread and broke
it, and said, This is my body; and
he took wine and blessed it, saying,
This is my blood; and he appointed
this to be an everlasting ordinance
in his church, and promised
that whosoever should eat of that
bread and drink of that chalice
should inherit everlasting life. Here
are the bread and the wine and the
mystical fish. And was it possible
for Christian eyes to attach any
other meaning to the combination
than that it was intended to bring
before them the remembrance of
the Christian mysteries, whereby
death and the grave were robbed
of all their gloom, being only the appointed
means of entrance to a
never-ending life? If anybody is
tempted to object that the vessels
here represented as containing the
bread and wine are too mean ever
to have been used for such a purpose,
we must remind him that it
had already been put on record by
archæologists, before the discovery
of this monument, that the early
Christians in the days of poverty
and persecution continued to use
vessels of the same humble materials
as had been used in the sacrificial
rites of Jews and Gentiles before
them, and that these were precisely
such as are here represented.
Nay, further still, that even when
vessels of gold and silver had come
into use in the church, still there
were exceptional times and circumstances
when it was lawful, and
even praiseworthy, to return to the
more simple and ancient practice.
St. Jerome praises St. Exuperius,
Bishop of Toulouse in his day, because,
having sold the church-plate
to relieve the pressing necessities
of the poor, he was content to carry
the body of Christ in a basket
made of wicker-work, and the blood
of Christ in a chalice of glass. Most
assuredly St. Jerome would have
been at no loss to interpret the
painting before us.
.pn +1

But let us now pass on into the
cemetery of San Callisto, and enter
again the chamber in which we saw
Moses, and the fishermen, and the
ministration of baptism, and the
paralytic. Let us pursue our walk
round the chamber, and immediately
after the paralytic, on the wall
facing the doorway, we come to the
painting of a three-legged table with
bread and fish upon it, a woman
standing on one side in the ancient
attitude of Christian prayer, and a
man on the other stretching out his
hands over the fish and the bread,
as though he were blessing them.
Can it be that we have here the
act of consecration of the Holy
Eucharist, as in the adjacent wall
we had the act of baptizing, only
in a somewhat more hidden manner,
as became the surpassing dignity
of the greater mystery? Nobody,
we think, would ever have
disputed it, had the dress of the
consecrator been somewhat more
suited to such an action. But his
breast and arm and one side of his
body are considerably exposed, as
he stretches out his arm from underneath
his cloak; and modern
taste takes exception to the exposure
as unseemly in such a time
and place. We have no wish to
put a weapon into the hands of the
anti-ritualistic party. Nevertheless,
we believe that it is pretty well ascertained
that at first no vestment
was exclusively appropriated to the
celebration of Mass. We are not
sure that Dean Stanley was in error
when he wrote the other day that
St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul and
first Bishop of Tours, wore a sheepskin
when he officiated, and that
“he consecrated the Eucharistic
elements with his bare arms coming
through the sheepskin.” And
at any rate it is certain that in the
days of Tertullian, to which the picture
before us belongs, many ministers
of Christ’s word and sacraments
used the pallium as the dress most
suitable to their own profession.
The writer we have named published
a short treatise on the subject,
in which, with his usual wit
and subtlety, he commends its use,
and he concludes with these words:
“Rejoice, O Pallium! and exult;
a better philosophy claims thee
now, since thou hast become the
vestment of a Christian.” Forty
years later a fellow-countryman of
this writer, St. Cyprian, expressed
a strong objection to the dress, both
as immodest in itself and vainglorious
in its signification. Thus
everything conspires to support the
interpretation which the picture itself
suggests and the age to which
it has been assigned; and we conclude
with confidence that those
who first saw it never doubted that
it was meant to set before them the
most solemn mystery of their religion.

They would have recognized the
same mystery again without hesitation,
under another form, in the
painting which follows immediately
afterwards, in which seven men are
seen seated at a table, partaking of
bread and fish. Our own thoughts,
as we look at it, fly naturally to the
last chapter of the Gospel according
to St. John, where such an incident
as this is minutely described
after the miraculous draught of
fishes which was the occasion of it.
But unless we are very familiar with
the writings of the Fathers, our
thoughts would probably go no further;
they would rest in the mere
letter of the narrative; we should
not penetrate beneath the surface,
and see (as all the Fathers saw), in
every circumstance related, a prophetic
figure of the whole history
of the church: first, the immense
number of souls caught in her net,
then the union of those souls with
.pn +1
Christ, “the fish that was already
laid on the hot coals” (<i>Piscis assus,
Christus passus</i>), their incorporation
with him through partaking of that
living Bread which came down from
heaven, and consequently their sure
hope of abiding with him for ever
in the world to come. This is no
private or modern interpretation;
it is drawn out at greatest length
by St. Augustine; but it is to be
found also in all other patristic
commentaries on Holy Scripture;
and the marvellous unity, not only
in dogmatic teaching, but even in
the use of allegories and artistic
symbols, which reached from east
to west in the ancient church, warrants
us in assuming that it was not
unknown to him who selected this
scene as the central piece of decoration
for the principal wall of this
chamber.

Next after it he painted Abraham
with his son Isaac, the ram,
and the faggot for the sacrifice—a
type both of the sacrifice on Mount
Calvary and (in a yet more lively
manner) of the unbloody sacrifice
still perpetually renewed on Christian
altars.

Thus there is the most exact
similitude between the illustrations
used to set forth the Holy Eucharist
on the one wall and those of
holy baptism on the other. Both
sacraments are at the same time
veiled from unbelievers, yet indicated
to the faithful, by types taken
from the history of the Old Law, by
incidents belonging to the life of
Christ, and by representations, sufficiently
simple yet obscure, of the
actual manner of their administration.
And then the last wall was
reserved for the setting forth of our
resurrection, in the example of
Lazarus, which was, in truth, the
natural end and completion of all
that the sacraments led to.

We have not left ourselves space
to speak at length of the miracles
of changing water into wine, or the
multiplication of the loaves and
fishes, as other figures of the Holy
Eucharist often to be seen in the
Catacombs. That they were painted
there in this sense we cannot
doubt, when we consider how they
were connected with that sacrament
in the sermons and catechetical
instructions of the early church.
In the first miracle the substance
of water was changed into the substance
of wine; in the second a
limited substance was, by Christ’s
power, so multiplied as to be made
present in a thousand places at
once, capable of feeding a thousand
persons, whereas a minute before
it had been only present in one
place and was sufficient only to
satisfy the appetite of one. The
analogy is obvious; but these miracles
do not seem to have entered
so early into the system of decoration
of the Catacombs (except in a
very fragmentary and indirect manner),
neither do they anywhere enter
into so long and beautiful a
series of mystical figures, as those
others which we have been just now
examining. Those form a series
of rare and very special interest.
They are repeated, as we have already
said, in several successive
chambers, whose date can be determined,
by a number of concurrent
indications, as not later than the
first quarter of the third century.
In these chambers the same histories
and the same symbols are
repeated in the same style, freely
changed in their arrangement and
in some accessories of the composition,
yet constant in their hidden
meaning and theological sense; and
that sense is briefly this: the idea
of a new life imparted to the Christian
soul by baptism, fed by the
Holy Eucharist, and continued uninterruptedly
throughout eternity.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=carols
TWO MAY CAROLS. | BY AUBREY DE VERE.
.sp 2
.h4
DARKNESS.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The authentic Thought of God at last
  Wanes, dimly seen, through Error’s mist:
Upon that mist, man’s image cast
  Becomes the new God-Mechanist.

The vast <i>Idea</i> shrivels up:
  Truth narrows with the narrowing soul:
Men sip it from the acorn’s cup:
  Their fathers drained the golden bowl.

Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies;
  Shrinks in their hand their measuring-rod;
With dim, yet microscopic eyes
  They chase a daily-dwindling God.

His temple thus to crypt reduced,
  For ancient faith is space no more,
Or her, its Queen.[#] To hearts abused
  By sense, prime truths are true no more.
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Father Newman has, I think, remarked that in the Protestant scheme there is <i>not room</i> for Mary.
.fn-
.sp 2
.h4
LIGHT.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The spirit intricately wise
  That bends above his ciphered scroll
Only to probe, and analyze,
  The self-involved and sunless soul,

<i>Has</i> not the truth he holds—though plain;
  For truth divine is gift, not debt:—
Her living waters wouldst thou drain?
  Let down the pitcher, not the net!

But they, the spirits frank and meek,
  Nor housed in self, nor science-blind,
Who welcome truths they did not seek;—
  Truth comes to them in every wind.

.pn +1

Beside his tent’s still open door,
  With open heart, and open eye,
The patriarch sat, when they who wore
  That triad type of God drew nigh.

The world of faith around us lies
  Like nature’s world of life and growth:
Seeing, to see it needeth eyes
  And heart, profound and simple both.
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=irishp2
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. | FROM THE FRENCH.
.sp 2
<sc>November 16, 1869.</sc>

Thérèse has followed her sister....
At the last moment reason
returned; she looked at her mother
and said: “Here is Mad;
give me your blessing!” O my
God! it is, then, true—the nest is
empty.

Kate, how are Berthe and Raoul
to be consoled?
.sp 2
<sc>November 22, 1869.</sc>

Margaret is here again—a ray of
sunshine after the storm, in this
dwelling, twice visited by death.
Oh! how we wept in embracing her.
And with what affection she hastened
to Berthe, this devastated,
disinherited, wounded, and bleeding
heart! “How shall we leave
this cemetery now?” said my mother
to Gertrude. Oh! I would wish to
remain here with her. To return
to Orleans, to find their traces
everywhere, would be too much
grief. What a crushing blow! What
incredible, unforeseen suddenness!
It is enough to take away one’s reason.
Raoul speaks no more, hears
no more, sees no more; Berthe is in
tears: we have to console and support
them. Help us with your prayers,
happy Kate, who witness no
death! In the middle of the park
are two trees which Raoul planted
on the day his daughters were born.
They are to be transplanted to their
tombs. Dear children, so united,
so beautiful, and inseparable, even
in death! O the mother! what
sorrow is hers. Ought children to
die before their mother?

Mme. de T—— is heroic in self-denial,
and yet these deaths revive
all her troubles. Ah! who could
have foretold that my happiness
would so soon have declined, and
that God would so quickly have
claimed his portion of our treasure!
See, here are Gertrude and Berthe—two
mothers without children:
Ellen and Edith in eternity; Marcella
at Naples. I now experience
an indescribable apprehension, and
count the beloved heads by which
I am still surrounded.... I remember
the L—— family, carried
off in one year.

A radiant letter from Marcella,
who does not yet know of our
mourning. <i>Beati qui lugent!</i> Let
us love God, let us love God!

It is in him that I cherish you,
my Kate.
.pn +1
.sp 2
<sc>November 28, 1869.</sc>

All our Ireland in letters of fraternal
condolence. The saintly
Isa speaks to me sweetly of the
happiness of the souls thus called
away, and exhorts me to perfect
love. Lizzy invites me to cross
the Channel to receive the consolations
of those whom I consoled
formerly. Sarah and the others
comfort me in our beloved tongue.
O Kate! it was so beautiful, our
peaceful home, with its assembly of
children and grandchildren, forming,
as it were, a glorious crown
around my venerated mother; and
now a void has been made, the
birds have spread their wings, and,
like the dove from the ark, return
no more.

O charming towers, silent witnesses
of our happiness! O vast
sea, coming to murmur at our feet!
O flowers they loved! O thickets
where their voices, fresh and pure,
resounded! O lawn whereon they
tried their earliest steps; dear
abode which witnessed their
growth! O forests through which
they sped along, lively and swift of
foot, in chase of butterflies or of
their favorite dog! O solitary
paths which they so often traversed
to go and lavish on the poor their
gold and their love!—speak to us
of <i>them</i>, and of <i>them</i> always.

Dear Kate, pray for the desolate
parents. “All my future has vanished,”
says Berthe. May God be
with her! Everything else is very
small in trials so great as these.
My mother begs you to ask for
fifty Masses at Fourvières; we have
not the strength to write.

Life, the sunshine, and blue sky—all
have disappeared. Adieu, dear
sister.
.sp 2
<sc>December 5, 1869.</sc>

Adrien is reading to us <i>Herminie
de la Bassemoûturie</i>, a true narrative
of a life of suffering and humiliation,
borne with a courage so heroic
and supernatural that one’s heart
kindles at it. Margaret is going
away, perhaps to-morrow. On the
30th Heaven sent Lucy a dear little
daughter, who was baptized yesterday
without any pomp. Gertrude
was godmother, and the godfather
is a brother of my pretty sister’s.
They have called this little daughter
of Brittany <i>Anne</i>—a good name.

<i>Dec. 6.</i>—I have just returned
from accompanying our friends as
far as to D——. Emmanuel continued
to send me kisses while the
carriage went slowly away....
Dear Margaret! how much I regret
her. Everybody loves her,
wherever she goes. Now we are
alone.... Johanna, Paul, and their
children leave us this evening to
spend some months at Paris. I
never tell you about Arthur and
Edward, whose vacation is over,
and who are very good friends together.
The <i>abbé</i> remains with
us, that we may not be deprived
of daily Mass. From henceforth
follow me in thought into the great
drawing-room, once so bright with
the dear young creatures whom I
so loved, and there you will see, in
her large easy-chair, my mother,
whom grief has aged, with your
Georgina on a low chair at her
feet. Gertrude, with needlework in
her hands, occupies the other side
of the fire-place, Berthe is near her,
then Adrien, René, Raoul, Edouard,
and the <i>abbé</i> round the table, near
which is seated also the charming
Lucy.

But a ray from on high pierces
the sombre veils: our dear
ones see God; they contemplate
him in eternal ecstasy. I had
bought at Orleans a poetic little
picture—a lily broken on earth,
which flowered again in heaven—and
.pn +1
underneath it a verse of the
beautiful lines by Mlle. Fleuriot on
the death of <i>Alix</i>. How this lily
recalls Picciola to my mind! René
is working at a miniature which he
intends to give to Berthe: in the
foreground the twins are embracing
a poor old man; in the distance
are two lilies on a tomb and two
doves taking flight. I am continuing
the <i>History of the Popes</i>; it
will be for Marguerite and Alix.

How I wish you were here! My
heart aches for Berthe, formerly
so happy, and so lonely now. Ah!
what burning tears are those that
spring from the hearts of mothers
when God takes back from them
the precious ones lent them for a
day. O remediless grief, deep void,
unfathomable abyss!

Yes, we shall remain in Brittany.
The noise of the festivities of this
world would be to us a martyrdom;
but I am athirst for my Kate, and
it seems as if I shall be stronger
when her gentle hand has laid balm
upon my wounds. René and I will
be in Paris on the 23d for a few days.

Mistress Annah shed many tears
at the moment of leave-taking.
Margaret was pale and greatly
moved; why should there be any
separations, sister? Ah! doubtless
because earth would be too delightful.
May God be always with
you!
.sp 2
<sc>December 12, 1869.</sc>

Do you know that Overbeck is
dead? Edith MacMoor sends me
long and interesting details from
Rome. Edith has taken up her
abode in the city which is the fatherland
of Catholics, and her old
sympathy with me, she says, has
reawakened before the <i>Sibyls</i>. Dear,
ardent soul, always so amiable!
O our artist, so beloved, so admired!
The world is no more
anything to me but a <i>Campo Santo</i>.

Have you heard of the <i>Pearl of
Antioch</i>? I am reading this Christian
romance with René.

On the 8th we observed as a
special festival the opening of the
great sittings of this Council which
will crown with a new glory the
reign of Pius IX. Our life is quite
monastic: no more joyous laughter
rings along the corridors; silence—the
“first power in the world,” as
the Père Lacordaire called it—dwells
with us. We are in mourning
for our beloved children, and these
dark dresses are of a solemn sadness
which strikes our visitors.
Every day, no matter what the
weather may be, René accompanies
me to the cemetery. In spite of
the cold, there are flowers, and this
marble is almost <i>joyous</i>. The <i>Revue</i>
gives an interesting story—“Laurence,”
an account of a young girl
who wished to die because her sister,
on whom she lavished all her
love, had departed to heaven. I
do not think that Thérèse wished
for death, but think rather that
Picciola asked of God that she
might share her felicity.

Lucy is well, and thanks you for
your sisterly prayers. We are expecting
news from Margaret and
Marcella. Mary and Ellen write
regularly to Berthe and to me.
Good and kind hearts, full of gentleness
and affection!

Kate dearest, what do you say to
my idea?—the adoption of these
children would console my sister.
Would it be well to propose it to
her?

I find René changed. Pray for
us.
.sp 2
<sc>December 15, 1869.</sc>

Margaret sends me her Journal
since the departure, every line of
which is redolent of poetry and
affection. Emmanuel is hourly
asking for us. Marcella sends me
.pn +1
pages bathed with tears: “Why
did you allow me to go away, dear
and generous friend? I feel that
your soul would have taken refuge
with mine in these sad days.”

Kate, what, then, is happiness,
since it lasts so short a time?

Marcella is going to spend the
winter at Rome; Anna continues
to grow both taller and stronger,
“but the departure of her friends
makes her wish for heaven, and
everything gives me the presentiment
that in a few years my beloved
one will enter a convent. You
will scold me for thinking this so
long beforehand, but you will agree
with me that her piety is beyond
what is ordinary. I have so unlearnt
happiness that I live always
in uncertainty.” A friend of Adrien’s
tells him of the reception
given at Naples to the happy family
party: Mme. de V—— is allied to
the Princess of X——. How fair
a future has opened before my
friend! “To return to Rome, where
so many of my memories linger,
was my earnest desire; blessed
be God, who permits it to be
realized!”

René is writing to you. Good-by
for to-day, dearest sister!
.sp 2
<sc>December 18, 1869.</sc>

Read an admirable pastoral letter
by Mgr. Berthaud. “It is a
fountain of living water, a springing
fountain,” writes Louis Veuillot,
who has the happiness to be in
Rome.

Berthe yields to the entreaties of
her mother, who begs her to go to
her in her old castle on the banks
of the Rhine. Lucy is going away
at the same time to show her sisters
the beautiful little Anna, her rosebud.
I look forward with fear to
the feeling of solitude which will
seize upon us after they are gone.
O my God! these will all return, but
thou keepest thine angels.

The happy Karl sends the most
fraternal letters that he has ever
yet addressed to me. He is now
in retreat, almost ready to mount
the steps of the altar and accomplish
Ellen’s last desire. “I am
never lonely,” he writes. What ardor
consumes him! How he burns
to shed his blood for Christ! “My
whole soul springs forth towards
those disinherited souls who know
not God! If you still take an interest
in your unworthy brother, wish for
him crosses, trials, sorrows, and
persecutions. But I am not worthy
to participate in the Passion of
my Redeemer, and it may be that
my cross may be the burden of a
useless life.” Saintly friend! noble
heart! His director, who is a
relative of our good <i>abbé</i>, never
wearies in his praises of Karl. According
to all probability, he will
set out for Marseilles the day after
his ordination, where the first ship
that sails will take him on board.
What am I, my God, by the side of
this brother left me by Ellen?

I am coming to see you, dear
Kate, to refresh myself with you—a
too rapid apparition, too fleeting
a happiness, and one in which I
scarcely can believe.
.sp 2
<sc>December 22, 1869.</sc>

Dear Kate, this sacrifice must also
be made. Yesterday a frightful
accident threw us all into the greatest
agitation. My mother’s horses
ran away. The footman, losing all
presence of mind with terror, leaped
down and was killed by the fall.
He was taken up quite mutilated....
Horrible! horrible! My mother
has fever; we remain. The
unfortunate Antoine will be buried
to-morrow morning. He leaves
three children. He was an excellent
.pn +1
Christian, and was preparing to
make his Christmas communion....
I am writing to Karl, and at
the same time to the venerable superior
to obtain permission for our
friend to give us one or two days
previous to quitting France and
Europe.

My mother was coming back
from the town, whither we had all
gone to take those of our party who
were leaving. René and I were to
have taken our departure this evening.
All in this world is nothingness,
except the pure and holy love
of God. I had so set my mind on
this journey that I can only give it
up by doing violence to my heart.
But if the shock my mother has undergone
should bring on an illness,
I should never forgive myself for
having gone away.

Pray, dear Kate!
.sp 2
<sc>December 25, 1869.</sc>

My mother is better, dear sister,
although the doctor condemns her
still to repose. The good <i>curé</i> is
very unwell, and, since my mother
would not have been able to attend
the midnight Mass, the <i>abbé</i> offered
to say it at the parish church.
Ah! if the twins had been here.
We left the house at ten. What a
night! What impressions! In a
clear and calm night, with the sky
spangled with thousands of stars,
to go through hedge-bordered paths
to this old Breton church, so vast
and so full; the singing, the sounds
of the organ played by René, the
<i>Gloria in Excelsis</i>, so sweet and
grand, the numerous communions,
the dimly-lighted sanctuary—all
these things had about them an
indescribable old-world poetry, a
certain interior and heavenly charm,
which made me ask if we were not
at Bethlehem, and if we were not
suddenly about to behold with our
bodily eyes, like the shepherds, the
adorable new-born Saviour in the
manger. “The Cedar of Lebanon
is gone forth from the hyssop in
our valley.” Lord Jesus, grant thy
blessing upon France!

It is two years to-day since Ellen
entered into glory. With what ecstasy
<i>she</i> must behold Karl at the
altar! Dear Kate, I know not what
atmosphere is surrounding me, but
it seems to me that every sorrow
brings me nearer to God.

My mother was visibly affected on
reading your kind lines; how she
loves us! Gertrude is more saintly
than ever; her self-denial is increasing.
She has owned to me
that she never loses the presence
of God. We five form a severe
group, in which the highest questions
are discussed. Gertrude is
on fire when she speaks of charity.
There is no sort of mortification in
which she does not take delight;
how I startled her yesterday by
coming suddenly upon her as she
was exchanging her shoes for those
of a beggar! She fasted on bread
and water the three last days of
Advent, and has asked me if I
would go with her barefoot to the
crucifix on the mountain, the path
to which is covered with brambles.
You see she is a worthy imitator of
the <i>Acta Sanctorum</i>.

<i>A Dieu</i>, best beloved!
.sp 2
<sc>December 28, 1869.</sc>

Karl arrives on the 31st. Dear
Kate, his letter showed me heaven.
Good news of everybody, and my
mother is in the drawing-room. So
the year is about to end—this year,
so eventful, and so plentiful in
tears! O my God! how many loving
looks follow me no more. In
my meditation this morning I asked
myself whether I am yet submissive
and resigned. Alas! I truly
.pn +1
wish whatever God wills, but I am
weak.

Just now two little birds came
and perched on my window, fluttering
as if wanting to come in. I
opened it gently and crumbled a
cake for them, and the pretty little
hungry creatures pecked up the
crumbs gladly. Then they flew
away, and I began to think of the
two sweet birds which, almost before
we were aware, have flown
away also. I was so proud of this
beautiful family, so happy to belong
to it! Oh! you know well,
Kate, that it is above all for the
sake of the poor father, the sorrowing
mother, that I regret these
two attractive creatures! Raoul
writes that Berthe is more calm,
and he thinks she will remain
some time where she is. What an
image of death is this silence and
the solitude that now surrounds us!
I work hard, take long walks, teach
two little boys their catechism, and
yet, in spite of everything, as soon
as René is no longer there, as soon
as I recall the past, my heart is
ready to break.

“Take care, my dear daughter,”
my mother says to me. “Strengthen
your soul; throw yourself upon
God.” And Gertrude: “The
thought of God softens everything.
He has permitted it—let us submit;
let us live in heaven.”

Would that we could go thither
together, dear sister!

Accept all my best wishes for the
New Year—wishes for every day and
every hour, for your earthly and
eternal happiness.
.sp 2
<sc>January 5, 1870.</sc>

Dear Kate, how good God is!
This is the cry of my heart, crushed
beneath the weight of its gratitude.
Karl has been our Good Samaritan.
If Berthe and Raoul could
only hear him! What unction in
his words!

He made his appearance like the
angel of Providence amongst us. It
was in the evening. René had gone
to wait for him; we had heard no
noise, when the door opened.... It
was he! There was a moment of
emotion and tears, and when he consented
to bless us, and I saw him in
the light, I understood the words of
Gertrude: “He has found true happiness.”
Then his Mass the next
day, the Communion, and Thanksgiving
said aloud, the chanting of
the <i>Magnificat</i> and of the <i>Lætatus</i>—it
was heaven. This impression still
remains; thanks to a concurrence of
circumstances in which I perceive
the intervention of our good angels,
the newly elect of the priesthood
remains with us until the 20th—an
unhoped-for and most precious favor.
Alas! shall we see him again?

He has given me a little book
which he had kept by permission
of his superior; you are aware
that this generous Karl despoiled
himself of everything before giving
<i>himself</i> also to God. This <i>Basket
of Eucharistic Flowers</i> is full of
sweetness to my heart. I find in it
some verses on Picciola—not mine,
but the flower—and the heavenly
utterances of the pious Marie Jenna,
my favorite poetess. Listen to
this:

.pm verse-start
“Oui, cette vie en larmes est féconde;
J’ai peu vécu, j’ai déjà bien souffert.
Mon Dieu, j’ai soif, et les routes du monde
Ne me sont rien qu’une aride désert.
Mais à tes pieds mon âme se repose.
O tendre Ami, Divin Consolateur,
Qu’importe à moi de perdre toute chose,
Si je te garde, amour de mon Sauveur!”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
Yes, this our life is plentiful in tears.
Though I am young, still I have suffered much.
My God, I thirst! and this world’s weary ways
Are but an arid desert unto me.
But at thy feet my soul finds her repose,
O tender Friend and Comforter Divine!
What matters it to me if I lose all,
But still keep thee, my dearest Saviour’s love!
.pm verse-end
.fn-
.pn +1

And this cry of the soul:

.pm verse-start
“Jesus, pour seul bonheur, ah! donnez-moi des larmes
        Que vous consolerez.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
Jesus, for my sole happiness, oh! give me tears
        Which thou wilt wipe away.
.pm verse-end
.fn-
.sp 2
<sc>January 10, 1870.</sc>

Karl has spoken to me much of
you, dear sister. He wishes that his
last sculpture in Europe should be
for our chapel: René and his brothers
have for some time past been
working at a pulpit; the principal
figure will be our missionary’s work.
He has consented to let me prepare
his baggage. Kate, I was complaining
of our solitude, and now it has
become sweet to me, because I love
God more. Oh! what a blessing to
the soul it is to love.

I am slipping these few words in
with René’s, and send you a thousand
loving messages.
.sp 2
<sc>January 14, 1870.</sc>

Impossible not to give you the
history of our day, although it is
very late. I wished to go to Auray
with Karl, and my mother felt
strong enough to go with us. On
the way we met with a German, poor
as Job, a true disciple of Luther,
his Bible in his hand. His gentle
and melancholy air interested us.
We entered into conversation with
him, Karl preached to him, he came
with us to Auray, and when we
came out of the church he told us
that his mother was a Catholic,
that the sight of our fervor had
touched him, etc., etc. In short, we
brought him back with us to the
château, and Karl is going to catechise
him and finish his conversion.
You see the good Saint Anne has
indeed had a hand in this. Is it
not a charming episode?

15th.—Letters: 1st, Margaret,
who sends you her heartful of
good wishes; 2d, Marcella, with the
chronicle of the Council and the
account of an audience with the
Holy Father; 3d, Lizzy, who wants
to make me admire her Daniel; 4th,
Lucy, who is impatient to come
back, because her pretty Anne cannot
be happy without us, says our
amiable sister; 5th, my Kate. I
mention all in chronological order;
you know very well that you are
first in order of affection. But how
short it is, dearest! Tell me soon
the reason of this brevity; you
must have so much to say!

<i>A Dieu</i>, my dearest Kate. All and
each of the happy inhabitants of
my Brittany offer you their homage
and respect.
.sp 2
<sc>January 19, 1870.</sc>

Well, dearest, he leaves us to-morrow—this
friend, this good brother
and generous priest. Our German
is converted, but for reasons
of prudence the baptism is deferred.
The worthy man does not wish to
quit us, and does his utmost to render
himself useful. He is passionately
fond of music, and teaches it
to our pastors, who in return
<i>strengthen</i> him (as he says) in the
catechism. How sadly we shall
miss Karl! But then, souls, souls!
Ah! I would not keep him back,
even if I could.

I have had a strange dream. I
was with you in your cell. You
seemed to be asleep; I spoke to
you, but you did not answer me. I
went to kiss you, and in this kiss I
felt so strange a thrill, as if your
beautiful face had been of marble,
that I woke, crying out in a manner
which alarmed René. It is in vain
that I say to myself again and
again that it is but a dream; the
impression remains—a profound
terror, and an anguish which oppresses
my heart. Write to me;
.pn +1
reassure me, dear Kate. I have lost
faith in happiness. What am I saying?
So long as I belong to God,
and nothing can separate me from
him, shall I not have the only happiness
worthy of the name?

Karl promises to write to us.
He is going to China, that literary
country, where barbarism and civilization
are so strangely mingled.
My mother, <i>the Adriens</i>, and we are
putting together our savings to
give them to the dear missionary,
that with them he may have more
facilities in his work of gaining
souls. How I bless fortune on
these occasions!

A thousand lovingnesses, dear
sister—the dearest of sisters.
.sp 2
<sc>January 26, 1870.</sc>

We accompanied Karl to his
ship, which I visited, and which we
saw start on her voyage. Thus he
is now between sea and sky, exposed
to tempests. Oh! “how beautiful
are the feet of those” who
have left all—family, friends, country,
repose, comforts, enjoyments—to
go in search of the lost sheep.
It seems to me that the angels of
faith and love must spread their
wings over the vessel and keep far
away all contrary winds.... We
seem as if impregnated with sanctity.
Grief is a powerful lever to raise
one to God and to transform souls!

You do not write. René is uneasy
and tries in vain to conceal his
anxiety from me. Did you receive
his letter of the 24th? Dear Kate,
if you are ill, send one word and
we will hasten to you. O my God!
Ill! You! Could it be possible?
That terrible dream is always before
my eyes. You will scold me,
dearest.... Remember that for
some months past I have suffered
so much that even the thought of a
misfortune overwhelms me.

Oh! may God guard you, darling
Kate, my sister, my soul.
Take care of yourself for the love
of me.

My mother entreats you to write;
she suffers on account of my anxiety.
My God! grant that that
may have been only a dream.
.sp 2
<sc>January 29, 1870.</sc>

Still nothing; perhaps your letter
is lost.... May God protect
you! The <i>Univers</i> pleases me. Mgr.
Berthaud has had a triumph at
Sant’ Andrea della Valle—the dear
church where we have prayed.
“His imagery is rich and abundant,”
writes Louis Veuillot, “because
his faith keeps alive in him a
perpetual enthusiasm for the works,
the mercies, and the love of God.
His thoughts are an endless song.
What he says he sees; what he
sees he admires and adores. External
things, enveloped and, as it
were, transpierced by the rays
of the divine Sun, appear to him
as magnificent as he describes
them to be. Things are the works
of God; men are the children of
God, divinities in flower, called by
their adoption to the ineffable glory
of the divine union. As soon as
they are in their way, their vocation,
their order, their accidental
defects are effaced; there is no
more ugliness, there are no more
rags, no more miseries—all is already
transfigured, already at the
attainment of its end, and the lyre,
vibrating to the touch of a sacred
enthusiasm, gives forth sounds at
once vehement and sublime.”

What eulogy! What style!

Mgr. Mermillod made a magnificent
discourse at Saint Louis des
Français, on the perpetuation in
the church of the Gospel scene
of the Magi. “The action of God
in the world, the redemption of
.pn +1
souls, the perpetuity and definition
of the truth, all repose upon these
three great weaknesses: a Child at
Bethlehem, a Host in the tabernacle,
an aged man at the Vatican.”

Kate dearest, I admire, but nothing
dispels my preoccupation, the
dominant note of my thoughts—you!
yourself! Why this silence? I must
know it! Write to me; I am suffering....
.sp 2
<sc>January 31, 1870.</sc>

It is here, on my writing-table,
this white page on which you have
traced but one word.... “It was
not a dream!” We start at once;
this note will precede us by a few
hours. Oh! live for me, my beloved
sister; ask God to cure you.

My God, I have so often prayed
thee to preserve her to me—to let
her live as long as I!

.tb

JOURNAL OF GEORGINA AFTER HER SISTER’S DEATH.

<sc>February 15, 1870.</sc>

.pm verse-start
O amare! O perire tibi!
O advenire ad Deum!
.pm verse-end

Still would I write to you, beloved
sister who have left me! Oh!
can this be possible? You, my
Guardian Angel! It is in heaven
that I now look for you, that I now
behold you—in heaven, your true
home—in heaven, where you have
found again our mother. O my
God! my God! Always shall I remember
this last journey, of which
you were the object; the anguish
on the way, the haste to arrive, the
chill that fell on my heart at the
gate of the convent. Oh! you
knew that I could not bear to see
you suffer; and then, perhaps, you
might think you would recover, for
I cannot believe that you desired
to die.... Ah! to see you dying;
to embrace you, watch by you,
hear the last effusions of that tenderness
to which my mother had bequeathed
me; to see this flame,
which was my life, die out, and yet
not die myself—Kate, Kate, I can
think only, speak only, of you!

I have been very ill. I feel weak,
very weak—almost discouraged to
live. Tell me that you are not
gone away; soul of my sister, speak
to my soul! Oh! how it seems to
me as if I had lost everything. You
it was who gave so great an interest
to my life, animating everything
with your affection. And now....
.sp 2
<sc>February 28.</sc>

Dear Kate, obtain strength for
me. I desire to live for René.
Why did you not stay with us, my
beloved? I have bitter regrets.... I
should have wished to nurse you,
to keep you here. O foolishness
of love! what right have I to wish
to keep you from your own country?
Dear sister, the correspondence
which was my daily delight must
not end: I will write my journal
for <i>you</i>. God, who is so good, even
when he separates two hearts
which were one, could not refuse
anything to his elect. Ask him,
then, my sister, that you may every
day come to me, if even only for an
instant. Oh! would that I could see
you. It seems to me that with you
all died; that nothing more will
ever in this world smile on me,
that the eternal mourning of my
soul can never more be comforted.
Our friends write to me. Margaret
and Marcella weep with me. My
mother, Adrien, Gertrude, and
René are full of unspeakable tenderness
and solicitude towards me;
and yet I have scarcely any response
to make them but my tears. All
is night around me: the Sun has
set.

Oh! speak to me, Kate—only
.pn +1
one word, one vibration of your
dear voice, one of your smiles. Is
it true, my God, that for twenty-five
days past this face so dearly loved
has been covered with a shroud?

Is it true? Has death indeed
come between us? Had we not
enough of absence and of separation,
that other mourning of the
soul? I still hear her last word....
Oh! who will give me back
my past joys, fled away, and the
affection which enfolded all?

Adrien is reading me the <i>Beatitudes</i>,
by Mgr. Landriot. There are
some admirable conferences on the
divine words, <i>Beati qui lugent</i>.
“There are,” says the Père Lacordaire,
“tears in all the universe;
and they are so natural to
us that even if they had no cause,
they would flow <i>without</i> cause, solely
from the charm of that ineffable
sadness of which our soul is the
deep and mysterious well.” Again:
“Melancholy is the great queen of
highly sensitive souls; she touches
them without their knowing how
or why, in a secret and unexpected
moment. The ray of light which
gladdens others brings veils to them;
the festive rejoicing which moves
and delights others pierces them
with an arrow. It is with much
difficulty that God and our Lord
can scatter from the heart which
loves them these vain and chilling
clouds; the suffering is so much
the more difficult to vanquish from
having a less real cause.”

Oh! the cause of my sorrow, can
I forget it? Kate, obtain strength
for me. How truly I feel you present!
.sp 2
<sc>March 5.</sc>

We are come back to Brittany.
They say that I have become a
mere shadow. Kate dearest, I wish
to be courageous, but my poor human
nature gives way on this Calvary.
O my memories! They are
a golden book in which I read every
hour, in which every leaflet recalls
my other self, her devotedness and
love. Your papers have been given
to me—the private pages which God
alone has read with me. How you
have loved me! Dearest, I weep
no more, except over myself. You
were hungering for heaven, as were
Mad and Thérèse, Ellen and Edith.
Oh! gone—you also, you my guardian
angel!

I wanted to write, to relieve myself
a little; my heart swelled, and
I could do nothing but sob. I have
fearful moments. Oh! speak to me,
Kate. Last night I seemed to witness
your death again. Oh! those
eyes, those eyes which I almost worshipped—I
had to close them. Kate,
what is happiness? Mine has fled
away like a cloud, and I seek after
it in vain.

I know that you are happy, and
yet my selfishness grieves. Pray for
your Georgina!
.sp 2
<sc>March 8.</sc>

Strange blindness of heart! You
were to me so sweet, so infinitely
precious, that the thought of an
<i>adieu</i> without ever meeting here
again had never occurred to me.

You were six years old when you
imprinted your first kiss on the brow
of your Georgina. Our most distant
memories show me your beloved
image. You never left me;
the sight of you was a talisman
that stopped my tears; your voice
taught me my first baby-words.
Oh! this union of ours from the
very cradle was my mother’s pride—this
mother, so beloved and so beautiful,
who saw herself over again in
you. You did not know that you
were fair; you early disdained earthly
frivolities; and how much it must
have cost you, later, to remain in the
world for me!
.pn +1

Everywhere you were surrounded
by sympathy and respect; your sisterly
devotion made you an aureole.
Kate, who was like you?

Tell me that you hear me, that
you see me every day. How shall
I live without you? A great void
has been made in me; my heart is
like a desert. Ah! I loved you too
well, and our God is a jealous God.

I adore his will, and, in spite of
my inexpressible desolation, I kiss
his divine hand beneath the blow
which overwhelms me. I desire to
become truly your sister by sacrifice
and love.

Help me! I know not how to
climb up Calvary!
.sp 2
<sc>March 10.</sc>

No, I cannot believe that it is at
an end; that I have no more a
sister. At times I believe myself
to be under the influence of a
nightmare. My black dress—this
sombre vestment which made me
afraid—is become dear to me since
I wear it for you; but ... what
faintings of heart! In what an
ocean of grief my soul is plunged!

To-day I wished to go out and
visit my poor; my strength failed.
Kate, sorrow is killing me.
.sp 2
<sc>March 12.</sc>

An unexpected consolation—a
visit from the Père de G—-. His
touching, penetrating words roused
me. Pardon me, Kate! I was
cowardly. God forbids not tears,
but he forbids despair. Alas!
formerly I comforted others, and
now I am unwilling to accept any
solace in my trouble; I wish for no
truce to my regret. Oh! be happy,
soul of my sister. Obtain for me
grace to love much, more than
ever, all who suffer, all the elect of
misfortune. The gentle Abbé Perreyve
used to say: “The greater
part of souls would remain closed
to other souls, if they had not suffered;
trial bruises them, and compels
them to shed around them
floods of love.”

I loved them already—these dear
poor of the good God! But I feel
that my time belongs to them, that
I owe myself also to those who love
me, and that it remains to me to
pray and suffer while I love.

Help me, dear Kate, help me!
.sp 2
<sc>March 15.</sc>

How kind René is, dear Kate,
and how fraternal! He understands
my wish to write to you still,
to continue my life so violently cut
in twain, and unceasingly to speak
to you. I am stronger, but not yet
resigned. Can one be resigned to
such a loss?

I saw yesterday a young girl
whom Gertrude knows, and who
has opened her heart to me as to a
friend. With what ardor of desire
she dreams of the religious life!
God permits her to be cruelly tried:
her mother is utterly opposed to her
departure. There are several other
sisters, one of whom shares the aspirations
of my new acquaintance.
How they both suffer! Would
that a heavenly light might illuminate
the heart of their mother, who
little comprehends the martyrdom
of her children! How everything
is at cross-purposes in this poor
world! People are saddened by
things at which they ought to rejoice,
and <i>vice versâ</i>. Mothers, who
have had experience of the cares
and pains of marriage and the
world—mothers, who know too
well the sum of happiness that may
be expected from even the best-assorted
unions—make themselves
miserable at the mere thought of
their daughters’ union with God, as
if he were not the Supreme Good,
.pn +1
the Spouse <i>par excellence</i>, the faithful
Friend, the plenitude of every virtue
and of love! Ah! it is because
everything in this world has its
shades and its defects, and because
few souls know truly how to love.

Thus is it that there is a mixture
and alloy in my affection for you
when I weep for you so bitterly,
dear sister of my life!

Nothing can separate our souls.
I am yours in life and death!
.sp 2
<sc>March 18.</sc>

Berthe’s brother has just sunk
under a malignant fever. The
poor widow is ill of grief. Three
such beautiful children, whom he
loved so much—so many powerful
bonds which bound him to this
world so suddenly broken—all this
makes the grief immense. Gertrude
said to me: “Why, then, are those
mourned for who enter the port—those
who go hence to rest in God?
They only who remain behind are
really to be pitied.” Ah! what
deadly affliction must not our
friend feel, widowed of her happiness,
which nothing can restore to
her—nothing, until that hour when,
delivered in her turn from this life
sown with crosses, she too shall see
God, and, with God, him whom she
weeps!

Kate, would that I could see you
and embrace you again as in that
last hour! Everywhere death,
everywhere mourning!
.sp 2
<sc>March 21.</sc>

Count de Montalembert died on
the 13th of March. It is a great
funereal date. May God receive
him into his glory! I was just
now hearing some beautiful pages
by Alfred Nettement, dead also
the 14th of November—dead in the
breach, in those combats of pen and
thought so worthy of admiration
and of enthusiasm when their object
is the defence of the church.
Our dear M. de Riancey is also
dead, faithful, to his last moment,
to this proscribed monarchy, which
sees its best defenders falling one
by one. O my God! what losses.
Kate, if I could forget you for a
single instant, would not these
deaths lead me back to the thought
of you?

Adrien has given me <i>The Book
of All who Suffer</i>, by M. Gautier.
How well this good brother was inspired!

Marcella, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa,
and so many other kind hearts write
to me frequently, but nothing can
replace my Kate!
.sp 2
<sc>April 1.</sc>

Dear sister, I have suffered fearful
pains for ten days past. My
good René has been to me like a
Sister of Charity. I am like Thérèse,
I cannot live without my other
<i>self</i>. Oh! to see you, to hear you,
to kneel by you, and kiss your beloved
hands.

Until now I did not know what
separation meant. I remember with
a sort of remorse how joyous my
first letters were after that first
farewell which was to be so soon
followed by a farewell that seems
eternal. I saw you as having attained
the object of your dreams. I
entered with glad heart into this new
life where all was golden. Kate, I
am ungrateful! God has permitted
me to know no other troubles than
those which should not be such to
the Christian—death, the beginning
of true life for those who love God.
Help me, that I may be strong; my
sadness clouds so many brows!
.sp 2
<sc>April 8.</sc>

Nelly, who flattered herself that
she would recover, has bid adieu to
this poor world, in which she suffered
.pn +1
so terribly, although possessing
numerous certainties of happiness,
if it be true that anything can be
certain here below, even when one
is only twenty years old.

My new young friend visits me
often; her fervent piety and the
ardor of her desires find an echo
in my heart. You were thus, O
sister of my soul! at her age, in
that spring-time of life thrice happy
and thrice blessed when one belongs
to God.
.sp 2
<sc>April 15.</sc>

The Duchess de Berry died on
the 10th, at her castle in Upper Styria,
far from Naples, far from France,
far from her son. Yet another grand
figure disappeared! Kate, do you
remember our presentation to this
heroine? But she is now with you,
in the true fatherland of souls, far
from agitations and sufferings. Call
us, call us, all together—all our <i>corner
of Brittany</i>; I, too, am athirst
for heaven.

What a day was this Good Friday!
Made four times the <i>Way
of the Cross</i> for the souls in purgatory.
Is there any possibility that
you are in that place of expiation,
dear Kate? Oh! tell me, or rather
assure me, that you are in heaven.
Gaston yesterday asked his mother
to show him Mme. Kate up in the
sky; he believes that you have become
a star. Charming belief!
.sp 2
<sc>April 16.</sc>

A year ago, and I was full of joy
and hope. O my happy days with
my sister! you have for ever fled
away.
.sp 2
<sc>April 17.</sc>

God be praised! I saw you this
morning.... Oh! do not let me
be told that it is a dream. I <i>saw</i>
you, dear Kate; your beautiful hair
falling over your shoulders, and you
were smiling. Happiness enough
for one whole day!

Christ is risen! The weather is
splendid; we are in the full bloom
of spring; bright sunshine, songs of
birds, verdure everywhere; joy in
our souls. Kate, I weep no more;
you are in heaven!
.sp 2
<sc>April 19.</sc>

Walk with Amélie, the future <i>religieuse</i>
of whom I spoke to you.
She relieves herself a little to me
of some of the desolation that fills
her heart. She is not allowed to
depart, and yet the delay requested
is expired. Her grief makes my
heart ache, and I would that it
were given me to smooth for her
the way to the cloister. For that I
should be obliged to go out, to visit
the mother; and as soon as I see
any one I burst into tears. Do you
blame me for the fidelity of my regrets?
In listening to Amélie I
understand what you must have
undergone when once the Lord’s
choice was clearly manifested. Pardon
me for having wished still to
hold you back!

Gertrude, our saint <i>par excellence</i>,
speaks admirably of heaven. Lucy
weeps with me, and makes her pretty
Anne wipe away my tears. Kate,
will you read this?
.sp 2
<sc>April 26.</sc>

Minds are much occupied respecting
the <i>plébiscite</i>. My politics
are not of this world; I hear what
others say, and that is all. Sister,
what is earth? I fear and pity it.

Berthe is at Paris, somewhat preoccupied
by present agitations. My
poor soul passes through the most
varying states: nameless anguish,
indescribable discouragement, sweet
and pure joys; one thing comes as
a repose to the other, and life slips
away.... Amélie came to me yesterday;
she talked long of <i>her crosses</i>,
glad to be understood, compassionated,
.pn +1
and loved; she would willingly
have remained with us for the
night. Her home, where she was
formerly so happy, appears to her
now an insupportable place of
abode, and her life, with all its
struggles and contradictions, is a
real martyrdom.

I read her, from the <i>Pilgrimages
of Switzerland</i>, a beautiful page on
Christian resignation. Oh! how I
would wish to console others—I,
who cannot be consoled, alas!
.sp 2
<sc>April 30.</sc>

Kate, I have been dreaming of
you. Why did you go away so soon,
sweet sister, so beloved?

A cousin of Amélie’s died the
day before yesterday, after two
years of marriage. See how short a
time human felicity lasts! Every
terrestrial happiness reunited on
this charming head for so short a
time! Her poor mother had buried
all her other treasures one by one,
and concentrated her affections
and her hopes on this idolized
daughter, the only one spared to
her, and who was to be stricken
down after two years of so happy a
union! Were these two souls truly
religious? I know not. Ah! who
will comfort the mother, if God is
not her comforter? Alas! these rapid
destinies, these human fragilities,
these futures broken, these deaths,
this mourning—will they not open
the eyes of those who persist in not
seeing? Amélie is always breathlessly
eager to attain her object, and
distressed at the hindrances which
hold her back. How pitiful that
difficulties so contemptible and vulgar
should be raised in order to
turn aside the flight of this poor soul
from the heavenly Bridegroom! I
can only conceive a mother with an
absolute devotion, a complete self-forgetfulness,
a perpetual <i>sursum
corda</i>. But these miserable obstacles,
these calculated delays, to enchain
this dear Amélie in spite of
her tears and ardent longings—how
they make me suffer! It appears
that for three years she has been
soliciting her mother’s consent.
My God, where are the hearts which
see but thee in all things? Mme.
de Vals[#] is overwhelmed by this
catastrophe. All the family is in a
state that breaks one’s heart. Oh!
if these distressing scenes had only
shown Mme. de Vals the vanity of
earthly illusions; if she had only
understood that we must cling to
God above all!

.fn #
The mother of the young wife who died.
.fn-

Kate, my sister in heaven, pray
for this friend of your Georgina,
and pray also for me, who cannot
live without my sister!
.sp 2
<sc>May 5.</sc>

The month of flowers, the month
of songs, the month of the ever-blessed
Virgin, comes to me with
bright memories. My own Ireland,
mother, sister, where are you?
What cowardice is mine!

Brittany is smiling, rosy under
a beautiful sun; the sea is calm
and magnificent. I have just been
leaning over my balcony and looking
long at this grand spectacle:
the blue sky, the green sea, in the
grand and majestic silence of immensity.
Was there not a Christian
meaning in the words of the
philosopher of antiquity who said:
“God does all in silence”? How
fine is this expression!

Dear Kate, bless me! I go out,
move about, wish to be useful; I
work with Gertrude, with my mother,
with René. But I drag heavily
the cross of your absence. I
complain to God without ceasing.
Love makes everything sweet and
light: I have, then, no love?
.pn +1

From this month of May will
date for your Georgina the adoption
of a prayer, sweet among all
others—the Office of the Blessed
Virgin. Oh! these psalms, these
hymns, these harmonious supplications—how
sweet they are to my
poor soul! I love especially the
<i>Lætatus</i>. Lucy and René sing it
with an expression which charms
me. You, dearest Kate, have entered
there, into the house of the
Lord!
.sp 2
<sc>May 12.</sc>

I am reading the <i>Interior of Jesus
and Mary</i>, by the Père Grou,
the <i>Conferences</i> of Père de Ravignan,
and our dear <i>Review</i>. The
letters on the Council interest me
particularly. I try to imagine that
I am reading them with you; that
your dear head is resting on my
shoulder.... Oh! the fair and happy
times which return to my memory.
We so loved the <i>Chansons de
Gestes</i>, those pretty French ballads
which my mother translated with
so peculiar a charm! M. Léon
Gautier has published a thoughtful
and exquisite study on France
under Philip Augustus; he brings
on the scene the fair Aude, the <i>fiancée</i>
of Roland, who died on hearing
of the death of her Paladin—I
can understand love like this!—and
the charming little Aelis, and
Sibylle de Lusignan, and the Duchess
Parise, and Aye d’Avignon, and
the courageous Ameline, and
Berthe, the wife of Duke Girart,
and Guiboure, that magnificent
type of the Christian woman! Do
you remember, sister, Count Robert
of Flanders refusing a crown
because he was in haste to see his
son again? the little Garnier nursing
his father, stricken with leprosy?
the mother of the sons of Aimon—Belissende
and Heustace? How we
had learnt to love those middle ages!

Pray for Amélie, dear Kate; she
is so unhappy! O inestimable favor,
priceless benefit, incomparable
fidelity of the religious vocation!
how little are you understood in
this world.

It seems as if I heard you saying
to me: <i>Speranza! Pazienza! Coraggio!</i>
.sp 2
<sc>May 16.</sc>

My soul is fallen again into an
abyss of desolation. It is strange,
and at the same time painful, these
struggles between myself and myself;
between nature which revolts
and grace which submits. On this
day four years ago where were we?
Kate, help me!
.sp 2
<sc>May 28.</sc>

I have been travelling a little,
and my moments have all been employed.
René wants to give me
change and distraction; but I cannot
drag my thoughts away from
these images of death. Hélène has
written me a letter, saintly and
sweet. Alas! who does not suffer
here below?
.sp 2
<sc>June 5.</sc>

I have just quitted Amélie, who
is keeping her room from indisposition.
Her mother is kind, I believe,
but how severe in aspect!
Berthe and Raoul arrived yesterday.
Kate, I dreaded this meeting again,
our hearts were all so sad! Berthe
is more tranquil than I had expected;
she has seen Mary and Ellen,
the dear exiles! who showed her
that they greatly desire to see us.
Inspire me, dear Kate. Lucy is going
away again; the house without
children is like a heaven without
angels. Johanna will not return
for two months.
.sp 2
<sc>June 12.</sc>

René would like to bring the two
orphans himself. My mother approves.
They will occupy the
.pn +1
apartments of the twins. Kate,
who will replace you?

More funereal letters: two friends
of our dear ones who have flown
away have also been summoned to
their Father’s house. Happy souls!
if they were prepared; but poor
mothers whose joy they were!
.sp 2
<sc>June 17.</sc>

Dear Kate, I thought I saw you
yesterday evening.... A young
and amiable religious, collecting for
her poor, caused me a thrill. I
calmed myself and conversed with
her. Her life is admirable. But
what emotion afterwards, and poignant
grief!

Sister dearest, let me hope that
you read these lines; that there
exists a means of communication
between heaven and earth; that
you have not wholly quitted me!
It was so sweet to write to you, to
confide everything to you. I should
like to write your life; to relate to
myself the story of our childhood—that
golden morn when so many
smiles and joys surrounded us; but
these souvenirs are so distressing!
.sp 2
<sc>June 24.</sc>

Mary and Ellen are sleeping beneath
those curtains of gauze which
I have so often parted.

They are grown, and prettier
than ever. With what grace they
presented themselves yesterday!
And already I am anxious; have
they not been taken sufficient care
of? I know not, but their almost
constant cough oppresses me like a
remorse; and to replace their mother....
.sp 2
<sc>June 29.</sc>

Berthe loves our orphans, who
rarely quit her. Gertrude draws
me with her in her walks, in her
life of devotedness and labor, and
I let it be so. I am no more <i>myself</i>;
my better part is wanting. Oh!
you were my strength, my counsel,
my happiness.

Feast of SS. Peter and Paul—a
glad festival for the Christian.
Louis Veuillot, who has the happiness
of being at Rome, writes there
charming, sublime incomparable
pages; he counted on the <i>desired
dogma</i> being proclaimed to-day,
but all is not so easy, even in the
things of God. Anniversary of the
death of <i>Albert</i>.
.sp 2
<sc>July 1.</sc>

Mary and Ellen are very attractive.
Decidedly we shall keep
them with us. Berthe sees in
them a resemblance to her doves;
my mother likes their smiles for the
poor, for flowers, for every living
thing, their precocious reason, and
their already remarkable piety.
Lucy is gone. What voids! and
how different to '67, the happy year,
at least during its first months!
Trial, you used to tell me, is a
grace; that those favored with the
good things of this world ought to
expiate their enjoyments. Kate, I
submit!
.sp 2
<sc>July 4.</sc>

The letters of Marcella and Margaret
are frequent. My friend beyond
seas speaks of returning soon;
she knows what a balm the sight,
the beloved sight, of her brings.
Marcella quits Naples and its blue
sky no more; Anna writes to me of
her joys, without suspecting what a
price the health of which she is so
proud cost us.

The <i>abbé</i> takes in the <i>Univers</i>,
rendered so attractive by the truly
magic pen of the author of the
<i>Parfum de Rome</i>. Finished <i>La
Marquise de Montagu</i>, an interesting
book, the style of a great lady
of the seventeenth century. Reading
is worth less than prayer, but
both ameliorate exile.
.pn +1

René is carving an altar for the
parish church. He and Adrien
are making curious studies in the
precious MSS. of the <i>Saint of the
Sea-shore</i>. What splendid gifts
God has bestowed upon this friend
of my soul!
.sp 2
<sc>July 8.</sc>

The pious and learned editor of
<i>Eugénie de Guérin</i>, who also revealed
to the world the treasures of
Cayla—M. Trebutien—is just dead.
René assures us that <i>Eugénie</i> must
have opened to him the gate of
Eden. Oh! I love to believe this.
Amélie is at the height of her wishes:
her mother has suffered herself
to be vanquished by our united entreaties,
and her entry into Carmel
is fixed for the 6th of August. Another
separation. God wills it thus.
.sp 2
<sc>July 14.</sc>

Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess,
has written some noble pages on
the regretted M. Trebutien. “It
is the hand of a friend still trembling
with emotion that has written this”;
it is the first cry of affection and of
grief, but of pure and holy affection,
and of grief resigned and Christian
in the highest acceptation of the
word. “If this were a learned man,
an antiquary, an artist, above all he
was a soul—a soul, that masterpiece
of God, that thing so fair that
he himself delights in it, that he
has profoundly loved, even when,
having lost the attraction of innocence,
she had no other attraction
than misfortune. He was an ardent
Catholic, he prayed, he loved
God. He, who so hungered after
justice, love, and beauty, could not
but love God! The gifts of the understanding
exercised over him an
irresistible magic; but if he lived by
intelligence, he lived still more by
the heart. His friendship was full
of strength and tenderness; he gave
himself without measure.”

Ah! dearest Kate, I forget that
you are no longer here. Ellen is
extremely sympathetic towards me;
she listens to me, speaking of you,
for hours together. This morning,
after a long account, in which her
mother’s name and yours recurred
a hundred times, she said to me
with feeling: “I am going to pray
God to put me soon where they
are.”

O Blessed Virgin! may she stay
with us.
.sp 2
<sc>July 18.</sc>

Arthur is ill. Johanna writes
agitated and sorrowful pages. My
saintly Kate, pray for us!

The rumors of war which have
for some days been circulating are
taking consistency. What is about
to become of this poor country?
Will the hour of vengeance strike,
or will mercy again carry the day?
Epidemic maladies and drought
have already spread desolation
everywhere.

Kate, I would fain penetrate into
the future. O folly! What would
it be, when I cannot even support
my present grief?

René has had three attacks of
fever. O this dear invalid, this
son of liberty and space, restless as
a lion! in repose. Dear, good
friend! Come, then, and see him,
dear Kate, when three times a day
he attends to an unfortunate child
whose wounds horrify everybody.
“The hand of M. René passes
over my sores like the wing of an
angel!” What charming praise,
and especially in Breton, in the
mouth of this frightful little lad,
who is distressed at his own ugliness!
Gertrude is teaching him
the catechism; Mary and Ellen
prepare his meals with their little
.pn +1
white hands. Ellen has lovely eyes
of sea-blue, very dark.
.sp 2
<sc>July 24.</sc>

The <i>Univers</i> of Wednesday, the
20th, is splendid: “The Infallibility
is proclaimed! <i>Ubi Petrus,
ibi Ecclesia!</i> The times are hard;
war, pestilence, famine; but the
year 1870 will be none the less immortal.
This will be called the
Century of Pius IX., the Pope of
the Immaculate Conception and of
the Infallibility.” Great joy in the
Catholic world.

Here is war with Prussia—that
power which, whatever may be
said, is truly redoubtable. Happy
the people whose history is wearisome!
Misfortune to those who
depart from the path traced for
them by Providence! What a magnificent
page might France have
added to her history had she so
willed! “Archimedes asked but a
lever and a fulcrum to move the
world,” said the Père Lacordaire at
Notre Dame; “but in his time this
lever and this fulcrum were unknown.
They are known now:
faith is the lever; and the point of
support, the Breast of the Lord
Jesus.”

Who, then, will lift this lever?
My God! may they who seek
thee find gladness and joy in thee.
<i>Tristis es, anima mea!</i>

Arthur is better; our dear Parisians
are returning to us; the horizon
is so dark to those who see
things rightly! Berthe is gone to
the town for the funeral of a friend
of her childhood who passed through
the greatest trials in the world.
She made a most edifying death,
preserving the fulness of her faculties
to the last, blessing her children,
and putting all her soul into
her last directions. And when she
had said all, and was asked if she
desired nothing, she answered with
her failing voice: “I desire nothing
but God!” The long agony of her
heart, the suffering which has killed
her, this painful martyrdom—all is
over, and the Blessed Virgin, whom
she so loved, must have welcomed
her into glory. <i>Amen!</i> The two
little children, alarmingly pale, followed
the coffin. How one would
pity them, if God were not the Father
of orphans!

Spain in a state of revolution.
Queen Isabella has abdicated in
favor of Prince Alphonso. Poor
Spain! Where is Isabella the Great,
the Catholic?

Adrien is reading to us the tenth
volume of the <i>Histoire du Monde</i>,
by De Riancey. The illustrious and
lamented author wrote from Rome,
after receiving from the Pope and
the Comte de Chambord precious
tokens of affection: “Now I am
almost ready to sing my <i>Nunc Dimittis</i>,
and there remain only the joys
of heaven to be added.“ Dearest
Kate, I said something like this
when I still possessed you....

[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=nilep2
UP THE NILE. | CONCLUSION.
.sp 2
The dignity of some of these half-clad
Nubians is almost beyond conception.
As we walked through the
town of Korosko we saw numbers
of elephants’ tusks, ostrich feathers
and eggs, and great piles of gum-arabic.
We told Ali to pick up a
handful of the gum, and then demanded
the price. With a shrug
of the shoulders, the owner answered
in the most indifferent manner:
“Whatever you please.” Ali offered
him one piastre. The merchant
took out his purse and coolly
handed a piece of the same value,
saying: “If you cannot pay more
than that for the gum, you must be
very poor; take this for backsheesh.”
“Well,” broke in Mr. S——, unable
to restrain his indignation, “would
you like us to give you two pounds
for that handful of gum?” “Oh! no,”
he replied quietly; “whatever you
please.” He was finally satisfied
with the amount first offered.

This Korosko is an important
town; for from here the direct road
lies across the desert to Aboo-Hamed,
Shendy, Sennaar, and
Khartoom. The bend in the river
between this place and Derr is so
great that the river flows south-southeast.
Going up, we were detained
some time. The north wind,
which carried us up thus far, was
now almost dead ahead, and we
were obliged to wait till it died out.
The temple at Wady Sabooah a few
miles below is of the time of Rameses
II. His favorite amusement, to
judge from the figures on the temple
walls, was to catch hold of a
few score of his enemies by the
hair of the head, all at once, and
in one hand too, while with the
other he knocked them about with
a club. The old temple was afterwards
used as a Christian church.
In the time of the great temple-builder
a figure of some god stood
in the adytum; the Christians covered
it with plaster (it was a bas-relief),
and then painted on it a
picture of St. Peter. The other
figures are not altered, and the result
is that the great Rameses is
now making offerings to a Christian
saint.

I was anxious to obtain a dress—a
full dress—of a Nubian young lady.
I did not propose to introduce this
style at home—it would scarcely be
suited to our winters, although it
might answer in summer—but it
would be a pleasant thing to show
it, and, when some fair one should
ask what it was, to reply: “Oh! that
is a dress that belonged to a lady
friend of mine in Nubia; she gave
it to me to remember her by.”
Just think how jealous all the men
would be! Frank carefully treasures
up a ribbon, and Charley considers
priceless a lock of hair which
his fair one has worn—small trinkets
compared with mine, even if
I cannot put mine in a locket. So
I am bound to have one by fair
means or foul.

The reader will probably be anxious
to know what this dress is.
Well, he must not be shocked; he
must remember the climate is
warm, and the immediate descendants
of Eve set the fashion here.
The full costume consists of a leather
.pn +1
girdle, from which hangs
fringe of the same material, about
six inches long, ornamented with
shells. I have one. It belonged
to a very pretty, dark-eyed young
lady of thirteen, from whom I
purchased it as a curiosity. The
girl’s wardrobe being unusually
well stocked, she sold me her
best for the small sum of six
piastres.

The people are very much afraid
of the evil eye, more dangerous on
this account: that no one can tell
who possesses it. Even some of
the innocent howadjii may have it;
if they look at any one who is near,
he or she is instantly possessed by
some spirit and becomes sick. But
they have medicine; for they immediately
send to some priest and inform
him in what way the sufferer
is afflicted. For a small fee he
writes out a portion of the Koran
which will cure the disease. This is
enclosed in a leather bag and worn
on the arm or around the neck. The
disease is not only cured, if the extract
be the right one, but all future
danger from the evil eye is
averted.

We have been visiting temples
and tombs almost every day for
the past week, and have been very
much annoyed by the crowds that
followed us and in many cases prevented
us from properly inspecting.
On Feb. 6 we visited the little temple
of Baybel Welly. I put into
operation a plan I had thought out
last night. I wanted to try the effect
of sarcasm on these half-civilized
Nubians. The temple was
very small and the crowd pushed
in after us. We withdrew, and I
then spoke in a quiet, dignified
manner to the one who appeared
to be the leader. “This temple is
not large enough for both of us to
visit at the same time. We will wait
outside until you and your friends
finish your examination, and then
we will look at it. If you find anything
particularly interesting, you
will be kind enough to inform us.”
At first he did not take the point;
after a time a light broke upon him,
and he replied: “You go in; I
will keep these walluds out.” And
he did so.

I have told of the presents we
gave the crew. They made a common
pool, a sort of joint-stock company
on the mutual-benefit plan.
Reis Mohammed was treasurer.
They held a meeting and resolved
to declare a dividend, after the
manner of many modern railway
dividends—for it was paid out of
the capital. A very noisy confab
prevailed for an hour or more;
then votes were cast, and it was resolved
“that the treasurer be instructed
and empowered to purchase
a calf at a price not exceeding seven
dollars, said calf to be served
up immediately for the use of the
stockholders.” This should furnish
a hint to antiquarians; perhaps
they may be able to trace back the
origin of our modern corporations
to the old Egyptians. The similarity
of management should afford
some clue.

On the 10th of February we
reached Philæ. On the mainland
opposite is the small town of Belal.
Here is an old mosque; from its
minaret the first Moslem call to
prayer in Nubia was made. It
is February 12, and we are still
lying at Mahatta, waiting for the
Shellallee, to take us down the cataract.
They will not come to-day,
so we go to visit the quarries of
syenite granite from which the
obelisks were taken. Two of the
party mount the diminutive donkeys;
I want to oversee them, so I
climb on a camel. He kneels for
.pn +1
me to mount, and then rises at
command. The camel rises with
three distinct motions. I have said
that he kneels for one to mount;
this will hardly convey the proper
idea. His legs are doubled underneath
and his belly touches the
ground. With the first motion he
raises himself on his fore-knees,
then straightens up his hind-legs,
and then his fore-legs. The effect
of this motion upon the rider is
very curious. He is first pitched
violently backwards, but before he
has time to fall off is thrown forwards
again; and just as he feels
certain that he is about to dive into
the sand, he regains his equilibrium,
and off goes the camel. When he
walks, the rider sways back and
forth; his run is not unlike the trot
of a horse.

An unfinished obelisk—one that
has never been entirely detached
from the rock—shows us the means
employed by the Pharaos for cutting
out these immense masses.
Holes were cut along the whole
line of the block a few feet apart.
Into these wooden wedges, saturated
with water, were firmly driven.
The swelling of the wood, causing
an equal pressure, split the rock in
a straight line. Just above where
we are moored is the body of a
man lying in the water. His hands
are tied behind his back—probably
a slave from away up country, beaten
to insensibility and then thrown
into the river. Perhaps he stole a
few piastres, or was not sufficiently
quick in obeying his master’s commands.
It is a sickening sight, this
putrid, bloated corpse, so we ask
Ahmud to have it taken out and
buried. It was carried by the current
into this little cove some four
days ago; hundreds of people pass
it daily, yet no one will remove it.
Ahmud says it is the duty of the
governor to bury it, and, unless he
does so, the natives will let it remain
until the fish and vultures eat
it up. “If I see the governor,”
continues Ahmud in the most unconcerned
way, “I will speak to
him about it.”

Early next morning the Shellallee
assembled and preparations were
begun. To make the descent it is
requisite that the water should be
smooth and not a breath of wind
stir the air. The day was all that
could be desired; so at six <sc>A.M.</sc> began
the charge of the black brigade.
On they come from every
quarter; every rock sends forth two
or three. We have sixty or seventy
on board. Ali says that most of
them come to get a place to sit
down and smoke their chibouks.
There is the usual amount of talking,
and at a quarter to seven we
cast loose from our moorings and
stood out into the stream. God’s
flag was tied to a post on the port
side of the quarter-deck—a red flag
with two yellow stars and a diamond,
the latter representing the
sword of Mohammed, and over all
the sacred name “Allah.” This was
placing the dahabeeáh under the
divine protection to ensure a prosperous
descent. Our old friend Nogood
was with us, seated by the flag,
smoking a long pipe and reading
the Koran. Another sheik was
seated on the opposite side telling
his beads. Four men stood at the
helm, and two at each oar. To
judge from the noise and excitement,
you would be led to think
that no boat had ever descended
the cataracts before. Ahmud was
so nervous that tears came into his
eyes. The balance of the Shellallee
squatted on the deck, lit their
chibouks, and never moved until
we hustled them off at Assouan.
The current carried us swiftly on to
.pn +1
the west bank, and we neared the
great gate. A piece of wood was
thrown overboard; it was a guide
to the steersmen. Now all was
quiet; not a word was uttered on
board. The rowers stopped, the
howadjii held their breath; a moment
more we rounded the corner
almost at a right angle, and shot
into the great rapid. The boat
grazed the rocks on the port side.
The waves dashed over the bow.
Directly ahead the rocks rise perpendicularly
to the height of
twenty feet. The howadjii shudder;
surely we will be dashed to
pieces. Before we have scarce
time to think, before we are at the
bottom of the rapid, the rudder is
jammed hard to starboard, the boat
swings round at a right angle;
we are in smooth water—we have
descended the cataract in safety.
This rapid is two hundred feet long
between the rocks, about seventy
feet broad, and falls from six to
seven feet. Old Nogood springs
up now with astonishing activity,
and snatches the turban from Reis
Mohammed’s head. This is his
perquisite. It is the custom for
the head sheik to take both tarbosh
and turban from the captain’s
head when the descent is safely accomplished.
This was all very
well when these descents were first
made, there being then some doubt
as to their safe accomplishment.
Now numbers of boats are taken
down every year and an accident
rarely happens. This custom should
be done away with—at least, so
thought Reis Mohammed; for he put
on the oldest tarbosh he had, and it
was so bad that Nogood would not
take it. Every one shook hands
all around. One of the Shellallee
cut his foot very badly; I put court-plaster
upon it, and then bound
it up with my own handkerchief.
He smiled and asked for backsheesh.

About nine we reached Assouan.
Every one wanted backsheesh,
even those I told about who sat on
the decks smoking chibouks, and
had never raised a finger to help
us. Finally we got rid of them all.
What a relief it was to be alone
again with our little family!—for we
are coming to love our sailors;
they have been with us so long, and,
in spite of their few faults, they are
a good set and we have had no serious
trouble with them. There is a
modern temple at Kom Ombos,
about thirty miles below Assouan,
built by one of the Ptolemies
about one hundred and fifty years
before Christ. It is interesting, and,
notwithstanding its recent construction,
we examined it with care.
There is another of these Ptolemaic
temples at Edfoo, one of the
most interesting temples on the
Nile. True, it is far younger than
Karnak, but then it is the best-preserved
temple in Egypt. As a perfect
specimen of an Egyptian temple,
complete in all its parts, it
stands unrivalled. Let me go into
details here and describe this temple.
It will give an idea of all the others;
for the temples of ancient Egypt were
all constructed on the same plan, except
rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which
has been described before. The
Egyptian temple was not a place
of public worship, like a Greek
or Roman temple, or a Christian
church. It was an edifice erected
by a king in honor of some triad of
divinities to whom he wished to
pay special homage in return for
benefits conferred or in hope of
future favors. A rude brick wall
surrounded the whole enclosure
and shut out from the vulgar gaze all
that took place inside. This wall
is almost entire at Edfoo, but a
.pn +1
small portion of it having been destroyed.
A gateway admits us into
the enclosure, and we pass through
an avenue of sphinxes to a second
gateway with its propyla, or immense
pyramidal tower, on either
side. Over the gateway is a winged
scarabæus in high relief. The
pyramidal towers are covered with
intaglio sculptures representing the
king holding a brace of his enemies
by the hair, and about to knock off
their heads with a club. Flag-staffs
were attached to the outside
of these towers, rising many feet
above their summit. Entering a
large hypæthral hall through this
second gateway, we see before us
the portico of the temple itself.
We enter this between two columns;
from these to the side walls are
screens reaching about half-way to
the roof. A little further on we
reach the sanctum sanctorum—a
magnificent monolithic chamber of
polished gray granite, in which was
kept the hawk, the emblem of the god
Horhat, who was the principal divinity
of this temple. The rest of
the naos, or portion of the temple
behind the portico, and in which
this sanctuary was placed, was cut
up into a number of small chambers
used for religious purposes.
Within the enclosure was the temenos,
or grove, thickly planted
with trees, and near at hand was a
lake. The whole length of this temple,
including the gateway and wall
of circuit, is four hundred and fifty
feet. The breadth of the propylon—the
inner gateway with its pyramidal
towers—is two hundred and
fifty feet and its height one hundred
and fifteen feet. The sculptures
all over the walls are extremely interesting.
Some give the names of
the several chambers of the temple,
and their dimensions in cubits and
parts of cubits, so that the modern
measurements can be compared
with the ancient ones. Others give
valuable information respecting the
ancient geography of Egypt.

During the reign of Psammenitus,
son of Amasis, a most remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians,
says Herodotus; for rain fell at
Egyptian Thebes, which had never
happened before nor since, to my
time, as the Thebans themselves
affirm. For no rain ever falls
in the upper regions of Egypt,
but at that time rain fell in drops
at Thebes. In the year of grace
one thousand eight hundred and
seventy-four the same remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians, say I;
for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes.
If we did not know the dignity and
sober character of that ancient
traveller, we might suppose a sarcastic
witticism lay hid in the closing
part of the above story. See
how cautious he is: the rain fell in
drops. Well, that is precisely the
way it fell when we were there.
And the drops could be counted.
There was no shower. The dust
was not even laid. But it rained.
I saw it—perhaps the first time in
three thousand years. It is no small
affair for a man to be able to say to
his grandchildren in years to come:
“It rained when I was at Egyptian
Thebes—in drops, you know.”

Ten days tied up at Luxor, measuring
the columns of Karnak,
looking at the endless procession
of gods and warriors, and going
far into the mountain-side to search
for the sarcophagi of Egypt’s long-departed
rulers. The ruins of
Thebes are familiar—at least to
every one who has read any of the
numerous works on Egypt; so I
will not describe them. There is
one place, however, not mentioned
in the guide-books about which I
will say something. Behind the
.pn +1
temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, on the
western shore, there are several
mummy-pits. Mr. S—— and I determined
to visit them. We descended
a well about ten feet deep,
at the bottom of which we found
a narrow passage, so low that we
were obliged to crawl. This led
into a large chamber filled with
bodies. Ali begged to accompany
us, but, when he caught sight of the
first body, he beat a hasty retreat
to the upper air. Truly, it was a
solemn, ghastly sight. The mummies
were piled up to what depth
no one knows; as they then were they
had filled up the room to a level
with the narrow passage, forming a
floor over which we walked. The
Arabs had been there hunting for
scarabæi and other antiques to sell
to travellers, and in so doing had
handled the corpses without care
or ceremony. Here was a man
standing on his head with his feet
resting against the wall; there a woman
broken in two, the legs placed
astride the neck; corpses all around
in every conceivable position—grinning,
staring corpses, enough to
give one the nightmare for weeks
to come. Beneath this top row
they were placed in layers. I found
the body of a young woman well
preserved, and with hair banged
across the forehead, like the French
style of a few years ago. I carried
the body out to show it to the rest
of the party, thinking somewhat of
bringing it home. “Desecrating
graves,” “robbing sepulchres,” and
words of like import met my ears,
and, feeling somewhat abashed, I
took the body back, but detached
the hair and brought it with me.
In this pit we found numbers of the
small clay figures of Osiris. They
were rudely made—for these were
the fellaheen, or lower class, who
were thrown into a common pit.
They were embalmed in the cheapest
way, which was done, according
to Herodotus, by thoroughly rinsing
the abdomen in syrmæa, and
then steeping it with natron for
seventy days.

The boy who owned my donkey
was sick, so Fatma, his little black-eyed
sister, attended for him. She
was a pretty, bewitching little creature,
yet of a marriageable age—thirteen,
I think. Day after day she
ran behind my donkey, urging it on,
and occasionally coming up alongside
to make some pleasant remark
and disclose teeth like Oriental
pearls. When we were parting I
gave her a small present and asked
her if she would go with me to
America. “Certainly.” And the
little one jumped and clapped her
hands with joy. “Do you know
where America is situated?” I
asked. “Not exactly, but down
the river, somewhere near Alexandria,
is it not?”

Here we are at Keneh, and when
we see a fine large house, in appearance
not unlike a provincial theatre,
we naturally ask who inhabits it.
The consuls of France and Prussia—the
lion and the lamb lying down
together. Here they live together
in the same house on the best of
terms, just as if King William had
never marched into Paris or Napoleon
III. had not surrendered at
Sedan. We did not meet them,
but very probably they were like
Ali Murad—natives, with a faint
idea that there had been some misunderstanding
between France and
Prussia; but then they were not
concerned with that, so they smoke
their pipes together and let the
outside world take care of itself.
Passing Sheik Selim’s place on
March 9, we stopped and sent
some of the sailors with presents.
We arrived at Bellianeh, whence we
.pn +1
proposed to visit the interesting temple
of Abydos. We rode for six
miles through rich fields of grain,
principally wheat, and reached the
modern village of Arabat, called by
the Arabs Madfuné (the buried),
from the ancient buildings that until
recently lay all around covered
with desert sand. On entering the
town we saw a gang of men working
at excavations under the charge
of an overseer, who quickened their
movements with a bamboo. We
saw pictures of this on the tombs
four thousand years old. A fine-looking
man, with an immense red
turban on his head, broke from the
gang, rushed up to us, threw himself
on the ground, embraced our
feet, and piteously implored us to
take him away. He was a sheik
of a neighboring village, he said, and
had been torn from his family and
pressed into service. In proof of
this he produced a long document,
about as intelligible to us as the
hieroglyphics on the temple wall.
It was done by order of the viceroy,
so we could not interfere, and
he went reluctantly back to his
work. His appeal to us angered
the overseer, who struck him a fearful
blow with the bamboo that felled
him to the ground. Said—good-hearted
Said—took the man’s part,
and for a time it looked as though
we were going to have a lively row.
But it all evaporated in talk; the
overseer promised not to beat him
any more, and then he and Said
became the best of friends.

These workmen are not paid very
much—five cents a day; but their
work is not very heavy—at least, as
they do it. One man fills a small
basket with earth, then sits down
and smokes a cigarette. The basket
is dragged about twenty feet,
emptied out, then he has a little
talk with some of his friends. We
were looking for the celebrated
tablet of Abydos, but the passage-way
was so filled up with sand that
we could not approach it. This
tablet is called the new one, although
M. Mariette supposes it to
be the original of the fragmentary
one found in the temple of Rameses
II. at this place and now in the
British Museum. It contains figures
of Sethi and Rameses offering
homage to seventy-six kings, their
predecessors, beginning with Menes
and ending with Sethi I., and has
been of incalculable benefit to the
historian. But we are going farther
back than Menes, for there is the
Kóm es Sultan, the Holy Sepulchre
of the ancient Egyptians—the tomb
of Osiris. It is not a natural tumulus,
but is formed by the heaping
up of tombs during many ages one
upon another. Are they not the
tombs of those rich Egyptians that
Plutarch tells of who came from
all parts of the country to Abydos
to be buried near Osiris?

A few days after we were strolling
along the east bank when we
came upon a Coptic church. Entering,
we saw a novel rendering of
the legend of St. George and the
dragon. I have said before that
St. George is the patron saint of the
Copts, and here they turn the dragon
into a Turk, substituting a real
enemy for a mythical one. St.
George, on a spirited steed, is frantically
endeavoring to pin a Turk
to the earth. He has his lance run
through the neck, but the Turk is a
tough fellow and is fighting so hard,
while the horse is balancing himself
in the most incredible manner on
one leg, that it is a question which
will get the upper hand.

As we run close to the bank
scores of urchins salute us with that
now familiar cry, “Backsheesh, howadji”—“Alms,
O shopkeeper”—not
.pn +1
that they took us for shopkeepers,
but then these were the first to
travel for purposes of trade; and
when others, travelling for pleasure
alone, came after them, no distinction
was made by the natives, but all
were classed in the same category.
Everywhere in the East, from the
poorest beggar to the sultan himself,
is heard the same demand,
“Backsheesh, howadji”—from the
great ones couched in hidden terms
and well-set phrases, but as well understood
as the outspoken clamor
of the rabble. After careful study
and deliberation I have classified
the different uses of this phrase.
I have divided them into eleven different
demands, expressing the following
ideas: First, the distant
or dubious demand. This is made
by small urchins from the bank as
we sail by. The tone of voice indicates
that they doubt very much
whether they will receive anything,
but deem it worth while to make
the attempt, although sometimes a
quarter of a mile of water separates
us from them. Second, the salutative
demand from older ones.
As we ride or walk through the
country we meet an Arab. “Naharak
Saiid” (May the day be good
to you), say we. “Backsheesh,
howadji,” he replies in the same salutative
tone, and moves on. Surely
he cannot expect anything; he
does not even stop. Third, the
imperative demand, growled out in
a fierce tone by half-grown boys—your-money-or-your-life
demand of
highwaymen. This is always unsuccessful.
Fourth, the curtailed
demand from over-lazy ones, as
this: “Backshee, howadj”—a very
indifferent one. Fifth, the plaintive
demand—the fourteen-children and
seven-year-widow story listened to
by tender-hearted people. Sixth,
the non-expective demand, a mere
matter of form, and surprise exhibited
if complied with. Seventh,
the interrogative demand—to wit:
“Did it ever occur to you, O howadji!
that a small present would
be acceptable to your petitioner?”
An idea similar to this frequently
crossed the howadji’s mind.
Eighth, the confidential demand
from the donkey-boy when near the
end of a trip. In a low whisper,
and with a knowing look: “Howadji
and I understand one another;
it is all right; about two piastres
will do.” Ninth, the future demand:
the praises of the donkey
are sounded when starting out;
professions of fidelity and attachment
on the part of the attendant
are loud and constant; he will show
you everything, and—“Backsheesh
kabeér dahabeeáh” (Much backsheesh
on the return to boat), in a
matter-of-course tone. Tenth, the
infantile demand, from imps scarce
able to talk: “Backtheeth, howath”—most
successful of any. Eleventh,
the fraudulent demand, practised
principally in Nubia. A mother
holding an infant in her arms:
“Backsheesh for the baby, O howadji!”
and when the kind-hearted
traveller places a coin in the little
dimpled hand held out to receive
it, the mother takes possession of
it for her own use. When the traveller
approaches a town, every child
is snatched up into some one’s
arms—it is immaterial whether the
mother gets her own child or some
one belonging to another—and presented
to him.

Little Saida, our gazelle, broke
her leg at Thebes; we sent for the
barber, who is doctor also, to bind
it up. He performed the operation
in a bungling way, and mortification
set in a few days after. She
had become a great pet, and was
beginning to know us and eat from
.pn +1
our hands. So we concluded it
was best to kill her, as she was suffering
very much. Wishing to preserve
the skin, she was hit on the
head with an axe, so as not to injure
it. After the skin had been
removed we offered the body to the
crew for a meal. Reis Mohammed
threw it overboard, saying that it
was not killed in the proper way
for them to eat: it should have
been shot, or else the throat cut,
after repeating certain passages
from the Koran. It is strange to
see how obedient these Arabs are
to the sacred writ. They are fond
of meat, but do not have it very
often. On one occasion we were
lunching in a temple. When we
had finished, some fine slices of ham
were left. I gave them to Ali for
himself and the two sailors who
were with us, and whose lunch had
consisted of dry bread. Without a
moment’s hesitation he threw them
to a dog who was near us, saying
that it was good food for dogs and
Christians, but not for Arabs.

On the summit of the rocks of
Gebel Aboofayda, near their southern
end, are the caverns of Moabdeh,
commonly called the crocodile
mummy pits. We stopped and
procured some fine specimens—small
crocodiles which had been
treated as gods five thousand years
ago. Every one in this country
seems to know every one else. It
seemed to me that, when our crew
wanted to see any one, they simply
called out the name—Ali, Mohammed,
or whatever it was—and he
soon appeared. When purchasing
goods it makes no difference whom
you pay, whether owner or not, provided
you pay some one. Many
people marvel how the old Egyptians
transported their obelisks and
colossi from the quarries at Syene to
their destination several hundred
miles down the river. Back of the
Christian village called Ed Dayr
en Nakhl, on the east bank nearly
opposite Rhoda, are a number of
grottoes cut into the mountain-side.
In one of them is one of the most
interesting paintings found in any
of the Egyptian tombs, which will
enable us to understand how these
immense masses of stone were conveyed
from one place to another.
We had great difficulty in finding
this grotto; for, although it is mentioned
in the guide-book, the natives
seemed unaware of its existence.
At last we found it, away
up on the mountain-top, the entrance
so filled up with débris that
we were obliged to crawl in. But
we were well paid; for we saw the
famous painting of “A Colossus on
a Sledge,” which, as far as I am
informed, is the only one of the
kind in Egypt. The person represented
by the colossus was called
Thoth-ôtp, and was of high distinction
in the military caste. He is
styled the king’s friend, and one of
his children was named Ositarsens,
after the king. This grotto was his
tomb. The figure is seated and
placed upon a sledge, being firmly
secured to it by ropes. One hundred
and seventy-two men, in four
rows of forty-three each, pull the
ropes, attached to a ring in front of
the sledge, and a liquid—most probably
oil—is poured from a vase by a
person standing on the pedestal of
the statue, in order to facilitate its
progress as it slides on the ground—or
more probably on a tramway
made for the occasion, though that
is not indicated in the picture.
Some of the persons engaged in
this laborious duty appear to be
Egyptians; others are foreign slaves
who are clad in the costume of
their country. Behind the statue
are four rows of men, three in a
.pn +1
row, representing either the architects
and masons or those who had
employment about the place where
the statue was to be conveyed. Below
are others carrying vases filled
with water, and some rude machinery
connected with the transportation
of the colossi, followed by
taskmasters with their wands of
office. On the knee of the figure
stands a man, who claps his hands
to the measured cadence of a song
to mark the time, and to ensure a
long pull, a strong pull, and a pull
all together. Before the statue a
priest is presenting incense in honor
of the person it represents. At
the top are seven companies of men—a
guard of honor, or perhaps reliefs
for dragging the sledge. Beyond
are men slaying an ox and
bringing the joints of meat to the
door of the building to which the
statue was to be transported. From
this we may judge with tolerable
certainty how the great obelisks
were conveyed to the temples before
which they were set up, and
how the great stones of the Pyramids
were transported from their
mountain-beds.

We are now rapidly sailing down
stream and nearing civilization.
In a few days we reached the lofty
cliffs of Gebel et Tayr, which rise
abruptly from the river to a height
of several hundred feet. On its
summit stands the Coptic convent
of Sitta Mariam el Adra (Our Lady
Mary the Virgin). As we approached
several of the monks jumped
into the stream—not from the top
of the cliff, however—and swam out
towards us. They seized hold,
jumped aboard, entirely naked, and
saluted us with “Ana Christian, ya
howadjii” (I am a Christian, O
howadjii!) Of course we could not
resist this appeal, but a few paras
satisfied them, and, putting the coins
in their mouths, they swam back to
shore, to sit like birds of prey
waiting for their next victims—for
they never miss a dahabeeáh
that passes. This Gebel et Tayr—“The
Mountain of the Bird”—has a
strange legend attached to it. It
is said that all the birds of the
country assemble annually on this
mountain, and, having selected one
of their number to remain there till
the following year, they fly away
into Africa, and only return the
next year to release their comrade
and substitute another in his place.

A funny accident happened to
Reis Ahmud. We had grounded
on a sand-bank, where we remained
sixteen hours, and the usual
means were being employed to
pull the boat off. An anchor was
thrown out some seventy feet ahead
in the direction of the channel. A
rope was attached to this, and the
other end carried through a pulley
on the deck. The entire crew pulled
upon this rope, when it became
entangled in a block on the starboard
side. Reis Ahmud went
forward to release it, and, without
slackening the rope, he began to pry
it with a long pole. The strain on
the rope was of course very severe.
He succeeded in raising it over
the block, but it acted like the
string of a bow, and Ahmud, being
in the place where the arrow usually
is, was struck by it. He was
shot directly over the top of the
kitchen, and plunged headlong into
the water on the other side of the
boat as though he had been shot
out of a catapult. The expression
of fear, terror, and uncertainty as to
what struck him, shown plainly in
his face as he went flying over
the boat, pole in hand, was most
ludicrous. Fortunately, he was not
hurt. A bad fright and thorough
ducking will teach him to avoid
.pn +1
strained ropes in future. Some
statues, a few fragments of granite,
and some substructions are all
that can be seen of the ruins of a
city which, if there is any truth in
the descriptions given of it, must
have exceeded any modern city as
much as the Pyramids exceed any
mausoleum which has been erected
since those days (Curzon). So one
day was enough at Memphis, and
still on to the south we sailed.
Now the great Pyramids loom up
in the distance, and at ten of the
morning of March 30 we reach the
iron bridge at Cairo, our long Nile
journey over. That night we left
our dahabeeáh, and bade farewell
to our crew. I have travelled far
and wide throughout this world of
ours, but I know of no trip that
has afforded me more real satisfaction
and pleasure than these four
months on the Nile. The expense
is not very great; a party of four
can contract with a good dragoman
to supply boat, crew, provisions,
and everything necessary for the
voyage for from five to six pounds
sterling a day. The winter of
1873-'74 was cold for Egypt. The
superintendent of the viceroy’s sugar-works
at Rhoda informed us
that it was the coldest winter known
in Egypt for seventeen years. See
what a cold winter is in the Orient—for
these observations I took myself:
Average thermometer from December
20, 1873, to March 28, 1874,
sixty-nine degrees. Highest thermometer
during same period, eighty-two
degrees on February 21, 1874;
lowest, February 8, 1874, sixty
degrees. The observations were
taken in the cabin—in the shade,
of course—at noon of each day.
.sp 4
.h3 id=may
MAY.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The month of Maia—Cybele’s Roman name[#]—
  Ere Rome was Christ’s. And ’twas for Vulcan’s priest
To kindle at her shrine the rosy flame
  On sweet May-day. Womb’d in the fruitful East,
  Not vainly Westward, as the myths increased,
This purer rite, nor unprophetic, came:
  A flower that should be gather’d for the feast
Of Truth—with more that erst deck’d Pagan shame.
Not now the mother of vain gods[#] we pray,
  But Her, the God-Man’s Mother, ever a maid:
And still to her this fairest month of May
  Assign—our hearts upon her altar laid,
That her chaste love, descending with its fire,
May purge them from the dross of base desire
.pm verse-end

B. D. H.

.fn #
Maia, or Majesta: not to be confounded with Maia, the mother of Hercules.
.fn-

.fn #
Cybele was the “Mater Deûm” of the Greeks and Romans.
.fn-
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=frenchclergy
THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.
.sp 2
The war of 1870 between France
and Germany has taken the place,
in the minds of the French, of those
other, not more glorious, but more
successful, wars with which the very
word “war” was formerly associated.
They were used to think of
nothing but triumphs; individual
losses were swallowed up in national
exultation; and they connected with
the memories of the two Napoleons
the peculiarly French axiom that
there existed no such word in their
language as “impossible.” <i>That</i> is
still true to-day, notwithstanding
the reverses through which they
have passed; for moral heroism
stands upright on a lost battle-field
as well as on a triumphant one, and
the nation can say with its chivalrous
monarch of old: “All is lost,
save honor.” If the discipline was
faulty, if the management was indiscreet,
if the government was
weak, if circumstances were contrary,
there was still individual
courage, and not only among the
soldiers, but among all classes.
The very misfortunes of the country
roused the spirit of women,
priests, students, exiles, of the weak
and the poor, the secluded and the
helpless; never was there such
spontaneous truce to all differences,
such generous sacrifice of personal
comforts and, what is more, of personal
antipathies; all good men and
true shook hands across the barriers
of politics, religion, and caste,
and, with one mind and heart, did
each his best in his own way for his
suffering country. Of course there
were cowards, time-servers, and
place-seekers, making profit out of
their fatherland’s necessities, getting
into safe, so-called official,
berths, and generally skulking; but
they were not the majority, and it
is superfluous to ask here if every
nation has not its scum.

The part which the French clergy
took in the war of 1870 exceeds
that taken by them in any previous
war, when some few members of
their body acted as salaried chaplains
to the troops. Even during
the “wars of religion” under Henry
IV. of France few priests accompanied
the troops; the <i>abbés</i> of
Turenne and Condé’s times were
officers and gentlemen rather than
pastors and nurses; during the wars
of the great Napoleon public opinion
would have frowned down their
services; and the successful wars of
the Crimea and of Italy under the
late emperor, though they stirred
the clergy more, were yet <i>too</i> successful
to vie as a field of action
with the ever-present needs of city
and country parishes. But the last
disastrous conflict was emphatically
a <i>home</i> war; each family in the
quiet hamlet where his cure of souls
lay came to the parish priest, asking
blessings for its departing members
and prayers for its dead ones; each
wife and mother claimed his comforting
words and poured her sorrows
and fears into his ears; soldiers
on the march made his presbytery
their natural home, slept and
ate there, asked him for common
little necessaries, and made sure of
getting no denial had they asked
for anything he possessed; boys
.pn +1
whom he had christened came home
to die, and it was he who gave them
the last sacraments and read the
burial service over their graves; in
a word, he lived on the battle-field
even while still cooped up in his
village. It was not strange, then,
that he should easily take one step
further, and go himself to share
abroad the same danger whose face
was so familiar to him at home. A
German historian, writing of the late
war, says that there was more patriotism
found among the French
clergy as a class than in any other
class in the whole nation. General
Ambert, a soldier and a civil servant,
has gathered together[#] many
interesting episodes of the war relating
to the heroic behavior of the
priests, who from the beginning
came eagerly to ask leave to act as
chaplains for the love of God and
their neighbor only; for when war
was declared there were but forty-six
accredited chaplains in the
whole army. Not only parish
priests presented themselves, but
also hundreds of monks, brothers,
and confraternity-men; every order
was represented—Jesuits, Capuchins,
Dominicans, Benedictines,
Carmelites (the most distinguished of
whom was Père Hermann, who died
at Spandau), Trappists (of whom one
convent alone furnished thirty-five),
Cistercians, Oratorians, Lazarists,
Redemptorists, Christian Brothers
(of whom nineteen died during the
war, besides those who were the
victims of the Commune), and other
brotherhoods, old orders and new,
their members drawn from all
classes, from the Legitimist nobleman
to the peasant and the artisan,
from the doctor of laws or of theology
to the brother-scullerer or
porter. One day in mid-winter,
during the armistice, the Christian
Brothers had been for more than
twelve hours unceasingly at work
digging in the snow for the bodies
of the French dead of Petit-Bry,
Champigny, and Croisy. Two Prussian
officers, at the head of a detachment
of their men, were doing
the same for the bodies of the Germans.
It was a bitterly cold night,
the wind blew the flames of the
torches about, and nothing was
heard but short, business-like sentences,
the sound of pickaxes breaking
the ice, and that of the carriers’
feet as they bore the dead away on
rough litters. The Prussian officers
looked admiringly at the silent
brothers, and one said to the other:
“We have seen nothing so fine as
this in France.” “Except the Sisters
of Charity,” answered the other.

.fn #
<i>L’Héroïsme en Soutane.</i> By General Ambert.
Paris: E. Dentu, Palais Royal. 1876.
.fn-

One day Brother Nethelmus, of
St. Nicholas’ School, Paris, was
wounded by a ball, which proved
his death-blow two days later, and
hardly was he buried before a
young man asked to see the superior,
and said to him very simply:
“I am the younger brother of
Nethelmus, and have come to take
his place.” “Have you your parents’
consent?” asked the superior.
“My father and mother blessed
me before I left, and bade me
come,” said the youth, as if nothing
was more commonplace.

The service of the wounded was
the priests’ favorite field of work,
and it was in this that they most frequently
met death themselves. The
Abbé Géraud, after the defeat of
Mans, being chaplain of the Vendean
<i>francs-tireurs</i>, was seeking out
the most dangerously placed among
the wounded. The latter had in
many cases been abandoned by the
drivers of their ambulances, who, in
the general rout and panic, had unharnessed
the horses and run away.
.pn +1
On one of these carts were two soldiers
and two officers of “Mobiles”—one
of whom tells the story—all
badly wounded and trembling with
cold and ague. Many a man ran
past them, intent on his own safety
and heedless of their piteous appeals,
and the men despaired of
help, when they saw a priest running
quickly towards them with
cheery looks and words, telling
them he was looking for them.
The first thing he did was to take
off all his available clothing to cover
the men and warm them a little;
then, stopping some of the runaways,
he begged, promised, and
reproached so effectually as to induce
several to help him. “Push
the wheels, my fine fellows,” he
cried, as he harnessed himself to
the shafts, and from the battle-field
he drew the cart to a village, where
he never rested till he had begged
for his charges food, coverings, and
straw, and at last a horse, with which
he drove them to the nearest hospital.
He continued his labors
throughout the war. The Abbé de
Beuvron, who has lived with the
soldiers for fifteen years in various
times and climates, tells us of
the priests at Fröschwiller, who,
after confessing and anointing the
dying placed in the village church,
saved the wounded while the building
was in flames, and persuaded the
Prussians who guarded the wells to
let them have a few drops of water
for the sick; this blockade lasted
for four days, after which fifteen
Alsatian peasants were condemned
to be shot for having mutilated the
bodies of some Prussian soldiers.
This system of shooting the first-comer
for a crime committed by an
unknown person was one of the
most cruel features of the late war.
These poor wretches, taken at random—some
mere boys, some old, infirm
men—were tied with their hands
behind their backs to one thick rope
which kept them all on a level. The
Protestant clergyman, who had himself
gone to the general and asked
the lives of these men, came to
beg M. de Beuvron to intercede
for them; he was equally unsuccessful,
and, when he begged as a
Catholic priest to be allowed to see
the condemned, the general smiled
and said: “You are welcome; I will
give you an escort.” But on addressing
the poor men the priest
found that they understood no
French, and he could not speak
German. He pointed to heaven,
and spread his hands while he
gave them absolution, and they,
with one accord, fell on their
knees, sobbed and prayed, and
bowed their heads. This solemn,
silent service seems to us as noble
as the most magnificent of triumphant
processions, with chants
and rejoicings, and imperial <i>cortége</i>
following—this, the last moment
between time and eternity,
between faith and vision.

It is M. de Beuvron who has said
with truth: “It is the country parish
priest who makes Catholic
France.” And Prince Frederick
Charles of Prussia echoed this
sentiment when he said at an official
dinner in 1872, at the table of
the Bavarian ambassador: “There
is in France but one class that is
noble and patriotic, earnest, courageous,
worthy of respect, and really
influential, and that is the clergy.
Impossible not to admire it as it
appeared on the recent battle-fields.”
Some of these heroic men preserved
their incognito; one is mentioned
by the London <i>Times’</i> correspondent
who followed the Saxon
regiments. “There is a man,” he
writes, “whom I have noticed, since
Sedan until the struggles before the
.pn +1
walls of Paris, constantly following
the wounded. He has neither horse
nor conveyance, but, stick in hand,
he follows the track of the army,
and, with the consummate finish of
the man of the world and the tenderness
of a woman, he attends
and comforts the dying. He is a
French priest, a Benedictine....
The other day I met him suddenly
on a field of battle, and he asked me
to direct him to where the wounded
were. He had walked twenty
miles that day. No government
pays him; he is a volunteer in the
best sense of the word.... He is
in the prime of manhood, of handsome
build, distinguished-looking,
and with no less than courtly manners.”
Another unknown volunteer,
but a layman, was found dead
at Forbach. No one had seen him
till the day of the battle, and he
wore a dark dress and cap and a
fancy rifle. At the moment when
the battle began he suddenly joined
a brigade and fought like a hero.
His purse held a large sum of money
in gold, and his linen, unmarked,
was remarkably fine, while round
his neck was a medal hanging by
a silken ribbon. There was nothing
to identify him.

But to return to our parish
priests, of whom many refused rich
rewards and promotion after the war,
as M. du Marhallach, who, though he
accepted the Legion of Honor, declined
the bishopric of Quimper,
and, when his townsmen forced him
to represent them in the National
Assembly, managed to resign before
long and return to humbler scenes
of usefulness in his country parish.
If a book were to be filled with incidents
of the devotedness of the
country priests, there would yet be
ten times as many unknown and
unrecorded. As the Prussians entered
the village of Verrey, slaying
all in their way—men, women, and
children—the <i>curé</i>, M. Frérot, was
almost ubiquitous among the dying.
He was wounded twice with
bayonets, and, as he retreated into
his garden, the soldiers fired and
wounded him twice more. He
dragged himself to the doctor’s,
where some wounded were being
attended to, and got his wounds
dressed, when the doctor, taking the
flag of the Geneva Association with
him, undertook to get him safe into
his own (the doctor’s) house, where
some of the wounded had been
carried for safety. The enemy,
heedless of the flag, fell upon him
again with ball, bayonet, and gun-stocks
till he fell down insensible.
He died a few days after, glad, as
he said, if his death could be in any
way useful to his country. Useful!
Yes, as an example; but how
many precious lives are lost thus,
while vile, worthless ones preserve
themselves! One can only compare
the pouring out of such blood to
the “waste” of the precious ointment
which our Lord so highly
commended.

The Abbé Miroy, of Cuchery,
near Rheims, died another kind of
death: he was judicially murdered
for having allowed arms to be hidden
in the barn of his house. When
asked for this permission, he was
in the first agony of grief at the
news of the death of his parents at
a hamlet burnt by the Prussians.
However, whether responsible or
not—and probably as a Frenchman
he saw no harm in passively helping
in the defence of his country—he
was shot at Rheims, at daybreak,
on a bleak February morning and
a Sunday. It was during the armistice.
His people put this inscription
on his tomb-cross: “Here lies the
Abbé Charles Miroy, who died a
victim to his love of country.”
.pn +1

M. Muller, parish priest of Sarreguemines,
when asked for the
keys of his church, flatly refused to
give them up, and, on being threatened,
answered:

“How many shots do you fire on
a condemned man?”

“Eight and the '<i>coup-de-grâce</i>.’”

“Very well, then, before you
cross the threshold of my church
to desecrate it fire these eight shots
and the <i>coup-de-grâce</i> at me; for
you shall only step in over my dead
body.” There were many like instances;
for the priests knew well
that the enemy delighted in wantonly
outraging the most sacred feelings
of the people by profaning and
robbing their churches. A barbarous
story is told (General Ambert
vouches for it) of the treatment
undergone by the aged Abbé
Cor, of Neuville in the Ardennes,
who had considerably delayed the
march of the Prussians by certain
information given to the French,
and who, notwithstanding his age
(he was more than eighty), was tied
to a horse’s tail and dragged along
for a good distance, with another
rope tied to his leg, with which a
soldier pulled him up whenever he
fell. At last the soldiers got tired,
and threw him into a ditch, and,
marvellous to relate, he recovered.
One of his parishioners cried out in
pity: “O father! what a state you
are in.”

“Oh!” he answered cheerfully,
with a twinkle in his eye, “it is
only my <i>old</i> cassock!”

The parish priest of Gunstatt was
brought before an improvised council
of war just after the battle of
Forbach; what was requested of him
the book does not say, but his answer
just before he was shot points
to something evidently against his
country’s interests: “I prefer death
to the crime of betraying France.”

If these facts, which speak for
themselves, allow us to make any
commentary, we can think of none
so appropriate as this: how does
this France contrast with the feverish,
theatrical, rationalistic, immoral
France presented to us by a
certain wide-spread form of French
literature? No country is so libelled
by its own writers as France.
Granted that many novels represent
“life as it is,” yet it is not the
undercurrent of life, not the life of
the majority. It is the artificial,
sensational, exceptional life of large
cities and of reckless cliques; and,
besides this, novels have a trick of
magnifying this diseased life into
illusive dimensions. It fills the
eye of the foreigner, it shapes his
judgment, it draws his curiosity,
till the sober, prosaic, quiet, respectable,
and vital life of the country
fades out of his memory. He
forgets the <i>vie de province</i>, the impoverished
gentlemen living in dignified
retirement, like Lamartine
and his mother at Milly, like the
family in one part of a <i>Sister’s Story</i>,
like Eugénie de Guérin with her
homely, housekeeping cares; the
cosey homes of the middle classes,
their precise, thrifty, cheerful ways;
the family bond that enables different
families to live patriarchally in
a fellowship which few Anglo-Saxons
would or could imitate; the peasant-proprietors
with their gardens and
little farms; the healthy rural, natural
life that is everywhere, and even
<i>in</i> cities; the kindliness, the simplicity,
and the innate refinement
which ought to make many a
traveller of the Anglo-Saxon race
blush for his surliness and brutal,
superficial, haughty way of setting
down every foreigner as a monkey
or a barbarian.

Among the country priests there
were not only heroes, but strategists.
.pn +1
Towards the beginning of the war
a French column was on its way to
join the main body, and had to retreat
through a hilly, wooded, and
unknown tract to avoid being surprised
by the enemy. No one knew
just what to do or advise, and the
little maps were very unsatisfactory.
The general stopped at a Lorraine
village and sent for the authorities.
The mayor and most of the inhabitants
had fled in anticipation of danger;
only the <i>curé</i> was left, with a
few sick and old people. He was
over seventy himself, tall and large,
his hands and face swollen and his
feet protected by huge wooden
shoes. The general did not hope
for much advice from him, but the
old man sat down and explained
that he was gouty and unable to
get about, but knew the country.
When the general had joked about
this impromptu council of war, and
the priest in return had reminded
him how often the church had had
occasion to help the army before,
they examined the map together,
and the <i>curé</i> took a pencil and
quickly drew certain lines in a most
business-like manner, calculating
how long such a road would take
to traverse, how much headway
would be gained over the enemy,
what points would be a safe resting-place
for a few hours for the tired
troops, the route which, believing
the bridge to be destroyed, the
Prussians would probably follow,
the houses where the general would
find willing and able contributors
to the necessities of his men—in a
word, every chance and every detail
that an accomplished commander
would have thought of.
Then he asked for four soldiers, two
to be placed in the steeple to look
out for the Prussians and toll the
bell the moment they came in sight,
and thus give the understood signal
to the column at its masked resting-place;
and two to watch with him
at the entrance of the village.

“<i>Monsieur le curé</i>,” cried the general,
“you are a hero!”

The old man sneezed violently—he
took snuff—and laughed as well,
as he said: “<i>Mon général</i>, the seminaries
are full of such heroes as <i>I</i>
am. It is no heroism to love one’s
country. Now, when you have
given your orders, I shall carry you
off to the presbytery and give you a
roast chicken and some good omelet;
and I think Turenne would have
been glad sometimes to barter a few
of his laurel branches for an omelet.”

The priest and the two soldiers
had a long and cold watch through
the night. At three o’clock in the
morning the latter were getting tired,
but the old man said: “Hist! do
you see something over there?”
The men peered through the dark
and saw nothing; there was a wide
circle of old trees and a road across—a
well-known spot, the Fontaine
wood. But the priest both saw
and heard, or else he guessed by
instinct. “See, they are creeping
nearly on all fours behind the
trees; now they stop to listen, they
are gathering together. There is
an officer speaking to them in
whispers. It is time to ring the
bell. Go now, children.”

“But how can we leave you
alone?” said the soldiers.

“Never mind me; God will take
care of me. Your general’s orders
were to leave the moment the bell
rang.” And as his companions
withdrew he rang his little bell and
the church tocsin immediately answered.
Its sound was nearly
drowned by the discharge of the
Prussian rifles. The old man knelt
down and began the Lord’s Prayer;
he had not said the second line before
a ball hit him and he fell. The
.pn +1
French column escaped without
the loss of one man; and when the
general reported to his superior in
command, the latter, lighting a cigar,
said: “That priest was a brave
fellow.” But the general was to meet
him once more. The <i>curé</i> was not
killed, but was afterwards condemned
to be shot, which sentence
was commuted to exile on account
of his great age; and when he met
his old friend, who believed him
dead, he greeted him with the
cheerful question: “Well, how did
you like my omelet?” The other
caught him in his arms and repeated
with as much tenderness as admiration:
“You are a hero!”

The next story we choose from
the many related by Ambert is one
of pure Christian self-sacrifice, and
one that has its daily counterpart
in hospitals and plague-stricken
cities, even in peaceful times.
Small-pox in an aggravated form
had broken out among the French
troops, and, on the approach of an
infected battalion of Mobiles to a
village not far from Beaune, a <i>gendarme</i>
was sent on to bid the inhabitants
lock their doors and keep
out of the way, while the sick
were taken through to an isolated
camp-hospital at some distance.
There were hardly any able-bodied
men left in the village, as they
were off harassing the Prussians
and watching their movements, and
the women, in their loneliness, felt
a double fear. The patients came.
A death-like silence prevailed; no
face was seen at door or window.
The sick men dragged themselves
slowly and painfully along, asking
for nothing, touchingly resigned
to their lot of lepers and outcasts,
though many of them were raw recruits
of a few weeks only, whose
homes were in just such villages
as the familiar-looking one they
were crossing now. They had
passed the last houses, but at the
door of one a little apart from the
rest one soldier fell, and, seeing
how hopeless it was to urge him
further, a sergeant placed him on
the doorstep and knocked at the
door for help. No answer; and
the battalion resumed its march,
while the sergeant went back to tell
the mayor. When he was out of
sight a man and two women came
hastily and furtively out of the
house, carried the unconscious soldier
some distance to the foot of
a tree, and there left him. The
sergeant had found the parish
priest on his way back from a sick-call,
and asked him to tell the mayor,
as he was in a hurry to join his
regiment. They came to the house,
and, not finding the sick man, asked
the owner where he was; the man
half opened the shutter and pointed
in silence to the tree. Without
even seeking help, the priest, finding
the soldier still alive, carried
him home in his arms and laid him
on his own bed. The hubbub was
great in the parish; the old housekeeper
indignantly remonstrated,
but the priest gave her a few clear
and severe orders as to her own liberty
of staying away, and the substitute
whom he had the means
of sending for to replace him in
church, also the manner of bringing
him his food once a day, and then
went out to speak to his excited
parishioners. “There,” he said,
pointing to a placard on the wall
of the mayoralty, “you read 'Liberty,
fraternity, equality.’ Am <i>I</i> to
be deprived of the <i>liberty</i> of helping
my neighbor? Is he not our <i>equal</i>,
and does not <i>fraternity</i> require that
we should give him every chance for
his life? I cannot forget that the
good shepherd lays down his life
for his sheep.”
.pn +1

“But he does not even belong to
the parish!” murmured the crowd.

“In such times as these,” said M.
Cloti with enthusiasm, “all France
is my parish, and every brave fellow
who dies for you is my parishioner.”

And for sixty-five days and
nights he watched the stranger,
Jean Dauphin, made his bed every
night, cooked his food, mixed his
medicines, swept the rooms, and
scarcely slept or ate himself. The
doctor had insisted on the utmost
cleanliness, but said that, with all
precautions possible, only a miracle
could save the soldier’s life. Charity
wrought the miracle, and by the
fortieth day the patient was sitting
up listening to the priest reading to
him. Only one person in the village
caught the disease—the daughter
of the man who had spurned
the soldier from his door; and,
though she did not die of it, she
lost her beauty for ever. Some
months after the doctor asked the
priest if he knew at the time that
he was risking his life, and that
there was but the barest chance of
escape for him. “Yes,” said M.
Cloti simply, “I knew it.”

A terrible barbarity was the occasional
punishment of the <i>bastonnade</i>—a
kind of “running the gauntlet.”
This occurred once at the
village of Saint-Calais, where the
enemy found some guns hidden in
the belfry, and one hundred and
forty-five male inhabitants, including
the mayor, Baron Jaubert, and
the priest, were seized. They were
compelled to walk slowly between
a double row of Prussian soldiers
armed with clubs and sticks, and
received merciless blows on their
bare heads, their shoulders, back,
arms, and legs. The number being
odd, the priest was placed last
and alone, so that both rows were
able to reach and torture him.
He fainted, and was given a glass
of water, after which the torture began
again; and when he fell the
second time, his head was found to
be split in five places, and his body
was thrown aside for dead. He recovered,
however, after a long and
severe illness, but the baron died
of his wounds. One priest, at Ardenay,
was maltreated and imprisoned
and finally carried away to
Germany for having kept on his
steeple a tricolor flag which had
been there since 1830. Some
priests whom one can forgive for
their patriotism, but who were perhaps
too forward, as ministers of
peace, to foment war, used to go
on the battle-fields and search the
bodies of the dead for cartridges
for the living; but these instances
of enthusiasm were exceptional,
and it should be remembered that
some among the clergy were old
soldiers.

Among the prisoners of war the
priests found ample room for their
ministry. Some of the clergy were
themselves prisoners, while some
left their country and volunteered
for this special service. There was
much to do. Besides saying Mass
and administering the sacraments,
there were the ignorant to instruct,
the scoffers to convert, the young
to protect, and the intemperate to
reclaim. In that forced idleness
many gave themselves up to drunkenness
and grew reckless and desperate.
This sin, which in our
time seems to have sprung into
new life and strength, showed itself
lamentably strong among the captives,
and the priests, to counteract
it, had to attend not only to the
spiritual needs of their charges, but
to invent amusements and occupations
to wean the soldiers from
gross self-indulgence. Father Joseph,
.pn +1
a missionary and military
chaplain, published an interesting
work on the prisoners, their behavior,
pastimes, etc., the statistics of
their captivity, their treatment, and
such little things. During the war,
more than 400,000 were taken prisoners.
Letters with contributions
came constantly through and from
the country <i>curés</i>. Father Joseph,
who was stationed at Ulm, quotes
many of these letters, of which the
following is a specimen: “I venture
to recommend to your care
one of my parishioners, made prisoner
at Strasbourg. I recommend
his soul to you—for it is his most
precious possession—but also his
bodily wants; I am afraid he is in
need of clothes. If your circumstances
allow it, be kind enough to
give him what is needful; if not, set
the whole to my account, and I will
reimburse you. Our country will
bless you for your charity....
May our soldiers, whom so many
have labored to demoralize, be led
to understand these truths; for then
only will they be worthy of victory.”
This dignified attitude of resignation
to the hard lesson God allowed
the unsuccessful war to teach
France specially characterized the
clergy of all ranks, but it did not
take one jot from their eager and hot
patriotism. Another country priest,
over eighty years of age and nearly
blind, begins by excusing himself
on that score for his bad handwriting,
and, mentioning one of his
flock among the prisoners, says:
“The poor boy must suffer terribly.
Help him and comfort him; I shall
look upon all that you do to him as
done to me. It is long ago since
it has been dinned into the people’s
ears that we are their foes,
while in truth they have no better
friends; we are accused of not loving
our country, while, on the contrary,
we are her most devoted sons....
I fear that my age will prevent
me seeing the end of her
troubles, but it will be a comfort to
me in death that to my latest breath
I shall have labored in her service.”
Charitable committees abroad and
at home, mostly under church
superintendence, sent food, money,
and clothing, books, papers, games,
etc., to the prisoners. Mgr. Mermillod’s
committee at Geneva, and
those of Lausanne and Bordeaux,
chiefly distinguished themselves;
but in this work religious fellowship
overcame national prejudice,
and the clergy and sisters of the
Catholic Rhineland cordially helped
their so-called enemies. They
vied with the French in ministering
to the prisoners in the several cities
where the latter were confined; but
not only they, for there were numberless
Germans, both civil and
military, who behaved generously,
kindly, and delicately towards the
prisoners.

We have already mentioned the
terrible custom of choosing at random
hostages or victims in reprisal
for the acts of some unknown men.
This took place once at Les Horties,
a village where, despite the
Prussian sentries, two hot-headed
youths succeeded in picking off
three German soldiers. The shots
were returned, but the agile youths
got away unscathed. A detachment
was sent forthwith into the
village, with orders to seize the
first six men they happened to
meet. This was done, the hostages
guarded by the Prussians, and the
mayor given till eleven o’clock the
next morning to give up the real
offenders, under penalty, if it proved
impossible, of seeing the six
men shot. Those who had fired on
the Prussians were strangers, who
hovered constantly on the outskirts
.pn +1
of the enemy, accomplishing, most
likely, some vow of vengeance for
a wrong done by soldiers to some
near and dear to them. There were
many such. Heaven forgive them!
for they brought untold sorrow on
the heads of families like their own,
whose death they were so blindly
trying to revenge. It was out of
the mayor’s power to give up the
culprits, and no prayers or tears
made any impression on the Prussian
officer in command. The women’s
lamentations were terrible;
the men’s despair appalling. One
of them, a widower of forty with
five children, was all but out of his
mind, blaspheming horribly and
crying out: “Yes, yes, it was my
three-year-old Bernard who fired
on the wretches. Let them take
me and my five boys, and let
the rest go!” The priest, M. Gerd,
was unable to comfort him, and
slowly left the school-room where
the poor victims waited their fate.
Going to the headquarters of the
German captain, he said: “I believe
you only wish to shoot these
men as an example; therefore the
more prominent the victim, the
greater the lesson. It cannot matter
to you individually <i>who</i> is shot;
therefore I have come to beg of you
as a favor to be allowed to take the
place of one of these men, whose
death will leave five young children
fatherless and homeless. Both
he and I are innocent, but my
death will be more profitable to you
than even his.” “Very well,” said
the officer, and the <i>curé</i> was bound
with the rest of the men, and the
man he had saved left him in tears.
The night passed, and, like the martyrs
of Sébaste, whose fortitude was
strengthened by the young heathen
who joined them in the stead of
one of themselves who had faltered,
these unhappy men were transformed
by the priest’s words and
examples into unflinching heroes.
The hour came, and he walked at
their head, saying aloud the Office
of the Dead, the people kneeling
and sobbing as he passed, when the
condemned met a Prussian major
who was passing by chance with
some orders from the general. He
was struck by the sight of the
priest—an unusual one, even during
this “feast of horrors”—and inquired
into the matter, which seemed
less a thing of course to him
than it had to the captain. He
countermanded the order and referred
the whole thing to the general,
who called the <i>curé</i> before him.
It ended in the former saying that
he was unable to make an exception
in any one’s favor, but that for <i>his</i>
sake he would pardon every one
of the hostages, and, when the
priest had left, he turned to his officers
and said energetically: “If
all Frenchmen were like that plain
parish priest, we should not have
long to stay on this side of the
Rhine.”

But here is another story, very
like this one and more tragic, which
has not come within Ambert’s
knowledge, and to which we are
indebted to an English novelist,
who, vouching for its truth, has
worked it into a recent tale.
Neither name nor place is given,
but it runs thus: The same thing
happened as at Les Horties, and
a certain number—I forget how
many—male inhabitants were condemned,
all fathers of families.
After vain appeals for mercy from
the priest, the mayor, the old men,
and the women, the former called
all his people into the church,
which had been pillaged and half
burnt some time before. He went
into the pulpit and held up a common
black cross; it was the only
.pn +1
ornament or symbol left of the simple
village church treasury.

“My children,” he said in a
voice trembling with sobs, “you
know what has happened, and how
many hearths are going to be left
desolate. Here, in God, in Christ,
is our only comfort and our only
strength. I have no ties but such
as bind me to each one of you
equally. I have but one life to
give, but I will gladly take the
place of one of these fathers of
families, and trust to God to protect
you when I am gone. Now,
if any of you feel that God will
give you grace to die in the stead
of any other of your brethren, say
so, and God bless you!” He knelt
and bent his head on his clasped
hands in prayer; silence, only broken
by suppressed sobbing, filled
the church. The women were in
agonies of weeping; the men’s
faces worked as if in some mighty
struggle. Presently one young
man rose up and said: “Father, I
will follow you; I have neither
wife nor children. I will take such
a one’s place.” And then rose another
youth, giving up all his hopes
of the future for the sake of another
of the victims; and the women
crowded round them, blessing
them, crying over them, pressing
their hands, and calling them
heroes and deliverers. Those for
whom no substitutes had appeared
caught the high spirit of the occasion,
and bore their fate like Christians
and men. No Providence
interposed in this case, and the
priest was allowed to consummate
his sacrifice. Such courage was
more than human.

The part taken by the sisters
of various orders in the scenes of
the war and the Commune was one
which neither France nor Germany
will ever forget. They shared every
danger to which the soldiers themselves
were liable, even that of
being shot in cold blood, which
was the fate of four sisters at
Soultz, near Colmar, on the Rhine.
They were found nursing the
wounded, and the Prussians accused
them of advising and encouraging
the inhabitants to resist.
There was no inquiry, no form, but
a few of the scum of the invading
army dragged the women away at
once, set them against a wall, and
shot them. During the retreat
after the battle of Reischoffen a
Sister of Charity made her way
among the disorganized troops, seeking
some one to help. Balls and
shells were whizzing past, and frightened
horses wildly galloping by. A
cry was heard as a man fell mortally
wounded, and the sister stopped,
knelt down, and began her work; but
hardly a minute after a ball struck
her and carried off both her legs. She
fell in a swoon by the soldier’s side.
M. Blandeau, who tells the story,
did not know her name; he only
says pointedly: “She was a Sister
of Charity.” An officer of the
French Army of the Rhine gives
an account of a Trinitarian nun,
Sister Clara, who the night of the
16th of August, 1870, after a bloody
battle, was tending the wounded in
a barn; they were in such pain as
not to be able to bear being carried
to a safer place, and all they cried
for was “Water, water!” Every
five minutes the nun went quietly
in and out, under the fire of the
enemy, to fetch as much water
as her scanty number of vessels
would hold; you would have thought
she was armor-plated, to judge by
her calm and smiling demeanor.
The next day began the dreary retreat
towards Metz; the wounded
were heaped on carts and wagons,
and there again was Sister Clara,
.pn +1
comforting, helping, encouraging
the men, giving water to one,
changing the position of another.
She left on the last cart, holding
against her breast the head of the
nearest wounded man; but not half
a mile further the column was
made prisoner by a detachment of
Uhlans, the ambulances cut off, and
in the <i>mêlée</i> a shot struck and killed
the sister, who was probably
buried by and among strangers.
At Forbach the superior of the
Sisters of Providence, whose house
was a hospital and asylum at all
times, was killed by a shell, and at
Metz no less than twenty-two Sisters
of Charity died either from wounds,
disease, or exhaustion in the service
of the soldiers. At Bicêtre,
during the siege of Paris, eleven
died of small-pox in one day, and a
request having been made for the
same number to supply their place,
thirty-two presented themselves at
once. At Pau, at Orleans, at
Mans, at Nevers, and in numberless
other cities, as well as in impromptu
hospitals, canvas towns, villages,
and battle-fields, the Little Sisters
of the Poor, the Sisters of Charity,
the Visitation Nuns, and other orders
too many to mention distinguished
themselves. Many sisters were
forced later on to accept the Legion
of Honor, but a far greater number
of those who deserved it did not live
to have it offered. At the siege
of Paris their courage seemed absolutely
superhuman. An officer
once met near Châlons, on the road
to Paris, a blind and wounded soldier
led by a Sister of Charity.
He was an old veteran from Africa,
without relations, of a terrible temper,
and with not much religion. The
Prussians had left him on the road,
finding him an encumbrance among
the prisoners. The sister found
him and undertook to lead him to
the <i>Invalides</i>, where, she said, he had
every right to claim a home. In
all weathers this strange couple
plodded along. She begged food
and shelter for him, and always
gave him the best; but he was fractious
and not very grateful. One
day the weather was a little finer,
and he heard a lark sing; he seemed
quite touched and happy. The
sister asked him to kneel down and
repeat the “Our Father” after her,
and he did not refuse. This was
the beginning of his conversion. But
the Sister now grew ambitious, and
wanted to restore his physical sight
to him as well as his spiritual; so
she said: “We will not go to the
<i>Invalides</i> after all, but I will take
you to the best surgeons and the
most famous oculists in Paris, and
beg them, for the love of God and
their country, to do their utmost to
cure you; and if God sees fit to let
them succeed, you will promise me
to be a good Christian as long as
you live, will you not?” Three
months later the soldier was as
hearty as ever and had recovered
his sight, while the sister had long
been at work in a country school;
but at Notre Dame des Victoires
may be often seen a veteran praying
on his knees before the grated
door of the shrine—praying for
his deliverer.

The Pontifical Zouaves formed a
volunteer regiment of their own during
the war, and fought like lions;
most of their members were the descendants
of old French families
whose sympathies are with the last
of the exiled Bourbons, and who,
while they reject the empire and
the republic equally, and keep out
of the way of office or active employment
of any kind, even to the
prejudice of their career and to the
point that many of their young men
are forced to make a life for themselves
.pn +1
in foreign service or by emigration,
yet are full of real love of
their country. The virtues of such
enthusiasts always come out in adversity,
while in prosperity their
attitude of aloofness may seem rather
childish. In the last war they
fought nobly. Plenty of Breton
peasants joined them; they have
nearly the same traditions and fully
the same faith; in fact, they have
long been natural allies.

The incidents of the Commune—a
period so much more terrible
and shameful than that of the war—have
been so often and fully described
that we will not add much
to this sketch by going over the
fearfully familiar subject. Every
one knows the phase of rabid feeling
which came uppermost among
the Communists: the hatred of God,
religion, and priests—even a more
rabid feeling than that entertained
towards owners of property. The
clergy were thus forced to be prominent
in that national delirium: the
chief victims were ecclesiastics. In
Paris and other places it has been
noticed that a certain class of lazy,
good-for-nothing men live from
hand to mouth around the barracks
and the churches, living on the
alms of soldiers and priests, inventing
excuses to account for their
indolence, cheating and lying and
taking ravenously all they can get.
When a revolution comes, these men
become denunciators, assassins, and
leaders. It is they who cry the loudest
against the army and the priesthood—the
“butchers” of Versailles
and the “hypocrites” in cassocks.
Raoul Rigault spoke their sentiments
when he said to the porter
of M. Duguerry’s house (the famous
parish priest of La Madeleine,
shot with Archbishop Darboy at La
Roquette): “God! you fool!” (the
man had exclaimed, as is the custom,
innocently meant, in France, '<i>O mon
Dieu!</i>') “Hold your tongue; how
dare you speak of God! Our revolution
is against your God, your
religion, and your priests. We will
sweep all that rubbish away!” And,
by way of contrast to this plain
confession of faith, here are the
words of M. Duguerry in prison
to his biographer, the Baron de
Saint-Amand: “My dear friend, if I
knew that my death would be of
any use to the cause of religion, I
should kneel down and beg them
to shoot me.” But it is not necessary
to multiply quotations to show
the intense hatred of the Commune
towards religion and its ministers.
Holy Week in 1871 was indeed
the <i>Passion</i> Week of many of the
latter. The devilish conduct of
many women recalled the worst excesses
of the Reign of Terror. A
woman with a military cap on rode
at the head of the escort of the hostages,
three of them Jesuit Fathers,
who were taken from La Roquette
to Belleville to be shot. She swore
and yelled and gave orders, insulting
the priests especially. On the
Boulevards, as the condemned passed,
riots took place, and disorderly
crowds nearly killed the prisoners
in their impatience. Women again
were prominent, brandishing guns,
knives, and pistols, throwing bloody
mud on the priests, and blaspheming
as badly as any man; it would
have been safer to run the gauntlet
of a crowd of maniacs let loose
from the asylum. Mgr. Surat was
killed in the streets on another occasion
by a young girl of sixteen,
who deliberately put a pistol to his
forehead. “Mercy, mademoiselle!”
cried the priest quickly; but with
an untranslatable slang play on his
words[#]—equivalent, say, to “You
.pn +1
shall have it hot and peppery,” or
some such phrase—she drew the
trigger and stretched him dead at
her feet. The Abbé Perny, in his
evidence before the council of war,
says: “I have lived among the savages
for twenty-five years, but I never
saw among them anything to equal
the hatred on those faces of men
and women as we passed them on
our way from Mazas to La Roquette.”[#]
Father Anatole de
Bengy, a Jesuit, was a remarkable
man who had been military chaplain
in the Crimea, and was volunteer
chaplain of the troops during
the last war till the siege, when he
attached himself to the Eighth Ambulance.
He had a singular power
of commanding the love, obedience,
and confidence of others; he was
brave and good-tempered, and such
a thorough soldier that Marshal
Bosquet said of him: “Upon my
word, if there are many Jesuits of
that kind, <i>I</i> say hurrah for the Jesuits!”
His letters are full of
pleasantry and life. He tells his
friends how he helps “our poor
soldiers,” and jokes about his
tramps with “his bundle on his
back,” which phrase, he says, “always
rouses a certain pity in the
listener; but indeed, my dear Aymard,
the bundle (<i>le sac</i>) does not
deserve its bad name: it urges the
body forward, and its inconveniences
are fully made up for by the
advantages it gives rise to. Some
thinker should undertake the Praise
of the Bundle, and rehabilitate it
in the eyes of pilgrims.” The
words of this manly and brave
priest at the funeral of Commander
de Dampierre would serve as his
own eulogy: “The fountain-head
of duty is in the three world-famous
words, <i>God wills it</i>.” When
his name was called at La Roquette,
on the list of condemned,
the Communist official stumbled
over it, and Père de Bengy stepped
briskly forward, saying: “I know
my name is on the list—Bengy;
here I am.” M. Crépin, a shoe-maker,
who was condemned, but
saved by the entrance of the
troops, saw the butchery of Belleville,
and in his evidence said:
“Let no one speak ill of the clergy
before me again! I have seen them
at home now; I know them by experience;
I have witnessed their
courage and been comforted by
their words.”

.fn #
<i>Tu l’auras maigre et non pas gras</i> (<i>grasse—grâce</i>).
.fn-

.fn #
At Ménilmontant a woman named Lefêvre
proposed, amid cheers and bravos, to undermine the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, fill it as full as it would
hold with priests and nuns, and blow it up. At a club-meeting
another woman—Leblanc—cried: “We
must flay the priests alive and make barricades with
their carcasses”; and at Trinity Church a woman
argued thus on the existence of God: “Religion is
a farce got up by men, and there is no God; ...
if there were, he would not let me speak so. Therefore
he is a coward, and no God....” And there
were other and even more revolting things said and
done.
.fn-

The Dominicans of Arcueil
transformed their school into an
ambulance during the siege, and
Père Bengy happened to be chosen
chaplain. But the Commune was
to elicit greater sacrifices. The
monks might have left, but did not,
and reopened their hospital for
the wounded wild beasts, whose
curses sounded upon their watchers
even from their sick-beds. The
Geneva flag was hoisted, and the
Sisters of St. Martha acted as domestic
servants, besides many other
women and girls. There were
twenty wounded in the hospital on
the 19th of May, 1871, when the
Commune arrested the inmates of
the house, thirty-eight persons—priests,
lay brothers, tradesmen and
servants in their employment, some
of them foreigners, nuns, married
women and widows, two young
girls, and a child of eight years old,
daughter of the tailor, who was
.pn +1
afterwards shot with the priests.
The latter were, with a devilish
show of mercy, offered their liberty
if they would take arms against the
Versailles troops, and, when they
refused, they were condemned.
Their death took place a few days
later, and the shooting was not done
with military precision, but bunglingly,
so that the victims were rather
butchered than shot. After
the bodies had ceased to breathe
they were savagely mutilated, the
heads and larger bones hacked with
axes, and the flesh pierced with
bayonets. Some of the priests
managed to escape in the crowd
and smoke, all of them wounded,
however; and one was saved by a
woman who hurriedly threw her
husband’s clothes to him. According
to the saying of a National
Guard who escorted the Belleville
victims to their death, and who, on
being asked by a passer-by, “Where
are they taking those men to?”
answered gravely, “To heaven,”
the road these priests walked was
truly the “narrow road that leadeth
to salvation.”

Surely, if any class of French
citizens did their duty in troublous
times and deserve well of their
country, it is the clergy.
.sp 4
.h3 id=tudor
DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.” | PART II.
.sp 2
We said, in our last article,[#] that
the Catholic reader would find this
second play much more painful
than the first. We are sure, too,
that the non-Catholic reader will
deem it inferior in point of interest.
Yet we do not agree with the London
<i>Spectator</i> that there is an “artistic
chasm” between the two plays.
At any rate, whatever constructive
defects are to be found in the present
performance, there is no falling
off in dramatic power.

.fn #
<sc>The Catholic World</sc>, March, 1877, p. 777.
We regret to be informed by the publisher that
this really great drama is now out of print.
.fn-

The play is preluded by an “Introductory
Scene,” in which Mary
is discovered prostrate on the tomb
of Jane Grey. This does not at all
surprise us after the remorse we
have witnessed in the last scene of
the preceding play. Holding herself
criminally responsible for the
execution of her cousin, it was natural
for her to perform “penances
severer than the Church prescribes.”
The gentle Fakenham—now Abbot
of Westminster—may well express
anxiety for his penitent.

.pm verse-start
                        “Pray God
Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken.
These tearful macerations of the spirit,
These fasts that chain all natural appetites,
Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone,
Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.”
.pm verse-end

While he is soliloquizing Gardiner
enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham
has requested the latter’s presence.

.pm verse-start
                  “Whate’er hath passed,
Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you.
Therefore we trust your coming may dispel
The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit;
Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.”
.pm verse-end

Elizabeth answers:

.pm verse-start
“You hope too much. Awakened jealousy
Preys on her, like the Egyptian’s asp.”
.pm verse-end

But she is mistaken; for presently
the queen, on recognizing the
“veiled mourner,” says tenderly:
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
                               “I part
The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee
<i>With the strong yearning of a blighted love</i>.
I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms—
And let me weep.”
.pm verse-end

The weeping revives Mary’s energy,
but that energy takes a shape
in which we see the old despair
combined with a new fanaticism.

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Elizabeth.</sc>     These mingling tears wash out
All venom from past sorrow—”

<sc>Queen.</sc>               “Not from mine!
Immedicable evil hath infected
The fount of life within me. I shall die
In premature decay; and fall aside
As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch.
I, like a mother by her dying babe,
Have closed the eyes of hope; and o’er my heart
Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.”
.pm verse-end

Then, suddenly apostrophizing
the “Eternal Majesty,” she appeals,
as one “hemmed in by dark conspiracies”
and “baited by schismatics,”
for “prescience to detect”
and “strength to control them”;
deeming herself, once more, “the
Lord’s Vicegerent,” to execute his
judgments.

.pm verse-start
“Fly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen:
And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote
The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope
And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth
Consuming impious men: even <i>till the Church,
Swinging her holy censer in the midst,
Shall stay the pestilence</i>, God’s wrath appeased!”
.pm verse-end

This is a fine allusion to the destruction
of the three schismatical
upstarts in the wilderness; and it
is surprising to see a Protestant author
attribute to Catholics so much
knowledge of the Bible. Nevertheless,
poor sinful mortals never
make a greater mistake than when
they fancy themselves ministers of
what they call the “justice” of
Him “whose thoughts are not as
our thoughts.”

Perhaps Fakenham was about to
make some such reply; for this
poet-created Mary Tudor—after
pausing, we suppose, to take breath—continues:

.pm verse-start
“Answer me not. I rise from this cold grave,
My penitential couch, with heart as frozen
As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending
As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”
.pm verse-end

Thus we are fully prepared for
anything she may do; yet, in fact,
she proves singularly innocuous.

The play opens with a discussion
between Gardiner and Fakenham
on the subject of the queen’s marriage.
Both are agreed that she
ought to marry, for the good of
State and Church; but either has
his eye on a very different candidate
for her hand. The abbot’s
candidate is Reginald Cardinal
Pole—a character to whom our
author does full justice as among
the loftiest of his time. Fakenham
thus describes him as a “student at
Padua”:

.pm verse-start
              “A nobler presence
Never embodied a more gracious soul:
Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge
Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.
<i>Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease,
It seemed incorporated with his substance;
And beamed forth, like the light that emanates
From a saint’s brow.</i>”
.pm verse-end

And again:

.pm verse-start
            “Oft have I watched him sitting
For hours, on some rude promontory’s edge,
Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained
With outspread palm, o’ershadowing his eyes.
And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered
In strange community with nature; mingling
With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean,
The rock, the forest—looking back defiance
Unto the elements: <i>as some lone column
Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud</i>.”
.pm verse-end

For the thought in these last six
lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to
Lord Byron, that poet “of Titan
birth”—who, indeed, would have
sat for the picture far better, we
imagine, than Pole; except that,
instead of “looking defiance at the
elements” (an attitude for which
we see no reason in Pole’s case
either), his face would have shown
ecstatic joy at “mingling with all
around.”

.pm verse-start
“Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted!”

(<i>Childe Harold</i>, canto iv.)
.pm verse-end

The way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham’s
candidate, and then introduces
his own, affords us an opportunity
.pn +1
of correcting the author’s
misconceptions of this prelate.
First, then, there is no proof whatever
that Gardiner was blood-thirsty,
or even severe. Had he been the
relentless persecutor he is popularly
represented, his own diocese of
Winchester would have become the
scene of numerous executions for
heresy; whereas, in fact, not one
such execution can be shown to
have taken place there. Neither,
again, is there any more evidence
that he egged on Mary to acts of
cruelty. If he did make the attempt,
he failed signally; for the
real Mary Tudor was personally
guiltless of a single act of intolerance
even. The only authentic
instance in which Gardiner played
the part of evil genius to the queen
was when he urged her to retain
the Royal Supremacy established
by her father—her title and authority
as head of the English Church—a
counsel which elicited the witty
reply: “Women, I have read in
Scripture, are forbidden to speak in
the church. Is it, then, fitting that
<i>your</i> church should have a dumb
head?” At the time of giving this
bad advice Gardiner belonged to
the anti-papal party—which, of
course, was therefore schismatical,
though nominally Catholic. And
this time-serving adhesion was the
one great sin of his life. He repented
of it some time before his
death, and publicly lamented it in
a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross,
preached on occasion of the reconciliation
of the kingdom with the
Holy See; nevertheless, the memory
of it so weighed upon his conscience
when he lay on his death-bed that
he asked to have the Passion of
Our Saviour read to him, and, when
the reader came to the denial of
Peter, said: “Stop! I, too, have denied
my Lord with Peter; but I
have not learned to weep bitterly
with Peter.”

We may here remark that, had
our author been acquainted with
the above facts of Gardiner’s history,
he would not have sacrificed
truth to poetic effect by making
him die suddenly after the burning
of Cranmer; nor, again, have put
into his mouth such an un-English
argument as this against Pole’s fitness
to share the throne with
Mary:

.pm verse-start
              “He is <i>but an Englishman</i>:
And ’tis an adage older than the hills
That prophets are not honored in their land.”
.pm verse-end

One so anxious, as Gardiner
must have been at that time, to
keep <i>foreign domination</i> out of England
could never have advocated
the marriage of his sovereign with
“Spanish Philip,” nor, indeed,
have been likely to call the latter’s
father

.pm verse-start
“That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,
Potent of captains, fortunate of men.”
.pm verse-end

But, of course, the poet stands
to his colors. Having selected
Gardiner for the villain <i>par excellence</i>,
he makes him welcome even
foreign domination in the person
of a bigoted prince, who, he knows,
will imbrue his hands in the blood
of heretics.

Philip does not come upon the
scene till the third Act; but the intervening
scenes form a prelude
to his advent.

First we have the queen in council
on the question of her marriage,
and particularly of the Spanish
prince’s suit. While asking Gardiner’s
advice she betrays her love
for Reginald, and is quickly crushed
into abandoning that hope by the
chancellor’s daring assurance that
her cousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly,
she yields reluctant assent
to the prayer of Philip’s ambassador.
Then, in the same scene,
.pn +1
follows a “patient hearing” of Ridley
and Latimer, whose contumacious
spirit is well shown by the
dramatist. Mary treats them with
great forbearance, and leaves them
to ponder what she has said. The
closing passage of this scene is
noteworthy. Latimer boasts:

.pm verse-start
                 “O queen! that day is past
When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests.
Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck.
Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough
The fruit of knowledge.”
.pm verse-end

Mary’s reply is of surprising force
and beauty:

.pm verse-start
                        “Ah, sirs, have a care!
The tree of knowledge was an evil thing,
<i>With root in hell, and fruitage unto death</i>.
But in the self-same garden likewise grew
Another mystery, the tree of life.
This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time:
And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we,
<i>Condemned to cultivate what first we stole,
Must tend the second tree with watchful love,
Or perish by the poison of the first</i>.”
.pm verse-end

The remaining scene of this Act
and the opening scene of the next
are taken up chiefly with the disturbance
occasioned by the approaching
nuptials. Underhill, the
“Hot-Gospeller,” is introduced, together
with riotous citizens and the
antagonists Sandys and Weston.
Underhill is an honest fellow, and
loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist
he becomes at the play’s close.
Though the rioters are in the minority,
the rebellion becomes strong
enough to attack Whitehall Palace,
where Mary is seen at the opening
of the second Act. Her masculine
valor is here displayed. First she
leans from the window to encourage
her soldiers, then actually sallies
forth to head them in person, and
wins the day by thus risking her
life. In the second scene Underhill
excites the indignation of Sandys
by his chivalrous defence of
the queen not only as the one

.pm verse-start
“Whom the Lord gives to rule o’er Israel,”
.pm verse-end

but for her clemency.

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Underhill.</sc> <i>The queen is not well served</i>.
    You heard yourself
How, leaning from the Holbein gallery,
Where she so long stood target to your shafts,
She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake
Peace to the suppliant throng.”

“<sc>Sandys.</sc>                    Yet your fierce captains
Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves,
Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats;
Or at their own doors summarily hang them.”
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Underhill.</sc> Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum
If measured by domestic pangs, yet <i>small
If balanced by the evil of their plots</i>:
Small if contrasted with the precedents
Of former feuds. In Henry’s time, they say,
Full seventy thousand their viaticum
Had from the hangman.”
.pm verse-end

But our author does more than
make Underhill her apologist. He
seems anxious, every now and then,
to remind us that he privately
thinks much better of his heroine
than the history he has read allows
him to represent. He sets off the
gentler side of her nature in strong
contrast to the vindictive, and, indeed,
attributes the latter to inherited
qualities for which she is not
responsible. Accordingly, in the
third and fourth scenes of the second
Act Mary’s generous forgivingness,
and especially to Elizabeth, shines
out gloriously.

Count Egmont, Philip’s envoy,
has placed upon her finger his master’s
betrothal ring, when Renaud,
the Spanish ambassador, strikes in
with:

.pm verse-start
                            “Permit me
To be so bold as to suggest ’twere prudent
His Grace delayed till treason be put down.
<i>Too many prisoners your Grace releases</i>.

<sc>Queen.</sc> It was the custom of my forefathers
To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
<sc>Renaud.</sc>                Pardon me: there may be
Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back
Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come
While criminals remain unjustified?
<i>Your sister waits her trial.</i>

<sc>Gardiner.</sc>                      Let me speak.
While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety
For England, for the Church.”
.pm verse-end

Here Bridges, Lieutenant of the
Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Bridges.</sc> Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this,
Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant
Commands me yield the princess—to be dealt with
As sentence shall direct.

<sc>Queen.</sc>                    O thou good servant!
Thy queen, on her heart’s knees, thanks and rewards thee.
Whose is this deed? By God’s death, answer me!
Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing,
If thou hast done it.

<sc>Gardiner.</sc>             Let me see the paper.
A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me,
I had no hand in it.      [<i>He tears the warrant.</i>

<sc>Queen.</sc>                  <i>Inhuman hounds!
That worry your poor victim ere you slay it.</i>
But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner!
Too much already hath been said: your tongues
Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you,
Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth
Secure my sister. You have known and loved her.
You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.”
.pm verse-end

Thus foiled in their design, Renaud
and Gardiner pretend, of
course, that they did not for a moment
mean the death of the princess,
but only her removal; and the
Spaniard goes on to explain that
this “removal” was to be effected
“by a bridegroom’s sweet compulsion”—mentioning
Philibert of Savoy
as a suitor—and then, finding
that offer contemptuously rejected,
suggests “the kind keeping of the
Hungarian queen.”

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Queen.</sc>            Be content, sir.
<i>My sister hath but one friend in this council—
Myself</i>, companion of her youth. <i>It may be
She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I,
Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her
By death or exile.</i> You are malcontent.
Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.”
.pm verse-end

In the following scene, where
Mary and Elizabeth have it all to
themselves, the generosity of the
former is the more touching by
reason of her reproaches, which
Elizabeth can only answer by acting
a part which such a dissembler
could very easily feign. Mary
shows strong grounds for suspecting
her loyalty, but nobly acquits
her and replaces on her finger the
ring which was the pledge of love
between them, saying:

.pm verse-start
“Or innocent or guilty, I forgive you.”
.pm verse-end

We regret that space does not allow
us to transcribe this scene in
full.

We pass to the third Act, which
introduces the two best-drawn
characters of the play—Philip and
Reginald Pole.

In these two men the author has
illustrated—perhaps unconsciously—the
antipodal extremes of the moral
results of the Catholic religion.
In Pole we see a character perfectly
Christlike in its mixture of majesty
with gentleness; in Philip
one who has degraded faith into
superstition, and made doctrines
and means of grace the instruments
of selfishness and passion.
The greater the good in a system,
the greater the evil into which it
may be perverted. The amiable
Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the
previous scene, his mind about the
Spaniard’s portrait:

.pm verse-start
                   “A moody man,
Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal:
For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,
Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.
<i>I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse,
Than such a man, whose hell is in himself.</i>
He is a tree of death.”
.pm verse-end

Gardiner may well wince as he
replies:

.pm verse-start
          “You have a caustic brush:
The canvas burns beneath it.”
.pm verse-end

Yet poor Queen Mary fondly
looks forward to the coming of her
affianced as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite
metaphor)

.pm verse-start
         “the rainbow of her future years—
Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.”
.pm verse-end

Neither does she betray any foreboding
in consequence of the storm
that ushers in her wedding-day.
The bridegroom, on the contrary,
peevishly exclaims:

.pm verse-start
“A sorry day for our solemnities!
I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen,
Most holy James of Compostella!”
.pm verse-end
.pn +1

<i>He</i> does not see in this conjugal
union

.pm verse-start
“The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.”
.pm verse-end

The “omen” is not unfelt,
though, by some of the spectators,
particularly when Doctor Sandys
gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene
is simple enough. The
queen says, very prettily, when
Philip offers a diamond ring:

.pm verse-start
                “Nay, my lord:
I would be wed, like any other maiden,
With the plain hoop of gold.”
.pm verse-end

It is the remaining half of the play
which makes the whole so inferior
to the first play. Not that, as we
have said, there is any deficiency
of dramatic power. Philip and the
cardinal are masterfully handled.
Full justice, too, is done—from the
author’s stand-point—to the characters
of Gardiner, Cranmer, and
the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs
the entire picture; and the
glaring historical untruth of much
of it is no relief to Catholic eyes.

Philip and Pole clash instantly.
The Spaniard has a presentiment
of this at the moment when Sir
John Gage announces

.pm verse-start
“The cardinal legate’s boat hath touched the beach.

<sc>Queen.</sc> The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin!
Go, my lord chamberlain—go, Sir John Gage,
And bear our greetings to his Eminence.
Let his legantine cross be borne before him;
And all appliances of holy state
Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king,
And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.

<sc>Philip.</sc> You are right gracious to the cardinal.
In Spain we condescend less.

<sc>Queen.</sc>                        Ah! you’ll love him,
As I do, when familiarly you know him.

<sc>Philip.</sc>   I somewhat doubt it.”
.pm verse-end

In the next scene, when the cardinal
has congratulated the queen
on the return of England to the
faith—telling the nation:

.pm verse-start
                          “Be sure
The light devolving from great Gregory
Still shines from Peter’s chair. Who turns from it
Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams”—
.pm verse-end

and Mary has joyfully responded:

.pm verse-start
“Here stand we without question, king and queen;
And, with our Parliament, implore the pope
For reconciliation. Take this missive:
It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!”—
.pm verse-end

Philip interjects:

.pm verse-start
“Your Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees—
Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.”
.pm verse-end

No wonder the queen faints as
the cardinal blesses her.

Philip, having thus early begun
with insolence, loses no time in
showing the mixture of brute and
devil that he is. He threatens to
leave England because his sanguinary
counsels are not taken; whereupon
we are rejoiced to see the author
make Mary as well as Pole
defend the policy of “free discussion.”
Of course Gardiner supports
Philip eagerly. Presently—so
outrageous is Philip’s conduct to
his wife—the cardinal’s indignation
can contain itself no longer, and
his dignified remonstrance stings
the king into exclaiming:

.pm verse-start
“Were I a basilisk, I’d look thee dead!”
.pm verse-end

Gardiner urges Pole to retire;
but the hero answers:

.pm verse-start
              “Not so. My heart is strong:
And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need
Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb,
I shrink not from the combat. <i>He who carries
His cross, a daily burden, well may stand
In front of any giant of the ring
Who boasts he can move spheres.</i>”
.pm verse-end

And again he warns the monster:

.pm verse-start
                    “Ay: you are great
Above us by your station, as the vulture
Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?
The arrow makes a pathway in the air:
<i>The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant</i>,
<i>And from the vale quench his despotic eye</i>.”
.pm verse-end

—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.

We find a profound study in
Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly
in its persistence. How
she could feel toward such a man
anything beyond wife-like duty—she,
too, who had loved Reginald
Pole from her childhood—is mysterious
indeed. It will doubtless
be said that the poet intends this
.pn +1
new love for a part of her madness—like
her passion for the worthless
Courtenaye: her craving for love
being such as to invest any spouse
with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then,
again, the treatment Pole receives
at Philip’s hands, and his sublime
bearing under it, ought to have the
result of alienating her affections
from the Spaniard even more than
the latter’s behavior to herself.
Hear her cry, one moment:

.pm verse-start
                      “Poor heart!
Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated!
Witnessed—by him!—by Pole! O Reginald!
Avenged!”
.pm verse-end

And the next, see her so overjoyed
by an usher announcing “the
king” that she springs up from the
suppliant posture in which she has
just been praying

.pm verse-start
                      “that even as the thief
On the third cross I may have peace in heaven”—
.pm verse-end

springs up, and exclaims wildly:

.pm verse-start
              “The king! King Philip!
O speed him hither! Stay: here’s for thy news—
A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.”
.pm verse-end

And again, though his Majesty
enters “moodily,” she can actually
greet him thus:

.pm verse-start
“O Philip. Philip! art thou come to me?
<i>And shall there not now be an end of weeping?</i>
I was thinking of thee—whom else think I of?
I talked of thee—of whom is all my talking?
But thou art here again: <i>and my poor heart,
Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars,
To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom</i>.
Speak—speak—<i>my soul</i>! and give me peace.”
.pm verse-end

Verily, this <i>is</i> madness! Who
has ever seen so extraordinary a
picture of woman before? Has
not the poet drawn something impossible?
Not at all. He simply
displays, we think, an unusual
knowledge of the feminine heart.
A much less acquaintance with that
organ should prevent surprise at
any phenomena it may exhibit—particularly
in the shape of undeserved
love or unreasoning constancy.

Of course the poor woman’s
fondness only irritates her lord, instead
of appeasing him; so he tells
her bluntly what he has come for—to
deliver his ultimatum; which is,
first, the removal of the legate;
and, secondly, the death of the
heretical prelates. Of his feeling
towards the cardinal he says:

.pm verse-start
“Call it not hatred, but antipathy:
Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks,
Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it:
That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror
When we approach. I know he cannot harm me;
<i>And have small doubt he would not if he could</i>.
But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him,
As when one strokes a cat’s hair ’gainst the grain.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
                          Odious is his garb
Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands;
<i>That beard down-streaming like the chisel’d locks
Of Moses from the hand of Angelo</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Like a gleam of sunshine, for a
moment, comes a happy description
of a visit from Elizabeth to the
queen. Underhill is the narrator.
It is in the ninth scene of this too
long third Act.

.pm verse-start
                      “Her royal barge
Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around
An awning of green satin, richly broidered
With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one
Beneath this canopy reclined in state,
Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman.
Her royal sister on the bowery shore
Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles;
Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow.
With hospitable care, and love, she led
Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves
And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold
And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought
With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates.
The music they so love breathed in their ears
Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn
Rippled along the wave with soberer ray,
The princess stept once more into her barge,
And floated down the current like a swan.”
.pm verse-end

Yet one more quotation from this
Act; for we shall have but little to
cite from Acts fourth and fifth.
The cardinal, after arguing with
Gardiner against the severe measures
that are being taken under his
and Bonner’s supervision, and defending
the queen from the charge
of approval—her consent having
been forced, and things of which
she was ignorant done in her name—finds
.pn +1
relief in conversing with
Fakenham, whose virtues he thoroughly
appreciates. The latter
speaks of his friend’s failing
strength; and Pole, at a loss to account
for it, says he has “heard
of vampire poisons,” but instantly
suppresses the suspicion. They
have been up all night, apparently.

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Cardinal.</sc>             A sudden sunburst!—Lo!
God’s Image in our heart is as yon orb
Unto the universe; <i>the eye of nature,
Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues</i>;
Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence
Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes.
At times that Image walks through spheres remote;
Unobvious to the largely wandering eye:
Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul:
Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul,
Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house.
<i>But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves;
And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak
Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed
So palpably to meet Divinity,
That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God.</i>”
.pm verse-end

In the fourth Act we have, first,
the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived
by Philip and Gardiner.
The queen refuses to let him go;
but while, in obedience to her, he
remains in England, he resigns his
legateship in submission to the interdict.
Then comes the picture-scene,
which is admirably contrived.
The poor queen stops before
Philip’s picture and talks to it as if
it were a shrine. The original enters
and brutally disenchants his
worshipper. After a bitter interview,
in which Mary accuses him
of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard
takes his departure, answering her
“Begone!” with a sudden “For
ever!”

.pm verse-start
“<sc>Queen</sc> (<i>alone</i>).       I submit to God’s decree.
Was it for this my maiden liberty
Was yielded?—to be spurned, despised, and still
Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame!
      [<i>She approaches the picture of Philip.</i>
Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy,
And is my torture! Back!—See, I have rent you,
False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame!
I wrench thee forth—I look on thee no more!
And thus—and thus—      [<i>she tears up the picture</i>]
I scatter thee from out
The desecrated temple of my heart!      [<i>A pause.</i>
My brain is hot—this swoln heart chokes my throat
Yet I am better thus than self-deceived.
Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife!
<i>I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!</i>”
.pm verse-end

Next follows the trial of Ridley
and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present,
and disputes, but is not on
trial. The contrast between Gardiner
and Pole is admirable. Mary,
too, is represented as sedulously
just. Ridley and Latimer speak,
of course, as if perfectly conscientious
and worthy of martyrdom, but
make no attempt to disprove the
principle of submission to authority,
insisting solely on their own infallibility.
The cardinal is at last
compelled to say of them:

.pm verse-start
                “This is very grievous!
Madam, so please you, these be heated men,
Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”
.pm verse-end

He has better hopes of Cranmer;
but his gentle earnestness is lost
upon him no less.

Here be it remembered that it
was the secular, and not the ecclesiastical,
arm which inflicted the
death-penalty for obdurate heresy.
This penalty was the law in those
days—days when every kind of felony
was more severely punished
than now. Whatever we moderns
may think of this law, we must not
forget that heresy is the greatest
and most pernicious of crimes; and,
again, that it was only formal and
aggressive heresy that got itself
arraigned and condemned. Moreover,
what made the civil power so
severe upon it was the fact that it
was always coupled with sedition
and treason.

But before we close our remarks
upon the executions in Mary’s
reign, let us look for a moment on
the beautiful scene which intervenes
between the one we have been examining
and the prison-scene at
Oxford—the last of the fourth Act.

Mary and Reginald are closeted
together. The holy priest seeks to
comfort his cousin.
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
                    “Poor soul!
Be to yourself more charitable. Think
That One there is who answers for your faults
And multiplies your merits.

<sc>Queen.</sc>           Hope rests there:
Or I were mad.

<sc>Cardinal.</sc>     All men are born to suffer.
What are the consolations of the Scripture,
The fruit of exhortation and of prayer,
If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.

<sc>Queen.</sc> <i>My web of life was woven with the nettle.</i>
My very triumphs were bedewed with tears.
What now is left?

<sc>Cardinal.</sc>     Religion. <i>As the sunbow
Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud
A shape of glory</i>, in thy path she stands
A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem!
Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life
Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.

<sc>Queen.</sc> Thanks be to God! time works while
we grieve on.
<i>Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs,
The sad quiescence of desponding thought</i>.
Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud,
And so was comforted. Remember, also,
In weeping I can pray. Should I not?

<sc>Cardinal.</sc>                               Yea.
Pray with thanksgiving: ’tis the sum of duty.”
.pm verse-end

The sublimity of this passage
needs no comment. The rest of
the scene is equally touching.
Mary speaks for an instant of
Philip. She is still obliged to say:

.pm verse-start
“Whene’er I turn my thoughts to God, one image
Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer
A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.

<sc>Cardinal.</sc> To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn
The dead, is sinful.

<sc>Queen.</sc>       Speak no more of him.
Thoughts holier be my guide.”
.pm verse-end

Then Reginald teaches her what it is

.pm verse-start
“To stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.”
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
<i>The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness</i>:
And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes—
Hidden with God.”
.pm verse-end

She offers him the archbishopric
of Canterbury. He answers musingly:

.pm verse-start
                “He who hath stood
Upon the first step of the papal throne,
And vacant left the Vatican, may look
With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.”
.pm verse-end

Then he accepts, and presently
the queen observes:

.pm verse-start
“I have long thought it strange that you refused
The greater honor though the heavier burden:
The proffered crown of Rome.

<sc>Cardinal</sc> [<i>after much agitation</i>]. Look not alarmed.       [<i>A pause.</i>
You touch the mind’s immedicable wound.
O God! that I had died before I knew thee!
Pardon me—pardon me!

<sc>Queen.</sc>                   We both need pardon.
Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!

<sc>Cardinal.</sc> Fear not. <i>Henceforth we gaze upon each other,
As the two Cherubim upon the Ark—
The living God between.</i>

<sc>Queen.</sc>                   Then take my hand.
It will be colder soon. May God be with you!”
.pm verse-end

This “immedicable wound” is the
poet’s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos
of the scene is exquisite.

The prison-scene at Oxford gives
us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer
taking leave of Cranmer; then
Cranmer watching their execution
from the window, and Gardiner,
unobserved, watching him. The
famous recantation number one
takes place; and the subsequent
despair of the wretch closes the
fourth Act.

The fifth Act we do not care to
analyze minutely, so much of it is
sickeningly untrue. Mary has become
fanatical again. Pole tells
her that “the poor, by thousands,
perish in the flames.” This is utterly
false. All the executions
under Mary’s government did not
amount to more than two hundred
and seventy-seven, and “from this
list of 'martyrs for the Gospel’ must
be excluded,” says a learned writer,
“the names of those who suffered
for political offences or other
crimes.” Dr. Maitland, the celebrated
librarian of Lambeth, in his
<i>Essays on Subjects connected with the
Reformation in England</i>, speaks of
“the bitter and provoking spirit of
some of those who were very active
and forward in promoting the progress
of the Reformation; the political
opinions which they held, and
the language in which they disseminated
them; the fierce personal attacks
which they made on those
whom they considered as enemies;
and, to say the least, the little care
which was taken by those who were
.pn +1
really actuated by religious motives,
and seeking a true reformation of
the Church, to shake off <i>a lewd, ungodly,
profane rabble</i>, who joined in
the cause of Protestantism, thinking
it, in their depraved imaginations, or
hoping to make it by their wicked
devices, the cause of liberty against
law, of the poor against the rich, of
the laity against the clergy, of the
people against their rulers.” From
this rabble, then, came the “poor”
who “perished in the flames.”

As to Oxford’s pretended “martyrs,”
Ridley and Latimer were inciters
of sedition and brought upon
themselves the vengeance of the
law; while Thomas Cranmer was,
without exception, the most unmitigated
miscreant in the whole disgraceful
business of what is called
the Reformation. Who will question
that he richly deserved the
stake after bringing to it so many
victims, in Henry’s reign, for denying
doctrines which he himself was
secretly denying at the time?
There are living Anglican writers
who rejoice in calling all these
boasted reformers a set of “unredeemed
villains.”

Of course, as we said in our review
of the first play, we acquit the
author of all conscious prejudice.
The last words he puts into his
heroine’s mouth—“Time unveils
Truth”—are an appeal to “the
avenger,” who will not fail to do
her justice yet. It was a noble
thought to make Underhill, the
Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist.
Oxford vaticinates:

.pm verse-start
                          “Awful queen!
Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge:
For they shall measure thee—

<sc>Underhill.</sc>             Let me speak, sir:
For I have known, and been protected by her,
When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not
That she was innocent of grave offence;
Nor aught done in her name extenuate.
But I insist upon her maiden mercies,
<i>In proof that cruelty was not her nature</i>.
She abrogated the tyrannic laws
Made by her father. She restored her subjects
To personal liberty; to judge and jury;
Inculcating impartiality.
Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness
Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor:
And fed the destitute: and they loved her.
<i>A worthy queen she had been if as little
Of cruelty had been done under her
As by her.</i> To equivocate she hated:
And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was
<i>In all things excellent while she pursued
Her own free inclination without fear</i>.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=nanette
NANETTE. | <i>A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV.</i>
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
A police report is scarcely the
place where one would look to find
an idyl—least of all a French police
report. But just as one comes
at times upon a shy violet nestling
in the dusty city ways, even in such
an unpromising quarter, and in the
records of a still more unpromising
time, did the present writer stumble
upon a veritable romance—

.pm verse-start
                      “Silly sooth
That dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.”
.pm verse-end

Let the reader judge if it be not
a genuine violet.

Of the many strange functions of
the Parisian police in the days
of the well-beloved Louis XV.—and
altogether most worthless of
his name—one of the strangest appears
to have been that of furnishing
for the amusement of the royal
circle regular reports, or rather
novelettes, of all episodes, striking
or romantic, that came under their
notice. The French have always
had a taste for the dramatic aspect
.pn +1
of the law, and to this day a <i>procès-verbal</i>
reads often like a <i>feuilleton</i>
of Ponson du Terrail. It may be
supposed that, in the narratives
which thus tickled the languid leisure
of Louis, a rigid adherence
to truth was not deemed essential
where a slight embellishment enhanced
the interest. But all had
probably a basis in fact, which one
is fain to hope was more than usually
broad in so innocent and touching
a history as that of Nanette
Lollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais
Royal.

In the year 1740 there dwelt in
the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an
honest, hard-working couple named
André Lollier and Marie Jeanne
Ladure, his wife; the former of
whom held a subordinate position
in the Bureau of Markets, while
the latter attended to their fish-stand.
Between them they earned
ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably,
had it not been for the
prodigious number of small mouths
that daily watered around that
savory and capacious vessel; and
when there came a sixteenth, it is
to be feared that honest André received
it rather ruefully and altogether
as a discord in the harmony
of existence—a blessing very much
in disguise. So despite the new-comer’s
beauty and precocity and countless
pretty baby ways, her aggrieved
parents were only too glad to accept
her godmother’s offer to take her
off their hands and to bring her up.
By that good lady—who seems to
have been really a most kind-hearted
person, although she <i>was</i> a beadle’s
widow—the little Nanette (so
the child had been named) was
carefully instructed in such branches
of learning as a young person of
her station was at that time expected
to know, and which, in truth,
were not very many. There is
little doubt that one young lady of
Vassar would have put the entire
faculty of St. Cyr to rout.

But Nanette was soon found to
possess a fine voice, and pains were
taken to cultivate it—so successfully
that when, at the mature age
of twelve, the youthful chorister
made her <i>début</i> in a Christmas anthem
at the parish church, everybody
was delighted. And when
during the following Holy Week
she sang a <i>Stabat</i> better than many
persons four times her age, everybody
said at once she was a prodigy.

Now, we all know what comes to
prodigies. The praises, pettings,
and presents this prodigy received
turned her small and not very wise
head. Good Mère Lollier wished
to make a fish-mongress of her;
mademoiselle spurned the proposal.
What! she, a genius, a beauty,
a divine voice, waste her life on
horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made
no objection, you will observe, to
dining on them when her mother
cooked them for her, but that was
quite a different matter.) She soil
her pretty fingers with scales, haggle
over herrings, or dicker about
dace? Perish the thought! Her
mother did it, to be sure, but then—her
mother was not a genius. (Do
young ladies nowadays ever reason
thus?) No; she would be a
flower-girl and sing her nosegays
into every buttonhole—or wherever
else they then wore their nosegays—in
Paris. The manners of the fish-market
even then lacked something
of the repose of Vere de Vere,
and Mère Lollier’s only answer to
this astounding proposal was a slap
and—we regret to say—a kick. She
was not aware that genius is not
to be kicked with impunity. She
.pn +1
soon discovered it to her sorrow;
for in her way she loved Nanette,
and kicked her, we may be sure,
only in kindness.

Shortly after this affront Nanette
disappeared, and from that moment
all trace of her was lost. Word
came to her parents from time to
time that she was well, but of her
whereabouts their most persistent
efforts could gain no tidings. Her
absence lasted three years; how or
where passed no one—we sniff the
touch of the embellisher here—could
ever discover, nor would she
herself divulge. At last one fine
morning comes a message to Mère
Lollier that her daughter is at the
convent of the Carmelites, and will
be handed over to them in person,
or to any priest who comes with an
order from them.

Beside herself with joy, Mère
Lollier, with just a hasty touch to
her cap—even a <i>Dame de la Halle</i>
is, outside of business, a woman—rushes
off to M. le Curé with the
great news. In those days M. le
Curé was the first applied to in
every emergency of joy or grief:
perhaps it would have been better
for Paris if the custom had not
been survived by others less wholesome.
The good priest lent a sympathetic
ear; for the piety and industry
of the Lolliers had made them
prime favorites with him, and he
had, besides, taken a lively interest in
the fate of his little chorister. A
<i>fiacre</i> is called at once, and the
<i>curé</i> and Mère Lollier, with her
eldest son, a strapping sergeant in
the French guards—not then such
pigmies as absinthe has left them
now—fly to the convent at such a
pace as only the promise of a fabulous
<i>pourboire</i> can extract from a
Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior
greets them in the convent
parlor and presently ushers in a
lovely young girl—what! a girl?—a
princess, to whom Mère Lollier
with difficulty represses an inclination
to courtesy, while M. le Curé
wipes his spectacles and the gaping
sergeant at once comes to a salute.
But the princess speedily puts an
end to their doubts by embracing
them all in turn with the liveliest
emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but
Nanette developed into such beauty
and grace and sprightliness as
many a princess might envy. Nor
is her moral nature less improved.
She is now as modest and docile as
before she was vain and headstrong;
only—she will still be a flower-girl.
And yet women are sometimes called
weak!

Before the young lady’s appearance
in the parlor the superior had
explained to her wondering auditors
how a strange lady the evening
before had brought Nanette to the
convent—“Hum!” says M. le Curé
dubiously, taking snuff—and on
leaving her had left at the same
time 20,000 francs for her dowry, if
she wished to become a religious—“Ha!”
says M. le Curé thoughtfully,
brushing away the snuff that
has fallen on his band. Then he
beams upon Nanette, rubbing his
hands encouragingly, while Mère
Lollier nods acquiescence and the
sergeant shifts to the other leg and
gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these
diverse blandishments, respectfully
but firmly declined to be a religious.
Her vocation was to be a flower-girl,
and a flower-girl she would be.

“’Tis the devil’s trade,” cries
the <i>curé</i>, quite out of patience.

“All roads lead to heaven, my
father,” answers Nanette mildly.

So a flower-girl she becomes;
and it must be confessed that, in
spite of Undine, beauty seems more
at home with the flowers than with
the fishes.
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
One bright morning in the summer
of 1756 the loungers under
the chestnuts which then adorned
the garden of the Palais Royal—that
forehanded and long-headed
(though, long as his head was, he
could not keep it long) personage,
Philippe Égalité, thought shops
would be more ornamental as well
as more useful, so he put the chestnuts
in his pocket and built that
splendid colonnade which is the
wonder and delight of the wandering
American—the loungers in the
shade of the Palais Royal chestnuts
were conscious of a new sensation.
Not that sensations were just then
going begging. By no means. One
or two royal gentlemen, by laying
their crowned heads together, had
already contrived that famous misunderstanding
which was to turn a
large part of three continents into
a shambles for the next seven years;
to cost the “well-beloved,” in Canada
and India, the brightest jewels
of his crown, and to make of Montcalm,
for losing one and his life with
it, a hero, and of Lally-Tollendal,
for having the bad taste to survive
the loss of the other, a traitor or a
martyr as you were for him or
against him. So often is it that for
precisely the same services a grateful
and discriminating country decrees
to one of her sons a monument,
to another a halter. Perhaps
there is not so much difference between
the two—to the dead men, at
least—as some folks imagine.

But the heroes we are to deal
with are by no means of the stuff
of martyrs, and fighting, beyond an
ornamental pass or two in the Bois
de Boulogne, they vote vulgar and
<i>bourgeois</i>. Here under the chestnut
blossoms is a sensation much
more to their taste. It is a new
flower-girl. But what a flower-girl!
Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la
Duchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in
silks and laces and jewels a marchioness
would give her head for
(marchionesses’ heads were rated
higher then than they came to be
before the century was over), with
a golden shell for her flower-basket,
lined with blue satin and suspended
by an embroidered scarf from
the daintiest waist in the world—a
flower-girl with the face of a seraph
and the figure of a sylph, with eyes
of liquid light and hair of woven
sunshine, with the foot of Cinderella
and a hand—a hand only less
perfect than that of Madame, which
your humble servant most respectfully
salutes.

News so important must be sent
post-haste to Versailles. A score
of noblemen sprang to the saddle
and rushed to lay their hearts and
their diamonds at the feet of this
strange paragon. But Nanette,
young as she was, could tell base
metal from good. The jewels she
took from her adorers with smiling
impartiality; the other sort of trinkets—sadly
battered by use, it must
be confessed, and not worth much
at any time—she rejected with equally
smiling disdain. Always gracious,
gay, and self-possessed, sparkling
with raillery and wit, she yet
maintained a maidenly reserve that
abashed the boldest license, and
her reputation grew even faster than
her fortune.

And the latter grew apace. She
became the rage. Her appearance
on the Palais Royal, followed at a
little distance by footmen in livery
and her maid, gathered about her
straightway all the gallants and wits
in Paris. Her basket was emptied
in a trice, and emptied again as
often as refilled by her servants.
It was deemed an honor to receive
.pn +1
a nosegay from her pretty fingers,
and more louis than half-franc
pieces repaid them.

Great ladies came to her <i>levées</i>—for
such they really were—and even
deigned to accept from the beautiful
flower-girl the gift of a rose or
a violet—gifts always sure to be recompensed
in noble fashion with
jewels or costly laces, rich silks or
pieces of plate. Within two years
Nanette had thus accumulated in
houses, lands, and rents an annual
income of forty thousand francs, besides
loading her kindred with presents.

Naturally, this circumstance did
not cool the ardor of the followers
whom her beauty had attracted.
One of these was particularly noticeable
for his assiduity. He was a
young man about twenty-two years
old, of distinguished air and handsome
features, tinged with that shadow
of melancholy thought to be
so irresistible to the feminine imagination.
His clothes, too, were in
his favor; for though irreproachably
neat and faultlessly cut, they had
plainly seen their best days. We
all know what a sly rogue Pity is,
and how untiringly he panders for
a certain nameless kinsman. Every
afternoon found the melancholy
young man at the garden awaiting
the flower-girl’s coming. On her
arrival he would advance, select a
flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange
a word, perhaps, and disappear till
the following day. Once he was
absent, and the fair florist’s brow
was clouded. In other words, Nanette
was extremely cross, and
many an unlucky <i>petit-maître</i> was
that day unmercifully snubbed for
presuming on previous condescension.
The garden trembled and
was immersed in gloom. But presently
the laggard made his appearance,
Nanette’s lovely face was
again wreathed in smiles, the garden
breathed freely once more, and
the <i>petit-maîtres</i> were astonished to
find their vapid pleasantries received
more graciously than ever. From
this remarkable circumstance the
sagacious reader will doubtless form
his own conclusion; and we do not
say that the sagacious reader will
be wrong.

In point of fact, we may as well
admit at once that Nanette, without
knowing it, was already in love
with this handsome, melancholy
stranger, of whom she knew nothing,
except that he was noble, since he
wore a sword. She would have
given half she was worth to know
even his name, but she dared not
ask it. As often as the question
trembled on her tongue she felt
herself blushing violently and unable,
for the life of her, to open her
lips. Her modesty had not been
educated away by a season in the
civilizing atmosphere of the court.

Chance at last befriended her.
One evening the brilliant Marquis
de Louvois, after talking awhile
with the unknown, came up to the
Count de la Châtre, who was seated
beside her, and said to him:

“This ass of a De Courtenaye puts
me out of all patience. The king
has asked why he does not come to
Versailles. I repeat to him his
majesty’s flattering question. Well!
it goes in one ear and out the
other. Can one so bury one’s self
in Paris?”

Think of that, good Americans,
before you die! In the year of
grace 1756 Paris was only a burying
place for Versailles! So that
1870 had a precedent.

“What else is he to do?” asks
the count. “It takes money to live
as we do, and his father, poor fellow,
left him nothing but a name, which,
although one of the first in France,
.pn +1
is rather a drawback than otherwise,
since it won’t permit him even to
marry for money anything less than
a princess; and rich princesses
like to get as well as to give.”

“True, true,” murmurs the compassionate
marquis. “I had forgotten.
More’s the pity; such a
good-looking fellow as he is—”

“And a connection of the royal
family.”

“Faith, the king is not over and
above kind to his cousins.” And
the gentlemen dismiss the royal
poor relation from their noble
minds as they would brush a grain
of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll
off, humming an aria from the latest
opera of the famous Favart, the
little Offenbach of his little day.
Forgotten art thou now, O famous
Favart! and thy immortal airs are
as dead as Julius Cæsar.

But not so easily did M. de
Courtenaye’s tribulations pass from
the mind of Nanette, who had lost
not a word of this conversation.
She thought of him all through a
wakeful night; she was still thinking
of him the next morning—having
arisen for that fond purpose
long before the household was stirring—when
she was startled by feeling
a kiss upon her arm. She
sprang up with a little cry of anger
and alarm; but her frown changed
to a smile when she recognized
the offender. It was Marcel, the
handsome Marcel, her favorite
brother, a year her senior, but so
like her they were often mistaken
for twins.

“O Marcel!” she cried, “how
you frightened me. How was one
to look for such gallantry from one’s
brother?”

“But if one is the brother of
Nanette?” says Marcel still more
gallantly.

Marcel has been in good company
and flatters himself he has
quite the <i>bel air</i>. As an apprentice
to M. Panckoucke to learn the
bookseller’s trade, wherein his sister,
when he got old enough, was to
set him up for himself, he had
many opportunities of seeing and
hearing the wits of the capital, not
without profit to mind and manners.
Indeed, he fairly considered himself
one of them already.

“Yes, my dear little sister,” he
added with a patronizing air, “you
are positively the talk of the town.
Go where I will—and you know I
go into the best circles,” he says
pompously, adjusting his ruffles as
he has seen the dandies do—“I hear
of nothing but the beautiful, the
witty Nanette. Why, it was only
the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the
ingenuous youth
did not deem it essential to state
that he had been sent in the honorable
though humble capacity of
“printer’s devil” with a bundle of
proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed,
of the <i>Contes Moraux</i>: the
dullest, surely—always excepting the
delightful, interminable romances
of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever
penned in the tongue
of Montaigne and Molière,) but his
sister understood his harmless vanity
and did not so much as smile—“at
M. de Marmontel’s with the
Duke de Nivernais, the Count de
Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the
Prince de Courtenaye.”

Nanette started slightly, but her
brother did not perceive it. It is
the way of brothers, and this brother,
besides, was for the moment rapt in
contemplation of the greatness reflected
upon him by association
with these great names. He fairly
grew an inch in stature as he rolled
them out, dwelling fondly on the
titles. It is something to have a
king speak to you, if only to ask you
.pn +1
to get out of the way. Marcel continued:

“The talk was all of you. M.
de Lauraguais, not knowing me to
be your near relation, presumed to
deny your wit and to question your
virtue.”

Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed
in a way that would have made the
slanderer uncomfortable had he
seen it.

“Insolent!” she murmured,
clenching her little fists.

“You may imagine how my blood
boiled,” went on Marcel. “I was
on the point of doing something
rash when M. de Courtenaye took
up the cudgels in your behalf. 'M. de
Lauraguais,’ he said with grave severity,
'is it possible that you, a gentleman,
can give currency to the lies
set afloat by baffled libertines or
malicious fools against the reputation
of a defenceless girl? My life
upon it, Nanette is as pure as she
is lovely; and were proof of her innocence
needed, I should ask none
better than these stories of lovers
whom no one has seen, or can even
name. Why, had Nanette a lover,
all Paris would ring with it in an
hour.’ The impassioned earnestness
of the prince made the company
smile; but M. Diderot, siding
with him, said he was sure you were
better than the best that was said
of you.”

Nanette’s eyes filled with tears.
Had the youthful pedant been less
intent on showing his familiarity
with fashionable life, he must have
had his suspicions aroused by her
agitation. As it was, he was not
even enlightened when Nanette,
suddenly flinging her arms about
his neck in a tender fury, kissed
him twice or thrice passionately.
He took the kisses complacently as
a guerdon for his story. Fraternal
obtuseness in such cases is simply
limitless. “By the way, Nanette,”
he added, “why wouldn’t it be a
good idea to thank the prince by
sending him some of your prettiest
flowers? I can take them to-morrow
with some books I am to convey
to him.”

“Nonsense!” says Nanette incredulously.
“I don’t believe you
even know where he lives.”

“Don’t know where he lives?”
cries Marcel indignantly. “Perhaps
you will tell me next I don’t
know where the Hôtel Carnavalet
is, or how to find the Rue Culture
Ste. Catherine? Don’t know where
he lives, indeed!” And Marcel flings
out of the room in a state of high
dudgeon that his acquaintance with
a great man should be doubted,
and, worst of all, by Nanette. We
are sorry to say he slammed the
door after him. The best of brothers
will do such things under
strong provocation. But Nanette
only smiled—the wily Nanette!
.sp 2
.h4
III.
.sp 2
The next morning, at his frugal
breakfast in a rather lofty apartment
of the Hôtel Carnavalet, the
Prince de Courtenaye read with
much amazement the following letter:

.pm letter-start
“<sc>My Dear Cousin</sc>: I am an old woman
and your near relation. I have long observed
with pain the poverty which keeps
you from assuming your proper station.
I have wealth, and not many years to
keep it. What is a burden to me will
be a help to you. Suffer me, then, from
my superfluity to relieve your necessity—I
claim it as the twofold privilege of
age and love—and accept as frankly as I
tender it the 25,000 francs which I enclose
to procure you an establishment
suited to your rank. On the first of
every month 4,000 francs will be forwarded
to you in addition.”
.pm letter-end

Some commonplaces of civility
ended this remarkable but not unpleasant
.pn +1
epistle—would that such a
one some celestial postman might
leave at the door of the present
writer, to whom documents of a far
different nature—but this is a painful
and unnecessary digression. Let
us continue. The prince read the
queer communication with conflicting
emotions, in which wonder
predominated. He was not aware
of any wealthy aunt or female relative
particularly prone to this sort
of furtive benevolence; but his connections
were legion, and women
were odd fish. Still, his honor seemed
to him to forbid his accepting a
fortune so acquired. But older and
wiser heads stifled, or at least silenced,
his scruples; and secretly resolving
to leave no stone unturned
to discover his mysterious benefactress,
and to return to her or to her
heirs every sou of the money, which
in his heart he accepted only as a
loan, he resigned himself to his
good-luck with tolerable cheerfulness.
Henceforth no more elegant
equipage was to be seen than the
Prince de Courtenaye’s. He became
the fashion; he was the life
and talk of every <i>salon</i>—as we
should say, the success of the season.
Nevertheless, he failed not to
go every afternoon to the garden of
the Palais Royal for his nosegay,
with this difference only: that he
now paid francs instead of sous.

A year sped away, spent by the
prince in buying nosegays and in
sharing the gayeties, though not the
dissipations, of the court; by Nanette
in continuing to perfect herself
secretly in all the feminine accomplishments
of her time, so that now, at
the age of nineteen, she was not only
peerless in beauty, but as cultivated
as Mme. de Sévigné and as learned
as Mme. Dacier—no, not as Mme.
Dacier—no mere mortal was ever
so learned as Mme. Dacier; but let
us say as Mme. de La Fayette, who
could set Father Rapin right in his
Latin and silence Ménage. Was
it for herself she underwent these
prodigious labors? It is not known
that she ever mentioned. But she
still sold nosegays and still reaped
a golden harvest.

One evening the Count de la
Châtre was again sitting beside her
when the Marquis de Louvois once
more accosted him.

“My dear fellow,” said he, “what
the mischief ails Pierre?” (he spoke
of De Courtenaye). “He must be
going mad. Have you heard his
latest freak? Mlle. de Craon, one
of our wealthiest heiresses, with a
royal dowry and a princely income,
is proposed to him, and what do you
think? He refuses her—positively
refuses. What bee is in his bonnet?”

“Love.”

“Love! Is it one of the Royal
Princesses, then?”

“I imagine not.”

“Who then? Some divinity of
the <i>coulisses</i>, I’ll wager.”

“Louvois,” said the count gravely,
“you wrong our friend. De
Courtenaye, as you know, abhors
vice, and I am much mistaken if
she whom he loves is not a virtuous
woman.”

Louvois shrugged his shoulders
as only a certain kind of Frenchman
can. Virtue was a word not
in his dictionary.

The next day the prince received
this note, the second from his unknown
relative:

.pm letter-start
“<sc>My Nephew</sc>: Why do you decline
to marry Mlle. de Craon, who unites all
that is illustrious in birth and splendid
in fortune? I will provide you with the
capital of the income I now allow you.
Accept also as a wedding-gift for your
intended the jewels I send herewith.

“If you consent, wear for eight days in
your buttonhole a carnation; if you refuse,
a rose.”
.pm letter-end
.pn +1

With the letter came a handsome
jewel-case containing a million of
francs in bills—it is well for the romancer
to be liberal in these matters—and
a magnificent parure of
diamonds of the purest water, valued
by the Tiffany of the time at 100,000
more.

That afternoon it was noticed in
the garden that Nanette was unusually
pale and silent. The Prince
de Courtenaye entered at his usual
hour; the nosegay in his buttonhole
bore neither pink nor rose. He
drew near the flower-girl, who offered
him a posy with a hand she
vainly tried to make steady. Like
his own, it had neither pink nor
rose.

The prince examined Nanette’s
offering attentively, smiled sadly,
stood for an instant in a musing attitude
twirling the bouquet in his
fingers, and then suddenly, as one
whose mind is made up:

“My child,” he said, “will you
make me the present of a rose?”

Nanette fainted.
.sp 2
.h4
IV.
.sp 2
When the flower-girl recovered
she found herself in her own room,
her family around her. But her
eyes sought in vain the one face
she most wished to see. Her mother
and sisters told her with prodigious
clamor and excitement, all
talking at once at the tops of their
voices, how she had fainted—“from
the heat,” the gentleman said.
“Yes, from the heat,” murmured
Nanette softly, closing her eyes—how
a great nobleman, the Prince
de Courtenaye, had raised her, and
how, without waiting for a carriage,
and rejecting all aid, he had borne
her in his arms to her house near
by.

Nanette listened with closed eyes
and a happy smile. All this was
balm to her poor, sorely-tried heart.
She even ventured to ask what had
become of the kind gentleman. He
had waited, they told her, to hear
the doctor’s report giving assurance
of her safety, and had then
gone away, invoking for her their
most zealous care. Presently the
prince’s valet came to inquire after
her health; but he himself did not
come. Nanette was wounded, but
she said nothing. Even pain in
such a cause was too sacred a thing
to be shared with another. Woman-like,
she hugged her grief as
though it were a treasure, and
smiled, without knowing why, at
the empty compliments of a crowd
of <i>petits-maîtres</i>, who, after the
fashion of the time, had rushed to
pay her their condolences, and who
ransacked Dorat for their vapid
homage. Each took the smile to
himself and redoubled his insipid
gallantries. But Nanette was too
much in love, if she had not been
too clever, to heed them. So she
contented herself and them by
smiling.

At heart she was happy, in spite
of the prince’s neglect. At least
he would not marry; so much was
secure. But the future: might he
not have surprised her secret—she
blushed as she thought it—and
would he seek to abuse his power?
No, she felt he was too noble for
that, and, come what might, she
would enjoy the present hour, the
happiest she had known. So in
vague, delicious hopes, and doubts
not less delicious; in fluttering fears
and half-formed, undefined resolves;
in pain that seemed to be pleasure
and pleasure whose sweetest element
was pain—all the exquisite
<i>mélange</i> of confused and dreamy
emotions which take possession of
a young and innocent heart so soon
as it has fairly admitted to itself it
.pn +1
loves—Nanette awaited her prince.
She knew he would come; her
heart told her so. And she was
not deceived.

Early the next day he was announced.
She essayed to rise as
he entered, but sank back into her
chair, half from weakness, half from
agitation, murmuring incoherent excuses
for her awkwardness. In an
instant the prince was at her feet.

“Ah!” he cried, “I have found
you out at last, my good cousin.
But I am not come to return you
your benefactions; only to beseech
you to make it possible for me to
keep them by adding to them a still
more precious boon.”

“And that is—?”

“This fair, kind hand. Ah darling!
you cannot refuse it me when
you have already given me your
heart.”

In sacrificing his name to this obscure
young girl the prince was no
doubt conscious of doing a noble
and magnanimous act. And so it
was—how noble, can only be realized
by those who know the measureless
distance which, in the days
of Louis XV., divided the nobility
from the people, or the insolent disdain
with which the former looked
down on the latter—a disdain commemorated
to this day in the use
of the word <i>peuple</i> to indicate a vulgar
fellow. But if he thought to
conquer Nanette in generosity, he
was mistaken. The flower-girl, after
a moment’s reflection, begged
her lover to give her till to-morrow
to answer. He consented reluctantly,
but not doubting the result.
Who could have looked in the
eighteenth century to see a fish-monger's
daughter refuse the hand
of a French prince?

De Courtenaye arose the next
morning satisfied with himself and
with the world, and more in love
than ever. He longed impatiently for
the message which should summon
him to the feet of his adored mistress
to receive the seal of his
happiness. At last, after, it seemed
to his eagerness, an age of waiting,
his servant brought him a letter.
He glanced at the superscription;
it was in the well-known
hand. He pressed the dear characters
to his lips and tore the missive
open with trembling fingers. This
is what he read:

.pm letter-start
“Love blinds you. A marriage with
me would dishonor you. You love me
too well for me to refuse you the most
convincing proof of my love. I give you
up, and I give up life for you. When
you read this the flower-girl Nanette
will have quitted the world for ever.
Do not scruple to keep the money you
have received, in your aunt’s name; it is
yours by right. A kinsman, who accomplished
your father’s ruin, simply made
me the instrument of his tardy atonement.
I leave to my family a fortune
ample for their wants. Adieu! Think of
me sometimes in the cloister, wherein I
take refuge from my heart, and where I
shall never cease to pray for you.”
.pm letter-end

So ends the history of Nanette
Lollier. The Archbishop of Paris
in person, it is said, conducted her to
the convent of her choice, and the
Palais Royal went into mourning.
The prince was almost wild with
grief; but his prayers, his supplications,
his almost frenzied entreaties,
could not shake Nanette’s resolve.
He never married. The allusion
in the flower-girl’s letter recalled
to him certain rumors current
at the time of his father’s death;
but, as our chronicler shrewdly surmises,
the story of the kinsman was
simply a device of Nanette’s affection
to disarm her lover’s pride.

This is the romance of Nanette,
the flower-girl of the Palais Royal,
as it is recorded in a chronicle of
the time. In the foul and fetid
.pn +1
annals of that most polluted reign,
barren alike of manly honor and
womanly virtue, it comes to us
like a jewel we lift from the mire,
or a fresh-blown rose we rescue
from the kennel. Let us not ask if
it be true. Stories of disinterested
love, of magnanimity and devotion,
let us rather accept as always true,
saving our incredulity for narratives
of another sort. For our
own part we had rather believe Tiberius
to be a myth than that
Cordelia is a fiction; that Nero
never fiddled in his life than that
Henry Esmond never put his birthright
in the fire to spare his
benefactress pain.
.sp 4
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Classic Literature, principally Sanskrit,
Greek, and Roman.</sc> With some
account of the Persian, Chinese, and
Japanese in the Form of Sketches of
the Authors and Specimens from Translations
of their Works. By C. A.
White, author of <i>The Student’s Mythology</i>.
New York: Henry Holt &
Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

We find on p. 12 of this new <i>Hand-book
of Classic Literature</i>, as it is entitled
on the back, among the “most
commendable maxims” of the <i>Pancha-Trantra</i>—a
work on morals composed by
Hindoo sages—the following: “As long
as a person remains silent he is honored;
but as soon as he opens his mouth
men sit in judgment upon his capacity.”
The young people who will make use of
this book, which is principally intended
for their benefit and pleasure, must be
the final judges of the capacity of its
author to make classic literature intelligible
and interesting to their minds. The
author appears to understand them, and
to have acquired that experience and
skill in adapting instruction to the juvenile
mind, by practical familiarity with
young students in the class-room, which
is almost necessary to ensure success in
preparing a good text-book. The <i>Hand-book
of Classic Literature</i> is not intended
as a manual for lessons and recitations.
It is not exclusively intended for those
who study Latin or Greek; and we are
not aware of any considerable number
of young people who are studying Sanskrit,
Persian, or Chinese, so that evidently
no such class of pupils could
have been in the eye of the author. In
fact, the aim of the author is to give
some general notion of the ancient authors
and their principal works, and
some fine specimens of the best translations
which have been made into English,
to those who do not study the
ancient languages at all, or at most
learn only the rudiments of one or two
of them. Three-fourths of the volume
are devoted to the Greek and Latin classics.
The remaining eighty pages are
divided between the Sanskrit, Persian,
and Chinese, with a brief notice of the
Japanese. The most elaborate and
valuable portion of the work is that
devoted to Greek literature. The author
has made use of the best critical
works and selected a large number of
the most excellent translations. So
much learning, pains, skill in faithful
and idiomatic rendering, and even poetic
genius, have been expended by
English scholars in translating the
Greek classics that any reader of intelligence
and taste may understand
and enjoy to a very great extent these
ancient masterpieces without learning a
word of Greek. We notice as particularly
discriminating and just the criticisms
of the author on the three great
tragedians. Specimens of several different
authors who have translated
Homer are presented, and a number
of extracts from Aristophanes
and others of the generally less known
poets. There must be many whose
curiosity will be excited by these
choice morsels to read the entire translated
.pn +1
works themselves. Next in interest
to the sketches and translations
from the Greek are those from the Sanskrit
and Persian, on account both of the
novelty of the subject-matter to the
generality of readers, and also the intrinsic
beauty of the selected passages.
The author writes enthusiastically about
Zoroaster, and we think with great justice.
The song of the tea-pickers, from
the Chinese, pleases us extremely, and
is one of the prettiest and most touching
of the minor pieces in the volume. The
author has shown remarkable judgment
and good taste in making this compilation,
and writes in all that part of it
which is of original composition in a
style of peculiar accuracy and felicity of
diction. The strict and conscientious
regard in which the old saying <i>Maxima
reverentia debetur pueris</i> has been kept
throughout is an example for all those
who write for the young. There is nothing
which can endanger the faith or
damage the moral delicacy of the young
Christian pupil in all this volume filled
up with the literature of heathen nations.
On the contrary, its effect is salutary,
and shows beautifully not only the great
obscurity in which those gifted pagans
lay from the want of a clear revelation
of truth, but also that the human mind
everywhere, in all times, naturally Christian,
longs for the light.

The mechanical execution of the <i>Classical
Hand-book</i> is remarkable for beauty
and accuracy. We have noticed only
two or three typographical faults in the
whole volume. It is a most attractive
book to take up and read. We have
said that it is not properly a class-book.
It is a reading-book for higher pupils,
and a companion for lectures, suitable
for reference or use in class-readings.
We recommend it most cordially to all
higher schools, especially academies for
young ladies, and others where classical
studies are not made one of the chief
branches of instruction. The great number
of choice and elegant extracts from
the best writers, many of which are unfamiliar,
as well as the historical notices
and criticisms, make this book equally
suitable for use in families and literary
circles, especially for reading aloud, as
for schools. We wish for the author the
best reward which can be bestowed on
one who is devoted to the culture of
young pupils—the love and gratitude of
their generous, affectionate hearts.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Cradle of the Christ</sc>: a Study
in Primitive Christianity. By Octavius
Brooks Frothingham. New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.
.pm letter-end

The author of this volume is one of
the representative men of the left section
of Unitarianism in this country. He
is distinguished by a clear style, a finely-cultivated
imagination, and his writings
are characterized by a pervading placidity
which is only occasionally ruffled
by a mocking scepticism that suggests
the too close proximity of Dr. Faust’s
intimate friend.

The volume abounds in sweeping assertions,
slovenly-expressed ideas, and
lacks throughout the cement of a sound
logic. It fosters on Cardinal Wiseman
and Dr. Newman opinions which can
only be accounted for on the supposition
of the author’s inaccurate scholarship
or his contempt for the intelligence
of his readers. (See preface, page 5.)
Among other things, he informs his readers
that “it has been customary with
Christians to widen as much as possible
the gulf between the Old and the New
Testaments, in order that Christianity
might appear in the light of a fresh and
transcendent revelation, supplementing
the ancient, but supplanting it” (page
10). The custom of St. Augustine, St.
Thomas, and Catholic theologians generally
is precisely the contrary. There is
a remarkable book by a Catholic on this
very point, published in our own day,
entitled <i>De l’Harmonie entre l’Eglise et
la Synagogue</i>, par Le Chevalier P. L. B.
Drach, a converted rabbi. The rabbi, in
his two volumes, aims at showing that a
Jew, in becoming a Catholic, does not
deny or change his religion, but follows
out, completes, and perfects it. The
Jewish Church and the Catholic Church
are identically one, and the former is to
the latter as the bud to the full-blown
flower.

With a criticism that kills beforehand
the life it would dissect, Mr. O. B.
Frothingham ends by coolly telling his
readers that Christianity is extinct. And
with a self-satisfied air he naïvely exhorts
them, by the efforts of their imagination,
to build up a new and superior
religion to Christianity. His readers
will, we opine, politely decline this task,
and leave to him who had the genius to
conceive the idea its accomplishment.
What a pity he did not tell them what
he means by the imaginative faculty!
.pn +1
For if in this, as in other things, he follows
his foreign masters, we have no
reason to expect as the result of its exercise
in this direction, other than an
additional illusion to the long list of
religious vagaries given to the world,
from Simon Magus down to Joe Smith
and the Fox girls.

A scholar who has read the volume
describes its contents as “theological,
philosophical, and speculative old shreds
picked up in German and French tailor-shops
and cunningly sewed together in
the shape of a cloak by a 'cute’ Yankee
apprentice, in order to cover the nudity
of the latest form of the unbelief of New
England.”

The book before us shows no mean
literary skill, but contains nothing original
in the way of thought or erudition,
not even an original error, though its
errors are many more than the number
of its pages.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Problem of Problems, and its
Various Solutions; or, Atheism,
Darwinism, and Theism.</sc> By Clark
Braden, President of Abingdon College,
Ill. 8vo. pp. 480. Cincinnati:
Chase & Hall. 1877.
.pm letter-end

Recent scientific research has at last
put the orthodox world on its mettle
and elicited expressions of opinion from
all shades of believers. Coquetting with
dangerous premises, even in the guise
of science, toleration of views implicitly
or indirectly infidel, and a general
disposition to compromise, are not indicative
of a healthy tone in any organization
avowedly Christian. Yet such tendencies
have for a long time characterized
the relation of the various Protestant
sects towards scientism, and one of the
greatest outcries raised against the Syllabus
proceeded from its alleged intolerance
of, and general hostility to, unhampered
scientific inquiry. But coaxing
and cajoling, and a concurrent cry
against the stupidity of Catholics, had no
weight with Messrs. Spencer, Huxley,
Tyndall, and Draper, who went on just
as ever dealing their blows against revelation
and all positive forms of belief, as
though his Lordship of Canterbury were
a myth and his faith a sham.

At length consistency compelled the
representative men of the various denominations
to resist the further encroachments
of an irreligious philosophy,
and they are beginning to do so
with the bitter consciousness that they
were the very ones who most ridiculed
the sagacity of the Holy Father when
he censured the tone and tendency of
modern scientism. But it is better late
than never; and if the gentlemen who,
from Princeton to Abingdon, feel themselves
called upon to do the work will
only graciously allow that they are
eleventh-hour workers, we will find no
fault with their intention, but confine
ourselves to a criticism of its execution.

The <i>Problem of Problems</i> is the latest
addition to the religio-scientific controversy,
and it is entitled to serious consideration
because of the earnestness
of the author and the elaborate character
of the work. This elaborateness is,
however, more apparent than real, and
consists in a measure of diluted thought
and diffuse expression. Whether it is
unfortunately a peculiarity of Western
authors to strip a thought entirely bare
and leave nothing to suggestion, as the
charge is made, we are not prepared to
say, but certain it is that Mr. Clark
Braden has gone far towards justifying
such a suspicion. He is not satisfied
with a placid presentment of his own
views, nor with a brief arraignment
of what he deems to be the errors of
others, but he must reiterate, emphasize,
and in general lash himself into a state
of incandescence not at all needful for
his purpose. Dignified opposition, even
if a little tame, is somewhat more
congenial to the frigid tastes of persons
living east of the Alleghenies than those
fervid utterances which mistake sound
for sense. This, however, is an error of
form which does not necessarily militate
against the intrinsic value of the
work, nor do we think that an allusion
to it is likely to discompose the learned
author; for in a little prologue, addressed
to “Reviewers and Critics,” he courts
and solicits dispassionate and impartial
criticism. In addition he requests that
all publishers send him a copy of what
their <i>imprimatur</i> has allowed critics to
say concerning his book. We presume
this is right; but when the request comes
coupled with the condition that every
one undertaking to comment on his
work must not do so before having read
it from cover to cover, we fear that it
will not always be faithfully complied
with, or that he will have to read some
pages in which gall and wormwood
abound more than the milk of human
.pn +1
kindness. The reason of this we have
hinted at. The book is prolix and
repeats to a fault. Many excellent
thoughts are covered up in a mass of
verbiage which emasculates and obscures
them. We wish the author had the
academic fitness to cope with his antagonists—whose
culture has made their
productions marvels of composition and
terribly enhanced their influence for
evil. We are sorry that this charge
should be the main one to prefer against
a book which was prompted by the best
of motives and which really exhibits
rare evidences of argumentative power.
Take even the opening sentence, and we
find ourselves face to face with a flagrant
grammatical inaccuracy: “One of the
wise utterances of one whom his contemporaries
declared spoke as never
man spoke was, that no wise man, etc.”
Here, apart from the slovenly repetition
of “one” we find no subject for the first
“spoke,” unless it be “whom,” and that
is in the objective case. Similar mistakes
occur throughout, and give painful
evidence that Mr. Braden began his
scientific investigations before he had
made himself familiar with Blair or Lord
Kames. We would, in connection with
this same matter of style, suggest that the
too frequent use of interrogation not only
mars the beauty of a page, but has an inevitable
tendency to wearisome diffuseness.
Lest, however, we may be suspected
of harshness towards the author, we select
a passage at random, that the reader may
judge for himself how little Mr. Braden
is acquainted with the quality of a good
style. On page 171 he says: “We have no
horses on the pampas of the New World,
<i>although they existed as the most adapted to
horses of any portion of the globe for ages</i>,
and there were <i>equine types in the New
World for several geologic epochs</i>. Multitudes
of cases might be given where
man has carried animals into places
where they did not exist and they flourished,
and even improved, thus showing
that the conditions were especially fitted
for them, yet had not produced them, although
they had existed for vast ages.
Hence conditions have failed to evolve
what was especially fitted to them, and
just what they would produce, did they
produce anything.” We submit that
these sentences are not only clumsy in
construction, but are positively ungrammatical,
and no one who undertakes the
guidance of others along the thorny
paths of scientific research has a right to
tax the general patience with slipshod
composition of this kind. Such examples
as those given are not isolated, but
disfigure nearly every page. On page
87 we find the following; “There was at
first use of bodily organs in appropriating
food and slaying for food animals,
and the use of spontaneous productions
of the earth, like animals.”

So much for the form of the book. The
matter is indeed better, though necessarily
much impaired by the many faults of style.
In consideration of fair play towards the
author we will not accept his own standard
of judgment while passing an opinion
on his book; for we would then have
either to mistrust our own intelligence
entirely or to utter unqualified censure
of all that he has written. In his appeal
to “Reviewers and Critics” he says:
“If there is censure or condemnation of
what is written, let it be only after the
critic understands what he condemns,
and <i>because he understands it</i>.” Now, we
do not propose to condemn any portion
of the book <i>because we understand it</i>; for
we freely confess that there is much valuable
thought to be found in its pages,
and the author gives proof of having a
good logical mind, not hampered, indeed,
by the subtleties of <i>Port Royal</i> or the
<i>Grammar of Assent</i>, but sturdy and vigorous,
with a Western breadth and freedom.
We have not space to give even
an outline of the plan Mr. Braden has
mapped out for himself. Method is an
important feature of a scientific and argumentative
work, and, when judiciously
adopted, goes far to promote the purpose
of the author.

Clearness, natural development, logical
sequence of thought, and ready conviction
are the results of a suitable method,
while confusion, weariness, and dissatisfaction
follow from a neglect thereof. Mr.
Braden’s lack of method will do much
in the way of injuriously interfering with
the effect of his book. Divisions and
subdivisions without number, irrespective
of reason, may swell the dimensions
of a work, but do not certainly contribute
to the satisfaction of the reader.

If all Mr. Braden has written in the
present volume were presented in a
more orderly and attractive manner his
book would be a valuable contribution
to polemics, but the faults we have indicated
will constantly militate against its
usefulness.
.pn +1

In the Appendix both Draper and
Huxley come in for a share of censure,
but while the author utterly fails to make
a point against Draper, he so overloads
with irrelevant matter his review of Huxley’s
three lectures, delivered in this city,
that the reader rises from the perusal of
it with a tired memory and a dissatisfied
mind.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Childhood of the English Nation</sc>;
or, The Beginnings of English
History. By Ella S. Armitage. New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.
.pm letter-end

The authoress of this “little” book
tells us, in her preface, that when she began
to write it “no <i>short and simple</i> history
of England had appeared <i>which
made any attempt to give unlearned people
an insight below the surface of bare facts</i>,”
but that “since then numerous works of
the kind have appeared.” Yes, indeed,
too numerous; yet, as far as we know,
not one of them so pretentious as this.
With a very readable style and a great
show of erudition (an appalling “list of
authorities” is appended to her volume)
she sets up for “an interpreter to those
who have no knowledge of history,”
taking for her theme what she is pleased
to call the “childhood of the English
nation”—by which she means the history
of England “till the end of the twelfth
century.” Of course, therefore, she has
to deal largely with the work and influence
of the Catholic Church. Now,
when those who are not Catholic undertake
to expound a philosophy to which
they have not the key—to wit, the philosophy
of any part of history with which
Catholic faith has been concerned—we
can pardon their mistakes, provided they
evince that humility which is the mark
of fair-mindedness. But, if this condition
be wanting, we can only regard their
attempt as a piece of insufferable impertinence;
their very concessions to our
cause—a trick quite fashionable of late—but
making them the less excusable.

Here, then, lies our quarrel with the
writer of this book. She goes out of her
way to theorize on matters she does not
understand, instead of confining herself
to “bare facts.” For example, after
acknowledging (p. 19) that “there is no
saying how long the English might not
have remained heathen if Pope Gregory
I., in the year 597, had not sent missionaries
to bring them to the faith of Christ,”
she must needs endeavor to account for
the Papacy as follows:

“Gregory was Pope or Bishop of
Rome from 590 to 604. In his time the
popes of Rome had not yet risen to the
position of universal bishops and supreme
heads of the church, though they
were tending towards it. All men were
agreed that there must be one, and only
one, visible, united church, but all had
not yet made up their minds that the
Bishop of Rome was to be the head of
that church. The church of the Welsh,
for example, and that of Ireland (!), owed
no obedience to Rome. The pope himself
did not dare to call himself universal
bishop: 'Whosoever calls himself so
is Antichrist,’ said Gregory I. Still, it
was natural that Rome, which had been
the ruling city of the one universal empire,
the queen of the West, should be
the chief centre of the one universal
church, and that the Bishop of Rome
should become the head of the church,
and all other bishops should bow to
his authority. This was what did come
to pass in time, but at the time of which
I am now speaking it seemed very uncertain;
for things had sadly changed
with Rome. She had no emperor now;
the emperor was at Constantinople; Italy
was invaded by barbarians, Rome herself
was scourged by plague and famine.
The Bishop of Constantinople tried to
set himself up as Universal Bishop and
Head of the Church; and that the popes
afterwards won the day in this struggle
was largely due to the great influence
which Pope Gregory I. gained by his
wisdom and his powerful character.”

The cluster of absurdities contained in
this passage would be “matter for a flying
smile,” were it not that the ignorance
displayed looks too much like perverted
knowledge. Can the lady have really
failed to perceive the transparent nonsense
of supposing that such a power as
the Papacy originated in people making
up their minds that the church ought to
have a visible head, and that the Bishop
of Rome was the right man because, forsooth,
Rome <i>had been</i> the seat of empire?
If, again, she knows what St. Gregory said
to the ambitious John of Constantinople,
why does she not quote a few more of
his remarks? “<i>The care of the whole
church</i>,” said he, “<i>was committed to Peter;
yet he is not called 'Universal Apostle</i>.’”
“<i>Who does not know that his see</i>
(of Constantinople) <i>is subject to the Apostolic
.pn +1
See</i> (of Rome)?” St. Gregory, like his
predecessor St. Pelagius, refused the title
of Œcumenical Patriarch, or Universal
Bishop, for himself out of humility; how,
then, could he tolerate the assumption of
it by a bishop who did <i>not</i> sit in Peter’s
chair?

But we need not cite this book further
to show that it is valueless in Catholic
eyes.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Dr. Joseph Salzmann’s Leben und
Wirken Dargestellt von Joseph
Rainer, Priester der Erzdiöcese
Milwaukee, Professor am Priesterseminar
Salesianum.</sc> St. Louis:
Herder.
.pm letter-end

The Salesianum is an ecclesiastical
seminary near Milwaukee which enjoys
a very high reputation for the learning
of its professors, the solidity of its course
of studies, and the strictness of its discipline.
Near it there is a Normal College
for the training of school-teachers, and
another college for the intermediate education
of boys. The man who was the
principal founder of these excellent institutions
was the Very Rev. Joseph Salzmann,
D.D., an Austrian priest, who
came to Wisconsin as a missionary
thirty years ago and finished his earthly
course in January, 1874, honored and regretted
throughout the United States.
The venerable Archbishop of Milwaukee
first conceived the idea of founding a
seminary to educate priests for the
Northwest more than thirty years ago,
while praying at the tomb of St. Francis
de Sales, and this is the reason of the
name Salesianum by which the seminary
was christened. The first rector was
the present learned Bishop of La Crosse,
Dr. Heiss. Dr. Salzmann succeeded
him in office in 1868. The Rev. Professor
Rainer, in the little volume before
us, gives an interesting account of the
whole life of Dr. Salzmann, but especially
of his great and arduous work of
founding and establishing the Salesianum,
which we may truly call a heroic
achievement. He was a thoroughly
learned and accomplished scholar, a
man of sacerdotal dignity and personal
attractiveness, an eloquent preacher,
with fair and seductive prospects before
him in his own beautiful Catholic land.
He was well fitted to adorn those positions
in the church which are surrounded
with the most outward <i>éclat</i>, and give
the opportunity of enjoying all the ease,
comfort, and pleasure in literary pursuits
and quiet seclusion which are lawful and
honorable in the priesthood. Nevertheless,
he chose the life of a Western missionary,
and devoted the greater part of
his time and energies, not to the intellectual
and attractive employments of
preaching and instruction in the sciences,
but to that most repugnant and arduous
work of collecting money and looking
after the drudgery of building, providing,
caring for the material wants of new,
poor, struggling institutions. It is not
possible for any who have not been
brought up in some one of the old Catholic
countries of Europe to estimate the
sacrifice made by young men of refined
character and education, and strong love
of home and country, when they devote
themselves to missionary labor in a new
country, and to its hardest, most repulsive
departments. There are special
difficulties and hardships to be encountered
by those who work among our
German population. When they are
bad or indifferent Catholics, they are
the most obstinate and unmanageable
people with whom a priest can have to
deal, and very difficult to reclaim. Apostate
and infidel Germans have a brutality
in their hatred to the Catholic Church
and all religion which is extremely odious
and cannot be fully appreciated by
one who has not come into personal contact
with that class, whose only god is
beer and whose church is the lager-beer
saloon. <i>Zur Hölle</i> is the appropriate
motto we have seen over one of these
dens in New York. When thoroughly
imbued with the Catholic spirit, the German
people are admirable. The wonderful
work of Christian civilization
wrought out among them in past ages is
known to all readers of true history. Dr.
Salzmann, and others like him, are worthy
successors of the apostolic men whose
names are recorded in the history of the
church. They are the men who carry
on the true Cultur-Kampf in the vast
realms of our Western territory. Their
acts are worthy to be classed with those
so charmingly related in <i>The Monks
of the West</i> and <i>Christian Schools and
Scholars</i>. A keen Western speculator
said that “a bishop was worth as much
as a railroad to a Western town.”
All that is wanted to repeat in the immense
regions of our new States and
Territories the creation and development
of great civilized and Christian communities
.pn +1
is the virile force, the manhood, of
those early times. Land and material
resources exist in prodigal abundance.
It is men that are wanted—masses of
people with strength and spirit to abandon
our crowded cities and old States
and colonize new domains, and men
with the ability and virtue of leaders,
guides, founders, instructors, legislators,
rulers, and benefactors. We trust that
the modest recital of the life of one generous
young priest who left his charming
Austrian home to engage in this work
may find its way among the educated
young men and young ecclesiastics of
Germany. There is work here for some
among the hundreds of such young men,
full of vigorous health, full of intellectual
vigor, full of sound learning, who are
at a loss to find a sufficient sphere for
their activity in their own country.

The greatest and noblest project of Dr.
Salzmann was one which he could not
even begin to carry into execution—that
of founding a university, a new <i>Fulda</i>,
for the Germans of America. We do
not think that such an institution could
or should remain permanently an exclusively
German university. We desire,
nevertheless, to see this grand idea carried
out, as a special work of our Catholics
of German origin and language, under
the direction of a <i>corps</i> of learned
German professors, and with special reference
to the education of youth who
are of the same descent or who wish to
study the language and literature of Germany.
Time and the course of nature
will eventually blend all our heterogeneous
elements together, but we do not
believe in violent efforts to hurry on the
process. All that we can borrow from
any European language or literature,
all the recruits we can gain from the
nurseries of scholars or population in the
Old World, is so much added to our intellectual,
social, and political strength
and breadth. Of course the English language
and literature, American history
and institutions, ought to be assiduously
studied by the learned foreigners who
are domesticated among us, and taught
to their pupils of a different mother-tongue.
This may be done without abdicating
the advantage which they possess,
and which others must acquire at
the cost of great labor, by being born
heirs to the inheritance of their own immediate
ancestors.

The great practical question of the
moment is that of Catholic education.
The advocates of compulsory secular
education are the enemies of religion, of
their country, and of true culture. The
seminaries, colleges, and schools where
Catholic priests, youths, and children are
trained in sound religious knowledge,
morality, and science are the fortresses
and the centres of real civilization.
Whoever does a great work in the
cause of Catholic education is a benefactor
to the church and the country.
Such a noble and meritorious man was
Dr. Salzmann, a priest powerful in word
and work, a model for the young ecclesiastics
of the Salesianum to imitate, an
encouraging example for all who are
laboring to found and perfect similar institutions.
The diocese of Milwaukee
was a poor and feeble little bishopric
when the venerable Dr. Henni was consecrated
in 1844. Now it is a metropolitan
see, with above 190,000 Catholics in
its diocesan limits, above 180 priests,
several flourishing institutions for the
higher education of both sexes, and
schools in almost every parish. The
Salesianum, where the first rector, Dr.
Heiss, was professor of Greek, mathematics,
physics, philosophy, and moral
theology, numbers thirteen professors
and two hundred and fifty students.
Surely, the prayers and labors of a good
bishop, seconded by those of able and
zealous priests, can work wonders now
as well as in the best ages of the past.
Indeed, works which a St. Francis of
Sales was unable to accomplish are now
successfully performed within a short
time and with comparatively little difficulty.
Assuredly, we cannot fail to recognize
a special benediction of God upon
the church of the United States.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Consolation of the Devout Soul.</sc>
By the Very Rev. Joseph Frassinetti,
Prior of Santa Sabina, in Genoa. Translated
by Georgiana Lady Chatterton.
London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For
sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
.pm letter-end

The worth of a book ought to be estimated
chiefly from its intrinsic merits,
yet, even without being acquainted with
these, we may often obtain a fair idea of its
character by knowing something about
the author.

Father Frassinetti was an extraordinary
man. He was born in the city of
Genoa on Dec. 15, 1803, and died there
.pn +1
on the 3d of January, 1868. Thirty-nine
years of his life were spent in the priesthood,
with an unsullied reputation for
piety and zeal, and a wide-spread fame
as a preacher, director of consciences,
and writer on spiritual matters. A uniform
edition of his works, which are all in
Italian, was published shortly before his
death in ten volumes, and dedicated to
the late Cardinal Patrizi, Vicar of Rome.

The first volume of his collected works
contains <i>Il conforto dell’ Anima Divota</i>,
of which we have the excellent translation
before us. Its author was not only
a remarkably learned man, but also a
singularly pious man—one whom our
Holy Father Pope Pius IX. called, in a
certain brief, a priest <i>spectatæ doctrinæ
et virtutis</i>—and distinguished by the
rare faculty of being able to communicate
his knowledge to others, and of
knowing how to lead others on to personal
holiness. Nearly forty years of his
life were passed in leaching his fellow-men
by word and example how to love,
serve, and honor God and save their
souls. That such a one should have
written this little book on <i>The Consolation
of the Devout Soul</i> is a sufficient guarantee
of its usefulness and doctrine. The
work is divided into five chapters and
an appendix, in which the author successively
defines what is meant by Christian
perfection, shows that it is not a
thing too difficult to be acquired, solves
certain objections against facility of sanctification,
explains the beauty and utility
of Christian perfection, points out the
means of arriving at this much-desired
end, and concludes with a short treatise
on the holy fear of God. Several notes
are added.

This translation bears the <i>imprimatur</i>
of the devout and learned Bishop of
Birmingham. We earnestly recommend
it to the members of religious orders,
and to people who serve God in the
world.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Code Poetical Reader</sc>, for school
and home use. With marginal notes,
and biographical notices of authors.
By a Teacher. London: Burns &
Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
.pm letter-end

This Reader is made up of eighty
short poems from British and American
authors. Each selection is accompanied
by marginal notes and is headed by a
short biographical notice. The plan is
excellent, the publishers’ work is well
done, but the biographical notices are so
brief as to be of little value, and the marginal
notes are nothing more than commonplace
definitions of difficult words.
Perhaps it is hardly just to call the
words referred to difficult, since the majority
of the poems are as simple in diction
as <i>Lord Ullin’s Daughter</i>. The
fault may be attributed partly to the
marginal-note plan, since an absence of
notes would leave an unsightly page.
Still, this is no excuse for careless definitions:
<i>unfriended</i> is a poor substitute
for <i>forlorn</i>; <i>California</i> is not <i>a mountainous
country of North America on the
Pacific coast</i>; <i>Indian</i> is a name given to
the <i>aboriginal</i> inhabitants of America,
not to the <i>ancient</i> inhabitants; <i>pollution</i>
does not mean <i>to corrupt</i>; concealing
can hardly mean at once <i>hiding</i> and <i>to keep
secret</i>. In the lines from <i>The Village
Blacksmith</i>,

.pm verse-start
“Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its close,”
.pm verse-end

the word <i>close</i> is defined <i>finished</i>. These
are a few inaccuracies out of many.
The selections comprise some of the
most exquisite short poems in the language,
there being few extracts and but
one translation. Were it not for the absence
of selections from Catholic sources,
this would be a desirable class-book.
Why Adelaide Procter, Aubrey
de Vere, Gerald Griffin, Davis, McGee,
are excluded, and Bret Harte honored
in two places, is a mystery. Nor do
other poets fare better. Caswall is not
mentioned; in truth, there is not one
poem from a Catholic author. Catholics
are not the only persons who suffer from
the editor’s discrimination. Tennyson
is excluded, while Rev. Charles Kingsley
contributes two pieces. Six selections
come from Longfellow. These
facts show that it was not for want of
space that Catholic poems find no room
in a text-book published by a Catholic
firm. Nor was it merit alone that
prompted the editor in his selection.
The book seems to have been prepared
for schools in which neither the name
nor the sentiment of a Catholic writer
might enter. The system that excludes
the grace and purity of Adelaide Procter,
the sweetness and vigor of De Vere,
and the perfect rhythm of Tennyson will
bring forth bitter fruit, and those who
assist the projectors in their plans may
.pn +1
expect to reap the usual harvest of ingratitude,
together with the unpleasant
memory of having closed their eyes to
the merits of Catholic poets because of
the hostility of some so-called non sectarian
school-board.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Summa Summæ.</sc> Pars Prima—De Deo.
Confecit ac edidit T. J. O’Mahony,
S.T.D., Philos. in Collegio OO.SS.,
Dublinii, Professor. Dublinii: apud
M. H. Gill et Fil.; Lond.: Burns et
Oates; Paris: J. Lecoffre et Soc. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This summary of the <i>Summa Theologica</i>
of St. Thomas is chiefly intended as
an aid to ecclesiastical students in the
study of the great work of the Angelic
Doctor. The first part only is yet published.
Dr. O’Mahony, of All-Hallow’s
College, its author, with great skill and
painstaking, has endeavored to make
the order and arrangement of topics and
divisions in the <i>Summa</i> more intelligible
by means of a convenient type-arrangement
and distinctive headings, and to
facilitate the understanding of the text
by an analytical abstract which contains
many literal quotations, followed by a
synthetic synopsis of subjects. The work
seems to have been done intelligently
and well, and its utility is obvious to
every student who has attempted to read
even one page of the <i>Summa</i>. It is
neatly printed, and we trust may soon
be completed.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Why are we Roman Catholics? Because
we are Reasonable Men.</sc> By
Hermann Joseph Graf Fugger Glött,
Priest of the Society of Jesus. From
the German. London: Burns & Oates.
1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
.pm letter-end

A clear, solid, and short exposition
of the Catholic faith, in view of actual
objections against its reasonableness. It
would be well if there were more works
of this kind. The rational side of revealed
truth needs a various development
to meet the many intellectual demands
of our age. Besides, there are
many sincere persons in Protestant communities
who are disposed to be Christians,
but are in suspense because of the
inconsistency of Protestantism with reason.
These need only the obstacles
to faith to be removed for them to become
Catholics. For such this short
treatise will be of special service. It
should be also read by Catholics, as
they ought to be prepared when asked
to know how “to give a reason for the
hope that is in them.” The author shows
a familiar knowledge of the anti-Christian
writers of our day, is free from all
bitterness, and we hope to hear from his
pen in this field again. The translation
reads as if written in English.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Carte Ecclesiastique des Etats-Unis
de l’Amerique. Lyons. 1877.</sc>
.pm letter-end

A few copies of this chart have been
sent to this country, and we have received
one through the courtesy of Father Perron,
of Woodstock College. It is a handsome,
well-executed, and, so far as we
have discovered, correct map of the provinces
and bishoprics of the United
States. Such a map is convenient and
valuable. We think it would be improved
by making each of the provinces
of one distinct color, and marking the
dioceses by broad colored lines, and the
States by similar black lines. The
titles of the provinces and dioceses
might also be printed in large letters,
and the sees receive more conspicuous
signs. The chart is published by the Society
of Catholic Missions, 6 Rue d’Auvergne,
à Lyon. Directeur, M. l’Abbé
Stanislas Laverrière. All the profits are
given to the missions. We suggest to
our Catholic publishers to send for
copies and keep them on hand for sale.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Heroic Women of the Bible and the
Church.</sc> By the Rev. Bernard O’Reilly,
D.D. With art illustrations. New
York: J. B. Ford & Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

We can do no more now than call the
attention of our readers to this most
beautiful work—beautiful in every sense—of
which we have received advance
sheets. The author’s name needs no introduction
to Catholic readers. We reserve
for a future date a fuller notice of
a well-conceived and admirably executed
work, one too of great practical utility.
Father O’Reilly’s statement in the preface,
that “the publishers have spared
neither labor nor expense to make this
book most beautiful in form,” is obviously
true at the first glance.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 147.—JUNE, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=jubilee
THE PAPAL JUBILEE. | SONNETS BY AUBREY DE VERE.
.sp 2
.h4
I. | THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
What beam is that, guiding once more from far
Earth’s Elders Rome-ward over sea and land?
What Sanctity, serene as Bethlehem’s star,
From East and West leads on each pilgrim band?
God’s light it is—on an unsceptred Hand!
God’s promise, shining without let or bar,
O’er sleeping realms that yet may wake in war,
Forth from that Brow Discrowned whose high command
Freshens in splendor with the advancing night
Missioned to blot all godless crowns with gloom:—
Like fruits untimely from a tree in blight
Such crowns shall fall. Even now they know their doom!
Advance, pure hearts! Your instinct guides you right
The Bethlehem Crib, this day, is by Saint Peter’s tomb.
.pm verse-end

.pn +1
.sp 2
.h4
II. | THE JERUSALEM OF THE NEW LAW.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“The Tribes ascend.” Ten centuries and nine
Have well-nigh passed since first the earth’s green breast
Confessed, deep-graved, those feet that Christ confessed,—
Those feet which, then when earth was Palestine,
Circled her Salem new. Mankind was thine,
O Rome, that time. All nations sent their best
To waft thee offerings, and their faith attest:—
They love thee most who love thee in decline.
The noble seek thy courts. What gibbering crew
Snarls at their heels? The brood that fears and hates;—
Prescient Defeat in bonds, that jeers the brave:
Ascend, true hearts! Such tribute is your due!
In Rome’s old triumphs thus the car-bound slave
Scoffed, as he passed, of Fortune’s spite, and Fate’s.[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
In the Roman triumphs a captive slave was bound to the car of the conqueror, into whose ear his
office was to whisper of fortune’s instability.
.fn-
.sp 2
.h4
III. | THE CONFESSOR PONTIFF.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Full fifty years are past since first that weight
Descended on his head which made more strong
His heart, his hands more swift to war with wrong—
His martyred Master’s dread Episcopate:
Full thirty years beside the Apostles’ Gate
He reigned, and reigns: he roamed, an exile, long:
Restored, he faced once more the apostate throng,
Unbowed in woes, in greatness unelate.
New Hierarchies he sped to realms remote:
Central, by Peter’s Tomb he raised his hands
Blessing his thousand bishops from all lands;
Confirmed their great decree. False kings he smote:—
How long, just God, shall Treason’s banner float
O’er faith’s chief shrine profaned by rebel bands?
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=pius9
POPE PIUS THE NINTH.[#]

.fn #
<i>Pie IX.: sa vie, son Histoire, son Siècle.</i> Par
J. M. Villefranche. Lyons. 1876.

<i>Rome: its Ruler and its Institutions.</i> By John
Francis Maguire, M.P. New York. 1858.

<i>Italy in 1848.</i> By L. Mariotti. London. 1851.

<i>The Secret Societies of the European Revolution,
1776-1876.</i> By Thomas Frost. 2 vols. 8vo.
London. 1876.
.fn-

The whole Catholic world prepares
to celebrate on the 3d of
June of this year the fiftieth anniversary
of an episcopate which has
no parallel in the history of the
church. Our Holy Father Pius
IX. has surpassed most of his predecessors
in the importance of his
labors, and has far exceeded them
all in the length of his pontificate.
He was young when he reached the
dignity of bishop, but Leo XII., to
whom he owed his promotion, had
already discerned the beauty of
his character. Sinigaglia, where he
was born, on the 13th of May, 1792;
Volterra, where he passed six years
at college; Rome, where he studied
theology, abound with stories of the
sweet and sunny disposition, the
fervent piety, and the burning zeal
which illustrated even his tenderest
years. He was six years of age
when the venerable Pius VI. was
dragged away into captivity, and
the biographers of Pius IX. speak
of the excitement which stirred his
boyish heart, and the prayers which
he poured out night and morning at
his mother’s knee for the outraged
church. His earliest recollections
of the Papacy were a fit preparation
for what he was to undergo in after-life.
The Holy Father appeared
to his young eyes, not as the
crowned pontiff, but as the suffering
and heroic confessor. He saw
Pius VII. following Pius VI. into
banishment. He saw the last inch
of territory taken from the Holy
See. One of his uncles, a canon
of St. Peter’s, was driven from Rome
on account of his fidelity to the
pope; and another uncle, who was
Bishop of Pesaro, was thrown into
prison for the same cause. He had
finished his course at college and
was living at home when Pius VII.
returned from exile, and he was
presented to the pontiff as he passed
through Sinigaglia on the road
to Rome. The Mastai family were
distantly related to Pius VII., and
the pope took an interest in his
kinsman. But there was an obstacle
which seemed likely to defeat
the young Mastai’s desire to enter
holy orders. He was subject to fits
of epilepsy. The physicians gave
him no hope of a cure. About the
time of the pope’s return, however,
the violence of the disorder began to
abate, and his health was soon so far
restored that he was encouraged to
continue his studies for the church.
He always ascribed his relief to the
protection of the Blessed Virgin.
In 1819 he was ordained priest by
special dispensation, and appointed
to the humble duty of serving the
asylum for poor children established
in the Via Giulia in Rome by a
pious mason named Giovanni Borgi.
It was called the Asylum Tata Giovanni,
because “Tata Giovanni”—or
Papa John—was the name which the
lads used to give their protector.
The Abbate Mastai had been a
good friend and helper of Papa
John, and was glad of the privilege
of continuing his work now that the
benevolent old man had gone to
.pn +1
his reward. He occupied a little
chamber in the asylum. He ate at
the table with the boys. He spent
all his income in their service. He
kept his regard for them long after
they had grown up, and even as
Pope he remembered the names of
his pupils and followed their fortunes
with a tender interest. It
has often been said that Pius IX.
never forgot anybody.

The first employment which
brought him into public notice was
a mission to the New World. Some
of the clergy of the South American
states had petitioned the Holy
See to fill their long-vacant bishoprics.
Many years had passed
since the close of their war of
independence with Spain, but the
mother-country still asserted the
authority which she no longer attempted
to enforce, and claimed
the right of presentation to sees
long withdrawn from her jurisdiction.
The church in South America
remained, consequently, in lamentable
confusion until the Sovereign
Pontiff resolved to re-establish
order by the exercise of his prerogative,
without government interference
from either side; and the
embassy of which we speak was
despatched in consequence. Monsignore
Muzi, with the title of vicar-apostolic,
was at the head of it, and
the Abbate Mastai was appointed
adjunct.[#] Before the expedition
sailed Pope Pius VII. died, but
Leo XII. confirmed the selections
made by his predecessor; and, indeed,
the choice of the Abbate
Mastai had been made originally
by his advice. On the voyage the
ship was driven by stress of weather
into the Spanish port of Palma,
in the island of Majorca. The governor
threw the embassy into prison
and kept them for some days in seclusion,
on the ground that the
country to which they were bound
was in rebellion against the Spanish
crown. “Then,” said the Pope, in
telling this adventure nearly half
a century afterward, “I realized
the necessity of the papal independence.
They sent me a ration of
food every day from the ship, but
I was allowed neither letters nor
papers. I was initiated on this occasion,
however, into the little stratagems
of solitary prisoners; for we
hid our correspondence in loaves
of bread.” The embassy got away
at last and spent two years of fatigue
and danger in South America,
visiting the missions of Chili, Peru,
and Colombia, traversing the awful
passes of the Cordilleras, and crossing
the continent in bullock-carts—a
journey which took them nearly
two months. Once, in going by sea
from Valparaiso to Callao, their
vessel, caught near the coast in a
gale, was driving upon the rocks
when a fisherman put off in his
boat, boarded them in the midst
of the storm, and brought them
through intricate passages into the
harbor of Arica. The next day
the Abbate Mastai visited the hut
of this daring pilot, and left with
him a purse containing about four
hundred dollars. After becoming
Pope he sent the man a second
purse of equal value and his picture.
The fisherman was overwhelmed
with gratitude. The first four
hundred dollars had proved the
making of his fortune. He gave
the second to the poor, and placed
the picture of the Pope in a little
chapel which he had built on a
spot overlooking the sea.

.fn #
For a full account of this mission see <sc>The Catholic
World</sc> for January, 1876.
.fn-

The embassy returned to Rome
in 1825, and the Abbate Mastai
was appointed canon of Santa Maria
in Via Lata, a little church on
.pn +1
the Corso, with an oratory in which
pious tradition relates that St. Paul
and St. Luke used to teach the
faith to the first Christians of Rome.
He was also promoted to the prelacy
and placed at the head of the
great Hospital of St. Michael. “The
Hospital of St. Michael,” says one of
the latest of the biographers of Pius
IX., “is a city in itself, and its administration
is a real government.”
Founded two centuries ago by Innocent
X., it grew, by the additions
of later pontiffs, to be one of the
greatest and grandest asylums in
existence—a house of refuge for the
young, a retreat for the aged and
infirm, a hospital for the sick, a reformatory
for Magdalens, a home
for virtuous girls, and, besides all
that, a school of arts and industries.
When Monsignore Mastai assumed
the presidency of this vast and
complicated institution, every department
of it was in a deplorable
state of disorganization. Nearly
all the earnings of the boys and
girls in the industrial schools went
towards the support of the establishment,
and yet there was an
enormous deficit in the revenues.
Bankruptcy seemed at hand. The
new president took up his task with
magnificent ardor and equally magnificent
discretion, with the enthusiasm
of a reformer and the practical
sagacity of a man of business.
In two years the disorder was at an
end. The expenses of the institution
were brought within its income,
yet its charity was enlarged
rather than restricted, and a large
share of the earnings of the boys
was paid into a savings’ fund, to be
returned to them when they went
out into the world. Monsignore
Mastai had obtained this remarkable
result in part by his talent for
business; but not wholly by that,
for when the work was done his
own patrimony had disappeared.
“Of what use is money to a priest,”
said he, “except to be spent in the
cause of charity?” So it happened
that when Leo XII. called him to
the archbishopric of Spoleto in 1827
he had not money enough to pay
for his bulls. The last acre of his
estate was sold for the customary
fees, and he entered Spoleto as
penniless as the apostle whom our
Lord commanded to take the tax-money
from the mouth of a fish.

The first years of his episcopate
were passed as any one who had
watched the labors of his priesthood
might have predicted that
they would be. He was rarely
seen by the courtiers of the papal
palace, but his people knew him as
the friend and father of the poor,
and loved him for a tenderness
and generosity almost without
bounds. He filled his diocese
with good works, founding seminaries
and asylums, introducing
charitable orders, always setting a
practical example of beneficence by
attending personally to the wants
of the unfortunate. He spent in
alms the last copper in his purse,
and sold the ornaments from his
parlor for the poor when his purse
was empty. It was the golden time
of his life—a time of peace and consolation.
The church in Italy just
then was at rest. A long period of
political disturbance had been followed
by comparative quiet. Convents
and pious schools were multiplied,
and the saintly Archbishop
of Spoleto found himself in the
midst of a devout clergy and a
grateful people. There was a short
outbreak in the Romagna in 1831,
premature and easily suppressed,
and it was then that the archbishop
was brought for the first time into
contact with the spirit of revolution
destined to make such a bitter and
.pn +1
memorable war upon him in later
years. Among the adventurers
implicated in the movement were
two scions of the Bonaparte family.
The elder brother died during the
enterprise; the younger lived to become
emperor. There is a story
that when Louis Napoleon fled
from the ruin of the revolt in the
Romagna, he knocked one night at
the door of the Archbishop of
Spoleto, and owed his safety to the
charity of that most charitable of
men. It is a story which rests upon
no very firm authority, and yet,
though often published, it stands
uncontradicted. It is certain, however,
that in the last days of the
insurrection the archbishop did
show his tenderness for the unfortunate
in a signal manner. Four
thousand revolutionists, pursued by
Austrian troops, presented themselves
before Spoleto. The archbishop
went out to meet them.
He persuaded them, since their
cause was lost, to lay down their
arms. He gave them several thousand
crowns for their immediate
needs. He pledged his word that
they should not be molested.
Then he performed the still more
difficult task of inducing the Austrian
commander to ratify the promise.
The pursuit was abandoned;
the insurgents retired quietly
to their homes. Pope Gregory
XVI., however, was not pleased with
this transaction, and the archbishop
was called to Rome to defend himself.
We must presume that his
explanation was satisfactory; for
the next year he was advanced to
the see of Imola. This is only a
suffragan see, but it is more important
in itself than the archbishopric
of Spoleto, and is, moreover, what is
called a cardinalitial post—under
ordinary circumstances a step towards
the higher dignity of the
scarlet hat. It was held by Pius
VII. when he was Cardinal Chiaramonti.
The promotion of Bishop
Mastai came in due course. His
creation as cardinal was announced
in December, 1840, having been
reserved <i>in petto</i> since the previous
year, and he took his title from the
church of SS. Peter and Marcellinus.
With his new dignity he
adopted no new mode of life.
Works of charity and devotion
still filled his days. The love and
respect of all classes of men still
encompassed him. It is the best
proof of the tranquil and happy
course of his episcopate that of the
nineteen years which he passed at
Spoleto and Imola there is hardly
an incident to be related.

His whole life thus far seems to
have been a providential preparation
for the two great works for
which he was destined by Almighty
God. On the spiritual side
of the church he was to bring
about the consolidation of Catholic
dogma and the complete definition
and development of the authority
of the church over the
minds and hearts of her children.
On the secular side, after showing
the perfect compatibility of the
temporal power with the needs of
modern society, he was to guide
the church with fortitude and prudence,
and give the Christian world
a shining example of constancy during
the trying days that were to see
that power destroyed. What better
training could he have had for this
double destiny than so many years
of charitable labor and close intercourse
with God? He issued at
last from his pious retirement with
a character enriched by the daily
practice of virtue, a disposition
sweetened by the habit of self-sacrifice,
a resolution strengthened by
reliance upon God, and a heavenly
.pn +1
courage that was proof against the
threats and buffets of the world.
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
We have spoken of the brief season
of repose in Italian politics
about the time of our Holy Father’s
elevation to the episcopate.
It was, indeed, only a transient
gleam of sunlight in the midst of
a tempestuous era. We come now
to a period of universal disturbance.
This is not the place to discuss
the causes of the great revulsions
of 1848. Probably they were
more complex and reached further
back than the world generally supposes.
But whatever may have
been the local provocations for revolt
in particular states, it is clear
that, for more than a quarter of a
century before the date with which
we are now occupied, the revolutionary
tendencies of all Europe
had shown a unity of direction
which implied a single guiding impulse.
It is not credible that a
few clubs of political enthusiasts,
visionary young students, hare-brained
apothecaries, and metaphysical
breeches-makers should
be able by the fire of their own
genius to set a continent in flames.
The revolutionary propaganda of
1830-1848 found in every country
of Europe a combustible population
only waiting for the spark.
Some states were rotten with social
and moral disorders of long
standing; some, like Poland, were
writhing under an oppression which
moved the sympathies of the whole
world; some fretted under the restrictions
of antiquated forms of
government, unsuited to the wants
of an expanding society. Thus
the generous and patriotic were
easily hurried into enterprises
whose true purpose they were far
from suspecting. The central influence
which vitalized and directed
all the scattered tendencies towards
revolt was the conspiracy of
the secret societies. “In the attempt
to conduct the government
of the world,” said the British
prime minister last autumn, in his
address at Aylesbury, “there are
new elements to be considered
which our predecessors had not to
deal with. We have not only to
deal with emperors, princes, and
ministers, but there are the secret
societies—an element which we
must take into consideration, which
at the last moment may baffle all
our arrangements, which have their
agents everywhere, which countenance
assassination, and which, if
necessary, could produce a massacre.”
Lord Beaconsfield’s statement
was a very mild one. The
secret societies had become, at the
time of which we write, the most
formidable force in European politics.
There was not a corner
of the Continent in which their
power was not felt. Intimately allied
with Freemasonry, their origin
dates back to a remote, unknown
time. They were already strong in
the eighteenth century, and their
share in the great French Revolution
is well understood. They became
formidable in the Illuminism
of Weishaupt in Germany a hundred
years ago. They appeared
in the Tugendbund, which had so
large a share in the overthrow
of the governments imposed upon
the German states by Napoleon
I. They were busy in Russia, in
Greece, in Ireland, in Spain, and
even in the Swiss Republic; in
Italy they have never been idle
since the first appearance of the
Carbonari at the beginning of the
century; in France they are the
only power which seems to be permanent.
.pn +1
As early as 1821 the Italian
revolutionist, Pepe, gave Carbonarism
an international character
by establishing in Spain a secret association
of the “advanced political
reformers of all the European
states”; and in 1834 Mazzini made
a much more effective union of the
revolutionary elements when, with
the aid of Italian, Polish, and German
refugees, he founded at Berne
the society of Young Europe. The
organization of Young Germany,
Young Poland, and Young Switzerland
dates from the same time and
place, and Switzerland became the
centre of all the agitations of the
Continent. Young Italy had been
grafted upon Carbonarism by Mazzini
as early as 1831.

Many of these associations, as
we have already intimated, professed
an excellent object. They
would have been comparatively
harmless, if they had not attracted
and deceived the good. The Tugendbund,
for instance, originally
aimed at the deliverance of Germany
from a foreign yoke; Young
Poland captivated the noble and
the ardent; even the Carbonari had
an alluring watchword in the Unity
and Independence of Italy. But
there was always an ulterior purpose,
revealed only to the initiated.
That purpose was one and unchanging,
and it was the bond which
united all the leaders of the vast
conspiracy from the Irish Sea to
the Grecian Archipelago, from Gibraltar
to Nova Zembla. It was the
establishment everywhere of an
atheistic democracy; or rather the
destruction simultaneously of all
religion, all government, and all
social bonds. Kings and priests
were equally hateful to the “Illuminated.”
There was to be no
recognition of God in their republic.
It was hostile not only to the
Catholic Church as an organization,
but to Christianity as a moral influence.
The Illuminati were founded
in the midst of the Masonic
lodges of Bavaria; they passed
thence into Austria, Saxony, Holland,
Italy, and Switzerland; they
were carried to Paris by Mirabeau,
who was initiated in Germany;
they were united with the Freemasons
all over France. Recognized
as the parents of the later
societies, they sounded as early as
1777 the key-note of the whole
complex movement. Findel, the
Masonic historian of Freemasonry,
declares that “the most decisive
agent” in giving the order a political
and anti-religious character
was “that intellectual movement
known under the name of English
deism, which boldly rejected all
revelation and all religious dogmas,
and under the victorious banner
of reason and criticism broke down
all barriers in its path.” But Weishaupt
found still too much “political
and religious prejudice” remaining
in the Freemasons, and
consequently devised a system
which, as he expressed it, would
“attract Christians of every communion
and gradually free them
from all religious prejudices.” The
“illumination” of the brethren was
to be accomplished by a course of
gradual education in which Christianity
was carefully ignored. It
was only in the higher degrees that
the initiated were taught that the
fall of man meant nothing but the
subjection of the individual to
civil society; that “illumination”
consisted in getting rid of all governments;
and that “the secret associations
were gradually and silently
to possess themselves of the
government of the states, making
use for this purpose of the means
which the wicked use for attaining
.pn +1
their base ends.” We quote this
from the discourse read at initiation
into one of the higher degrees, and
discovered when the papers of the
fraternity were seized by the Elector
of Bavaria in 1785. The same
document continues: “Princes and
priests are in particular the wicked
whose hands we must tie up by
means of these associations, if we
cannot wipe them out altogether.”
Patriotism was defined as a narrow-minded
prejudice; and, finally, the
illuminated man was taught that
everything is material, that religion
has no foundation, that all nations
must be brought back, either by
peaceable means or by force, to
their pristine condition of unrestricted
liberty, for “all subordination
must vanish from the face of
the earth.” The ceremonies of
initiation into the lodges of the
Carbonari remind us so strongly of
this explanation of the principles
of Illuminism that it is impossible
to resist the conclusion that the
two associations are closely connected.
The neophyte was taught
the same doctrine in both: that man
had everywhere fallen into the
hands of oppressors, whose authority
it was the mission of the enlightened
to cast off. Here, however,
as in the earlier society, the
pagan character of the proposed
new life was only revealed by degrees
to those who were prepared
for it. The conspirators seem to
have accommodated their system
of education to the peculiarities of
national training and disposition.
For example, they humored the
religious tendencies of the Italians
by retaining the name of God and
the image of the crucifix in the
ceremonial of the lower degrees,
and even published a forged bull,
in the name of Pope Pius VII., approving
the Carbonari; while in
the training of Young Germany
just a contrary course was adopted.
“We are obliged to treat new-comers
very cautiously,” says a report
from a propagandist committee established
among the Germans in
Switzerland, “to bring them step
by step into the right road, and the
principal thing in this respect is to
show them that religion is nothing
but a pile of rubbish.” Indeed, the
rampant atheism of the secret societies
of Germany, and also of
France, has always been notorious.
Of the still more horrible manifestations
of impiety to which they
were carried in Italy we hesitate
to speak, lest we be suspected of
sensational exaggerations. All that
we have said thus far of the principles
and practices of the Masons,
Illuminati, and Carbonari is quoted
from their own books and papers,
and may be found in the work of
their admirer and apologist, Thomas
Frost, the title of which we
have placed at the head of this article.
For a more startling picture
of their inner mysteries we
refer the reader to Father Bresciani,[#]
who lived in Rome in 1848
and had direct testimony of horrors
which almost defy belief. Mr.
Frost, however, gives a glimpse of
the worse than pagan spirit of Carbonarism
when he describes the
initiation into the second degree—a
ceremony wherein the candidate,
crowned with thorns and bearing a
cross, personated our divine Lord,
and knelt to ask pardon of Pilate,
Caiphas, and Herod, represented
by the grand master and two assistants,
the pardon being granted
at the intercession of the assembled
Carbonari! In all the societies an
abstract morality was taught which
was not the morality of Jesus
.pn +1
Christ, and laws were laid down at
variance with the laws of the state.
Assassination was one of the chief
duties which the fraternity enjoined
upon its votaries. The initiated
fancied that they emancipated themselves
from all subordination; but
they bound themselves by the most
awful penalties to murder any one,
even friend or brother, who might
be pointed out for death by some
unseen, unknown, and shadowy
authority.

.fn #
<i>The Jew of Verona.</i> English translation, 2
vols. 12mo. Baltimore. 1854.
.fn-

When Pope Gregory XVI. came
to the throne the conspiracies of ten
years were just ripening. He was
assailed in the very first month of
his pontificate by the rising in the
Romagna, and he spent the fifteen
years of his reign in a struggle to
keep down the evil spirit whose apparition
then alarmed him. All
Europe during these fifteen years
was a volcano sending forth the
deep mutterings and sulphurous
vapors which presage an eruption.
France was never at peace from the
overthrow of Charles X. in 1830 till
after the re-establishment of the empire—if
even she is at peace yet.
Every capital in Germany was in
nightly danger of the dagger, the
torch, and the barricade. Switzerland,
though a free republic, was no
less severely tormented by conspiracies
than the monarchical countries,
and after several years of contention
her secret societies took arms in 1844
to compel the Catholic cantons,
against the constitution of the confederation,
to expel the Jesuits. In
Poland, at the very moment when
the nobles were preparing a revolt
against the Austrian yoke, a socialistic
and agrarian rising of the
peasants against the nobles filled
Galicia with massacres of incredible
barbarity. In Italy the Carbonari
negotiated for a while with
the Duke of Modena, by whose aid
they proposed to expel the Austrians
from Lombardy and Venice,
and unite the states of the north
and centre under one sovereign—of
course with the further object, held
in reserve, of getting rid of the
Duke of Modena as soon as they
had no further use for him: a
scheme almost exactly like that
which Young Italy tried a few
years later with Charles Albert of
Sardinia. Defeated in this project
and crushed in attempts at insurrection,
they worked for some time
in secret, but they worked with furious
energy. The doctrines of
Illumination were carried into every
corner of the peninsula. A score
of local secret associations came
into existence, adding to the wickedness
of the parent society some
peculiar brutality of their own.
Ancona had its “Society of Death,”
Sinigaglia its “Infernal Association,”
Leghorn its “Society of
Slayers,” Faenza its “Band of
Stabbers.”

Between 1831 and 1840, however,
the policy of the Italian revolutionists
was greatly modified. Mazzini
established Young Italy under the
conviction that the old methods of
conspiracy must fail. Instead of
wasting their strength in vain efforts
to overturn the Italian princes
singly, he urged the brethren to
concentrate their energies upon a
movement for the expulsion of the
Austrians and a consolidation of
all the Italian states. The fate of
pope, and kings, and princes could
be settled afterwards. “All questions
as to forms of internal policy,”
he wrote, “can be put off till the
close of the war of independence.”
Italy and independence! This was
a programme, not for the secret
societies alone, but for the whole
peninsula. It captivated the generous,
the impulsive, the ardent,
.pn +1
the ambitious. It brought to the
same work poetry, patriotism, and
religion, the pistol, the dagger, and
the poisoned cup. What was to be
done with Italy, when it was united
and rid of the Austrians, was one of
the secrets of the initiated never
explained to the common people;
but remarkable illustrations of the
inner character of this movement
were found in 1844 among certain
papers seized by the police
in Rome. “Our watchword,”
wrote one of the leaders, “must
be Religion, Union, Independence.
As for the King of Sardinia, we
should seek some favorable opportunity
to poignard him. I recommend
the same course to be
pursued in regard to the King of
Naples. The Lombards may second
our efforts by poison, or by
insurrection, under the form of little
'Sicilian Vespers’ against the
Germans. Functionaries or private
citizens who show a hostile spirit
must be put to death. Let them
be arrested quietly during the
night, and the report be circulated
that they have been exiled or sent
to prison, or have absconded.”
Mazzini himself a little later, in an
address to Young Italy, gave a significant
explanation of his idea.
“In your country,” said he, “regeneration
must come through the
princes. Get them on your side.
Attack their vanity. Let them
march at the head, if they will, so
long as they march your way. Few
will go to the end. If they make
concessions, praise them and insist
upon something further. The essential
thing is not to let them know
what the goal of the revolution is.
They must never see more than
one step at a time.” And he urged
also the importance of “managing”
the clergy. “Its habits and hierarchy
make it the imp of authority—that
is to say, of despotism”; but
the people believe in it, and we
must make its influence of use.
With the Jesuits, however, he proclaimed
war to the knife. None of
the socialists and infidels were willing
to make any terms with the
sons of St. Ignatius.

In the prosecution of this new
scheme of revolution the conspirators
obtained invaluable help from
a most unexpected ally. The erring
genius of the unfortunate Abbate
Gioberti did more for them
than the machinations of the lodges.
Carried away by visions of a new
Italy and a new Catholicism, he forgot
the divine mission of the church
in speculations as to what she might
accomplish in purely secular enterprises.
His great error was in
thinking of religion as an agent of
civilization rather than an instrumentality
for saving souls, and thus
he was led into the blunder of attempting
to unite God and the
world in an equal partnership. He
conceived the idea of an Italian
federation with the King of Sardinia
as military head and the Pope as
spiritual president—a sort of dual
empire like that of Japan, with a
tycoon at Turin, a mikado at the
Vatican. But the clergy were to
abdicate their dominion over the
minds of men, and bend their energies
to effecting an alliance of religion
with a material progress that
in his theory had outstripped the
church and become for ever incompatible
with ecclesiastical tutelage.
He wished the priests to put themselves
at the head of the new social
movements, and, hand in hand with
the political agitators, to lead Italy
to a material glory such as no nation
on earth had ever seen. His
book, <i>Del Primato</i>, was welcomed
with unparalleled enthusiasm. The
charm of a brilliant style, the force
.pn +1
of an original, cultivated, and poetic
mind, the glamour of a philosophy
which seemed to meet all the wants
of an exciting and uneasy time,
turned the heads of the whole nation.
Gioberti, Cesare Balbo, Massimo
d’Azeglio, were the creators
of a new literature, and all Italy
read them with flashing eyes and
quickening pulse. Theirs was a
reform which seized upon the fancy
of good and bad alike, and hurried
into a common delusion the heedless
Christian and the veteran Carbonaro,
the young, the imaginative,
the adventurous, and the artful.
Mazzini, who afterwards became
one of Gioberti’s bitterest enemies,
was too shrewd to undervalue this
influence. He sought an interview
with Gioberti in Paris; he offered
terms of co-operation; he even
went through the form of renouncing
what he styled his own “more
narrow views,” and proposed a National
Association which, adjourning
all questions of forms and spirit
of government, faith or scepticism,
God or the devil, should unite Italy
in the single purpose of creating an
Italian nation. Different as the
aims of the two men were—for
Gioberti included even the Austrian
government of Lombardy and Venice
in his union—they embraced
each other for the moment. Together
they swept the peninsula.
Every city from Palermo to Milan
was aflame with the new ideas.
The soberest patriots lost their composure,
and many of the clergy began
to dream wild dreams of political
change, and to see visions of reformed
conspirators kneeling at the
feet of a democratic pope. We
look back upon those days from
the vantage-ground of experience,
and we wonder that men should
have been so deceived. But 1848
had not then given the lie to the
professions of 1846. Devout Italians
at that time did not see, as
we do, that the secret societies
which assailed the church on one
side of the Alps with fire and sword
could not be sincere in offering to
place it in a new position of power
and glory on the other, nor did
they realize the extent of the conspiracy
to overwhelm religion, government,
and social order throughout
Europe in one general ruin.

That conspiracy was more formidable
in Italy than anywhere
else, and it was more formidable
not only because it was better organized,
but because it involved so
many men of blameless character
and offered to satisfy a lofty national
aspiration. During the last
years of Pope Gregory XVI. an
explosion seemed inevitable. Probably
nothing kept it back except
the age and infirmities of the venerable
pontiff; the leaders preferred
to wait for his death. He died on
the 1st of June, 1846. The whole
peninsula was instantly in commotion,
and the symptoms of violence
in Rome were so alarming that people
doubted the possibility of an
election. Austria, as the power
most directly interested in the secular
politics of the Holy See, was
understood to demand a continuance
of the restrictive policy of
Gregory; France, on the contrary,
was said to desire a moderately
liberal pope. To avoid pressure
upon the conclave, as well as to
forestall an outbreak, the Italian
cardinals resolved to begin their
deliberations at once and finish
them quickly. Without waiting for
their distant colleagues, they entered
the Quirinal on the 14th, the
doors were closed, the guards were
set, and the balloting began. Two
ballots are taken in the conclave
every day. The persons whom public
.pn +1
opinion selected as most likely
to command the necessary thirty-four
votes were Cardinals Gizzi
and Lambruschini. The modest
and retiring Cardinal Mastai seems
to have been little known by the
outside world, though his merit was
no secret to the Sacred College. He
was appointed scrutator, to open
and read the ballots. At the first
session of the conclave his name
was proposed by Cardinal Altieri,
Prince-Bishop of Albano, and the
first scrutiny showed that he united
a large party of the cardinals. On
the second ballot he gained a little.
On the third his vote was twenty-seven—only
seven less than a majority.
He retired to his cell and
spent the whole time in prayer till
the evening meeting. He came to
the performance of his functions
pale and agitated. When the ballots
were taken from the chalice in
which they had been collected, he
read his own name on the first, on
the second, on the third, on every
paper up to the eighteenth. He
could not go on; he begged the
conclave to commit the rest of the
task to another. But to change the
scrutator in the midst of the vote
would invalidate the election. The
cardinals gathered around him; for
some time he sat terrified and almost
insensible, while streams of
tears flowed down his cheeks. On
the completion of the count it was
found that he had the suffrages of
thirty-six out of the fifty-four cardinals
present. As the whole assembly
rose to confirm the choice
by unanimous acclamation, the
Pope-elect fell upon his knees, and
profound silence reigned in the
Pauline Chapel while he communed
with Almighty God.

It was on the following day, June
18, that, according to custom, the
bricked-up window in the front of
the Quirinal Palace was broken
open, and the cardinals came out
upon the balcony to announce to
the waiting multitude the choice
of a new pope. It is said that men
turned to one another in surprise
when they heard the name, and
asked who this Cardinal Mastai
could be. But when his beautiful
and benignant face appeared among
the throng, and his hand was raised
in that gesture of benediction
which all who have seen him will
for ever associate with his memory,
he won the love and admiration of
the Roman people; and the true
Romans have loved him ever since.

The story of his first days in the
pontificate reads like a charming
romance. He called the steward
of the palace and said to him:
“When I was bishop I spent for
my personal expenses a crown a
day; when I was cardinal I spent
a crown and a half; and now that I
am Pope you must not go beyond
two crowns.” He went about the
city alone to search out abuses and
to look into the condition of the
poor. He presented himself without
warning at public institutions.
He knocked at the doors of religious
houses at night. He startled
the congregation at St. Andrea del
Valle by appearing unannounced
in the pulpit to preach against blasphemy.
He delighted children by
visiting the schools. He talked freely
with the humble whom he met
in the streets and on the country
roads. He gave lavishly to the
needy. A poor market-gardener
lost his horse and walked boldly
into the palace to ask the Pope if
he could not spare an old one from
the Quirinal stables. A secretary
found the man on the stairs and
took his message to the Holy Father.
“Yes,” was the Pope’s reply;
“and give him this money, too.
.pn +1
He must be very poor, or he never
would come to the Quirinal to get
a horse.”

But Pius IX. was not ignorant
of the dangers which surrounded
his throne. He chose his course
promptly. It may be doubted
whether stern measures of repression
could have accomplished any
good in the excitement of that
time, but at any rate he had no
taste for them. He favored the
idea of a national confederation
under the presidency of the Pope,
wishing to accomplish it by a friendly
alliance of the existing governments,
not by war and revolution.
For the rest, he looked forward to
a reform in the administration of
his states, and the introduction of
liberal and popular institutions as
fast as the old forms could be safely
changed, and he purposed to
rule by kindness, generosity, and
confidence. Yet, as we shall see,
he did not lack firmness when firmness
was needed. One of his first
acts was to declare an amnesty for
political offences, and a characteristic
anecdote is told of him in
connection with it. He called a
council of his principal advisers
and asked their votes upon the
proposed measure of mercy. To
his chagrin, a majority of the balls
voted were black. He took off his
white cap and placed it over them;
“Now,” said he, “they are all white.”
The prisons were opened. The exiles
returned. One thousand six
hundred persons were restored to
freedom and friends. Rome was
in a tumult of joy. The populace
thronged about the pontiff whenever
he went abroad, and waited
long hours before the palace windows
to get his blessing. On the
feast of St. Peter’s Chains a great
number of the pardoned received
communion from the Holy Father's
hands, and the occasion was
celebrated with lively demonstrations.
Nor was the Pope satisfied
with an easy act of clemency. He
made a close personal study of the
administration. A multitude of
petty abuses were swept away.
The taxes were reduced. The
liberty of the press was enlarged.
Industries were fostered; railways
were planned. The Jews were relieved
of burdensome and humiliating
restrictions. Then the old
municipal privileges of Rome were
restored, and a long stride ahead
was made by the formation of a
lay consulta of state and the popular
representation of the provinces
in the central government.

Nothing could surpass the enthusiasm
of the people at this dawn
of a new political era. It was almost
a continuous holiday in Rome,
with gay processions by day and
torch-light parades by night, public
banquets in the vineyards and gardens,
triumphal arches spanning
the streets, the papal colors fluttering
from every window and decorating
every breast. Because those
colors were white and yellow, it
became a point of honor with delighted
Romans to breakfast every
morning on boiled eggs. Nor was
it only Italy which raised the chorus
of applause. All over the world
the Papacy shone with a glory
which it had hardly displayed since
Leo XII. The Protestants of New
York held a monster meeting of
felicitation at the Broadway Tabernacle,
where cordial letters were
read from ex-President Van Buren
and Vice-President Dallas, and an
enthusiastic address to the Pope,
prepared by Horace Greeley, was
adopted by acclamation. The British
government offered its congratulations.
The French ministry,
led by M. Guizot, rivalled the
.pn +1
French opposition, led by M. Thiers,
in resolutions and speeches of encouragement.
Mazzini, true to the
policy already explained, addressed
to the Holy Father a letter of ostensible
sympathy and praise. Such
halcyon days might well have filled
the most wary with a dangerous
confidence.

The Pope was not deceived.
He knew that under this outward
show of peace the conspiracy was active.
The first attempt of the revolutionary
party was to separate him
from the cardinals. Three weeks
after the amnesty, as he drove
under one of the arches erected
in his honor, the mob stopped
some of the prelates of his suite
and refused to let them pass.
Certain demonstrations at the popular
out-of-door repasts became so
significant that the gatherings had
to be forbidden. Before the end
of the year the cry of “Viva Pio
Nono!” changed to “Viva Pio
Nono Solo!” and mingled with
shouts of “Down with the Jesuits!”
and “Death to the retrograders!”
The next summer Rome was
thrown into a fever of rage by an
invention so outrageous and yet
so ridiculous that one reads of it
with amazement. It was alleged
that Cardinal Lambruschini, the
Austrian government, and the
General of the Jesuits had organized
a plot to fall upon the populace
on the anniversary of the amnesty,
and in the midst of the massacre to
get possession of the Pope and put
a stop to his liberalism. The <i>fête</i>
appointed for the anniversary was
given up, and the excitement enabled
the revolutionists to depose
the old police and throw the city
into the arms of the civic guard, of
which they were really the directing
force. On New Year’s day,
1848, the Pope was molested in the
street by a disorderly mob, shouting
menaces against “reactionists”
and “Jesuits.” The violence of
the radical faction increased; their
demeanor became more and more
insulting; the danger of riot grew
imminent; the civil guard showed
plain symptoms of disloyalty. Yet
all this while the Holy Father persevered
in his reforms. He took
no step backward. He withdrew
no concession. The measure of
popular liberty was constantly enlarging,
the administration becoming
more thoroughly representative.
If it was “progress” that the agitators
wanted, what was this?

We cannot understand the history
of this strange time without
bearing in mind that the danger
arose, not from anything the Pope
had done or failed to do, but from
the steady and stealthy advance of
the pagan conspiracy. Rome, under
the mild rule of Pius IX., became
the resort of all the chief revolutionists
of the Continent, and it is
hardly too much to say that the particular
house in Rome where they met
and plotted with the most comfort
was the British embassy. Palmerston’s
policy was always to encourage
radical movements on the Continent.
When he sent Lord Minto,
therefore, as a special envoy to Italy,
the parlors of that nobleman were instantly
thronged by the Carbonari.
In this diplomatic sanctuary gathered
a strange company of princes and
demagogues—Ciceruacchio, the orator
of the rabble; Prince Charles Bonaparte,
the radical in purple; Sterbini,
the poet, physician, and journalist;
Tofanelli, the tavern-keeper;
Materazzi, patriot and joiner;
Galetti, the grocer, who became
Minister of Police in one of the later
democratic cabinets.

A letter of Mazzini’s, written in
1847, taught Young Italy that the
.pn +1
time for action was close at hand;
it was useless to count upon the
Pope; their best policy was to inflame
the popular hatred of Austria;
then provoke Austria to attack
them; and in the heat of war
to accomplish the rest. But at this
critical time Austria herself committed
an act which hastened the
explosion. Alarmed at the aspect
of affairs in Central Italy, she marched
a body of troops into the papal
territory. The treaty of 1815 gave
her the right to place a garrison in
the citadel of Ferrara; she went
further and occupied the town;
and although the spirited protest
of the Pope caused her to withdraw
after some delay, the occasion
which the secret societies desired
had been given, and a cry for war
and independence resounded from
the Gulf of Genoa to the Bay of Naples.
We know but imperfectly the
hidden springs of action of that
year of revolutions; but, as if by
concert, the insurrection flashed up
almost simultaneously all over the
Continent. The Milanese flew to
arms. The revolt broke out in Vienna.
Barricades arose at Berlin.
The Republic was proclaimed in
Paris. Naples and Tuscany were
menaced. The municipality of
Rome waited upon the Pope and
demanded a constitution. He consented
to give it. “I would have
preferred,” said he, “to watch for
a while the result of the reforms already
instituted; but other Italian
princes have granted constitutions,
and I will not show less confidence
in my subjects than they have had
in theirs.” At the same time the
ministry was changed. Cardinal
Antonelli, whose management of
the finances had made him very
popular, became Secretary of State,
and three of the most moderate of
the liberals—Minghetti, Galetti, and
Sturbinetti—entered the cabinet.
It is characteristic of the spirit of
the revolution that the first effect of
these concessions was to stimulate
a fresh attack upon the church,
disorders in Rome, and an assault upon
the Gesù. The Jesuits were forced
to close their establishment,
some taking flight, others finding
shelter in private houses. The
constitution was proclaimed in
March. It provided for a Senate
and a House of Deputies—the senators
to be appointed for life, the
deputies to be elected by the taxpayers
of Rome and the provinces.
This parliament was not to meddle
with ecclesiastical affairs, but in
other matters it had the usual powers
of legislation.

Meantime, the war of independence
in the north of Italy was in
the full tide of success. Young
Italy believed it had found a leader
in Charles Albert of Sardinia. The
Austrians were driven from Milan.
The republic lived again in Venice.
The Pope sent 17,000 men to protect
his frontiers, with strict orders
not to cross them. At once the
conspirators spread the report that
he had declared war against Austria.
They called the people together
in the Colosseum to ratify the
new crusade, and there the Barnabite
monk, Gavazzi, masquerading
in the character of a new Peter
the Hermit and brandishing a tricolored
cross, made his first bid for
notoriety. There were only 7,000
regular troops in the papal expedition;
the rest were motley volunteers—the
flower of the nobility and
the dregs of the wine-shop, the most
gallant lads of Rome and the scum
of all the political clubs of the Continent.
They hurried through the
Romagna, gutting taverns and hunting
Jesuits by the way, and when
they reached Bologna their general
.pn +1
(the Piedmontese, Durando) announced
that the Austrians were
making war upon our Lord, and
that the soldiers of the Pope would
give them battle with the cry, “God
wills it!” It was afterwards discovered
that this direct defiance of
the Pope’s commands, this open
act of hostility against a power with
which the states of the church were
at peace, was in accordance with
secret instructions from the Pope’s
radical Minister of War. While
the sovereign ordered his troops to
remain strictly on the defensive
within their own boundaries, the
ministers told Durando to cross
over into Lombardy and place himself
at the disposal of Charles Albert;
and Durando prepared to
obey them. It was impossible for
the Holy Father to remain silent
under such an outrage. He repudiated
Durando’s order of the day
in the official press, and he spoke
more fully in an allocution: “We
shall not make war upon Austria;
we embrace all countries, all nations,
with an equal paternal love.”
And he took occasion at the same
time to denounce the project of
destroying all the governments of
the peninsula in order to build out
of their ruins one Italian republic
with the Pope at the head of it.
He was no doubt prepared for the
explosion of wrath which followed.
But the revolution was not to be
ignored any longer. For some
time ministers had been in the
habit of counterfeiting his assent to
measures of which he disapproved;
if the army was to make war without
his consent, his reign was at an
end. Rome was in a tempest.
The cry of “Treason!” rang
through the streets. Ciceruacchio
proposed to kill all the priests.
The civic guards flew to arms, posted
soldiers at the doors of the cardinals,
and refused to recognize
the Pope’s orders. A new and
more radical ministry, led by Count
Mamiani, came into office on the 3d
of May, and on the same day the
Holy Father wrote a touching letter
to the Emperor of Austria—a plea
for peace and Italian independence:
“We exhort your majesty with the
most paternal affection to withdraw
from a contest which cannot reconquer
for the empire the hearts of the
Lombards and Venetians. There
is no grandeur in a domination
which rests only on the sword.”

The new ministry insisted at
once upon war, but here it found
the determination of the Pope unalterable.
There seems to have
been an attempt, of which the ministers
themselves were possibly innocent,
to precipitate hostilities by
rousing an uncontrollable popular
impulse. One day a courier,
breathless and dusty, rode through
the Corso announcing a great victory
of Charles Albert over the
Austrians. The city was illuminated;
there was talk of forcing the
clergy to chant <i>Te Deum</i> in the
churches. But the next day it
was discovered that the messenger,
who entered Rome as if from Lombardy
by the Porta del Popolo, had
left the city only an hour before by
the Porta Angelica, gathering all
the stains of travel in an easy ride
along the walls, and had been paid
three dollars for the performance.
Charles Albert had been signally
defeated.

Whatever fitness for self-government
might be latent in the Roman
people, it was certain that, in
the existing condition of the Pontifical
States, a government by the
people was out of the question.
Every attempt to satisfy the popular
aspirations, every scheme for
the introduction of parliamentary
.pn +1
and representative institutions, was
baffled by the Mazzinian clubs,
whose rule, supported by conspiracy
and assassination, was the most
cruel and absolute of despotisms,
yet destitute of that stability and
force which make some despotisms
respectable. They threatened the
church with spoliation, the clergy
with death, the young with atheism.
They undermined the authority of
all government, not merely of this
or that particular form, but of all
forms. Italy appeared to be rushing
towards anarchy. It was time
to cry, Halt! Pius resolved to yield
not another inch, but, without withdrawing
any reasonable concession,
to put what remained of his authority
upon a firm basis. He invited
Count Pellegrino Rossi to form a
cabinet.

Count Rossi was an Italian by
birth, a Swiss by adoption, a
Frenchman by subsequent choice,
an old Carbonaro, an old conspirator,
an old political exile. He was
an ardent partisan of Italian unity,
but he had seen the emptiness of
some of his early illusions, and he
had abandoned the secret societies.
He had come to Rome in the time
of Gregory XVI. as ambassador of
Louis Philippe, charged with a negotiation
for the removal of the
Jesuits from France; in his diplomatic
capacity he had been one of
the most moderate advisers of Pius
IX.; and after the fall of Louis
Philippe he had remained in Rome
as a private citizen. He accepted
the task of restoring order; he reorganized
the administration, negotiated
with Naples, Turin, and
Florence for the formation of an
Italian confederation under the
presidency of the Pope, arrested
Gavazzi, who was preaching rebellion,
and brought back some of the
troops which his predecessors had
sent away from Rome. The radical
press speedily opened an attack
upon him. The clubs began to
prepare for his downfall. The 15th
of November, two months after his
accession to power, was the date
fixed for the opening of the Chambers.
He received more than one
warning that the same day had
been appointed for his death. The
wife of the Minister of War wrote
him that his life was to be attempted
as he entered the Chamber. A
Frenchman sent him a note to the
same effect. A priest stopped him
at the Quirinal and repeated the
warning. The Pope had also
learned of the plans of the conspirators
and begged Rossi to beware.
“They are cowards,” replied the
count; “they will not dare to
strike.” “The cause of the Pope,”
said the intrepid minister to one of
his colleagues, “is the cause of
God. I must go where my duty
calls me.” On the night before the
opening of the parliament a corpse
was taken from one of the hospitals
and carried secretly to the little
Capranica theatre. There a select
band of conspirators rehearsed the
assassination, and the chosen instrument
of the vengeance of the
societies, a young sculptor named
Costantini, learned by repeated
practice where to strike. They
were waiting for the count at the
entrance to the hall of Deputies.
As he placed his foot upon the
steps they gathered around him.
One struck him on the side. He
turned his head, and Costantini
plunged a dagger into the carotid
artery. The nearest priest was
called, and Rossi lived just long
enough to receive absolution. He
had yielded to the fears of his
friends so far as to post extra
guards about the court and staircase;
<i>sed quis custodiet custodes?</i>
The assassin and his accomplices
walked away unmolested and passed
.pn +1
the night promenading the city
with songs of triumph. The streets
were hung with flags. The bloody
dagger, decked with flowers, was
exposed to the veneration of their
party on the top of a tricolored
standard, and held up before the
windows of the weeping family of
the victim. When the news of the
awful crime committed on the
stairs was carried into the Chamber,
the deputies manifested no concern.
“It is nothing, gentlemen,”
said Sterbini; “let us to business.”
When it was made known to the
Pope he fell upon his knees and
remained some time in silent prayer.
“Count Rossi has died a martyr,”
said he; “God will receive
his soul in peace.”

The next day the Quirinal was
surrounded by a menacing crowd
demanding an immediate declaration
of war against Austria, the convocation
of a Constituent Assembly
to devise a new form of government,
and the surrender of all power
in the meantime to a ministry
headed by Sterbini. The Pope
would not listen to them. Then
they tried to burn the palace. A
single volley from the Swiss Guard,
fired over the heads of the mob,
drove them back. But they returned
in force, with an ultimatum,
backed by cannon and the whole
civic guard. Sharp-shooters occupied
the house-tops or sheltered
themselves behind the famous
equestrian groups in the centre of
the piazza, and poured a shower
of balls into the palace windows.
One of the papal secretaries was
killed. A bullet entered the Pope’s
chamber. The Holy Father called
the diplomatic corps together and
told them that he must yield.
“But let Europe know that I am a
prisoner here; I have no part in the
government; they shall rule in
their own name, not mine.”

His chief thought now was flight.
But he was closely watched and the
guards invaded even his private
apartments. On the 22d of November,
six days after the attack upon
the Quirinal, he received from the
Bishop of Valence in France a silver
pyx in which Pope Pius VI.
used to carry the Blessed Sacrament
suspended from his neck during
his painful exile. “Heir to the
name, the see, the virtues, the courage,
and many of the tribulations
of this great pontiff,” wrote the
bishop, “you will perhaps attach
some value to this interesting little
relic, which I trust may not serve
the same destiny in your Holiness’s
hands as in those of its former possessor.”
The Pope looked upon
this as a providential provision for
his journey. The ingenuity of the
Duke d’Harcourt, ambassador of
France, and the boldness of the
Bavarian minister, Count Spaur,
aided by the quick wit of his pious
French wife, finally arranged the
escape. The Pope’s faithful gentleman-in-waiting,
Filippani, collected
the little articles absolutely
needed on the route, and at night
carried them under his cloak, one
by one, to the residence of Count
Spaur. Meanwhile, it was announced
in Rome that the count, accompanied
by his family, was going
to Naples on a diplomatic errand.
The countess started first in her
travelling carriage with her son and
his tutor, giving out that her husband,
detained a few hours in Rome
by important business, would overtake
her at Albano. Towards evening
on the same day (November
24, 1848) the Duke d’Harcourt
visited the Quirinal in state, and, being
admitted to a private official interview
with the Holy Father, began
to read to him a series of long despatches.
He read in a loud tone,
so that his voice could be heard by
.pn +1
the guards in the ante-room. If
they could have seen what passed
as well as they heard, they would
have been very much astonished.
For no sooner had the duke begun
than the Pope retired to an inner
chamber and transformed himself into
a simple priest. He put on a
black robe, an ample cloak, and a
low, round hat, and, accompanied
by Filippani, he reached the grand
staircase by a private door, passed
the guards unsuspected, and found
himself in the street. Filippani had
a carriage in readiness, and drove
with his august master to the
church of SS. Peter and Marcellinus,
beyond the Colosseum, where Count
Spaur was waiting with another
conveyance. The Pope entered it;
the count took the reins; they
passed out by the gate of St. Giovanni,
near the Lateran, the sentries
being satisfied with the count’s
declaration of his name and quality;
and late in the night they reached
a certain fountain on the Appian
Way, where the countess was to
meet them with the coach and four.
When she drove up a few minutes
later she was terrified at finding the
fugitive surrounded by an armed patrol.
Count Spaur was answering the
questions of the soldiers, and the
Pope and a trooper stood side by side
against the fence. The countess
did not lose her presence of mind.
“Come, doctor,” she exclaimed,
“jump in; you have kept us waiting”;
and bidding good-night to the
patrol, the party drove off at full
speed. The Pope was the first to
speak. “Courage!” said he; “I
carry the Blessed Sacrament in the
same pyx in which it was borne by
Pius VI.” They crossed the Neapolitan
frontier at daylight, and as
soon as they were safe beyond the
Pontifical States they all recited the
<i>Te Deum</i>. They reached Gaeta in
the afternoon. There Cardinal Antonelli
joined them in disguise, and
Count Spaur, posting on to Naples,
with a letter from the Pope to King
Ferdinand, resigned the care of
the Holy Father to the secretary
of the Spanish embassy. Refused
admission to the bishop’s palace
because the bishop was absent, the
Pope and his companions took up
their quarters at a poor inn, and
there they were placed under surveillance
by the military commander,
Gen. Gross, who suspected
them as spies. The general was
questioning the countess and the
cardinal next day, when he was
astounded by the arrival of the king
and queen with three vessels of
war and a guard of honor. Count
Spaur had reached Naples and delivered
his letter to the king in person
about midnight, and his majesty,
after spending the rest of
the night in preparations, embarked
in the early morning to do honor
to his illustrious guest. And during
the year and a half spent by
the Pope in the Neapolitan dominions,
either at Gaeta or Portici,
there was no possible mark of respect
which King Ferdinand failed
to show him. His purpose had
been to embark in a Spanish frigate
for the Balearic Islands, the scene
of his brief and absurd imprisonment
in 1823, but Ferdinand persuaded
him to remain in Gaeta,
where the royal palace was prepared
for his occupation. There
the diplomatic body gathered around
him, and the cardinals assembled
after escaping from Rome by various
stratagems and disguises.

And how was it in Rome? The
ministry of Sterbini, the parliament,
and the authorities left by the Pope
disappeared with equal suddenness,
and the government passed into the
hands, not by any means of the
Roman people, but of Mazzini with
the secret clubs, and of Garibaldi
.pn +1
with two or three thousand soldiers
of fortune, brought into the
city from other parts of Italy. They
pronounced the deposition of the
Pope, and declared a republic with
an executive triumvirate. Nominally
the triumvirs were Mazzini, Armellini,
and Saffi; in reality the
head of the administration was
Mazzini alone. Wherever the pagan
democracy triumphed, even for
a few days, the result was the same.
Religion, the rights of property, and
common morality suffered together
and personal liberty vanished. Private
estates in Rome were confiscated
to the uses of the triumvirate
under the guise of forced loans.
The goods of the church were
seized. The shrines and altars
were stripped bare. Confessionals
were burned in the Piazza del Popolo.
The houses of the cardinals
were sacked, convents were assaulted.
Profane rites were celebrated
in St. Peter’s at Easter and Corpus
Christi; the papal benediction <i>urbi
et orbi</i> was travestied by a suspended
priest; the canons of St. Peter’s
were fined for refusing to take part
in the impious ceremonies; the provost
of the cathedral of Sinigaglia
was put to death for a similar cause.
The clergy were hunted like vermin,
cut down in the public roads,
dragged from hiding-places. The
convent of St. Callisto was turned
into a slaughter-house, where one
of the Roman priest-catchers used
to shut up his victims, and kill
them at pleasure without the formality
of trial or sentence. He
killed fourteen there in one day.
Two vine-dressers, accused of being
Jesuits in disguise, were torn to
pieces on the bridge of St. Angelo.
Murder and pillage stalked hand in
hand through the city. There soon
ceased to be any real government
at all in Rome, until on the 2d of
July, 1849, the French army restored
the papal authority after the
horrors of a severe siege, in which
foreigners, not Romans, manned the
defences. Anywhere else in the
world the quelling of such a revolt
would have been followed by wholesale
condemnations to the galleys
and the scaffold. But nothing could
conquer the kindness of Pius IX.
His restoration, like his accession,
was followed by an act of amnesty.
It left in exile the guiltiest of the
leaders; and care was taken to give
the re-established government as
much strength as the situation demanded.
Some restrictions were
certainly necessary; several priests
had been assassinated since the
surrender of the city; two attempts
had been made to burn the Quirinal;
and placards menaced with
the vengeance of the societies all
Romans who should welcome the
Pope on his return.

Nevertheless, the Holy Father’s
journey home in April was a continuous
triumph, and his entrance
into Rome was celebrated with
frantic demonstrations of delight.
He confirmed many of the most
valuable of his political reforms,
and resumed his old life of charity
and devotion. The next ten years
of his reign are commonly described
as a period of severe reaction.
Nothing could be further from the
truth. Pius IX. has never been an
absolutist, never ceased to favor all
true liberty, never believed that nations
can be governed in the nineteenth
century by the methods
which prevailed in the ninth.
From his accession down to the
present day he has not only been
the kindest ruler known to history,
but he has invariably granted his
people the most liberal institutions
and the fullest measure of personal
freedom which the incessant activity
of the secret conspirators would
allow. The enemies of Italian liberty
.pn +1
are the dagger and the bayonet.
It is mere cant and bigotry
to assume that everything calling
itself a republic, whatever its true
character, is entitled to the sympathy
of a free people.

When Charles Albert was defeated
by the Austrians, Mazzini
declared that the war of the kings
had ended and the war of the peoples
was about to begin. The war
of the peoples had failed in its turn,
and now the secret societies went
back to a conspiracy of the kings.
They found Victor Emanuel a more
useful instrument than his father,
and with him they made a compact
whose terms we can gather plainly
enough from the event. As the
destruction of Christianity was the
avowed purpose of the secret societies
from the very beginning, so the
first service which Sardinia must
render them in payment for the
crown of Italy was a systematic attack
upon the church in the Sardinian
territory. The method of
these attacks is always the same.
They begin by silencing the clergy,
dispersing the religious orders, and
giving an anti-religious character to
public education. In Sardinia the
government went so far as to found a
state school of heretical theology,
and to impose it upon the episcopate
by force. In the university
of Turin it was taught that the
state is omnipotent over the church,
that the temporal power of the
Pope is incompatible with the spiritual,
that marriage cannot be proved
a sacrament; and the government
prohibited the appointment of any
clergyman to a benefice who had
not followed the condemned theological
course at this university.
For warning their clergy against
such heresies the bishops were imprisoned
and their revenues were
seized. Priests were arrested
for preaching “insubordination.”
Convents were suppressed without
warning, and even without law.
Nuns were turned into the streets
in the middle of the night. Clerics
were pressed into the army. Religious
communities engaged in
teaching were treated with especial
rigor. Church property was confiscated
and priests were reduced
to beggary. Thus so early as 1849
did the Sardinian government join
the pagan conspiracy, and lend itself
for a price to the work of
emancipating the people from all
religious belief.

It was not until 1859 that the
plot was ripe, and then, to the dismay
of the great Catholic party in
France, an accomplice of Victor
Emanuel presented himself in the
person of Napoleon III. There
was no reason to wonder at such
an unnatural alliance. Napoleon,
whose empire was built upon revolution,
and who held despotic power
by the double and doubly false
titles of massacre and counterfeit
suffrage, was always treacherous to
the Pope. After the fall of the
Mazzinian republic in 1848 he attempted
to impose upon the Holy
Father a policy in the interest of
the revolutionists, and that was the
cause of the Pope’s long delay at
Portici; Pius IX. would not return
to Rome until he could return
without conditions. He declared
that he “would sooner go to
America; he knew the way thither
already: or he would take refuge in
Austria.”[#] Napoleon was compelled
to yield. Then came the demonstration
of Count Cavour at the
Congress of 1856, made, undoubtedly,
with Napoleon’s connivance.
Cavour hurled “the Roman question”
into the midst of European
politics by his proposal for the
separation of the Legations from
.pn +1
the Pontifical States, and their
government by a lay vicar; and
although the subject was postponed,
the mere discussion of it served
a practical purpose. “It is the
first spark,” said Count Cavour’s
own newspaper, “of an irresistible
conflagration.” Count Rayneval,
the French representative at
Rome, refuted the charges brought
by Cavour against the papal administration,
but his able report
to the Minister of Foreign Affairs
was suppressed in Paris, and only
saw the light through the pages of
a London daily paper. Two years
later (January 14, 1858) Orsini
made his attempt upon Napoleon’s
life, and from his prison he warned
the emperor that the Carbonari
held him to his ancient engagements.
“So long as Italy shall
not be independent the tranquillity
of Europe <i>and that of your majesty</i>
will be but a chimera.” From
this time there was no more mystery
about Napoleon’s purposes.
He had a long private conference
with Cavour at Plombières, and on
the 1st of January, 1859, he made
the famous unfriendly remark to
the Austrian ambassador at the
Tuileries which proved the signal
for the Franco-Italian war. A
month later appeared his pamphlet,
<i>Napoleon III. and Italy</i>, in which
he denounced the civil government
of the Pope as incompatible with
modern civilization, and proposed
anew the double-headed confederation
of Gioberti, with the King
of Sardinia as military chief and
the Sovereign Pontiff as honorary
president. And Piedmont, in the
meantime, played her part astutely.
For a long time her agents had
been busy among the Italian
states. A circular signed by Garibaldi,
who was now a general in
the Piedmontese service, gave instructions
to the conspirators:

.fn #
Villefranche.
.fn-

“1. Before hostilities have commenced
between Piedmont and
Austria you are to rise with the cry
of 'Italy for ever! Victor Emanuel
for ever!’ 2. Wherever the insurrection
triumphs, he among you
who enjoys most public esteem and
confidence is to take the military
and civil command, with the title
of provisional commissioner, acting
for King Victor Emanuel, and to retain
it until the arrival of a commissioner
sent by the Sardinian
government.” But it is unnecessary
to quote proofs of the plot; Mazzini
himself laid it bare when he attacked
the government on account
of its prosecution of the authors
of the abortive revolt at Genoa, in
1857: “Monarchico-Piedmontese
committees exist at Rome, Bologna,
Florence, and several cities of the
Lombardo-Venetian kingdom; and
there are secondary centres in several
other towns. I could name
to you the persons, several of them
deputies, who are the agents between
the poor dupes and the personages
of the government.” In
Florence the plot against the Grand
Duke of Tuscany, which resulted in
his abdication after his troops had
been bribed to desert him, was matured
in the very house of the Sardinian
ambassador. In Parma the
Sardinian agents instigated the expulsion
of the Duchess Regent, who
was yet so popular that her subjects
spontaneously recalled her, and
Victor Emanuel had to drive her
out a second time. In the Papal
States the Sardinians stood upon
no ceremony, but, when the insurrection
took place, they boldly
marched in troops to sustain it.

Before the peace of Villafranca
all Central Italy was in the hands
of the Piedmontese commissioners.
By the terms of that treaty these
commissioners were to be withdrawn.
The amazement of Europe,
.pn +1
therefore, was profound when, even
before the signatures to the convention
were dry, Victor Emanuel
was found to be setting up provisional
governments in Parma, Modena,
Tuscany, and the Romagna,
and getting ready to play the favorite
French farce of the plebiscitum.
As it was managed in one state it
was managed in all. The Romagna
has a million of inhabitants. The
Sardinian agents prepared voting
lists, restricted to the large towns
where the revolutionary party was
strong and bold, and put on these
lists only eighteen thousand names.
Of these not more than a third voted.
The total vote for and against
annexation represented, therefore,
only three-fifths of one per cent. of
the population. And this is called
a plebiscitum! Nevertheless, on
the 18th of March, 1860, the Legations
Parma, Modena, and Tuscany
were declared annexed, like Lombardy,
to the Sardinian monarchy,
and the king, assured of the countenance
of the emperor, made preparations
for the invasion of Umbria
and the Marches.[#] It was a comparatively
simple process; in this
case Sardinia frankly took the coveted
provinces by force of arms.
The expedition was concerted at
Chambery between Napoleon and
the Piedmontese general Cialdini,
and in closing the interview the
emperor is reported to have said,
<i>Faites, mais faites vite!</i>—almost the
very words which our Lord spoke
to Judas: “What thou doest, do
quickly.” On the tenth anniversary
of this interview Napoleon, a prisoner
in the power of the great German
Empire which he had done more
than any other one man to create,
ceased to reign.

.fn #
When the Pope launched a bull of excommunication
against the spoliators of his territory, Napoleon
forbade its publication in France. He allowed
the official and radical journals, however, to
publish a forged bull, and to ridicule and denounce
at pleasure the extravagant language which it imputed
to the Holy Father. The bishops tried to
expose the forgery, but the press was closed to
them.
.fn-

We are near the end. A fortnight
after Sedan the Piedmontese
army, 60,000 strong, appeared before
the walls of Rome to seize the
last of the temporal possessions of
the Holy See. Defence was impossible.
The pontiff instructed
his little army to resist only until a
breach had been made in the walls.
Then he went to pray in the venerable
Lateran basilica, the mother-church
of Christendom. He visited
the neighboring chapel of the
Scala Santa, and made on his knees
the painful ascent of the twenty-eight
marble steps from the judgment-hall
of Pilate which our Saviour’s
blessed feet had pressed.
In the little chapel at the top he
implored the pity and protection
of Almighty God for the afflicted
church. Then, followed by the
acclamations of a crowd of affectionate
subjects, and blessing them
as he went, he entered the Vatican,
and Rome has never seen him
since.

The troops of Victor Emanuel
made themselves masters of Rome
the next day, September 20, 1870.
The king followed them in time
and established his court in the
Quirinal. And since then, in Rome
as in the rest of Italy, the pagan
revolution has gone steadily forward
to the suppression of Christian
education, of monastic and
charitable orders, and, as far as
possible, of all divine worship.
When Garibaldi rode on horseback
into the church of Monte Rotondo
and ordered his prisoners to cover
their heads, which they had bared
out of respect to the sacred place,
he only gave emphasis to the sentiment
which pervades the whole
movement. The convents are empty;
the churches are desolate; libraries
.pn +1
are scattered; great seminaries
of theology are broken up;
Christian education has been driven
from the school-room; there
are hundreds of priests who go
hungry and in rags; there are nuns
in Rome whose whole income is
three cents a day; the bishops have
been robbed of everything and live
on the charity of the Pope; pious
processions are prohibited; members
of religious orders who survive
the suppression of their houses
are forbidden to receive novices;
the father-general of the Jesuits is
an exile from Rome, and his nearest
representative lives as a private
lay person in hired lodgings. Today
a bill is pending in the Italian
parliament, and has already passed
one branch of it, to punish bishops,
priests, religious writers, and journalists
for what is styled “disturbing the
public conscience” and the “peace
of families.” The Italian government
has pretended to guarantee the
freedom and independence of the
Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise
of all his spiritual functions, but
now it proposes to prevent the publication
of his encyclicals and allocutions;
to condemn him not only
to perpetual imprisonment, but to
perpetual silence; to prosecute the
bishops if they transmit his instructions
to the faithful, and the priests
if they preach against any heresy
sanctioned by the state. To censure,
by speech or writing, any law
or institution approved by the civil
authority is to be treated as a felony
calculated to “disturb consciences.”
Our divine Lord passed
the whole period of his ministry on
earth in disturbing consciences;
the history of Christianity, the labors
of missionaries and reformers,
are nothing else than a record of
the disturbance of consciences. But
the pagan revolution has no toleration
for Christianity. Close the
confessionals, tear down the pulpits,
burn the Bibles, break the tables
of the law; the sleeping conscience
of Italy must not be disturbed.

Thus the conspiracy of the kings
has moved on towards the subjugation
of the church. The secret
societies are only using the kingdom
of Italy and the despotic empire
of Germany for the accomplishment
of their anti-religious
purpose, and when that is done the
kings, in their turn, will be the victims
of the deep-laid and long-cherished
plot for the abolition of “subordination”
and worship. Let nobody
imagine that they are inactive
or that they are satisfied with national
unity. Mazzini never pretended
that their work was done
when a king was set up in the
Pope’s palace. He died conspiring
against Victor Emanuel and
urging Italy to press on to “the
goal of the revolution.” Nor did
his projects die with him. The
anniversary of his death was celebrated
last March by democratic
demonstrations all over Italy which
the government was helpless to
suppress. “A funeral march, a national
hymn, and a few short, earnest
words from some well-known
and esteemed local republicans and
<i>capi-popolo</i>,” says an English liberal
journal, “declaring the commemorative
ceremony to be not merely a
token of remembrance, but 'a <i>promise</i>,’
was all that took place; but the
fact that these things did take place
on the same day throughout the
whole of Italy is one of great significance.
In many instances the
authorities did their best previously,
by warnings and even by threats,
to prevent these demonstrations,
but we have heard of no case
in which they ventured upon any
attempt to put them down by
force.”[#] The flags which the associations
.pn +1
carried were “free from
the stain,” to use the popular
phrase—that is to say, they did not
show the arms of Savoy; and the
letters read and addresses delivered
spoke openly of a “time for action”
which was yet to come. And while
the clubs were thus parading and
declaiming the following circular
was distributed among the rank
and file of the Italian army:

.fn #
<i>The Examiner</i> (London), March 31, 1877.
.fn-

.pm letter-start
“Free citizens! Brother Carbonari!
Every sect, every family, every individual
is free to investigate, as best he may,
the road which leads to heaven; but it
belongs to the Carboneria to indicate and
open up the way to the kingdom of liberty,
to the triumph of justice, to social
amelioration upon earth. The Carboneria,
in its principles, in its development,
and in the means which it proposes
to employ for its purpose—<i>i.e.</i>, for
the amelioration, economic and moral,
of mankind, for the diffusion of liberty,
and for the perfect equalization of society—is
the one association which can
boast of the right of nature and the most
perfect justice. All other associations,
because based on privilege and ambition,
either miss their aim or become useless.
Persuaded of this, the apostles of
our principle have devoted themselves
to propagating and defending it with ardor,
defying dangers, condemnations,
and calumnies of the most deadly kind.
Many were the acquisitions which our
association made in a short time in every
branch of social science, in the arts, and
in commerce, and now all our aspirations
are turned towards you who compose
the army—the material force of nations.
Soldiers! remember that you are sons
of the people, free citizens, and at the
same time the obstacle to the common
weal and the hope of all. Do you wish to
serve tyranny, privilege—in a word, the
oppressors? Remember that you are
sons of the people; that force alone
dragged you from the bosom of your
desolated families; that, slaves of a stern
discipline, you are forced to shoot down
the oppressed, to protect the oppressors;
and do not forget that to-morrow,
wounded and crippled, you will return to
the ranks of the people whom you charged
with the bayonet, and that in your turn
you will then be charged and oppressed.
Remember that before being slaves
you were free, and that before serving
the despot you were citizens. The Carboneria
expects you among its ranks;
come and range yourselves by the side
of thousands of other brave ones, officers
and graduates, who do not disdain to
stake everything to preserve themselves
true sons of the people, generous citizens
of our common country.”
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
We have endeavored to follow
thus far the progress of that general
revolt of the world against the
divine authority which has marked
the pontificate of Pius IX. and
embraces the Holy Father’s heroic
life of constancy and suffering.
But simultaneously there has gone
on a contrary movement—a clearer
development and consolidation
of the authority of God’s church
over the minds of the faithful; and
herein we trace his glorious life of
triumphant action. For his attitude
towards the revolution has
not been one of mere passive resistance.
He has fought a stout
fight for the imperilled truth. It
is a time of corruption and unbelief,
when the world is lifted up
with satanic pride to defy Heaven,
and society is sacrificing all the
guarantees of order, and even the
elect are sorely tempted. History
will record that the great mission
of Pope Pius IX. was to expose the
fallacies and illusions of these evil
days, to stamp every error as it
arose with the reprobation of the
infallible judge, and, after empires,
and kingdoms, and republics have
been racked by a century of the
pagan revolt, to prepare again the
foundations of Christian civilization.
“God has laid on me,” said
he to the great assembly of bishops
in 1867, “the duty to declare the
truths on which Christian society
is based, and to condemn the errors
which undermine its foundations.
And I have not been silent.
.pn +1
In the Encyclical of 1864, and in
that which is called the Syllabus,
I declared to the world the dangers
which threaten society and I
condemned the falsehoods which
assail its life. To you, venerable
brethren, I now appeal to assist me
in this conflict with error. On you
I rely for support. I am aged and
alone, praying on the mountain,
and you, the bishops of the church,
are come to hold up my arms.”
“There is perhaps hardly any pontiff,”
says Cardinal Manning, “who
has governed the church with more
frequent exercises of supreme authority
than Pius IX.”; and surely
there is something magnificent in
the courage with which he has met
every attack of the world by a new
and bolder assertion of the everlasting
truths against which the
world is in arms. There is not a
characteristic heresy of the time
for which we Catholics cannot find
in the utterances of this great pontiff
a complete antidote; there is
not a loss inflicted upon the church
by her enemies for which we cannot
trace a compensation in some
clearer recognition of her spiritual
power, some sublime restatement of
her sovereign authority. Our Holy
Father has healed divisions, abolished
national and doctrinal parties
within the pale of the church,
and displayed to the universe the
household of Christ one not only in
the bonds of faith, but in unity of
sympathies. Four times he has
summoned the bishops to meet him
at the tomb of the apostle. In
1854 more than two hundred bishops
and cardinals assembled for the definition
of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception—an act which, besides
its importance in a doctrinal
sense, had a special significance as
illustrating the supreme authority
of the see of Peter. In 1862, just
after the first spoliation of the temporalities
of the Papacy by Victor
Emanuel, two hundred and sixty-five
bishops assembled in Rome for
the canonization of the martyrs of
Japan, and their meeting, both for
the circumstances under which it
was summoned and the strong terms
in which the prelates expressed their
union with the Holy See and their
absolute submission to its teachings,
made a profound impression throughout
Christendom. Five years later
the revolution had made immense
progress; yet in the midst of political
disturbance the world not only saw
five hundred bishops gather at Rome
to celebrate the centenary of St.
Peter’s martyrdom, and again to
testify their devotion to Peter’s successor,
but it heard the announcement
of a general council, the first in
three hundred years, called at a time
when to the unaided human eye
the papal throne seemed tottering
to its fall. Here was an inspiring
example of faith and Christian
courage!

Cardinal Manning’s admirable
sketch of the history of the Vatican
Council,[#] now in course of
publication, shows the reasons for
calling that grand assembly, and the
reasons especially for the definition
of infallibility, its supreme and
most glorious achievement; and it
brings out in clear light the fact
that it was with Pius himself that
the idea of the council originated.
If it could ever be said that a
general council was the work of
one man, the Council of the Vatican
might be called the crowning
work of the long life of Pius IX.—one
which alone would place him
among the most illustrious of all
the Roman pontiffs, and make his
reign a remarkable era in the history
of the Catholic Church. The
circumstances of the time which
.pn +1
give such immense importance to
the convocation of this council are
summarized in the opinions of the
cardinals to whom the Pope submitted
the question as early as
1864, and we find an excellent
synopsis of them in the papers by
Cardinal Manning already cited.
“The special character of the age,”
say their eminences, “is the tendency
of a dominant party of men
to destroy all the ancient Christian
institutions, the life of which consists
in a supernatural principle,
and to erect upon their ruins and
with their remains a new order
founded on natural reason alone....
From these principles follows
the exclusion of the church and of
revelation from the sphere of civil
society and of science; and, further,
from this withdrawal of civil
society and of science from the
authority of revelation spring the
naturalism, rationalism, pantheism,
socialism, communism of these
times. From these speculative
errors flows in practice the modern
revolutionary liberalism which
consists in the supremacy of the
state over the spiritual jurisdiction
of the church, over education, marriage,
consecrated property, and
the temporal power of the head of
the church.” These and a multitude
of other prevalent errors
Pius IX. had condemned in the
Syllabus and Encyclical which
Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers
to as “among the greatest
acts of this pontificate,” summing
up the declarations of many years,
and giving them “a new promulgation
and a sensible accession of
power over the minds not only of the
faithful, but even of opponents, by
the concentrated force and weight
of their application.”[#] But it was
expedient that the declaration
should be published again with the
united voice of the whole episcopate
joined to its head. Thus the
council was almost unanimously approved
as a sovereign remedy for
the disorders of the time, an encouragement
for the faithful, a cure
for dissensions, an antidote for
evil tendencies within the church,
an impulse to the new and nobler
life which even amid the political
and social confusion had already
begun to spring up among the
Catholic peoples. And so, even
while the pagan revolution was
preparing its last assault upon the
pontifical throne, an astonished
world witnessed this most majestic
demonstration of the authority, the
unity, and the power of the church,
and the whole body of the faithful
were filled with courage and fresh
enthusiasm. Driven from his capital,
robbed, and insulted, the captive
of the Vatican, whose voice
rings out clear and firm above the
din of the century, whose strong
arm sustains, whose saintly example
inspires, is yet victor over the
world in the council and the Syllabus.

.fn #
<i>The Nineteenth Century</i> (London), March
and April, 1877.
.fn-

.fn #
<i>Petri Privilegium.</i> London. 1871.
.fn-

It would be pleasant, if space allowed,
to follow the course of his
beautiful private life. It is a model
of devotion and simplicity. In
his great palace he occupies only a
plain bed-chamber with a bare stone
floor, and a working-cabinet with
little furniture except a table and
two chairs. He rises, summer and
winter, at half-past five. He says
Mass, and hears a second Mass of
thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents
him from celebrating the
Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive
communion. His hours of work
are long and regular. His fare is
plain, even to meagreness. Every
day he takes exercise in the Vatican
gardens, and one of his favorite resorts
is a beautiful alley of orange-trees,
.pn +1
where the pigeons come to
feed from his hand. One day he
was discovered with three cardinals,
playing “hide and seek” in the
gardens with a little boy. Yet with
all his gentleness he has a keen and
caustic wit. The author of a pious
biography sent his book to the
Pope for approval. The pontiff read
till he came to these words: “Our
saint triumphed over all temptations,
but there was one snare which
he could not escape: he married”;
and then he threw the book from
him. “What!” said he, “shall
it be written that the church has
six sacraments and one snare?”
Of a Catholic diplomatist whose
conduct and professions were at
variance he said: “I do not like
these accommodating consciences.
If that man’s master should order
him to put me in jail, he would
come on his knees to tell me I
must go, and his wife would work
me a pair of slippers.” During the
French occupation of Rome a certain
French colonel was guilty of
so gross an offence to the Pope’s
authority that the Holy Father
demanded his recall. Before his
departure he had the effrontery to
present himself at the Vatican and
ask for a number of small favors,
ending with a request for the
Pope’s autograph. The Pontiff
wrote on a card the words which
our Lord addressed to Judas in the
garden, “<i>Amice, ad quid venisti?</i>”
(“Friend, wherefore hast thou come
hither?”), and the colonel, who did
not understand Latin, showed it to
all his friends as a testimonial of
the Pope’s regard, until somebody
unkindly supplied him with the
translation. It is the etiquette of
the Vatican that carriages with only
one horse must not enter the inner
court. This rule was enforced one
day in 1867 against the Prussian
ambassador, Count von Arnim, and
Bismarck, for purposes of his own,
endeavored to make a diplomatic
scandal of the transaction, instructing
the ambassador to close the
legation and quit Rome instantly
unless he was allowed to drive with
one horse to the very foot of the
papal staircase. But Bismarck was
no match for Pius IX. The Pope
caused Cardinal Antonelli to write
that “His Holiness, taking compassion
on the difficulties of the diplomatic
body, would in future allow
the representatives of the great
powers to approach his presence
with one quadruped <i>of any sort</i>”—avec
<i>un quadrupède quelconque</i>. It
is believed that the Prussian minister
never availed himself of this permission
in its full extent.

The newspapers bring us bad
news from time to time of the
Pope’s health. Let us not be
alarmed. He comes of a long-lived
family. His grandfather died
at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three,
his mother at eighty-eight,
his eldest brother at ninety. “I
am in the hands of God,” he said
to an English gentleman; “I shall
bless my hour when it comes. But,
my son, when I take up certain
newspapers nowadays, and do not
find in them an account of my last
illness and my end, it always seems
to me as if the editors had forgotten
something.”
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=colosseum
A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have
made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit.—<i>Ps.</i> lxxviii.
.pm letter-end

.pm verse-start
I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon,
A poet’s passionate verses, falling softly into tune
Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words,
Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds;
Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster’s trill
Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still;
Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war,
Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar—
Loud pæan sounds triumphant that Italy was free,
United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea;
From Sicily’s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy’s Alpine chain
One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o’er hill and plain;
And haughty Rome, in truth, the Cæsar’s city now once more,
The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o’er.
“<i>Io!</i> <i>triumphe!</i> onward! All ye guarding eagles, come!
And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.”

I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim
The poet’s glowing setting of pale Freedom’s Roman hymn,
Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made.
The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet’s mellowing shade,
Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people’s voice
Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice.
I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound
Of forging iron fetters—even riveted while crowned,
Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne
Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.

“<i>Io!</i> <i>triumphe!</i> onward! But the shouting could not drown
The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down,
Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need.
And from the cross’s folly must St. Francis’ sons be freed!
I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad <i>Miserere</i> sing,
As ceased for them for ever their old convent’s sheltering—
Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are;
The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!
.pn +1

I heard, above th’ exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer
Strike down the church’s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer
Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne
By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn,
Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold—
Why not his spouse’s raiment for twice that, glittering gold?
I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry
By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry.
Loud chimed the strangers’ clanking coin that paid the moneyed worth,
But faint the modern anthem’s notes proclaiming Freedom’s birth!

Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread,
Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread,
Fair Freedom’s added burden grown too heavy to be borne;
While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn
To seek across the western sea the life she could not give;
For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live.
A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole;
All too quick the world’s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul.
Still with triumphant pæans did the poet’s verses ring:
“Shout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing!
Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont’s Victor,—king!”

                    “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,”
                        Sounded church and convent steeple;
                    “In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
                        Leading back thy erring people.”

And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound,
The <i>Miserere</i> drifting to the peoples gathered round,
Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight,
And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night,
Stood in the Colosseum’s shade, with many a wondering thought,
No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought;
The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor shade;
No torches’ fitful splendor through the lonely arches played;
And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell,
So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp’s sighing swell;
No beaded <i>aves</i> drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross,
No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations’ loss;
No tourists’ idle laughter broke the silence of the scene,
While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.

Years, centuries had vanished as my wingèd thoughts flew fast
To days when Rome imperial o’er the world her robe had cast;
O’er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine,
While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine—
.pn +1
Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians’ foolish faith:
How traitorous to Cæsar’s state was every Christian breath.
And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more,
As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o’er.

Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians’ matin psalm,
And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb:
Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East,
Egypt’s sage, Juda’s captive, meeting at the angels’ feast.
Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear—
His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare:
Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art;
Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart;
Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave,
Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save;
One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer
That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs’ dull air:

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,”
                      Rose the sad and earnest pleading;
                  “In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
                      Unto thee the nations leading.”

Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song
A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along,
And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood
Grew peopled with the city’s fierce and restless multitude.
What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away,
What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday?
Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its strength,
That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length?
Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress’ zone:
To-day, by Cæsar’s lions, Christian maid shall be o’erthrown!

Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood—
A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude;
So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face,
Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place;
The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak,
And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek—
The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven’s shadow resting there,
The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair.
Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild
The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child;
The voice of the Belovèd bidding sweet his loved one come:
“Arise, my Dove, my Beautiful”—it sounded o’er the hum
.pn +1
Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr’s strength,
Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length
On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far
The spoils of all the nations gracing Cæsar’s triumph-car.
One little grain of incense still might save the martyr’s life,
But one little breath for Cæsar still win release from strife—
Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God the life he gave;
Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save?
And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone
Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone,
And stars as calmly watching o’er as once in days bygone
When Cæsar’s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,”
                      Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing;
                  “Call thy erring sheep, O Saviour,
                      Dearest Lord of love undying!”

Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness’ mighty shade
A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed,
The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek
The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak—
Christ’s blessèd cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead
For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love’s meed;
Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link ’twixt heaven and earth,
The sign by which earth’s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly birth.
In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now,
Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow;
The modern Cæsar has no need to mark where martyrs fell:
“Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s”—that word they kept too well.
And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o’er,
The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore;
To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built
Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt.
Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome—
The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,”
                      Seemed the very stones outcrying;
                  “In thy mercy spare the nations.
                      Heed, O God! the prisoners’ sighing.”

A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place,
Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger’s face—
A face so fair not Paphos’ queen could claim a grace so rare;
Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear.
And low I heard her murmuring: “Ah! me, woe, woe is me!
So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free.
.pn +1
Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown,
And Piedmont’s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down.
Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear;
And among the nations standing a nation’s crown I wear—
Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea,
Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free;
Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant’s scourge bend low,
And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show;
Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name,
Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta’en away thy shame.’

“O gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains?
Ne’er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains?
O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free
Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!’
When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross
Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss!
Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing,
While Freedom’s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring:
'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free,
And bend, oppressed, at Peter’s throne no more thy trembling knee.
Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood’s strength;
See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length!
Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king;
Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.’

“O strong-armed western people! in your home beyond the sea,
Bearing even as your birthright the grace of liberty,
List not the songs such poets sing: they know not me or mine;
Studded with cruel thorns for me each laurel wreath they twine.
A mournful queen I am, alas! crowned in another’s place—
The mighty One from whom my face hath won its look of grace.
I sit as a usurper where I fain would kneel and pray,
Crowned with Rome’s earthly circlet from her forehead stol’n away!
The world’s imperial mistress once, now queen of love and peace,
Holds she her life and liberty but as earth’s monarchs please?
Fain would they on her gracious brow my coronet have set,
Its lustre dimmed with Savoy’s loss, with Naples’ tears all wet!
The handmaid of her Maker, fair with lustre not of earth.
Should she to Piedmont’s Victor bend her brow of heavenly birth?
The mother of all peoples where the cross’s light is shed,
Was my dull, narrow diadem fit crown to grace her head?
In her old palace I sit throned, crowned with her earthly crown,
With jealous care watched ever, lest I cast the honor down.
I see my children wander wide in exile from their own,
And, when they ask for living bread, my masters give them stone.
I sit beside St. Peter’s chair; like his, my hands are bound;
My eyes weep bitter sorrow at your pæans’ wild, glad sound;
.pn +1
Beneath the heavy cuirass that is girded on my breast
I bear the wreath mysterious St. Peter’s hand hath blessed.
Upon the cannon rests my hand craving to lift the cross,
And 'neath Sardinian colors I bewail the blind world’s loss.

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,”
                      Seemed the weary voice outcrying,
                  “Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
                      Hearken thou the prisoners’ sighing.

“O credulous Western people! cease shouting I am free.
My masters have no knowledge of the truth of liberty,
Who murmur with ignoble lips my old and honored name,
And seek to rebaptize me with unholy rites of shame.
Are ye drunk with Freedom’s dregs that ye have forgot her face,
And bend before th’ unworthy thing men show you in her place?
Stretch not your hands, God-fearing race, to welcome such as these:
God, who your shepherd is, and judge, gives not to such his peace.

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,
                      Mighty Lord of all the living,
                  In thy mercy spare the erring,
                      Sacred Heart of love forgiving!”

“The great arched walls sent echoing back the sad, indignant plaint,
The light from that fair, mournful face grew evermore more faint,
Till, fading in the darkness, light and shadow both were gone,
And I sat where crimson sunset with southern splendor shone,
Lighting the western city with a flood of harmless fire,
With a glory, quickly fading, enwreathing mast and spire;
Whence no mellow bells pealed earthward, sounding the angel’s call,
Nor <i>Miserere</i> drifted from roof and tower tall;
The busy craft went sailing up and down the crowded stream—
Upon my lap the poet’s book, the conjurer of my dream.
Vision and sound had vanished, only still dim echoes fell
Of pleading voices rising on the night-wind’s scarce-felt swell:

                  “<i>Miserere, miserere</i>,
                      Hear, O God! the prisoners’ sighing;
                  Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
                      Dearest Lord of love undying.”
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h4 id=bell
THE DOOM OF THE BELL.
.sp 2
Two men were sitting in a garret
at the very top of one of the craziest
old houses in Bruges—<i>not</i> a house
dating from the fifteenth century,
such as those we admire to this day,
but a house that was already two
hundred years old when those were
built. It stood on the brink of the
canal beyond which are now the
public gardens that have displaced
the ramparts of the once turbulent
and independent city. <i>Then</i> the
houses crowded into the wide fosse
of not too fragrant water, and leaned
their balconied gables over it.
This was not in the busy or the
splendid quarter; it was far from the
cathedral and the Guildhall. And
in those prosperous times of the
Hanseatic League, of the Venetian
and Genoese merchant-princes visiting
and marrying among their full
peers of the city of Bruges—the
times of the grand palaces built by
those royal and learned traders—these
two men I speak of were poor,
obscure, and with little prospect of
ever being anything else. Yet one
of them had it in him to do as
great things as the Van Eycks,
and to take the art-loving city by
storm, if he could only get “a
chance.” It was the same in the
year 1425 as it is now, and men in
picturesque short-hose and flat caps
were marvellously like those we see
in ugly chimney-pots and tight trousers.
The rivalry of other artists—none
<i>very</i> eminent—and the ungetable
patronage of rich men stood in
this young painter’s way, and he got
disheartened and disgusted. This
garret was his studio, his bedroom,
and his kitchen. It was cheap, and
the light could be managed easily
and properly to suit his painting;
but it was not one of those elaborately
artistic studios, a picture in
itself, which we associate with the
idea of the “old masters.” The
things that were there had evidently
drifted there and got heaped up by
accident—homely things most of
them, and disposed with the carelessness
natural to a man who had
little belief or hope in his future.
There was an air about the whole
place as well as its owner that seemed
to say as plainly as any words,
“What is the use?” But the other
man was a contrast to him. He
was much older; a wiry form, and
eager, small eyes, and an air of resistance
to outward circumstances,
“as if he could not help it,” but
not in the sense of what is popularly
called an “iron will,” were his
chief distinguishing marks. He
was neither artist nor merchant,
and he lived “by his wits.” In
those days, just the same as now,
that meant something bordering on
dishonesty; and such men were
known as useful, but scarcely reputable.
This individual was seated
on a low trunk or chest of polished
wood, but not carved, nor even
adorned with curious hinges or
iron-work; the other stood opposite,
leaning on the high sill of a
window in the gable, looking down
into the canal.

“Peter,” said the latter after a
pause, “have you heard of any one
dying lately in the great houses, or,
for that matter, in the rookeries?”

“No, not <i>dying</i>—at least, not
lately,” said the other slowly.

“Not <i>dying?</i>” said the first, laying
the same emphasis on the word as
.pn +1
his friend had done, and not showing
any lack of understanding or
sign of surprise.

“Well, I mean she recovered; but
she was pretty near death, and of
course will be again as soon as it is
safe. It put some of his lordship’s
plans out a little when he heard how
badly Simon had done his work.
But you know it was not at his
house, but in a kind of prison, and
she was put there on a charge of
stealing her mistress’ Genoese pearl-embroidered
robe, and <i>it was said</i>
the lady begged as a favor she
might not be publicly executed
for the attempt, but allowed some
time to repent and prepare; and
when she was ready, she was to be
told that one day, within the week,
she would be poisoned by something
in her food, which she could
not taste and which would give her
no pain, but put her to sleep—<i>for
ever</i>. But no one believed that this
was her mistress’ request, nor that
she ever stole anything, of course.
Every one knows that poor Dame
Margaret is a cipher in her husband’s
house—a worse victim of my
Lord Conrad’s than any one there,
many as they are; and he is just
now out of reach of punishment,
being, by the Count of Flanders’ influence,
a member of the government,
a councillor, and I know not
what besides. But it seems Simon
did not do his work aright, and
the poor girl is still there, and no
doubt, in a week or two, the experiment
will be quietly tried again
and with success. Jan, are you
listening?”

“Yes,” said the artist as he turned
round with absent look and a
gesture, as if he had unconsciously
been picking off some buttons from
his sleeve and dropping them in
the canal below.

“Well, what do you think of it?”

“Peter,” said the other abruptly,
“is Simon your friend?”

“Well, we have had dealings together
sometimes. He sells me
clothes now and then; you know
he has a good deal of such stuff on
his hands.”

“If I could pay him,” said the
artist bitterly, “I should not need
any go-between; but I have nothing.
I want something he could give me,
and, if I had it, I should not need
any patron, and would take none,
short of the Count of Flanders himself.”

“Riddles again,” said Peter quietly;
“poverty makes you mysterious.”

“I’ll tell you plainly what the
riddle is, if you’ll help me.”

“For friendship’s sake?”

“Oh! no, indeed. Is there one in
all Bruges would do it, or I expect
it of him?”

“Well, well, do not croak; but
<i>you</i> know by experience that it is
hard to live.”

“If you will get me what I want
of Simon, you shall have one-fourth
of my future reward and Simon one-fourth.”

“Too mean terms, those, Jan,”
said Peter quietly, but intently
watching his friend’s face.

“Very well, each a third, then; I
knew you would want no less. But,
look you,” he added, brightening
up, “no one can share the fame,
and I shall be known all over Flanders
and Brabant, and France—ay,
even Italy and Germany; and who
knows if the Greek merchants will
not carry my name to the court
of Constantinople itself?—and you
two poor wretches will have nothing
but a pitiful handful of gold.”

“Quite enough for me, at any
rate,” said Peter composedly; “it
will be more than I ever had before.
But do not let us 'count our
.pn +1
chickens before they are hatched.’
What is it, though, that you want
to work this miracle with?”

“Only a vial of her blood after
the girl has been dead four hours.”

Peter betrayed no emotion.

“Rather an unusual request,” he
said meditatively, “and one that
savors strongly of witchcraft, which
you know is scarcely less dangerous
than heresy. You remember
what happened at Constance scarcely
more than ten years ago?”

“Nonsense! What has heresy to
do with the mixing of my colors?
And who but a leech will find out
the mixture? And after all, if a
fool were to use this potion just
mixed as I shall mix it, and paint a
picture with it, his picture would be
only fit for a tavern-sign, and no
one could tell the difference. If
you need the ingredients, you need
the skill more.”

“Why, Jan, you are getting enthusiastic—a
miracle, that, in itself.
I thought you had made up your
mind that you would never do
anything that would get known.”

“Well, I have a feeling, since
you mentioned this case, that I
<i>shall</i> be known before I die, and
known by <i>this</i> means too. Can you
get me what I want?”

“I dare say I can. But shall I
tell the old sinner Simon that I
want it for you, or say it is for a
leech?”

“Why lie about it?” said the
young man fiercely.

“Prudence, you know,” said the
other, perfectly unabashed.

“No; tell him the bare truth, but
swear him to secrecy. If he tells
it, he shall forfeit his share.”

“He could get twice as much for
denouncing you.”

“Let him! Where is his interest
to denounce me? He is not a fiend,
and <i>he</i> knows it is hard to live.”

“He <i>did</i>, but may be he has forgotten
it in his present position.
All the grandees know him now.”

“But you forget, Peter, that his
own business is more dangerous
than my undertaking could be,
even taking it for granted I should
be suspected of witchcraft, and he
would scarcely like to draw attention
on his own delicate doings.”

“So far true,” said Peter. “I respect
your shrewdness; you <i>can</i>
talk sense sometimes. I will get
that vial for you some time this
week or next.”

“Do not forget the <i>exact</i> time
after death—four hours. The perfection
of the mixture would be
gone if you did not attend to that.
I shall come with you to the door,
and wait for you and the vial, any
night and any hour you mention.”

“Very well,” said Peter, as he got
up and stretched himself. “I suppose
your larder is empty?”

“Oh! I forgot. You can have
what there is—cheese three days
old, and some fresh brown bread,
and two eggs, new-laid yesterday
morning, which my friend the washerwoman
gave me for sitting up at
night with her sick boy. She <i>would</i>
make me take them, and I am glad
now <i>I</i> need not eat them myself. I
should feel mean, if I did; and yet,
if they stayed there till to-morrow,
hunger would drive me to it. You
are welcome to them.”

Meanwhile, Peter had silently
helped himself to all the articles
mentioned except one “hunch” of
bread, and left the garret with a
cool “Thank you.” Jan turned
back to the window, and stayed
nearly an hour looking down into
the drowsy canal with its fringe of
dark, huddled houses, each, as he
thought, a frame for a picture full
of the same agony of hopeless aspirations
and submission to grim
.pn +1
and sordid circumstances as his
own. But he saw through glasses
of his own staining; for many of
those wretched, crazy, but beautiful
houses held pictures of a bright
home life and love that looked no
higher or farther for happiness, and
was, in truth, the outcome of a mind
more philosophical than the future
glory of Flemish art, staring into
the flood from his garret window,
could boast of possessing.

Three months went by, and no one
saw the young artist, save the man
who sold him his meagre provisions,
Peter, and his friend of the eggs.
Five days after the conversation we
have recorded Peter and he were
walking home at two o’clock in the
morning through the streets, where
no one but the watchman had leave
and license to be, calling out the
hour when the chimes struck it.
It was bright moonlight, and the
two men would gladly have dispensed
with the beauty of the
night, much as it enhanced the
charm of the great mansions they
passed, the carved doorways, the
delicate balconies, the ponderous,
magnificent iron bell-pulls, the lions’
and griffins’ heads on the many
bridges over the narrow canals.
Even Jan passed hurriedly by, standing
nervously back in a doorway if
he heard the clear cry of a watchman,
starting as a loose stone rattled
under his feet in the pavement,
and even when his companion ill-naturedly
put his hand in a fountain
and noisily disturbed the water
with a “swish” that made the
other turn pale and look around in
horror of being pursued.

As the weeks went by and the
young man worked on alone, feverishly
and battling with his own superstitions
as well as the fear of
being denounced by his two associates,
an odd change came over
him. Peter noticed it about one
month after the day they had procured
the vial of blood. Jan was
taken with a pious fit that day, and
insisted on spending some miserable
pence he had on candles offered
for the soul of the poisoned girl,
and which he, with genuine devoutness,
put on the iron spikes provided
for the purpose in the church
of Notre Dame. That day, having
spent all in this way, he fasted altogether
and nearly fainted at his
easel; but when he left off work
Peter saw that a startled, expectant
look was in his eyes, which he directed
furtively every now and then
to one particular corner of his room.
When questioned he hurriedly turned
the conversation; but the scared
look grew more and more intense as
time went on. At last, one night,
the young man asked Peter seriously
and with great trepidation to
stay and sleep with him.

“I believe I am getting nervous,”
he said, with a laugh that was anything
but genuine. Peter made no
objection, but in the middle of the
night he was awakened by Jan.
The poor fellow was in a violent
cold perspiration, and, pointing excitedly
to the same corner, cried:

“There she is; and she never
says a word, but only looks at me
reproachfully! She has been there
every night since the first Month’s
Mind!”

“Pshaw!” said Peter, “I see nothing
there, Jan; you should be bled—that
is all. You have been overworking
yourself.”

But nothing would persuade the
artist that the ghost of the poisoned
girl was not there, silent and reproachful;
and there, day after day
and night after night, he saw her,
and, though he longed to speak to
her, he never dared.

Three months were over and his
.pn +1
picture was done; but he was only
the skeleton of his former self, and
he looked, as Peter said, like what
the Florentine woman had said of
Dante—“the man who had gone
down to hell and come back again.”
His bitterness was gone, so was his
hopelessness, but there was no
healthy joy or youthful enthusiasm
in their place; he seemed to have
grown old all at once, except for
the feverish, eager haste to show
his picture and win the name that
should darken that of the national
pets and the popular favorites.
Where to show it? was a question
Peter put more than once, but Jan
waived it as not worth any anxiety.
He should write a notice, and post
it on the church doors and those of
the Guildhall and the Exchange,
to the effect that a new and unknown
painter had a picture for sale and
exhibition at such and such a place;
and if the public did not care to
come there to see it, they might see
it once on next market-day in the
Grande Place, where the artist
would show it himself, free to all.

The subject was “Judith and
Holofernes”—a common subject
enough in those days, but the artist
thought that no one had ever
treated it in the same way before.
When we see it in the market-place
and hear the comments of the people,
we shall understand in what
lay the difference.

The day appointed by the artist
came. All the rich and learned
men had noticed the placard on
the church doors, and the connoisseurs
and critics were on the alert.
This unpatroned and self-confident
painter stung their curiosity, and
the merchants, native and foreign,
were also eager to see and, if they
liked it, “buy up” the new sensation.
The people, too, had heard
of the exhibition, and many crowded
earlier than usual to the market-place
to get a glimpse of the mysterious
picture being set up by the
artist.

No one did see it, however. A
good many stalls, booths, and awnings
were up long before daylight,
and no one noticed the stand of the
new-comer, put up in a corner, and
screened all round with the commonest
tent-cloth. As soon as
dawn made it possible to see things
a little, the stand was found to be
open, and a picture, unframed, was
seen set up on trestles, and some
coarse crimson drapery skilfully
arranged round it, so as to take the
place of the frame which the artist
was too poor to buy. A few loungers
came up, and, fancying this was
the screen to some mystery-play to
be acted later in the day, sauntered
away again, like uncritical creatures
as they were. Presently a priest
and a merchant came up, evidently
searching for some particular booth,
and soon stopped before the picture.

“Here it is,” shortly said one of
them.

“So <i>that</i> is the picture?” said
the other; and for a while they both
stood in silence, examining it in
detail.

“Wonderful!” said the merchant
presently. “It beats the hospital
'St. John.’”

“There <i>is</i> a strange power about
the drawing,” said the other.

“But the coloring!” retorted the
merchant. “See the depth, the
life-likeness, the intensity; and yet
there is nothing violent or merely
sense-appealing. It is horror, but
rather mental than physical horror.”

“True,” said the priest. “I wonder
if he had a model.”

“Most likely, but there is more
than he ever saw in any common
.pn +1
model; the merit rests with himself
alone, I should judge.”

“Well, do you think of buying
it?”

“I am inclined to do so, but
want to examine it more closely
first. Besides, I see no one here to
represent the painter, or even guard
the picture.”

“Oh! I have no doubt there is
some one hovering about—perhaps
that countryman who looks so vacant.
You know the professional
tricks of our worthy artists!”

And with this he called the person
in question, who surely looked
vacant enough to be in disguise.

“Can you tell me what you
think of this picture, friend?” he
asked.

“Very fine, messire.”

“You do not think it like one
of Hendrick Corlaens, do you?”

“I never saw that, messire,”
bashfully said the countryman.

“But you think <i>this</i> is fine?”

“Very, very.”

“Why do you like it?”

“It seems like life.”

“Like death too?”

“Yes, messire.”

“How far did you come this
morning?” asked the merchant,
fancying his companion’s shrewdness
had overshot the mark this
time.

“Forty-three miles. I started before
midnight from Stundsen.”

“I think,” said the merchant to
his brother-critic, “we shall make
nothing of this man. He must be
one of my brother-in-law’s men at
Stundsen. He is quite genuine in
his stupidity.”

And the pair moved nearer the
picture, while others came up and
stopped, till there was soon a little
knot of admirers talking in whispers.
The crowd grew as the day
went on. In the side street leading
into the Place the doors of
Notre Dame opened to let out the
flood of worshippers that had flowed
in since dawn from the country,
and who now rushed from their
devotions to their business. Noise
was uppermost, trade was brisk;
the sun got hot and men got
thirsty. It was soon a riotous as
well as a picturesque scene, and a
spectator on that balcony of the
curiously-carved corner window on
the same side of the Place as
the Guildhall could scarcely have
told which stalls the hurrying
masses most besieged, so tangled
was the web of human beings jostling
and jolting each other along the uneven
pavement. A good many had
stared and gazed at the picture. It
was the subject of many comments
and disputes that day; men quarrelled
over its merits as they drank
their sour wine, and women talked
of it in whispers over their bargains.
Some children had screamed and
kicked at first sight of it; altogether
it had not failed to be known, seen,
and talked about. Our two friends
of early morning had hung about it
all day and overheard most of the
remarks of the crowd. Some people
had been disappointed in finding
that it was not the sign of a play
representing the slaying of Holofernes,
but only a picture; a
Venetian and a Greek, daintily
dressed and speaking some soft,
foreign tongue—a wonder to the
sturdy Flemish peasants from the
dykes and canals by the sea—lounged
near the unpainted railing that
protected the picture from the
crowd. No one could see behind
the picture, but many thought the
artist was hidden within the closely
<i>sewn</i> curtains, that never flapped in
the breeze like the rest of the market
awnings. These two and the
first critics listened in eager silence
.pn +1
to the judgment of the crowd, put
forth in short sentences at long intervals.
On coming up one woman
said to her companion:

“Why, I thought they always
painted Judith with black hair;
this one has hair the color of
mine.”

“Perhaps it was his betrothed he
painted,” said the other, “and in
compliment to her he made it a
portrait.”

“Then I should not like to be
he. A ghostly bride he would
have.”

“But look at her eyes; they seem
like a corpse’s just come back to
life.”

“Pshaw! how could a <i>corpse</i> come
back to life? You mean a ghost.”

“No—Lazarus, you know. I can
fancy how frightened and reproachful
he might have looked when he
woke up and found himself in his
shroud.”

“<i>I</i> think he would look glad and
thankful. But come away. It seems
as if I should dream of that face.”

“Yes; it makes me feel very
strange the more I look at it.”

And the two women moved off.

Presently another voice was heard
in a muffled tone.

“See the blood in Holofernes’
throat. It looks as if it were moving.”

“Judith looks too weak and small
to kill him,” said another.

“So she does,” said a third, and
he added, in a lower tone: “I once
had a cousin very like that picture.”

“Is she dead?” asked a woman,
a stranger to the speaker.

“Yes,” said the man, with some
surprise.

“I thought no live person could
remind you of <i>this</i> face,” answered
the woman, as if in explanation.

The two couples of critics glanced
appreciatively and with a smile at
each other, and the Greek said to
his friend:

“Your <i>boors</i> are no bad critics,
after all. I think the barbarians
rather beat us in painting.”

“Beat <i>you</i>!” laughed the Venetian.
“Speak for yourself. But it
is your religion that has fossilized
your art; otherwise you would have
been—”

“No,” said the other thoughtfully,
“I think you mistake; I
doubt if we have the gift you, and
the Flemings also, have for painting.
Our literature is as far above
that of this northern people as heaven
is above the earth, and our
sculpture, of course, is unrivalled;
but they have the gift of music, and
of architecture, and of painting—the
two last marvellously developed.
And in the first I think your
people—I do not mean Venetians,
but some of your other Italian
neighbors—have just now reached
a good climax. At Milan I heard
some chanting that would put us to
shame, and even here I have heard
something not unlike it. Yes, I
cede the palm to the barbarians in
the arts of Euterpe and—”

“But in architecture yours is the
peer of any northern style,” said
the Venetian.

“I doubt it,” said the Greek.
“There is a strange impression
comes over me in these vast, sky-high,
delicately-carved cathedrals,
dim and resonant, that comes nowhere
else—not in our gold-colored,
mosaic-paved, dome-crowned
churches, nor your St. Mark, the
daughter of our St. Sophia.”

“Every one knows how liberal
are your views,” said the other, with
a smile.

“Yes?” asked the Greek, evidently
in innocence. “But I am
only fair to others. I would rather
.pn +1
be a Greek than a barbarian, as the
adage of one of our old heathen
philosophers has it; but I can see
that God has not rained every blessing
on one spot, and that my native
land, as he did on the Garden of
Eden before Adam fell.”

“Hush!” said the Venetian, interrupting
him. “Some girl has
fainted.”

Some little stir was taking place
in the crowd; it <i>was</i> a girl who had
fainted, and an old woman, strong
and powerful, was holding her.

Among the many questions tossed
to and fro and never answered,
our four friends all managed to
hear the words of the old woman
to her nearest neighbors.

“Yes, that is the portrait of her
sister and my granddaughter, just
as if the poor lost girl had sat for it
herself. But then this must have
been painted since she lost her rosy
color. And I believe the painter
knows what became of her, and
where she is, if she is alive; and,
God forgive me! I always accused
the Lord Conrad of Schön of her
ruin and disappearance. I <i>will</i>
know, too, if this painter is to be
found anywhere in Flanders. Oh!
yes, Agnes is very well; she will be
herself again directly, nervous little
thing!” And the old woman, with
a kind of savage tenderness, shielded
the face of her granddaughter
in her bosom, while the girl slowly
revived.

Some people hinted that the painter
was hidden in the closed tent
behind the picture, and others
brought out shears to cut the curtains;
but the priest here interposed.

“I think, my friends,” he said in
a clear, authoritative voice, “that
you had better leave this matter
to the proper authorities. Messire
Van Simler and I will see that this
good woman is heard, and, if need
be, helped to find her granddaughter,
or any news of her death and
fate. It would be an unwarrantable
act to cut these curtains open: if
there is no one there, you will feel
like fools, the dupes of the childish
trick of an unknown painter; if you
find the person you are looking for,
you may do him a mischief and
come yourselves under the eye of
the law. I advise you to let the
matter rest. And you, my good
friend, here is an address you may
find useful whenever you wish to
make further inquiries. It would
be best to take your charge home.”

The manner rather than the
words of the speaker took effect at
once, and the group dissolved to
make room for other sight-seers,
all gaping, all admiring, and all ending
by feeling uncomfortable and
leaving the stand with muttered
words of equal wonder and fear.
But it is impossible to follow each
comment, and we have yet other
scenes to look at before we close
the history of this picture.

Among the crowd that day had
been Peter and Simon, and the former,
familiar as he was with the
painting, had ceased to feel impressed
by the weird, indescribable
beauty and awe that were its very
essence. But he had been, in a
business-like way, alive to everything
connected with what was to
him the instrument of future success,
and the fainting scene and
its close were especially observed.
He noticed the drift of all the remarks
made on the picture; he had
foretold it himself—for he was nothing
if not worldly-wise—and he
carefully scanned the faces of the
four critics who had so pertinaciously
lingered round the stand all day.
He knew them all for enlightened
men, above the nonsense of the
.pn +1
age, good art-critics, and men born
to be masters of their kind. Even
the young Venetian had the making
of a statesman in him; the Greek
was as simple-minded as he was
generous, and, though his countrymen
had a bad name at Bruges for
conventional sins of which not half
of them were really guilty, he was,
even with the most ignorant, a signal
exception. The other two were
trusted native citizens, bosom
friends, patrons of all that was good,
learned, and improving, and, what
was more, powerful in the council
and civic government. The first,
by the way, was a canon of the cathedral,
by private inheritance a
rich man, and, by dint of charity to
the starving and liberality to men
of letters, raised above the scandal
that attended on rich ecclesiastics.
These four were representative
men, and though each a representative
of the best type of his own
class and nation, still no less entitled
to be called representative men.

Peter noted the way Messire Van
Simler went that evening; the canon
he knew well by reputation. Then
he came back to the Place and helped
a young peasant to lift and pack
the picture, leaving on the planks in
front of the booth the address of the
artist and a notice that purchasers
were asked to meet the painter at
his own studio any time each day
before dark. The peasant seemed
slim and tall for a Flemish countryman,
but his cap concealed his face,
and his loose vest was well calculated
to increase his seeming bulk;
still, when he got to the studio in
the old garret over the canal, and
threw off his cap, he proved to be
the person you must have suspected—the
painter himself. He said
nothing, and Peter did not offer to
speak; but the former, as soon as he
came in, glanced hurriedly into one
corner and then back at the picture.
Over their scanty supper the
two exchanged a few monosyllables
as to the result of the show, but
each was uneasy and spoke as if
compelled by the suspicion of the
other. Next morning
Peter went to Van Simler’s
house before the latter was out of
bed, and was received during the
merchant’s ample breakfast. No
one came to Jan’s garret the first
day, and he stayed at home alone
with his work, now and then retouching
it, as if drawn to it by a
spell he could not master; but
each time he worked at it he seemed
more ill and nervous. Towards
dusk he heard a footstep on the
stair, and opened the door to let in
some light on the break-neck place,
full of corners and broken steps,
where some stranger was evidently
groping his way. It was the Greek.
He greeted the painter with grave
earnestness and more interest than
is usual with a purchaser.

“I have come,” he said after the
first civilities, “to buy both your
pictures and <i>you</i>, and pack both at
once, as my ships will be in port by
the night after to-morrow night, and
it needs time to meet them. They
cannot wait—at least, <i>that</i> one cannot
which happens to be most convenient
for you to go in. Have
you any objection to go with me
to Greece?—any tie to detain you
here?”

Jan looked into the corner before
he answered, and shuddered. “I
fear I have,” he said unwillingly.
The Greek looked fixedly at him.

“I will not keep you any longer
than you like, and you probably
like travelling? There are scenes
in Greece and the East that will
delight you, if you have a liking for
Scriptural subjects; and the journey
need not be longer than the
.pn +1
interval between this cargo <i>from</i>
here and the next cargo back.”

Jan said nothing.

“You see I am bent on having
<i>you</i> as well as your picture,” the
merchant went on; “but if you insist
on refusing me your company,
I will take the picture at once. I
have men below ready to carry it
away, and I will give you your own
price at once, in gold coin.”

And Jan still gazed into the
furthest—and empty—corner.

“I have reasons for my haste,”
said the Greek, slowly, at last.
Jan turned inquiringly.

“Good reasons,” said his visitor
gravely and gently, “which I will
tell you when we are at sea, if you
will trust me till then; if not, I
will even tell you now, though
the proverb says that 'walls have
ears.’”

Jan seemed to need no immediate
explanation, but said:

“Take the picture, and welcome,
and believe in my gratitude, though
I cannot put it into words; but I
can take no gold for the picture.”

“Why, you invited purchasers
to come here to you!”

“I have learned to-day that I
cannot sell it.”

“Well,” said the Greek, with a
look of intelligence, “I think you
and I understand each other, then,
and I may as well take you and the
picture too.”

“No,” said Jan, “you do not understand
<i>me</i>, but I understand you
and am grateful. If I am in danger,
it matters little; I prefer meeting
such a danger as you fear for me
to seeing what I should see always,
on the ship, in the East, as well
as here—or at the stake.”

“Your mind is—preoccupied, my
young friend,” said the merchant.
“But let me take the picture; at
least, it is better to have the evidence
put out of the way in time.
Let me call to my men.”

“Yes, but no gold for it,” said
Jan without emotion, as he pushed
away the purse on the table.
“Take the picture; there will be
only <i>one</i> face then, and I shall not
be torturing myself as to whether
the likeness is faithful enough or
not.”

The Greek bent out of the window
and whistled to two men sitting
on the narrow stone-work of the
canal; one of them struck a flint,
lit a pine torch, and, beckoning the
other to follow him, came up the
winding stairs. Jan said not a word,
and the picture was packed and
carried away, while the merchant
lingered yet, pressing gold, protection,
and future patronage upon the
benumbed artist. Even the hint
of fame could not stir the young
man.

“I have done my life’s work,” he
said gloomily. “I shall never paint
the equal of that picture again, and
I do not wish to,” he added with a
shudder; “and for the sake of my
reputation I must not paint anything
below that standard.”

“But why should not you do
even better?” said the Greek.

“I thought you knew,” said the
young man, in puzzled uncertainty.

“I <i>know</i> nothing, and my suspicions
are too vague to shape my
judgment on the merits of this particular
work of yours. I gathered
all I <i>do</i> know, or even suspect, from
the remarks of the people to-day.
I am used to watching indications
of men’s fancies, prejudices, passions,
say even superstitions, and I
thought it a pity that such people
as we heard to-day should have it
in their power to end or mar the
career of an artist of your genius.
We want some young, rising painter—one
who can rival the Italians;
.pn +1
one who can show that there is a
future for art, that it is progressive
and improvable; one especially
who will defy conventionalities—for
I own that your independent treatment
of a 'Judith’ fascinated me.
But if I cannot prevail upon you to
accept my services at present, you
will not refuse to take this address;
it will find me, no matter where I
may be, and it will be even a personal
safeguard for you in my absence
and during the interval that
may elapse before I hear of your
appeal.”

“Thank you a thousand times
for your unprovoked and generous
interest!” said Jan more warmly
than he had spoken before. “I
shall never forget it. God grant
my life or death may be guided and
determined by the highest Power!
I should not trust myself to decide
wisely, if I had the choice offered
me; but if it is ordained that
I should live long, I prefer <i>your</i> being
the instrument of my salvation.”

The merchant left, and Jan stayed
alone all night; he was stonily
calm, watching, thinking, waiting as
if for an expected event, and never
breaking his fast through the long,
dark hours. When early morning
came, two men in gray cloaks opened
his door and respectfully <i>ordered</i>
him to come with them to Van Simler’s
house, which he did without
surprise and without remonstrance.
Here he found the canon, who with
Van Simler told him briefly that
they thought it for his good to be
taken into the country to the castle
of Stundsen, belonging to the merchant’s
brother-in-law. They did
not tell him why, and it did not
even occur to him to ask. As he
passed from the large dining-hall
where this short interview took
place to a room furnished with
Spanish leather and carved oak—<i>his</i> room, he was told, for a few
hours—he thought he recognized
the Greek anxiously and quickly
open a door that led to the passage,
as if to assure himself of the presence
of some expected person.

Van Simler and his friend, meanwhile,
had a short and significant
talk, a few words of which are here
set down to explain facts that may
look to the undiscerning reader
like the conventional tricks of modern
mediævalists, to whom plots
and kidnapping are “daily bread.”
“Now,” said the merchant, “if that
scoundrel Peter goes no further,
there is every hope of getting this
obstinate young genius out of the
city in safety; but he may try to
get <i>two</i> prices and hint the matter
to Conrad Schön.”

The canon shrugged his shoulders.
“Of course, in that case,”
he said, “all would be in vain, for
Count Conrad has the sovereign’s
ear; and you know the hobby the
Count of Flanders has lately bestridden.”

“The youth ought to have gone
with the Greek; but the latter says
he believes him half-mad, which
accounts for his staying in the jaws
of the lion.”

“I have heard of Jan the painter
before,” said the priest, “and, had
he been a different person, I should
have gone to him myself; but, from
my general knowledge of his character,
any one would do better than
one of us, and I am glad the Greek
forestalled me. Why did not you
keep Peter under lock and key
when he came here?”

“It was a mistake, I own,” said
the other; “but still, if I had, there
was Simon in the secret.”

“Simon is a fool, and nothing of
this would have occurred to him.”

“I doubt about his being a fool;
at any rate, he is a dangerous one.
.pn +1

“He <i>is</i> a fool in such matters as
these, though dangerous enough in
his way, as you say. Now, our
Greek friend has just left the
house, I see, and there is nothing
to detain <i>me</i> here just now. You
take the transport business in your
hands? Well and good; while I attend
to any foolish charge made in
the city. I expect I shall see old
Mother Colette before dark to-night.”

There is no need to go through
the details of the few days that followed.
In one word, Peter was
more powerful than Jan’s four protectors
put together, but only because
he had Conrad Schön at his
back, and behind him a greater
“presence” yet—no less a person
than the Count of Flanders, who
had lately taken a mania about
witchcraft. It was easy to play
upon his vanity and tickle his supposed
superior sense of discovery,
and Conrad had reasons for diverting
to the young artist the opprobrium
which even he, with all his
power, could not fail to have
brought upon himself in such an independent
and proud burgher-city
as Bruges for the wrong done to
the orphan daughter of one of her
citizens and an attendant of his
wife; for there was still a lingering
in Flanders of the old knightly
feeling of the earlier days of chivalry,
which made it the duty of
a knight to consider every house-maiden
within his walls as his own
daughter or sister, and protect, and
even defend, her as such.

The dark accusations of Conrad
and his informant against the
defenceless painter were but too
readily listened to, and, before his
friends could conceal him, the sovereign
had already sent to demand
his person. We will pass over the
mock examination which the count
held, more with a view to satisfy his
own curiosity than to assure himself
of the prisoner’s guilt; over
the honest but bitter malignity with
which old Mother Colette, an unconscious
tool sought out by Jan’s
enemies, testified against the man
who, to make such a startling and
mysterious likeness of her lost
granddaughter, must have been
intimately acquainted with her;
and, lastly, over Jan’s strange apathy
and silence, his refusal to deny
the charges brought against him,
and his seeming relief at being
condemned to die.

He never told any one the reason
of all this, and the secret would
have died with him, if Peter, years
afterwards, when the picture again
came to light and became famous,
had not made known the hallucination
of the painter, to which was
really due the success others had
stupidly attributed to forbidden
practices. The last thing that concerns
us is the strange sentence and
fanciful doom pronounced by the
Count of Flanders, the carrying out
of which will take us up into the
belfry of the Guildhall, just above
the market-place where the unlucky
picture had first roused the
ignorant suspicions of the mob.

Here, where swings the largest
bell of the famous carillon, we find
the artist once more. The great dark
mass hangs dumb beside him; very
little light is here, but enough to see
by dimly, and make out some of
the maze of beams and iron-braced
stays that uphold the old bell.
Even some of the inscription is visible;
its gilt letters in relief gleam
out of the dimness and naturally
fix the eye in that kind of magnetic
gaze which some say is favorable
to sleep. Jan was half crouched
in one corner, wondering why
he was there and how long it was
.pn +1
intended he should stay; the two
men who had brought him had
simply told him that the count had
sent him up there to see if he could
rival the penance of St. Simeon
Stylites, for a few hours at least.
Presently the bell began to stir and
sway softly, slowly; one dull, muffled
tone came out as the tongue touched
the outbent lips of the mighty
bell; the next stroke came louder,
the next swing was wider, and Jan’s
head already throbbed with the
unwelcome noise. Now the monster
was alive in earnest. Warming
to its work, it swung further and
further; it tossed its base upwards,
till the beams groaned and creaked,
and all kinds of hideous minor
noises seemed to be embroidered
on the constant dull echo between
each stroke. A strange wind blew
in Jan’s face; it was the breath of
the bell, whose relentless beat grew
more and more regular, more and
more monotonous, as it went on.
The artist dared not move; one
hair’s breadth nearer the terrific engine
would be his death, one blow of
its lips would be more effectual than
any stroke of axe or pile of faggots.
He shrank close to the wall, but,
as his body just cleared the bell in
its mad flingings and tossings, his
mind seemed to be struck by it at
every toll, almost absorbed in it,
drawn to it with fatal curiosity.
Was that the bell whose sound had
been so majestic, so solemn, so beautiful
in his ears as a child, so grand
when it rang out above the others—eighty
of them—that chimed on the
great church holidays and welcomed
the victorious sovereign when
he came back from war? Was this
the heart of the great angel that
poetry and popular belief had endowed
the belfry with—this terrible,
maddening, brazen-tongued,
relentless engine? It only just
missed touching him each time it
flung itself on his side of the beam-chamber;
if it were to swing only a
little more fiercely, as it seemed
easy for it to do, one blow would
crush him. Already the air seemed
to suck him in under the bell, into
some dark vault, no doubt—some
bottomless pit; had his conductors
known, when they put him there,
that it was time for the bell to toll,
or had they forgotten him? How
long would this go on? His brain
could not stand it much longer, he
felt, but to scream was useless; the
great, dread voice hushed all other
sound. It seemed presently as if
the gilt lettering got brighter; it
took the shape of a glaring yellow
eye; now redder, like fire, now alive,
now like the eyes in his “Judith,”
that the woman had said were the
“eyes of a corpse just come back
to life.” But had bells eyes as
well as tongues? he asked himself
helplessly. He remembered learning
about the Cyclops and their
single eyes in the middle of their
foreheads; now he really saw a
worse monster, with an eye of flame
set in its huge, black, bulging lip.
Was that the gold the Greek had
offered him? Surely it was that,
and no eye. Of course his fancy
had betrayed him. But how could
the gold have got there and got
stuck to the rim of the accursed
bell? How long had he been there,
and when were they coming to
fetch him? But they could not get
in while that fiend was tossing and
bellowing in these narrow walls.
What was that other noise now?—a
whirring of a thousand wheels!
Where? It seemed all round; and
now the bell appeared to him in a
network of wheels, all going round
faster than the eye could follow—a
.pn +1
mass of moving air formed of many
hazy circles intertwined; he <i>knew</i>
they were wheels, but could not
actually see them. He dared not
hold his ears and head with his
hands, for between each fling of
the bell there was not time to lift
his hands; and if they were caught—Some
one was there now—come
to bring him away. How did he
get in? But it was not a man; it
had long, fair hair and a misty sort
of covering. He knew the face. Was
there an angel of the bell, after all,
who was going to stop the great
tongue and deliver him? No; that
face was a dead face—Judith just as
he had painted her, just as he saw
her in the corner of his room; and
<i>this</i> was his room, and he had been
dreaming of the bell. Scarcely—he
could not dream of such a noise;
then the devil must have got into
his room and changed everything.
But the clangor never stopped, and
never spoke either louder or softer—one
eternal, dreary, vexing, maddening
ring. He would go mad,
no doubt, if he stayed there another
quarter of an hour; how long
had he been there? Now he was
fascinated by the unerring accuracy
of the strokes, and, in a trance,
expected feverishly the next dull
boom, and mechanically counted on
his fingers till the next was due
again, and so on for five minutes.
Suppose he should hang on to the
tongue; would it make a feather’s
weight of difference in the time or
the sound of the stroke? He wondered
how the bell sounded to those
in the Place; they did not heed it
at all, most likely, or some thought
it must be getting near their time
for dinner, while pious women
were reminded to say a prayer,
and some gleeful child would clap
its hands and count the strokes. He
could count the beats of his heart
and the throbs in his head. He was
not mad yet, he hoped, and his
thoughts came regularly, and he saw
pictures burned into the air one
minute and gone the next; if he
could have put them on canvas,
they would have made his name
and fortune. He was sure he could
catch their shading; they looked
as if fire had been made liquid and
colored. It was better than any of
the windows in the cathedral, famous
as they were through the art-world
for their undiscoverable secret
of vivid, jewel-like coloring. But
one picture followed the other so
soon that, had he painted them all,
it would have taken him twice the
threescore years and ten of an ordinary
life, and they would have
filled every Church in Flanders fuller
than twenty chapels in each
could require. What was the coloring
of “Judith,” with the pitiful
chemical combination for which he
had risked so much, to these rich,
mellow, miraculous tones, with a
thousand new, unnamable shades,
and shadows that looked more like
the depths of a dark-blue Italian
lake than the darkness of common
air? But through all these meditations
of a second’s length, though
they seemed like the reveries of
hours, the boom of the pitiless bell
went on, crashing through the brain
of the prisoner, shattering each
new picture which the last interval
had stamped on his fancy, sounding
to him now like a roaring fall
of water, now a ploughing avalanche,
now a thunder-clap, now the fall
of a burning house, now the thud
of earth upon a coffin, now the
blow of a massive cudgel on his
own head. Instinctively he cowered
lower, and a beam struck him on
the back with a sudden violent
.pn +1
blow that made him stand upright
and remember that the bell was
there, but no cudgel; but as he
rose he had stretched out his hand,
blindly feeling for support, and
touched the great rocking monster.
A thrill went through his frame; he
looked upward and vaguely wondered
if this was the end, and he
saw his “Judith” again, a shadowy
form among the rafters. The next
feeling of consciousness was that
of lying flat on his back and a
strong, cold wind wafting across his
feet; he put up his hand to lift his
head a little and press his left temple,
and then— The bell had
only tolled for a quarter of an hour.
As soon as it stopped the same
men who had taken Jan up came
again and found him dead, lying in
a cramped position on his side, and
one leg still stretched out beneath
the now silent bell.[#]

.fn #
If any one cares to know what became of the
picture, he may be interested to hear that it hangs
now over the altar of a private oratory in the same
city where it was painted. The Greek merchant
took it to Constantinople, where it remained in his
family till the siege, twenty-eight years later. It
was then given by him for safe keeping to his Venetian
friend and transferred to Venice, whence the
Greek himself, having become a resident of that
place, took it back to Bruges and offered it to the
canon, on condition of no further mention being
made of the circumstances connected with it. The
offer was gratefully accepted, and it remained till
the priest’s death in his private collection, the
Greek having declared that, what with having paid
no price for it and its being a Scriptural subject, he
preferred that it should in some way belong to the
church rather than to the world. At the canon’s
death it was sold to a dealer, who sold it again for
a high price to an Italian collector, whose descendants,
in “hard times,” parted with it to a rich
Englishman. It happened, strangely enough, that
it returned to the native city of its unlucky author
by an intermarriage between the family of the
English connoisseur and that of a passionate lover
of art in Bruges, and this time it was transferred
as a <i>gift</i>. It has been freely shown to any and
every one who asked to see it, and the story attached
to it made it one of the “sights” of the old city.
.fn-
.sp 4
.h3 id=wildroses
WILD ROSES BY THE SEA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Untrimmed, uncared for, filling all the ways
  That stretch between the shadow of the pine
  And sea-washed rock where in the soft sunshine
The sea breaks white through all the long June days,

The fair wild roses, flushed like Eastern skies
  When sinks the sun to rest in radiance calm,
  Their pink bloom lift amid the sweet-bay’s balm
And shine a welcome true to loving eyes.

Sweet June’s rich gladness in the rosy flush,
  As if rejoicing with our human souls,
  While solemn melody from wave-beat rolls,
Whose endless anthem knows not any hush:

And ever answering from the pines sweep down
  The wailing chords the wandering wind doth wake—
  Sad undertones that through June’s singing break,
But cannot dim her roses’ radiant crown,

Beyond whose jewelled zone spreads on and on
  The long, low level of the endless sea,
  Blue with the shadow of infinity
From cloudless skies, in sparkling light, dropped down;

.pn +1
With here and there a sail, in shade and light,
  Wind-seeking, bearing careless o’er the crest
  Of summer waves the whiteness of its breast—
A moment’s dazzling vision on our sight:

Earth, air, and sea, with mirth unsullied filled,
  With happy sunshine from June’s roses flushed.
  We hold our rose-leaves all to-day uncrushed,
Our cup of spring-time joyousness unspilled.

But spring-time passes, rosy petals all
  Drop down and mingle with earth’s earlier dead,
  Though faithful sweet-bay still breathes balm o’erhead,
And ocean’s anthem e’er doth rise and fall.

Almost unfelt the summer hours die,
  Green leaves grow russet on the salty shore,
  The crimson vines droop rocky crevice o’er,
And wild ducks’ marshalled columns southward fly.

Low asters gleam with delicate light amid
  The massive sunshine of the golden-rod;
  A stray Houstonia shines above the sod
And lifts to gold-spun skies its pale blue lid.

The autumn’s glory lavishly is spread,
  But summer dieth, loving sung to sleep
  By western wind and murmur of the deep,
The softened sunshine on her gently shed.

Where are our roses?—that rare gift of June
  That filled to perfectness our human life,
  That hushed with silent touch all earthly strife,
That voiceless sang to keep our hearts in tune.

Lo! crowning each rich, sun-browned stem
  Where once its rose the summer’s sunrise flushed,
  Where shone our coronal of joy, now crushed,
Stands, round and firm, a deeper-tinted gem.

Rich summer faileth, and true-hearted June,
  For whom birds sang, and perfect blessedness
  Filled every grass-blade with a sense of bliss,
Tells o’er her beads for one to die so soon.

Her rosary strung around the rose-crowned shore,
  Our pure June gladness, gathered into prayers,
  The sweet-bay’s incense ever upward bears,
While we, 'mid loss, seem richer than before!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=divorce
DIVORCE, AND DIVORCE LAWS.
.sp 4
Of the many evils now arrayed
against society, none is greater than
that threatened by the frequency
and facility with which divorces are
obtained. This bane of our day, if
not plucked up by the roots, will
inevitably bring on the country
disasters tenfold greater than the
bitterest political strifes. Already
its incursions into our midst have
cast a blight on our morals, have
infected all classes of society, have
rudely shaken our best institutions,
and, if not checked, will prove a
greater scourge than in our apathy
we dream of. Yet it continues to
grow among us day by day; it rears
its head higher and higher each
moment; it strikes deeper root on
all sides; its hideous mien is ever
becoming more familiar to us; some
even smile over its attendant disclosures
of depravity as pleasant
tidbits of scandal with which the
morning papers agreeably enliven
the breakfast-table, while few reflect
over the awful magnitude of
the danger with which it is fraught.
So dulled, indeed, has become the
public conscience in this respect,
so slow its apprehension of the
mighty evil pressing on us, that
scarcely has a warning voice been
lifted against this social hydra,
which goes on tightening its coils
more closely around us every moment.
It is not alone our crowded
cities that are poisoned by its
breath, but it has invaded the stillness
of hillside and hamlet, and no
part of the land is a stranger to its
presence.

In olden times a special act of
Parliament was required in England
to legalize a remarriage during
the life-time of husbands and wives,
but so tedious and expensive was
the proceeding that few cared to
avail themselves of the privilege;
whereas of late days and in our
land so simple and easy has become
the severance of the marriage-knot
that the mechanic as well as the
millionaire figures before courts
and referees, and multitudes now
throng this new high-road to social
ruin.

Chief among the evils resulting
from the laxity of our divorce
laws is their active warfare against
society. The family, as known
among us, is a creation of the
church wrought out through the
indissolubility and sacredness of
marriage. It is the nursery of society,
the hope of the state, and the
cradle of its destinies. While it remains
pure and intact, so long will
our sound social institutions flourish,
so long will a healthy public
sentiment live among us, ready
to rebuke the shortcomings of
the powerful and to lighten the
burdens of the poor, to frown upon
official corruption and to encourage
disinterested public action.
Indeed, this is a point we
need scarcely insist upon. All
moralists and sociologists allow
that the family is the parent of
society, as the seed is of the crop
and the acorn of the oak. They
agree that with its extinction we
are at once driven on the breakers
of socialism, communism, and free-love—in
a word, that society ceases
to exist. Now, divorce is the entering-wedge
which the law supplies
for the ruin of the family; it is
as the priming to a loaded gun.
.pn +1
Once give the world to understand
that marriage is but a simple compact
by which two persons of opposite
sexes agree to live together
conditionally for a time, and the
permanency of the family is destroyed;
the sacredness of conjugal
love is degraded before the
law into mere sexual desire; that
institution which Christ blessed
and declared to symbolize his own
union with the church becomes at
the best a system of stirpiculture,
and nuptial altars are converted
into shambles of licentiousness.
Let the cause be what it may bestowing
on either party to the marriage
contract the right to annul it,
and the cohesion of family ties is
fatally weakened. This fact our
court records ominously demonstrate
every day. Applications for
divorce, based on the special enactments
of each State, are constantly
filed, in which release from marriage
is sought in accordance with
the provisions of the law. In Indiana,
for instance, mere incompatibility
of temper is made the ground
of petition; and in only very few
cases do we find adultery or grossly
cruel treatment alleged as a
reason. The easier conditions of
the State law are naturally enough
invoked, whatever may be the true
inner grounds of disagreement.
The law of the State offers a means
of escape from an onerous condition,
and, either through the perverse
temper of the litigants or the legal
skill of counsel, the circumstances
of the case are readily adapted to
the requirements of the law. Thus
the law in reality supplies to those
who are weary of wedlock the
means of escaping from it, while
apparently striving to hedge in its
interests. This fact will for ever
and essentially stultify divorce laws.
No matter how ingeniously framed
they may be, how buttressed with
conditions and exactions of proof,
such are the peculiar relations of
married life that, given on the side
of the law the possibility, and on
the side of the husband or wife the
desire of escaping from a yoke that
has become galling, and mere legal
restrictions melt as wax before the
sun.

As has just been said, the court
records constantly prove this. Let
us examine the facts in New York
State, where adultery is the only recognized
ground on which absolute
divorce can be procured. A husband
desires to free himself from
married thraldom. He consults a
convenient friend or an accommodating
lawyer. (Happily, there are
not many such, but we all know
that one can work an infinity of
mischief.) A conspiracy is entered
into against the wife; detectives are
set on her track; her incomings and
outgoings are narrowly watched;
her innocent visits are painted over
with the color of criminality; her
letters are intercepted; she is lured
into the paths of temptation; and
such proof, devised with devilish
cunning, is soon obtained as brands
that woman with the most infamous
of crimes. The picture is not of
the imagination; the revelations of
the law attest its terrible reality
every day, and so defiant of public
opinion have some discreditable
practitioners become that they take
no pains to cover up the tracks of
their infamy. Indeed, it was with
something like surprise that a short
time ago a lawyer in New York
City listened to the scathing words
which debarred him from future
practice in our courts, because of
his participation in a conspiracy to
prove an innocent woman an adulteress.

Circumstantial evidence is all
.pn +1
that the law requires in these cases.
As a rule, indeed, none other can be
furnished. Now, this evidence, proposing
to establish what is after all
but the semblance of crime, since the
facts necessarily elude ocular proof,
is such that by asking for it the
law seems to invite those who are
desirous of so doing to weave around
innocence itself a web of circumstances
calculated to immesh it in
the appearance of guilt. Thus the
law defeats its own intent and
places a premium on sin. It aggravates
the evil it endeavors to estop.
Like the smitten eagle, it is forced
to—

.pm verse-start
“View its own feathers on the fatal dart
Which winged the shaft that quivers in its heart.
Keen are its pangs, but keener far to feel
<i>It nursed the pinion that impelled the steel</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Two hundred divorces <i>a vinculo</i>,
obtained in the State of New York
in the course of a single year, give
point to these remarks. And in most
of these cases, it must be remembered,
the defendants denied the charge
and were convicted only by such evidence
as, though necessarily deemed
sufficient by the court or referee,
is essentially and of its nature such
that it might have been manufactured.
But if these attempts on the
part of husbands to take advantage
of the laxity of our divorce laws by
blasting the character of their wives
excite our honest indignation and
disgust, infinitely more heinous must
appear the conduct of some wives
in their efforts to procure evidence
against their husbands. Our readers
must here pardon a few details
which the cause of truth compels
us to set down, but which we will
couch in as few and modest words
as possible. What we are about to
state proves the truth of the holy
proverb that when woman falls
“her feet go down into death, and
her steps go in as far as hell”
(Prov. v. 5). There is a fashionable
physiology which denies the
physical possibility of absolute continence
without serious impairment
of health. The easy votaries of
sensuality do not hesitate to uphold
this odious doctrine in so-called
scientific treatises, and to proclaim
with Dr. Draper that “public celibacy
is private wickedness.” We
call this fashionable physiology; for
the mass of intelligent non-Catholics
make open avowal of it. Indeed,
the doctrine is essentially non-Catholic,
and has been acted upon
by all rebels against the church
from Luther to Loyson. Swedenborg
condemns celibacy as a crime
against nature. From being a purely
religious doctrine, however, it
has recently come to be regarded as
a scientific tenet. Pseudo-science
now shelters it under its ægis, and
it is as much the vogue to believe
in it as it is to accept the other views
of so-called advanced modern scientists.
It is this very notion which
supplies to many a recalcitrant
wife the weapon with which she has
succeeded in breaking down the law
and bringing irretrievable ruin on her
family. If, as the writer has taken
pains to assure himself, the inner
history of our most notorious and
disgraceful divorce cases could be
read in the light of broad day, the
facts would appears as follows:

A faithless wife, impressed with
the doctrine just stated, takes such
steps as will, in her belief, compel
her husband to compromise himself.
He then is watched, snares
are set about his feet, he is encompassed
by enemies, and, alas! sharing
as he does the views entertained
by his wife, he soon furnishes
such evidences of wrong-doing as
justify a recourse to legal proceedings.
We have stated the case briefly,
but at sufficient length to indicate
.pn +1
the lowness of the depths to which
human nature, deprived of grace,
can sink, and how ingeniously the
law has constructed a pitfall for itself.
One author says that “such
stratagems are of frequent occurrence,”
and the mournful testimony
of our tribunals is overwhelming in
proof of the appalling frequency
with which this repulsive drama is
enacted. But to wade through the
putrescent mass of evidence were to
make the cheek grow crimson and
burn, so that a scant allusion to it
is all that decency can permit.
What we especially desire to impress
upon our readers is the fact
that the imagination is here powerless
to compete with the reality, and
that human ingenuity has exhausted
itself in the contrivance of the
most abominable devices in its successful
efforts to overreach a stupid
law. But it is not alone in thus inviting
infraction of its provisions that
the law of New York State is weak
and faulty; it is, in addition, guilty
of contradicting itself in a matter
of vital importance. Marriage is
either a contract for life or can be
limited by previous mutual consent.
Now, the law denounces such limitation
as immoral and strictly forbids
it. But does it therefore recognize
marriage as in reality a contract
for life? We emphatically
answer in the negative, and for the
following reason: It is of the nature
of a contract that all its essential
terms and conditions be such
as to come within the jurisdiction
of the authority appointed for the
purpose of directing its fulfilment.
But if the authority be so crippled as
not to be able to take cognizance of
conditions admitted to be essential
to the proper fulfilment of the contract,
the latter must be regarded as
null and void, or binding only <i>in
foro interno</i>. All outside authority,
all outside jurisdiction over it, is
at an end. This is precisely what
happens in civil marriage. Ostensibly
the law recognizes it as a contract
for life; indeed, openly proclaims
it to be so; even provides a
penalty for its violation as such;
and yet, by admitting its dissolubility
on certain conditions, leaves it
in reality as much the subject-matter
of temporary stipulation as a
lease or a business copartnership,
and, in addition, baits it with the
temptation to commit an enormous
crime. What is there to prevent
two persons from entering into a
civil marriage with the understanding
that they should live together
for a certain time, be as other married
persons before the law, sharing
its protection and enjoying
its privileges, and then separate by
complying with the conditions on
which the law allows a separation?
The case is entirely possible—has,
indeed, occurred time and again—so
that we are forced to admit that
among us the law virtually treats
marriage as a temporary partnership,
however much it may insist
upon its being regarded as a life-long
contract, and is thus guilty of
the inconsistency of declaring a
certain thing to be what it in reality
treats as quite another.

Nor can it be contended, as
against this argument, that the law
will not grant a divorce where connivance
is attempted; for the case,
typical of thousands, supposes that
neither party desires to reveal such
connivance. Nor is it of any avail
to affirm that the party proved to
be guilty is debarred the right of
contracting a new marriage. Technically
the law so reads, but practically
it is powerless to enforce its
provision. In such a case, indeed,
it may be said that love laughs law
to scorn. Its hope to punish a
.pn +1
transgressor of the sort is as futile
as the

.pm verse-start
“Desire of the moth for the star.”
.pm verse-end

It is proper to assume that the
purpose of the law is to punish the
criminal partner and to restore to
the injured one privileges which
ought not to be forfeited because
of another’s guilt. These two objects
represent the policy and expediency
of the law; and in view of
its entire failure to work them out
wisely and effectually, we will show
that the law is neither politic nor
expedient. We will grant, indeed,
that the law is competent, in all
cases coming under its notice, both
to punish the wrong-doer and partially
to redress the wrong; but
what is the use, if, instead of effectually
repressing the wrong, it tends
rather to encourage its commission?
And such is indeed the anomalous
condition of the law, both as it reads
and as it works. The easier and
more numerous the terms on which
the marriage contract can be dissolved,
the greater, of course, will be
the number of divorces sought; but
whether it be for one reason or
many, once given a gateway from
marriage bonds, and none who are
desirous of escape will find much
trouble in passing through the portals
which the law has flung open.
The facts, as attested by the courts
of Connecticut and Indiana, prove
the truth of the first part of this
proposition; for nowhere are cases
looking to the absolute severance
of the marriage tie more frequently
argued, and in no other States are
so many divorces granted. The
reason obviously is because the
conditions for obtaining such concessions
are there easiest of all.
Where the conditions for procuring
divorce are more onerous fewer applications
are made; and the facts,
as occurring in New York State,
verify this sum in proportion and
thus prove the second part of our
proposition.

In the State of New York adultery
is the sole condition of divorce, and
just in proportion as such a crime
is less frequent than mere family
jars and broils, so are divorces less
frequently sought. The proposition
is therefore true that the permission
to dissolve marriage begets
a demand to that effect in proportion
to the ease with which it may
be obtained. The corollary of this
proposition is that, the more easily
divorce may be obtained, the less
regard is had to the obstacles which
may stand in the way of its coming
at our beck. Should marriage be
declared to be absolutely indissoluble,
and come to be viewed as such
by the masses, few would dream of
assuming its responsibilities in the
hope that, should time render it
irksome, they could slip the noose
and again soar “in maiden meditation
fancy free.” On the other
hand, they would be disposed rather
to approach the matter with deliberation,
to take to heart the conditions
of the contract, and seriously
to study the surroundings of a state
which is to endure till death. It is
for this reason that the church advises
her children to ponder long
and deeply the consequences of the
step they are about to take when
proposing to cross this moral Rubicon.
If Cæsar felt that, the traditionary
river once crossed, fate had
marked him for her own, or Cortez
that, his ships ablaze, all hope of
return was gone, more still does
the church insist that sacramental
marriage is a step that cannot
be retraced. Divorce laws ignore
these considerations, and make
light thereby of that social institution
on which all others depend
.pn +1
for their perpetuity. They forget
that—

.pm verse-start
“Marriage is a matter of more worth
Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.”
.pm verse-end

With siren voice they lure the unwary
and unreflecting to a fate
fraught with untold possibilities of
unhappiness. The result is that
persons take less account of the solemn
nature of the contract. It
suits their humor at the moment to
get married, and little they reck of
the future. <i>Carpe diem.</i> The rosy
present bounds the view, and there
is no thought of to-morrow. Time
enough for the disillusioned groom
to wail:

.pm verse-start
<i>Miseri quibus intentata nites</i>—
.pm verse-end

when “marriage vows have proved
as false as dicers’ oaths,” and bitter
hate succeeded the short-lived
joys of the honeymoon. And why
should it be otherwise? Is not the
potent panacea of matrimonial ills
ever within ken and reach? What
need is there to cloud the golden
prospect with thoughts of possible
future wrangles and rancor, and in
advance study to avert or mitigate
them, since, should they come along,
a benignant law is at hand to end
them? We are convinced on the
best of grounds that the frequency
of divorce suits has its root in the
neglect of duly considering the conditions
essential to the happiness
of married life. Were Dante’s
words written over marriage portals:

.pm verse-start
<i>Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’intrate,</i>
.pm verse-end

a deal of curious prying, at least,
would precede the decisive steps
and few would rashly fly to a “bourn
whence no traveller returns.”
But when the law points to an easy
escape from the consequences of a
heedless step, what necessity can
there be for heeding? Plenty of
prior deliberation and a close scrutiny
of its obligations would not
have failed to render marriage tolerable,
at least, for many who now
fret and fume 'neath its galling
yoke because they had flown to it
in a wanton hour as to a flower to
gather sweets from. <i>Festina lente</i>—or,
as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly
translates it, “Celerity should be
contempered with cunctation”—would
be a valuable maxim to hold
up to the giddy gaze of our modern
youth who woo and wed with more
sentimental sighs than sober sense;
better, by all means, than the cynical
“Don’t” of Douglas Jerrold.
The knowledge that what God hath
joined together no human authority
must put asunder, alone can
stop those unhallowed unions which
curse society by the filthy disclosures
they occasion, and blast the
happiness, both temporal and eternal,
of so many.

At the time when this question
was widely discussed in England,
and so many eminent authorities opposed
the project of law which now
rules in the British realms, and which
is in the main identical with our
own State law, Lord Stowell held
the following language, which goes
at once to the kernel of the matter
and shows a keen appreciation of
the worst results of easy divorce.
He says: “The general happiness of
the married life is secured by its indissolubility.
When people understand
that they must live together,
except for a very few reasons
known to the law, they learn to
soften, by mutual accommodation,
that yoke which they know they
cannot shake off; they become
good husbands and good wives;
for necessity is a powerful master
in teaching the duties it imposes.”
The church in surrounding marriage
with that solemnity which
.pn +1
it possesses in the eyes of Catholics,
and thus giving greater
prominence to its indissoluble
character, has thereby supplied to
her children the means of softening
a union so binding, and from the
crucible of suffering offers to both
husband and wife a purer gold.
In the schedule of conditions essential
to the procurement of the best
results from marriage she holds
to our gaze a larger and deeper
culture than current philosophy
dreams of—a culture that appeals
to the intellect through moral sense,
unlike that modern culture which
is addressed to the intellect alone.
It has almost passed into an axiom
in political economy that self must
sink out of sight where the interests
of many are concerned; and so the
church teaches that men and women,
having reached that period
when the duties of married life
ought to be assumed, should thenceforth
devote to the service of society
those labors they had hitherto
bestowed on the prosecution of
their individual aims. The culture
proceeds from this. Tolerance of
each other’s shortcomings on the
part of husband and wife is strongly
inculcated. A gentle forbearance
of mutual peculiarities is enjoined,
whereby the noble disposition to
forgive the countless trifles of manner,
thought, and action which
might offend a morbid or fastidious
idiosyncrasy is fostered. Thus
the Catholic wife or husband, in
view of the indissoluble nature of
marriage, is taught to round off angularities,
to tolerate oddities, to
adapt individual views and feelings
to special requirements, and to
hold all subject to that higher and
holier law which tells us that self
should not be consulted where
duty is concerned.

How many bickerings and misunderstandings,
how many of the
heart-burnings, how much of all
the unhappiness that now mars
and disfigures married life, might
be avoided if these large and liberal
views more generally prevailed!
Petty jealousies, the offspring of
our baser nature; furtive suspicions,
exaggeration of faults, imputation
of wrong motives, misinterpretation
of harmless actions—in a word, the
hundred-and-one incentives to disagreement
which beset each day’s
path—could find no room in a household
harboring this pure and enlightened
conception of marriage.
We know that the will is as much
the subject of discipline as the intellect,
and we likewise know that
as it is tried, as temptations beset
it and are repelled, as suffering is
endured without repining, as petty
torments, numerous in proportion
to their smallness, are patiently
borne, the whole character comes
forth from the ordeal smoother,
sweeter, more spiritual, and stronger,
with a life that is not likely to
die. Marriage, rightly conceived, is
a training-school where many salutary
lessons are taught. Its tendency
is to strengthen the will, to
soften the heart, to remove asperities
of character, to evoke the tender
and gentle in our nature, and
to beget a happiness all its own.
Wrongly understood and blindly
sought, it is full of perils, not, indeed,
imaginary, but real with that
terrible reality which court calendars
daily reveal in sickening colors.

Thus the standard by which the
Catholic Church measures marriage
makes it yield a higher culture,
more generous, large, and abiding,
than can flow from the gross conception
which represents it as a
contract to be rescinded at will.
The Catholic view promotes among
.pn +1
the married that freedom of action
which loves to borrow the consciousness
of doing right from the
conviction that the right is freely
courted and the wrong freely spurned,
and thus paves the way for a
nobler plane of conduct. That irritability
which inheres so deeply
in our nature is what unfits most
of us for companionship. It seeks
to fasten on others the blame which
is our own, or holds them responsible
for grievances which are the
necessary outcome of human life.
If not controlled, it either causes
entire estrangement and forfeiture
of affection, or leads those towards
whom it is manifested to deceptiveness
and the employment of
crooked ways to reach legitimate
ends. A narrow and illiberal life
is the result. Darkness and trickery
prevail where all should be light
and freedom. Evil accumulates on
evil, till both parties seek through
divorce to free themselves from a
yoke that has become intolerable.
The shrew will nag and the tyrant
husband domineer because a narrow
selfishness, bred of this unrestrained
irritability, has usurped the
place of a large-hearted and gentle
forbearance. The knowledge of
these possibilities is the most effective
armor against their actual occurrence;
for it demonstrates in advance
the necessity of patience and
a tolerant spirit; it hints at a delicate
regard for the feelings of
others; it leads to a vivid introspection
of self, and inclines to a
mezzotint view of actions not our
own; it discriminates between true
love, which is self-sacrificing, gentle,
and forgiving, and the counterfeit
presentment of love, which is lurid
passion, fire without light. And
this knowledge is best guaranteed
by the conviction that marriage is
indissoluble. Urging this view of
marriage and the study of these
things, the church implicitly holds
that a liberal toleration of individual
action is essential to the happiness
of married life, and that the
ignorance which accompanies intolerance
must be dispelled ere the
ideal picture of married bliss can
meet the gaze. Thus Christian
freedom goes by the golden mean,
on one side of which is domestic
tyranny and on the other the rampant
license of immorality. Unlike
the generality of guides, however
the church possesses the means of
enforcing her enlightened views, of
imparting wise counsel, and offering
helpful advice in concrete cases
through the Sacrament of Penance.
Those who have derived their notion
of the confessional from the
scurrilous writings of Michelet, the
senseless diatribes of Gavazzi, or
the eminently vulgar flings of some
sensational preachers will be a little
startled by this proposition. But
let those whose knowledge of the
tribunal of penance has been fashioned
in the school of bigotry and
ignorance consult any intelligent
Catholic, husband or wife, and they
will find that the web of falsehood
in which they have been caught is
such that they should blush at their
own simplicity for having become
entangled in it and held “faster
than gnats in cobwebs.” They will
find that all those virtues which,
even to the commonest understanding,
shine clearly forth as the basis
of contentment in married life, are
here inculcated; that here on the
heat and flame of distemper cool
patience is sprinkled; that chafes
are healed and rankling barbs plucked
out; and that magnanimity, self-sacrifice,
and love brighten afresh
at the latticed crate of the confessional.

But notwithstanding that the
.pn +1
church has exhausted prudence
and employed every means which
common sense could suggest in
compassing the integrity of marriage,
she seeks not in these the
<i>ultima ratio</i> of her action. To her
marriage is a sacrament, bestowing
grace on those who approach it
worthily, and sealing married life
with a supernatural impress. This
sacramental notion of marriage it is
which elevates, purifies, and sanctifies
the relation, enables the church
to mitigate the evils with which human
perversity leavens it, and gives
her control where the most restless
plotters for the regeneration of
society have acknowledged their
utter powerlessness to act.

During the controversy which
marked the adoption of the Divorce
Bill in England its opponents, when
twitted with their inconsistency in
rejecting the Catholic notion of
marriage as a sacrament and still
insisting upon its inherent indissolubility,
fell, through their reply,
into an error which, in proportion
to its prevalence, has led to a wide-spread
misconception of the grounds
on which the Catholic Church
claims marriage to be indissoluble.
A prominent writer at the time said:
“The opinion of the Roman Church
itself does not found the indissolubility
of marriage on its character
as a sacrament, but only conceives
the obligation to be enhanced by
that circumstance”; and in confirmation
of the assertion he quotes
the words of the Council of Trent,
which are to this effect: <i>Matrimonium,
ut naturæ officium consideratur
et maxime ut sacramentum, dissolvi
non potest.</i> Now, if the words <i>ut
maxime</i> be allowed to bear their
proper meaning, they certainly
prove that the Tridentine fathers
intended that the indissolubility of
marriage should, before all and
above all, rest upon and grow out
of the sacramental character of
the contract. <i>Ut maxime</i>, if meaning
anything, means <i>as far as it is
possible, pre-eminently</i>; and so the
church regards marriage as naturally
indissoluble, but especially so
when viewed as a sacrament. The
fact proves that the opponents of
the bill had little else to fall back
on than the falsely-advanced statement
that the Catholic Church, the
most strenuous advocate of indissolubility,
sought the reason of her
opinion in the nature of the contract
rather than in the character
of the sacrament.

But, apart from the declaration
of the Council of Trent, the whole
history of the church exhibits beyond
peradventure her higher estimate
of marriage as a sacrament
rather than as a contract. She
holds it to be, in a mystical sense,
the symbol of our Lord’s union
with the church, and surely no
higher character could attach to it.
But this symbolic meaning of marriage
rests altogether on its sacramental
phase, so that the church
views it as a sacrament supernaturally,
as a contract naturally, her higher
regard for it being in the former
sense. The English indissolubilists,
therefore, could in no manner object
to the proposed Divorce Bill;
for, denying marriage to be a sacrament,
they surrendered the strongest
reason for proclaiming it to be
indissoluble. If, as even Gibbon
admits, the church has lifted woman
from the lowest degradation into
which she could be plunged, in
which she was the mere slave of
man and the toy of his passions, to
her present position of respect and
independence by investing matrimony
with the holiness of a sacrament;
and if the church has by the
same means purified home-life and
.pn +1
cemented its affections, is there not
danger that, by dragging down marriage
from its high estate, woman
may again come to be regarded
“not as a <i>person</i>,” as Gibbon says,
“but as a <i>thing</i>, so that, if the original
title were deficient, she might be
claimed, like other valuables, by the
use and possession of an entire
year”? Such was the law in pagan
times, and such it may be again
if we list too readily to those modern
renovators of society who call
marriage tyranny and a “system
of legalized prostitution.” Not in
vain did St. Simon, Fourier, Le
Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers
inveigh against Christian
marriage. We are now reaping the
fruits of their unholy crusade against
it. Their labors are to-day blossoming
in Oneida County as well
as in Utah, in the general rush all
round to snap uncongenial ties, and
in the woful spread of an evil too
base to be mentioned. These form
the goal to which such pestilent
agitations tend; and if some well-meaning
advocates of innovation
have not kept step with the leaders,
it is not because their principles restrained
them, but rather because
they have not quite broken away
from the influence of early teachings.
Marriage, once stripped of its
supernatural character, and reduced
to the level of a contract, becomes
as much the subject-matter
of speculation as political systems.
Reformers object to this feature of
it or to that, and suggest endless
modifications. Plato contended
that there should be no such thing
as marriage proper, and that all
children should be surrendered to
the state. To-day, in the light
which the Gospel has shed on the
question, civilized states tolerate
a condition akin to that which the
Athenian philosopher advocated.
And just as Plato, by the sheer
force of his commanding intellect,
imposed his views on many both in
his own time and subsequently, so,
it is to be regretted, the skill and
eloquence of some modern opponents
of marriage are such that
they have succeeded in winning
hundreds to their standard.

It is a law of our nature that great
intellectual force is never unproductive;
that it triumphs over many
obstacles; and, no matter what may
be the cause on the side of which
its influence is cast, it is always attended
with at least partial success
in the achievement of its aims. Now,
we have witnessed the most strenuous
efforts of powerful minds enlisted
in the attempt to abolish marriage.
We have had eloquent pleas
for socialism, phalansterianism, etc.,
and it could not but be that these
labors were destined to bear issue
of some sort. That issue we are
contemplating at the present moment;
for these assaults on marriage
have lowered the general conception
of its obligations, its sanctity,
and its importance to society. They
have lured to a mere mockery hundreds
who, when scarce the marriage-kiss
has impressed their lips, besiege
our courts with petitions for divorce.
The influence of pernicious
doctrines is deeper and wider than
their authors imagine. It does not
consist alone in the fact that they
draw disciples and beget neophytes;
but they weaken faith in what they
assail, and thus engender the most
pitiful lot of man—scepticism. This
is precisely what we now complain
of. Our neighbors round about us
emphatically eschew the doctrines
of the <i>illuminati</i>, of Heine and of
Prudhomme, yet they more or less
admit that there is some reason in
what has been so well said, so forcibly
and so eloquently urged. The
.pn +1
consequence is that their faith in
the true order of things is shaken;
they are dissatisfied; they declare
the doctrine of indissolubility to be
rigoristic; and, provocation given,
qualms are brushed aside and they
hesitate not to fly to the ready remedy
of the law. We may thus set
down to the erratic speculations of
a few self-appointed social reconstructionists
many of the matrimonial
miseries and scandals we now
deplore. And the leaven is working
not alone in the United States,
but in every country where the
same low estimate of marriage prevails,
and where the law is the ready
tool of those who desire escape
from shackles of their own forging.

In England, where law machinery
is more cumbersome than among
us and its processes more tedious,
not quite so many divorces are obtained,
but still the number is on
the increase. The English law is
much the same as that which rules
in New York State, and it is interesting
to inquire what reason there
can be for the greater percentage of
divorces in New York than in England.
We hinted that the administration
of English law is slower, but
that fact is not sufficient to account
for a difference so marked. All the
influences already enumerated as
tending to favor the multiplicity of
divorces are as actively at work over
there as among ourselves, and hence
we must strive to find the explanation
of the difference in the different
character of the social systems
of the two countries. In England
society is stratified with such extreme
nicety that seldom, if ever, a
waif is borne from one stratum to
another. Lines are sharply drawn
between classes, and the fact is well
recognized; for the lowly do not
seek to soar, nor do the higher ever
entirely lose their social grade.
Hence marriages are contracted
only between those whose tastes by
birth and education agree, whose
general views are more apt to harmonize,
and whose sympathies mainly
run in the same channels. They
come to the altar (we employ the
word in its current sense) with a
better understanding of what each
expects from the other, with fewer
doubts to frighten them and stronger
hopes to sustain them, and hence
subsequent collisions and estrangements
are less frequent. In our
country society has not quite passed
out of its formative stage, the elements
have not settled into their allotted
planes. It still is like an estuary
in which the conflict of opposing
tides brings to the surface what
had just lain at the bottom, and
drives to the bottom the bead that
had glistened for a moment on the
brimming top; in a word, social
stratification is not yet complete
among us. The result is a tendency
to the intermingling of incongruous
forces. In the social ferment which
is going on some rise suddenly
from a lower depth and crystallize
in their new plane by marriage,
some fall and remain below on the
same condition. Here wealth is a
potent escort to lead its possessors
higher up than they could hope to
reach without the aid of this
glittering talisman. A little veneer
and a resolute lack of shamefacedness
often enable those whom suddenly-acquired
riches have lifted
above their former level to hold
their new station till marriage has
assured it to them and given them
a title to their position. But rapidly
as wealth lifts in the social scale,
more rapidly still does poverty drag
down, and we have not yet fully developed,
though happily we are fast
coming to it, that public sentiment
which refuses to behold loss of caste
.pn +1
in loss of wealth. Till then a lower
social level is the certain bourn of
those who have fallen from opulence,
just as a niche higher up in the social
temple awaits the <i>nouveau riche</i>.

We are not sticklers for the social
classification of aristocratic
countries, but simply for that which
is founded on cultivated taste, refinement,
and general intelligence;
and we contend that where the social
condition is such as to permit
the barriers between vulgarity and
refinement to be broken down, no
matter though the former may vie
with Crœsus or the latter appear
in the tattered garb of Lazarus,
matrimonial misalliances will be
the result. December and May
are no more fitly mated than platinum
and lead—<i>i.e.</i>, sixteen and
fifty make no more suitable alliance
than refinement and its opposite.

.pm verse-start
                “For in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.”

—<i>Merchant of Venice.</i>
.pm verse-end

Till, therefore, this social ferment
has settled and all the elements
have reached their allotted planes,
there to remain, misalliances will
continue to occur, and misalliances,
we know, are a fruitful source of
separation. There may be more
satisfactory and truthful explanations
of the fact we are endeavoring
to account for, but of this
we are convinced: that, for whatever
cause, antagonistic social
conditions operate more frequently
against happiness in married life in
this country than in Europe.

Space will not allow us to pursue
the discussion of this question
much farther, so we will devote the
few remaining lines to the consideration
of the leading objection
which is constantly urged against
absolute indissolubility, and which
may consequently be taken as a
strong argument in favor of divorce.
Divorce, it is contended,
favors morality; for, whether law intervenes
or not, passion will assert
its supremacy, and it is better to
let those depart in peace and with
the sanction of the law who cannot
live together than have them burst
their bonds illegally and contract
new relations in despite of the law.
By so permitting, the advocates of
divorce hope to stem the torrent
of evil which they say deluges
some European continental nations
where the proportion of illegitimate
births is wofully excessive. The
same thing, they maintain, is especially
true of Spain, Italy, and, in
a word, of all Catholic countries.
Wherever divorce is not sanctioned
by law dissoluteness, they affirm, is
far greater than where divorces are
granted. So the statistics seem to
prove; and, in a spasm of virtue, believers
in mere statistical figures denounce
indissolubility as a stepping-stone
to lust. We will grant the
reliability of statistical reports for
the nonce, and prove by them that,
so far from immorality abounding
in those countries where divorces
are prohibited, a greater amount of
immorality really exists in divorce
countries, with the added immorality
of a law which cloaks it. We
know that passion, blind and impetuous,
is the reigning force which
orders the actions of those who
contemplate emancipation from
marriage bonds. Certainly they do
not act under the inspiration of
grace. When, therefore, they break
loose from their unsuiting partners,
it matters little to them whether
the law approves or disapproves
of their action, provided they can
act with impunity. This impunity
is guaranteed in most cases in
countries where divorce is permitted,
.pn +1
and new marriages, having all
the seemingness of virtue, are contracted
with the sanction of the
law. In Catholic countries this is
not permitted; new post-marital
relations are branded as adulterous
and their issue illegitimate. Is it
any wonder, then, that illegitimacy
is more prevalent in those countries
where divorce is unknown than
where caprice or crime can sever
old bonds and weld new ones, all
with the countenance of the law?

The only difference is that adultery
and its consequences are called
by their proper names in the
former case, whereas in the latter an
anti-Scriptural law retrieves them
from stigma. And as there is in
the human heart a disposition to
do more frequently and more extensively
what the law allows than
what it prohibits, we may be sure
that there are many more pseudo-marriages
contracted in countries
where divorce is permitted than
there are adulteries where it is prohibited.
Were, then, the mask of
the law removed, we should find in
the former more infamy and crime
than even in those Catholic countries
where the record of morality
is lowest. There is one Catholic
country in which divorce is a
thing known only in name, and yet
where even the illegitimacy which
affects not to seek shelter behind
the law is very much less than in
the adjoining country, where divorces
are frequently obtained.
In Ireland the courts are most
rarely troubled with such applications,
and yet illicit relations on the
part of married persons are fewer
than in any country of Europe.
Does not this fact evidently disprove
the claim that absolute indissolubility
is unfavorable to morality?
While the Catholic Church
holds to view on the one hand the
indissolubility of marriage, and on
the other the precept of conjugal
chastity, and while even in one
country she has established a higher
rate of morality under those rigid
conditions, it is evident her
wisdom in this trying matter has
been attested by the facts.

But the attempt to bolster up
divorce morality by an appeal to
statistics is radically wrong. It is
based on the supposition that the
end justifies the means; that it is
better, for the sake of avoiding the
scandals incident to adulterous cohabitation,
to legalize it, and thus
exhibit to the eyes of society a
whitened sepulchre rather than
hold to view the rottenness of “an
enseamed bed.” It is the duty of
moralists and teachers of religion
rather to stem the torrent of vice
and pluck the brand from the
burning than attempt to cloak over
and extenuate by legal devices
what is essentially and for ever
wrong. There are times, indeed,
when separation is the only hope
for two unfortunates whom an unlucky
fate had thrown in each
other’s way; but separation does
not imply remarriage, and theirs it
is, while reaping the fruits of an
enforced singleness, to reflect that
they are answerable for the consequences
of their own deliberate
action, while their case may serve
as an example to others. Let the
beautiful conception of Christian
marriage more abound; let men
and women learn to view marriage
as something holy, in which the
husband is the protector, the wife
the comforter, and we may meet
with more marriages in which,
while the husband faithfully performs
his allotted <i>rôle</i>, the wife
embodies the beautiful picture of
her drawn by Washington Irving:
“As the vine which has long twined
.pn +1
its graceful foliage about the
oak, and has been lifted by it in
sunshine, will, when the hardy
plant is rifted by the thunderbolt,
cling round it with its caressing
tendrils and bind up its shattered
boughs, so it is beautifully ordered
by Providence that woman, who is
the mere dependant and ornament
of man in his happier hours, should
be his stay and solace when smitten
with sudden calamity; winding
herself into the rugged recesses of
his nature, tenderly supporting the
drooping head, and binding up the
broken heart.”
.sp 4
.h3 id=hecubap1
FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES. | <i>A free translation.</i> | BY AUBREY DE VERE.
.sp 2
[<i>The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris.</i>]

STROPHE.

.pm verse-start
My doom was sealed, my lot decided,
  Not now, not now, but long ago,
    When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy,
By that pernicious goddess guided,
  Laid Ida’s stateliest pinewood low,
    And built his ships, and sailed from Troy,
To seek her gift—the richest, rarest—
That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
ANTISTROPHE.

.pm verse-start
A netted deer our country lies:
  One sinned; and all partook his ruin!
    O fatal, fatal was the hour,
Fatal the contest and the prize
  How ill adjudged for my undoing,
    When in green Ida’s mountain bower
That awful Three—my bane—contended:
Even then our golden reign was ended.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
EPODE.

.pm verse-start
And haply some Achaian bride
  Even now, by far Eurotas’ wave,
    Widowed like me, like me is mourning!
Perhaps some mother by her side
  Laments for those she could not save,
    The early lost, and unreturning;
Raising her withered hand to tear
Her last thin locks of whitening hair.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=sunnyp3
SIX SUNNY MONTHS. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. | CHAPTER XIII. | “OUR LADY OF SNOW.”
.sp 2
“To-morrow comes the flower of
the festivals,” the Signora said on
the morning of the 4th of August.
“It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday,
and the loveliest of birthdays,
too—just a sweet little poem.”

“Let us give ourselves up to it
entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and
see if we cannot imagine ourselves
back in the middle of the fourth
century. I really do not like to look
at all these things as an outsider.”

“We must, then, shut the world
out for two days,” the Signora replied.
“I would like it, if you are
agreed. I have found, indeed, that
it is impossible to enter into the
spirit of these beautiful beliefs of
the old time while one is having
much social intercourse with people
about, even goodish people.
It reminds me of seed scattered on
good but shallow ground, which
the fowls come and pick up. You
think, you meditate, you pray, you
begin to find yourself impressed;
glimmers of light steal in, and your
soul is on the point of being enriched;
when in comes some friend,
who means no harm, who has, perhaps,
a faith like a dry branch with
one green leaf at the end, and immediately
all is discord. If you
utter what is in your mind, it is
like pearls before swine; if you listen
in silence, and with sufficient attention
to enable you to answer intelligently,
it is more than likely
that the religious impression you
have received will be much weakened,
if not entirely effaced. One
understands, in such a case, the profound
wisdom of the philosophy
of silence, which even the pagans
knew, and recollects the admonition
of our Lord: “Let your speech
be yea, yea; no, no.”

“Still, I should think,” Bianca
observed dreamily, “that one might
be so settled in that way of feeling
and thinking as to influence others,
instead of being influenced by
them.”

“Very true, you dear little visionary!”
replied the Signora, pinching
the pretty ear so near her, from
which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If
one were a great saint, and never
touched earthly things except with
conspicuous recollection; or a great
egotist, constantly impressing on
everybody that one is a very exceptional
being and cannot possibly
be approached in the ordinary manner;
or some one, like a clergyman
or a nun, who by their very profession
impress those who approach
them with the consciousness of different
and loftier interests. But
we common mortals are overrun
by the many. You have seen the
breakwater of a bridge, have you
not, built of stone, and thrusting a
sharp point up the stream to part
the waters, that they may not rush
against the broad side of the piers
and sweep them away? Well, for
one person to keep a firm stand
against the influence of many, it is
necessary to put forward, and keep
.pn +1
forward, a very hard angle of the
character. However, I will not
preach any more about it, my dear
friends. I will simply say that till the
day after to-morrow we are in retreat.
We will go up now to the
church, and refresh our minds in
relation to the legend, and look at
some of the treasures there, if you
like. Then we can read the whole
over here at our leisure. I have a
kind friend there—my patron with
St. Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated
description of the church,
which he has offered me any time I
may wish for it. I will ask for it
to-day. By this means we shall be
ready to assist intelligently to-morrow
at the <i>festa</i> of Our Lady of
Snow. And, by the way, what a
charmingly fresh thought for the
season is that of snow! I call for
the yeas and nays.”

An unanimous yea was the reply,
and they prepared themselves immediately
to go to the church.

They had, of course, seen already
all its more evident beauties; but
such a temple can be studied for
years without exhausting its attractions,
and there were several of its
more celebrated gems which they
had quite passed over. After having
heard Mass, then, they went
first into the Sistine Chapel to see
the Tamar. This beautiful figure
is painted in one of the pendentives
of the cupola—a space shaped like
an inverted pear. She sits with her
twin boys standing on the seat at
either side of her, their lovely heads
filling the rounded-out space. The
most exquisite charm of the figure
is the transparent veil which floats
about the head and shoulders, and
through which her face, with its
large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly
visible.

From there they visited the grand
<i>loggia</i> to look once more at the mosaic
story of the miraculous snow.
This grand mosaic, made in the
fourteenth century by the order of
two Colonna cardinals, was once on
the open façade of the church; but
Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth
century, building the new façade,
enclosed them in the grand <i>loggia</i>
from which the popes gave benediction,
and of which they form
the lower side. In the centre of
the upper half of the picture the
Saviour sits enthroned, the right
hand giving benediction, the left
holding a book open at the words,
“I am the light of the world.”
At either hand above an angel
swings a censer, at either side below
an angel adores. Four figures—the
Blessed Virgin and saints—stand
at right and left, the symbols
of the four evangelists over their
heads. The lower half, separated
by the large, round window that
lights the eastern end of the church,
has, on the left, two pictures—one
the sleeping Pope Liberius, the
other the sleeping Giovanni—over
both of whom hovers the same vision
of the Madonna directing them
to build her a church where the
snow shall fall the next day. On
the right side is Giovanni telling
his dream to the pope in one picture,
and beside it the pope, in
grand procession, coming to the
hill-top where, from above, the Saviour
and Virgin send down the
snow. So quaint, so full of faith,
so exquisite in meaning, this visible
story is one of the most eloquent
sermons ever preached.

Opposite the mosaic picture, and
seen through the graceful arches of
the portico, was that living picture
of St. John Lateran looking down
the long street, the blue mountains
melting far away, the nearer palm-tree,
and the piazza with its beautiful
column and statue.
.pn +1

“I have a little special treat for
you this morning,” the Signora said
as they went down into the church
again. “It has no special connection
with the Madonna delle Neve,
but it will not disturb your visions
of her. Here, however,” pointing to
an altar near the sacristy door, “is
the story again, and here is buried
that Giovanni Patrizio who was
found buried under, or in front of,
the grand altar.”

It was the chapel of Santa Maria
delle Neve, with a painting over
the altar where the Virgin appears
to Giovanni and his wife, and points
them to a snow-capped hill.

Then they went into the sacristy,
where one of the canons joined
them, and had some precious vestments
brought out for them to see;
among them a cope of stuff such as
one does not find any more, thick,
rich, and dim, and threaded with
gold, with the short fringe of mingled
crimson and gold so thick as
to round up almost like a cord—the
cope given and worn by St.
Pius V. Almost more precious, if
one could choose, was the chasuble
given and worn by St. Charles
Borromeo—long, and with a slight,
graceful point in the back. It had
been proposed, the sacristan told
them, to have this made a model
for chasubles now on account of
its graceful form, but no change had
yet been made.

“This is worn on the <i>festa</i> of San
Carlo, though it is crimson,” he
added, “because it was his. Sometimes
strangers exclaim, when they
see it, that San Carlo was not a martyr.”

They touched reverently the sacred
relics, and kissed the fastenings
that those saintly hands had
touched; then, with a more human
admiration, examined a marvellous
flounce of lace given the church
three hundred years ago by the
Prince Colonna of that time—a web
of such fineness that the spiders
might have woven the thread, and
of such beauty of design that only
an artist could have imagined it.

Before leaving the church they
paused in front of the closed <i>cancella</i>
of the Borghese Chapel to look at
the bas-relief over the altar, wherein
Our Lady of Snow again repeats
her story. All was still in the
church. Choir and High Mass were
over, and only here and there lingered
some <i>custode</i>, or assistant, putting
the finishing touches to the preparations
for the <i>festa</i> which would begin
with first Vespers that afternoon.
The pavements shone newly polished,
the candlesticks were like
gold, the gilt bronze angels that
hold the great painted candles stood
on the marble rail of the confession,
the draperies were all up. In the
chapel itself the benches of the
choir were prepared, the altar glittering
with its most precious ornaments,
the two great hanging lamps
at either side swinging faintly, as if
impatient for the music to begin.
All was peaceful; and a tender
shade and coolness in the air veiled
the glittering richness of the place.

“I cannot tell you how mysterious
that picture seems to me,”
Bianca whispered, pointing to the
square veiled case bordered with
jewels, and supported by gilt angels
in the middle space over the altar.
“The two veils that are to be removed
in order to see it, and then
the depth at which it is set, and the
mere dark outline that is all one
can see inside the golden border—it
all impresses me with a sense of
mystery and awfulness. I wonder
what the face really looks like, and
if any one has seen it.”

“Why, you have seen my engraving
of it, my dear,” the Signora
.pn +1
said; “and I presume that is a
faithful copy, taken when the features
were more distinguishable.
That has a noble, serious look
which impresses me. And no wonder
you look with awe at this. If
it were not painted by St. Luke
even, it is embalmed by memories
not less sacred. Twelve hundred
years ago St. Gregory the Great
carried this very picture in procession
through the city, in a time of
terrible pestilence, and set it on
the altar of St. Peter’s. It was on
the open façade of this church till
Paul V. built this chapel to contain
it. Ampère says that angels
have been heard chanting litanies
about it. It is held by all here
in the most tender veneration. I
have never heard any one describe
it, and do not know who has
seen it near. I have heard somewhere
that only the chapter of the
basilica and the Borghese family
have the privilege of going up to
it. <i>Madonna mia</i>, what a privilege
it would be!” she sighed,
looking up at the closed jasper
gates.

They stayed a little longer, then
started to go home; but as they
were going out a boy came to tell
the Signora that Monsignore M——
begged to speak with her. The
others went on, but she turned
back, well content; for a call from
Monsignore M—— always meant
something pleasant. This prelate
was no less distinguished for position
than for his virtues; and, finding
the Signora a stranger and somewhat
lonely when she first came to
Rome, he had done her many kindnesses—was,
in fact, her Santa
Claus.

“Do you guess what little devotion
I want you to make on the
eve of our <i>festa</i>?” he asked, meeting
her with the confident smile of
one who knows he is going to confer
a great pleasure.

“I know it is something delightful,
<i>Monsignore mio</i>,” she replied,
“but I cannot say just what.”

“Well, I want you to visit the
antique Madonna,” he said.

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

He pointed to the veiled shrine
in the Borghese Chapel, near which
they stood. “Don Francesco will
be here in a moment with a candle,”
he said. “I prepared all,
because I knew you would want to
go. I could not invite a party, you
know; but you belong to the
church and have a special devotion
to our Madonna.”

The Signora could not reply.
Such a swift fulfilment of her wish
moved her too deeply for words.
She kissed the hand of her kind
friend, and looked across the
church to the tabernacle of the
Blessed Sacrament with the almost
spoken thought: “I am going to
see your Mother.” To visit that
sacred shrine was to her as near to
seeing the Mother of God face to
face as one could come on earth,
without a miracle.

Presently appeared the custodian,
bearing a lighted candle and a
bunch of keys; he opened a small
door beside the chapel. They ascended
a narrow, winding stair,
without any light except the one
they carried, and passed a long,
arched corridor where the walls almost
touched their elbows at either
side, and the vault just cleared their
heads above. This corridor was
between the side wall of the chapel
and the wall of the adjoining sacristy.
Another door opened, and
they entered a cross corridor leading
to one of the balconies of the
chapel—one of those beautiful gilded
balconies the Signora had so
.pn +1
many times wished to get into.
She stepped into this now, and
looked down through the chapel,
out into the church, and across
to the Sistine Chapel, the columns,
pictures, and gilded arches of the
basilica set like a picture in the
great arched entrance of the Borghese.

Going on then, Don Francesco
opened a strong, locked door, that
showed another door immediately
within, closing the same wall.
These led into another of those
narrow white corridors running between
the walls of the chapel behind
the altar. Turning then into
a third short corridor leading toward
the chapel, they faced still another
door, over which were painted
the arms and tiara of Pope Paul
V., who built the chapel.

This door unlocked, they found
themselves in a little chamber directly
behind the grand altar, with
the miraculous picture, set in a box
cased in metal, right before them.
It stands a little back from the
screens that cover it in the chapel,
and there is space enough at
either side for a person to slip in
in front and see the picture face to
face. Two iron hooks that barred
the passage were taken down, and
the Signora went in and found herself
in front of this most venerable
image.

The picture is painted on panel,
and, though dim, is still distinct on
so near a view, the rich, soft colors
coming out as one gazes—a long,
oval face full of serious majesty,
with large eyes, and a mantle dropping
over the forehead. But this
mantle is now almost hid; for the
head of the Mother, and of the
Babe that looks up into her face,
and the outline of their shoulders,
are closely filled in with gold and
gems. But for this nothing but a
dark square would be distinguishable
from the chapel. The outline
is so clearly made, however, as to
give a perfect idea, when looked at
from below, of a crowned woman
with a crowned child in her arms.

If, in the presence of the picture,
one can think of jewels, these are
worth looking at. They are the
gems of a cardinal and of a pope—stones
of immense value set in pure
gold. Besides rubies and amethysts,
in the centre of the Virgin’s
crown is a large emerald surrounded
by diamonds, and from the jewelled
chain at her neck hangs a cross
made entirely of large sapphires.

The Signora took the candle in
her hand and held it before those
faces, and the clergymen with her
knelt, one at either side of her.

After a little while they rose, the
Signora kissed the floor before the
picture, and the case that held it,
and they turned away. On leaving
she observed that this little chamber
behind the altar was quite covered
with frescoes. Then came
the low corridors again, and the
narrow stairs; one more peep from
the gilded balcony, and at length
she stepped out into the church
again, bewildered and enchanted.

“I will tell them nothing about
it,” was her conclusion as she went
home. “They might feel hurt at
being left out. It shall be a little
secret of my own.”

They went to first Vespers and
to the High Mass next morning, but
the finest part was the Vespers of
the day, to which they went early,
and were so fortunate as to have
chairs in the chapel near the altar.
The chapter came in in procession
from the basilica, singing as
they came, and the place was soon
crowded.

Nothing was wanting to make
the scene perfect; the magnificent
.pn +1
chapel, the beautiful dress of the
canons, who all wore purple silk
soutanes, with rich lace on those
picturesque little <i>cotte</i> of theirs, and
the music—each was in harmony
with all the rest. Then, as the
music went up, down through the
cupola, glowing with the colors of
Cavaliere d’Arpino, and faintly veiling
the frescoes of Guido Reni,
came the soft and loitering snow of
blossoms, flowery flake by flake.
They were lost one instant against
the white band of Carrara marble—cornice,
capitals, figures, and flowers—under
the arches, then green of
verd-antique, and red of jasper, or
the colored mantle of one of Guido’s
saints threw them into relief again.
Little by little the mosaic of the
pavement grew dim under that exquisite
snow-fall, which seemed, as
it came down, to toss on the music
in mid-air.

The light up in the cupola grew
red with sunset, and the chapel below
began to show softest shades
and pale gold lights from the candles,
and the pageant slowly dissolved
like a bouquet that parts into
flowers, each flower showing more
beautiful separated than when
massed together.

Going out into the basilica, where
it seemed almost evening, so strongly
contrasted were the lights and
shades, the Signora silently pointed
out to her friends the long, red-gold
bar of sunshine that came in at a
window of the tribune and lay the
whole length of the nave, looking so
solid one felt like stepping over
or stooping to go under it, as if it
were an obstacle. It was her very
idea of the bars of the tabernacle
which the Jews bore with them.

“If only the church should be
lifted and borne to Paradise now,
when it is all bathed in flowers and
full of incense and music!”

They lingered yet, unwilling to
go. Monsignore M—— came out
of the sacristy and brought them all
some of the blessed blossom-snow.
People were gathering it up from
the floor of the chapel, and, it having
fallen also in the tribune, little
boys were slyly vaulting over the
railings, snatching it up unseen by
the <i>custodi</i>, and scampering out again.
The lights went out, the <i>cancelle</i>
were closed, and finally our friends
were forced to go home.

They stood a moment outside the
church door before descending
the steps, the two girls expressing
their delight with feminine enthusiasm.
Mr. Vane had but one word:
“There is a certain Protestant
hymn that used to make me feel,
when I was a boy, very loath to go
to heaven,” he said. “But, remembering
it now by the light of
this <i>festa</i>, I think heaven couldn’t
be better described than as a
place——

.pm verse-start
“'Where congregations ne’er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end.’”
.pm verse-end

A few days later they made their
little visit to Genzano, stopping
one day in Albano on the way. It
was the feast of the Holy Saviour,
in which again an antique and
venerated picture had a prominent
part. They reached the town just
in time to see the procession go
from the Duomo bearing the picture
up to the little church of Santissimo
Salvatore on the hill.

“What are those military bands
playing for?” Mr. Vane asked, as
they sat in the loggia of their apartment,
after having rested a half-hour.

“They are playing for the Lord,”
said the Signora.

He stared a little, but, finding
her perfectly serious, said after a
moment: “Well, I don’t know why
.pn +1
they shouldn’t; only I am not used,
you know, to hearing fifes and drums
on any but military and civil occasions.”

“This is a military occasion,” the
Signora replied gravely. “It celebrates
Him who is the God of battles
and the Lord of hosts. It is
a civil occasion, too, in honor of
the King of kings, the Lawgiver
of the universe, the Prince of
peace.”

“You are right!” he said emphatically;
“and I need not ask
now why they are firing cannon.”

They went out just at sunset and
took their places on the steps of
the little church to which the procession
was to come, catching
glimpses of it in the distance as it
appeared in some turn of the ascending
way.

The slope of the street just in
front of them had been swept, and
two men were sprinkling it in a
very primitive fashion. One trundled
along a cart with a little barrel
of water on it, and the other
dipped in a small wooden bucket
and scattered the water from side
to side. He did it very dexterously,
however, showing practice. Nearer
the steps the street was paved
with a mosaic of flowers, and all
the houses by which the procession
was to pass were decorated in some
way, with flowers, pictures, and
lamps to light later, some already
lighted and showing faintly through
the gloaming. All the windows
and little balconies and elevated
door-steps near the church were
filled with women and children,
every face turned toward the winding
street up which a cross was
glittering and a sound of music
coming. A banner came in sight
after the cross, and then a crucifix
with its canopy, and then banner after
banner, and crucifix after crucifix,
showing in air over the wall that
wound with the street. At one
turn were visible the tops of the
tallest heads; then, a little farther
on, the whole heads of men, and
the flowing locks of the boys of the
choirs; and, lastly, they came into
full sight near by, the inferior
persons marching in lines at each
side of the street, leaving hollow
spaces where there was no banner
or crucifix to be carried, the clergy
walking in the centre. As the
picture of the Holy Redeemer came
along, borne on the shoulders of
four men, all the crowd about sank
on their knees. The picture was
carried up the steps and placed on
a table set there to receive it, and
there were prayers and hymns before
dropping the curtain over it
and taking it into the church.

The sun went down and one
large star burned in the west. It
was easy to imagine an angel hand
and wings above, and golden chains
dropping down to a lamp of which
that star was the flame. All the
lamps, many-colored as the rainbow,
were lighted in the windows,
throwing their light, as the twilight
deepened, in a strong splash, here
and there, on a leaning face intent
and praying, on a mantle of vines,
on a bit of carving, a rough stone
balcony, or a stair climbing up into
the dark. One little arched window,
with a vine over it, held a
single beautiful face of a young
woman, and a single lamp that
shone on her black hair and eyes
and perfect features, motionless
there in prayer, till she looked like
a cameo cut in pink carnelian.

The prayers ended, and some one
drew the curtain before the lovely
face of the picture. As he did so
a chorus of exclamations burst from
the kneeling crowd, and several women
burst into tears.
.pn +1

“What do they say?” Mr. Vane
asked in surprise. “What is the
matter?”

“They say, '<i>Grazie, Santissimo
Salvatore!</i>'—Thanks, most holy Saviour,”
she replied.

He smiled faintly and repeated
after them, “<i>Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!</i>”
and it seemed that his eyes
glistened in the candle-light.

“I am glad it touches you,” the
Signora said as they went to their
lodgings. “Some, even Catholics,
think it superstitious; but it is no
more so than it is a superstition for
us to kiss and weep over the pictures
of our friends.”

The next morning they went up
to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin
church, at the head of its long
avenue of overarching trees, loitering
slowly home again when the
Mass was over.

“Now,” said the Signora suddenly,
spying a man with a large basket—“now
I will show you what
figs are. You have not known before.”

She beckoned the man and asked
how many he would sell for a
<i>soldo</i>. He replied, “Twelve.”

“You may give me eight dozen,”
she said. “Each of you dear people
are to have two dozen and to
carry them yourselves. Out with
your handkerchiefs! That is the
fashion. Don’t be scrupulous.”

“They don’t look as if I should
wish to eat two dozen,” Bianca remarked
doubtfully. “They look
to me like little bits of green apples.”

“Please to defer your judgment,”
remarked her friend; “and what you
do not wish to eat I will take.”

When they had reached home
and were seated at the breakfast-table,
the Signora took one of the
little figs, with some ceremony and
much anticipated triumph, and, lacking
a fruit-knife, peeled its green
skin off with the handle of a tea-spoon.
All their eyes were watching
the process; and when it was
ended, and she pushed out the little
teaspoonful of delicious fruit for
Mr. Vane to have the first, the
others were convinced by only seeing.
It was a rich, deep red, of
the consistency of solid old preserved
strawberries, but with the
fig flavor.

After breakfast was over they
went out to visit the gardens of the
Cesarini palace, for which they had
a permit. These are laid out and
kept by a Swiss gardener, and are a
wilderness of flowers and trees and
fountains on the level and down
the hill-side. After wandering about
the upper part for a while they descended
a slowly-winding path, bordered
by hydrangeas in full flower,
that stood shoulder-high and dropped
their great balls of amethyst
bloom toward the earth, and came
out into a little terrace where the
trees and shrubs left an open front.
A long bench at the back, and a
richly-carved antique capital of a
column near the wild-vine parapet,
gave them seats, and before them
was the whole verdant amphitheatre,
with Lake Nemi at the bottom,
and the town of Nemi half up the
opposite bank, like a little white
flower painted half way up the inside
of a green cup. And down
from the flower, like its white stem,
dropped a white stream, cascade
after cascade, to the lake, its motion
petrified in the distance.

Tall white cloud-shapes marched
round the hill-tops and looked over—shining
shapes that seemed to hold
Olympian deities within their folds,
“impenetrable to every ray but that
of fancy.” The amphitheatre sloped
steeply in a green cone rich with
orchards and vineyards, and pressed
.pn +1
in a waving line around the water.
Opposite the little terrace in
which they sat, as in a box at the
opera, the shore made a green heart
in the water, and from behind one
curve of it a boat, tiny in the distance
as a black swan, slipped out
and moved across the view. The
lake lay like an emerald half-fused,
its shaded greens touched in places
with a soft purple bloom or a silvery
lustre, and catching now and
then a melting image of some cloud-cap
higher than the rest. There
was a sound of mellow thunder
from some direction—Jupiter Tonans
driving through those driving
clouds.

They sat there silently drinking
in the beauty of the scene, speaking
only a word or two now and
then, waiting till it should be noon
and they should hear the Angelus
from Nemi. When it came, a dream
of a sound, touching with the outermost
wave of its song the party
of strangers across the lake, they
stood up and said the prayers together.
Then, bidding adieu to
Nemi and its lake and the beautiful
garden, they went slowly away.

That afternoon they went back
to Albano, and the next evening
returned to Rome. They had only
one other excursion to make—that
to Monte Cassino. Certain affairs
were calling Mr. Vane to America,
either for a longer or shorter stay,
to go with only his daughters, or to
have a nearer companion yet, and
the end of their visit was approaching.
It would soon be September,
and in October they must start.
Besides, it was found that, subject
to her father’s approval, Bianca
had promised to marry early in
the spring, and some preparations
must be made for the wedding.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=topiusix
TO POPE PIUS IX. | A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.
.sp 2
I.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
To-day the scattered peoples of the earth—
  Haply the monarchs may not all forget—
  Pay unto thee, great Pope, their willing debt
Of love sincere—blest debt of heavenly birth!
We kneel afar, a people of to-day,
  Whose life but doubles in its hundred years
  Thy long episcopate of many tears;
But none the less we love, nor ceaseless pray
That He who leadeth Joseph like a sheep
  May bless thee with fair length of glorious days,
  May give thee yet triumphant voice to raise
When men, with happy tears, shall vigil keep
Of that great feast when Christian Rome no more
In chains shall stand a world’s awed gaze before.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
II.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Eudoxia’s church—where Michael Angelo
  Hath Moses wrought in terrible array—
  With faith’s most loving rites keeps holiday
In holy thought of those long years ago
When, 'neath its roof, the throng devout drew near
  To see thee made a shepherd of the sheep,
  Thy crook receive, that thou shouldst bravely keep,
Thy flock e’er leading by the waters clear.
“St. Peter of the Chains”—prophetic name!
  Beneath this title was thy charge begun;
  As Peter’s self thy hands his chains have won,
With these, his years. When shall God’s angel claim
Thy liberty, the prison gates fling wide?
Christ in his vicar no more crucified!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
III.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
O happy senses of the Virgin Blessed
  Standing the cross of Calvary beneath—
  So winning martyrdom without its death—
Queen of all martyrs evermore confessed!
.pn +1
O happy Pontiff! wear’st thou not to-day
  Beneath the triple crown one wrought of thorn?
  So crowned for love thou hast unfailing borne
To thy pure spouse the faithless would betray?
Art thou not martyr, too, by that deep woe
  Thou sharest with our Queen Immaculate?
  About thee rise the cries of blinded hate,
Thou seest afresh the wounds of Jesus flow;
His cross thy palm, his words sublime thine too—
“Father, forgive; they know not what they do.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
IV.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
As said Lacordaire, of the rosary,
  That love must ever its own speech repeat
  That, ever murmured, groweth e’er more sweet,
So, seeking long some gift to bring to thee
On this high day that keeps thy years of gold—
  Some thought that shall heart’s dearest service prove—
  Find I but one e’er-echoing word of love
That doth all else I seek most fair enfold.
Too great thy deeds for my poor verse to tell
  That need the Tuscan’s speech of Paradise;
  Even to think them, tears are in my eyes
And sorrow stifles the <i>Te Deum’s</i> swell—
Tears for so dear a feast seem gift unkind,
But love in every falling bead is shrined.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
V.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
As, when our Lord doth rest in solemn state
  On altar for his worship set apart,
  And from the fulness of each faithful heart
The fairest flowers to him are consecrate—
Pure lilies, that with fragrant breath pour forth
  The speechless worship human love must give;
  Red roses, in whose flush love seems to live—
As, 'mid this wealth, some gift of little worth,
Some penance-hued, frail-blooming violet,
  Is brought by humble soul with love as great
  As lies within the lilies’ lordlier state—
Each cancelling so little of love’s debt—
So I, my father, 'mid thy lilies place
My rue, thy blessing shall make herb-of-grace.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=judaism
THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.
.sp 2
Judaism, in its purity, is not a
false religion. It was revealed and
established by God, and nothing
which comes from him can be untrue.
Judaism, as it now exists
here and in Europe and Asia, is, on
the one hand, overladen and almost
smothered by the inventions and
additions of men, until the original
deposit of the truth is with difficulty
discerned; on the other hand, it
is refined and explained away until
it has become little better than a
system of worldly morals. To-day,
in Europe, Jews, and the descendants
of Jews who have lost their
ancestral faith without becoming
Christians, are powerful in the cabinets
of kings, in parliaments, in
the money exchanges, and in the
world of journalism. In America,
while they have as yet, perhaps
with a single exception, taken no
leading part in the political affairs
of the country, they have become
a power in finance, and are beginning
in a quiet way to influence,
and to some extent to control,
journalism. The ability of the
race is unquestionable, and their
virtues, as a race, are many. They
are prudent and thrifty; they are
charitable to each other, and their
charities are not always confined to
their own people; they are seldom
guilty of crime, although when a
Jew does become a criminal his
offences are apt to leave little to be
desired in the matter of completeness,
audacity, and cruelty; they
are excellent parents, and the domestic
virtues among them are cultivated
to a high degree; their
women are for the most part chaste;
their men are seldom cruel creditors,
even when their defaulting
debtors are Gentiles. They have
their faults and objectionable peculiarities;
among certain classes of
them these imperfections are especially
noticeable; but, as we shall
show, the rising generation of Jews
in America will probably become
tolerably well Americanized, and
will, to some extent at least, cease
to be an unpleasantly peculiar
people.

To Catholics the study of the
changes which have taken place
and are now occurring among the
Jews should be invested with peculiar
interest. We cannot forget
that the Holy Scriptures of the
Jews are a portion of our Holy
Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady
was a Jewess, and that our Divine
Lord willed to be born a Jew according
to the flesh; that he made
himself subject to the ceremonies
and rites of the Jewish law, which
was then the divine law, and consequently
his own law; that the
first drops of his precious blood
were shed in the Jewish rite of
circumcision; that his chosen apostles,
and among them the first pope,
were all Jews; that the Catholic
Church at its first organization was
wholly composed of Jews; and that
the first Christian martyr was a
Jew.

When Jesus Christ had finished
his work on earth and had ascended
into heaven, the Jewish law was
fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained
in full force and effect,
.pn +1
subject only to such modifications
as God himself, speaking through
the infallible mouth of the church
which he had established, should
ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice,
and outward observances. The
code of laws given by God to Moses
on Mount Sinai, and engraved
by the divine hand upon tables
of stone, is as binding to-day upon
all of us as it was binding upon the
Jews on the day when Moses came
down from the mount bearing the
sacred tablets in his hands. The
devout Jew who to-day, with reverently
covered head and contrite
heart, stands in his synagogue and
listens to the reading of the law,
hears the same words that Jesus of
Nazareth read when, as was his
custom, “he went into the synagogue
and stood up for to read.”
True, hearing, he does not hear the
full meaning of the divine words;
seeing, he does not see how they
have been fulfilled; his understanding
has not been opened to know
that the Messias for whom he still
yearns was the Jesus whom his ancestors
crucified on Calvary, and
that, on the altar of the church
which, perhaps, stands next door
to his synagogue, this same Jesus,
risen, glorified, and descended again
from heaven, stands ready to receive
and bless him.

But the Jew, ignorant of this and
still clinging fast to the faith of his
fathers, has an infinite advantage
over all the other non-Catholics in
the world. His religion, as we
have said, was revealed by God, and
therefore is not false in its essence,
however much it may be overlaid
and hidden by the innumerable superstitions
and additions with which
successive generations of rabbis
and doctors have encumbered it.
It is not a revolt against the Catholic
faith nor a contradiction of it;
for not only did it exist before the
Catholic Church was established,
but it was revealed by God, and
he cannot contradict himself. The
Jew errs only because he cannot
or will not see that the Catholic
Church is the lineal heir and rightful
possessor of the church of which
Adam was the first, and Caiphas
the last, high-priest; and as for his
sin in this hardness of heart and
blindness of eye, God will judge
him. Outside of this, and outside
of the human additions which have
been made to his creed, he believes
what God spake unto Abraham,
Moses, and the prophets, and his religion
is entitled to respect because
it is of divine origin. But the origin
of all the other non-Catholic religions
in the world is human or diabolical.
They are revolts against the
authority and teaching of the church
which Jesus Christ established in
the world; to the earthly and visible
head of which he gave the keys
of the kingdom of heaven; to the
words of which he enjoined all
men to render obedience; on
which he has bestowed the inestimable
grace of perfect unity; and
which the Holy Spirit keeps ever
in the truth. The Jew can say
with truth, “God founded my
church”; but the Protestant can
only say, “Martin Luther, or King
Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth,
or John Knox, or John Wesley, or
Alexander Campbell, or Jo Smith,
or the devil founded <i>my</i> church.”

Judaism, however, although divine
in its origin, ceased to possess
the divine sanction from the moment
when our Lord had completed
his work on earth and ascended
into heaven, and the Holy Ghost
descended to preside over the organization
of the church from
.pn +1
which he has never since departed.
The Jewish religion, thus deprived
for ever of the divine sanction,
was at once deprived of its
divine authority and became a
merely human organization, subject,
like all other human things,
to corruption, change, decay, and
disintegration. These processes
have been going on within it for
eighteen hundred years, and they
have now reached a most advanced
stage.

Prior to the crucifixion and ascension
of our Lord the essential
unity in faith of the Jewish people
had been preserved. The lawyers,
the doctors, and the Pharisees had
added much to the law of Moses in
the way of laying heavy burdens on
the people; they took tithes of annise
and cummin; they made broad
the edges of their phylacteries, and
they were famous for making long
extempore prayers, in which latter
respect they resembled too closely
some of our esteemed Protestant
brethren. But the essential and
divinely-given articles of the Jewish
faith remained unimpaired, and
in these essentials the unity of the
people was complete. The process
of change and disintegration commenced
immediately after the establishment
of the Christian Church
and what may be called the formal
transfer to her of the guiding and
enlightening influence of the Holy
Spirit. But for many centuries
this process was slow and its progress
excited little or no attention.
The Jews, until a very recent period
in their history, were a persecuted
people; and persecution
tends to make men cling closer to
that which is the cause of the
persecution. There were times in
the history of the Jews when their
only city of refuge was Rome;
when the popes, alone of all the
sovereigns of the earth, stretched
forth over them a protecting arm
and permitted them to dwell in
peace and security. Within the
last century, or less, all this has
been changed: nowhere in all
Europe now, save in Bulgaria and
one or two other provinces, are the
Jews persecuted; they have obtained
equal political and social rights;
they are cabinet ministers, premiers,
members of parliament, eminent
journalists, and autocratic bankers.
With this prosperity have come
the marked evidences of that disintegration
in matters of faith to
which allusion has been made.
And here in America, where the
Jews have been always free, these
changes have now become more
signal and wide-spread than in any
other country.

To show how this has come
about, it will be necessary, in the
first place, to explain briefly the
nature of the additions which have
been made by the Jewish doctors
to the divine law; the effect of
these human edicts and precepts
upon the minds of those Jews who
retain their faith; and their contrary
effect, upon other minds, in
promoting and disseminating the
spirit of infidelity which is now so
widely prevalent among the Hebrews.
The strictly “orthodox”
Jew to-day is more burdened than
were ever any of his ancestors by
practically endless rules, observances,
rites, and ceremonies, while his
“reformed” or “ultra-reformed”
brother has not only shaken himself
free from all, or nearly all, of
these human inventions, but has
emancipated himself also from the
letter and spirit of the law of Moses
and from the bonds of the faith.

The books of the Jewish law as
.pn +1
they now exist are the Old Testament,
as we call it; the “Mishna,”
or Second Law; and the “Gemara,”
or supplement to the “Mishna.”
These two latter books, taken
together, form the “Talmud.” But
the “Mishna” is the explanation
of the Old Testament; the “Gemara”
is the explanation of the
“Mishna”; and there remains behind
or above all these the mystical
and mysterious “Cabala,”
which contains within itself the
sum and essence of all human wisdom,
and of such portions of divine
wisdom as men are permitted to
know. The “Cabala,” properly
speaking, is not a book, and has
never been wholly committed to
writing. The “Cabala”—and the
meaning of the word is the “tradition”—is
a divine, sublime, secret,
and infinite science, treating
of the creation of the universe, of
the esoteric meaning and significance
of the Mosaic laws, and of
the secrets of God. No trace of
its origin is to be found. Moses,
David, Solomon, and the prophets
are said to have been masters of
it. It was taught to successive
generations, but with the utmost
secrecy and only to a select few,
who were deemed worthy to receive
this priceless knowledge.
Those portions of it which are
written are brief, obscure, and full
of abbreviations and initials, to be
understood only by the initiated.
They resemble the manuals of Freemasonry—pregnant
with meaning
to the members of the craft, but
unintelligible to all who have not
the key of the cipher. He who is
a perfect master of the “Cabala”
is so wise and potent that he not
only can work wonders, but may
exercise almost creative powers.
Nay, even an imperfect and surreptitiously-obtained
knowledge of
its mysteries enables one to perform
miracles. He who can place
certain letters in a certain way, and
pronounce them in a certain manner,
may suspend the operation of
the laws of nature and command
the angels of God to do his will.
The Cabalists, however, claim that
seldom, if ever, has their divine
science been used by unworthy
men or prostituted to selfish purposes.
The penalty for such a sin
is eternal death; it is written in
one of their books that “he who
abuses the crown perisheth,” and
this is understood to refer to those
who possess themselves of this
knowledge and then use it for selfish
purposes. The true Cabalists
study their science not for gain, but
for the sake of obtaining profound
knowledge. They apply their rules
to the letters and words of the
Mosaic law, and ascertain thereby
its hidden significance, drawing
from every word or sentence an
esoteric meaning, often full of sublime
intelligence, and as often pregnant
only with absurdity.

Emanuel Swedenborg seems to
have been an unfledged Cabalist;
it is probable that he became in
some manner acquainted with a few
of the outward formulas of the Cabala,
and that he based on these
his wearisome treatises upon the
secret meaning of the Scriptures.
Certain it is that nothing which
Swedenborg imagined is not to
be found in the Cabala. Fortunately,
a knowledge of the Cabala
is not necessary for salvation; on
the contrary, knowledge of it is a
special perfection which every one
is not able to attain, and for the
want of which no one is to be
blamed.

The “Mishna” contains the oral
.pn +1
or traditional laws transmitted from
Moses, through a line of which the
personality of every member is
known, to the Rabbi Jochanan, who
lived at Jerusalem at the time of
the destruction of the second Temple.
It was compiled by Rabbi
Jehuda Hanasi in the latter half
of the second century. The “Gemara,”
or supplement to the “Mishna,”
is a wonderful book, containing
thirty-six treatises upon history,
biography, astronomy, medicine, and
ethics, interspersed with legends,
aphorisms, parables, sermons, and
rules of practical wisdom. The
oral or traditional laws in the
“Mishna” are claimed to be of
divine authority; and the passages
in both these books which seem to
be absurd in the letter have a secret
meaning understood best, if
not exclusively, by the Cabalists.
The morality taught in these writings
is not to be despised. For
example, it is laid down that men
should not use flattery or deceit in
business affairs; they should not be
boisterous in their mirth nor permit
themselves to sink into abject
melancholy, but should be reasonably
and gratefully cheerful; they
should be neither greedy of gain, nor
slothful in business, nor over-righteous
in fasting and penance; all
that they do they should do for the
glory of God; they should love
every Israelite as themselves, and
they should be kind and charitable
to the stranger; they must abstain
from inward and silent hate, and if
aggrieved by a neighbor they should
make it known to him, affectionately
asking him to redress the wrong;
they should be especially solicitous
to comfort, aid, and protect the
widow and the orphan, not merely
if these be poor, but because they
have suffered and their hearts are
laden with grief. There are three
mortal sins—idolatry, fornication,
and bloodshed; but calumny is
equal to all three. Every one who
professes the true faith must believe
that there is a Being whose
existence is inherent, absolute, and
unconditional within himself; who
has no cause or origin, and like
whom there is no other; who is the
first producer of all things; in whom
all creatures find the support of
their existence, while he derives
no support from them; and that
“this Being is by men called God—blessed
be he!” There are six
fundamental principles of the faith—the
creation of all things by God
out of nothing; the pre-eminence of
Moses as a prophet and lawgiver—a
pre-eminence so great that there
never has been and never can be
another equal to him; the unalterableness
of the law which he gave;
the dogma that the proper observance
of any one of the commandments
of the law will lead to perfection;
the resurrection of the
dead; and the coming of the Messias.
But upon this excellent
foundation has been built up that
structure of ceremony, ritual, observance,
and false and narrow
philosophy which has become unbearable
to so many of the Jews in
this country and in Europe, and
from the yoke of which too many
have escaped by throwing aside all
faith, while others have contented
themselves with taking refuge in
the half-way houses of “reform.”

It is difficult to estimate with accuracy
the number of Jews in the
United States. But the census of
1870 affords us some valuable data
upon which a calculation may be
based. In 1850 there were 36
Jewish synagogues in the United
States, with sittings for 18,371 persons,
.pn +1
and having a value of $418,600.
In 1860 there were 77 synagogues,
with sittings for 34,412 persons
and a value of $1,135,300.
In 1870 no less than 189 Jewish
“organizations” were reported;
there were 152 synagogues, seating
73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234.
Now in the city of New
York there are 26 synagogues, and
the Jewish population of the metropolis
is not less than 75,000.
This would give an average of
some three thousand souls to each
synagogue; and if we took this
average as a basis of calculation,
we should have a Jewish population
in the whole of the United
States amounting to 456,000 souls.
But we have reason to believe that
this is much less than the actual
number. We have received from
two high authorities estimates of
the Jewish population in the republic;
both are avowedly only estimates,
but they have been made
with care. One of them places the
number of Jews in the United
States at “one in thirty of the
whole population,” which would
give a total of 1,600,000 souls; the
other reports the number to be
“almost exactly 1,000,000 souls.”

According to the census of 1870,
there were no Jewish synagogues
or other Hebrew organizations in
Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida,
Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi,
Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory,
or Wyoming. But, in point
of fact, there are many Jews in all,
or nearly all, these States and Territories.
The following table will
show the number of Jewish organizations
in the United States, the
number of their synagogues, with
their sittings and their value, according
to the census of 1870:

.ta l:19 rb:15 rb:13 rb:10 rb:10
<th>    |Organizations.|Synagogues.|Sittings.|  Value.
Alabama            |   2          |   2       |   1,650 |   $30,000
Arkansas           |   1          |   1       |     300 |     6,500
California         |   7          |   7       |   3,600 |   314,600
Colorado           |   1          |  —        |    —    |    —
Connecticut        |   5          |   3       |   1,850 |   105,000
Dist. of Columbia  |   2          |   1       |     800 |    18,000
Georgia            |   6          |   5       |   1,400 |    52,700
Illinois           |  10          |   9       |   3,950 |   271,500
Indiana            |   5          |   4       |   1,900 |   113,000
Iowa               |   5          |   1       |     150 |     1,900
Kansas             |   2          |   1       |     300 |     1,500
Kentucky           |   3          |   3       |   1,500 |   134,000
Louisiana          |   5          |   5       |   2,200 |    75,000
Maine              |  23          |  23       |   7,315 |    36,400
Maryland           |   5          |   4       |   2,750 |   650,000
Massachusetts      |   5          |   2       |   1,500 |    33,000
Michigan           |   5          |   3       |   1,300 |    51,000
Missouri           |   4          |   4       |   2,100 |   217,100
New Jersey         |   1          |   1       |     300 |     8,000
New York           |  47          |  33       |  21,400 | 1,831,950
North Carolina     |   1          |   1       |     200 |       500
Ohio               |   7          |   7       |   4,000 |   360,584
Pennsylvania       |  15          |  14       |   7,750 |   681,000
Rhode Island       |   1          |  —       |    —   |    —
South Carolina     |   3          |   3       |     900 |    91,200
Tennessee          |   4          |   4       |   1,100 |    21,000
Texas              |   1          |   1       |     400 |     6,000
Vermont            |   8          |   7       |   1,890 |    35,300
West Virginia      |   1          |  —       |    —   |    —
Wisconsin          |   4          |   3       |     750 |     8,500
                   |              |           |         |
    Totals         | 189          | 152       |  73,265 |$5,155,234
.ta-

A careful examination of this
table discloses some remarkable
contrasts which are not without
their significance. While the synagogues
in North Carolina, Iowa,
Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other
States are small and cheap structures,
costing only from $500 to
$2,800 or $3,000 each, those in
Georgia have cost, or are valued
at, an average of $10,500; in Alabama
and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois,
$30,000; in Connecticut, $35,000;
in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania,
$49,000; in Ohio, $51,500;
in Missouri, $54,000; in New York,
$60,000; and in Maryland, $162,000.
These instances exemplify to some
extent the comparative wealth and
religious zeal of the children of
Israel in the different States named,
and many of our readers, we suppose,
will learn with surprise that
there are far more Jews in Maine
than in all the other New England
States put together; and that the
.pn +1
Jews of Maryland are apparently
very much more wealthy and zealous
than their co-religionists in
any other part of the republic. But
we must now trace the history of
the settlement and progress of the
Jews in this country, and set forth
the outer as well as inner causes
which have tended to work changes
in them: to Americanize them to a
great extent; to remove or soften
the prejudices formerly cherished
against them; and to weaken, modify,
or destroy, in a degree which
cannot yet be accurately determined,
their own religious faith.

Jewish emigration to this country
began at a very early period in
its history, but only within the last
thirty years has this emigration assumed
perceptible dimensions. The
Jews who came to the United States
prior to 1848 were for the most
part members of a low class; they
were chiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese,
or Spanish birth; they
were either poor or pretended to
be poor; they were peddlers, dealers
in old clothes, pawnbrokers,
money-changers in a small way, and
petty merchants. From all social
intercourse with the rest of the
community they were cut off; they
did not seek that which probably
would have been denied them had
they asked for it; the traditional
prejudice against the Jews which
exists so generally among the Gentiles
was not diminished by the appearance,
the actions, and the general
reputation of these children of
Israel. They were supposed to be
exclusively devoted to trade and to
money-making, and to be quite devoid
of any scruples as to the means
by which they might get the better
of the person to whom they sold or
of whom they bought. A Hebrew
writer of some note many years ago
remarked that the Jews, as a race of
people, were more widely and generally
known and less generally appreciated
than any other class upon the
earth; that the peculiarities which
have marked them as objects of dislike
were by no means original in
their character, but were the fruits
of centuries of oppression and degradation;
and that they needed only
a few years of existence in a free
country, where equal rights would
be accorded to them, and where
they might in peace and security
manifest the virtues which were in
them, in order to win for themselves
not only the toleration but
the active esteem and respect of
their fellow-citizens. The truth of
this remark has been amply substantiated
by what has occurred in
England, France, Germany, and
other portions of Europe; while in
this country the Jews have succeeded
in Americanizing themselves to
a very great extent, and in obliterating
in a marked degree the peculiarities
which formerly served to
point them out as a wholly separate
and foreign people. That this process
has been accompanied by the
partial loss of their religious faith
is unquestionably true, but it is not
clear whether they have become
Americanized because they have to
this extent lost their faith, or whether
they have lost their faith because
they have become Americanized.

The Jews in America at the present
moment are divided into five
classes—the “Radical Orthodox,”
the “Orthodox,” the “Conservative
Reformed,” the “Reformed,”
and the “Radical Reformed.”
There is a wide gulf between the
first and the last of these classes;
but the shades of difference between
a Radical Orthodox Jew and
an Orthodox Jew, or between a
Conservative Reformed Jew and a
Reformed Jew, are somewhat difficult
.pn +1
to define. The Radical Orthodox
Jews are few in number,
and are said by their co-religionists
to be daily growing less. They
are chiefly of Polish, Austrian, or
Hungarian birth; they for the most
part are in humble and obscure
walks of life; they form no associations
with Gentiles; they accept as
the rule of their life the Mosaic law
interpreted by the “Talmud” and
the “Cabala”; they do not welcome
Gentiles, or even Jews of later views,
to their synagogues. We believe
there is but one synagogue in New
York belonging to this school of
Jews, and in which one may witness
Jewish worship as it was performed
a thousand years ago. The
children of the Radical Orthodox
Jews—especially the male children—do
not adhere closely to the faith
and ritual of their fathers; and
some of the fathers themselves, as
they become rich in this world’s
goods, manifest a disposition to
affiliate themselves with one or
other of the less rigorous sects.
Some of them are content to join
the ranks of the Orthodox Jews,
who hold most firmly to all matters
of dogma, and to all the essential
rules of life laid down by the law
of Moses, but who at the same time
dispense themselves from the strict
observance of a certain number of
the more onerous observances and
regulations enjoined by the rabbinical
writers.

The line of demarcation between
the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative
Reformed Jews is vague
and undetermined; but the Reformed
Jews are very much advanced.
They hold themselves bound
no longer to obey the ceremonial
and dietary laws laid down by
Moses and his successors, and
their faith in the predictions of the
prophets has almost wholly faded
away. The higher class of the Hebrew
community for the most part
belong to the Reformed sect; but
these congregations are also largely
composed of the well-to-do middle-class
Jews. Nearly all of the Jews
of American birth are found in the
ranks of this sect or in the one of
which we have yet to speak; and
very many of the German and
English Jews resident here are
also members of the Reformed synagogues.
They openly avow their
desire and ambition to become
thoroughly Americanized, and to
cease in all respects to be regarded
as an alien and foreign people.
They still retain their belief in
God, but this belief is in too many
cases vague and ill-defined. The
expectation of the coming of the
Messias in any literal sense has,
with rare exceptions, ceased to be
entertained among them. They
will not confess that the prophecies
of his coming were fulfilled in
Jesus Christ, and their philosophy
has led them to the conclusion that
these prophecies do not now remain
to be fulfilled, save in a metaphorical
sense. The Messias is indeed
to come—but not as an individual.
Humanity as a race, elevated, happy,
prosperous, blessed with long
life, health, and earthly comfort, is
the Messias; the prophets saw him
and were glad, but it was reserved
for the children of this generation
to discover what was the hidden
and real meaning of their predictions
concerning him.

A learned Jewish scholar has
thus expressed this phase of Jewish
thought: “The majority of intelligent
Israelites have long since abandoned
the wish of building up an
independent national existence of
their own. The achievement of
higher conditions of human life
they are disposed to regard as the
.pn +1
fulfilment of Messianic prophecy,
and the furthering of this end, in
intimate union with their fellow-men,
as the highest dictate of their
religion.” These are weighty
words; and there is abundant reason
to believe that they truthfully
represent the dominant tone of
thought among the American Jews.
The latest sect among them—the
Radical Reformed Jews—go to the
root of the matter and have the
full courage of their opinions. They
have the goodness to admit that
there is, or may be, a God, but
they deny that he has ever revealed
himself to man save by the law of
nature, and that God is himself nature.
In other words, these Jews
have become Pantheists. Benedict
de Spinoza was excommunicated
and denounced by the forefathers
of those who now revere and extol
him. The most eloquent and gifted,
if not the most learned, of the
Jewish rabbis in America has become
the leader of this sect, and
has left the magnificent synagogue
which was built for him, only to
draw after him into new paths a
large proportion of his former congregation.
They are extremely
wise in their own conceit; they
prate of the necessity of doubting
all things; they deride the rites
and practices of external religion;
they say they worship God, but inasmuch
as God, as they insist, is
only nature, and nature is part of
themselves, in worshipping God
they worship themselves. We are
told that many of those Jews who
still maintain their connection with
the Conservative Reformed or Reformed
congregations are by conviction
in full sympathy with the
Radical Reformers. The laity are
far in advance of the rabbis of
each sect. The rabbis are for the
most part men of foreign birth and
foreign education; there are, we
believe, not a dozen rabbis of American
birth in the whole Union.
The almost universal tendency of
thought and practice among the
younger Jews is in the direction of
that phase of infidelity of which we
have spoken; and the elder members
of the race take little care to
counteract in any effectual manner
this apostasy. The education of
Jewish children in this country is
left pretty much to take care of
itself. There are few, if any, Jewish
schools, and none at all of a
high character. The Jewish children
for the most part attend the
public schools, where they either
are taught no religion at all or
listen to such vague and disjointed
utterances concerning the truths of
Christianity as the caprice or the
prejudices of the teacher may lead
him to pronounce. In some instances
the children of well-to-do
Hebrews among us are sent to receive
their education in Unitarian
academies; in others the sons of
wealthy American Jews are educated
in the German universities, from
whence they return full-blown infidels.
Intermarriages between Jews
and nominal Christians are not rare;
and the children of these unions
are, as a rule, educated in the religion
of the mother—if she happens
to possess any.

We have said that the Jewish
laity is in advance of the rabbis in
the matter of what is called “reform,”
but which is too generally
nothing but destruction. The position
of the rabbis is a peculiar
one. They are not priests, for they
no longer offer sacrifice. They
are not even the sons of priests;
the hereditary character of their
office has long since been lost;
they are rabbis, or, in other phrase,
teachers, not by hereditary descent
.pn +1
nor by divine selection or consecration,
but merely by their own
choice and the good-will of their
neighbors or friends. The last
high-priest of the Jewish Church
who had any divine sanction for
the title which he bore was Caiphas,
and his office was taken away
from him, in the sight of God and
in truth, on the day of Pentecost,
when the Holy Ghost descended to
dwell until the end of time with
the Christian Church. Since that
day there have been no priests of
God upon the earth, save the priests
of the Catholic Church; and consequently
since that day there have
been no true Jewish priests. The
altars of the Jews have crumbled
away; their sacrifices have ceased;
the sons of the tribes of Aaron and
Levi have abandoned even the
pretence of belonging to a priestly
order. In the place of the priests
have come the rabbis, who are mere
ministers or teachers. They are to
the Jews what the Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, and other Protestant
ministers are to the respective
Protestant sects. They are a
little less than some of the Protestant
ministers claim to be; for some
of these do set up in an uncertain
way a vague and altogether fallacious
pretence to the possession of
“orders” and to having been empowered
to perform priestly functions.
The rabbis make no such
pretence, and their position, such
as it is, is confessedly invested with
only purely human sanction. They
are teachers, but do not claim that
they have a divine authority to
teach. They are subject to the
will and caprice of the congregation
to which they are attached;
they are like school-teachers, whose
tenure of office depends upon the
pleasure of the school commissioners.
Some of them have sought to
put themselves at the head of the
reform movement, and have succeeded,
but only on the condition
that they should keep pace with
the advance of the laity. The younger
German rabbis have been most
prominent in this respect. They
have effected an organization among
themselves, as well here as in Germany,
and have managed to act
together with something approaching
to unanimity. Destitute, however,
of any rule of faith and practice
higher than their own will and
whim, and having no central or supreme
authority to which they can
appeal, they lack the essential bond
of unity, and some of them are constantly
wandering off in one direction
or the other. They began their
work of reform by modernizing the
ritual of the synagogue, and eliminating
from it, little by little, those
portions of it which, directly or indirectly,
assert the dogmas that are
inconveniently opposed to the new
ideas whereof they are enamored.
Among the regular prayers of the
synagogue, for instance, were supplications
for the bringing back of
the chosen people to the land of
their fathers, the restoration of the
throne of David, and the coming
of the Messias. The new philosophy,
as we have shown, teaches
that the Messias is not to come in
any literal sense; that inasmuch as
modern progress is best subserved
by democratic or republican institutions,
the establishment of a monarchy
of any kind is not to be desired
or prayed for; and that the
return of the Jews as a nation to
Palestine is not to be wished, even
if it were feasible.

It became advisable, therefore, to
reconcile theory with practice, and
to cease pretending to pray for that
which was either impossible or undesirable.
If it were absurd to believe
.pn +1
any longer that the Messias
was to come as a personal king
and redeemer, to lead back his people
to the Promised Land, and to
elevate them as the rulers and
princes of the earth, then it was
something worse than absurd to
continue the repetition of the prayers
imploring the hastening of his
coming. If the Books of the Law
and of the Prophets are not the
veritable word of God; if they contain
merely ingenious and beautiful
myths, symbolical poetry, and a
code of moral and dietary rules
which, in some respects at least,
are no longer either necessary or
advisable to be obeyed, it is dishonest
to pretend to regard these
writings with devout reverence, and
to insist upon any one governing
himself by them. By this course
of reasoning the German rabbis,
often pushed further than they
cared to go by the laity who were
behind them, sapped the foundations
of faith among the common
people of the Jews, and prepared
them for the downward path which
so many of them are now treading.

Having thus reviewed the present
state of Judaism in America,
we may ask ourselves what is likely
to be the future of what was once
the church of God, but has now
fallen to the level of a mere sect.
It is clear that the Jews, here as
in the Old World, and more rapidly
here than in the Old World, are
losing the faith of their fathers.
Judaism, divine in its origin, but
no longer invested with the divine
sanction nor inspired or guided by
the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the
same process of disintegration and
decay which the Protestant sects
are suffering. Judaism, now wholly
human, like Protestantism, is leading
its adherents to infidelity. Every
day, as Protestants see this, the
devout and pious among them turn
to the one church which Jesus
Christ established in the world, and
in her bosom find refuge, peace,
and salvation. The number of
conversions from Protestantism to
the holy Roman Catholic Church,
here and in Great Britain, is continually
on the increase. But nothing
is more rare than the conversion
of a Jew. They are rapidly
parting with their own faith, but
very seldom do they embrace any
form of Christianity in its stead.
In a few years the great majority
of Jews in the United States will
probably have ceased to be Jews,
save only in name. But how many
of them will become Catholics?
All roads lead to Rome; but very
few Jews have made that journey.
A Jew who becomes a Catholic is
a most excellent Catholic; he seems
to desire, by the fervor of his faith
and the burning zeal of his charity,
to make some reparation for the
sins of his people. Jews should be
the best Catholics in the world;
and God has told us, through the
mouths of Jewish prophets, that
the time will come when they will
be all that they should be. The
word of God is sure and cannot
fail. He has told us that the day
is coming when the Jews shall ask
him, “What are those wounds in
the midst of thy hands?” and when
he shall reply, “With these was I
wounded in the house of them that
I love.” In that day he “will pour
out upon the house of David the
spirit of grace and the spirit of
prayers; and they shall look upon
him whom they have pierced, and
they shall mourn for him as one
mourneth for an only son, and
shall grieve over him as the manner
is to grieve for the death of
the first-born.” In that glorious
day God has promised that he will
.pn +1
destroy the names of idols out of
the earth, so that they shall be remembered
no more; and that he
will take away the false prophets
and the unclean spirit out of the
earth. He will bring back the captivity
of Juda and the captivity
of Jerusalem, and “will build them
as from the beginning”; he will
cleanse them from all their iniquities,
whereby they have sinned
against him and despised him; and
he will so crown them with blessings
that all the world shall be
amazed thereby. “It shall be to
me a name, and a joy, and a praise,
and a gladness before all the nations
of the earth that shall hear
of all the good things which I will
do to them.” “Behold, the days
come, saith the Lord, that I will
perform the good word that I have
spoken to the house of Israel and
to the house of Juda.” When the
Jews become Catholic Christians,
Jerusalem shall “be called by a
new name, which the mouth of
the Lord shall name,” and the
Jews shall become “a crown of
glory in the hand of the Lord and
a royal diadem in the hand of
God.” Then they shall no more
be called forsaken, and their land
shall be no more called desolate;
“but thou shalt be called 'my
pleasure in her,’ and thy land inhabited.”
Then shall the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass be celebrated
by Jewish hands in the Holy City
where Jesus Christ first offered up
the ever-living Sacrifice, and then
shall the Jews eat the heavenly
Bread and drink the sacred Blood
which have so long been given to
us Gentiles and rejected by them.
“The Lord has sworn by his right
hand and by the arm of his strength:
Surely I will no longer give thy
corn to be meat for thy enemies,
and the sons of the stranger shall
not drink thy wine for which thou
hast labored; for they that gather
it shall eat it, and they that have
brought it together shall drink it in
my holy courts.” Wonderful are
these words; full are they of a
meaning at once mystical and clear.
The Jews, in God’s own time, will
become Catholic Christians, and,
united with the whole body of the
faithful on earth, they shall eat the
divine Bread which is the life of
the world. The abandonment of
their traditional faith will continue
to lead them more and more to the
abandonment of all their distinctive
national peculiarities and practices,
and they will become merged in
the great body of the children of
men. Then such of them as God
may choose will have given to them
the grace of faith, and as individuals,
and not as a nation, will they
become Catholic Christians. We
know that in the vision of St. John
the Apostle he saw one hundred and
forty-four thousand of the children
of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand,
who had come out of great
tribulation, and washed their robes
and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb. We are certain, then,
that before the end of the world at
least this number of Jews will have
been converted. It may be that
the number represents only those
who belonged to the church while
it was yet mainly composed of
Jews. If so, let us hope that those
of the once chosen people who yet
remain may be found, or at least
many of them, in that great multitude
which no man can number, of
all nations, and tribes, and peoples,
and tongues, which St. John also
saw, standing before the throne and
in the sight of the Lamb, clothed
with white robes and palms in their
hands, crying with a loud voice
“Salvation to our God who sitteth
upon the throne, and to the
Lamb.”
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=irishp3
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. | FROM THE FRENCH. | CONCLUSION.
.sp 2
<sc>July 30.</sc>

This morning I was in a sort
of mortal sadness. I opened the
“Book of those who suffer” at these
words: “You have willed, O my
God! to separate me from her to
whom I have so often said that I
should wish to die the same day as
she. This desire has not been
granted, and thou hast condemned
me to survive.

“<i>She</i> is at rest; and never have
I more fully realized than in this
my exceeding grief the meaning
of that beautiful Christian word,
<i>quies</i>—rest.”

I said this with all my heart, and
I have comprehended.... O Kate!
I loved you too much for this
world. Bless me from on high, and
visit me with Picciola. It seems
to me that the divine Goodness
must permit that.
.sp 2
<sc>August 2.</sc>

“The present war is the natural
and necessary consequence of the
great apostasy of the sixteenth century
and the principles of the
Revolution!” O my God! if this
might be a holy war! But I fear;
for France is so guilty! Prayers
are being offered in all the dioceses;
the emperor has put himself
at the head of the army. May
God save us! We needed a St.
Louis, if we were to deserve victory.
Do you remember, Kate,
how much we admired these words
of Bossuet? “War is often a salutary
bath, in which nations bathe
and are regenerated.” Oh! how
you must pray, all our kind friends
in heaven.
.sp 2
<sc>August 4.</sc>

Amélie has bidden us adieu;
she is a charming creature. Her
mother will not accompany her.
She fears her own weakness; and
she is a veritable Spartan.

On the 2d of August took
place a first engagement at Saarbrück;
our troops were victorious.
May this success augur well! They
say that there is a terrible effervescence
in minds. Our Bretonnes are
praying that their sons may soon
return.

Arrival of our Parisians! Alix
and Margaret have all the grace of
the twins; my godson is magnificent.
I like to feel that we are
together in these troubled times.
How I pity mothers!
.sp 2
<sc>August 7.</sc>

Terror, anguish, defeat—these
are the synonyms of this date.
Two days ago we were beaten at
Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach.
We are waiting for news.
Our reverses are a chastisement;
the French government is withdrawing
its troops from Rome. Is
it, then, to secure success that
France abandons the Pope? Oh!
it is not France which acts thus;
she is too profoundly Catholic for
that; but she will be none the less
certain to undergo the penalty for
this cowardice. Kate, pray for
.pn +1
France! The Prussians are upon
our soil, and civil war is also feared.
.sp 2
<sc>August 13.</sc>

Horrible details are received of
the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal
MacMahon behaved with admirable
heroism. He would not quit the
field of battle after witnessing this
odious butchery—40,000 against
150,000! Lord, O Lord! have pity.
There must have been some treason
there. The cuirassiers and
chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed
themselves to facilitate the retreat.
The newspapers make one weep.
Kate, what is said in heaven?

My Guy is charmingly beautiful;
and when he is twenty years old
an enemy’s cannon-ball will have
the right to carry him off!
.sp 2
<sc>August 21.</sc>

Dear Kate, I bless God for having
placed you in the peace of
eternity before these murderous
struggles, in which your heart
would so often have been wounded!
Ah! it seems to me that it is
a great favor to be taken from this
earth before the calamities which
are impending.

A subscription has been set on
foot, in order that all France shall
offer a sword of honor to MacMahon.
Marshal Lebœuf, General-in-Chief,
is replaced by Marshal
Bazaine; the army is falling back
on Chalons. There were brilliant
affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th.
But what agitation in the country!
The republicans consider the moment
favorably for their triumph,
and René declares that the Prussians
of France are still more to be
dreaded than the Prussians of Germany.
Montaigne said: “There
are triumphant defeats which equal
the finest victories.” Our troops
are sublime. Fresh levies are being
made, companies of <i>francs-tireurs</i>
are organized; will France
be saved? Catholic La Vendée is
rising <i>en masse</i>.
.sp 2
<sc>August 24.</sc>

The Prussians are at Saint-Dizier.
It is said that in the partial engagements
the losses are considerable on
both sides. The enemy is bombarding
Strasbourg. Read heart-rending
details. <i>Povera Francia!</i>
They say that two sons of Count
Bismarck are dead; it is the justice
of God passing by! Oh!
when we think of so many families
who are suffering from the disasters
of invasion, who see their homes
invaded and their days in peril,
how ardent are our prayers!

That which I dreaded is come
upon us. René and his brothers
are going! O my God! guard them
from danger. I love France too
well to hinder René from defending
her. The fear of afflicting me
held him back. God aid us and
have at the English! as our Breton
ancestors used to say. The English
of to-day are the Prussians.

They leave us, five brothers, all
valiant and strong, courageous as
lions. Ah! if they should not return.
I believe in presentiments,
and something tells me that all
hope of happiness is at an end for
me. “Give all to God,” a saintly
priest wrote to me. <i>Fiat!</i> Take all,
my God, but leave me thy love!

Do you remember, Kate, my mother’s
stories of the heroism of our
grandfather? Do you remember
that Georgina whose name I received,
who said to her brother, “Go
and fight without thinking of
me. God and his angels will
guard me; think of your country!”

Could I be less courageous than
she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven!
What shall I do without him?
.pn +1
.sp 2
<sc>August 26.</sc>

Levies are being raised <i>en masse</i>.
Men will not be wanting, but soldiers
cannot be made at a moment’s
notice, especially in our days. It
is said that Bazaine is blockaded in
Metz with 70,000 men, and that he
has before him 200,000 Prussians.
MacMahon is going to his relief
with an equal number of heroes.
The French have burnt the camp
at Chalons. What will be the issue
of this frightful struggle? The
ministry which has caused all our
misfortunes has resigned; a clear
understanding is most important,
and time passes away in useless
discussions. General Trochu, a
Breton, is Governor of Paris.

To-day we shall be left alone....
.sp 2
<sc>August 29.</sc>

It is over. René has taken with
him all my heart, and I feel a
strange sense of suffering. My
mother has been sublime. O these
adieux, these last embraces! Who
would have said that we should come
to this?

Protect them, ye holy angels!
Bring them back to us soon with
the return of peace! There are
wounded everywhere; my mother
has asked for ten, to whom we shall
attend ourselves. It is terrible to
see these mutilations. O war! how
I hate it.

The army of Prince Frederick
Charles is marching upon Paris;
there are no official tidings of our
soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz,
Strasbourg are all undergoing the
horrors of bombardment. Where
shall we go? Prayer alone will
save us. There is much patriotic
eagerness in the populations; the
loan of 750,000,000 has been covered
with astonishing rapidity.
What will become of the capital?
What chastisement will visit it for
having erected a statue to Voltaire?

A visit—the Comtesse de G——
and her two daughters, friends of
Lucy. What a difference between
the two sisters! The younger
calm, gentle, and placid, like a
beautiful lake, seraphic and tender;
the elder ardent and enthusiastic
to exaggeration, impassioned
for the cause of good, peace,
and right, but like a volcano.

Kate, tell me that you pray for
us, and that God will have pity
upon his people!
.sp 2
<sc>August 31.</sc>

A letter from René! Alas! his
presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude
and I do not quit the chapel,
except for the wounded. Mary
and Ellen, Marguerite and Alix,
multiply their prayers. Arthur has
made his mother give him a Zouave’s
uniform; thus equipped, he
drills the children at the school.
You should hear him say how he
wants to join his father and fight
with him. Our savage enemies
commit revolting atrocities. How
truly are they the sons of the Teutons!

Berthe’s family is in Switzerland.
.sp 2
<sc>September 4.</sc>

Lord, save us; we perish!

The public journals speak in an
ambiguous manner of triumphs with
respect to which a terrible silence
had been observed in official quarters;
a great battle was imminent....
The day is come, and its
events are brought to light. <i>Povera
Francia!</i> The emperor and
40,000 French prisoners, MacMahon
grievously wounded, and a
capitulation—it is horrible! My
God! hast thou abandoned France?
The public consternation cannot be
described. It was said yesterday
that, owing to a crypt whose existence
.pn +1
was generally unknown, the
women and children had been able
to quit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended
by General Uhrich. The
enemy aims his murderous projectiles
especially at the cathedral—that
unequalled marvel in stone.
Horrible! horrible! It seems as
if hell had vomited innumerable
legions of monsters upon France.
There were 550,000 in this last
three days’ battle. How will all
this end? “Arise, O Lord! and
deliver thy people, for the time to
show mercy is come!”[#]

.fn #
Ps. ci.
.fn-
.sp 2
<sc>September 6.</sc>

The republic is proclaimed. Paris
is in a state of delirium. Did
not Joseph de Maistre say: “The
French Revolution has been satanic;
if the counter-revolution is not
divine, it will be a nullity”? Read
the <i>Univers</i> yesterday—so Christian,
so right-thinking. Louis
Veuillot calls Prussia the <i>Sin of
Europe</i>. Will the republic save
us? The enemy is at Soissons.
We see now the result of twenty
years of despotism.... “MacMahon
is dead!” said a workman on
the boulevards with a journal in
his hand. At these words arose a
general cry: “Honor to MacMahon!”
This report is contradicted,
and Mme. la Maréchale set out
yesterday to join her husband. O
this wound! What Frenchman
would not give his life to heal it?
No army left! Bazaine is still
blockaded in Metz, bombarded by
the Prussians. MacMahon had
done wonders, but was unable to
effect his junction with Bazaine.
He was thrown back by the enemy
upon Sedan, and a bridge not having
been destroyed, notwithstanding
his orders, he was surrounded
by a network of the enemy; grievously
wounded, he placed the command
in the hands of General Wimpffen,
who capitulated. MacMahon
would never have done this—never!
Without a miracle, France is lost.
It seems as if one were suffering a
bad dream in reading that, owing
to our woods, the enemy slaughter
us without mercy, whilst our blows
fall on emptiness, and that on the
fatal day which annihilated our
army our artillery was for a quarter
of an hour playing upon a regiment
of French cuirassiers.... The
<i>Angelus</i> is ringing. O Angelic Salutation!
with what anguish Christian
hearts yesterday repeated you,
on this beginning of a new era of
which no one can tell the form or
the duration.
.sp 2
<sc>September 7.</sc>

A line from Adrien to reassure
us all. Alas! who does not tremble
at this hour? Kate, protect
us! Some members of the Left
have, themselves alone, made the
republic and seized the reins of
government. Can the enemies of
God regenerate a people? “The
Keeper of Israel neither slumbers
nor sleeps.” Napoleon I. (Louis
Veuillot, the valiant heart, tells us)
used to say that the general who dared
speak of capitulation ought to be
shot; what, then, would be the deserts
of him who surrenders? Poor
France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived
of her noblest children!
.sp 2
<sc>September 8.</sc>

On this festival of your nativity,
O Our Lady of Victories! succor
us. No courier from Paris, which
must be invested. The <i>Garde Nationale</i>
is being organized; the
scheme is to oppose the whole of
France to these Vandals of the nineteenth
century—barbarous hordes
who seem to be impelled by some
irresistible force into the heart of
.pn +1
our unhappy country. How French
I feel myself in these days of sorrow!
Dear Kate, is it true, as we
believe, that all our saints of France,
headed by St. Remi, Charlemagne,
St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate
at the feet of the Eternal to
obtain the pardon which would
save us?
.sp 2
<sc>September 11.</sc>

In the frightful catastrophe of
Sedan our soldiers were in want of
munitions and had not eaten for
four days.

I send daily a long bulletin of news
to my devoted Margaret. Has not
Marcella also something to fear?
Poor Italy! Poor France! We
can but have either a shameful
peace or a pitiless war.... Laon
is threatened with the fate of
Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities,
besieged and heroic. “Country
of my brethren and of my
friends, may the words of God for
thee be words of peace: 'May peace
be within thy walls, and plenteousness
within thy towers!’ O my
God! save thy servants who put
their trust in thee!”[#]

.fn #
Ps. cxxi.
.fn-

Every man under arms, every
woman at prayer! This decree
makes me bless the republic. And
René—where is he?
.sp 2
<sc>September 13.</sc>

Laon must have ceased to exist;
the commander has had the citadel
blown up. They say that Garibaldi,
the insulter of Pius IX. and
the king of vagabonds and bandits,
is coming to succor France; is not
this the depth of humiliation?
“How long, O Lord! wilt thou delay
to succor us? O God! be thou
our judge, and defend our cause
against this pitiless nation; deliver
us from these men, who are full of
injustice and deceit!”

The enemy is six leagues from
Paris. M. Thiers has set out for
Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London.
The United States have offered
their mediation. We are assured
that the foreign powers desire peace,
but what proofs do they give?
Russia is preparing formidable armaments,
doubtless finding the present
moment opportune for taking
possession of Constantinople. The
excommunicated king is adding to
his crimes in annexing to his own the
last remaining States of the church.

We are told that the republican
world boasts greatly of the circular
of Jules Favre and the letter of
Victor Hugo.

I do not know from whence there
comes to us a copy of a revelation
announcing that from the 20th to
the 29th all will be over, and that
France will be delivered by a
stranger. O feast of St. Michael the
Archangel! be to us a day of salvation.
But, Lord, does France deserve
it? Ah! she is no longer
the eldest daughter of the church,
since she consents to the odious
spoliation of Italy, and since every
sort of hatred is let loose against
religion. Do they not say that at
Lyons the Visitandines have been
driven from their convent? We
deserve every misfortune and disgrace.
Louis Veuillot, calm in the
midst of so many storms, gave yesterday
a beautiful article, in which
he predicted the near approach of
the triumph of the church; and today,
the splendid history of Judas
Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we
who are thy people. “God gives
to his church the flotsam of every
wreck, as he gives her, sooner or
later, the laurel of every triumph.”

It is said that Paris will be destroyed.
“Unless the Lord keep
.pn +1
the city, he that keepeth it watcheth
in vain!”[#] Hope! hope! Prayer
will save us!

.fn #
Ps. cxxvi.
.fn-

I knew yesterday that Réne was
alive. O Kate! pray for us.
.sp 2
<sc>September 17.</sc>

O surprise! O joy!—if I dared
to say so.... Margaret here!
Kind, dear, and perfect friend! she
could not remain away from us
during these troubles. Lord William
and Emmanuel have come with
her. What an exquisite proof of
affection! How we have wept together!
O dear Kate, dear flower
transplanted to heaven! your native
soil, how much we have spoken
of you. How René will be touched
at hearing of this arrival! My
mother and sisters give a festive
welcome to my <i>belle Anglaise</i>, who is
English only in name, being as Catholic,
as Irish, and as French as
we are.

Communications are interrupted,
or are on the point of being so.
The line of Orleans is cut. The
Paris <i>Journal</i> is here, however,
with frightful accounts of the barbarity
of the Prussians. Save us, my
God; have pity on those who are
fighting <i>pro aris et focis</i>!

Margaret has brought me a bit
of the soil of Ireland, and some
flowers gathered from our mother’s
grave.
.sp 2
<sc>September 19.</sc>

What is happening to-day, twenty-four
years after the Apparition
of La Salette? We are melting
away in prayers. My mother has
obtained from the bishop the most
liberal permissions for benedictions.
Our good <i>curé</i> is dying ... of
old age and grief. The love of
their country is a robust plant
among the Bretons.

Dear Kate, we speak of you with
Margaret. I told her that I continue
to write to you; she was
touched at hearing it. How kind
it is of her to have quitted her
home to share our anguish and our
dangers! The province will be invaded—that
is certain. No news
of René; but who does not feel
courageous at this time? Ah! assuredly,
in face of the extent of our
disasters, selfish anxieties disappear,
and the soul grows, in her prodigious
faculty of suffering, to compassionate
all the present miseries,
all the crushing misfortunes, all the
deaths. How long, O Lord! will
thy hand be heavy upon us? O
mysterious depths of the designs
of God! O militant church! O
venerated Pontiff, the purest glory
of our age! O Rome, invaded like
France! I have just read an admirable
pastoral letter of Mgr.
Freppel, the illustrious successor
of Mgr. Angebault in the see of
Angers. He sees a reason for hope
in this community of sorrows between
the mother and the <i>eldest
daughter</i>. O Pontiff!—is not this
title become a bitter derision? The
gates of hell shall not prevail against
the church, and we are surely not
far distant from her signal triumph;
but how many tears, it may be, and
how many martyrdoms, before that
hour! Italy, France, Ireland—the
three countries of my heart, lands
that are mingled in one in my enthusiasm
and love, daughters of
God, and the privileged ones of his
heart—you cannot perish; God will
fight for you, and we shall bless
him for ever!

Kate, beloved sister, tell me that
you hear me, that your soul touches
mine. Be René’s guardian angel!
.sp 2
<sc>September 21.</sc>

Our life is strange. Beneath all
it has a wonderful serenity, a confidence
.pn +1
in God which defies everything;
on the surface it is a sort
of fever, passing from the wildest
hope to the most complete discouragement.
Gertrude has appointed
us her <i>aides-de-camp</i>—Margaret and
myself. There is much to do
around us. Our Bretonnes have
need to be consoled, and there are
sick and dying. The good <i>abbé</i>
multiplies himself with admirable
self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying,
happy to be called away at the
present crisis.

I have a letter from René—a kind,
long, sweet letter, from which I cannot
take away my eyes. He only
speaks to me vaguely of the war,
so as not to increase my alarm.
Every ring of the bell makes us
start; the gallop of a horse makes
us run to the windows. My mother
never quits her psalter and
rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully
keeps her company when we are
not there; Mary and Ellen, with
the other dear young ones in the
house, are our sunshine. The courageous
Margaret talks politics with
Lucy, the <i>abbé</i>, and the doctor, organizes
plans of defence, creates
fortresses, and finally expels the
enemy. Lord William was just
now reading to us in the Paris
<i>Journal</i> of the 18th details of deep
interest relating to the affair of
Sedan—“the Waterloo of the Second
Empire, and the greatest disaster
of modern times.”
.sp 2
<sc>September 25.</sc>

Jules Favre has made an appeal
to William and Bismarck. France
is very low. The result has been
the affirmation of the exorbitant
demands of the conquerors. The
struggle is to be pushed to extremities.
Regiments are to be formed
of National Guards. Here
none are left but old men. No
official news. It is said that the
enemy has been repulsed at Versailles,
that Nantes is burnt, that
headquarters are at Meaux; they
said yesterday at Rheims: “O
Clovis! why are you not there with
your Franks?” The Prussians are
burning Rouen. When, then, will
the terrible work of these executioners
of Heaven be ended? William
wants Alsace and Lorraine,
Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and
Mont Valérien. Ah! we also, we
shall say with the Bishop of Orleans
that which was said by Louisa of
Prussia—a magnanimous soul, to
whom the life of her four sons was
less dear than the honor of her
country; a believing and valiant
woman, who beheld so violent and
devastating a storm pass over her
kingdom that Prussia was on the
point of being erased from the map
of nations: “I believe in God; I do
not believe in force. Justice alone
is stable. God prunes the spoiled
tree. We shall see better times, if
only each day find us better and
more prepared.” The son has not
inherited the sentiments of the
mother. It is said that it was
Prince Albert who commanded the
burning of Bazeilles; this fearful
barbarity would suffice for his reprobation
in the memory of men.
“The Hebrew people saw Deborah
and Judith arise in the day of its
affliction; Gaul, St. Geneviève;
and France of the middle ages,
Joan of Arc.”[#] Who shall save
modern France? Whose arm shall
God raise up to avenge her? “But
now thou hast cast us off, and put
us to shame: and thou, O God!
wilt not go out with our armies....
Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest
thou?”[#]

.fn #
Gabourd.
.fn-

.fn #
Ps. xliii.
.fn-

Rome is invaded by the republican
.pn +1
troops; they leave the Pope
the castle of Sant’ Angelo and the
Leonine city, with <i>magnificent</i> assurances
of security. O the time
of deliverance, the hour of salvation!—soon,
doubtless, soon. The
church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff,
Pius IX., Vicar of Christ and
his representative, like him crucified
in heart, given gall to drink,
overwhelmed with insults, your
powerless children join their supplications
to your own, and God
will arise, mighty and terrible, to
confound your enemies—you who
have loved justice and hated iniquity!

Letter from René, hastily written
in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady
protect his devotion! “Our help
is in the name of the Lord!” O
church of Jesus Christ! how happy
are thy children in the midst of their
distress. What ineffable consolations
in thy sacred prayers! I
live in the Psalms, I nourish my
soul with them; every feeling of
the heart is there so marvellously
expressed, and in incomparable
language.
.sp 2
<sc>September 27.</sc>

Louis Veuillot, the intrepid defender
of the Catholic faith, a few
weeks ago wrote as follows: “God
will have pity on us. Justice will
not exceed mercy. We shall not be
scourged beyond the needs of our
future well-being; we shall find in
the cup of chastisement a healthful
beverage. The love of their country
raises hearts above vulgar vexations.
They are willing to be ruined;
they are willing to die. But
these abject and senseless things
mingled with our tragedies, these
intoxicating songs when the earth
is being watered with generous
blood, these statesmen who ask for
prayers and authorize blasphemy,
these blasphemies beneath the falling
thunderbolt, these assassins of the
pavement and these orators in the
tribune—all this revelation of the
stupid crowd which will not be saved—it
is these things which keep
souls under the millstone, which
suffocate and grind them down.”
How well this great mind describes
the deepest sufferings of all that is
still Christian in this nation of crusaders
and martyrs! The admirable
demonstrations of the Bretons
and Vendéans console one for the
irreligion of the greater number.
Why has not all Europe risen to
defend in the Pope the cause of
outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege
of Victor Emanuel has met
with no resistance.

“Be to us, Lord, a place of defence
against the enemy!” We are on a
volcano—the volcano of popular passions;
if the hand of God does not
arrest them, what will become of us?
Confidence! confidence! “Infidel
France is abased and humiliated,
and is not yet willing to repent;
eucharistic France will pray, will
arise, and increase in greatness!”[#]

.fn #
Louis Veuillot.
.fn-

O beloved soul gone hence before
<i>me</i>, and who art <i>myself!</i> offer to
God our prayers.
.sp 2
<sc>October 2.</sc>

Toul has surrendered, after a
splendid resistance worthy of a
better fate. The 29th—the looked-for
29th, the feast of the glorious
Protector of France—has brought
us another sorrow more: the capitulation
of Strasbourg! O dear and
beautiful cathedral, which I loved
so well! “There is nothing left
but ruins,” writes one of Berthe’s
cousins. Why does the Lord delay
to help us? Will not our other
fortresses be also forced to give
themselves up into the enemy’s
hands? What will become of
.pn +1
France? William is at Versailles;
he lay down, booted and spurred,
in the bed of the great king who
so imperiously dictated laws to all
Europe. Who will redeem us from
all our humiliations?

Margaret and Lord William
have apprehensions which will
only too soon, alas! be verified.
La Vendée is rising at the call of
Cathelineau and of Stofflet—two
illustrious names. Ah! who will
merit for us that we shall be saved,
when the public papers lavish outrage
and abuse against everything
that is holiest in the world—against
the church of God, his priests, his
pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who
shall restrain thine arm, O Lord!
when scarcely a voice is raised to
recall to conquered France that
thou art the Salvation of the nations?
.sp 2
<sc>October 7.</sc>

The gentle Bishop of Geneva
used to say: “Alas! we shall soon
be in eternity, and then shall we
see of how small account were the
affairs of this world, and how little
it mattered whether they were accomplished
or not.” Adrien sends
us long details. My soul is in anguish.
O Kate! pray for us. I
went yesterday with Margaret to the
cemetery; we stayed there long. A
splendid moonlight illumined the
golden crosses surmounting the
marble columns beneath which our
doves repose. A feeling of profound
peace took possession of my
soul in the midst of this striking
contrast—the calm and tranquillity
of this field of death with the tumult
and agitation of actual life in
our poor France.
.sp 2
<sc>October 8.</sc>

The journals give accounts, only
too faithful in their details, of the
battle of Sedan, the catastrophe of
Laon and of Strasbourg. It is horrible—this
destruction, these savage
attacks! Of how many valiant defenders
are we not deprived, while
the enemy’s forces are going to
strengthen the army now besieging
Paris! William is at St. Germain;
he desires to be present at the
bombardment of the brilliant capital
which gave him so splendid a
reception three years ago. To the
shame of humanity, Europe remains
unmoved in presence of our misfortunes.
America sends an insignificant
number of volunteers. O
divine Justice! wilt thou not avenge
us? Who shall tell the story of
this sanguinary epic? Who shall
recount this unheard-of intermingling
of shameful cowardice and
prodigies of courage, of base treason
and sublime devotion, of reverses
and successes equally impossible?
Who shall tell posterity
that the most loyal and generous
of nations, the people which has
been eager in its succors to every
misfortune, has found no defender
in the day of its calamities? And
who shall make known to France
that her success is a consequence
of her repentance, that there is
something greater than victory,
more decisive and more powerful
than the most formidable engines
of war—the protection of Him who
holds in his hands the destinies of
nations? <i>Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti
nos?</i>
.sp 2
<sc>October 10.</sc>

Two melancholy, dark, and rainy
days, such as always depress my
soul. Garibaldi has arrived at Marseilles
with a thousand volunteers—doubtless
the scum of Italy. Mgr.
de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons
to the defence of their country.
“No, France will not die!
This cry from the heart of forty
millions will pierce heaven and
.pn +1
awaken all the echoes of the earth!”
Paris has provisions for two months;
but after? Surely all France will
rise, and, as soon as she feels herself
strong enough, she will meet
these barbarians, to whom all has
been successful hitherto! What
bloodshed! What ruins! What
opprobrium! Will not God raise
up some hero from this soil which
has given so much to the world?
Anna Maria Taigi predicted that
the Council would last eighteen
months, that Pius IX. would die
towards its close, and the gentle
and venerated Pontiff would see
the dawn of a new time. Does
not this mean that soon the trials
of the Papacy will cease? “The
church cannot perish; but God has
not made to nations the same promises
of immortality.”

O Kate and Mad, my two idols!
I think of you. To-morrow we go
to Auray, all together; the <i>abbé</i> will
say Mass for us there, if we can arrive
before noon.
.sp 2
<sc>October 14.</sc>

I have prayed much, thought
much, suffered much, hoped much,
loved much, during these four
days!

A prediction, said to be from
Blois, assures us of definitive success.
Alas! we were in need of
saints; this republic of lawyers
makes me afraid. My mother quoted
to us yesterday an old prophecy
from the works of Hugues de Saint-Cher,
Cardinal-Dominican of the
thirteenth century: “There will be
four sorts of persecutions in the
church of God: the first, tyrants
against the martyrs; the second,
heretics against the doctors; the
third, lawyers against simple people;
and, lastly, Antichrist against
all.” We are in the third. There
is no <i>unity</i>; there is impotence, and
therefore nothing succeeds.

A terrible rumor which will only
too soon be confirmed—Orleans is
invaded. M. de Bismarck’s plan
is to ruin France in detail, in order
that it may for a long time be impossible
to her to avenge herself. But
vengeance belongs to God, and he
will take it! The journals gave us
so much hope! What a spectacle—two
nations slaughtering each other,
and a land which God created
so fair covered with blood and
ruins! Send us, O Lord! legions
of angels; fight for the cause of
civilization and right; save France,
and may there no longer be amongst
us a single soul which does not by
its worship glorify thee!

The news from Metz is reassuring
in that direction—Metz, which has
been our ruin! The inhabitants
are admirable in their patriotism,
and engage to defend the city if
Bazaine and the one hundred thousand
men can make themselves an
opening. Without a miracle, however,
can the aspect of events undergo
a change? Bitche continues
to resist. O my France! must thou,
like Ireland, also be crucified?

<i>Evening.</i>—An enigmatic despatch,
in <i>negro language</i>, announces that
the army of the Loire has been
compelled to retire before superior
forces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed
fifteen thousand of the enemy.
Garibaldi declares that fifteen
thousand Italians will march at the
first signal. The six thousand Pontifical
Zouaves will form a splendid
regiment, under the leadership of a
hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how
these words rend my soul: <i>Garibaldi,
Pontifical Zouaves</i>. What
an assemblage! May God pardon
France! How will all this end?
Phalsbourg holds out, and other
towns; but to see the enemy always
in imposing numbers, to know that
everywhere they make crushing
.pn +1
requisitions, that each day brings
fresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow!
What part of our soil will remain
unpolluted by the passage of these
emissaries of death?

Orleans is in the enemy’s power—Orleans,
the key and the heart of
France—Orleans, the Queen of the
Loire, the faithful city, the town
saved from Attila by St. Aignan,
from the English by Joan of Arc!
A great battle is imminent.

Our venerated pastor suffers no
more. This morning, at three
o’clock, one of our farmers, who,
with Mistress Annah, was sitting
up with him, came to let us know
that he was sinking, and we reached
him in time to receive his last blessing.
O Kate! draw us also. The
words of the divine Office for to-day
are admirably suitable to our
distress: “I am the Salvation of my
people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever
affliction they shall be, I will
hear them when they shall call
upon me, and I will be their God
for ever.” “If I am in trouble,
thou, O Lord! shalt preserve my
life; thou shalt stretch forth thy
hand against the fury of mine enemies,
and thy right hand shall save
me!”
.sp 2
<sc>October 20.</sc>

O my God! if it were declared
that these avenging hordes are to
carry fire and sword through the
whole of France, if our sanctuaries
and our relics protected us not,
still would we hope in thee, whose
love is greater than our misdeeds,
and we would bless thee for ever.

No news from Rheims.
.sp 2
<sc>October 22.</sc>

Twenty thousand Prussians have
invaded Chartres, the city of Mary,
famous for its pilgrimage and for
its splendid memories. Will they
not defile its cathedral? Horror!
The churches of Nancy are changed
into stables. O my God! so
many profanations, and still always
triumph.
.sp 2
<sc>October 26.</sc>

Read the circular of M. Jules
Favre to the French diplomatic
agents. O statesman! your eyes,
then, are not opened, and you perceive
not that, chastised for our
crimes, we cannot be saved but by
the help of God.

They write to us from Orleans:
it is lamentable! Poor, dear city!
who shall restore it to us? O misguided
France! what firm and
Christian hand shall take thy helm
and steer thee into port? At the
beginning of this century, and up
to the close of its first half, what
noble characters, what ardent Catholics
defended the cause of liberty!
And now, alas! how this oracle of
the Holy Scriptures makes me fear:
“A kingdom is given over from
one people to another, because of
its injustice, violence, and crimes.”

Kate, what is said in heaven?
O dearest sister, my other mother!
protect René and pray for France.
.sp 2
<sc>October 30.</sc>

Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000
troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon,
flags, and Metz, the strongest
of our citadels, the heroic city—all
is Prussian! It is, then, finished.
It seemed as if all French hearts
had there their hope—not the last,
which can be only God. The
circular of Gambetta begins by
a <i>sursum corda</i>: “Lift up your
hearts! lift up your souls!” It is
well, but <i>whither</i>? You say not,
“Up to God,” nor do you pronounce
that saving name.

Ah! France has deserved this
shame of being again vanquished,
of seeing all her citadels fall one
after another, until the day when,
.pn +1
repentant and humbled, she will
implore the divine aid. Schélestadt
has also capitulated.... Gertrude
is ill and keeps her room. The
blade has worn out the scabbard,
the body has been broken down
by the soul. O my God! wilt
thou take from me also this elder
sister—this admirable saint, my
model and consolation? “Weep
for France, dear sister,” she said,
“not for me. I have given all to
God; I do not fear. I offer for
my country my last sorrow—that of
not seeing Adrien once more....”

This unexpected blow crushes
me. Pray for us, Kate!
.sp 2
<sc>November 1.</sc>

“Heaven is opening. O Jesus!
have pity upon France.” And
thus she died.... It is, then, true!
Henceforth I must seek her in heaven
with you, dear Kate, and all
our dear ones who have taken
wing from hence.

What an example she leaves us!
Not a complaint: she owned to me
that she had long been suffering.
What austerity of life! What renunciation
of her own tastes! What
love of poverty! “She was too near
heaven to remain below,” my mother
says. Margaret is very unwell,
because of so many emotions.
O this life and this death;
these adieux, this generosity of
heart, these last lines traced for
Adrien, for her brothers! A few
minutes before her departure she
said to me: “<i>You will come soon.</i>”

I scarcely know where I am; my
soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but
the love of God prevails over all. I
am writing this by her funeral couch.
Three days ago she went out with
us. She fatigued herself too unsparingly;
she never shrank from
trouble. Kate, welcome her and
bless your sister! Gain strength
for me, and, if I must die without
once more seeing René, obtain that
I may know how to say, <i>Fiat!</i>

Mourning in the family, mourning
for the country—for everything,
mourning!
.sp 2
<sc>November 7.</sc>

I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing
me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember
us on high. The day before
her death Gertrude said:
“Prayers, prayers! Oh! the <i>Lætatus</i>
of the angels must be so beautiful....
I hear it!...” Mary
and Ellen at her request sang her
an Irish melody on the love of
one’s country. “Georgina, to pray,
to suffer—this is everything!”

What words! And how well I
understood her at that moment,
when all was passing away from
this valiant and strong soul who
had fought the good fight! Poor
Adrien!

Troops have been levied <i>en masse</i>,
from twenty to forty years of age.
The Lamentations of Jeremias apply
to us in our calamities! Who
shall number the widows and the
orphans? May God protect us!
The sadnesses of the present life
complete my detachment from this
world by discovering to me its
nothingness. The details respecting
Metz throw me into stupefaction.
My mother has heroically
borne the great trial; she herself
closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful,
of her eldest daughter. She
insists that Lord William shall take
Margaret away, because the enemy
is certain to come upon us also.
“Well, then,” says my friend, “we
will defend you!”
.sp 2
<sc>November 10.</sc>

The <i>Univers</i> is here, edited at
Nantes. Yesterday it contained a
magnificent page, vibrating with
Catholic faith, addressed by Louis
.pn +1
Veuillot to General Trochu. The
illustrious convert of Rome has, then,
quitted the country of his heart and
is present at the agony of that Paris
whose corruptions he has so energetically
denounced. I have been
glad (if one may use the word) to
find, in this believing journal, an
expression of the indignation of my
soul against those who have dared
to give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi,
the rank of a French general
at the moment when Piedmont was
consummating its sacrilegious attacks
against Pius IX. There is
fighting at Orleans. O Joan of
Arc!

Kate dearest, we all suffer.
What has become of all our hopes?
No, they are not destroyed; they
had heaven for their object.
.sp 2
<sc>November 13.</sc>

I dare not make a complete narrative
of our disasters, and I know
not how to speak of anything else.
“Revolutionary France is no longer
the France of Christ. She has
kept the name, but repudiated the
heart. O France, France! nation
of so many centuries, of such men,
and of so much glory, crouched
beneath the boot of Flourens, before
the sword of the Prussian.”
These are the words of Louis
Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by
rioters, the dregs of the Revolution.
Bismarck is said to have uttered
the pride-inflated words that
“there is nothing but Prussia in
the world: there is no more Europe!”

“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let
us examine the inexorable
logic which rolls us in the mire,
and see by what hands it has been
possible to lay prostrate a nation
which is proud of having no more
thought of God! O mockery! O
derision! And this is France!”

We know nothing of the absent....
Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!
.sp 2
<sc>November 16.</sc>

Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau,
the morning of his solemn entry,
went with his Vendéans to hear
a Mass of thanksgiving. <i>In hoc Signo
vinces.</i> Marseilles and Lyons, the
Queen of the Mediterranean and
the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières,
are agitated by violent intestine
struggles. <i>Pazienza! Speranza!</i>
Oh! what need has my soul
of these two sources of strength to
bear up beneath this hour of unutterable
anguish! René and Adrien
are wounded! “Remember, my
daughter, the sacrifice is short
and the crown eternal,” my poor
mother says to me, wounded to the
heart like myself. Where are they?
The date is torn off the letter, which
has been brought us by an unfortunate
soldier with an amputated
limb, who has faced a thousand
dangers to come and die in his own
part of the country. I wish to go—but
whither? Kate, inspire me!
.sp 2
<sc>November 22.</sc>

My anxiety has brought on fever....
Yesterday was a great day in
the religious history of France.
Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked
the whole church of France
to a solemn act of faith. At one
and the same hour, in all the sanctuaries
of this nation, bent beneath
the strokes of the divine Justice,
Mass was said to obtain pardon.
O Lord! if only so many prayers
and tears might obtain peace.
“All for God and our country!”
cried Cathelineau, before that altar[#]
where joys so pure were granted
me. “Let official France make
her act of penitence!” says the
Univers. Alas! it does not appear
that this thought occurs to her.
.pn +1
O these dates, these memories,
my whole life in my remembrance!
I examined myself this morning
and had to acknowledge my own
weakness. My God! wilt thou require
of me this sacrifice? I would
desire to submit, but my heart!...
Dear and sweet friend, chosen for
me by the best-beloved and most
devoted of sisters, return, return!
O fatal war! I comprehend the
words of Rousseau: “The man
who has lived longest is not he
who can reckon up the greatest
number of years, but he who has
felt most what is life.”

.fn #
In the cathedral of Orleans.
.fn-

There are presentiments.... My
soul is crushed. Ah! these hours,
these days which are passing by—what
are they for France?

The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor
Emanuel, is named King of
Spain by the Cortes. Into what
hands is Europe yet to fall? The
diadem of Charles V. and of St.
Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated
King of Italy; these
two countries of noble memories
thus fallen, and France defended
by Garibaldi; the insulter of
sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus
Christ, made a French general! O
blindness, O impiety of a government
which pretends to be a regenerator!
And this, too, in the age in
which we live, in the century of
Pius IX. and of the Immaculate
Conception!... Deluges of rain
for weeks past. Our unfortunate
youth of France decimated by misery
and cold!

Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two
lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[#]

.fn #
A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina
learnt of the death of René. Of the five brothers,
two had given their lives for France. Adrien and
Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.
.fn-
.sp 2
<sc>November 26.</sc>

The Lord gave him to me; the
Lord hath taken him away!
Thou hast willed it, my God;
thou hast taken back this life which
was so dear to me. I adore thy
will!
.sp 2
<sc>November 29.</sc>

Is this <i>dying life</i> deserving of a
single regret? And yet I weep!
My God! thou pardonest these
tears—thou who didst weep over
us. Oh! if I had at least had his
last look.

It is a week ago this evening
since I knew of my misfortune. O
my God! that unusual stir, those
sinister noises, and the entrance of
Raoul, Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both
dead! I would see that dear
face once again, to try and restore
its warmth by my kisses!
.sp 2
<sc>December 1.</sc>

Kate, I can write no more.... A
<i>widow</i>! Can you comprehend this
word and the desolation which
freezes my heart? All my soul was
devoted to him, placed in him.
<i>Miserere mei, Deus!</i> Friend so
dear, so loving, so heroic, so kind,
obtain for me that I may follow
you to the home where separation
is no more. O you who stood on
Calvary, Our Blessed Lady! pray
for us. Have pity upon my distress!

He is dead! The heart which
loved me has ceased to beat! And
if only France were saved, and my
mourning might win her salvation!

And still I must live, move about,
spend myself in attendance on the
sick, when I feel as if the heavy
stone which hides him from me
were weighing down my soul. O
the destruction wrought by death!
Thus one single year has taken all
from me!

Prayed for two hours yesterday
by this newly-closed tomb. O
Lord! I spoke to him, I understood
.pn +1
him, I comprehended that thou
requirest holy victims to disarm
thy justice.

O France! which I loved so
much.
.sp 2
<sc>December 25.</sc>

Margaret leaves us suddenly.
Her father-in-law is dying. God
be praised for having left her with
us during these days of trouble!

I am still weak in the inferior
part of my soul, feeling every hour
an increase of bitterness and depression.
“You will come soon!”
This farewell of Gertrude’s resounds
continually in my ears. Nevertheless,
if the pain of a long life should
be in store for me, if her words
were symbolic only, if I must grow
old, I pray the Author of all good
to permit that the unending mourning
of my heart may overflow in
tenderness towards all who suffer,
that I may wipe away or comfort
tears—I, who henceforth can only
live in tears.

Christmas, feast of gladness, of
the birth of Jesus, and of love; the
anniversary of Edith’s death!
.sp 2
<sc>January 1, 1871.</sc>

Spent this day in the church and
cemetery. O René! how I hear you
still. I seek you now in heaven.
Pray for France, and also for me,
who cannot accustom myself to
widowhood.

O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed
in the intimacy of that noble
heart! can I think upon you and
not die?

Dear René, dear Kate, it is before
God that I weep; it is on these
pages concealed from all that I write
my regrets. Does God permit this,
or is it cowardice?
.sp 2
<sc>January 4.</sc>

Edouard has this morning put
René’s pocket-book into my hands.
My name is on every page. Observed
these words, which I have read a
hundred times over: “If I die,
comfort her, ye good angels who
guided me to her!”... Oh! it is
more than I can bear—emotion and
regrets so deep.
.sp 2
<sc>January 6.</sc>

<i>He is at rest.</i> Eternal felicity of
rest in God, thou art become his
inheritance. I loved him so much,
and, alas! I could not secure his
happiness! Just now I opened
my book of <i>Hours</i> at this Psalm:
“<i>Cantate Domino canticum novum,
quia mirabilia fecit.</i>” I seemed to
obtain a glance into heaven, and
this friend, so ardently and faithfully
loved, was smiling upon me....
Rapid flashes of light, after which
the darkness thickens and the
loneliness grows more oppressive!
.sp 2
<sc>January 13.</sc>

May God console the mothers,
the widows, and the orphans!

If I had time to think of self in
this chaos of nameless events, I
should feel myself unfortunate beyond
all expression. O Lord! the
happiness of loving thee, of possessing
thee in heaven, is well worth
some years of Calvary; and although
mine appears to me at
times so difficult to climb, thou
knowest that it is no more for myself
that I weep, but that the sufferings
of René’s country alone
fill my heart. My poor France, so
glorious whilst she still served thee,
wilt thou efface her for ever from
the book of nations, or wilt thou
restore her power? <i>Fiat voluntas
tua!</i> Turn us to thee, O Christ!
who didst die to save the world,
and, for the sake of so many hearts
that turn to thee, shorten our
woes!
.pn +1
.sp 2
<sc>January 18.</sc>

Heard for the first time the complete
account of <i>his death</i>....
My brothers are on the point of
setting out again; they are of a
race in which self-devotion is hereditary.

O René! how proud I am of
you—dead on the field of honor,
after receiving your God that morning;
and dying in defence of
France! Ah! I would fain be a
Sister of Charity, to have a right to
receive the last sigh of our courageous
defenders.

Often had you said to me: “It
seems to me that I should have
strength to love God even to suffering
martyrdom!” And the hour
came when it would have been permitted
you to remain quietly at
home; but your country was in
mourning, and you went forth, a
soldier for right, a soldier of God!
Ah! then I felt indeed something
which broke within me....

Do you, on high, remember her
who loved you better than herself?
Do you call to mind those delightful
days when heavenly love shed
a ray from on high upon our love?
Do you remember our conversations,
in which the thought of eternity
was always present? Ah! we
both knew well that our happiness
was not of this world.

Yesterday I dressed the wounds
of an unhappy victim of this war,
which posterity will call inexplicable.
What a horrible wound! The
man was a Vendéan and a Catholic.
He saw tears in my eyes, and
thanked me with a hearty and naïve
simplicity. He regrets his wife,
whom he wants to see. Poor woman!—or
rather, happy woman; for
she will see him!
.sp 2
<sc>January 25.</sc>

A letter from Karl, addressed to
René. O my God!

The enemy is approaching;
France is agonizing. René, Kate,
Mad, pray for us!
.sp 2
<sc>February 2.</sc>

<i>Miserere nostri, Domine!</i>

I return to these pages on a day
of cruel disappointment. Paris has
capitulated! The Prussians occupy
the forts; the army has been
made prisoners of war. There is an
armistice of twenty-two days. There
were elections on the 8th for a constituency.
How many sorrowful
events have taken place!—the
bombardment of Paris, the defeat
of Chanzy at Mans, the civil discords....
One must despair, were
it not that God overrules all, and
that if he punishes he is ready to
pardon. The question is whether
France is to be or not to be!

Edouard writes. He hopes that
the Prussians will not advance so
far as to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what
do they think at this
time, at this Gethsemani of France?

“O my God! I am as thou wert,
falling prostrate from weakness,
when another had to carry thy
cross!”[#]

.fn #
The Abbé Perreyve.
.fn-

.pm verse-start
Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie,
Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
“Could you but know how small a thing is life,
and also by what sweetness death is followed!”
.fn-
.sp 2
<sc>February 12.</sc>

Prayer and charity fill up our
time. Alas! there is still room for
regrets. Everything revives them;
to-day it is a passage from Montaigne:
“We were seeking one another,
and our names were intermingled
before we had made acquaintance.
It was a festival when
I saw him for the first time; we
found each other all at once so
bound together, so united, so well-known,
so obliged, that nothing
was so dear to each of us as the
.pn +1
other. And when I ask myself
whence comes this joy, this ease,
this repose that I feel when I see
him, it is because it is <i>he</i> and because
it is <i>I</i>; this is all I can
say.”

O René! it was thus that we
loved, and thus our love will be
eternal.
.sp 2
<sc>February 18.</sc>

The fatherland of our soul is
God! Trial is not sent only as an
expiation to purify us, but also to
detach us from earth and raise us
near to God. “<i>Jubilate Domino,
omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia!</i>”
O my soul! do thou serve the
Lord with gladness. Lift the veil;
behind your troubles and sorrows
God is there, who counts them
all, and whose love will change
them into an unknown weight of
glory! <i>Beati qui lugent!</i> Heaven!
heaven!

I was thinking this evening of
the motto of Valentine of Milan:
<i>Plus ne m’est rien, Rien ne m’est
plus[#]</i>. Is this sufficiently Christian?
From this world’s point of
view, from the frivolities of life and
of all that charms the senses, oh!
nothing is anything to me. But
one’s country, the church, the poor,
one’s family!

.fn #
More is naught to me; naught is aught to me
more.
.fn-

O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember
that thou hast said: “All
that you shall ask the Father in my
name, he will give you.” May thy
adorable will be done! He who
believes, hopes, and loves—has he
the right to complain? Can the
soul whom thou dost protect call
herself abandoned? Will the heart
that is rich in thy love feel despoiled
and desolate? Draw me
to loftier heights, O Christ, my
King!
.sp 2
<sc>February 21.</sc>

Belfort has capitulated! <i>Tristis est
anima mea usque ad mortem.</i> Must
we say with Dante: <i>Lasciate ogni
speranza</i>? How empty and desolate
earth appears to me! My God,
show thyself; let thy power shine
forth in our behalf! I will hope
in thee against all hope. “Every
soul is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to
labor, by the sacrifice of himself,
at the redemption of humanity. In
the plan of this great work each
one has a place marked out from
eternity, which he is free to accept
or to refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude,
you all understood this! O
my God! have pity upon France.
I offer myself as a holocaust to thee.
I accept every sacrifice; I give myself
up; take with me all who have
in like manner devoted themselves:
let not France undergo the fate of
Ireland; let her not be crushed by
Protestantism, but leave her her
faith and love.
.sp 2
<sc>March 1.</sc>

Peace is declared, but at what
a price!—five milliards, Alsace,
and Metz; the occupation of
Champagne until the payment of
the indemnity, the entry into Paris
of thirty thousand men on this
very day. O the Alsatians! To
think that henceforth they belong
to the Vandals who have ruined
their territory, made a desert everywhere,
brought mourning into
every home—what infinite grief!
No! the Prussian will not be their
master; the heart of Alsace is too
French; the yoke of the enemy
may weigh down bodies but not
souls. We have here a friend of
Berthe’s, a young wife and mother,
who ever since this morning has
been in the chapel, weeping in despair.
Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the
mother-country sacrificing
her more unfortunate sons
.pn +1
to purchase the others!... Where
is Joan of Arc? Where are even
the women of Carthage! Lord, save
us!
.sp 2
MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.

<sc>March 20, 1871.</sc>

God be with us!

Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear,
beautiful, and perfect Georgina has
departed from us for ever!

I cannot leave to any one else
the sorrow of acquainting you with
this fresh bereavement.... Shall I
have strength for it? I feel as if my
heart were enclosed in the tomb
where my children rest.

A pernicious fever has carried
from us this most lovable creature,
who has been amongst us like an apparition
from heaven. She is now
reunited to him whom she so loved
and mourned, and she who had
“<i>unlearnt happiness</i>” is happy now!
This thought is necessary to sustain
those who remain. You know
what she was to me—the most loving,
devoted, and piously amiable
of daughters; you know what she
was to all—an adviser, a comforter,
and a light. And all this in a few
hours has vanished from us. Who
shall console us for the loss of this
angelic child, the very sight of
whom was a consolation?

Dear friend, she thought of you;
she murmured your name in her
last prayer. God, the church,
France, Ireland, and all those who
loved her, by turns were on her
lips; the voluntary victim of charity,
she accepted death with gladness.
You who were her sister,
kind Lady Margaret, would that
you had been with us at that time
which was at once both sweet and
cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted
to me; the place of angels is in
heaven.

Do not think of returning to us
until peace is definitely established.
Alas! only a few days since we
were forming a project to go and
take you by surprise. Henceforth
I quit Brittany no more—my <i>Campo
Santo</i>, as my beloved daughter
called it.

Oh! how she must pray for our
sorrows on high.

On the morning of the last day
she twice repeated to me these
beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire:
“However hard may be the
separations of this world, there always
remains to us Him who is its
author, who has given and who
removes us, who never fails, in
whom we shall all be one day reunited
by the faith and charity
which he has given us.”

And a few minutes before breathing
the last sigh she said: “Mother,
I asked that I might die for
France; it was a sacrifice, because
of leaving you. Now all regret has
disappeared from my heart; I am
going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate,
René—and God!”

May she call me soon also!

Dear and kind friend, I would
comfort you, but I am powerless.
Let us love and pray.

My remembrances to Lord William;
kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure
whom she so much loved, and
to yourself, the expression of the
maternal affection of my desolate
heart.

COMTESSE DE T——.

.tb

Madame de T—— survived this
last affliction only a few months,
and the <i>Campo Santo</i> received yet
another tomb. May these delineations
of love so pure and Christian,
.pn +1
and of resignation so sublime, benefit
at least some souls! This is the
editor’s sole aim.

The premature end of Lady Margaret
has unfortunately only too
soon facilitated the sorrowful task
of the friend who has been desirous
of revealing to loving hearts
the private life of her dear Georgina,
this poetic flower of Ireland,
transplanted to the soil of this our
France, which became the second
country of her heart, and which she
loved even to death.
.sp 4
.h3 id=ancient
PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.
.sp 2

.pm verse-start
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

<i>—Merchant of Venice.</i>
.pm verse-end

Music, in its most general sense,
is the art of producing melodious
sounds, and, from its power over
the passions, it is called the sentimental
art. In the mythology of
Greece it was cultivated chiefly by
the Muses, from whom the term
<i>music</i> is derived; but, although
dear to all of them, it was presided
over by Euterpe, who is always represented
with a flute in her hand.
The great divinity of song and
instrumental music, however, was
Apollo, who is mentioned in the
<i>Iliad</i> as delighting the immortal
gods with the sweetness of his
notes; for he was the inventor of
the lyre and leader of the Pierian
nine, whence he is called sometimes
<i>Citharœdus</i> and sometimes
<i>Musagetes</i>, in both which characters
very fine statues of him have
come down to us from antiquity.
The worship of the Muses began
early in Greece, and the favorite
resort of these divinities of intellectual
pleasure was the flowery border
of the rills that murmured down
the sides of Mount Parnassus,
while their chaste grove and sacred
fountain of Castalia was on that
part of the Parnassan range called
Helicon. Here their statues were
seen and described by Pausanias,
and afterwards removed by Constantine
to his new capital on the
Bosporus.

Pagan authors ascribed the origin
of music to fanciful occurrences,
or, at best, to chance and
natural operations. Thus, according
to some, it was a gift to man of
this one or that of their national
divinities; but, according to others,
the babble of running waters, the
warbling notes of birds, mountains
that echoed, winds that sighed
through the forest trees and

.pm verse-start
Fill the shade with a religious awe,—
.pm verse-end

in a word, the general song of
nature inspired Apollo and the
Muses, who were no more than
shepherds of Arcadia, to please the
world with music; for

.pm verse-start

            The birds instructed man,
And taught him songs before his art began;
And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains,
And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains;
And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.

—<i>Lucretius.</i>
.pm verse-end

But Christian writers believe that
Adam, the first man, being endowed
.pn +1
by the Creator with every sort
of knowledge, excelled in music as
well as in the other arts and
sciences. With his fall this knowledge
was weakened, while in his
descendants many things were lost
and all things became obscured.
That music has in some way a
heavenly origin all are agreed—even
the Hindoos, who say that its
effects are produced in us by recalling
to memory the airs of Paradise,
which we heard in our state
of pre-existence; even the Greeks,
whose fables are founded on the
corruption of primeval traditions,
and whose invocation to music is:

.pm verse-start
O art divine! exalted blessing!
Each celestial charm expressing!
Kindest gift the gods bestow!
Sweetest good that mortals know!
.pm verse-end

But the writer in the English
or, perhaps, in any other language
who has most poetically stated the
case of music, and given us a
Christian view of it, is Newman,
in the last of his Oxford University
sermons. “Can it be,” he
asks, “that those mysterious stirrings
of heart, and keen emotions,
and strange yearnings after
we know not what, and awful impressions
from we know not whence,
should be wrought in us by what is
unsubstantial, and comes and goes,
and begins and ends, in itself? It
is not so; it cannot be. No; they
have escaped from some higher
sphere; they are the outpourings
of eternal harmony in the medium
of created sound; they are echoes
from our Home; they are the voice
of angels, or the <i>Magnificat</i> of
saints, or the living laws of divine
Governance, or the divine Attributes;
something are they besides
themselves which we cannot compass,
which we cannot utter, though
mortal man—and he, perhaps, not
otherwise distinguished above his
fellows—has the gift of eliciting
them.”

The ancients urged in favor of
music three principal benefits to
mankind: its effects in softening
the manners of men, thereby promoting
civilization and raising a
people out of the barbarous and
savage state; its effects in exciting
or repressing the passions; and its
effects as a medicinal power to
cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes
to the cultivation of this art
the refinement of the inhabitants
of Arcadia, and to the absence of
such a discipline the roughness
which characterized the citizens of
Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a
musician near the person of Clytemnestra
as a guard upon her
chastity, and, until he was away,
Ægistus, who then wronged her,
had no power over her affections.
The subduing influence of music
was again tried with success many
ages after by the Jesuit missionaries
in Paraguay, who used to play
upon guitars and flutes to attract
the melody-loving Indians from
their forest haunts towards the
village communities which they
had established on the banks of
the Parana.[#] Lycurgus regulated
the music of Sparta, and his laws
were set to measure by the celebrated
musician Terpander; while
Plato not only attributed an instructive
virtue to music, but maintained
that a people’s music could
not be interfered with without altering
their form of government.
This civilizing influence of music
is beautifully illustrated by the old
legend of the Greeks, that when
the workmen toiled on the walls
.pn +1
of Thebes, Amphion played so
sweetly on a lyre borrowed from
Mercury that the stones did move
of themselves. This, of course, is
an allegory, to signify that by his
musical talents, poetical numbers,
and the wisdom of his counsel
Amphion prevailed with a rude
people to submit to law, live in
society, and raise a defence against
their neighbors.

.fn #
After religion there is certainly no greater
means of civilization than commerce; and commerce
in the middle ages began with fairs, at
which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy
and music to draw numbers together, and
thus be able to display and sell their goods.
.fn-

Since two things greatly contribute
to the effects of music, its
powers of imitation and of association,
the ancients gave it a large
measure of influence over the passions.
Thus Plutarch relates that
Terpander appeased a violent sedition
among the Lacedæmonians by
the aid of his lyre, and that Empedocles
prevented a murder by the
soothing sound of his flute; and
the painter Theon, having brought
one of his works, which represented
a soldier attacking an enemy, to be
exhibited on the public square,
would allow the veil to be withdrawn
only after his attendant musicians
had wrought up with military
airs the crowds that gathered
before it. Hence Plato wrote that
a warlike air inspires courage, because
it imitates the sounds and
accents of a brave man, and that a
calm air produces tranquillity in
the soul on the same principle; or,
as Burke says, “The passions may
be considerably operated upon,
without presenting any image at
all, by certain sounds adapted to
that purpose, of which we have a
sufficient proof in the acknowledged
and powerful effects of instrumental
music”; for it counterfeits by sound
some quality or state of the mind.
Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but
love and pity are gentle; consequently,
loud and clangorous music
stirs up the stronger passions, while
a smooth measure imitates the gentler
emotions of the mind. The
wonderful influence of martial
music on the ardor of soldiers in
battle has been remarked by many
writers on military affairs, and
opera-goers must confess the bad
tendency of sensuous music. Shakspere
knew it well when he wrote of
the fellow

.pm verse-start
Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
.pm verse-end

The effects of music on the heads
and hearts of men were so strongly
perceived by Plato that he banished
from his model republic the
Lydian and Ionian modes, because
they excited the lower instincts,
but retained the severe Doric and
Phrygian measures on account of
their manliness and decency; and
some of our best English poets
have recorded their testimony to
these same effects. We subjoin a
few examples, taken almost at random:

.pm verse-start
And ever against eating cares.
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.

—<i>Milton.</i>

Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

—<i>Congreve.</i>

Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed,
And his rough manners with soft music framed.

—<i>King.</i>

Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

—<i>Dryden.</i>

Now wild with fierce desire,
My breast is all on fire!
In soften’d raptures now I die!
Can empty sound such joys impart?
Can music thus transport the heart
With melting ecstasy?

—<i>Cunningham.</i>

Music! the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav’n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.

—<i>Addison.</i>

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her spell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
.pn +1

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.

—<i>Collins.</i>

Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate’s severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.

—<i>Pope.</i>
.pm verse-end

Association of ideas, which has
so large a share in the operations
of the human mind, often contributes
much to the effects of music;
for, as Shakspere says:

.pm verse-start
How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
.pm verse-end

Thus, music that has been heard in
an agreeable place or that was
played by some one near and dear
to us, or music that is connected
with the trials and triumphs of our
native land, will awaken sentiments
of love or melancholy, or sympathy
or ardor, on the principle of associated
ideas. This is feelingly expressed
in the 136th Psalm in the
persons of the captive Hebrews, in
whom the sound of music which
they had listened to in happy days
would have awakened too keen an
anguish.[#] In more modern times we
have had public illustrations of the
same principle in those simple melodies
called <i>ranz des vaches</i>, which are
such favorites with the mountaineers
of Switzerland, and are played upon
a long trumpet or Alpine horn.
The sound of these tunes, and the
rude words set to them, which are
expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the
shingled cottage, the dashing
waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the
lowing of herds, and the tinkling
cow-bells—sometimes recalled so
vividly to the native in a foreign
clime the memories of his own
land as to produce a disease called
<i>nostalgia</i>, that often showed itself
among the Swiss soldiers in the
Neapolitan service;[#] for

.fn #
This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical
English verse by Donne, who makes it touchingly
suggestive; and later, and better still, by Aubrey
de Vere in his beautiful drama, <i>Alexander the
Great</i>.
.fn-

.fn #
A person who was present has feelingly described
the deep effect produced on some of our
poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to a
church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after
one of the battles in the Wilderness, when some
person sat down at the organ and played “Home,
sweet Home.”
.fn-

.pm verse-start
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

—<i>Cowper.</i>
.pm verse-end

The belief of the ancients that
music was auxiliary to medicine is
attested by a great number of writers.
Chiron the Centaur, who educated
Achilles, was careful to unite
instructions in the healing art to
those which he gave on music. Plutarch
tells us that Thales of Crete
delivered the Spartans from a plague
by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus
quotes Theophrastus as authority
that the Thebans cured epilepsy by
the notes of a flute; Aulus Gellius
says that music will rid a man of
the gout; Xenocrates employed
music in the cure of maniacs; while
the judicious Galen gravely speaks
of playing the flute over the suffering
parts of the body; and the idea
that music is the sovereign and only
remedy for the bite of the tarantula
still lingers in Southern Italy.
The Tyrrhenes always hired a flute-player
to perform while they flogged
their slaves, to give them some
relief under the lash; and there was
usually an arch-musician on board
of the triremes—in which the rowers’
strength and endurance were more
severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not
only to mark the time or
cadence for each stroke of the oar,
but principally to cheer the men
by the sweetness of the melody;
whence Quintilian takes occasion
.pn +1
to remark that music is a gift of
nature, to make us the more patiently
to support labor and fatigue.[#]

.fn #
Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes,
used to contrive that the sufferers in the hospitals
at Cartagena, in South America, should be solaced
with music; and for centuries it has been a custom
at Santo Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent
organ which is set up in the main ward play three
times a week for the patients.
.fn-

Among the nations of antiquity
Egypt was long thought to be the
mother of ancient civilization; and
the Egyptians were well acquainted
with music, for representations of
musical instruments have been discovered
on some of their oldest
monuments, such as obelisks and
tombs. But they never popularized
music, because they thought that it
had the effect of making youth effeminate;
yet Strabo says that their
children were instructed in one, and
only one, special kind of music, of
which the government approved.
Like every other profession, that of
musician was hereditary. Egyptian
music was originally grave and
in solemn accord with the stiffness
of the kindred arts, which were
hampered by strict hieratic rules,
and almost exclusively devoted to
the service of religion. When the
country fell under the sway of the
Greeks, music became of a gayer
and less moral sort, being as much
or more employed at banquets and
on other profane occasions as in
the temples and beside the bier.
The Ptolemies encouraged Greek
music, and the musical contests introduced
into Egypt by this race
of splendid princes were all of Hellenic
origin. Athenæus relates that
at a grand Bacchic entertainment
given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over
six hundred musicians formed the
orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary
in the Ptolemaic dynasty,
and the father of Cleopatra was
surnamed <i>Auletes</i>, or the flute-player,
from his excessive attachment
to this instrument.

We have little knowledge of music
as a science among the Hebrews,
but there is abundant proof
of its practice. They had music
on their festival days, whether domestic,
civil, or religious, and professional
musicians were attached
to the royal court; but the art was
systematically studied in the schools
of the prophets, and received its
highest application in the Temple,
where it entered largely into divine
worship.

The music of the Greeks has engaged
the attention of many learned
men, but is so difficult a subject that
no one understands it; and it is as
easy to imagine how the Pyramids
were raised as to conceive what
Greek music was like.

Music enters largely into the mythology
of Greece, and strange legends—some
of which are pure
myths, others the exaggeration of
facts—have been made up about it.
The Muses were extremely jealous
of their musical talents, and whoever
ventured to compete with them
was punished. Thus the impudent
Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their
wings, and the lovely daughters of
King Pierus were changed into
birds.[#] Two of Apollo’s contests
are famous for their mournful ending.
One was with Marsyas, a ranger
of the woods, who, having found
the flute which Minerva threw away
because it distorted her handsome
features, rashly challenged the divine
.pn +1
Apollo to a contest between
this instrument and the lyre, the
condition of which was that the
victor might do what he wished
with the vanquished. The Muses
decided in favor of their leader,
and the miserable mortal was tied
to a tree and flayed alive. A statue
of Marsyas, bound and suffering,
was generally placed by the
Greeks, and afterwards by the Romans
also, in the vestibule of their
halls of justice, as a warning not to
go into litigation hastily, and, above
all, not to dispute with the gods—<i>i.e.</i>,
bring religion into court.[#]

.fn #
The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious
Sirens was a subject early seized upon by Christian
art within the Discipline of the Secret to convey an
idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of
his vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship),
and the seductions of the world (of the flesh particularly)
in this voyage of life. See De Rossi's <i>Bulletin
of Christian Archæology for 1863</i>, page
35, in which a curious monument bearing on this
strange <i>rapprochement</i> is described.
.fn-

.fn #
One of these old statues having come to light
in good condition while the palace of Monte Citorio,
designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the
seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being
built, it was appropriately placed on the landing
at the head of the great stairway. The Italian Deputies
have doubtless removed it, as too significant
of <i>divine vengeance</i>.
.fn-

Another triumph of Apollo was
over Pan, a <i>dilettante</i> of music and
inventor of the reed-pipes, which he
called <i>syrinx</i> after the beautiful
Arcadian nymph whose adventure
with her tuneful lover is well known
from Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia,
was chosen umpire, and, deciding
in favor of Pan, was disgraced
by having his ears changed into
those of a donkey. Poor Midas
contrived for a time to conceal his
mishap by wearing day and night a
cap of a peculiar form;[#] but as no
man is long a hero to his valet, his
body-servant, while trimming his
hair one day, pushed up the bonnet
a little and discovered the deformity.
The secret so embarrassed
him that, fearing he might unwittingly
divulge it, he dug a hole in
the ground beside a meandering
brook and whispered therein: “Midas
has ass’s ears!” He then filled
it up and thought himself secure
against himself; but, alas! on the
very spot a tell-tale reed grew up,
which, as the breezes rocked it to
and fro, murmured the fatal secret,
“Midas has ass’s ears.” While this
fable may signify one of the ways
by which the ancients believed nature
to have drawn man’s attention
to instrumental music—for travellers
tell us that in some parts of
the world there are plants called
vocal or singing reeds, which emit a
sweet strain when moved by the
wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate
that music is a sort of language;
and as such, says Metastasio,
it has the advantage over poetry
which a universal language would
have over a particular one, for music
can touch all hearts in every
age and country, but poetry speaks
only to the people of its own age
and country. One of the Greek
stories of sublimest significance,
and which mysteriously enters into
early Christian art under the discipline
of the secret, is the Orphic
legend. Orpheus, presented by
Apollo with a lyre and instructed
in its use by the Muses, was able
to tame with his sweet notes the
wild beasts that gathered around
him, and to enchant even the trees
and rocks of Olympus, which started
from their places and followed
the sounds that charmed them:

.pm verse-start
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage
But music for the time doth change his nature,
.pm verse-end

.fn #
We find in this story the origin of the <i>Phrygian
cap</i> which came to be a symbol of slavery and
degradation among the Romans, by whom the
Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose
rulers even had asinine qualities; and it never quite
lost this character, but was used in France up to
the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners,
and it is well known that an irruption of escaped
convicts into Paris during the Reign of Terror,
carrying one of their caps at the end of a pole and
singing the <i>Marseillaise</i>, gave rise to the absurd
custom of the liberty-pole and cap now so common.
.fn-

as Shakspere remarks. That some
animals are amenable to the influence
of harmony is certain—hence
the success of the Hindoos with
their deadly cobras; and some recent
botanists are of opinion that
.pn +1
the growth of flowers, and especially
roses, is stimulated by music.
But whatever slight foundation of
fact there may be in the wonders
of the <i>historical</i> Orpheus, it fades
into obscurity beside the noble conception
of the <i>mythical</i> Orpheus,
whose history seems based on a
traditional knowledge of the happy
state of man in Paradise when all
things of earth were subject to
him:

.pm verse-start
                      Till disproportioned Sin
Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.

—<i>Milton.</i>
.pm verse-end

Music is mentioned with a degree
of rapture in more than fifty
places of the <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i>.
The Lacedæmonians had a flute
blazoned on their standards, and
the military airs composed by Tyrtæus
continued to be played in the
Spartan army until the end of the
republic.

The Pythagoreans and Platonists
not only supposed the soul of man
to be a substance very like a disembodied
musical instrument of
some sort, but believed the universe
itself and all its parts to be
formed on the principles of harmony;
hence their not altogether imaginary
music of the spheres which
enters into their systems of philosophy:

.pm verse-start
                    Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
<i>There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins</i>:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

—<i>Merchant of Venice.</i>
.pm verse-end

And this idea of a close connection
between music and the heavenly
bodies was still lingering in the
minds of some philosophers as late
as the eleventh century of our era,
when Psellus the younger, treating
of music and astronomy, describes
the former as symmetry and proportion
itself, which reminds one
of Hegel’s profound and intelligible
definition that “music is architecture
in time”! Pythagoras especially
is said to have regarded music
as something celestial and profound,
and to have had such an opinion
of its powers over the human affections
that he ordered his disciples
to be waked every morning, and
lulled to sleep at night, by the dulcet
notes of the lyre or the flute.[#]

.fn #
Dr. Burney, <i>History of Music</i>, vol. i. p. 436,
has a note which bears too quaintly on this part of
the subject not to be reproduced. He says: “Master
Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable
book called <i>Musick’s Monument</i>, would have
been an excellent Pythagorean, for he maintains
that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously
made plain by the connection of the three harmonical
concords 1, 3, 5; that music and divinity are
nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord
and discord, of the nature of the octave and
unison, will so strengthen a man’s faith 'that he
shall never after degenerate into that <i>gross subbeastiacal
sin</i> of Atheism.’”
.fn-

The love and cultivation of music
formed so much a part of the discipline
of the illustrious men who
sprang from the school of Pythagoras
that almost every one of them
left behind him a treatise on the
subject. Plato, in the seventh book
of his work on laws, says that
children in a well-ordered commonwealth
should be instructed
for three years in music, which reminds
us of the commendable efforts
made of late years in Great
Britain and the United States to
make music a necessary part of
popular education, in which connection
the late Cardinal Wiseman
wrote an interesting letter to the
Catholic Poor-School Committee of
London in 1849 about “the importance
of introducing music more
effectually into our system of education.”

In the third book of Plato’s <i>Republic</i>
music is treated of at considerable
.pn +1
length with reference to
education; “for whatever is concerned
with the art of music ought
somehow to terminate with the love
of the beautiful.” But to seize the
full meaning of this passage we
must remember that, in the doctrine
of the Academy, <i>the Good, the True,
and the Beautiful</i> are reciprocal
terms, and consequently that music
should elevate to the contemplation
of the great Godhead—Goodness
itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.

Eloquence was thought by the
ancients to be so intimately connected
with music that the orators
of Greece and Rome had a flute-player
standing at a proper distance
behind them while they
spoke, who kept up an undertone
of musical sound, now swelling as
the speaker rose with his theme,
now gently falling when, as in panegyrics
on the dead or in pleadings
for mercy, he sought the chords of
sorrow or sympathy in the human
heart. Musical contests of flutes,
trumpets, and other instruments
were among the attractions at
the public games of Greece; and
the profession of music was so
highly honored, and often so remunerative,
that many musicians lived
in splendor. There was Dorion
the flute-player, who lived like a
Sybarite and was a frequent guest
at the table of King Philip of
Macedon; there was Ismenias of
Thebes, who was sent on an embassy
to Persia, and (like the late Duke
of Brunswick) had a passion for
collecting jewels which his enormous
wealth enabled him to gratify
to the utmost. He once reproved
a smart agent for not having paid
as much for a pearl as it was worth,
saying that it belittled him in the
jeweller’s eyes not to have given,
and the gem in his own eyes not to
have cost, its full value, and sent
him back with the surplus money.
The flute which he bought at Corinth
for three talents (about $4,000)
must have been encrusted with precious
stones. Amœbeus, the harper,
received an Attic talent (about
$1,000) for every appearance on
the stage. But although proficients
in music were highly honored and
rewarded, the mere makers of musical
instruments enjoyed no greater
esteem than did other artisans,
and we know that the comic poets
of the time often ridiculed the celebrated
orator Isocrates because
his father had been able to give
him a liberal education with money
made by manufacturing flutes.
Not only men but women also publicly
exhibited their musical accomplishments;
they belonged, however,
mostly, if not exclusively, to the
class of <i>Hetairai</i>. Such was the
famous Lamia, whose skill as a
flute-player, hardly less than her
personal charms, won the heart of
King Demetrius.

Passing over to Italy, we can
only mention the Sabines and
Etruscans, who early cultivated
music, and from whom the Romans
derived their knowledge of the art;
the former giving them their profane,
and the latter their sacred,
music. At a later period the genius
of Greece banished her ruder
rivals and monopolized the art in
Rome. It was a general custom
among people of rank, towards the
end of the republic and under the
empire, to keep a private band of
musicians; but in the earlier days
of Rome music, being almost exclusively
devoted to religion, either
in the temples or at burial rites,
was under government control;
hence it was forbidden in the
Twelve Tables to have more than
ten flute-players at funerals, and
.pn +1
the <i>Salii</i>, who were priests of Mars,
were obliged, in their annual procession
through the city, to accompany
their stately tread by a sort
of music made by striking their
rods of gold on the metal shields
which they carried in the hand.
The most important body of musicians
at Rome, and the recognized
officials of the art, were the <i>tibicines</i>,
or pipers, who formed a college, and
on one occasion brought the religious
affairs of the city to a stand-still
by seceding in a body, after
some real or fancied grievance, to
the neighboring town of <i>Tibur</i> (Tivoli).

The “ambubajarum collegia” of
Horace, and the Syrian musicians
satirized by Juvenal, were held in
contempt by the Romans as not delighting
the soul with exalted harmony,
so much as exciting the instincts
to sensual gratification.
.sp 4
.h3 id=portmanteau
THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.
.sp 2
“We shall be happy to see you
at Rathdangan Castle, sir,” said Sir
Geoffry Didcote. “If—aw—you
come down on Saturday and—aw—stop
till Monday, we shall—aw—be
pleased”; stroking his finely-shaven
chin at each “aw.”

I accepted with a gratified alacrity.
We had won the rubber trick
by trick, and, although the honors
were against us, I had somehow or
other managed to establish a long
suit commencing with the king, and
had ended by lugging in all the
poor relations, including a miserable
deuce of diamonds, for which I contrived
to secure as good a berth as
that held by any member of its illustrious
family. Flushed with victory,
Sir Geoffry’s hospitality spread forth
its arms and enfolded me within its
embrace. This <i>was</i> a chance for a
briefless barrister during the long
vacation. Briefless! Why, I could
not even command a nod from an
attorney, much less that magic roll
of paper whose cabalistic inscriptions
are so readily deciphered by—the
pocket. The Hall of the Four
Courts was a most delightful club-room,
where all the news of the day
was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice
Keogh’s latest witticism to the
new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle;
from Baron Dowse’s joke to Sergeant
Armstrong’s wig. And as for
Circuit, it was nothing more or less
than a charming country excursion,
where the wit and wine of the bar
mess amply compensated for any
little <i>ennui</i> the hours occupied in doing
nothing during the day might
have reasonably engendered. In
vain I strutted across “The Hall”
with a bagful of old French novels,
endeavoring to appear as though absorbed
in some pending case in
which my dormant talent would be
strained to the utmost limits of its capacity;
in vain I caused myself to be
called forth from the library as often
as it pleased the porter to summon
me for the sum of five shillings, with
which I had retained his eminent
services; in vain I buttonholed
country friends. But why continue?
The word “briefless” speaks for itself;
and were it not for sundry remittances
from a maiden aunt, my
sole surviving relative, I should,
<i>bon gré mal gré</i>, have been compelled
to take the queen’s shilling or to
.pn +1
seek employment from the Corporation
of Dublin in the capacity of a
street scavenger.

As yet I had made but little way
in society. I could not talk Wagner
or fall foul of Tennyson. I had
not brass enough for a ballad or
talent for a <i>scena</i>. Too nervous for
anecdote, my modesty muffled me
even in conversation. I was not a
man’s man, nor yet a <i>cavaliere servante</i>.
I did not hunt, fish, or shoot.
In a word, I was somewhat of a
dreary drug in Vanity Fair.

Why Sergeant Frizwig asked me
to dinner I cannot determine; and
why Sir Geoffry Didcote, after that
excellent repast, took it into his
head to invite me to Rathdangan
Castle is a mystery unto this present
hour.

The vulgar question of ways and
means stared me in the face and almost
out of countenance as I walked
homewards. Rathdangan was
distant from Dublin at least thirty-five
miles, thirty of which could be
traversed by rail. The cost of a conveyance
from the station might or
might not be a “crusher”; and then
the tips to the retainers! Luckily,
my aunt had forwarded a remittance
of five pounds upon that very
morning, sixty shillings of which still
remained firm and true; and as she
invariably impressed upon me, in addition
to the necessity of obtaining
briefs, the advisability of mixing in
the best society <i>only</i>, I naturally calculated
on a “tenner” upon receipt
of the intelligence of my arrival at the
Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote
paper. My wardrobe was the next
consideration, and this was of the
scantiest description. The evening
suit might pass muster in candlelight,
but once turn a jet of gas upon
it, and the whole fabric tumbled
to pieces. The grease of countless
dinners, the patches beneath the
arms, the seams artfully blackened
with ink, the frayed linings, would
jointly and severally step into the
witness-box and turn evidence
against me. My shirts were singularly
blue, and worn away from constant
friction with the horny palms
of the washerwoman, whilst the
collars resembled those “sierras,” or
saw-edged mountains, which the
observant traveller recognizes upon
entering the dominions of his
most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the
Twelfth of Spain. My walking-suit
was presentable enough, consisting
as it did of Thomastown frieze, and
my boots, although machine-made,
possessed the redeeming influence
of novelty.

“I’ll risk it,” thought I. “The investment
is a safe one, and the return
will amply repay the outlay.”
A new and unforeseen difficulty presented
itself. The battered portmanteau
which usually bore my
“fixins,” whilst quite good enough
for “the boots” of provincial hotels,
was utterly unfit to be handled by
the genteel retainers at Rathdangan
Castle; and as nothing bespeaks a
certain <i>ton</i> more than smart-looking
luggage, I found myself under the
necessity of investing in a new
valise.

“There’s wan fit for Roosia, or
Pinsylvania—no less,” exclaimed the
proprietor of a description of open-air
bazaar situated behind the Bank
of Ireland, with whom I was in treaty
for the desired article. “Its locks
is as sthrong as Newgate, an’ ye
might dhrop it from Nelson’s pillar
an’ ye wudn’t shake a nail in it.”

This was a large black box strongly
resembling a coffin, both in size
and shape.

“Mebbe it’s a hair thrunk yer
looking for? Here’s wan. There’s
brass nails for ye! There’s hair!
Begorra, there’s many a man in Merrion
.pn +1
Square that hasn’t half as
much.”

Informing him that I had no intention
of emigrating just at that
particular moment, and that I required
a small, solid leather portmanteau,
Mr. Flynn proved himself
equal to the emergency.

“That’s solid enough, anyhow.
Shure, ye’d think it was Roman cimint—sorra
a less,” he cried, as he
administered several resounding
whacks to the article in question.

“What are you asking for this?”
I demanded.

“What am I axin’ for it?” Here
he fixed me with his eye, as the
Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding-guest.
“It’s worth thirty shillin’s.”

“Say twenty,” said I.

“I couldn’t if ye wor to make
me a lord-mayor.”

“I cannot give more.”

“Well, here now: we’ll shplit the
differ—say twinty-five.” And he
spat upon what he elegantly termed
“the heel of his fist.”

“Twenty,” said I.

“Begorra, yer a hard man! I
suppose ye must have it.”

My preparations being now completed,
five o’clock on the Saturday
evening found me on the platform
of the Amiens Street terminus.

“Hillo, Dawkins!” exclaimed
Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother
barrister, whose father (in the bacon
trade) allowed him five hundred a
year. “Going as special, eh? A
hundred guineas—you’re coining,
by Jove!”

“No,” I replied with assumed
<i>nonchalance</i>, “just running down to
Rathdangan Castle to spend a few
days with the Didcotes.” I never
felt better pleased in my life. This
fellow was always sneering at the
poverty of his briefless brothers, and
as his people happened to reside
near Rathdangan, but were of
course <i>un</i>visited, my red-hot shot
told with withering effect.

“Oh! indeed,” he muttered.
“What an awful swell! Going second?”

“First,” was my sententious reply.

“Let us travel together.”

“All right.”

Now, my intention was to have
taken a second-class ticket, but the
tone of Fribscombe altered my
mind. What a crisis in my destiny
as I walked to the booking office!
What a pivot in my fate!

Had I travelled second—but I
will not anticipate.

“The smoking-carriage is full.
Let’s get in here; <i>I</i>'ll tip the guard
to let nobody else pass,” said Fribscombe,
carrying his idea into execution.

We ensconced ourselves snugly in
the pet corners, and made a great
display of luggage all over the compartment.
My companion offered
me a cigar, but I preferred my ebon
meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen
himself at Lillehammer, and which I
had colored with possibly as much
delicate assiduity as Mr. Millais,
R.A., bestows upon his delightful
masterpieces.

We were about to “scratch,” as
the last bell had rung, when the door
was suddenly unlocked, thrown
open, and a bundle of rugs bristling
with umbrella-handles, a portmanteau,
and a lady attired in the newest
and presumably most correct thing
in widow’s weeds were flung violently
into the compartment. The whistle
sounded, the door was banged
to, and the train glided out of the
station ere we could make any move
in the direction of a change of
seats.

“What an infernal sell!” muttered
Fribscombe.
.pn +1

“Too bad!” I growled.

“That guard is a 'do.’ Half a
crown thrown into the Liffy!”

“Would she stand it, Fribscombe?”

“Not she. If the dear departed
smoked, it would remind her too
forcibly of him; and if he didn’t
smoke, she’d scream and call the
guard.”

In the meantime the object of
our solicitude had shaken out her
draperies and snugly wrapped herself
in a wolf-skin rug, the head and
glass eyes of which reposed in her
lap like the sporran of a Highlander.
Her figure appeared to very
little advantage in the heavy folds of
her ribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak;
nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful
grace and symmetry. She kept her
veil down, and from the posture she
assumed—her head pressed back
against the cushion—it became
pretty evident that, if she were not
<i>en route</i> to dreamland, she wished
to indulge in a profound meditation.

“This train won’t stop till we
get to Skerries,” said Fribscombe.
“I think,” he added <i>sotto voce</i>,
“that she is asleep, and a whiff or
two of real Havana will not awaken
her.”

“It’s much better to ask her consent,
and I’ll do it,” I whispered.

She sat directly opposite to me,
facing the engine. I leaned a little
forward.

“I beg your pardon, madam; but
may I ask if you have any objection
to our smoking? If you have
the slightest feeling on the subject,
I beg to assure you that it will
be no deprivation to us to wait until
we reach Skerries.”

She raised her veil.

“I have no objection whatever,”
she said in a low, sympathetic murmur.
“I like the perfume of tobacco.”
And, as if smitten by some
sorrowful remembrance, she sighed
and sank back, but did not lower
her veil.

I mumbled some incoherent expression
of thanks, scarcely knowing
what I said; for my whole soul
was focussed in my eyes as I gazed
into one of the loveliest faces that
I had ever beheld.

“You are not availing yourself
of my permission, sir,” she observed,
almost laughingly.

“'Pon my conscience! I forgot
all about it,” was my reply.

Woman-like she felt the compliment,
and woman-like she was grateful
for it; she knew it to be genuine.

Somehow or other we drifted into
conversation. There are some
women who can trot a man’s ideas
out for him, walk them gently up
and down, canter, and, lastly, gallop
them. Any little defects are concealed
by the excellent hand which
is over him; and were he to come
to auction at that particular moment,
he would be knocked down
to the very highest bidder, be he
ever so modest—namely, himself.
This young girl—for she could
scarcely have passed her teens—possessed
this marvellous gift, and,
as she deftly passed from subject
to subject, I found myself, usually
so dull, so reticent, so uninformed,
discussing topic after topic—travel,
music, the drama, literature,
anything, everything—with a feverish
facility, and offering decided
opinions upon subjects even to approach
which would have ordinarily
been a matter of no little enterprise,
doubt, and difficulty.

So deeply had I become absorbed
that when Fribscombe, whose existence
I had totally forgotten, suddenly
awakening from a cosey slumber,
shouted in a very excited tone:
“I say, Dawkins, jump out, man!
.pn +1
This is your station. We’re moving
off,” I could scarcely realize the
fact of its proximity, and that two
hours had rolled by, compressed into
so many minutes.

My first thought was to journey
onwards with my fair <i>vis-à-vis</i>—I
cared not whither; my second, that
Fribscombe would laugh me to death
at the “Hall.” With a sense of sorrow—I
might almost say of agony—in
my heart at the idea of parting
from her, I seized upon my portmanteau,
and just succeeded in alighting
without accident as the train
moved rapidly away.

I stood upon the platform like a
person just aroused from a deep
slumber. I was purposeless. The
tide had receded, and the bleak
barrenness of my shore life confronted
me. The fair enchantress
whose wand had conjured up a
new order of being within me had
departed.

“Ye’ll have for to come inside
the station, sir. I’m goin’ for to
lock the doore,” observed a porter,
as he significantly pointed in the direction
of the exit.

“Can I get a car over to Rathdangan
Castle?”

“Sorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan
dhrew two gintlemin over there
that come be this thrain.”

“Will he return here?”

“Sorra a fear av him. Ketch
him lavin’ a house where there’s
such lashins as at the Castle! Ow!
ow! sez the fox.”

“How am I to get across?” I
asked in some trepidation.

“Shure, it’s only a nice little taste
av a walk—nothin’ less.”

“How far is it?”

“Well, now, you might <i>coax</i> it into
four mile, but, be the powers!
it’ll fight hard for five.”

I could not refrain from laughing
at this peculiar form of expression,
although there was anything
but mirth in my present position.
To be late for dinner would be a
high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing
short of <i>lèse majesté</i>, even were
I to accept the porter’s <i>ultimatum</i>
and walk. I could scarcely reach
the Castle in anything like time.

“Did they expect you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Troth, thin, they might have
sint a yoke for ye. They always
does for the quollity.”

This was not complimentary, but,
like many a speech of a similar nature,
it contained a great deal of
truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have
forgotten all about his invitation?
It had been given hurriedly as
the whist-table was breaking up.
He had had his share of wine, if
revoking twice might be taken as
an index. Yes, the following morning
had erased me from the tablets
of his memory. What an ass
to come all this way to be instructed
by a common fellow in
a corduroy suit. Served me right!
I ought to have known better.

“What time does the next train
go up to Dublin, my man?” I asked.

“What time?” he ejaculated.

“Yes, yes, what time?”

“In forty minits, if she’s not
late; but she’s shure to be in time
if <i>I’m</i> not here, bad cess to her!”

I sat down in the cheerless waiting-room,
disgusted with Sir Geoffry Didcote,
disgusted with myself, boiling
with anger, and writhing with
mortification, till the recollection
of my fair travelling companion descended
like oil upon the troubled
waters of my mind, and the desire
to discover who she might be became
overwhelming. Fool that I
was not to have gained even a solitary
clue! She might be travelling
to Belfast <i>en route</i> for Scotland, or
.pn +1
she might have alighted at the
next station. The last thought induced
me to question the porter.

“Did you see a handsome lady in
weeds in the train that I travelled
by?” I asked.

“Is it a widdy woman ye mane?”

“Yes.”

“Young?”

“Yes—very.”

“Purty?”

“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.

Here he winked facetiously. “I
seen her. Me an’ her is acquainted.”

“Who is she?” I eagerly asked.

“She’s the widdy av a dacent,
sober man be the name av O’Hoolahan,
that died av the horrors av
dhrink.”

“Poor thing!” I muttered half-aloud.

“Poor? Begorra, it’s him that
left her warm an’ snug, wud three
av the elegantest childer.”

“Three children!” I interposed,
somewhat disconcerted. The name
O’Hoolahan was bad enough, but
three little O’Hoolahans!

“She left this parcel wud me.”

“When?”

“A few minits ago, whin she got
out.”

“Got out? Where!”

“Out av the third class, foreninst
the doore there.”

Pshaw! We had been talking
of the wrong woman, and somehow
I felt intensely pleased to think
that my fair <i>incognita</i> was <i>not</i> the
relict of the defunct O’Hoolahan
and the mother of three little
O’Hoolahans.

“Whisht!” suddenly exclaimed
my communicative friend. “I hear
a horse’s feet. He’s tearin’ along
like murther—a rale stepper”; then
turning to me: “Yer not forgotten.
It’s from Rathdangan. Yer sint
for. It’s Highflier, an’ Jim Falvey’s
dhrivin’ him.”

These surmises proved to be correct.

“I’ve to beg your pardon, sir, for
being late,” said Falvey, touching
his hat; “but we cast a shoe at
Ballinacor, and I done my best to
pull up the lost time. Any luggage,
sir?”

“This portmanteau.”

“All right, sir. Will you be pleased
to jump in? You’ll only get
over at the first dinner bell, if you
do that same.”

Having tipped the loquacious
porter, I sprang into the tax-cart,
and the next minute Highflier was
dashing at a hand gallop on the
road to Rathdangan.

Mr. Falvey informed me that
there was the “hoigth” of company
at the Castle; that every room was
full; Lord Dundrum and Captain
Buckdash had arrived by the morning
train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo
and his lady had just entered
the avenue as he was leaving
it; the partridge were plenty, and
a covey might be found within “a
few perch” of the west wing; Master
James (the Didcote heir) was
expected with two of his brother
officers of the King’s Dragoon
Guards; Miss Patricia’s collar-bone
was now as good as new, etc.
We then talked horses, and he was
still hammering away at the pedigree
of Highflier when we reached
the entrance gate. This was castellated
and partly covered with
ivy. A stout old lady unlocked
the ponderous portals, and, as she
admitted us, dropped a courtesy
whilst she uttered the cheery words,
“Yer welkim, sir.”

Why do people keep gloomy-looking
servants, dismal phantoms
who reply to your ring with a sigh,
answer your query with a sob, and
wait upon you with a groan?
Their depression is infectious, and
.pn +1
although you may, with a naturally
lively constitution, baffle the disease
for a time, sooner or later you are
laid low by it.

According to a time-honored maxim
of the road, we kept a trot for
the avenue, and just as we whirled
up to the grand entrance the sound
of a gong reached us.

“Jump out, sir. You’ve only ten
minutes; that’s the second bell.
There’s some of them in the drawing-room
already,” cried Falvey, as he
flung my portmanteau to a solemn-looking
domestic, who gazed at me
as though he were engaged in a deep
mental calculation as to the length
of my coffin and the exact quantity
of linen necessary for the formation
of a shroud. Following
this grim apparition across a low-ceiled,
wainscoted hall, in which a
billiard-table of the present contrasted
strangely with oaken furniture
of the sixteenth century, and up
an old oak staircase decorated with
battered corselets, deeply-dented
morions, halberds, matchlocks, steel
gloves, and broadswords, along a
wainscoted passage as dark as Erebus,
and up a spiral stone staircase
the ascent of which took all the
breath out of my body, I was
finally deposited in a little stone
chamber in one of the towers of
the Castle.

“Your keys, please, sir,” demanded
my janitor.

“Oh! never mind; thanks; I’ll get
out my things myself.” I feared the
penetrating gaze of this man. I
shuddered as I thought of the frayed
linings and the inked seams.

“Very good, sir,” uttered like a
parting benediction; and with a bow
which plainly said, “We shall never
meet at this side of the grave again,”
the dread apparition vanished. The
old saying, “More haste, less speed,”
never exemplified itself more unhappily
than in my case. With the
thoughts of the last gong ringing
through my brain, I vainly endeavored
to open my portmanteau.
My keys had got mixed up, and, as
they were nearly all of a size, I
had to travel round the entire ring
before I could manage to induce
one to enter the keyhole. Then,
when I came to turn it, it got blocked
and wouldn’t move either backwards
or forwards. I withdrew it,
whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin,
tugged and strained until my
backbone ached again, but without
effect. What was I to do?
Break it open. But how? I possessed
no implements. Perceiving
a bronze figure poised upon one
leg on the chimney-piece, I resolved
upon utilizing the outstretched
limb of the harlequin, and, having
inserted it in the ring of the
key, I finally, to my unspeakable
delight, succeeded in detaching the
bolt.

Throwing open the portmanteau,
I plunged my hand into the corner
where I had deposited my brushes,
but found that they must have shifted
during the journey. I tried the
other corner, with similar success.
I then probed and groped in the
lower compartment. Here was a
pretty go. I must have forgotten
to pack them, although I could
have sworn not only to their having
been packed, but as to the precise
spot in which I had deposited
them. Mechanically I drew forth
my linen and laid it on the bed, in
order to mount my studs.

I was somewhat astonished to
find that the breast was most elaborately
adorned with floriated needlework.

Some mistake of the laundress.
I detest worked shirt-fronts, which
are only worn by cads and shoddy
lords, so I picked out another. If
.pn +1
number one was embroidered, number
two was done in fresco, and, in
addition to the vast <i>tumuli</i> of birds,
beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging
of lace played a prominent part.
What could this mean? Surely I
put up my own time-honored linen
myself, and here were bosom decorations
fit for a fop of the year 1815.
Hastily turning out the contents of
the portmanteau upon the floor, in
order to realize my own property,
what were my sensations in discovering
that this pile of snowy drapery
did not contain one single article
of male apparel!

The truth flashed across me now
in all its appalling reality: Heavens
and earth! <i>I had taken the
young widow’s portmanteau for my
own.</i>

I do not know what the exact
sensation of fainting comes to, but
this I do know: that if I did not
faint, I went within a pip of it.
A cold perspiration burst out all
over me, and I felt as if I was on
board the Dover and Calais boat and
about to call the steward. How
could I appear to the assembled
company? With what ridicule would
I be overwhelmed when the true
state of the case came to light!
And then what would <i>she</i> think?
<i>She</i> would write me down an ass—a
donkey unfit to be allowed to wander
from a thistle-grove. Her key
would open <i>my</i> leathern “conveniency,”
and the ghastly condition
of my wardrobe would be laid bare,
whilst I had profaned the sanctity
of—but it was too dreadful to contemplate.
How could I meet her?
How could I look into that beautiful
face again? How was I to recover
my wandering wardrobe? My
whole stock of clothes, save those I
wore, were now in the possession of
another, whilst in exchange I had
received a commodity of no value
to me whatever. On the contrary,
my prize was worse than valueless—it
was contraband.

Bang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang!
went the gong.

Let it go! What were its sounds
to me? If I were starving, I could
not descend in my present costume.

“Sir Geoffry Didcote begs me to
say, sir, that he waits on you in order
to enter the dining-room,”
mournfully announced the dismal
servitor.

“Please say to Sir Geoffry that I
don’t feel quite well—that I will go
down by and by.”

“Thank <i>you</i>, sir.” This was uttered
as if he wished to say: “I am
glad that you are dying. <i>I</i> knew
how it would be—you couldn’t deceive
<i>me</i>.”

The man had scarcely time to
deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry
himself panted and puffed into my
apartment.

“My dear sir—aw—I hope—aw—that
you are not—aw—ill. It
would—aw—grieve me very much”—here
he availed himself of my
mirror to adjust his spotless white
choker—“if—aw—upon your—aw—first
visit you—aw—became indisposed.”

Honesty, thought I, is the best policy,
and it saves a lot of trouble; so
I made a clean breast of it to the
pompous baronet.

“How very unfortunate—aw—for
the lady! We will dispense—aw—with
ceremony under—aw—the
peculiar, not to say delicate—aw—circumstances
of the case, and Lady
Didcote will—aw—receive you in
your—aw—present attire. You can
telegraph—aw—for reinforcements,
which—aw—will arrive on—aw—Monday
morning.”

I could not see the force of this.
I might easily telegraph for reinforcements,
.pn +1
but would they come?
Secondly, as my visit was to terminate
upon Monday, reinforcements
were not necessary, unless
they could be brought up at once.
I begged to be excused from attending
table; but this he would
not listen to, and, as he informed
me that I was keeping dinner waiting,
there was nothing for it but to
descend with him.

I have, when a boy, been lugged
into the school-room to suffer condign
punishment; at a later period
I have been forced into the
presence of a young lady of whom
I was deeply enamored; I have
had to march up to the pulpit in
Trinity College dining-hall to repeat
the long Latin grace amid the
muffled gibes of my peers; I have
been placed in positions where my
bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured
and my retiring modesty
tried by fire and water; but never
did I experience the pangs of the
rack until the full blaze of that
drawing-room burst upon my vision.
The apartment appeared to swim
round, carrying with it the form of
a hooked-nosed dowager in a turban,
who screwed an eye-glass into
the corner of a wicked old eye, to
have a good stare at the strange
figure her husband had introduced
into her <i>salon</i>.

A confused murmur of many
voices, in which “Who is he?” “What
is he?” “Stole a portmanteau,”
“Highway robber,” “Police” smote
upon my ear, whilst a general craning
of necks in my direction announced
the curiosity which my appearance
had naturally excited.

I am aware that I bowed to
something in blue drapery surmounted
by a head, that it placed
the tips of its fingers on my arm,
that I mechanically followed a
crowd of people towards an aperture
in the wall which proved to be
a door, that I plunged downwards
upon a chair, and that then I came
slowly to my senses. Having gulped
down three glasses of sherry in
rapid succession, I found myself
seated beside a gaunt young lady
of about five-and-thirty, so covered
with pearl powder that she was
only partially visible to the naked
eye. On my right hand sat a portly
dowager, who viewed with some
alarm my inroads upon the sherry,
and she appeared so interested in my
movements that I fully expected to
receive a temperance tract before
the evening was half over. There
were about twenty at table, all stiff,
solemn, and ceremonious.

“So you have been robbed?”
snappishly remarked the young lady
in blue.

“Oh! dear, no; merely an exchange
of portmanteaus.”

“How stupid!”

Now, whether this applied to me
or to the fact, I was not in the position
to say, so I merely rejoined:

“Very stupid <i>of</i> me and <i>for</i>
me.”

“How so?”

“Why, I was the offending party.”
And I endeavored to make myself
agreeable by narrating the circumstances
exactly as they had occurred.

“And do you mean to say that
you opened the lady’s trunk, sir?”
demanded my companion with great
asperity.

“In mistake, madam, I assure
you.”

The waspish lady waited until a
portion of the ice which she was
engaged in despatching had cleared
two very shaky-looking teeth bound
in gold.

“There are some mistakes, sir,
which no <i>gentleman</i> should make.”

This was quite enough for me.
.pn +1
To endeavor to make terms with
this foe were worse than folly, explanation
weakness, and concession
cowardice. She gained nothing,
however, by her viciousness; whilst
I remained upon the field and prepared
to bivouac, surrounded by
sturdy sentinels in the shape of
port, claret, and Madeira.

“The—aw—guard insisted upon
his taking the old lady’s—aw—portmanteau.”
And Sir Geoffry
was proceeding to retail his version
of the story when Lord Dundrum
gaily exclaimed:

“Oh! by Jove, we’d better put
the witness into the box. Let us
cross-examine the lawyer.”

“With all my heart,” said I; “the
absurdity of the sensation will redeem
itself by its novelty.”

My story flowed joyously along,
and peal upon peal of laughter
greeted me as I described my sensations
upon discovering the strange
garments.

“So—aw—the widow was—aw—young?”

“About eighteen, Sir Geoffry.”

“And pretty?” added his lordship.

I devoutly kissed my second finger
and thumb, and flung them in
the direction of the ceiling.

“I’ll lay five to two he never
hears of his portmanteau,” lisped
Captain Buckdash.

“Shall I be at liberty to hunt it
up?” said Lord Dundrum.

“Certainly. Are you on?”

“In tens?” asked his lordship.

“Ponies, if you but limit the period
to one week.”

“Done, Buckdash! I’ll book it.”
And the peer, producing a pocket-book,
entered the bet, the terms of
which he read aloud, and which the
gallant captain pronounced eminently
satisfactory.

“I’m afraid, my lord, that you’ll
lose your money,” I observed to
Lord Dundrum as we ascended to
the drawing-room.

“I’ll give you the same bet, and
that I’ll get your portmanteau, without
any interference of <i>yours</i>, in less
than a week—say five days.”

“You know the lady?”

“No.”

“You suspect who she is?”

“I have no more idea of who she
is, where she came from, or where
she is going to, than the man in the
moon. Will you evince your sincerity
by betting now?”

“The fact is, my lord, I cannot
afford to bet.”

“Quite right,” slapping me on
the shoulder. “Never do. It’s a
doosid bad, pleasant habit.”

“And might I venture to ask
how you purpose proceeding towards
winning your money?”

“I’ll tell you. I have just ordered
round a trap. I’ll drive to
Ballynamuckle Station and telegraph
along the whole line. If
she’s local or a county swell, we’ll
have her name and address to-night.
If, on the contrary, she is
not known along the line, she will
have gone on to Belfast. I’ll set
the police to work there, and put
advertisements in all the papers
on Monday morning. If Tuesday
tells me nothing, I’ll put the wires
in motion north of Belfast, and on
Wednesday we’ll have a touch at
Scotland. I feel certain, however,
that we’ll find her this side of
Newry.” And his lordship retired
for the purpose of equipping
himself for the road.

This bet was a lucky chance for
me. Not that I cared much whether
my wardrobe ever turned up
again or not, but I longed to discover
the identity of my fair acquaintance.
I would at least enjoy
the satisfaction of learning her
name, and gain some knowledge of
.pn +1
her surroundings, and then—pshaw!
bow over my restored baggage and
utter <i>Vale, Vale, Vale</i> to my three-hour
dream.

In the billiard-room the menkind
were assembled for pool. By a series
of ghastly flukes I managed to
clear the table and divided every
pool. Captain Buckdash muttered
something in reference to Dawson
Lane, and one young fellow, whose
lives were sacrificed to my ruthless
cue with startling rapidity, offered
to back me against some formidable
player in the Guards, laying the
odds. For the second time in this
eventful day did I feel myself fit
for the front rank. Lord Dundrum
lounged into the room about eleven
o’clock. He indicated by a look
that he wished to speak to me, and,
under cover of “splitting a bottle,”
exclaimed in a low tone:

“It’s all right.”

My heart gave a bound.

“The portmanteau is found.”

“Where?”

“At Nobberstown, the next station
but one. She evidently discovered
your mistake; for she tumbled
it out. It’s coming on.”

“And where is she?”

“Oh! hang me if I know or care.
My ponies are safe. <i>You</i> can look
her up.”

“Did she leave no message, no
directions?” I asked eagerly.

“Don’t know,” said his lordship,
as he chalked the top of his cue
preparatory to joining in the pool.

Lord Dundrum was correct in
saying that <i>I</i> should take up the
running now. It was my business
to make restitution and to deliver
the white elephant left on my hands
to its rightful owner. This task
should be undertaken at once. I
scarcely closed my eyes all night,
thinking of the <i>modus operandi</i>; and
when I came down to breakfast
next morning I had resolved upon
nothing more definite than a
searching cross-examination of the
<i>employés</i> at Nobberstown Station.

“I’ll thank you for a check,
Buckdash,” said Lord Dundrum, as
the gallant warrior entered the
breakfast-room.

“For what?” asked the captain.

“For Mr. Dawkins’ portmanteau.”

“Wait till you get it.”

“I have it here.” And as he
spoke he lugged my valise from
beneath the table, accompanied by
a roar of laughter from all assembled.

“A capital joke,” grinned the
captain.

“A capital joke, indeed! Hand
over the coin.”

Captain Buckdash turned to me.

“Mr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?”

“It is indeed,” I replied.

“The one which you left in the
railway carriage?”

“Yes.”

“I am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum.
You shall have a check
after breakfast; in the meantime
will you kindly inform us how you
managed to lay hold of it?” And
he cracked an egg with a violence
that almost crushed in the china
cup.

I searched for some note or mark
by which to obtain a clue to her
identity, but in vain; my leathern
“conveniency” was as bald as when
I purchased it behind the Bank of
Ireland. No message had been forwarded,
not a line of instruction. This
course appeared singular, inasmuch
as it was unlikely that she would
make no effort to regain her property;
and why lose this most legitimate
opportunity? Had she no desire
to place herself in communication
with <i>me?</i> Ah! there was that in
.pn +1
her glance which gave this thought
the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love
up to my eyebrows and badly hit.
I was obliged to come face to face
with myself, to place my hand upon
my heart, and to plead guilty. I
thought of the elder Mr. Weller,
and of his opinion respecting widows,
and voted him vulgar. My
preconceived ideas upon the subject
of relicts underwent a total
change, and now a bashful maiden
seemed but an insipid nonentity.
I longed to quit Rathdangan, and,
excusing myself under the plea of
an important professional engagement,
started for Nobberstown at
cockcrow.

This station consisted of simply
a “porter and a platform,” one
equally intelligent as the other, and
of the two the platform was “the
better man.”

“Sorra a know I know,” was the
invariable reply to almost every
query.

“Did the lady alight here?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“Did she give you no message?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“No card?”

“Sorra a wan.”

“Who handed you the portmanteau?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

A thought now flashed across my
brain: Fribscombe! He was not
the man to lose a chance of talking
to a pretty woman. He would
have told her who I was, and it was
through him that she had communicated.
How asinine not to have
thought of this before!

Chartering a jarvey, I started
across the country to the family
mansion of the Fribscombes, accompanied
by the two portmanteaus.

“I never opened my lips to her.
She dried up after you left, and
pulled down the shutters.” This
gave me a pang of the keenest delight.
“I got out at Killoughter,
the next station, and she went on.”

On my return to Dublin I caused
advertisements to be inserted in
several of the leading Irish papers;
I also tried the second column of
the <i>Times</i> and the <i>Glasgow Herald</i>,
but, alas! with no effect.

Six months had glided away, during
which she made no sign. The
portmanteau maintained possession
of a corner of my solitary apartment,
and the image of its whilome
proprietor defiantly held more than
one corner of my heart; indeed, I
may as well candidly confess that
it was strongly entrenched in all
four.

The summer assizes were over,
and the briefless ones flitted hither
and thither for the long vacation:
some to Switzerland, with Mont
Blanc in the distance—very much
in the distance—others the passes
of the Tyrol, sunny Spain, byways
in Brittany, or the Highlands of
Scotland. Connemara found its
true believers, and Killarney its
pious pilgrims. As for myself, I
was perforce compelled to substitute
the Dodder for the Rhine, the
Dublin mountains for the Alps, and
Sackville Street for the Boulevard
des Italiens. My aunt had contributed
the ten-pound note upon
which I had hung in fond anticipation
towards the building of Father
Donnelly’s new church at Shinanshone,
and the letter which conveyed
this intelligence concluded with
the following: “I don’t see your
name figuring in any of the trials,
good, bad, or indifferent. It’s all
Macdonogh and Armstrong. What
are you about, at all at all? At this
rate of going you’ll never see a silk
gown, let alone the bench. You
might as well be on the Hill of
.pn +1
Howth as in the Four Courts, if
you don’t stir yourself. Let me
see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh
and Armstrong during the
coming winter, or I’ll know the reason
why, and make my financial arrangements
accordingly.”

I was seated one lovely morning
in autumn gazing gloomily into
the street, which was as empty as
my own exchequer. Dreamy visions
of the golden glory of ripening
corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded
dells, of limpid pools and
purple-clad mountains mocked my
aching heart. I sighed the sigh of
impecuniosity, and railed at the
inconsistency of a fortune which
gave little Bangs, who hadn’t one
idea to rub against another, a
thousand per annum, a vulgar cad
like Hopkins a bagful of briefs,
and which left me high and dry
in a front garret in Eccles Street,
without a red cent to come into collision
with a battered sixpence in
my somewhat cavernous pockets.
Heigh-ho!

An outside car, driven at a frosty
pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness
of the street, and my gloom
was somewhat speedily dispelled
by the sight of my friend Tom
Whiffler’s honest and beaming face,
and his expressive and expansive
signals while yet a considerable
distance from the house. Tom is
always full of money, full of health,
and full of the most boisterous and
explosive spirits.

“Aha! you old cat on the tiles,”
he shouted, “come down from your
coign of vantage. I was afraid
you were out of town. Somebody
said you were on Circuit.” And
standing upon the foot-board of the
car, he burst forth with—

.pm verse-start
“Hail to our barrister back from the Circuit!
Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig!
Long may he live o’er his forehead to jerk it,
Long at a witness look burly and big!”
.pm verse-end

“Come up, for gracious sake!” I
cried, as I perceived heads peeping
from behind the partly-closed
shutters of an opposite house, inhabited
by a genteel family, who
wished their little world to imagine
them in Italy, France, Spain—anywhere
but in Dublin—during
the dog-days.

In a few seconds Tom bounded
into the apartment. “This is a
slice of luck to get you, old man.
Come, now, pack up your traps,
and we’ll have four days in the
County Wicklow. I shall have the
car in any case, and our hotel bills
will be mere bagatelles which we’ll
square up at Tib’s Eve. Lend me
a couple of shirts and things; you
can bring the baggage—a change
for two—and I’ll do the rest. We’ve
twenty-five minutes to catch the
train.”

Five minutes found Tom upon
one side of the car, myself upon the
other, and, calmly reposing in the
well between us, the neat little
portmanteau of the fair unknown.
I was compelled to make use of it,
as Whiffler had no “leathern conveniency,”
and my travelling-valise
had been lent to one of “ours,”
and was possibly at that particular
moment strapped upon the murderous
mound of luggage which encumbers
the groaning roof of the
Alpine diligence, or snugly ensconced
on the grape-strewn deck
of a Rhine or a Moselle steamer. It
gave me more than a pang to remove
it from its well-known corner.
A chord had been touched
which set all my memories vibrating,
and I handled it with as much
care and anxiety as though it were
a new-born infant or a rickety case
containing rack-rent or nitro-glycerine.

A glorious moonlight found us
driving through the Vale of Clara
.pn +1
<i>en route</i> to Glendalough—the sad,
stricken valley of the Seven Churches.
The hills, quietly entranced,
lay gazing upwards at the gentle
moon, who enfolded them in her
pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny
mantle of light. The Avonmore
far, far down in the valley musically
murmured while she glided
onwards to join the Avonbeg, who
joyously awaited her coming in the
sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest
watch-dog’s bark bayed up the valley,
and the perfume-laden air in
its holy calm was as sweet as an
angel’s whisper.

After “a square meal” of rasher
and eggs which would have put
the most elaborate <i>chef-d’œuvre</i> of
the <i>cuisine</i> out of count, we strutted
forth from the hostelry in the direction
of St. Kevin’s Bed, and heard
the oft-repeated legend of poor
Kathleen’s fate from the lips of a
very ragged but very amusing
guide, whose services we were
desirous of engaging for the morrow.

“Troth, thin, but it’s me father’s
son that’s sorry not to be wud yez;
but shure”—and here he lowered
his voice—“it’s in regard to me
bein’ in a hobble that I’m out in
the moonlight.”

“What scrape have you got yourself
into?” asked Tom Whiffler.
“Whiskey?”

“Musha, thin, it wasn’t a dhrop
o’ sperrits that done it <i>this</i> offer.”

“A <i>colleen</i>?

“Sorra a fear av all the colleens
from this to Wicklow Head.”

“Mistaking another man’s sheep
for your own?” laughed Tom.

“If ye wor spaikin’ airnest I’d
make ye sorry for them words,”
said the man in an angry tone; but
brightening up, he added: “Av yez
wor guessin’ from this to Candlemas
ye’d be out every offer. I got
into thrubble be raison av a saint,
an’ I’ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses
av English comes here
in the summer saison, an’ nothin’s
too holy but they’ll make a joke on
it; but the divvle will have his own
wan av these days. Well, sir, last
Monday I was engaged for to divart
a cupple of English, as bowld
as brass, an’ that vulgar that the
very cows turned their tails to thim
as we thravelled through the fields—sorra
a lie in it. I done me best
for to earn an honest shillin’, but,
on my word, wan av thim, a stout
lump av a man, gev me all soarts
av impidince, an’ whin I come
for to narrate about St. Kavin he
up’s an’ insults the holy saint to me
very face.

“'There never was no sich man,’
sez he.

“'There was, sir,’ sez I.

“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’
as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was
no betther nor—'

'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I,
intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin
was a holy man, an’ never done nothin’
but what was good an’ saintly.’
Well, sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed
saint a bad name, so I hot him
betune th’ eyes an’ rowled him on
the grass, an’ I planted his comrade
beside him. An’ now I’m the worst
in the world below at the hotel for
bating two blackguards that done
nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy
religion; an’ that’s why I can’t go
wud yez to-morrow.”

It was far into the “wee sma’
hours” when we parted with Myles
O’Byrne and gained sanctuary in
the double-bedded room which had
been told off to us. The pale and
gentle Luna was surrendering her
charge to the pink and rosy Aurora,
and we sought our couches in beautiful
budding daylight.

“Where’s your portmanteau,
.pn +1
Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler.
“I want to get at my things.”

To my utter dismay, the portmanteau
was not in the apartment.
To ring the bell at this unseemly
hour was but to alarm the entire
hotel; so, slipping off my shoes, I
descended to the hall in the hope
of discovering it in a heap of luggage
which lay piled in graceful
profusion near the entrance. My
search was vain, and, with secret
forebodings of another mischance in
connection with this unhappy valise,
I returned to the room and
retired to bed.

“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed
the waiter the next morning
whom I interrogated about the missing
article—“a thick lump of a
solid leather portmantle. I can take
the buke on it, if necessary, sir.
Here’s the boots; mebbe he can tell
us something. Jim, did ye see a
thick lump av a solid leather portmantle
lyin’ about?”

“I did,” replied the boots, who
was a man of much <i>physique</i> and
very few words.

“Ye did?”

“Yis.”

“Where is it, thin?”

“Where it ought to be.”

“Where’s that?”

“Wud th’ owner.”

“It was not left in my room,” I
exclaimed.

“It was left in number five.”

“Shure, number five’s gone,”
cried the waiter.

“It’s news yer tellin’ us,” observed
the boots with a surly grin.

“An’ is the portmantle tuk be
number five?”

“Yis.”

“Phew!” whistled the waiter.
“Be the mortial the fat’s in the
fire now, anyhow.”

Here was a situation! My misgivings
realized. My portmanteau
gone, perhaps never to return. How
could I face the owner? I never
gave up the hope of meeting her
and of restoring the property.

“Who slept in number five?” I
asked.

“Number five is two faymales.”

“When did they leave?”

“They left for Father Rooney’s
first Mass beyant at Annamoe.”

“Where were they going to?”

“To Lake Dan and Luggelaw.”

I proceeded to hold a council of
war—consisting of the landlord, the
waiter, the boots, two or three
stable-boys, and the surplus population
of the village—when it was
determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting
pony in pursuit of the fugitive
luggage.

I was two inches on a mild Havana
after such a breakfast as the
tourist alone can dispose of, when
the waiter burst into the summer-house
situated over the lake, whither
we had repaired to enjoy the
“witching weed.”

“The portmantle is safe, sir, an’
number five is here with it an’
wants for to see ye, sir.”

“Well, I do not want to see number
five, waiter, so just say—”

“I dar’n’t say nothin’, sir; she
slipped a half a crown into the heel
of me fist an’ towld me to hurry you
up,” burst in the waiter, now in a
white perspiration.

“I’ll not stir till I finish this cigar,
at all events, and there is a
good hour’s pull in it yet.”

“Och! murther, an’ she’s in such
a hurry—such a dainty little craythur;
an’ it was <i>so</i> dacent of her for
to journey back the road with it.”

This last thrust failed to pierce my
armor. The waiter was conscientiously
working out his half-crown.

“She’s quite convaynient in the
.pn +1
coffee-room, sir. I’ll show ye a
short cut across the bog.”

I listened and puffed, puffed and
listened.

“I must get back, sir. May I tell
her ye’ll be over in five minutes,
sir?”

“Tell her anything <i>you</i> like, my
friend, but out of this till I finish my
cigar I’ll not stir.”

Why I acted in this manner I was
at a loss to determine. My anxiety
for the valise almost amounted to
pain; and yet here was the cause
for worry removed, and I would not
even trouble myself to walk a few
hundred yards to the hotel to thank
the lady for returning with it, which,
as a gentleman, I was bound to do at
any cost as to personal discomfort.

“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested
Whiffler.

“Probably; or a strong-minded
female doing Wicklow on a geological
survey,” I added.

When I got back to the hotel,
which might have been an hour or so
subsequently, I found my portmanteau
safely deposited in my room.

“Where is this lady, until I—”

“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the
waiter in a reproachful tone, “but
she towld me for to give you this
bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece
of paper folded cocked-hat fashion.

I opened it.

“I have two regrets,” it said—the
geologist’s handwriting was exquisitely
feminine—“one, that I was
inadvertently the cause of inconvenience;
and the other, that I was
denied the opportunity of claiming
the portmanteau, as I imagine that
I recognize in it one which I lost
about eight months ago during a
railway journey to the north.”

I was literally stunned. I gazed
from the letter to the now astonished
waiter, and back from his vacant
countenance to the three-cornered
billet, which, alas! told so
much and yet so little. It bore no
name, no initial, no monogram, no
clue.

“Describe this lady’s appearance!”
I shouted, clutching the
waiter by his greasy collar, and imparting
to him no very delicate
shake.

“I never seen her; her veil was
foreninst her nose the whole time
she was spakin’ to me. The boy
that attindid her is gone to the
fair at Knockatemple.”

“Who saw her?”

“Barrin’ the masther, dickins a
wan; for Mary, the chambermaid,
started this mornin’ for Fogarty’s,
of Glinmaloure. She an’ the misthress
had a few words in regard
to—but here’s the masther.”

The burly host presented himself;
he had not encountered my
enslaver, for the bill had been paid
by the other lady.

“The red wan,” interposed the
waiter.

“Just so, Mick,” said his master
approvingly, and turning to me:
“They have gone on to Luggelaw,
sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry
to-night.”

I unbosomed myself to Tom
Whiffler, who immediately entered
into the affair <i>con amore</i>. “We’ll
hunt them,” he said; “we must
catch them at Latouche’s Cottage.
There is no exit from Luggelaw
except the one.”

The road from the Seven Churches
to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque.
Behind lies that lake whose
gloomy shore skylark never warbles
o’er, with Lugnacullagh frowning
sternly over its gloomy waters, and
the round tower standing like a
grim sentinel ready to challenge
the approach alike of friend and foe.
In front is the little village of Lara,
with Castle Kevin perched upon a
.pn +1
ledge of rock like an aerie’s nest,
and stretching away in the distance
the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe,
while to the left the purple-crowned
crags of Slonaveena seem
almost to topple into the placid
bosom of Lough Dan. It was a
lovely summer day—one of those
days that recall past joys, and in
which the present is but a voluptuous
dream.

At Roundwood we gained intelligence
of the objects of our pursuit.
The car had passed through about
half an hour previously; the ladies
had stopped at the hotel while the
horse was being baited, and had indulged
in that inevitable cup of tea
which is at once the dissipation and
the solace of the sex. The road to
the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent
of three miles, which must of
necessity be traversed upon “shanks’
mare,” and it is a blisterer. Not a
vestige of tree, and with scarcely as
much pasture as will satisfy the cravings
of a few stunted sheep, the sun
smiles grimly upon the entire roadway
and scorches the luckless
traveller whom destiny leads to the
little lodge perched on the summit of
the mountain. We were not spared,
and coats, waistcoats, and neckties
were cast upon the car, while we retained
our pocket-handkerchiefs to
mop our glowing faces, which resembled
two very full and exceedingly
dissipated-looking rosy moons.

Puffing, panting, blowing, mopping,
by one supreme effort we
gained the table-land which crowns
the ascent, and, plunging towards an
adjacent thicket of pines, took tremendous
headers into the middle of
it, where we lay gasping like a pair
of stranded fish.

“Blow <i>me</i>,” exclaimed Tom Whiffler,
“if I’ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill
widow-hunting in July again. I
wish you and your portmanteau and
widow at Timbuctoo!”

A low, musical laugh quite near
us; a rustle of female garments—my
heart gave one mighty throb;
for right in front of us, not two
yards distant, with her large, lustrous
gray eyes bent searchingly upon
me, stood the owner of the peripatetic
portmanteau.

To spring to my feet, to apologize
for our <i>déshabille</i>—the car was
as yet half a mile down the hill—to
mumble some horrible incoherencies,
was the impulse and action of half
a minute.

She seemed puzzled to know how
to act, but her friend, the “red
wan,” cut the Gordian knot of the
present embarrassment by a fit of
loud, hearty, ringing laughter, which,
maelstrom-like, sucked us one after
another into it, and whirled us into
an ocean of mirth before we knew
where we were exactly, or what it
was all about. There are some
contagious laughs in the world, and
she of the ruby locks was the fortunate
possessor of one.

Two things establish instantaneous
and easy communication with strangers—with
women a baby, with men
a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if the
situation be a comical one, the
laugh beats infant and tobacco. In
this case it proved a talisman, and
a very few words found us at our
ease while I unfolded my tale.

I was i’ the vein and told my story
well.

“Why did you not send it after
me?” she asked.

“I had no clue,” I replied.

“I flung my card to the porter
at the station.”

“It must have gone down the
line; for the only reply I could
awake in that self-same porter was,
'Sorra a know I know.’” And I
.pn +1
devoutly dwelt upon all the bitter
anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration
had cost me, to all of which
I found a deeply-interested listener.

Before the sun had set on Luggelaw’s
deep-wooded vale I learned
much that satisfied me as to the
past, and a something—inferentially
only—that caused the white wings
of Hope to flutter against my heart.
Lucy Donaldson had been married
to Captain George Middlecomb,
of the Sixth Dragoon Guards, if not
against her will, at least under the
pressure of being talked into it.
Captain Middlecomb had died
within a year of their marriage of
<i>delirium tremens</i>.

Need I say that we travelled up
to Dublin as a party; that I became
a constant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb’s
beautiful residence—Arcachon
Villa at Killiney; that—

I suppose I should not divulge
it, but, as I have written so far, I
may as well finish the chapter. After
all, I won’t. Those who have
been interested, however, in the
portmanteau may be pleased to
know that it is now the common
property of Lucy and the writer.
.sp 4
.h3 id=bridesp1
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
.sp 2
.h4
I. | ST. DOROTHEA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The little martyr-maid of Cæsarea—
  I do not a more lovely legend know.
  Said young Theophilus, mocking: “Dost thou go
To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea,
Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea,
  Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!”
  The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so
She passed to death along the Roman Via.

A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame,
  Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn
A blooming boy to young Theophilus came,
  With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn
Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim
  To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h4
II. | ST. CECILIA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Two visions of divine Cecilia,
  Born of Italian art, possess my mind.
  One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined,
Reveals her as in catacomb she lay.
The budding maiden in her chaste array—
  Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind
  Clipt flower to stem!—to that cold sleep declined,
Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.

Her heart’s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse;
  She was not chary of sweet music’s gift
I see the listening rapture of her brows:
  I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift
Humanity to God! The heavens arouse,
  And storms and seraphs o’er the white keys drift.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
III. | ST. AGNES.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
I was God’s maid, less woman than a child;
  And yet they threw me in the common stews
  Naked as I was born, for men to use.
The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled,
From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled—
  Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose;
  And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse,
A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!

My life’s green branch they lopped with cruel sword;
  But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well;
  And, walking in the meads of asphodel,
I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord:
  I lead his lambkins by my lily bell,
Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=shakspere
SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.[#]
.sp 2
.fn #
<i>Shakspere, from an American Point of
View: including an Inquiry as to his Religious
Faith and his Knowledge of Law; with the Baconian
Theory considered.</i> By George Wilkes.
London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
1877. 8vo, pp. ix. 471.
.fn-

This elegantly-printed volume,
published in England, though by
an American author, has for its subject
four distinct lines of inquiry;
two of these—the validity of a
theory which originated in this
country a few years ago, that
Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote
the plays known as Shakspere’s;
and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s
legal knowledge—though
carried through the work, are subordinate
to the other two—the
anti-democratic tone of the dramatist
and the fact that he was a
Catholic. These are the real
issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes
holds that Shakspere should not
exert the influence in this country
that he does in England, and he arraigns
him at the bar of American
public opinion to answer the indictment
that he is always a strenuous
upholder of royal authority, an advocate
of the privileges of the nobility,
regarding them as far removed
above the <i>ignobile vulgus</i>, for whom
on all occasions the poet manifests
the utmost contempt. That a
work teeming with constant lessons
of this character is no fit guide for
Americans he makes the real argument
of his book. The second
count is apparently intended to be
no less damaging. Shakspere was
a Catholic, and as such should exercise
no influence on a Protestant
community. His influence in England
for three hundred years has
not apparently won that country
back to Catholicity, and the United
States are probably as safe. Still,
it may serve for a new agitation to
get up a cry: “No Shakspere in
the public schools!”

That Mr. Wilkes considers it a
danger is seen by the fact that he
uses toward Catholics every vile
nickname drawn from the slums
by religious hate to degrade us in
the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet
surely a Shaksperean scholar
should not need reminding that to
rob one of his good name is worse
than stealing his purse, oft-times as
bad as taking his life. Not only
this, but he more than once represents
the Catholic Church as actuated
by a hatred of intense fury
against the Jews, as an earnest upholder
of the unlawful claims of
aristocracy, as an enemy of popular
rights, and as an excuser of perjury.
While thus under a strong
anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger
even than he at all conceives—he
has attempted to understand
Catholic terms and usages,
and to enter into that world which
to Protestants seems so strange and
inconceivable—the world of Catholic
thought.

The question as to the religious
convictions of Shakspere is not a
new one. No Catholic has ever
read the great dramatist without
feeling that he was strangely lacking
in the usual anti-Catholic element,
even if he did not impress him as
often Catholic in thought.

Catholic writers in English periodicals,
such as the <i>Rambler</i> and
others, had already claimed Shakspere
.pn +1
as a Catholic. All evidence,
extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to
sustain the position. His family
belonged to the gentry on the father’s
and mother’s side, and on
both sides had adhered to Catholicity
after the change of religion in
England. The will of his maternal
grandfather, Robert Arden, who
died in 1556, is distinctly Catholic:
“I bequeath my soul to Almighty
God, and to our Blessed
Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy
company of heaven.” Of his father
there is still extant a <i>Testament
of the Soul</i>—not, as Mr. Wilkes
supposes, a form drawn up by some
chaplain of the family, but that <i>Testamentum
Animæ Christianæ</i> which,
in Latin and the vernacular, has
for centuries been found in Catholic
devotional manuals, and the
copying of which, as a kind of
formal act, has been maintained
in many families—certainly was
in the family of the present writer
down to the nineteenth century.
Shakspere’s father, too, was fined
for non-attendance at the established
church. So far as the families
of his parents were concerned, he
was evidently Catholic, and must
in childhood have been familiar
with the thoughts and language
of English Catholics. How far in
mature age he retained the impressions
of youth, or how faithful
he may have been to the teachings
of his religion, we have no
means of judging. The lightness
with which moral obligations lay on
him, his career as a wild but gifted
man, give little ground for supposing
him to have practised the religion
he may still have professed.

In his dramas Shakspere constantly
uses Catholic terms, speaks
of Catholic clergy, religious of both
sexes, rites and ceremonies with
respect, and in many cases turns
his ridicule upon the new order
of clergy in England. The Shaksperes
and Ardens had both held
office under the Tudor kings, and
the dramatist shows the utmost
zeal for royal power as against
the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this
gives his position at once. His
life was not a regular one; and he
could scarcely, in those days of
persecution, have been a firm, consistent,
practical Catholic, although
he clung to the faith, never abjured
it, and had no liking for any of the
new forms. His Bible reading was
in the Protestant versions of the
day, not in the Rheims and Douay,
of which no influence has ever
been detected in his plays. That
he died a good Catholic needs
proof; but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of
the meaning of the term are vague,
since he tells us that Henry VIII.
died a good Catholic.

The fact that Shakspere makes
his characters—most of whom are
Catholics in time or country—speak
as Catholics is really no proof of
his own Catholicity, any more than
Longfellow’s almost constant correctness
in his use of Catholic
terms and familiarity with Catholic
thought is proof that he is a Catholic.
The fact is, we admit, suspicious;
for during centuries Protestant
writers seem to have made
it a point to display the most intense
ignorance of Catholic terms, usages,
rites, and ceremonies, and equally
a point to insist on talking about
what they vaunt their ignorance of.
But, going back to Shakspere’s time,
we must bear in mind that the new
religion had not yet taken any hold
on the people at large; that the
only religious terms and expressions
that conveyed any definite ideas to
their minds were those of the old
faith sanctioned by the usage of
centuries, and that the terms introduced
.pn +1
by the various classes of reformers
were diverse, new, strange,
and, to the people, a mere ridiculous
jargon. The coinage of a
new religious vocabulary took time
and skill. It was no easy task to
shape Bible translation so as to
avoid old ideas and thoughts. This
new jargon rose to be a language
when the King James Bible was
imposed on the people after the Restoration.
Though long vaunted
as a well of English undefiled, philologists
now admit that it is the
language of no period of English
history, of no district of English
soil; it was a hash made to meet
the pressing want, with obsolete
words, terms drawn from every
county of England, and new-coined
expressions, all forced into the service
so as to supply the English
people with a new vocabulary of
religious thought.

To convey religious ideas in
Shakspere’s time, the readiest
words were those familiar to the
people. The dramatist employs
them with no regard to the country
or time. The pagan Hamlet
refers to the Blessed Sacrament,
Extreme Unction, the Mass, and
Office for the Dead; they talk of
confession and beads in the <i>Comedy
of Errors</i>; of indulgences in the
<i>Tempest</i>, and even in <i>Troilus and
Cressida</i>; of fasting days in <i>Pericles</i>
and <i>Coriolanus</i>; and christening
is spoken of in <i>Titus Andronicus</i>.
The anachronisms were apparently
not noticed in his time,
nor taken into account.

The system had not been adopted
of entirely ignoring Catholic
terms; there were no others, and
Shakspere used what he had. One
word seems to be avoided. The
Mass is introduced only like
Moore’s “neat little Testament,
just kept to swear by.” It occurs
only in the form of an oath, except
in one instance, to which Mr.
Wilkes devotes a chapter. Juliet,
going to her confessor, asks:

.pm verse-start
“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”
.pm verse-end

Mr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened
argument to show that it was
the custom at that time in England
to celebrate Mass at night.
He says: “I have found many illustrations
from Catholic reviews
and other reliable authorities of
the practices of the hedge-priests,
as they were called, in times of
Catholic persecution, whose business
it was to go in the darkness of
the evening to the houses of the
faithful to celebrate a nocturnal
Mass.” We should be much pleased
to see any such authorities.
He cites only an article in the
<i>Manhattan Monthly</i> last year, where
a writer speaks of priests in Ireland
“who often at dead of night fled
to the mountain cave, the wooded
glen, and wild rath to celebrate
Mass for the faithful”; but travelling
by night is one thing, and
saying Mass at night is another.
Again, there were no priests in England
answering to the Irish hedge-priests.
The priests in England
found shelter in the houses of Catholic
gentry; they had not a mass
of poor and oppressed faithful
among whom they lived. But
neither in Ireland nor in England
is there a single example that the
writer has ever found of a Mass
said in what may be called the evening—that
is, between sunset and
midnight—much less of its being so
frequent an occurrence as to make
Shakspere refer to evening Mass
as an ordinary matter. Dodd’s
<i>History of the Church</i>, Challoner’s
<i>Missionary Priests</i>, the works of
Father Parsons, Campion, and other
.pn +1
Catholic writers of the time, never
allude to any single case where
such a Mass was said. Nor is
there in any liturgical work reference
to any such custom ever having
obtained in England.

Mr. Wilkes seems to feel that
the theory is not very solid. He
next refers to the custom in some
parts of saying a Low Mass immediately
after the Sunday High Mass.
“Shakspere may have considered
the last or one o’clock Mass an
evening Mass.” The play itself
makes this untenable. It was late
in the afternoon when Juliet went
to the friar. When she comes
back the nurse says:

.pm verse-start
“See where she comes from shrift with merry look”—
.pm verse-end

not half as charmingly as Longfellow
describes Evangeline as most
beautiful

.pm verse-start
        “When, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walks with God’s benediction upon her.”
.pm verse-end

Then, a few lines lower down, Lady
Capulet, in the same scene, says:

.pm verse-start
“’Tis now near night.”
.pm verse-end

This fixes the time too clearly to
allow that any reference is made to
a Mass about mid-day. “Evening
Mass” is simply nonsense; but the
phrase has charmed later writers,
and several poets introduce the
expression, just as poets and
prose writers have all copied the
Protestant Bible misprint, “Strain
<i>at</i> a gnat,” instead of “Strain out a
gnat.”

But the word Mass here is against
all Catholic custom and reason.
Juliet wishes to go to confession.
She politely asks her confessor
whether he is at leisure or whether
she shall come again at a later
hour. Would any one, under the
same circumstances, propose to
come to confession to the priest
when he was saying Mass? It
would be just the time when he
could not possibly hear confessions.
If he expected to say Mass soon,
he would hear her then, and neither
he nor she would think of putting
it off till he had begun his Mass.
Shakspere critics have boggled
and blundered over this without
seeing this incongruity, which to a
Catholic is as patent as the day.
What, then, does it mean? Juliet
can ask only whether he will hear
her then or whether she shall come
later. Now, if we consider Shakspere
to have written:

.pm verse-start
“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?”
.pm verse-end

the whole thing is as natural, consistent,
and usual to Catholic ideas
as can be. Then there is no such
absurdity as evening Mass, or going
to confession to a priest who is
saying Mass. The dense ignorance
of later times on every Catholic
matter will easily account for the
neglect to correct the palpable
error in the actual text.

The fact that, while Shakspere
speaks of religion as the monastic
state, religious, monks, nuns, convents,
monasteries, beads, penance,
month’s mind, dirge, requiem, purgatory,
indulgences, relics, shrines,
the housel (Eucharist), christening
or baptism, aneling (anointing), the
cross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere
in any of his plays speaks of the
Mass (except in the oath “By the
Mass”), is a strong argument against
its use here. Convents and monasteries
were abolished; relics and
shrines were gone; no dirges or requiems
resounded in the old church
walls; allusions to them were simply
allusions to something deemed
past and gone; but there were
nearly a thousand Mass-priests in
.pn +1
England—men who carried their
lives in their hands, over whom the
severest edicts of the law were
hanging like the sword of Damocles.
To talk of the Mass as a
service with respect was verging on
high treason. Having avoided it
everywhere else, he would scarcely
introduce it here absurdly—no less
absurdly to him than to us.

At that time, though the government
was anti-Catholic, the state
church was a mere matter of office.
There was little zeal in its members—little
more than conformity to law.
The Puritans were active and zealous
in spreading their doctrines;
but the people were to a great extent
still Catholic, and, with many
nobles and gentlemen as leaders,
and a greater number of priests
than during the next two centuries,
formed a power which was finally
crushed by the Civil War. With
this body Shakspere sympathized.
He was not of the stuff to make a
martyr. Ben Jonson and Massinger
were, we know, Catholics, but
not a single act of Shakspere’s is
recorded that stamps him as a
Catholic. He was not fined as a
recusant, had no intercourse with
known Catholics, in all arrests under
the penal laws there is no allusion
to him, even as using his undoubted
influence with the great to
shield some poor victim. With
the mass of the people, at court
and not at court, he ridiculed the
new Gospellers, as we do Millerites
or any other oddities. Against
royal supremacy or the religion
established by law, the Common
Prayer, or the bishops who had
been intruded into the old Catholic
sees, Shakspere says nothing. His
ridicule is never launched at them.
His wit is turned, as was that of the
court circle, at the Puritan element.
The state church was respectable,
but lacked earnestness, piety, and
zeal: it was simply a state affair.
Those whose minds and imaginations
tended to effusive piety found
themselves repulsed. Gradually
they camped apart and formed new
organizations. In Shakspere’s time
the government and the government
church laughed at them, when
they should have used them to
build up the Church of England.
Just so in the following century
they repulsed Wesley. Shakspere
takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic
side; and there were no
prophets on that side to see that
James’ son was to die on the block
and the Church of England be abolished
by these very Puritans. That
he had any direct idea of attacking
Protestantism as a system, or making
his dramas—with their coarse
and often impure speech, such as
then found favor with Elizabeth
and her court—an arm against the
Reformation, is absurd, and Mr.
Wilkes, in going through play after
play to note every praise of convents
or religious practices as done
with a direct view to elevate the
Catholic Church, is extravagant.
We have but to remember that
Protestantism had then no institutions,
no religious rites or practices,
nothing absolutely for a poet or
dramatist to employ as illustrations.
Protestant poets and artists
feel the poverty to this day, and
in despair turn from cold, set formalism
to Catholic themes, where
poetry finds so many a subject.

Our American critic has endeavored
to follow out Catholic
thoughts, but not always successfully.
Thus, in <i>Richard III.</i> Elizabeth
addressing her murdered children:

.pm verse-start
“If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,”
.pm verse-end

and Buckingham:
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“If that your moody discontented souls
Do through the clouds behold this present hour,”
.pm verse-end

are gravely put down as evidences
of Shakspere’s recognition of the
doctrine of purgatory, as though
every believer in ghosts must be a
believer in purgatory. There are
some comical remarks about Shakspere’s
familiarity with “the intricacies
of the Roman Catholic
faith,” because in <i>Henry VI.</i> we
find:

.pm verse-start
“Although by sight his sin be multiplied,”
.pm verse-end

when surely the Scriptural injunction
to pluck out an eye that leads
one to sin might explain it without
his getting tangled in intricacies.
His knowledge of the marriage service
also seems peculiar; the rituals
we know are hardly the origin
of Shakspere’s marriage form.

Mr. Wilkes is evidently led away
by his theory in his forced Catholic
interpretation of many passages
of the dramatist; and his desire to
show that the whole series of dramas
was a device of the Catholic
Church to attack Protestantism in
England induces him to strain
much to support his view, and often
to jump at unwarranted conclusions,
as in making Hartley, in the
strange Girachy case, to have been
a priest. A man might be hanged
as a Catholic priest—as Ury was
a century ago within sight of the
spot where Mr. Wilkes’ office now
stands—and yet not have been even
a Catholic. There is no Catholic
record of priest or layman suffering
in connection with this affair.

Hence, while we admit Mr.
Wilkes’ diligence and ability in
studying Shakspere, we must regret
that his judgment, like that of too
many, has been warped by the old
anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of
giving the plays a character which
neither friend nor foe of Catholicity
at the time dreamed of ascribing to
them.

In treating the question of Shakspere’s
legal knowledge, he is free
from bias, and hence easily perceives
and often exposes the exaggeration
which induces learned
men of the law to interpret much
that any attendant at courts, whether
as witness or juror, might easily
acquire as proof of serious legal
study. The length to which the legal
argument has been pushed has
led to similar claims by other professions;
but a young man of such
Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly
was could scarcely have
attempted to obtain admission to
the bar in those days.

Certainly, as Mr. Wilkes well
maintains, the amount of legal
knowledge and the use of legal terms
manifested in the plays are not of
the character that we should expect
from one who had held such eminent
legal and judicial positions as
Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he
shows, the only difficulty. The
style of the dramas and that of Bacon’s
acknowledged writings are utterly
different; the conception of
thoughts and their clothing in language
are both distinct. The ear
attuned to Shakspere finds in Bacon
a measure, an adaptation of
words, a symmetry of his own, utterly
at variance with the dramatist.
Wilkes’ euphonic test has great
weight; and he well and aptly cites
Bacon to show that the chancellor
made style a test of disputed authorship.
If the Baconian theory
is but “a bubble which has never
floated among the public with
any amount of success,” it has
doubtless found some advocates,
and Mr. Wilkes has strengthened
the arguments against it.

His argument against Shakspere
as one who worships a lord and
.pn +1
despises the middle and lower
classes has but the one fault: that
it takes our modern American theories
as the test—our theories, and
not our practice; for after all personal
liberty has, in a certain
sense, steadily declined in America
during the last century, and
many of the rights possessed by
individuals in Shakspere’s time, and
enjoyed by our ancestors down to
the Revolution, have been swept
away in the name of liberty, while
general and local taxation has
reached a point that often amounts
practically to confiscation of all revenue,
and sometimes of the whole
estate. In point of fact, the lower
classes among us are more oppressed
in person and property by official
power, and less able to obtain
legal redress, than they were
in England in Shakspere’s time.
The distinction of rank was then
as absolute almost as that of the
Hindoo castes, and the contemptuous
style of the day in which the
aristocratic portion treated their inferiors
was caught up too readily
by Shakspere. Mr. Wilkes develops
this element steadily through
the work, and makes it, as we have
seen, the basis of one of his heaviest
charges against the dramatist.
He treats the point skilfully, and
the subject affords a fine scope for
discussion. For our own part, we
think that he carries his theory too
far, and that Shakspere may find
an advocate who will relieve him
from much of the obloquy and secure
his claim to respect in America.

Shakspere literature is now a
field so vast, and has won contributions
from so many able minds and
eloquent pens, that it requires some
courage to produce a new work on
the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes
has certainly produced a volume
that will take a prominent place
among the Shaksperiana. It gives
utterance to many new views; the
whole treatment, being thoroughly
American, is fresh and free from
much of the conventional bias that
is almost inevitable in England;
while solid German learning, by its
very seriousness and profundity,
seems often to miss the point and
<i>finesse</i> of the dramatist.

The Catholic part is so prominent
that we could not but treat it
plainly and frankly, addressing as
we do more exclusively a circle of
Catholic readers. We do so with
no wish to be merely censorious,
and with our recognition of the
author’s evidently careful study and
desire to treat the question fairly.

“He presents the volume,” he
avows, “rather as a series of inquiries
than as dogmatic doctrine, and
strives,” he says, “to support them
only by such an amount of controversy
as is legitimately due from
one who invites the public to a
new discussion.”
.pn +1
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Essays and Reviews</sc> By Rt. Rev. J. L.
Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 355.
New York: The Catholic Publication
Society. 1877.
.pm letter-end

The author of these essays has been
recently raised to the dignity of the episcopate
and appointed to the newly-created
see of Peoria, Ill. His name and
fame as an author, preacher, and orator
are already widely known in this country.
His <i>Life of Archbishop Spalding</i>,
his illustrious uncle, will remain one
of the landmarks of Catholic history and
biography in the United States. By this
important and valuable work the name
of the learned and distinguished author
is at present best known outside of the
immediate circle with whom friendship
and the round of daily life connect him.
He has done, however, much more than
this. He has used his great gifts incessantly
and in whatever way they could
prove of service to the cause which every
word he utters and every line he writes
proclaim he has alone at heart—the
growth and strengthening of Christ’s
church, the defence of Catholic faith
and doctrine, and the spread of Christ’s
kingdom on earth. With this view he
has even gone down to that lowly, much
neglected, yet most important field of
editing a series of Catholic school-books—that
issued by the Catholic Publication
Society.

He has been a constant and most valued
contributor to the pages of this magazine,
and a selection of his articles—which,
had he chosen, might have been
much larger—goes to form the present
volume of <i>Essays and Reviews</i>. As they
come before us now in book-form we
are glad to have this opportunity of saying
publicly what we have always felt,
not only in regard to these but also all
other contributions from the same pen:
that they are of the very best kind of that
peculiarly modern, peculiarly favorite,
and peculiarly difficult form of literature—the
magazine article. Dr. Brownson
used to say that there were not half a
dozen men in this country who could
write a really good review article.
Whether that be so or not, we are sure
that the veteran reviewer would not
have excluded these essays from his
category. And what we here state regarding
them is only an echo of the
general opinion, so far as it reaches us
through the medium of the public press
and the private verdict of excellent
judges. The style is fascinating, glowing,
brilliant. There are here and there
passages of extreme beauty and eloquence.
There is nothing like mere
verbiage or redundance. There is <i>a
man</i> behind it all—a man of knowledge,
of wide yet careful culture, writing in
dead earnest, observing the march of
events while the history of the past is
ever present to him, with power and
courage to say what he means in a manner
that all will understand. Not one
of these articles fell dead. The leading
one, “The Catholic Church in the United
States, 1776-1876,” excited universal
interest and attention not alone in this
country but abroad, and a distinguished
writer in the <i>Correspondant</i> made it the
chief text of an important article on the
United States. No history or historical
sketch that we have seen gives so complete
and profound a view of the history,
the trials, and struggles of the Catholic
Church in this country within the century
as that article. The other essays
are of a piece with it. Their very titles
speak their timeliness: “The Persecution
of the Church in the German Empire,”
“Prussia and the Church” (three
essays), “German Journalism,” etc. Perhaps
the most valuable of all, however,
are the three essays on the “Comparative
Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism
on National Prosperity,” for
which M. de Laveleye’s well-known
pamphlet furnished a text. They are
eminently characteristic of the writer.
He faces everything, shirks nothing.
He takes up the subjects of “Wealth,”
“Education,” and “Morality”—just the
very points on which Protestant writers
are in the habit of claiming superiority
for Protestant over Catholic nations—and
how he treats them we leave to the reader’s
enjoyment.

We are often asked the kind of article
needed for <sc>The Catholic World</sc>. We
can recommend no better text-book to
.pn +1
such applicants than this volume of
<i>Essays and Reviews;</i> nor can we recommend
anything fresher, better, or more
interesting to Catholics generally who
are anxious to defend their faith on
points where it is often believed to be
most assailable.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Magister Choralis</sc>: a Theoretical and
Practical Manual of Gregorian Chant
for the use of the clergy, seminarists,
organists, choir-masters, choristers,
etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl,
cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon.
Translated and enlarged (from the
fourth German edition) by Rev. N.
Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the
Immaculate Conception, Dublin.
Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati:
Frederick Pustet.
.pm letter-end

This excellent and most timely work
is one we have long desired to see.
Many pastors of churches and their
organists have been willing to do something
towards the introduction of the
holy chant in the divine offices, but the
means of instruction have been almost
wholly wanting. Very few organists
and choir-directors in the United States
have made any study whatever of the
chant, and the greater number are not
able to read even its notation. We have
felt and lamented the difficulties in the
way of those who, convinced of the
claims of Gregorian chant, and wearied
and disgusted with the wretched cheap
concert performances they have been
forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers,
have longed to rid themselves of
the “church music” nuisance and again
hear the true song of the church resounding
in the sanctuary. Even with ample
pecuniary resources it would not have
been enough to issue an order to the
choir-director to organize a Gregorian
choir, or even to sing some portions of
the chant from the organ gallery. The
work before us solves almost all these
difficulties. Of course the organist will
need to study the character of the chant
in other works, that he may be able to
appreciate its tonality and style, and to
give it its true accompaniment, without
which he would be more likely to produce
poor <i>music</i> than good <i>chant</i>, or a
detestable mixture of both, such as one
commonly finds published in various
Catholic “choir-books” and books of
so-called “Services of the Catholic
Church.”

We recommend to Gregorian organists
the careful study of the harmonies
of John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual
and Vesperal, the <i>Organum Comitans
by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment
d’Orgue pour le Graduel et Antiphonarium
de Rheims et Cambrai</i>, by Messrs. Dietsch
and Tessier.

The only faults we have to find with
Father Haberl’s work are, first, the rules
as given for the Italian pronunciation of
Latin, especially for the pronunciation of
the word <i>excelsis</i>, which is directed to be
pronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second,
the rule on page 66 directing the elision
of the last vowel of a word when followed
by another vowel in the next
word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret
to see this rule carried out in the new
Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet.
This rule may do for <i>reading</i> classic poetry,
but, if we mistake not, such elision
is absolutely forbidden in the <i>recitation</i> of
the divine Office, whether read or sung.
In all former editions of the Vesperal
we have found an extra note provided
for the superfluous syllable.

We cannot bring ourselves to sing or
say

.pm verse-start
Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,
.pm verse-end

or

.pm verse-start
Quænam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas
Grates pro merit-est apta rependere?
Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus
Und-Ecclesia nascitur.
.pm verse-end

How is one to sing <i>namqu-aperis</i>?
and what are we to think of <i>clavor-aditus</i>
for <i>clavorum aditus</i>, and <i>ill-hic</i> for <i>ille,
hic</i>? We would like to be referred to
some authority on this subject. That
this work has already reached the fourth
edition in Ratisbon is a very encouraging
sign of the restoration of Gregorian
chant among our German brethren.
May it find a wide-spread sale in our
own country!
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>Golden Sand</sc>: A Collection of little
Counsels for the Sanctification and
Happiness of Daily Life. Translated
from the French. New York: Sadlier
& Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

We have not seen for a long time a
more charming little hand-book of daily
piety than the modest volume of which
a young lady, who is too modest to put
her name on the title-page, has here
given us an excellent translation. Miss
Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted
for the publication of this version
.pn +1
of <i>Paillettes d’Or</i>, has turned the simple
and unaffected original into equally
simple and attractive English. First
published periodically in the form of
tracts, these short chapters of practical
counsels were afterwards collected in
pocket volumes, and the book now before
us, though it could be read through
in a morning, contains the series for
several years. It is addressed to people
in the world, and it embraces rules for the
sanctification of all the actions of life,
for making home happy and the domestic
hearth an altar of blessing and sacrifice.
No one can read a few of its pages
without feeling. “Here is something
that just suits my case; the circumstances
described here are just my own; the
temptations are mine; the little trials
are mine; nothing can be easier than to
make the virtues mine, too.” Several
chapters of the book, for instance, are
devoted to what the author styles “The
Angels of the Hearth,” and here is a
description of “The Angel of Little Sacrifices”:

“Have you never seen her at work?

“Have you never at least felt her influence?

“In every Christian family and in all
pious communities, as the image of his
providence in the household, God has
placed the angel of little sacrifices, trying
to remove all the thorns, to lighten all
the burdens, to share all the fatigues.

“She has for her motto these gracious
words of an amiable saint: Good makes
no noise, and noise effects no good.

“Thus she is like a ray of sunlight,
lighting, warming, giving life to all, but
inconveniencing no one.

“We feel that she is with us, because
we no longer experience those misunderstandings
of heretofore, those rancorous
thoughts, those deliberate coolnesses
which spoil family life; because we no
longer hear those sharp, rude words
which wound so deeply; because affectionate
sentiments mount readily from
the heart to the lips, and life is sweeter.

“Who, then, has absorbed that self-love
which would not yield; that egotism
which mingled with the most sincere
friendship; that self-indulgence, in fine,
which always sought ease?

“The angel of little sacrifices has received
from heaven the mission of those
angels of whom the prophet speaks, who
removed the stones from the road, lest
they should bruise the feet of travellers.

“And that of the angels who, according
to the simple legend of the first
Christians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath
the feet of Jesus and Mary in their flight
into Egypt....

“But, like them, she is oftener invisible;
she does her work in secret.

“There is a place less commodious
than another; she chooses it, saying with
a sweet smile, How comfortable I am
here!

“There is some work to be done, and
she presents herself for it simply with the
joyous manner of one who finds her happiness
in so doing.

“It is an object of trifling value, of
which she deprives herself to give to her
who the evening before has manifested a
desire to possess one like it.

“How many oversights repaired by
this unknown hand!

“How many neglected things put in
their places, without our ever seeing how
they came there!

“How many little joys procured for
another without his ever having mentioned
to any one the happiness which they
would give him!

“Who has known thus how to do good
in secret? Who has known how to divine
the secrets of the heart?

“Does a dispute arise? She knows
how to settle it by a pleasant word which
wounds no one, and falls upon the slight
disturbance like a ray of sunlight upon
a cloud.

“Should she hear of two hearts estranged,
she has always new means of reuniting
them without their being able to show
her any gratitude, so sweet, simple, and
natural is what she does.

“But who will tell the thorns which
have torn her hands, the pain her heart
has endured, the humiliations her charity
has borne?

“And yet she is always smiling.

“Does sacrifice give her joy?

“Have you never seen her at work,
the angel of little sacrifices?

“On earth she is called a mother, a
friend, a sister, a wife.

“In heaven she is called a saint.”

Here is another example of the familiar
and easy spirit, the clearness, the
practicality of this admirable little counsellor:

“<sc>What is my Cross of To-day?</sc>—It
is that person whom Providence has
placed near me, and whom I dislike;
who humiliates me constantly by her
.pn +1
disdainful manner; who wearies me by
her slowness in the work which I share
with her; who excites my jealousy because
she is loved more than I and because
she succeeds better than I; who
irritates me by her chatter, her frivolity,
or even by her attentions to me.

“It is that person who, for some vague
reason, I believe to be inimical to me;
who, according to my excited imagination,
watches me, criticises me, ridicules
me.

“She is there, always there.... My
efforts to avoid her are of no avail.

“A mysterious power seems to multiply
these appearances before me....

“This is my most painful cross; the
others are very small compared to this.

“Circumstances change, temptations
diminish, positions improve, misfortune
becomes endurable by habit, but persons
who are disagreeable to us always irritate
us more and more.

“<sc>How I Must Bear my Cross of To-day.</sc>—By
not showing in any way either
the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary
repulsion which her presence
causes me. By obliging myself to render
her some service, it matters little
whether she knows it—it is a secret between
God and me.

“To say nearly every day something
good of her talents, of her virtues, her
tact.... Something, certainly, I will
find to praise.

“To pray seriously for her soul, and
even to go so far as to ask God to love
her and leave her with me.

“Dear companion, blessed messenger
of God’s mercy, you have unconsciously
the mission of sanctifying me, and I will
not be ungrateful.

“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior,
were it not for thee I would fall
into humiliating faults. My nature disdains
and repulses thee, but, oh! how
my heart loves thee.”

There is an abundance of good advice
which will touch directly upon a multitude
of the commonest faults of good
people—those apparently trivial sins
and imperfections which cause so much
unhappiness at home, which make
family life so hard and bitter, and place
so many obstacles in the path of perfection.

The book cannot fail to do good. It
will be a favorite companion of the pious
soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome
monitor to the cold and careless.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Life of the Venerable Clement Mary
Hofbauer, Priest of the Congregation
of the Most Holy Redeemer.</sc>
By a Member of the Order of Mercy,
authoress of the <i>Life of Catharine McAuley</i>,
<i>Life of St. Alphonsus</i>, <i>Glimpses
of Pleasant Homes</i>, etc. New York:
The Catholic Publication Society.
1877.
.pm letter-end

We have received advance sheets of
this beautiful and most interesting life
by the gifted author of the <i>Life of Catharine
McAuley</i>. Father Hofbauer was one
of God’s heroes, and the story of his life
will be found full of interest and profit.
He is fortunate in his biographer, whose
clever pen seems particularly adapted to
a style of literary work than which there
is none more pleasing and useful. An
extended notice will appear later.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Lady of Neville Court.</sc> A Tale
of the Times. By the author of <i>Marion
Howard</i>, etc., etc. London: Burns
& Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
.pm letter-end

It is really refreshing to come across a
simple, unaffected, yet most interesting
story such as this. Its only fault is that
happiest of faults—brevity. The characters
are few, natural, well contrasted,
and well developed; the situations well
wrought up, yet by the most natural of
means. The pathetic portions are indescribably
touching, but constantly and
happily relieved by bright dialogue or
playfully humorous narrative. Richard
O’Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit
a modern one; and Maud Neville
as sweet and noble a woman as we have
ever met with in fiction. The real art
of the book lies in its genuine artlessness,
and we trust the author may give
us many such.

.tb

In the July number of <sc>The Catholic
World</sc> will appear the first instalment
of a new story, entitled <i>Alba’s Dream</i>, by
the author of <i>Are You My Wife?</i>, <i>A Salon
in Paris before the War</i>, <i>Number Thirteen</i>,
<i>M. Gombard’s Mistake</i>, etc., etc. The
story will be completed in three parts.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 148.—JULY, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=exodus
THE EUROPEAN EXODUS.
.sp 2
We propose in the following
pages to speak of the past history,
the present condition, and the future
prospects of European emigration
to this country. We shall
have to present many dry figures
and prosaic statistics; but the investigation
will lead us to regard
the wonderful manner in which
the wisdom and the love of God
have been manifested in the control
which he, as the ruler of all
things, has exercised over this
European exodus. Even out of
those details of its course and progress
which have seemed most deplorable,
and have caused to many
of God’s enlightened servants the
greatest anxiety and grief, beneficent
and grand results now begin
to be discerned which are likely to
secure the permanent establishment
of the church in this land, and to
prepare her for the magnificent
task which, as we believe, she is
destined to accomplish here—the
salvation of the republic and of society
from the utter ruin into which
the arch-enemy of mankind would
otherwise soon engulf them. The
foolishness of men is sometimes
the wisdom of God; and God, who
governs all things sweetly, has
chosen to turn the apparent folly
of a large portion of the emigrants
from Europe to the United States
during the last twenty-five years
into channels through which inestimable
blessings have already flowed,
and others, still more glorious,
are yet to pass.

The great wave of emigration
began to rise in 1840, reached its
highest point in 1869-72, and, notwithstanding
some fluctuations,
continued to bring to our shores
a colony every day until 1875. In
that year it experienced a sudden
and serious check, and has ever
since steadily subsided, until now it
has not only sunk to low-water mark,
but has even seemed to be about to
flow the other way. The official
reports of the Commissioners of
Emigration of the State of New
York classify the passengers who
arrive at this port from foreign
countries as “aliens” and as “citizens
or persons who had before
landed in the United States”; and
the “aliens” are subdivided into
steerage and cabin passengers. It
.pn +1
is safe to take the “alien steerage
passengers” as persons who have
come to this country for the first
time with the purpose of residing
here—in fine, as <i>bonâ fide</i> emigrants.
The alien cabin passengers in most
cases are tourists or visitors, although
among them also are some
emigrants. Now, the whole number
of alien steerage passengers who
arrived at the port of New York
during the year 1876 was only 60,308,
of whom 17,974 were from
Germany, 12,728 from Ireland, 5,429
from England, 1,479 from Scotland,
and 428 from Wales. The
whole number of steerage emigrants
from the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland who landed at
New York during this year was
only 20,064—a much smaller number
than arrived in any previous
year since 1840. Indeed, in no previous
year until 1875, when it was
34,636, had the number failed to be
twice as great; in many years it was
more than ten times as large. The
following table will show the emigration
of all classes from the United
Kingdom into the United States
at all our ports during the last thirty-six
years:

.ta l:6 rb:12
1840 |      40,642
1841 |      45,017
1842 |      63,852
1843 |      28,335
1844 |      43,660
1845 |      58,538
1846 |      82,239
1847 |     142,154
1848 |     188,233
1849 |     219,450
1850 |     223,078
1851 |     267,357
1852 |     244,261
1853 |     230,885
1854 |     193,065
1855 |     103,414
1856 |     111,837
1857 |     126,905
1858 |      50,716
1859 |      70,303
1860 |      87,500
1861 |      42,764
1862 |      58,706
1863 |     146,813
1864 |     147,042
1865 |     147,258
1866 |     161,000
1867 |     159,275
1868 |     155,532
1869 |     203,001
1870 |     196,075
1871 |     198,843
1872 |     233,747
1873 |     233,073
1874 |     148,161
1875 |      92,489
1876 |  [#]54,554
.ta-

.fn #
Of whom 24,452 landed at New York.
.fn-

The 54,554 persons who, not being
citizens of the United States,
arrived in this country from the
United Kingdom in 1876, embrace
all those who came either for pleasure,
or for business, or to remain.
But during the same year 54,697
persons of Irish and British origin
arrived in the United Kingdom
from the United States; so that
the emigration from this country to
the United Kingdom exceeded the
immigration into the United States
from the United Kingdom by
143 souls. The English Board of
Trade, in publishing these returns,
says that “as regards North America,
in fact, the records of 1876 are
the records of a movement of passengers
to and fro, and the so-called
emigration is not really emigration.”
We digress here, for a moment,
to speak of one or two facts
disclosed by the emigration returns
of the British Board of Trade for
1876, which cast a side light upon
a portion of our subject.

The total emigration from the
United Kingdom to places out of
Europe in 1876 was 138,222 persons;
the total immigration into
the Kingdom was 91,647 persons,
showing an apparent loss of population
of 46,575. But after deducting
from both sides the persons of
other than British birth, the net
loss of population to the United
Kingdom by emigration is reduced
to 38,000 persons—a percentage
scarcely worth mention when compared
with the annual increase by
births. As regards the emigration
from that Kingdom to the United
States, it is noted not only that it
has become very small, but that its
character has materially changed.
Only 73 agricultural laborers sailed
from England for the United States,
but no less than 3,191 of this class
sailed for Australia; while, on the
other hand, “4,535 gentlemen, professional
men, merchants, etc., and
.pn +1
10,874 persons of no occupation,
have gone to the States, and only
1,106 of the first-named class and
2,753 of the second migrated to
Australia.” The returns go on to
point out that emigration from Ireland,
and of Irishmen living in
England and Scotland, has almost
entirely ceased. “The total number
of persons of Irish origin who
emigrated from the United Kingdom
in 1876 to places out of Europe
was 25,976.” Of these 16,432
came to the United States; some
of these were only visitors; but
counting them all as emigrants, they
would not number as many as arrived
here in a single month in
former years.

The gradual but steady decrease
of Irish emigration to the United
States is pointed out in these returns
in a forcible and apparently
exultant manner. From 1853 to
1860 the annual average of Irish
emigration to this country was
71,856; during the ten years following
it was 69,084; in 1871 it
fell to 65,591; in 1874 it was 48,136;
in 1875 it was 31,433; and
last year it sank to 16,432.[#] “The
Irish people,” says the Board of
Trade with evident satisfaction,
“do not at present migrate from
the United Kingdom in any appreciable
numbers, although they may
emigrate from one part of the United
Kingdom to another.” We cannot
call the correctness of this
statement into question; it is no
doubt quite correct; and it is safe
to conclude that, for the present at
least, and probably for many years
to come, Irish emigration to this
country will be limited to very
small proportions. Nay, there is
some reason to fear that, unless a
marked improvement soon occurs
in the industrial affairs of our
country, we shall be in danger of
seeing too many of our Irish and
Irish-American citizens leaving us
to seek homes in Australia. The
year 1877 is scarcely six months old,
but it has seen three vessels sail
from this port with American, Irish,
and German emigrants for Australia.
This movement is probably a
wholly sporadic one, and too much
importance should not be attached
to it. But we are not yet in a condition
to encourage emigration
from this country nor to desire to
see it under any circumstances.
We wish still to receive many millions
of people from the Old World,
and, as we shall show, there is a
strong probability that we shall obtain
them.

.fn #
Of whom 13,314 landed at New York.
.fn-

Emigration from the Continent of
Europe, while showing a decrease,
has not diminished in such a marked
degree as that from the United
Kingdom. The whole number of
alien emigrants who arrived at the
port of New York during the thirty
years ending December 31, 1876,
was 5,604,073. Of these 2,920,397
were natives of Great Britain and
Ireland; 2,665,774 were natives of
the Continent; and the remaining
17,902 came from all the other
countries of the earth. The following
table will show the exact
number of emigrants from each
country arriving at the port of New
York during the last thirty years:

FROM GREAT BRITAIN.

.ta l:10 rb:10

Ireland    |        2,001,727
England    |          732,922
Scotland   |          157,578
Wales      |           28,170
  |      2,920,397
.ta-

FROM AMERICA.

.ta l:18 rb:10
South America |         3,066
West Indies   |         7,897
Nova Scotia   |         1,611
Canada        |         1,397
Mexico    |             1,030
Central America |         289
  |    15,290
.ta-
.pn +1

FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE.

.ta l:18 rb:10
Germany  |                 2,121,020
France    |                  107,710
Switzerland |                 81,798
Holland      |                39,069
Norway       |                44,772
Sweden       |               116,655
Italy        |                42,769
Belgium      |                10,096
Spain        |                 7,796
Denmark      |                32,974
Poland       |                11,291
Sardinia     |                 2,306
Portugal     |                 1,791
Russia       |                22,124
Sicily       |                   339
Greece       |                   269
Turkey       |                   242
Austria      |                21,677
Luxembourg   |                 1,076
 | 2,663,774
.ta-

FROM THE ORIENT.

.ta l:14 rb:10
China   |                      1,057
East Indies |                    304
Arabia      |                     14
Africa      |                    191
Australia   |                    225
Japan       |                    175
Unknown     |                    646
 |     2,612
 |
 |                                   5,604,073
.ta-

We may remark that fourteen of
the countries in this list are Roman
Catholic countries, and that
the emigrants from these number
2,212,963 souls. The proportion of
Catholics among the emigrants from
the other twenty-one countries would
probably be, taking them altogether,
not less than one-fourth of the whole
number—597,772. This would give
a Catholic emigration at the port of
New York alone, during these thirty
years, of about 2,800,000 souls.
But we shall return to this part of
our subject later on.

The emigration from Germany
at the port of New York during
the year 1876 was 21,035 persons,
of whom 17,974 were steerage passengers;
in 1875 the number was
25,559; during the twenty-eight
years from 1847 to 1875 the average
number of emigrants arriving
from Germany at this port had
been 75,000 annually. The severe
and sudden check which emigration
received in 1875 must be traced, in
the case of Germany, almost wholly
to the effects of the financial disasters
which had occurred in the
United States, and which had then
begun to be heavily felt. The Germans
are a prudent people; they
are exceedingly well informed concerning
the condition of affairs here,
and they were well advised not to
come to a new country at a moment
when industry and trade were prostrated,
when labor was superabundant
and poorly paid, and when
confidence and enterprise were so
paralyzed that capital could find
no productive or safe employment.
The restrictive measures against
emigration instigated and enforced
by Prince Bismarck, and the financial
distress which prevailed, and
which still prevails, in Germany,
had also their influence in discouraging
and retarding emigration;
but the principal cause of its decline
in the case of Germany was the
one we have mentioned. When
that cause shall have ceased to act,
as there is reason to believe it soon
will do, we can expect with confidence
a revival of emigration from
Germany and the other Continental
countries of Europe. Should the
present war in the East become
general and involve all Europe, the
anxiety of the people to escape its
horrors and burdens will increase
the desire for emigration, but their
facilities for seeking a new home
will probably be lessened by the
same causes. We must, in all likelihood,
wait for the return of prosperity
here and of peace in Europe
before the great wave of emigration
again rises to its former level.
There is no reason to doubt that
in due time it will again attain its
former proportions; but the principal
countries from whence we must
hereafter look for our emigrants
are Germany, Austria, Sweden,
.pn +1
Norway, Denmark, Switzerland,
Holland, and perhaps England.
The emigration of the future, most
probably, will to a large extent be
composed of people possessed of
some capital, and prepared to begin
their new life under far more
favorable conditions than those
which surrounded the Irish and
German emigrants of past years
upon their arrival here. The latter,
landing here too often with no
capital but their muscles, their honest
hearts, and strong but often uncultivated
intellects, have accomplished
the work to which they were
ordained. Their successors will
find much prepared for them, but
they also will have their mission to
fulfil.

Let us now endeavor to ascertain
with as much accuracy as possible
in what manner our foreign-born
citizens have disposed of
themselves, and what it is that they
have done and are doing for us,
for themselves, and for God. It
appears that, according to the
census of 1870, the whole number
of foreign-born persons then in the
United States was 5,567,229, of
whom 62,736 were Chinese, 9,654
were negroes, and 1,136 were Indians.
There were also 9,734,845
persons who had been born in this
country, but whose parents were all
of foreign birth, and 1,157,170 others
the father or mother of each of whom
had been of foreign birth. These
16,459,244 persons constituted, in
1870, the whole of that portion of
our population which could in any
way be classed as foreign or as being
under the immediate domestic
influence of foreigners. There remained
22,099,132 persons, who
were not only native-born, but
whose parents on both sides were
natives. Let us deal, first, with
the persons of foreign birth. In
1850 there were but 2,244,602 persons
of this class; in 1860 they had
increased to 4,138,697, and in 1870
to 5,567,229 souls. The following
table will show their nationalities:

.ta l:20 rb:10
Ireland     |      1,855,827
England     |        550,688
Scotland    |        140,809
Wales       |         74,530
Great Britain[#] |     4,117
Germany      |     1,690,410
France       |       116,240
Denmark      |        30,098
Holland      |        46,801
Hungary      |         3,649
Italy        |        17,147
Belgium      |        12,552
Luxembourg   |         5,802
Austria      |        30,506
Bohemia      |        40,287
Norway       |       114,243
Poland       |        14,435
Portugal     |         4,495
Russia       |         4,638
Spain   |              3,701
Sweden   |            97,327
Switzerland |         75,145
Turkey      |            301
Malta       |             51
China       |         63,042
Greece      |            390
Greenland   |              3
India       |            551
Japan       |             73
Africa      |            673
Asia        |            834
Australia   |          3,111
Pacific Isles |          305
Sandwich Isles |         539
South America  |       3,378
West Indies    |       4,897
Mexico         |      41,308
Cuba           |       4,811
Atlantic Isles  |      4,219
British America  |   489,344
At sea           |     2,612
Unknown           |    2,135
.ta-

.fn #
What part not stated.
.fn-

We have omitted from the above
table 9,654 negroes and 1,136 Indians,
born outside of the United
States.

Where now do we find these
five and a half millions of foreign-born
citizens? The greater part
of them—4,193,971—were congregated
in ten States, as shown by
the following table:

TABLE OF TEN STATES HAVING 200,000 OR MORE
OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.

.ta l:17 r:10 r:10 r:10
<th>    STATES.    |   1870.   |   1860.   |   1850.
California     |   209,831 |   146,518 |    21,802
Illinois       |   515,198 |   324,643 |   111,892
Iowa           |   204,692 |   106,077 |    20 969
Massachusetts  |   353,319 |   260,106 |   164,024
Michigan       |   268,010 |   149,093 |    54,703
Missouri       |   221,267 |   160,541 |    76,592
New York       | 1,138,353 | 1,001,280 |   655,929
Ohio           |   372 493 |   328,249 |   218,193
Pennsylvania   |   545,309 |   430,505 |   303,417
Wisconsin      |   364,499 |   276,927 |   110,477
 | | |
               | 4,193,971 | 3,183,939 | 1,737,998
.ta-

There were fourteen States each
of which had an Irish-born population
of less than 10,000 souls—to
wit, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware,
Florida, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada,
.pn +1
North Carolina, Oregon, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia,
and Virginia; nineteen States
each of which had an Irish-born
population of less than 100,000—to
wit, California, Connecticut, Georgia,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maine, Maryland,
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri,
New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio,
Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin;
while Illinois had 120,000,
Massachusetts 216,000, Pennsylvania
235,000, and New York 528,000
Irish-born citizens. Eighteen States
had each a German-born population
of less than 10,000—namely,
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine,
Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire,
North Carolina, Oregon,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Vermont, Virginia, and West
Virginia. Thirteen States had each
a German-born population of less
than 100,000—namely, California,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska,
New Jersey, and Texas;
while Missouri had 113,618, Pennsylvania
160,146, Wisconsin 162,314,
Ohio 182,889, Illinois 203,750,
and New York 316,882. The
following table will show the exact
number of persons of Austrian, German,
French, and Irish birth residing
in each State in 1870:

.ta l:14 rb:9 rb:9 rb:9 rb:9
<th>States.    |Austrian.| French.| German. | Irish.
Alabama        |    99   |    587 |   2,479 |   3,893
Arkansas       |    41   |    236 |   1,562 |   1,428
California     | 1,078   |  8,063 |  29,699 |  54,421
Connecticut    |   154   |    820 |   1,243 |  70,630
Delaware       |     8   |    127 |   1,141 |   5,007
Florida        |    17   |    126 |     595 |     737
Georgia        |    34   |    308 |   2,760 |   5,093
Illinois       | 2,099   | 10,908 | 203,750 | 120,162
Indiana        |   443   |  6,362 |  78,056 |  28,698
Iowa           | 2,691   |  3,130 |  66,160 |  40,124
Kansas         |   448   |  1,274 |  12,774 |  10,040
Kentucky       |   146   |  2,052 |  30,318 |  21,642
Louisiana      |   433   | 12,288 |  18,912 |  17,068
Maine          |    10   |    136 |     508 |  15,745
Maryland       |   266   |    640 |  47,045 |  23 630
Massachusetts  |    255  |  1,627 |   13,070|  216,120
Michigan       |    795  |  3,120 |   64,143|   42,013
Minnesota      |  2,647  |  1,743 |   41,364|   21,746
Mississippi    |     85  |    621 |    2,954|    3,359
Missouri       |  1,493  |  6,291 |  113,618|   54,983
Nebraska       |    299  |    340 |   10,954|    4,999
Nevada         |    157  |    414 |    2,181|    5,135
New Hampshire  |      9  |     59 |      436|   12,190
New Jersey     |    686  |  3,128 |   53,999|   86,784
New York       |  3,928  | 22,273 |  316,882|  528,806
North Carolina |     13  |     53 |      904|      677
Ohio           |  3,699  | 12,778 |  182,889|   82,674
Oregon         |     53  |    308 |    1,875|    1,967
Pennsylvania   |  1,556  |  8,682 |  160,146|  235,798
Rhode Island   |     19  |    167 |    1,200|   31,534
South Carolina |     10  |    143 |    2,742|    3,262
Tennessee      |    112  |    562 |    4,525|    8,048
Texas          |  1,748  |  2,226 |   23,976|    4,031
Vermont        |      2  |     93 |      370|   14,080
Virginia       |     56  |    368 |    4,050|    5,191
West Virginia  |     59  |    223 |    6,231|    6,832
Wisconsin      |  4,486  |  2,704 |  162,314|   48,479
 | | | |
               | 30,104  |116,240 |1,690,410|1,855,827
.ta-

These four nationalities, then, account
for 3,692,581 of the foreign-born
population in 1870; and the
remaining 1,874,648 had their birth
in the other thirty-five different
countries named in one of our preceding
tables. A glance over the
table just given will show still more
plainly within what limits the great
bulk of the Irish and German born
population is found; and the reader
will remember that we have shown
that all but 1,373,258 of the entire
foreign-born population were residing
in the ten States of California,
Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Missouri, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In
twenty of the States the persons of
Irish birth exceeded those of German
birth; in the remaining seventeen
States the latter outnumbered
the former. The excess of persons
of Irish birth over those of German
birth, however, was only 165,417.
This was seven years ago. During
these seven years the emigration
from Germany has almost equalled
that from Ireland, and for the thirty
years last past, taken as a whole,
the arrivals from Germany have
exceeded those from Ireland by
.pn +1
119,293 souls. We shall probably
not be far out of the way if we
assume that the entire foreign-born
population of the United States is
at present about seven millions, of
whom two and a half millions are
of German, and nearly an equal
number of Irish, birth. Let us,
however, continue to confine ourselves
for the present to the official
facts in our possession, and proceed
to follow up the 5,567,229 persons
of foreign birth whom we know
were among us in 1870.

One of the remarks most frequently
made concerning the foreign-born
population of this country
is that it has a general disposition
to congregate in our large
cities, from which have come consequences
highly prejudicial both
to itself and to the community at
large. These two assertions have
been made so persistently and in
such good faith; they have seemed
to be so susceptible of proof and
so apparently true; and they have
chimed in so well with the sometimes
latent and sometimes active
prejudice against “foreigners”
which is so often found in the
breasts of the natives of every
country, that they have passed
current almost without challenge
and have come to be regarded as
axioms. Nay, not a few of our foreign-born
citizens themselves, and
even of the Catholic bishops and
clergy, have often accepted these
two assertions as true, and have
not ceased to deplore the crowding
of the foreign population into the
large cities, regarding it as an almost
unmixed evil, and pointing to
it as the source of direful woe.
No doubt they have had some reason
on their side. A large proportion
of the crime and misery of
our cities is perpetrated and suffered
by foreign-born citizens or by
their children in the first generation.
Had these citizens not been
gathered together in the cities,
but scattered at remote distances
throughout the country, they might
have been criminal and miserable,
but their crime and misery would
not have been so obtrusive and
apparent to every observer. But,
leaving this point for a moment to
return to it in the light of the facts
we are about to adduce, let us see
what amount of truth there is in
these two assertions. We may remark,
in passing, that the truth of
the first does not necessarily imply
the truth of the second: it may be
true that the foreign-born population
has congregated to an apparently
undue and unwise extent in
our cities, but it may not be true
that this has been by any means an
unmixed evil either to the foreigners
themselves or to the native-born.

POPULATION, NATIVE AND FOREIGN, OF THE LARGE
CITIES, 1870.

.ta l:15 r:8 r:8 r:9 r:8
<th>    CITIES.   | Scotch. | French.| Austrian. | Belgian.
New York      | 7,559  | 8,240 |   2,737   |   325
Philadelphia  | 4,175  | 2,471 |     519   |   116
Brooklyn      | 4,098  | 1,892 |     321   |   142
St. Louis     | 1,202  | 2,788 |     751   |   254
Chicago       | 4,195  | 1,417 |     704   |   392
Baltimore     |   525  |   428 |     215   |    29
Boston        | 1,794  |   615 |     124   |    31
Cincinnati    |   787  | 2,090 |     554   |    46
New Orleans   |   568  | 8,806 |     253   |   134
San Francisco | 1,687  | 3,543 |     470   |   139
Buffalo       |   996  | 2,332 |     135   |    37
Washington    |   298  |   191 |      26   |     8
Newark        |   870  |   710 |     261   |    45
Louisville    |   298  |   856 |      69   |    31
Cleveland     |   668  |   339 |   2,155   |    16
Pittsburgh    |   584  |   348 |     117   |     9
Jersey City   | 1,175  |   276 |      69   |    43
Detroit       | 1,637  |   760 |     161   |   233
Milwaukee     |   423  |   189 |     574   |    79
Albany        |   427  |   149 |      36   |    17
Providence    |   575  |    72 |       5   |     1
Rochester     |   428  |   475 |      39   |     4
Allegheny     |   570  |   619 |     109   |     6
Richmond      |   146  |   144 |      29   |     5
New Haven     |   347  |   133 |      54   |     6
Charleston    |   115  |    97 |      39   |     4
Indianapolis  |   258  |   237 |      14   |     5
Troy          |   462  |    88 |      14   |     7
Syracuse      |   138  |   276 |      47   |     1
Worcester     |   187  |    29 |      12   |     1
Lowell        |   469  |    28 |       3   |     3
Memphis       |   119  |   207 |      14   |    10
Cambridge     |   298  |   100 |       9   |     1
Hartford      |   359  |    92 |      20   |     6
Scranton      |   366  |    64 |       4   |    —
Reading       |    35  |    77 |      36   |     2
.pn +1
Paterson      |   879  |   237 |      48   |    21
Kansas City   |   180  |   110 |      44   |     1
Mobile        |   166  |   311 |      33   |    11
Toledo        |   119  |   206 |      93   |    —
Portland      |   172  |    23 |       2   |     1
Columbus      |   133  |   238 |      20   |    —
Wilmington    |   117  |    64 |      —   |     2
Dayton        |    90  |   242 |      28   |     2
Lawrence      |   691  |     4 |       9   |     2
Utica         |   198  |   287 |      25   |     2
Charlestown   |    89  |    29 |       1   |     2
Savannah      |    72  |    99 |       5   |    —
Lynn          |    72  |     5 |       1   |    —
Fall River    |   382  |     3 |       4   |     2
 | | | |
  Totals      |43,055  | 42,430|  11,218   | 2,232
.ta-

.ta l:15 r:9 r:7 r:7 r:8 r:14
<th>     CITIES.   | Native.  | Irish.  | German. | English. | Brit. Amer.
New York       |  523,198 | 201,999 | 151,203 |  24,408 |  4,372
Philadelphia   |  490,398 |  96,698 |  50,746 |  22,034 |  1,453
Brooklyn       |  251,381 |  73,985 |  36,769 |  18,832 |  2,779
St. Louis      |  198,615 |  32,239 |  59,040 |   5,366 |  1,986
Chicago        |  154,420 |  39,988 |  52,316 |  10,026 |  9,528
Baltimore      |  210,870 |  15,223 |  35,276 |   2,138 |    292
Boston         |  162,540 |  56,900 |   5,606 |   5,968 | 13,548
Cincinnati     |  136,627 |  18,624 |  49,446 |   3,524 |  1,175
New Orleans    |  142,943 |  14,693 |  15,224 |   2,005 |    384
San Francisco  |   75,754 |  25,864 |  13,602 |   5,166 |  2,237
Buffalo        |   71,477 |  11,264 |  22,249 |   3,558 |  4,113
Washington     |   95,442 |   6,948 |   4,131 |   1,231 |    211
Newark         |   69,175 |  12,481 |  15,873 |   4,040 |    296
Louisville     |   75,085 |   7,626 |  14,380 |     930 |    311
Cleveland      |   54,014 |   9,964 |  15,855 |   4,530 |  2,599
Pittsburgh     |   58,254 |  13,119 |   8,703 |   2,838 |    282
Jersey City    |   50,711 |  17,665 |   7,151 |   4,005 |    556
Detroit        |   44,196 |   6,970 |  12,647 |   3,282 |  7,398
Milwaukee      |   37,667 |   3,784 |  22,599 |   1,395 |    792
Albany         |   47,215 |  13,276 |   5,168 |   1,572 |    843
Providence     |   51,727 |  12,085 |     592 |   2,426 |  1,038
Rochester      |   41,202 |   6,078 |   7,730 |   2,530 |  2,619
Allegheny City |   37,872 |   4,034 |   7,665 |   1,112 |    152
Richmond       |   47,260 |   1,239 |   1,621 |     289 |     42
New Haven      |   36,482 |   9,601 |   2,423 |   1,087 |    336
Charleston     |   44,064 |   2,180 |   1,826 |     234 |     32
Indianapolis   |   37,587 |   3,321 |   5,286 |     697 |    297
Troy           |   30,246 |  10,877 |   1,174 |   1,575 |  1,697
Syracuse       |   29,061 |   5,172 |   5,062 |   1,345 |  1,167
Worcester      |   29,159 |   8,389 |     325 |     893 |  1,960
Lowell         |   26,493 |   9,103 |      34 |   1,697 |  3,034
Memphis        |   33,446 |   2,987 |   1,768 |     589 |    225
Cambridge      |   27,579 |   7,180 |     482 |   1,043 |  2,518
Hartford       |   26,363 |   7,438 |   1,438 |     787 |    396
Scranton       |   19,205 |   6,491 |   3,056 |   1,444 |    125
Reading        |   30,059 |     547 |   2,648 |     305 |     26
Paterson       |   20,711 |   5,124 |   1,429 |   3,347 |    128
Kansas City    |   24,581 |   2,869 |   1,884 |     709 |    821
Mobile         |   27,795 |   2,000 |     843 |     386 |     55
Toledo         |   20,485 |   3,032 |   5,341 |     694 |    984
Portland       |   24,401 |   3,900 |      82 |     557 |  2,017
Columbus       |   23,663 |   1,845 |   3,982 |     504 |    190
Wilmington     |   25,689 |   3,503 |     684 |     613 |     47
Dayton         |   23,050 |   1,326 |   4,962 |     394 |    131
Lawrence       |   16,204 |   7,457 |     467 |   2,456 |  1,563
Utica          |   18,955 |   3,496 |   2,822 |   1,352 |    261
Charlestown    |   21,399 |   4,803 |     216 |     488 |  1,119
Savannah       |   24,564 |   2,197 |     787 |     251 |     63
Lynn           |   23,298 |   3,232 |      17 |     330 |  1,133
Fall River     |   15,288 |   5,572 |      37 |   4,042 |  1,324
 | | | | |
  Totals       |3,808,770 | 826,398 | 564,967 | 165,024 | 80,728
.ta-

In fifty of the largest cities of
the United States there was in
1870 a total native population of
3,808,770 souls; 826,398 persons
of Irish birth; 564,967 of German
birth; 165,024 of English birth;
80,728 natives of British America;
43,055 natives of Scotland; 42,430
natives of France; 11,218 natives
of Austria; and 2,232 natives of
Belgium—in all, 1,736,052 persons
born in foreign countries.

The foregoing tables give the
native population of each of these
fifty cities, with the foreign population
belonging to each of these
eight nationalities.

The persons of foreign birth of
other nationalities in the above
cities would raise the whole number
to about 1,800,000 souls.

It is to be noticed from this table,
in the first place, that in these
fifty cities, in 1870, the proportion
of foreign-born to native inhabitants
was almost exactly as 18 is to
38—1,800,000 to 3,808,770—while
the proportion of foreign-born to
native inhabitants in the entire
Union was almost exactly as 5 is
to 38—5,567,229 to 38,558,371. It
must be confessed that on this showing
there was an apparently or a
really undue proportion of our foreign-born
citizens congregated in
the large cities. But it should be
remembered that among the native-born
population were the 10,892,015
persons who had been born
here of parents, on one or both
sides, of foreign birth, and who, to
this extent, were <i>quasi</i>-foreign. If
these be taken into account, the
proportion of foreign-born and the
immediate descendants of foreign-born
persons to the rest of the
population throughout the country
in 1870 would have been as 16 to
38—16,459,239 to 38,558,371. This
is really the more correct basis upon
which to make the comparison;
for without doubt a large proportion
.pn +1
of the ten millions of persons
born here of foreign parents were
the children of the five millions of
foreign-born persons; and it is perfectly
natural that the parents and
the children should be found living
in the same localities. After giving
to this consideration, however, all
the weight to which it is entitled,
the fact still remains that an apparently
excessive proportion of our
foreign-born citizens are to be
found in the large cities.

Let us look still closer into the
subject. The whole number of
persons of Irish birth in the United
States in 1870 was 1,855,827,
and of these 826,398, or 44.4 per
cent., were living in these fifty cities.
There were 1,690,410 Germans,
and 564,967 of them, or
33.4 per cent., were in the cities;
550,688 English, of whom 165,024,
or nearly 30 per cent., were in the
cities; 489,344 British Americans,
of whom 80,728, or only 16.5 per
cent., were in the cities; while 30
per cent. of the Scotch, 36.5 per
cent. of the French, 36.7 per cent.
of the Austrians, and 17.7 per
cent. of the Belgians were in the
same category. Our Irish fellow-citizens
are the greatest sinners—if
any are sinners in this respect—and
after them, in a declining ratio,
come the Austrians, French, Germans,
Scotch, English, Belgians, and
British Americans. The Irish, Austrians,
French, and Germans are the
Roman Catholic emigrants, and in
the wisdom of God it has been ordained
that they should be the ones
most crowded into the cities. How
have they performed there the work
which he sent them to do?

Our cities are the centres of the
intelligence, the culture, and the
wealth of our country. They contain
to a very large extent the
brains of the republic. From
them issue influences which sway,
if they do not absolutely control,
the thoughts and actions of the people.
These influences are not, by
any means, always altogether wholesome,
but they are unquestionably
potent. The newspapers, magazines,
and other periodicals published in
New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati,
New Orleans, San Francisco,
and Milwaukee have a circulation
exceeding that of the similar
publications of all the rest of the
country combined. The serial publications
of one firm in New York
alone reach into the millions; the
aggregate annual circulation of the
New York daily and weekly journals
is so large that mere figures
expressing it convey but a faint
idea of its extent. The publisher
of a magazine in New York told
the writer the other day that if the
copies of his publication issued
each year were stacked together,
the column would be three times
as high as Trinity Church steeple.

The social influences of the cities
upon the rural districts are also
powerful. The cities not only set
the fashions in dress, but in political,
moral, and religious thought and
custom. The sturdy independence
of the bucolic mind may yet boast
of its existence, but it very often
yields to the sway of urban ideas.
A lady who had lived all her life in
a small village, in which the only
Catholic population consisted of a
handful of poor Irish people, destitute
of a church, and visited only
at long intervals by a humble
priest who celebrated the divine
Mysteries in an attic over a liquor-store,
not long ago came to New
York, and was taken by her friends
into one of our magnificent Catholic
churches. The grandeur and
.pn +1
beauty of the Mass were for the
first time revealed to her; for the
first time she obtained an idea of
what the Catholic Church was
and what it taught. By the grace
of God her conversion followed,
and, mainly through her exertions
and her influence after her return
home, her village is now blessed
with a church, a resident priest, and
a Catholic population composed
largely of converts. In very many
of our rural localities all over the
Union the Catholics are few and
poor; in too many of them the
idea of a Roman Catholic in the
minds of the natives is still associated
only with the idea of an ignorant
fanatic, who worships images,
pays half a dollar to a priest to pardon
him for a crime, and believes
that the Pope is God. But when
the country merchant of such a locality
comes to New York to make
his purchases, and sees the splendid
Catholic churches here, and
finds, perhaps, that the great importer
with whom he deals, or the
wealthy banker, or the renowned
lawyer to whom he is introduced, is
a Roman Catholic, and not unseldom
an Irishman or a German, his
eyes are opened and his mind is
prepared for the reception of the
truth. In a word, the congregation
of foreign-born emigrants, the most
of whom are Catholics, in our large
cities, has had the effect of making
the Catholic church in these cities
a noticeable and a respectable fact,
and of thereby accomplishing one
of the preliminaries in the work
which it has yet to perform in the
republic. The influence of this
fact is to be perceived, also, in the
changed tone of the secular press
with regard to the church. Respectable
journalists, with few and
decreasing exceptions, have become
ashamed to repeat the vulgar and
senseless slanders and the worn-out
calumnies concerning the
church, her ministers, her dogmas,
and her sacraments which were so
current twenty years ago. In communities
consisting in an appreciable
and often in a large proportion
of intelligent, wealthy, and influential
Catholics, the able editors do
not venture any longer to amuse
their readers with arguments based
on the assumption that the church is
the foe of knowledge and of education,
and that her mission is to degrade,
enslave, and pauperize mankind.
In cities where the spires
of dozens and scores of Catholic
churches, tipped with the emblem
of our salvation, point towards
heaven; where Catholic hospitals,
asylums, schools, and academies
abound; where many of the most
enterprising and wealthy merchants,
manufacturers, and bankers are
Catholics; where in the front rank
of all the professions Catholics are
found—in these communities it is
no longer a social disgrace or a
mark of singularity to be a Catholic,
and a convert to the faith is no
longer looked upon as a person of
weak intellect or a slave to a benumbing
and degrading superstition.
We shall show, in the subsequent
pages of our article, that for
all this, to a very great extent, and
under what seems to have been the
direct guidance of God, we are
indebted to the foreign-born population
of the country, and that its
accomplishment was made possible,
humanly speaking, by their congregating
themselves in the cities instead
of dispersing in small bodies
throughout the agricultural regions
of the country. But we shall show,
also, that, the work of God having
thus far been accomplished, the
time has now arrived when the future
emigration to the United States
.pn +1
should be directed towards the
rural districts, under conditions
which, until now, were practically
impossible; and we shall seek to
point out in what manner this new
colonization may be best directed
in order to promote the welfare of
the emigrants themselves, the prosperity
of our country, and the greater
glory of God.
.sp 4
.h3 id=albap1
ALBA’S DREAM. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC. | PART I.
.sp 2
Once upon a time, some sixty
years ago, on one of the bleakest
points of the coast of Picardy, high
perched like a light-house overhanging
the sea, there was a building
called the Fortress. You may
see the ruins of it yet. It had been
an abbey in olden times, and credible
tales were told of a bearded abbot
who “walked” at high water on
the western parapet when the moon
was full. One wing of the Fortress
was a ruin at the time this
story opens; the other had braved
the stress of time and tempest, and
looked out over the sea defiant as
the rock on which it stood. The
Caboffs lived in it. Jean Caboff
was a wiry, lithe old man of seventy—a
seafaring man every inch of
him. His wealth was boundless,
people said, and they also said
that he had gained it as a pirate
on the high seas. There was no
proof that this was true; but
every one believed it, and the
belief invested Jean Caboff with a
sort of wicked prestige which was
not without its fascination in the
eyes of the peaceful, unadventurous
population of Gondriac. Caboff
had a wife and three sons; the two
eldest were away fighting with Bonaparte
on the Rhine; Marcel, the
youngest, was at home. A shy,
awkward lad, he kept aloof from
the village boys, never went bird’s-nesting
or fishing with them, but
moped like an owl up in his weather-beaten
home. They were unsocial
people, the Caboffs; they never
asked any one inside their door;
but the few who accidentally penetrated
within the Fortress told
wonderful stories of what they saw
there; they talked of silken hangings
and Persian carpets, and mirrors
and pictures in golden frames,
and marble men and maidens
writhing and dancing in fantastic
attitudes; of costly cabinets and
jewelled vases, until the old corsair’s
abode was believed to be
a sort of enchanted castle. The
stray visitors were too dazzled to
notice certain things that jarred on
this profuse magnificence. They
did not notice that the damp had
eaten away the gilded cornices, and
the rats nibbled freely at the rich
carpets, or that Jean Caboff smoked
his pipe in a high-backed wooden
chair, while Mme. Caboff cut out
her home-spun linen on a stout
deal table, the two forming a quaint
and not unpicturesque contrast to
the silken splendor of their surroundings.

Some five miles inland, beyond a
wide stretch of gorse-grown moor,
rose a wood, chiefly of pine-trees,
and within the wood, a castle—a
.pn +1
fine old Gothic castle where the De
Gondriacs had dwelt for centuries.
The castle and its owners, their
grandeur and state and power, were
the pride of the country, every peasant
along the coast for fifty miles
knew the history of the lords of
Gondriac as well as, mayhap sometimes
better than, he knew his catechism.
The family at present consisted
of Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac,
and his son Hermann. The Marquis
was a hale man of sixty; Hermann
a handsome lad of eighteen,
who was at college now in Paris, so
that M. le Marquis had no company
but his books and his gun in
the long autumn days. He was a
silent, haughty man, who lived much
alone and seldom had friends to
stay with him. When Hermann
was at home the aspect of the
place changed; the château opened
its doors with ancient hospitality,
and laughter and music woke up
the echoes of the old halls, and the
village was astir as if a royal progress
had halted on the plain; but
when Hermann departed things fell
back into the stagnant life he had
stirred for a moment. It was natural
that the young man’s holidays
were eagerly looked forward to at
Gondriac. But one August came,
and, instead of returning home,
Hermann joined a regiment that
was on its way to the frontier. He
went off in high-hearted courage
as to the fulfilment of his boyish
dreams. M. le Marquis, who had
himself served in the guards of the
Comte d’Artois, was proud of his
son, of his soldier-like bearing and
manly spirit, and kept the anguish
of his own heart well out of sight
as he bade the boy farewell. “I
will come back a marshal of
France, father,” was Hermann’s
good-by.

Not long after his departure
tidings were received of the death
of Hugues Caboff, the old pirate’s
eldest son. He had fallen gloriously
on the field of battle; but glory
is a sorry salve for broken hearts,
and there was weeping in the Fortress
that day—a mother weeping
and refusing to be comforted. Old
Jean Caboff bore his grief with an
attempt at stoicism that went far
to soften men’s hearts towards
him—farther than his gold, which
they said was ill-got, and his charity,
which they called ostentation.

“Who may tell what will come
next?” said Peltran, the host of
the village inn.

“They say that M. le Marquis
has been over to see the Caboffs,”
said a customer, who dropped in to
discuss the event. People felt for
the Caboffs, but, there was no denying
it, this sad news was a break in
the dull monotony of Gondriac life.

“I saw his carriage at the foot
of the cliff,” said Peltran; “he
stayed full fifteen minutes up at the
Fortress. Père Caboff conducted
him down to his carriage, and
Marcel stood watching them till it
was out of sight.”

“It must have consoled them
mightily to have M. le Marquis
come in and sit talking to them in
that neighborly fashion,” remarked
lame Pierre, a hero who had lost a
leg and an eye at Aboukir; “that,
and poor Hugues being killed by
a cannon-ball under the emperor’s
own eye, ought to cheer up the Caboffs
wonderfully.”

“Ay, ay,” said Peltran; “God
tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb.”

“M. le Marquis looked as down-hearted
as if he had lost a child of
his own,” observed Pierre; “may
be he was thinking whose turn it
might be next.”

“There goes Mère Virginie with
.pn +1
the little one!” said Peltran; and
all present turned their heads towards
the window and looked out
with an expression of interest, as
if the objects in view were a rare
and pleasant sight. And yet it
was one that met them in their
daily walks by the roadside and
on the cliff—the little old lady in
her nun-like dress, with her keen
gray eyes and sweet smile, and the
dark-eyed, elfin-looking child whose
name was Alba. Alba was always
singing.

“Is not your little throat tired,
my child?” said Virginie, as the
blithe voice kept on soaring and
trilling by her side.

“I am never tired singing, petite
mère! Do the angels tire of
it sometimes, I wonder?”

“Nay, the angels cannot tire;
they are perfectly happy.”

“And I, petite mère—am I not
perfectly happy?”

“Is there nothing you long for,
nothing you would be the happier
for having?”

“Oh! many things,” cried Alba:
“I wish I were grown up; I wish
I were as beautiful as the flowers;
I wish I had a voice like the nightingale—like
a whole woodful of
nightingales; I wish I lived in a
castle; I wish I were so rich that
I might make all the poor people
happy in Gondriac; I wish everybody
loved me as you do. Oh! I
should like them all to adore me,
petite mère,” cried the child, clasping
her little hands with energy.

“Nay, my child, we must adore
none but God; woe to us if we
do!” said Virginie, and her face
contracted as with a sudden pain.
“But it seems to me, with so many
wishes unfulfilled, you are a long
way off from perfect happiness
yet?”

“But I am always dreaming
that they are fulfilled, and that
does as well, you know.”

Yes, perhaps it did, Virginie
thought, as she bent a wistful smile
on the young dreamer’s face. Alba’s
face was full of dreams—beautiful
and passionate, changeful as
the sunbeams, tender and strong,
pleading and imperious by turns.
How would the dreams evolve
themselves from out that yearning,
untamed spirit that shone with a
dangerous light through the dark
eyes? Would they prove a mirage,
luring her on to some delusive
goal, and leaving her to perish
amidst the golden waste of sands,
or would they be a loadstar beckoning
faithfully to a safe and happy
destiny?

The child gave promise of rich
fruit; her instincts were pure and
true, her heart was tender; but
there was a wild element in her
nature that might easily overrule
the rest, and work destruction to
herself and others, unless it were
reduced in time to serviceable
bondage. Who could tell how this
would be—whether the flower would
keep its promise and prove loyal to
the bud, or whether the fair blossom
would perish in its bloom, and
the tree bring forth a harvest of
bitter fruit?

“It will be as you will it,” a wise
man had said to Virginie; “the destiny
of the child is in the hands of
the mother, as the course of the
ship is in the hands of the pilot.”

“Then Alba’s will be a happy
one!” Virginie replied; “if love be
omnipotent here below, my treasure
is safe.”

.tb

Hermann de Gondriac had won
his epaulets. Every post brought
letters to the castle full of battles
and victories; and though the young
soldier was modest in his warlike
.pn +1
narrative, it was clear to M. le
Marquis that Hermann shone like
a bright, particular star even in the
galaxy of the <i>grande armée</i>, and
that now, as in olden times, France
had reason to be proud of the De
Gondriacs. If the boy would but
calm his rhapsodies about Bonaparte!
M. le Marquis’ patrician
soul heaved at the sight of this enthusiasm
for the upstart who had
muzzled his country and usurped
the crown of her lawful princes.
But he was a great captain, and it
was natural, perhaps, that his soldiers
should only think of this when
he led them in triumph from field
to field.

So far Hermann bore a charmed
life. Not so the Caboffs. One day,
some eight months after the death
of the eldest son, the second brother
followed him—“killed gloriously
on the immortal field of Wagram,”
the official letter announced
in its most soothing style. M.
le Marquis’ carriage was again seen
standing at the foot of the cliff,
and Peltran informed the population
that he had remained over
twenty minutes this time at the
Fortress.

“M. le Marquis is a true <i>grand
seigneur</i>, and never begrudges any
condescension for the good of his
inferiors,” observed the old tory
host. “This time it was only Marcel
who accompanied him down
the cliff. Old Caboff, they say, was
more cut up by this last blow; still,
grief ought not to make a man selfish
and unthankful.”

“Just so,” said lame Pierre, who
sat puffing in the bar; “and it’s
only what those two poor lads had
to expect; moreover, since a man
must die, better be killed in battle
than die of the small-pox.”

“All the same, it’s hard on the
folks up yonder,” remarked a bystander,
“and it isn’t their money-bags—no,
nor even M. le Marquis’
good words—that can comfort them
to-day.”

Soon after this M. le Marquis
left Gondriac rather suddenly one
morning. After reading his letters
he ordered his valise to be got
ready, and in an hour he was posting
to X——. There he dismissed
the postchaise, and no one knew
whither or how he had continued
his route. Gondriac busied itself
in endless conjectures as to the
purport and destination of this mysterious
journey. Had M. le Marquis
been summoned to Paris to
assist the government in some political
crisis? Had he gone over
to England to pour oil on the angry
waters there? For the king of England
was full of wrath and jealousy
against the great emperor, and it
was well known at Gondriac that
he was plotting foul play of some
sort against France. Or, again,
could M. le Marquis’ hasty departure
have had any reference to M.
le Comte? Perhaps M. le Comte
was wounded or a prisoner; who
could tell? So the wiseacres gossiped,
adopting first one theory,
then another.

A month went by without throwing
any light on the mystery. Then
the cold set in suddenly, and the
gossips had something else to talk
about. The cruel winter was down
upon them, catching them unprepared,
so how were they to face it?
They were only in October, and
the wind blew from the northeast
as if it were March, keeping up its
shrill, hard whistle day and night,
and the sea, as if it were exasperated
by the sound, roared and foamed
and thundered, till it seemed like
a battle between them which should
make most noise. And it was hard
to say who carried the day.
.pn +1

One night, when the battle was
at its fiercest, the wind shrieking its
loudest, and the sea rolling up its biggest
waves, Alba sat at her window
watching the tempest with thrills
of sympathetic terror. Virginie
thought the child was in bed and
asleep hours ago, and she was glad
of it; for the storm drove right
against the cottage, and burst upon
it every now and then with a
violence that shook her in her
chair and made the walls rock.
She was knitting away, but between
the stitches many a prayer went up
for those who were out breasting the
fury of the hurricane. Suddenly
a sound came up from the sea
that made her start to her feet with
a cry. Boom! boom! boom! it
came in quick succession, leaping
over the rocks with a sharp, dull
crash. The door of the little sitting-room
was thrown open, and Alba
stood on the threshold, white as a
ghost, her dark eyes gleaming. “It
is the signal-gun, mother!” she
cried. “There is a ship in distress!”

“How came you up and dressed,
child?” exclaimed Virginie.

“Mother, I could not sleep; I
have been watching the storm.
Hark! there it is again. Why
don’t they answer it? Let us hurry
down to the beach.”

“Of what use would we be there,
my child?” said Virginie. “Let us
rather kneel down and pray that
help may come.”

“I cannot pray; I cannot stay
here safe and quiet while that gun
is firing! Hark! there it is again.
Oh! why don’t they make haste?
Mother, I must go! If you won’t
come I will go by myself.” Alba,
as she spoke, threw back her head
with the wild, free movement that
Virginie knew, and knew that she
could no more control than she
could check the flight of a bird on
the wing.

“I will go with you,” she cried,
and, wrapping a cloak round Alba,
she flung another round herself,
and then lighted her lantern, and
the two sallied forth into the storm,
clinging fast to one another for support
until they got under the shelter
of the overhanging cliff. Lights
were glancing here and there, hurrying
down from the cottages, and
a few fishermen were already on
the beach watching the distressed
ship, helpless and hopeless. Presently
old Caboff appeared, holding
his lantern high above his
head—an aged, shrivelled man,
likely to be of little use in this desperate
strait; but such was the
prestige which his supposed antecedents
lent him in the eyes of the
panic-stricken group that of one
accord they turned to him as to
the only one who might give help
or counsel. The night was pitch
dark, and the blinding rain and
deafening roar of the breakers seemed
to make the darkness thicker.
It was impossible to see the ship,
except when the flash of the gun
lighted up the scene for a second.
In the lull of the billows—that is, between
the heavy sweep of their rise
and fall—the cries of the crew and
the whistle of the captain issuing
his commands were faintly audible.
How was it with the ship? Had
she struck upon a rock, or was she
simply going down before the storm?
It was impossible to say. On
finding that her signals were heard
and her position seen from land,
she slackened fire, and the gun only
spoke every three minutes or so.
In the interval of unbroken darkness
all conjecture as to the immediate
cause of the peril was at a
stand-still. Caboff said she had
struck upon a rock; the others
.pn +1
thought she was simply disabled
and rolling in the trough of the sea.

“Can we put out a boat? Who
is for risking it?” said Caboff,
pitching his voice to a whistle that
was heard distinctly above the roar
of the black breakers clamoring for
the moon. There was no answer,
but heads were shaken and hands
gesticulated in strong dissent.

Alba pushed her way into the
midst of the group. “What does
it matter what the danger is? Go
and help them!” she cried. “If
you don’t help them they will all
perish!”

“We cannot help them, little
one,” said an old fisherman. “No
boat could live in such a sea. See
how the waves run up in mountains
to our very feet, and think what it
must be out yonder! See, now
the signal-gun lights it up! Look!
again it flashes.”

It was an appalling sight while
the flashes lasted. The waves,
rushing back, left the side of the
ship visible, and then, returning
with a tremendous sweep, broke
over her and buried her out of
sight in foam. The stoutest heart
might well recoil from venturing
to put out in such a sea.

“Naught but a miracle could do
it,” said one of the oldest and
hardiest of the fishermen; “and
we none of us can work miracles.”

“God can!” cried Alba, and she
looked like the spirit of the storm,
her dark hair streaming, the light of
courage and scorn and beseeching
hope illuminating her face with an
unearthly beauty—“God can, and
he does for brave men; but ye are
cowards!”

“Gently, little one; men will risk
their lives to do some good, but it
is suicide to rush on death where
there is not a chance of saving any
one.”

It was Caboff who spoke, and his
words were followed by strong approval
from the rest.

“Ye are cowards!” repeated
Alba passionately. “God would
work the miracle, if ye had courage
and trusted him. See, there is the
light now!” She pointed to the sky,
where, as if to justify her promise,
the moon came forth, and, scattering
the darkness, shed her full blue radiance
over sea and shore. The storm
was now at its height. The guns
had ceased to give tongue, and the
crowd stood watching the scene in
mute horror, while the reverberating
shore shook under their feet
at every shock of the furious billows.

Caboff was right. The ship had
struck upon the Scissors, and, caught
between the two blade-like rocks,
was rapidly falling to pieces. The
deck was deserted. The crew had
either gone down into the cabin to
meet their fate or they had been
swept away by the devouring waters.
One man alone was descried
by Caboff’s keen eyes clinging to
the broken mast. “I will risk it!”
cried the old pirate, after watching
the wreck for some minutes intently.
“I will risk it; my old life may
as well go out in saving his. Come,
boys, help me to push down a boat.
I must have three pairs of hands.
Who is to the fore?”

A dozen men rushed forward; the
boat was at the water’s edge in a
moment, and after a short scuffle—for
now all were fighting for precedence—three
men got into it, and
the others, putting their hands to
the stern, launched it with their
might. A cheer rang out from the
shore; but close upon it came a cry,
piercing and full of terror. It was
Marcel Caboff, who was flying down
the cliff, and reached the scene just
as the boat put off.
.pn +1

“Father! father!” cried the lad,
and he fell on his knees sobbing.

“Don’t be afraid, Marcel,” said
Alba, falling on her knees beside
him; “he is a brave man, and God
will protect him!”

Something in the tone of the
child’s voice made him turn and
look at her, and as he caught sight of
the beam of confidence, almost of
exultation, on her face, he felt his
courage rise and despair was silenced.
But what meant that shout?

The boat was no sooner borne
out on the receding wave than it
went down into the sea as if never
to rise again; there was a moment
of breathless suspense, and then the
wave rose and tossed it violently to
and fro, and flung it back upon the
shore. The men who had launched
it were still upon the spot, and
rushed forward to seize the boat
and help the brave fellows out
again. One was so stunned by the
force of the shock that he became
insensible and had to be lifted out.
Old Caboff refused to stir.

“It is madness to try it again,”
said his companions. “A cork
could not live in such a sea!”

“I will risk no man’s life,” said
Caboff. “I will go alone. Here, my
men, lend a hand once more!”

There was a clamor of expostulation
from all present; but the old
man was not to be moved.

“I will go with you, father,” said
Marcel, stepping in and seizing an
oar.

“You here, lad! And your mother?”

“She sent me to look after you.
<i>Allons! mes amis</i>; push us out and
say God speed us!”

But there was now a third figure
in the boat. “Now we are three,
and God will make a fourth!” cried
Alba; then, turning to the men,
“Push us out,” she said, “and then
go home, lest ye take cold here in
the rain!”

“Good God! the child is mad,”
cried Virginie, rushing forward to
snatch her away. But it was too
late; a heavy wave rolled in and
made the boat heave suddenly,
which the men seeing, with one impulse
put their hands to it, till the
breaker washed under it and swept
it out to sea once more. Virginie
stood there like one turned to
stone, watching in dumb horror the
boat drifting away on to the seething
waters. Alba was on her knees,
her arms outstretched, her face uplifted
in the moonlight, transfigured
into an apparition of celestial
beauty—a heaven-sent messenger
from Him who can unchain the
storm and bid the winds and waves
be still. The rough men, subdued
by the sublimity of the scene, knelt
down like little children and began
to pray.

Gallantly the little boat rode on,
now drowned out of sight, now
rising lightly on the crest of the
wave, while the sea, as if enraged at
so much daring, redoubled in fury
and pitched it to and fro like a ball.
Old Caboff, grown young again,
worked away like a sea-horse.
Many a time had he and Death
looked into each other’s faces, but
never closer than now; and it was
not the old seaman who quailed.
Marcel, feeble Marcel, seemed endowed
with the energy and strength
of an athlete. They were now close
upon the sinking ship; but the peril
grew as they approached it. There
was a lull for one moment, as if in
very weariness the hurricane drew
a breath; then a huge wave rose
up like a mighty water-tower, oscillated
for a moment like a house
about to fall, and, dashing against
the boat, swallowed it up in an
avalanche of foam. Five seconds of
.pn +1
mortal suspense followed; not a
gasp broke the horrible silence on
the beach. But the boat reappeared
and rode bravely on to
within a stone’s throw of the ship.
The solitary man on deck was signalling
to them with one hand,
while with the other he clung to
the mast. At last the little skiff
was close under the bows. Old
Caboff threw up a rope-ladder; it
missed its aim, once, twice, three
times. “How the old fellow is
swearing! I can see it by his fury,”
cried one of the fishermen, stamping
in sympathetic rage. “Ha! the
poor devil has caught it. Bravo!
Hurrah! He is in the boat!”

Then there was a cheer, as if
the very rocks had found a voice
to applaud the brave ones who had
conquered the storm. Wind and
tide were with them as they returned,
the waves pitching the boat before
them like an angry boy kicking a
stone, until one final plunge sent it
flying on the beach.

“Vive Caboff! Vive Marcel!
Vive la petite Alba!” And every
hand was stretched out in welcome.
Then there was a pause, a sudden
hush, as when some strong emotion
is checked by another.

“Monsieur le Marquis!”

“Yes, my friends, thanks to these
brave hearts I am amongst you and
alive.”

He was the first to step from the
boat; then he took Alba in his
arms and lifted her ashore into
Virginie’s. Marcel alighted next,
and was turning to assist his father
when M. le Marquis pushed him
gently aside and held out both
hands to his deliverer. But the
old man still grasped his oar and
made no sign.

“Mon père!” cried Marcel, laying
a hand on his arm, “mon
père!”

But old Caboff did not answer
him. He was dead.

.tb

The <i>grande armée</i> was still winning
famous victories, ploughing
up sunny harvest-fields with cannon-balls,
and making homes and
hearts desolate.

“There is one comfort,” said old
Peltran, sitting moodily in his deserted
bar: “when things come to
the worst they must get better.”

“They’ve not come to the worst
yet,” observed a neighbor. “There’s
lots of things that might happen,
that haven’t happened yet; the
plague might come, or the blight,
or the <i>grande armée</i> might get beaten.
We’ve not come to the worst
yet, believe you me.”

“There’s one thing anyhow that
can’t happen,” said Peltran:
“there can’t be another recruitment
in Gondriac, for there isn’t a
man left amongst us fit to shoulder
a musket; we are all either too old,
or lame, or blind of an eye.”

“There’s young Caboff is neither
one nor the other. To be sure, he’s
not the stuff to make a soldier out
of; but when they’ve used up all
the men they must make the best
of the milk-sops.”

“Marcel is a widow’s only son;
he’s safe,” said Peltran.

“From one day to another the last
reserves may be called out,” observed
the neighbor; “it will be hard on
the mother, after two of her sons going
for cannon’s meat. It was a
plucky thing of the old father putting
out that night. I wonder if
he knew for certain who was on
the deck of the ship.”

“If he didn’t he wouldn’t have
been such an ass as to put out,”
said Peltran. “Why should he fling
away his bit of life for a stranger
that he owed nothing to?”

“For the matter of that, he owed
.pn +1
nothing to M. le Marquis; the
Caboffs, they say, are rich enough
to buy up every inch of land in
Gondriac.”

“Folks may owe more than money
can pay,” retorted Peltran.
“M. le Marquis was very kind to
the old man when his sons were
killed, and, whatever Caboff’s sins
may have been, he had a fine sense
of his natural obligations. It didn’t
surprise me much when I saw how
handsomely he paid off his debt to
M. le Marquis.”

“They say that monseigneur swore
to Mme. Caboff that if ever she asked
him a favor, whatever it was, he
would grant it,” said the neighbor.

“Very likely,” remarked the
host. “M. le Marquis has a grand-seigneur
way of doing everything.
I hope the Caboffs will have the
delicacy never to abuse it.”

Not many days after this conversation
Mme. Caboff was to be seen
walking across the moor on her
way to the castle. She looked an
older woman than she was; sorrow
had broken her down, and it
would take little now to destroy the
frail tenure of life that remained to
her.

This was the first time she had
ever entered the castle. Under
other circumstances the visit would
have thrown the widow into some
trepidation. She would have been
pleasantly fluttered at the prospect
of an interview with the great lord
in his own halls, and would have
been much exercised on her way
thither as to what she should say to
him; but her mind was full of
other cares to-day.

M. le Marquis was at home. He
had spent the morning over a letter
from Captain Hermann de Gondriac,
which contained a graphic personal
narrative of the retreat from Moscow
of that disastrous expedition
from which, out of the fifty thousand
cavalry who went forth, only one
hundred and twenty-five officers
returned. A pang of anguish and
patriotic indignation wrung the old
nobleman’s heart as he read and re-read
the terrible story, but tears of
deep thankfulness fell from the father’s
eyes at the thought that his
son was spared and was returning
safe and unhurt with that decimated
army of starved, exasperated
spectres. The marquis was perusing
the letter for the tenth time
when Mme. Caboff was announced.
He rose to receive her with a
warmth of welcome that boded well
for her petition.

“M. le Marquis, you made me
give you a promise once—that night;
do you remember it?” she said,
holding his white hand lightly between
her two black-kidded ones, and
looking up into his face with the
meek and hungry look of a dog
begging for a bone which may be
refused and a kick given instead.

“Remember it? Yes,” replied
the Marquis, returning the timid
pressure with a cordial grasp. “You
are in trouble; sit down, madame,
and tell me what there is that I can
do to make it lighter for you.”

“My son, my last and only son,
Marcel, is called out, M. le Marquis!”

“And you want to find a substitute
for him. It shall be done. I
will set about it without an hour’s
delay.”

“M. le Marquis, it cannot be
done; there are no more substitutes
to be had. I would give every penny
I possess to get one, but there are
none left. The widows’ only sons
were the last spared, and now they
must go. Marcel has been to the
prefecture, and they told him there
was no help for it: he must join
the new levy to-morrow at X——M.
.pn +1
le Marquis, have pity on me!
It will kill me to let him go; and,
oh! it is so dreadful to see the
boy.”

“He is frightened at the prospect
of going to battle?” There
was an imperceptible ring of scorn
under the courteous tone of the aristocrat
as he put the question.

“He is mad with delight, M. le
Marquis; he has always been wild
to follow his brothers and be killed
as they were.”

“Brave lad! But he shall not
have his wish; he shall not be made
food for Bonaparte’s cannon,” said
the Marquis. “Go home in peace,
madame, and break the bad news
to him as tenderly as you can.”

“Thank God! God bless you,
M. le Marquis!” said the widow fervently.
“But is it indeed possible?
I can hardly believe in so great a
joy.”

M. le Marquis was silent for a
moment, as if making a calculation;
then he said musingly:

“The emperor is in Paris to-day;
I will start in an hour from this and
see him to-night. He owes me
something. I never thought to have
asked a favor at his hands; but I will
stoop to ask him that your son be
exempted from the service.”

“O M. le Marquis!” Mme.
Caboff began to cry with joy; but
remembering suddenly that this
great emperor was conquering the
whole world and turning kings in
and out like valets—for Gondriac
heard of his fine doings and was very
proud of them—it occurred to her
that he might by possibility refuse
a request proffered even by so
great a man as M. le Marquis.
“You think his majesty is sure not
to refuse you, monsieur?” she added
timidly.

M. de Gondriac was too well
cased in his armor of pride to be
touched by the poor woman’s unconscious
insult; he smiled and replied
with a quiet irony that escaped his
visitor: “I think that is very unlikely,
Mme. Caboff. Be at rest,” he
continued kindly. “I pledge you
my word that your son shall not be
taken from you. Instead of going
to-morrow to X——, he had better
start off at once with a letter which
I will give him to the prefect.”

He wrote the letter and handed
it to Mme. Caboff.

.tb

It was late that evening when M.
de Gondriac arrived in Paris. He
drove straight to the Tuileries.
Time was precious, and he had
travelled in court dress, so as not to
lose an hour at the end of the journey.
It did not occur to him that
there could be any delay in reaching
the presence of the emperor.
Petitioners of his class were not so
common at the great man’s door
that it should close upon them because
of some informal haste in
their demand for admittance. He
handed in his card and asked to
see the lord chamberlain. After
some delay he was shown into the
presence of that high functionary, to
whom he stated his desire for an
immediate audience of his majesty.
The lord chamberlain smilingly
informed him that this was impossible;
mortals were not admitted
into the august presence in this
abrupt manner; but he—the lord
chamberlain—would present the request
at his earliest opportunity to-morrow,
and communicate in due
time with M. le Marquis.

“Things do not proceed so summarily
at court,” he added graciously.
The marquis felt his blood
boil. This mushroom duke telling
a De Gondriac how things were done
at court!

“I know enough of courts to be
.pn +1
aware that on occasions etiquette
must yield to weightier reasons,”
he replied.  “Oblige me, M. le Duc,
by taking my message at once to
the emperor.”

There was something in his tone
which compelled the obsequious
courtier to obey. He withdrew,
and returned presently with a face
full of amazed admiration to announce
to the visitor that his majesty
was willing to receive him.

The emperor was standing with
his hands behind his back in the
embrasure of a window when M.
de Gondriac entered. He did not
turn round at once, but waited until
the door closed, and then, walking
up to M. de Gondriac, he said
brusquely: “I have invited you
many times, marquis, and you have
never come. What brings you here
to-night?” The speech was curt,
but not insolent; it did not even
sound uncivil.

“Sire, I am an old man, and it
is so long since I have been at
court that I have forgotten how to
behave myself. My lord chamberlain
was deeply shocked, I could
perceive, at my breach of ceremony
in coming to the palace in this
abrupt way without going through
the usual observances. My motive
will, I hope, excuse me to your
majesty.”

“Yes, yes, I will let you off easier
than Bassano,” said the emperor.
“But what do you want of me?”
He had his hands still behind his
back, and, without desiring his visitor
to be seated, he turned to pace
up and down the room.

“I have come to ask a favor of
your majesty.”

“Ha! that is well. I am glad
of that. Do you know, that boy of
yours has behaved admirably,” he
said, facing round and looking at
the marquis.

“We are accustomed to fight,
sire,” replied M. de Gondriac. “It
came naturally to my son; he had,
moreover, the advantage of drawing
his maiden sword under a great
captain.”

“I mean to keep him by me. I
have appointed him on my own
staff. We are not done with war.
I am raising troops for a campaign
in the spring.”

“Sire, I am aware of it; it is
precisely about that that I have
come to speak to your majesty.
There is in my village a widow
whose two sons have fallen in the
service of the country; there remains
to her one more son, a lad
of nineteen....”

“And she is ambitious that he
should share the glorious fate of
his brothers; that is natural,” broke
in the emperor.

“Sire, she is a widow, and this
boy is all she has in the world. It
is no longer possible to procure a
substitute; therefore I come to
crave at your hands his exemption
from the service.”

“What! you would rob France
of a soldier, when they are so scarce
that gold cannot buy one? Is this
your notion of duty to your country,
M. de Gondriac? Is it thus
you aristocrats understand patriotism?”
The emperor confronted
him with a flashing eye.

“My son has answered that
question, sire.”

“Tut! And because, forsooth,
your son has done his duty, you
would have other men’s sons betray
theirs! A peasant makes as
good a soldier as a peer, let me tell
you. Because your son condescended
to share the glory of the
<i>grande armée</i> you expect me to
make you a present of a strong
young soldier! I do not understand
such sentimental logic.”
.pn +1

“Neither do I, sire. I was not
putting forward the services of my
son as a claim for this poor lad,
but those of his two brothers who
lost their lives, one at Wagram,
the other at Friedland.”

“What better could have befallen
them?”

“Nothing, in my estimation; but
their mother....”

“France is their mother; she
claims their allegiance and their
life before any one. The man who
puts his mother before his country
is a fool or a coward!”

“This young man has not asked
to be exempted; his mother came
and besought me to have him spared
to her, and, counting on your gratitude
and generosity, sire, I have
come to lay her petition at your
feet. The boy himself is frantic
to be off and die like his brothers.”

“Then he shall have his wish
and France shall count one more
hero. Tell his mother she shall
have a pension. Give me her
name, and it shall be done at
once.”

“She is not in want of it, sire;
she has wealth enough to buy a
score of men, if they were to be
had.”

“But they are not, and so her
son must go.”

“This is your last word, sire?”

“Yes, marquis, my last.”

“Then I have only to crave
your majesty’s forgiveness for my
intrusion.” M. de Gondriac bowed
and was moving towards the door,
when the emperor called out:

“Stay a moment. What motive
have you in pleading this widow’s
cause so strongly?”

The marquis in a few words
told the story of that memorable
night when Caboff saved him at
the cost of his own life. The emperor
listened to the end without
interrupting him; then he resumed
his walk, and, speaking from the
other end of the room, “You are
naturally anxious to pay back so
heavy a debt,” he said. “Would
this feeling carry you the length of
making some sacrifice?”

How could Bonaparte ask the
question? Did not M. de Gondriac’s
presence here to-night answer
it exhaustively?

“I think I have proved that,
sire,” he answered coldly.

The emperor was silent for a
while; then, turning round, he looked
fixedly at the marquis and said:

“I withdraw my unconditional
refusal. I will let you know to-morrow
on what terms I consent
to exempt the son of your deliverer
from dying on the field of battle.”

M. de Gondriac bowed low. “I
have the honor to salute your majesty.”

“<i>Au revoir</i>, marquis.”

What did he mean, and what
was this condition so mysteriously
hinted at, and only to be declared
after the night’s preparation?

M. de Gondriac was sitting over
his breakfast next morning when an
estafette rode up to his old hôtel,
bearing a large official envelope
stamped with the imperial arms
and the talismanic words, “Maison
de l’Empereur.” M. le Marquis
broke the seal and ran his eye
down the large sheet, and then
tossed it from him with an exclamation
of anger and contempt.

“Enter <i>his</i> service! Play lackey
at the court of an upstart who is
drenching my country in blood
from sheer vanity and ambition—a
usurper who is keeping my liege sovereign
in exile, and the best part
of my kindred in idleness, or else
in a servitude more humiliating
than the dreariest inactivity! A
De Gondriac tricked out in the
.pn +1
livery of a mountebank king like
him! Ha! ha! M. de Bonaparte,
when you give that spectacle to
the gods, ... <i>je vous en fais mon
compliment</i>!”

M. le Marquis laughed a low,
musical laugh as he muttered these
reflections to himself. But presently
he ceased laughing and his
face took a dark and troubled look.
The emperor made his acceptance
of this offer the price of Marcel
Caboff’s exemption. If he rejected
it, the lad must join. “Would
gratitude carry you the length
of a sacrifice?” When the question
had been put to him, it
seemed to M. de Gondriac that
he had forestalled it; but the emperor
evidently did not think so,
and now he was putting him to the
test. It was the severest he could
have chosen. When Hermann de
Gondriac took service under Bonaparte,
the old nobleman considered
his son was making a fine sacrifice
of personal pride to patriotism;
but the service here, at least, was a
noble one, and rendered to France
rather than to the upstart who had
captured her. But this other was
of a totally different order. Even
in the bygone days, when France
had a legitimate king and real
court, the De Gondriacs had been
shy of taking office in the royal
household, preferring the service
of the camp, diplomacy abroad, or
statesmanship at home; to stoop
now to be a courtier to Bonaparte
was a degradation not to be calmly
contemplated. If the tyrant had
asked any sacrifice but this, M. le
Marquis said to himself, he would
have made it gladly; but this was
impossible. It meant the surrender
of his self-respect, of those principles
whose integrity he had hitherto
proudly maintained at no small
personal risk and cost. Before he
had finished his coffee, the question
was settled, and he rose to write
his answer.

Trifles sometimes affect us with
the force of great repellant causes.
The act of taking the pen in his
hand brought before him vividly
the last time he had held it: it was
in his library at Gondriac; the widow
sat watching him with a swelling
heart, made glad by his promise
solemnly given: “I pledge
you my word that your son shall
not be taken from you.” M. le
Marquis laid down his pen and fell
to thinking. “No, I can’t do it,”
he said after a long pause. “I can’t
belie the traditions of my race; I
can’t stain the old name and turn
saltimbanque in my old age.” He
took up the pen and wrote to the
emperor, declining his offer.

The next day the town of X——
was full of excitement. The new
recruits were pouring in, sometimes
in boisterous crowds, singing and
hurrahing, sometimes in sober knots
of twos and threes, sometimes singly,
accompanied by weeping relatives,
mostly women. There had
been an official attempt to get up
a show of warlike enthusiasm, but
it had failed; people were growing
sick of the glories of war, sick of
sending sons and brothers and husbands
to be massacred for Bonaparte’s
good pleasure. The recruits
were called out by name, and
answered sullenly as they passed
through the Mairie out to the market-place,
where the sergeant was
waiting to give them their first lesson
in drill, showing them how to
stand straight and get into position.

“Marcel Caboff!” called out the
recruiting agent.

“<i>Remplacé!</i>”

“By whom?”

“Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac!”

TO BE CONTINUED.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=higher
HIGHER.
.sp 2
I have lifted up my eyes unto the mountains, whence help shall come to me.—<i>Ps.</i> cxx.

Too late have I known thee, O Infinite Beauty! too late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient and
new!—<i>St. Augustine.</i>
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
'Mid wide green meadows, made more fair with flowers—
  Tall, golden lilies, swaying in the sun,
  Slight, clustering rue that web of silver spun—
I lingered dreaming through the day’s first hours.
About me men in work-day toil were bent,
  Swift levelling the daisies’ drift of snow,
  The clover’s purple sweetness laying low,
And ripened grain whose summer life was spent.
I sat where leafy trees a shadow wrought
  Amid the broad, warm sunshine of the plain,
  Where, undisturbed, poured forth the wood-birds’ strain
And fancy’s magic played with every thought:
A whole life centred in each daisy-round,
And work-day toil seemed but a slumbrous sound.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Low rippling at my feet a loitering stream
  Slipt, murmuring music to each listening stone,
  Or flung its silver laughter where soft shone
The slant sunbeam breaking the shadows’ dream;
Betwixt the robins’ song the swift blue-bird
  Flashed like a heavenly message through the shade
  Where with the sunshine gentlest breezes played,
And quiet shadows to soft motion stirred.
Between me and the meadow’s smitten flow’rs
  The fresh June roses wreathed the rude fence bars,
  Frail elder trailed its galaxy of stars,
While butterflies sped by in golden show’rs—
Far, far beyond, the earth-haze shining through,
  Rose the great mountains’ dim and misty blue.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
III.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
So far and strange those misty hills! so near
  And intimate the little, shady nook,
  The skies reflected in the merry brook—
Those distant heights so lonely and austere!
.pn +1
Scarce e’en the busy mowers of the field
  Lifted their eyes to those dim gates of blue
  Where all their gathered harvest must pass through,
Its grass and stubble be one day revealed.
As grew the day, more clear the summits grew;
  Springing from shadow, radiant waterfalls
  Flung trails of sunshine o’er the stern rock-walls—
Such sunshine as the valley never knew!
Paled the June roses, fading in my hand,
  Tarnished the lowland river’s golden sand!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
IV.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Then seemed to stir the trembling leaves amid,
  To mingle with the robins’ cheerful call,
  A low, sad voice, as if the hills let fall
Faint, wandering echoes of sweet music hid
In dark ravine, on solitary height.
  I dropped my roses, gone their ravishment;
  I passed the mowers o’er their harvest bent;
I sought those distant mountain-lands of light.
Wild, thorny brambles stretched across my way,
  Sharp rocks were weary pathways for my feet,
  Yet ever lured me on those accents sweet
Whose very sadness was my weakness’ stay,
With every step more intimate and near—
  “Take heart, poor child! ’tis I; have thou no fear.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
V.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“Take heart, and I thy faltering steps will lead
  Above the earth-mists and the brier-strewn road
  To my far mountain-tops, the pure abode
Of heaven-born stream, and fair enamelled mead
Whose flow’rs immortal fells not any scythe.
  Long have I sought thee 'mid the withering flowers
  Wherewith thou smiling crown’dst the fading hours,
Weaving fine fancies 'mid the murmuring blithe
Of lowland stream, and birds, and pattering leaves;
  Long have I called thee, waiting for thy voice,
  So faint it rose above the troublous noise
Of earthly harvesters among their sheaves;
Long have I waited thy dear heart to win,
  So long desired to reign with thee therein.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VI.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
O sorrow-stricken Voice, so piercing sweet!
  Blinding my eyes with tears, smiting my heart
  Like some fire-pointed, swift-descending dart,
And giving strength unto my climbing feet
.pn +1
Seeking those dim and misty hills of blue.
  Lo! the great mountains at thy music thrilled,
  And all their deep recesses echoes filled—
Near and more near the sunlit summits grew!
The little birds that gathered, unafraid,
  On berry-laden boughs beside my way
  Mingled thy cadence with their roundelay—
Its joyousness grown sweeter through thy shade.
O Voice of love and grief, sad for my sin,
What ways were thine so poor a thing to win!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VII.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
O thou Almighty Lord of life and death,
  Thou that hast led me out the wilderness
  And shown me thy great hills’ pure strength to bless,
Guard in my soul, lest still it perisheth!
The cross thou gavest still I strive to bear—
  So light it grows that half, at times, I fear
  My trust is lost, sign of thy service dear—
Dost thou bear all, dear Lord, for me no share?
So in thy steps to follow still I seek,
  The wearing way thy patient feet have pressed,
  The blood-stained way thy heavy cross hath blessed—
Dost thou hold me to suffer aught too weak?
E’en when I strive one little thorn to grasp
It turns to tender roses in my clasp.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VIII.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The very stones win smoothness from thy feet,
  Beneath whose tread immortal flowers spring,
  Holding within their snowy hearts no sting,
And breathing spices for love’s incense meet.
The lark, swift rising thy approach to greet,
  The fulness of his heavenly song to pour
  No higher than thy breast divine need soar,
There hiding life and song in joy complete!
Though sheltering trees o’ershadow not my way
  To ward the sultry glow of noonday sun,
  Yet 'neath thy cross the coolest shade is won
That dims no ray of that eternal day
That from yon unstained hills of peace doth shine,
Whereto thou leadest me, O Love Divine!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
IX.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Yet many bitter tears I needs must weep,
  Remembering the glimmer of the plain
  Where nodding lilies and the bending grain
Seemed rarest treasure in their gold to keep;
.pn +1
Those thoughtless hours ere I learned to look
  Beyond my roses to the misty hills—
  The far-off pastures only God’s hand tills;
Where lost I in the laughter of the brook
And song of earthly birds that loving Voice,
  That patient call, alas! too long denied.
  Still in my heart in weeping woe must bide,
E’en in His breast who bids my soul rejoice,
The mem’ry of that day’s ingratitude
When God in vain for love his creature sued.
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=ironage
THE IRON AGE OF CHRISTENDOM.
.sp 2
Our period is emphatically one
of historical studies, as we have
had occasion to remark in a former
article on the <i>Life and Works of
M. Ozanam</i>. Among other illusions
swept away by the light of
truth which these laborious researches
have let in upon the obscurity
of the past, there is one
great illusion about golden and
iron ages. In respect to the Christian
period, specifically, it is manifest
that it is vain to look, in the
apostolic, ante-Nicene, mediæval, or
modern ages, for that ideal perfection
in real, concrete existence
which may have been in our imagination
as a pleasing picture.
There has never been an age of
gold unmixed with baser metal for
the church any more than for humanity
in general. The analogy
of the past, which is the only sure
criterion we can apply to the future,
forbids us to expect that there
ever will be such a purely golden
age on the earth. Moreover, those
iron ages or dark ages, of Christian
or pre-Christian, historic or
pre-historic times, which have been
imagined to precede or to interrupt
the epochs of splendor and light,
are seen on inspection not to have
been all iron or all darkness. The
progress of mankind towards its
destination has been continuous
from the beginning, although, in
larger or smaller local extensions
or numerical portions of humanity,
there has been in various periods a
stoppage or retrogradation of the
movement, in appearance, and in
respect to individual progress.
The earth keeps its regular course,
though men walk on its surface in
an opposite direction, and they are
carried with it unconsciously. The
ship goes on and carries with it the
passenger, while he is walking from
the bow to the stern. Clouds, night,
and eclipses are not a destruction
or suspension of the irradiation of
light from the sun on the earth, but
its partial and temporary impediments.
The ship which makes a
long, dangerous, but successful voyage
is making headway while plunging
into the trough of the sea as
well as while riding the crest of
the waves; often is less delayed by
beating against adverse winds than
by calm weather and light breezes.
The bark of Peter, freighted with
the treasures of human hope and
destiny, is steadily proceeding, under
the guidance of her heavenly
Pilot, over the waves of time,
through calm and stormy seas, toward
.pn +1
the port of eternity. Seldom
does she seem to be in safety, and
show the speed of her motion, to the
uninstructed eyes of those who do
not possess the sublime science of the
stars and charts by which her celestial
course is directed. “Never,”
says Lacordaire, “is the triumph of
the church visible at a given moment.
If you look at any one point
in the expanse of the ages, the bark
of Peter appears to be about to be
engulfed, and the faithful are always
prompt to cry out: <i>Lord, save
us, we perish!</i> But if you look at
the whole series of times, the church
manifests her strength, and you understand
what Jesus Christ said in
the tempest: <i>Man of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt?</i>”[#]

.fn #
<i>Conf. de Notre Dame</i>, tome i. conf. iv. at the
end.
.fn-

There is nevertheless a difference
in the character of epochs. The epochs
of Constantine, Charlemagne,
Gregory VII., of the thirteenth and
seventeenth centuries, are seen in
the retrospect to have a special
light of glory about them. The
seventh, tenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth
centuries present a dark aspect.
The tenth century particularly,
which we are at present bringing
under review, is generally called
“the iron age” even by our modern
Catholic historians, and not
without considerable reason, more
especially in respect to the state
and condition of the Roman Church
and the sovereign pontificate. Nevertheless,
the common notion, derived
from compendious histories
and the generalized statements which
form the commonplaces of popular
literature, respecting the tenth age
of Christendom is not correct and
is extremely confused. It was not
an age of complete barbarism and
universal ignorance. Ozanam says:
“Indeed, letters did not, at any
time, perish. The truth is that the
period of complete barbarism, supposed
at first to extend over a space
of a thousand years, from the fall
of the Roman Empire to the capture
of Constantinople, then gradually
reduced to narrower limits,
until it remained finally restricted
to the seventh and tenth centuries,
vanishes away under a more severe
scrutiny.”[#] Cantù remarks: “This
epoch is justly called the iron age,
because of the cruel sufferings endured
by individuals and nations;
but humanity made a sensible progress
in the face of these trials.
We cannot, therefore, concur in
the judgment of those who consider
it the most unhappy period
of the human race.”[#] We cannot
make logical divisions of history
into epochs exactly corresponding
with the numerical notation of
years and centuries. It would be
absurd to suppose that at 12 <sc>A.M.</sc>
of January 1, <sc>A.D.</sc> 900, to borrow
Carlyle’s expression, “the clock
of Time struck and an era passed
away”; and that the same venerable
old timepiece, from its corner
in the parlor of the universe, struck
again in just a hundred years, announcing
the end of the iron age
and the beginning of another of
some different metal. The boundaries
of epochs are not quite so
determinate, and centuries, periods,
epochs, run into one another, mix,
blend, elude precise delineation.
Cantù’s tenth epoch is not the
tenth century, but the period beginning
<sc>A.D.</sc> 800 and ending <sc>A.D.</sc>
1096. This period, between Charlemagne
and the Crusades, far from
presenting the aspect of a desolate
waste to the eye, is crowded and
variegated with events and persons
of the most important and interesting
.pn +1
character, and their history
is one great act in the European
drama, advancing it sensibly toward
the consummation which we
are still, in our own age, hastening
forward and awaiting in the near
or distant future. Within this great
period are other and lesser cycles,
embracing epochs, phases, temporary
states of ecclesiastical and
civil prosperity or adversity, alternations
of various kinds, in Christendom,
in Europe, or in portions
of the Christian commonwealth,
each having its distinctive notes.
That part of it which is in the
centre presents the characteristics
of an iron age more distinctly
marked than the preceding or following
periods. The latter half of
the ninth and the earlier half of
the tenth century, taken together,
really constitute the period which
can with strict propriety be called
the iron age. And within this century
a period of about forty years,
including the end of the ninth and
the first years of the tenth century,
was a sort of crisis in which Christian
Europe seemed to have reached
the dead-point in her progress,
and, having passed it, went on again
under the attraction of a new force.

.fn #
Dante, <i>Disc. Prelim.</i>, sec. v.
.fn-

.fn #
<i>Hist. Univ.</i>, ep. x. epilogue, tome ix. p. 478.
.fn-

This statement must not be taken
as rigorously and uniformly applicable
to all Europe and Christendom.
The Greek Empire and
the degenerate Eastern Church
were in a state of hopeless decadence,
verging toward a permanent
downfall. England and Spain, on
the other hand, passed through
their worst times earlier, and were
going upward and onward, led by
great men and heroes—Alfred and
the forerunners of Ferdinand and
the Cid—just at the time when the
rest of Europe was in the most disordered
and disastrous condition.
The crisis of the iron age affected
chiefly the countries which had constituted
the great domain of Charlemagne—France,
Germany, and
Italy. Its phases were various, in
respect to time and other conditions,
in these very countries. The whole
panorama, as presented to our
view in the pages of historical narrative,
is as shifting, varied, apparently
capricious, as mountain scenery
in the changing aspects of light
and shade, produced by sunshine,
clouds, and moonlight, by transforming
mists and sombre night.
It is only when we rise to the logical
order and sequence of events,
trace effects to their causes, enlarge
our scope of vision, ascend
into the upper regions of a true
philosophy of history whose atmosphere
is the Christian idea and
whose light is celestial faith, that a
real order, harmony, and progression
toward an intelligible and
grand result are clearly discernible.

Some few general statements borrowed
from this higher branch of
historical science must be premised
before we can come at a satisfactory
view of our particular and
immediate topic and set its details
in systematic order.

The actual evils and miseries
which afflicted the Christian people
of Europe during the iron age
were invasions of Saracens, Scandinavians,
and Hungarians, incessant
wars among greater and lesser
princes, terrible famines and pestilences,
and, in general, a state of
turbulence, insecurity, social and
moral confusion. This whole state of
things was a relapse into the condition
brought about by the fall of the
Roman Empire and the barbarian
irruption in the seventh century.
The great reason why it occurred
is found in the fact that Charlemagne’s
great empire and power
.pn +1
passed away and that no unifying,
organic power succeeded it until
Europe had passed through a period
of transition. The Roman Empire
had to pass away to make room
for Christendom, and for a time
its <i>débris</i> and the new material lying
on the ground for a reconstruction
made a state of confusion.
Charlemagne’s fundamental work
was solid and lasting, but he had
to make some temporary structures
which were showy but not substantial,
and therefore fell down or
were torn down; causing more
disorder for a time, until they were
cleared away to make room for the
permanent and splendid walls to be
built up according to the idea of the
divine Architect. The European,
Christian Idea is not that of one, uniform
political western empire, ruled
by an autocracy which continues
or succeeds to the old, imperial
Roman power. It is that of a
community of nations, bound together
by a common faith, common
principles, international law, mutual
alliance and amity, and preserving
full scope for distinct and
beautifully various forms of free,
spontaneous growth and culture.
Its regenerating, vivifying, and controlling
spirit is Christianity in the
Catholic organization. Its centre of
unity and force is Rome and the
spiritual supremacy of the pope.
The political supremacy of an emperor—understanding
by an emperor
a universal monarch ruling subordinate
kings set over dependent
kingdoms—is incompatible with this
true idea of a Christendom. Even,
supposing this universal political
sovereignty united with the sovereign
pontificate of the Pope, it is
incompatible with that true idea,
partly for the same reasons, partly for
different reasons from those which
militate against it, supposing the
two distinct powers to exist separately.
It was necessary that the
pope should possess his own separate
sovereignty in a kingdom of
moderate size. It was also necessary
that some one powerful king
should be endowed by the pope with
a special, sacred pre-eminence among
other sovereigns, as the protector
of his civil princedom and of his
spiritual supremacy. This was the
meaning of Charles the Great’s imperial
coronation. He was, in fact,
really the king of almost all Europe.
But this was temporary. His kingdom
was divided. The imperial
dignity was conferred on different
sovereigns of France, Italy, and
Germany from time to time, and
for above thirty years remained in
abeyance for want of a proper subject
to receive it, until it rested
at last on the head of the first of
the Saxon line, passing thence to the
Franconian house, and afterwards
to the Hohenstaufen. The German
emperors were, however, by
election kings of Germany, and
as such governed their states;
whereas they were made emperors
by papal consecration, and in that
capacity were protectors of the Holy
See and the church. The authority
which they lawfully exercised as
emperors in the city and principality
of Rome was the authority of a
civil magistrate who was not the
head but the right arm of the pope,
the real political sovereign in his
own state.

The European crisis of the tenth
century was a period in which the
Carlovingian dynasty was going into
decadence, and the new dynasties
of France and Germany had not yet
arisen. There was a great want of
able sovereigns, and especially of
men who were strong enough to
fulfil the functions of the imperial
office. To turn now especially towards
.pn +1
Italy and Rome, it was the
lack of a strong hand to preserve
peace and order among the petty
princes and states of Italy,
and to protect the pope and the
Holy See from the rebellions and
intrigues of powerful nobles and
contending factions within and
around the Roman principality,
which was the chief cause of the
long obnubilation of the sun of
Christendom—the Roman Church—during
the tenth epoch. We propose
to enter now more minutely
into the exposition of the historical
truth respecting this period, so far
as it relates to the popes and the
Roman Church directly and immediately.

The ordinary accounts of this
epoch in Roman and Italian history
produce a singular impression
on the mind of the reader. It
seems as if the gas had been suddenly
turned off and all had become
dark, or as if an express-train
filled with passengers had all at
once been stopped by an impediment
in the middle of the night at
an obscure way-station, to the surprise
and chagrin of all on board
when they awoke in the morning.
One is puzzled and disgusted by a
confused, disconnected story which
reads like the record of crimes and
disasters in a modern newspaper.
The persons mentioned seem to
have no reality or distinct character—to
be like the spectres of
dreams or the personified abstractions
in parables. The very names
of the popes, such as Formosus,
Marinus, Lando, Romanus, have a
strange, unpapal sound. They appear
and vanish with marvellous
rapidity, leaving no trace behind.
When we read that the world was
generally expected to explode in
the year 1000, we are not surprised,
but rather wonder why it did not,
and are quite relieved to find
ourselves safe and sound in the
eleventh century, and hear those
“whom the Lord hath sent to walk
through the earth answer the angel
of the Lord, and say: We have
walked through the earth; and behold,
all the earth is inhabited, and
is at rest.”[#]

.fn #
Zacharias i. 10, 11.
.fn-

One great difficulty in picking
the thread of history out of this
snarl is the paucity of contemporary
documents. Another cause of
misunderstanding and misrepresentation
has been the flippant and
mendacious character of the most
extensive and minute of the chronicles
of the period, that of Luitprand.
The same kind of gossiping,
scandal-mongering centres
which exist among us may not have
existed in the tenth century. There
were no newspapers filled with libels
and calumnies, falsifications of
news, reports of the army of detectives
of the press. But there
were the same violent factions, party
animosities, intrigues, mutual
denunciations, raising a cloud of
smoke and dust like that which
overhangs a battle-field, in even
more virulent activity then than
we now behold them in our modern
political <i>mêlées</i>. All the condensed
scandal, partisan vituperation, indecent
gossip, and malicious calumny
of the time in which he
lived are collected in the memoirs
of Luitprand, and from these have
been infiltrated through succeeding
times, leaving great stains which
only the acid of criticism has been
able to efface. Even Fleury says
of him that he is extremely passionate,
excessive both in his abuse
and his flattery, and given to buffoonery
to a degree which transgresses
the bounds of decency. He
.pn +1
was originally a subdeacon of the
church of Toledo in Spain, afterwards
a deacon of the church of
Pavia, during which time he was
sent by Berenger, King of Italy,
on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople.
Later he became Bishop
of Cremona, but was a disgrace
to the episcopate. He was a
courtier of Otho the German emperor,
who sent him on another
mission to Constantinople, a violent
adherent of the German party,
bitterly hostile to the Italian party
and all the popes who favored it,
and a participator in the schismatical
proceedings of Otho’s anti-pope.
His credit is now entirely
lost. But at the time of the revolt
of Luther all the incriminations of
the popes and the Roman clergy,
whether true, false, or doubtful,
were gathered up and made the
most of to sustain the bill of indictment
against the Holy See. The
same stories, repeated by numbers
of writers, produced the effect of
concurrent testimony on the general
mind of the readers of history.
Baronius and other Catholic historians,
not having sufficient materials
for testing and correcting all
these accusations, let a number of
them pass uncontradicted or admitted
their truth. Fleury and
some others of the lowest Gallican
school, who always write like advocates
who have taken out a brief
against the Holy See, have in their
historical works neglected and perverted
facts in a manner which is
equally shallow and perfidious, and
as contrary to sound criticism as it
is to orthodox doctrine. It is only
since the discovery of Flodoard’s
<i>Lives of the Popes</i>, the critical and
learned researches of Muratori, and
the great modern advance of genuine
historical science, that the tissue
of lies depending solely on the
worthless testimony of Luitprand
has been swept away. A better appreciation
of the great course of
events and the essential facts of
history is now possible, and even
easy. Men of genius, learning, and
conscientious devotion to truth
have lighted up these dark, buried
crypts of the substructure of Christendom,
as the zealous archæologists
of York have done in the old
minster, whose foundations were
laid in the very period we are describing.[#]

.fn #
See Mr. Ticknor’s <i>Life</i>, vol. i. p. 436.
.fn-

In regard to many particular
events and certain individuals
whose names figure in connection
with the transactions of an obscure
epoch we cannot expect to acquire
a perfect certainty. Nor is
there anything of moment depending
on the discovery of the truth
in such cases. We have to be content
with a probability or with a
doubt in thousands of matters
of detail. There are a considerable
number of popes of whom we
know next to nothing. In certain
instances it is not easy to determine
whether an election of a given
individual was valid or invalid.
Of the truth or falsehood
of the accusations made against
several popes and other persons
of high ecclesiastical or civil rank,
and of the reports of assassinations
and other great crimes, which are so
frequent in this period of disorder,
we cannot always form a certain
judgment. There is enough, however,
of that which is certain or
fairly probable to show the connection,
the continuity, and the
identity of principles both with
the foregoing and the following
epochs, and to furnish ample material
for the vindication of the
cause of the Holy See and the Papacy.
.pn +1
There is a sequence in the
progress through the struggles of
transition; there are great and
good men, noble and heroic achievements,
interesting and curious episodes—in
fine, there is a human
and a Christian character showing
its lineaments in place of the
cloudy spectre with distorted features
which has heretofore scared
the imagination.[#]

.fn #
We make here our acknowledgment of indebtedness
to the series of articles in the <i>Civiltà Cattolica</i>
entitled “I Destini di Roma,” which was
begun Aug. 19, 1871, for a great part of what is to
follow in this article.
.fn-

We begin our historical sketch
with Pope Formosus, who was
elected <sc>A.D.</sc> 891. This is one of
the popes of whom we have said
above that they seem in our common
histories like a mere shadow
of a great name without a personal
reality. Besides, there is a certain
cloud on his memory, arising from
the fact that he was deprived of
his see of Porto by John VIII., and
that he was the subject of a great
outrage from his successor, Stephen
VI. A careful examination of his
history shows, however, that he was
no common man and was both a
good and an able pope. As Bishop of
Porto he was one of the most conspicuous
among the Italian prelates.
He left his see to become a missionary
among the Bulgarians, where
he labored zealously and successfully
in the work of their conversion.
There is nothing to show
that his censure by Pope John VIII.,
which seems to have been chiefly
occasioned by his taking an active
part in a political opposition to the
Emperor Charles the Bald, involved
in it any moral dishonor. He
was restored by Pope Marinus, and
the indignities inflicted on his
memory by his successor were a
wanton and causeless outrage, which
was condemned and repaired by a
subsequent pope with the approbation
of the Roman people.

Europe was just then in the
depths of the disorders and miseries
caused by the decay of the imperial
authority and the degeneracy
of Charlemagne’s successors.
Berenger was king in Northern
Italy, but Guido, Duke of Spoleto,
and his son Lambert had been
crowned emperors in opposition to
him and to all the French and German
claimants. Toward the end
of the short reign of Formosus,
which lasted less than five years,
and after the death of Guido, the
dissatisfaction of the pope with the
conduct of Lambert and his mother,
Ermengarda, induced him to
summon Arnulph, King of Germany,
to come to the relief of the
Holy See and of Italy. He obeyed
the summons, made a forcible
entry into Rome, where the Lambertine
faction had gained the upper
hand and thrown Formosus into
prison, and was by him crowned
emperor. This was the beginning
of the appeals of the popes to Germany
for intervention in Italian affairs,
and of the never-ending conflicts
between the Italian and German
parties in Italy, whose <i>finale</i>
we have but just witnessed in our
own day in the exclusion of Austria
from her dominion in Venetia.
We have no doubt that it was necessary,
and on the whole productive
of good results, that the imperial
crown should be transferred
to the German sovereigns. But,
without delaying to consider this
point, we simply take note of the
fact that this was one of the great
questions of violent dispute and
contention which disturbed the Roman
Church and the papal elections
so long as there were Italian
princes who disputed the imperial
dignity with the Germans. Arnulph
.pn +1
returned almost immediately
to Germany. Formosus died and
was followed to the tomb a few
weeks after by his immediate successor,
Boniface VI. The party
of Lambert succeeded in obtaining
the election of Stephen VI., the
first of the popes who grievously
dishonored the tiara. His violent
and shameful conduct caused a
temporary reaction in favor of the
opposite party, by whom he was
imprisoned and strangled. Lambert
was, nevertheless, acknowledged
by the three succeeding popes,
Romanus, Theodore II., and John
IX., and by two successive councils,
and the pact between the
church and the empire was solemnly
renewed. These three pontificates
filled only a space of three
years and closed the century. The
year 901 saw a new competitor for
the imperial crown, which death
had taken from Lambert’s head, in
the person of Louis of Provence,
who was actually crowned by Benedict
IV., but very soon driven
away by Berenger, who was still
reigning in the north of Italy.
Berenger was an able and warlike
sovereign, in many respects worthy
of admiration, and capable of filling
the imperial office with honor
to himself and advantage to Italy.
Circumstances were, however,
extremely adverse. He maintained
himself in possession of a
certain pre-eminence among the petty
sovereigns of Italy, and carried
on vigorously wars against the Saracen
and Hungarian invaders.
He was even crowned emperor in
915, but was never able to establish
his authority on a solid and permanent
basis, and at last, in 924, he
was assassinated by a conspiracy of
Italian nobles. With him the imperial
office became extinct, and remained
so until it was resuscitated,
thirty-eight years afterward, in the
person of Otho the Great.

The failure of the imperial power
which had been instituted in the
person of Charlemagne left the Holy
See and all Italy a prey to contending,
petty sovereigns, to powerful
and mutually hostile nobles and factions,
and to fierce heathen invaders.
The Roman pontiffs maintained
with difficulty a restricted, often
merely nominal, civil sovereignty in
the city and principality of Rome.
Between the years 900 and 914
six popes succeeded each other:
Benedict IV., Leo V., Christopher,
Sergius III., Anastasius III., and
Lando. Of the nine popes who
came between Stephen VI. and
John X., it is certain that nearly
all were worthy of their exalted
position, and the grave accusations
made against two of the number,
Christopher and Sergius, rest on
uncertain testimony. The average
length of their reigns being less
than two years, and that of the
longest among them only seven,
most of the number had no time to
make a conspicuous figure in history,
and their annals are so scanty
that very little is known of the acts
of their administration.

The reign of John X., which
lasted fourteen years, from 914 to
928, was of a different character.
He was one of the great popes, and
proved himself fully equal to the
emergencies of the time and the
difficulties of his position. For
nine years previously to his election
to the Roman See he had
been Archbishop of Ravenna, and
the extraordinary ability which he
had exhibited in his government
of that important church had
pointed him out as one capable of
making head, in conjunction with
Berenger, against the perils with
which Rome and Italy were beset
.pn +1
at this most dangerous crisis in
their destinies. In fact, he was
obliged to do the work alone; for
Berenger was unable to help him,
having his hands full in fighting
Saracens and Hungarians in Northern
Italy. There was no hope to
be placed either in Germany or
France. The only resource for the
pope was to place himself at the
head of his own barons and in alliance
with the neighboring princes,
and to lead the war against the
Saracens in person. For this purpose
he formed a league among
the princes of Southern Italy, and,
obtaining also auxiliaries from the
Greek emperor, conducted a short
and brilliantly successful campaign
against the Saracens, by which they
were completely discomfited and
finally expelled from that part of
Italy. The entire reign of John X.
was in conformity with its glorious
beginning; but soon after the violent
and tragical overthrow of the
noble Emperor Berenger by the
turbulent Italian nobles, a similar
catastrophe ended the career of
the great pope, his friend and compeer.
Alberic, Count of Tusculum,
and Theophylact, senator of Rome,
had been the two most powerful
supporters, and the former had
been the chief subordinate leader,
of the great military operations of
John X. The almost exclusive
glory and credit which the popular
voice ascribed to John for the
liberation of the country from the
Saracens, and the great increase
and concentration of the sovereign
authority under his vigorous administration,
stirred up the jealousy
and discontent of these great
nobles. The wife of Theophylact
was the famous Theodora, the
younger Theodora was their daughter,
and another daughter, Mariuccia,
commonly called Marozia, was
the wife of Alberic. These women,
but especially the last mentioned,
were remarkable for their
beauty, talents, and ambition. The
stream of filthy tradition which has
come down through the sewer of
Luitprand and the popular romances
of the period has transmitted
to posterity the names of these
women, stained with every kind of
foulness and cruelty. How much
of calumny and exaggeration there
may be in these scandalous stories
we cannot determine. It is certain
that the family exercised a great
sway in Rome for many years both
before and after the great <i>coup
d’état</i> in which the intrigues of Marozia
culminated and collapsed, as
we are about to relate. One year
after the murder of Berenger, Alberic
was killed in an unsuccessful
assault on Rome, and Marozia married
Guido, Marquis of Tuscany.
The sister of Guido, Ermengarda,
Marchioness of Ivrea, was another
of the group of Italian princesses
of that period, remarkable in all
respects, except in the special virtues
of Christian women. In 926
Marozia set on foot, with these two
accomplices, a revolution in Italy,
by which Rodolph of Burgundy,
the successful rival and successor
of Berenger in the kingdom of Italy,
was chased out to make room for
Hugo of Provence, the half-brother
of Guido. After the coronation
of Hugo at Pavia, Guido and Marozia
took possession of Rome by
force of arms and imprisoned Pope
John X., who died a few months
afterward, it is suspected by violence.
Guido also died within a
year from his usurpation, and Marozia
governed the city alone with
the titles of senator and patrician.
After the two short, and perhaps
abbreviated, pontificates of Leo VI.
and Stephen VIII., she caused the
.pn +1
younger of her two sons by Alberic
to be elected pope under the name
of John XI. Still unsatisfied, she
aspired to become queen of Italy,
and empress, and for this purpose
contracted a marriage—which by
the ecclesiastical law was null and
void[#]—with her brother-in-law,
Hugo, the King of Italy. The marriage
was celebrated in 932, and
the imperial coronation was expected
to follow in due time. But the
violent and imperious temper of
the Burgundian Hugo ruined all
these plans. Alberic, eldest son of
Marozia by her first husband, Alberic
of Tusculum, was a youth
who inherited all the brilliant qualities
of both his parents, and whose
character was certainly not derived
from his mother or due to
her influence. One day at dinner
the princely youth was acting as
page to the king, and by accident
or design poured too much water
on his hands, for which he received
a buffet on the cheek from his rude
step-father. He immediately left
the room in a towering passion,
and, running out upon the piazza,
summoned the people, with words
of burning eloquence, to vengeance
and rescue. The Castle of St. Angelo
was very speedily taken by assault,
Hugo was forced to save his
life by flight, and Marozia, banished
from Rome, repudiated by her
husband, thwarted in her wicked
schemes, disappeared from view,
and, it is to be hoped, passed the
rest of her days until her death,
which did not occur later than 945,
in doing penance for her sins.

.fn #
A dispensation may have been granted, but
Hugo afterwards disavowed the marriage on the
plea of the ecclesiastical impediment.
.fn-

Now followed one of the most
curious and interesting of episodes
in the history of Christian Rome.
Alberic reigned during his whole
life-time—a period of twenty-two
years—as absolute sovereign of
Rome, with ability, justice, and
popularity. He was in harmony
with the popes, a protector of his
kingdom and of the Holy See, a
munificent patron of religious orders,
a benefactor to the church and religion.
The period of his reign is
like an oasis in the desert of the
tenth century. It is true that he
kept his brother, John XI., in an
honorable yet strict imprisonment
during his life-time. Yet, although
there is nothing recorded to the
discredit of this pope, Alberic’s
conduct toward the succeeding
pontiffs shows that he must have
had strong reasons for his treatment
of his brother. The elections
of popes during his reign were free
and peaceful, and the best men
among the Roman clergy were
chosen. By degrees the legal form
of the administration was so regulated
that the sovereign rights and
titles of the pope were preserved;
and although the actual civil government
was entirely in the hands
of Prince Alberic, it was administered
by him as the pope’s temporal
vicar, without discord between
the two powers. As a provisional
arrangement it worked well, but
Alberic was too wise and far-seeing
to think its permanent continuance
possible or desirable. By a singular
stroke of policy he prepared
for the restoration of the real sovereignty
to the one who had not
ceased to retain the title and the
right. His son Octavian was educated
as an ecclesiastic, and the
chiefs of the clergy and nobility
were induced to make a solemn engagement
before Alberic’s death to
elect Octavian pope on the first vacancy
of the Holy See. He was
accordingly elected pope soon after
the death of his father, although he
.pn +1
was but eighteen years of age, and
assumed the name of John XII.

Of the personal and private character
of this youthful pontiff, who
died at the age of twenty-six after
a reign of eight years, it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to form
an exact and certain estimate.
The accusations made against him
during his life-time are atrocious,
and they are still repeated by modern
writers, although the most judicious
and moderate historians soften
them down considerably. The
learned writer in the <i>Civiltà</i> gives
his judgment that as a pontiff all
his acts were laudable, and, as a
king, worthy of one who was the
son of Alberic. In respect to his
private morals, he considers that
the accusations of his political enemies
and of writers attached to the
German, imperial party—the almost
sole remaining source of information
respecting that period—are to
be distrusted; but that it is difficult
to exculpate him altogether
from the reproach of having lived
more as secular princes are wont
to do than as became the holy
state of a bishop. The salient
point of his administration was the
calling in of the King of Germany,
Otho the Great, and the subsequent
imbroglio between the pope and
the emperor. Otho, who well deserves
the name of Great, notwithstanding
grievous errors and wrongs
in his conduct toward the Holy See,
had been reigning twenty years
when he was summoned to Rome
and crowned emperor. The return
of the old disorders in Italy made
his intervention necessary, but he
carried it too far, and John XII.,
probably with good reason, and
certainly acting in a way which was
natural in a high-spirited and
youthful sovereign trained in the
maxims and sentiments of an Italian
prince, joined with the other
princes of Italy in opposition to the
German domination. A struggle
between John and Otho was the
consequence. The emperor, misled
by the bad advice of Luitprand
and other bishops, attempted to depose
the pope and substitute an
anti-pope, who called himself Leo
VIII., in his place. John XII.
died suddenly before this conflict
had any decisive issue, and Benedict
V. was elected in his place, but
was soon after carried away into
Germany by Otho and kept in captivity
at Hamburg. On the death
of the anti-pope, which occurred in
March, 965, a few months after the
death of John, the Romans requested
the restoration of Benedict V.,
which was granted by Otho. The
pope, however, died on his journey
to Rome, venerated and regretted
even by the emperor and by all
with whom he had come into personal
contact, as well as by the Romans.

The emperor and all the various
parties by which Rome was divided
agreed together and concurred
in the election of John XIII., who
favored the German party in politics,
and had, on the whole, a peaceful
and prosperous reign of six
years, sustained by the imperial
power, although it was interrupted
by one violent sedition, which was
repressed and punished in the severest
manner.

The close of the reigns of the
Pope John XIII. and the Emperor
Otho the Great was marked by
one extraordinary and most interesting
event—the marriage of the
young Emperor Otho II. with Theophania,
a Greek princess of distinguished
beauty, intellectual accomplishments,
and personal virtues.
She brought with her as dowry all
the Greek possessions in Italy, and
.pn +1
was regarded as an angel of peace
between the two empires.

The death of Otho I. in 973 was
the signal for new outbreaks and
disturbances in Italy. In Rome a
struggle began between two powerful
families: the Crescenzi, who
were the great lords of the Sabine
territory, and the Conti—that is,
the Tusculan counts—who were the
principal barons of Latium. The
latter favored, while the former opposed,
the imperial power in Italy.
Crescenzio, or Cencio, the first leader
of the Italian faction, is supposed
by many writers to have been
a grand-nephew of Marozia. He
attempted an imitation of Alberic,
though not by the same honorable
means, and endeavored to gain possession
for himself of the Roman
principality. The pope, Benedict
VI., who had succeeded John XIII.
a few months before the death
of Otho I., was assaulted and dethroned
by armed force, imprisoned
in the Castle of St. Angelo, and at
last strangled. An infamous ecclesiastic,
a partisan and accomplice
with Crescenzio in his crimes, was
intruded into the chair of St. Peter
while he was still, in the language
of Pope Sylvester II., dripping with
the blood of his predecessor. This
so-called Pope Boniface VII., who
is commonly regarded as an anti-pope,
was dispossessed, after one
month, together with his patron,
Crescenzio, by a counter-revolution
under the counts of Tusculum, and
fled to Constantinople. At a later
period he returned and succeeded
in seizing on the government for a
brief period, but came at length to
a most tragical and ignominious
end. Crescenzio ended his days
in a monastery. It is uncertain
whether there was or was not a
pope named Donus II. who reigned
for a few months after the death of
Benedict VI. Benedict VII., a
nephew of Alberic, Count of Tusculum,
and Bishop of Sutri, was enthroned,
according to Mansi, on
the 28th of December, 974, and
governed the Roman Church during
his pontificate of nine years in
such a manner as to leave no stain
upon his reputation. One of his
first acts was to excommunicate, in
a council of bishops, Cardinal Franco,
the anti-pope. In 980 he was
obliged to call upon the young emperor,
Otho II., to come to his assistance
in Rome. He came, in fact,
during the following year, but, after
an unsuccessful campaign against
the allied Greeks and Saracens,
died in his imperial palace at Rome,
Dec. 9, 983, in the twenty-eighth
year of his age—a prince whose
character made him worthy of his
father, but who was less fortunate
in his destiny. His premature
death and the infancy of Otho III.
seemed to threaten both Germany
and Italy with great disasters.
Germany was preserved from these
menacing evils by the sanctity and
ability of two noble and heroic
women—St. Adelaide, the widow of
Otho the Great, and Theophania,
widow of Otho II., and imperial
regent in the name of her son, who
was but three years old, yet universally
recognized as King of Germany
and emperor-elect. Rome,
however, had still to suffer, and remained
for another half-century to
come the foot-ball of rival factions.
The son of Crescenzio, called Crescenzio
Nomentano, obtained the upper
hand in Rome, recalled the
anti-pope, Boniface VII., imprisoned
and put to death John XIV., the
successor of Benedict VI., and
made himself patrician and governor
of Rome. The sudden death
of Boniface, however, and the
universal hatred in which his memory
.pn +1
was held, enabled the clergy
and people of Rome to elect a worthy
pope in the person of John
XV. (April, 986), who held the see
ten years, governing with great
prudence and success, notwithstanding
the great difficulties of
his position. In 989 the empress-mother,
Theophania, came to Rome
and held an imperial court. It was
expected that she would put an
end to the tyranny of Crescenzio
Nomentano, but she was deceived
by his extreme cunning and hypocritical
promises so far that she
confirmed him in his office as patrician.
After her departure he became
so much worse that the pope
was obliged to leave Rome and
take refuge with Hugo, Marquis of
Tuscany, through whose intervention
a pressing request was sent to
the emperor-elect, Otho III., now
seventeen years of age, to come in
person to Italy. So great was now
the fear of the imperial power that
Crescenzio hastened to reconcile
himself to the pope, who returned
and was reconducted with great
manifestations of honor to the Lateran
palace.

On his arrival in Rome at the
head of a large army, early in 996,
Otho III., who, with precocious
vigor of mind and character, had
assumed the reins of government,
found the Roman See vacant by
the death of John XV., and his
first care was the election of his
successor. The one whom he proposed,
and who was accepted by
the electors, was a young ecclesiastic
but twenty-four years of age,
the son of the Duke of Franconia
and his own cousin-german. His
name was Bruno, and his accomplished
education, joined with a
mature virtue, made him worthy to
fill the see of Peter. He assumed
the name of Gregory V., and gave
great promise of adorning the Holy
See during a long pontificate, as
Otho did of becoming an illustrious
emperor of Germany. The hopes of
the church and the empire were,
however, frustrated by the early
death of both. Crescenzio had
been condemned to banishment,
but, at the request of Gregory, his
sentence was remitted. The generosity
of the two youthful and confiding
sovereigns was requited by
Crescenzio, as soon as Otho’s back
was turned, by an uprising against
the German pope and the imperial
officers, the expulsion of Gregory,
and the creation of an anti-pope,
who was John Philagathos, a Greek
monk, Bishop of Piacenza, and
lately ambassador of the emperor
at the court of Constantinople.
The bold plan of these two conspirators
was nothing less than
the restoration of the sovereignty
of the West to the Greek emperor,
under whose auspices each one
hoped to be confirmed in his usurped
authority at Rome. In 998
Gregory and Otho re-entered Rome
together, and this time showed no
clemency either to Crescenzio or
Philagathos, both of whom were
victims of a terrible vengeance.

Pope Gregory died in 999, in the
twenty-seventh year of his age and
the third of his pontificate. He
was succeeded by the celebrated
Gerbert, a French monk, formerly
abbot of the famous monastery of
Bobbio, and at this present time
Archbishop of Ravenna, who took
the name of Sylvester II. He had
been the guide, the tutor, and the
friend of Otho during his boyhood.
In his earlier career he had been
somewhat hot-headed, and had sustained
a sharp and obstinate contest
with Pope John XV. in respect
to the see of Rouen. Now, however,
he was an old man and a
.pn +1
wise. No pope so truly great, in
the sense of the word most appropriate
to a bishop and an ecclesiastical
ruler, had ascended the papal
throne since the time of St. Nicholas
the Great, in the middle of the
ninth century. Otho remained always
in Rome and Italy, for which
he had a special predilection.
Nothing can be more beautiful
than the picture of this venerable
and learned old man, with his gifted
and loving pupil by his side,
“<i>pulchri Cæsaris pulcherrima proles</i>,”
filling together the throne of ancient,
eternal Rome with their
pontifical and imperial majesty.
What a subject for a painter or a
poet! Otho is one of the most winning
characters to be found in all
history. His mother, the Greek
princess, had given him an exquisite
mental culture, and his grandmother,
St. Adelaide, a most pious education.
There was something visionary
and romantic in his nature
which only adds to his personal attractiveness.
He dreamed of great
things for Rome and the empire,
such as the Florentine seer who
had the vision of the unseen world
dreamed of, but which were not in
accordance with the plans of divine
Providence, and probably not with
the views of Sylvester II. He died
at a castle near Civita Castellana,
in the twenty-third year of his age,
in the arms of Sylvester, who followed
him to the tomb in a little
more than a year after, on the 12th
of May, 1003.

The dreaded year 1000 had been
passed and the eleventh century
was begun. It was really one of
the most fortunate of all the centuries
for Rome and the popes, yet
it began under dark and menacing
auspices. The Crescenzi regained
the predominance in Rome and
kept it for twelve years during
three pontificates—viz., those of
John XVII., which lasted only
five months, of John XVIII. and
Sergius IV., both of whom ruled the
church in peace and with honor to
themselves, yet were obliged to tolerate
the usurpation of the patrician
Giovanni Crescenzio, who seems to
have governed with more mildness
than his father, Nomentano, had
done. In 1012, after his death,
the dominion of this family came
finally to an end, being supplanted
by that of the Conti Tusculani, who
retained it for thirty years. Count
Gregory, a descendant of Alberic
and Marozia, whose later years
were rendered illustrious by piety
and good works of a splendid munificence,
left at his death three
sons, Alberic, Theophylact, and
Romanus. The second of these
became pope under the name of
Benedict VIII., and governed the
church as well as the Roman principality
during twelve years with consummate
ability, aided in his civil
administration by his two brothers,
and in perfect amity with the emperor,
St. Henry II., who had succeeded
his cousin, Otho III., but had
always been prevented by wars and
other pressing employments elsewhere
from interfering in Italian
affairs. In 1014 St. Henry was
able to come to Rome with his
queen, St. Cunegunda, to receive
the imperial coronation from the
pope. A rival king of Italy, Arduin,
the last of the Italian kings who
aspired to the iron crown of Lombardy
until Victor Emanuel appeared,
had been conquered, and, retiring
to a monastery, passed the rest
of his days in penance. Henry and
Benedict together made successful
war upon the Greeks and Saracens,
putting an end to the troubles of
Italy from both these enemies.
The pope and the emperor both
.pn +1
died at about the same time in 1024,
and with Henry II. was ended the
Saxon line of emperors, which was
succeeded by the Franconian, called
also the Ghibelline from the
family castle of Waiblingen, and the
Salic, from the tribal name Salii—<i>i.e.</i>,
dwellers by the river Sala.
Benedict’s brother Romanus succeeded
him on the pontifical throne
under the name of John XIX., and
united more strictly in his own
person the functions of ecclesiastical
and civil sovereignty than had
been the case during the reign of
his predecessor. His pontificate of
eight years was a laudable administration,
without any event of note
which has been recorded, except
the coronation of the first Franconian
emperor, Conrad II. This
coronation was marked by the
presence of an unusually numerous
and splendid assemblage of princes
and prelates from all parts of Europe,
among whom were Rudolph,
Duke of Burgundy, and Canute the
Great, King of Denmark and England.
This grand ceremony was
performed in the spring of 1027,
but, notwithstanding the new splendor
which seemed at that time to environ
the Holy See, the greatest
disgrace and scandal with which it
was ever afflicted was close at hand
and came upon it in the next pontificate.
On the death of John XIX.,
in 1032, there was no one of the
family of the Conti upon whose head
the tiara could be placed with any
sort of fitness and propriety. So
great and so strongly fixed was the
power of that family that they succeeded
in securing the election and
coronation of a young boy, Theophylact,
nephew of the two preceding
popes, and the son of Count
Alberic, their elder brother. He is
said by some historians to have been
twelve years old, by others to have
been perhaps seventeen. Under the
name of Benedict IX. he continued
during the thirteen years of his
reign, under the protection of the
emperor and supported by the
power of his family, to harass his
subjects by his capricious tyranny,
and to afflict and desolate the church
by the unrestrained license of his
moral conduct. His scandalous
life and maladministration of the
government brought on a schism
headed by an anti-pope calling
himself Sylvester III., caused frequent
and violent popular tumults,
and excited universal contempt and
odium against his own person. At
last the discontent reached such an
extreme that of his own free-will
Benedict abdicated his office, that
he might have greater freedom to
live without any restraint upon his
conduct. The most distinguished
and the most respected priest of
the Roman Church at this time
was John Gratian, arch-priest of
the church of St. John at the Latin
Gate, the preceptor of St. Hildebrand,
who was afterwards Pope
Gregory VII. Desiring to put an
end to the calamities of every kind
which were the consequence of a
sacrilegious pontificate, Gratian took
the extraordinary course of offering
a large subsidy in money to Benedict
IX. on condition of a complete
renunciation of all his rights
to the Roman See. He was then
himself canonically elected Pope
under the name of Gregory VI.,
and began with zeal the work of
reformation in both church and
state. Nevertheless, the circumstance
that he had given a sum
of money to induce Benedict to
resign gave occasion to such a
plausible outcry of simony and
personal ambition against Gregory,
and the resistance of the anti-pope
Sylvester as well as that of Benedict,
.pn +1
who reclaimed his former office,
was so violent, that it was necessary
to call in the aid of the
new emperor Henry III., and to
summon a numerous council, that
the rival claims might be adjudicated
and sufficient measures be
adopted for restoring peace and
order. The council, which met at
Sutri, set aside entirely both Sylvester
and Benedict. The decision
of his own case was referred
to Gregory with great respect, but
with a manifest wish that he should
resign. The pope disclaimed in the
most solemn manner all mercenary
and selfish motives for what he had
done, yet nevertheless, on account
of the scandal which had been occasioned,
he judged himself to be
unworthy of the papal dignity, and
abdicated it with many tears and
expressions of humility. The council
confirmed his resignation, which
St. Hildebrand and many others regretted,
but which the greater number,
with St. Peter Damian, highly
approved, notwithstanding their esteem
for Gregory, who retired into
a monastery, where he lived a secluded
and holy life. Even Benedict
at last repented, and spent the
few remaining years of his life in
prayer and penance in the monastery
of Grotta-Ferrata, which his
grandfather, Count Gregory, had
founded.

On Christmas eve, 1046, Suidger,
Bishop of Bamberg, was proposed
by the emperor to the Roman clergy
and people, and by them elected
pope, taking the name of Clement
II. He was enthroned on Christmas
day, and on the same day
crowned the emperor and empress,
and, as a safeguard against the abuse
of the power of the Roman patrician
by the Italian barons, it was
transferred to the emperor, who was
thus made the recognized head of
the Roman aristocracy, with a special
right of superintending the
election of the sovereign pontiffs.
From this moment commenced the
dawn of better and brighter days
for Rome. The great work of reformation
was begun by Clement;
and, although his reign lasted but
one year, and his successor, another
German prelate of high
character—Poppo, Bishop of Brixen,
who became Damasus II.—survived
his enthronization but twenty-three
days, a saint was waiting to
inaugurate the glorious series of
the Hildebrandine popes.

Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who was
St. Leo IX., having after long resistance
been persuaded by the
emperor and the most eminent prelates
to consent to assume the tiara,
stopped at Cluny to see Hildebrand,
a young monk, who became
St. Gregory VII. With difficulty
he induced him to accompany him
to Rome, on the condition that he
would make the journey in pilgrim’s
garb, and submit the imperial
nomination without reserve to
the free election of the clergy and
people of the Roman Church. He
was enthroned on the 12th of February,
which was the first Sunday
of Lent, 1049. The eleventh century
was at its zenith, and the
bright sun of a new era shed its
rays upon Christendom, as a new
St. Leo sat upon the throne of St.
Peter, St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory,
and St. Nicholas, chasing
away the darkness and the clouds
of the tenth century, and putting
an end to the period of the obnubilation
of the Roman Church.

We have confined our attention
almost entirely to the local history
of the popes, without noticing their
administration of the universal
church. The general ecclesiastical
history of the whole period between
.pn +1
St. Nicholas I. and St. Gregory
VII. furnishes abundant proof
of the universal recognition and
continuous exercise of the papal
supremacy in the East as well as
in the West. Adrian II. celebrated
the eighth œcumenical council
at Constantinople in 870. John
VIII., John X., and John XV. exercised
throughout Europe the
same spiritual authority which
was exercised by Nicholas the
Great. The local difficulties of the
popes, and even the scandals which
disturbed the Roman Church, had
no effect throughout Christendom
to diminish the authority of the
Roman See. During the general
anarchy and chaos caused by the
new irruption of barbarians the
unity and common life of Christendom
was oppressed and enfeebled,
and the corporate, organic action of
the universal church could not
manifest itself so vigorously as it
had done before and did afterwards.
When all the evils which
had attacked the church and
Christendom at the very centre of
life in Rome reached their crisis in
the pontificate of Benedict IX., it
was certainly felt by all good and
honest men that the very existence
of the Papacy and the Catholic
Church, of the whole European society,
and of all civilization, morality,
and order on the earth, was in
imminent danger. The spectacle
of a youth who was no better in
morals, and no stronger in intellectual
or princely qualities, than the
weakest and most dissolute of the
Carlovingian monarchs, seated on
the throne of St. Peter, shocked and
scandalized Christendom to such
an extent that the loud outcry has
not yet ceased to resound in our
ears. Yet we perceive in the
action of the Council of Sutri, and
of the emperor, Henry III., in respect
to Gregory VI., one of the
most signal and splendid testimonies
to the undoubting and unshaken
faith of that age in the supremacy
of the pope. Sylvester was
judged and condemned to perpetual
imprisonment as an intruder
and a pseudo-pope. Benedict was
set aside, not because the council
pretended to judge him for his conduct
while pope, but because he
had executed a legal and valid abdication
of his office. In respect
to Gregory, the council examined
and judged of nothing except the
validity of his election, and, this being
ascertained, left the judgment
of his own case to his own supreme
authority, to his conscience, and to
Almighty God.

Just one rapid and parting glance
we must cast over Christendom, to
take in by a general view its
movement through this segment of
the great cycle of time, and the
state into which it had grown in
the middle of the eleventh century.
The great barbarian and heathen
irruption into Christian Europe
was like the casting of an immense
mass of fresh coals upon a glowing
but gradually-expiring fire in a
great foundry furnace. The general
aspect was black and dead, and
the momentary effect was a suspension
of the great works commenced,
but the result was a rapid
kindling from the burning bed beneath,
a stronger and hotter fire,
and a more vigorous resumption of
operations. The threatened Mohammedan
conquest of Europe was
averted, the Hungarian invasion
completely and finally repelled, the
Scandinavian eruptions changed
into a most beneficial colonization
and infusion of a new element of
strength. Many other most remarkable
and salutary political and
social transformations were effected.
.pn +1
The Scandinavians, Hungarians,
Russians, and other Sclavonian nations
were converted and added
to the church. A beginning was
made with the Prussians, even, by
the martyrdom of their first apostle,
St. Adalbert, although the
work was not completed until near
the close of the thirteenth century
and proved to be short-lived.
Since they have resumed the persecution
of bishops, there may be,
perhaps, a hope of their reconversion.

The calendars of the two centuries
from 850 to 1050 are crowded
with the names of great saints and
other illustrious men and women.
Among the popes flourished St.
Leo IV., founder of the Leonine
City, St. Nicholas I., John X.,
Benedict VIII., and Sylvester II.
Among the emperors and kings
we may single out Berenger, Henry
the Fowler, Otho the Great, St.
Henry II., Hugh Capet, Robert,
Alfred, Canute, Edward the Confessor;
Edward and Edmund,
martyrs; Brian Boroihme, Ferdinand,
St. Stephen, St. Olaf, Rollo,
and Wladimir. In the brilliant
group of Christian empresses and
queens shine with special lustre
Theodora, St. Adelaide, St. Cunegunda,
St. Matilda, Theophania,
and Olga. As illustrious specimens
of the great number of bishops
and abbots of high virtue and
merit, we mention St. Anscharius,
St. Methodius, St. Ignatius of Constantinople,
St. Dunstan, St. Odo
of Cluny, and St. Romuald. These
two centuries contributed but little
to the treasury of literature.
There is, nevertheless, a considerable
list of authors, among whom
are worthy of mention Nithart,
Flodoard, Suidas, Pascharius Radbert,
Wuthikind the German annalist,
and John Scotus Erigena.
One of the most gifted and clever
of the Latins, Luitprand, and the
most intelligent and erudite of the
Greeks, Photius, were unhappily
both so morally despicable that
they reflect disgrace rather than
honor upon their age.

The epoch we are considering
was more remarkable for action
than for writing. The vast and
strong foundations were laid for
the future superstructure. Empires
and kingdoms, smaller states, cities,
towns, universities, monasteries, and
great churches, rose in majesty during
the latter part of this epoch
upon the ruins made during its
earlier period, or upon heretofore
waste and desert land. The glorious
orders of Cluny and Camaldoli,
the universities of Oxford, Cambridge,
Cordova, several of the
great minsters, and the first efforts
of the new school of Christian
art date from this period. It
made scanty records of its own history,
but it is crowded with the richest
materials for the student and the
literary artist. M. Ozanam projected
a course of lectures at the Sorbonne
covering the whole space
from the fifth to the fourteenth
centuries, but executed only the
first and last part of his programme.
The middle portion still
lies open to any one worthy to complete
his work. The Iron Age is
worthy of more study than has
been given to it, and, when it is
carefully examined, there are many
great discoveries to be made concerning
the ages which preceded as
well as those which have followed
this hard era. When will intelligent
Englishmen and Americans
begin to read history and find out
how they have been duped? When
will the wretched little manuals such
as Mrs. Markham’s <i>History of England</i>
be driven out of our schools
.pn +1
and children’s libraries and replaced
by books which tell the truth? Let
us lay bare history and search for
the hard foundations of society
and civilization, and we shall see
with ocular evidence that the converging
and diverging lines of all
the centuries have but two centres,
Jerusalem and Rome. The rocky
height of Jebus, which David carried
by craft and valor; the Capitoline
Hill, where Romulus and Numa
laid the foundations of Rome,
are in the cycle of history what
the two foci are in an ellipse.
When the fortunes of Juda are
at their lowest point, the supernatural
providence of God over
that royal tribe and the house of
David is most signally manifested.
It is impossible to read intelligently
the history of the Roman See
and the popes without perceiving
a providence of a higher order,
working on a more sublime plane,
in the disasters as well as in the
glories and triumphs of the New
Jerusalem and its line of priestly
kings, the vicegerents of David’s
royal Son and Lord. The supernatural
providence manifest in the
destinies of Rome and its dependent
Christendom makes also the
supernatural end toward which
God is conducting mankind equally
manifest. The search after natural
causes without regard to the
first cause being proved absurd,
the search for natural effects without
respect to the final cause is
equally absurd. The ideal kingdom
on earth is not to be found.
Not only are we unable to find it
realized, we cannot even find a tendency
toward a future realization.
Royal power, national greatness,
the achievements of art and science,
the external order and splendor
of the church, are all, manifestly,
only means, and the end is
in the spiritual order, in the souls
of individual men. Everything external
and temporal is built on the
shifting, unstable sand of human
free-will, and is therefore evanescent
and changeable. The only
permanent and eternal result is in
the great, unknown mass of human
beings who have found the gate
and the way to the kingdom of
heaven, and in the <i>élite</i> of the human
race who have found the way
to its highest places and wear its
brightest crowns. The earth is
only a <i>palæstra</i>, a school, an ingenious
contrivance of divine art for
the acquisition and exercise of virtue,
for gaining merit, for nurturing
the childhood of the destined citizens
of the true and eternal city
of God—<i>Cœlestis Urbs, Jerusalem</i>.
The whole order of divine Providence
in the church and the world,
and its chief intention, must be
changed, if any ideal and stable
state of perfection is established on
the earth; for this would require
that no longer free scope should be
given to the liberty of the human
will. We conclude, therefore, that
future ages will not differ essentially
from those which are past. As
the fourth and the seventh centuries
differ, as the tenth and thirteenth,
the fifteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries mutually
differ, so there are possible cycles
of change from worse to better, or
the reverse, so long as the world
continues. There is a perpetual
progress toward that consummation
which God has in view. But there
is no change in the <i>militant</i> state
of the Catholic Church. We are
informed by divine revelation that
the earthly sovereignty of Jesus
Christ will continue only so long as
he has enemies to conquer, and that
when his conquest is completed he
will give up this kingdom to the
.pn +1
Father, that God may be all in all.
His eternal reign, in which all the
elect will share, consists in the
glory won by merit. All the rest
is only scaffolding to be torn down
and thrown away for fire-wood; it
is scenery and stage-costume, of no
use when the play is over. The
lessons of history teach us to discern
all the illusions which have deceived
past ages; if we are wise we
shall learn also not to make new
illusions for the future. We shall
fear nothing for the eternal cause
of truth and right, and we shall
have no fanciful hopes of a coming
millennium. We shall learn the
one needful and useful maxim that
all effort is a waste of time, except
the one effort to make ourselves
and others better and more virtuous.
.sp 4
.h3 id=sunnyp4
SIX SUNNY MONTHS. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. | CHAPTER XIV. | THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE. | CONCLUSION.
.sp 2
The morning they started for
Monte Cassino the Signora had a
Mass said for her intention, and
the intention was that she might
be enabled to decide speedily on
her state of life, and to decide so
clearly and wisely as never again to
have a doubt about it. Never had
she been nearer to accepting Mr.
Vane, and never had she been more
tremblingly afraid of doing so. The
suspense and trouble were becoming
intolerable. She felt that it
must be settled within these three
days.

But no sooner was the journey
begun than all else was lost sight
of. It was impossible to pass with
a preoccupied mind amid all that
beauty; impossible not to feel one’s
individual life dwindle in view of
the life of centuries there made
visible. The Campagna slipped
past like an old monotonous song
that has been sung over one’s cradle,
and heard in quiet intervals all
up the years, till every note has
grown to be something more than
a simple sound, and is rather a
long series of octaves caught along
the heart-strings. Then

.pm verse-start
“The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,”
.pm verse-end

pressing near the track, and looking
over each other’s heads at the
train as it went, as if wondering
what new Jason was ploughing
with fiery-snorting monsters down
through the green fields of the
south. Dim, gray cities stood petrified
on their heights, without a
sign of life; and the torrent-beds
on their sides were like silvery
paths up which the souls of all the
dead had climbed, and so faded
off into space. What fancies went
up those converging paths, and
spread their wings in the shining
clouds that moored themselves on
crest after crest! Or, fair as any
fancy, what brooks and torrents
came rushing down in the rainy
October and petulant April, catching
the sunshine as they ran, and
bringing flowers and harvests and
fountains for the thirsty plains.
.pn +1
On they went through the smiling,
luxuriant paradise waving with
solid green and bloom in the valleys.
Dark forests hung suspended
in gorges, cities lifted themselves
between the mountains to
look, here and there a castle sat on
its rock like a king on his throne.
They could no more have pointed
out the rapidly-succeeding beauties
to each other than they could have
indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.

At length, and before they had
begun to think they were tired, the
cars stopped at the station of San
Germano, and here a very tall old
man, bent into the shape of a new
moon, recognized them as the
party he was on the watch for, and
informed them that the donkeys
were waiting for them outside, and
that they were expected to dine at
Monte Cassino.

They recollected that they were
a little tired and a little hungry,
and, very opportunely, a pretty
young <i>contadina</i> presented herself
with a basket of bread, fruit, boiled
eggs, and wine. So they seated
themselves in the waiting-room, a
circle of admiring <i>contadini</i> standing
about and watching every mouthful
they ate, as a dog watches.

“Are we expected to take more
than we want and give them what
remains?” Isabel asked.

The Signora glanced over the
company, and demanded to know
which men had charge of the donkeys.

Five stout young fellows stood
forward, and a sixth made haste to
explain that four of them would attend
to the party, and a fifth would
carry their baggage up on another
donkey.

“And have you anything to do
with us?” she inquired politely of
this informant.

“I belong to the hotel of San
Germano,” he replied, and then
went on to explain the situation
still further.

“Oh! thanks; but don’t trouble
yourself,” the Signora interrupted
quite coolly. “You need not wait
for us. Five men are quite enough
to do all we want done.”

He withdrew a little, but did not
go away. There was not the slightest
sign of resentment or mortification.
He was actuated by a
simple and unadulterated desire
for money, and meant to stay by
till the last minute, in the hope
that he might snatch at the chance
of some small service which would
give him a claim.

“Now, girls,” the Signora said,
“don’t you give a penny to any
one, unless I tell you. Here are
twenty people on the watch for
money. Don’t let any one do the
smallest thing for you, except these
five men. We will give them some
bread and wine. That is all they
will want. The Italian poor live
on bread. What does that old
man want of us?” she inquired of
one of the donkey-men.

The old man, who had been constantly
hovering near, came forward
at once. He was the letter-carrier
for the monastery.

“Oh! I did not know but you
had something to do with the donkeys,”
she remarked.

He came a step nearer. “I do
not go up till evening,” he said
with an insinuating smile.

“Go whenever you like,” she answered
obligingly. “If you should
bring us up any letters, however,
we will give you a <i>soldo</i> for each
one.”

He glanced longingly at the
bread and wine, but she rose without
taking any further notice of
him.
.pn +1

“How much is your wine a bottle?”
she asked of the pretty
young vendor.

“Fifteen <i>soldi</i>, Signora,” was the
innocent reply.

“Nonsense! I will give you
five.”

Exclamations, deprecation, grieved
reproach on the part of the
young woman. The wine was too
good for that, she protested. It
was the best dry wine of the country,
and sincere, as the Signora
could see.

The Signora was not so new
as they had supposed. She had
bought better wine in larger bottles,
in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven
cents a bottle, and this was high
at six. It was not, however, worth
while to multiply words about it,
and they made a compromise by
paying seven <i>soldi</i> a bottle, with
which the young woman seemed to
be perfectly well satisfied.

Then they went out and mounted
their donkeys, followed by the
reproachful eyes and extended
hands of fourteen men and children,
and closely attended by the
young hotel servant, who attached
himself to Bianca. Marion, having
visited Monte Cassino thoroughly
not long before, had not accompanied
them, being a little delicate,
too, about joining himself to a
party without an invitation from
the monastery, though he would certainly
have been included had his
connection with the family been
known.

Bianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief,
and the young volunteer
esquire rushed to pick it up and
present it to her with a gallant
touch of the cap and a smile that
displayed a fine set of teeth. She
accepted it with blushing thanks.

“My dear, he counts on half a
<i>lira</i> for that,” the Signora remarked.
“Don’t get any romantic ideas into
your head. He would be as gallant
as that to a witch, if he thought
she would pay him. You must
really put on a more severe expression.
You have precisely the look at
this moment of some young princess
of fairyland who goes about giving
bags of gold to everybody. If you
keep on that sweet face, you will
be as surrounded by beggars as a
lump of sugar with flies.”

“You are a terribly forbidding and
obdurate woman,” Mr. Vane said,
looking into the Signora’s laughing
face.

“I am sometimes,” she protested.
“I pity one beggar, or two beggars,
or sometimes three beggars; but
when I see a score of healthy cormorants
surround poor travellers,
and ready for any pretence or any
servility to get money out of them,
I lose patience. I’ve been victimized
too much in days that are gone
to be very long-suffering now. Besides,
I work for my money and
have a feeling of indignation when
I see a strong, healthy person
stretch out a hand that has done
me no service. Aren’t these donkeys
little darlings? I do think
they are the most useful, faithful
creatures in the world.”

“If I could only know just
where the backbone of mine is
situated,” Isabel said pathetically;
for her saddle had been constantly
slipping either backward or forward
ever since she mounted. “It really
seems to me that I could ride a
rail more securely. There I go!
Oh!”

The hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically
to catch the back of her
saddle, and lift the rider from her
nearly horizontal position, and
help her off while they tightened
the girths.

“It’s a sort of knack which you
.pn +1
will soon learn,” the Signora said
consolingly. “The poor little animals
are as thin as a rail, but the
saddles are like a chair. Just let
yourself go, humor the motion of
the donkey, and in a little while you
will sit like—like Bianca there.
Look at that child! All she wants
is an infant in her arms!”

They had passed the narrow and
stony loops of the path out of the
town, and reached the mountain-side,
and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca,
leading the procession, went
round a turn before them and came
back higher up. She sat in the
saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright,
her hands folded in her lap,
and her fair face uplifted as she
gazed at the great pile of the monastery
on the peak above them.

She needed, indeed, but an infant
in her arms to be a ready picture
of the Holy Mother and Child
in the Flight into Egypt. She had
taken off her hat and laid a large
veil over her head. A blue mantle
hung over her shoulders and came
close to her white neck. The beast
she rode, the saddle, the rocky
path—all were perfect. She passed
under a cypress-tree that pressed
her eyes down with its black shadow,
and, in that downward glance,
caught their looks directed to her.
She smiled, clasped her hands, and
glanced around in mute rapture.

To and fro, to and fro they
wound up the height, every turn
unwinding and enlarging the scene
below. The low hills of the plain
disappeared, leaving only a vast
level laid out in an exquisite mosaic
of varied greens, with houses
here and there, single or in clusters,
forests that had dwindled to
groves, and groves that looked like
bouquets. The shining turns of a
river lay amid that verdure, like a
silver chain dropped and half-hidden
in the grass. All round the
mountains circled close and jealous,
guarding this little paradise.
Now they were skirted with trees;
now they rose in harsh masses of
stone that looked as if not even a
blade of grass could find a foothold.
A picturesque castle stood
on a spur sent off from the mountain
they were ascending.

Above them the vast square of
the monastery, with its many windows
and balconies, grew every
moment nearer. After an hour’s
ride trees shut them into an avenue,
and they found themselves
close under the grand walls of the
building. They alighted at the
lofty open archway and saw before
them a long, ascending passage
that looked strong enough to
support even that pile on its solid
arches. The first half was dim,
and part way up, at the right,
was a shrine in the wall, with its
floating flame burning before some
saintly face only half-visible behind
the wire screen. The upper
half was lighted by arched windows
at the left, showing a double wall
there, with some sort of room
or passage between, arched openings
in the inner wall answering
to the windows. At the upper
end of this avenue of stone shut
the great black valves of a double
iron door, studded thickly with
nails, pierced with a little cluster
of holes to peep through at one
side, and showing the outline of a
smaller door in the right valve.

The massive walls and doors, the
long, sloping ascent, the light and
shade, the one little golden flame,
were like nothing of the nineteenth
century. The action and business
of such a place were not the action
and business peculiar and
suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical
processions might go up there;
.pn +1
the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe
in the midst of a group of attendants
would well befit that dim and
echoing passage; a cavalcade of
knights and ladies, with horn and
hound and nodding plumes; a company
of soldiers with shield and
helmet—these were the figures to
animate such a scene. Or, most
perfect picture of all, one might
imagine there that sublime company,
the very thought of which
brings tears to the eyes—that long
procession of ecclesiastics and people,
with their banners and crucifixes
and candles, chanting funeral
hymns as they ascended, bearing
up to the mountain-top for burial
the twin saint of the glorious
founder and father of the monastery—Santa
Scholastica. It is but
yesterday, it seems, that the brother
and sister parted, having their
last conference together under a
little roof down the mountain-side,
while the tempest stormed about
them. It is but this morning
that St. Benedict has sent
his monks down to bring the
holy relics up and lay them
in his own tomb under the grand
altar, where soon he will join
her. So the colossal saints of all
time know how to recognize the
grandeur of a true woman. These
men are so near the most sublime
and regal of creatures—the awful,
immaculate Virgin—and the very
type of penitents—the thrice-purified
Magdalen—that the shining
veil of the one and the sacred
tears of the other flow about
their sisters, and woman is honored
in whatever work her Creator
calls her to do. It was in the
times, still illuminated by the twilight
of the scarcely-departed presence
of the Morning Star and the
Son, that St. Gregory the Great
ordered his mother’s portrait painted
with the mitre of a doctor on
her head, and one hand raised in
benediction, while with the other
she taught her son from the sacred
Book on her knees—the queenly
St. Sylvia! It was in such days
that St. Chrysostom proclaimed
that women may participate, as
well as men, in combats for the
cause of God and the church;
that St. Melania, the younger,
disputed so eloquently with the
Nestorians that she converted
many and frightened the rest,
showing herself so powerful that
Pelagius, who drew away priests
and bishops, strove, but in vain,
to convert her into an assistant;
the same Melania who converted
the persecutor, Volusianus,
whom all the eloquence of St.
Augustine could not convert. It
was in such days that saintly women
inspired the Fathers of the
church to write, and that St. Gregory
conceived his Treatise on the
Soul and on Resurrection while sitting
at his dying sister’s bedside
and listening to her discourse on
death, as she consoled him for the
death of St. Basil.

And not only such thoughts and
recollections, dear to women, flowed
in as they went up the path that
St. Scholastica had passed before
them, but other recollections, dear
to scholars and precious to the
church and to civilization. Here
was one of the citadels of learning
in times when barbarous invasions
overran the land and threatened
to extinguish every spark of intellectual
and spiritual wealth that
the race of man had accumulated.
Here the monks, with a zeal kindled
to passion, hoarded and preserved
the remains of their devastated
treasures, and spent unwearied
days and nights in multiplying
copies of writings that must not
.pn +1
die. Here, with the devotion of
the bridegroom who brings the
most precious gems he can procure
to deck his bride, or of parents
who shower upon their only child
every gift in their power to bestow,
genius the most exquisite consecrated
itself to the work of adorning
the page of the text of praise and
prayer with such marvellous miniature
beauty of form and color as
only the fairy pencil of Nature can
rival.

Wrapt and exalted in such recollections,
the Signora moved as one
in a dream, forgetting her companions
entirely. It was only when
the great iron doors swung open
before her, and she saw a tall gentleman
in a black robe hurrying
forward, with his hand extended in
cordial welcome to Mr. Vane, that
she came back to the nineteenth
century, and made an effort to
salute in a sufficiently-composed
manner the prior of Monte Cassino,
Father Boniface.

But it was a very beautiful nineteenth
century that she recalled herself
to. They were within the monastery
buildings, which completely
surrounded them in a massive
square, broken in the middle at
the left by a long portico of white
travertine supporting a superb terrace
called the <i>Loggia del Paradiso</i>,
and at the right, in the centre, also,
by the grand stairs that go up
to the higher level of the mountain
peak, around which the monastery
is built. This <i>loggia</i> and the grand
stairs are at the opposite sides of
a court with a picturesque well in
the centre, and colossal statues of
St. Benedict and St. Scholastica.
The paved court is between two
others, which are turned into gardens,
the three separated by double
colonnades and surrounded by porticos.
At the head of the stairs,
which are the whole width of the
court, another portico opens into the
upper court—that of the church—and
has a door at either side leading
back to the <i>Loggia del Paradiso</i>.
The church court, also surrounded
by porticos and adorned with statues,
is closed on one side by the
church. This is built on the very
mountain-top, the confession being
hewn out of the solid rock.

This plan they caught at first,
though but in a glance; for, after
welcoming them all, the prior conducted
them through two or three
dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone,
unfurnished and unadorned, into a
bright parlor, where a balcony window
gave them a view of all the
beautiful valley with its surrounding
mountains. In a few minutes
dinner was announced as prepared
in the next chamber, and here they
found a table laid out with the
freshest of linen, old silver as white
almost as the cloth, and a well-cooked
and well-served dinner.

Weakening their wine before
drinking it, they all observed the
quality of the water, limpid and
light as some third element half-water
and half-air, and the prior
explained to them that the monastery
used rain-water filtered.

“We have a great cistern, ninety
feet square, hollowed out in the
mountain under the central court.
The well you saw there is in the
centre of it. The water is thoroughly
filtered. Moreover, the
conduits that admit it to the cistern
are closed during the four hot
months, so that only cold water enters.”

This prior, the “urbane librarian”
of Longfellow’s recollections
of Monte Cassino, was not only a
kind and generous host and an intelligent
<i>cicerone</i>, but a most agreeable
and interesting man. He had
.pn +1
a noble figure and a handsome,
bright face, and combined in his
character qualities which might have
been thought to be inharmonious;
for he was at the same time an enthusiastic
monk, proud of his venerable
order, and devoted heart
and soul to his monastery, and a
man quite up to the times in all
that the times have of praise-worthy.

After dinner he led them up to
see the church, pointing out the
statues as they went. Here were
the father and mother of St. Benedict,
and with them popes, royal
dukes, kings, and emperors. Before
entering they paused to look at the
great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople,
in which is written in
silver letters the list of the possessions
of the abbey at the time the
door was made, in 1066. At this
time, more than eight hundred years
later, nothing was left of these
riches.

Entering the church, they stood
astonished. If it had been built of
simple marble, moderately varied
and ornamented, there would still
have been enough to praise warmly
in the beautiful form and proportions
of the three naves, the grand
altar by Michael Angelo, the raised
tribune, and the beautiful paintings
of the dome, roof, and eight chapels.
But these were only the
frame-work of a mosaic the most
splendid covering every part of
the edifice to the dimmest corner
or the smallest nook behind a
column. And this mosaic is not
that comparatively simpler kind,
made of small bits, but each flower
and figure is cut from a single
piece of marble or precious stone,
and so perfectly fitted into the
groundwork that the point of a pin
could not be introduced between
them. It was hard at first to believe
that the whole was not exquisitely
painted in every possible
color and shade, and it needed a
touch or a near sight of that fine, inimitable
gloss of marble to convince
one of the incalculable riches
of the whole. The very floor was
superb enough for the walls of a
splendid church; the very steps of
the tribune were set with mosaics.

The Signora took pencil and paper,
and attempted to make a memorandum
of only one chapel, to enumerate
its alabaster columns, its flowers
of mother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate,
and lapis-lazuli, its infinitely-varied
marbles and precious stones and its
infinitely varied designs, and, after
ten minutes’ rapid work, gave up the
task. A week would have been
necessary for that one chapel; and
there were seven more, besides the
altar, the confession, and the tribune.

“You like carved wood?” the
prior asked, with a smile of anticipated
triumph, as they went up the
tribune steps.

“Who does not?” the Signora
exclaimed. “Carved wood and
lace are two of my passions. I
have never stolen any lace, and I
hope I never shall. Wood-carving
is fortunately usually in too heavy
pieces to suggest the possibility
of being carried away in one’s
pocket.”

“We must, however, first visit
St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,”
said their guide, too charitable,
as well as too enthusiastic for
beautiful things, to be shocked at
this little escapade.

Thirteen silver lamps burned before
the screen at the back of the
grand altar, and under that screen
reposed the bodies of the twin
saints. Above them, written in
golden letters, was the inscription:
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“Benedictum et Scholasticam
Uno in terris partu editos,
Una in Deum pietate cœlo Redetos,
Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus,
Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.”
.pm verse-end

Rising from their knees, they
turned and faced the choir—a
double row of stalls forming three
sides of a large square open to the
altar. Looked at from a little distance,
these stalls had the appearance
of having been closely overgrown
at some past time with the finest of
vines, which had turned black and
petrified there, preserving perfectly
every little leaf and tendril, and
still covering entirely the plain
wood beneath. Looking longer,
one saw little figures and faces, and
birds and animals. Going nearer
scarcely dispelled the illusion, so
finely was every particle carved—the
vines and leaves in some places
quite separated from the ground, so
that one slipped the finger-tip behind
them. Every stall was different,
every one provoked a new exclamation
of admiring wonder.

Then they went into the sacristy,
a long hall with the sides completely
lined with presses of dark wood
with gilded metal ornaments.
These presses also were carved
finely, each department, in front of
which a priest would vest himself
for Mass, having a bas-relief of a
subject suggesting some particular
virtue, as that of the Pharisee and
the publican in the Temple, suggesting
humility.

Back of the sacristy was the relic-chamber,
where, in addition to the
more sacred treasures, the ladies
admired especially two little antique
caskets, one of smalt, bright as a
jewel, the other of carved ivory of
the most delicious tint of creamy
white—that tint so soft that it seems
as if the material itself must yield
like down to the touch. They gave
one glance at a crosier by Benvenuto
Cellini, on the inner curve of
which stood a tiny group, then
tore themselves away. The afternoon
was waning, and there was
left them but a day and a half
more, with

.pm verse-start
“Such rooms to explore,
Such alcoves to importune.”
.pm verse-end

The air of this place was an
ideal atmosphere; one breathed it
like a fine wine that exhilarates
delicately, but does not inebriate.
It was soft but not warm, fresh
but not chilly, and as pure as pure
can be. The fresh, rosy faces of
the troop of young students they
met going out showed how this
mountain air agreed with them.

“What a place to send boys to!”
Mr. Vane exclaimed. “It is a little
world in itself, where they can
have every amusement and companionship,
as well as instruction;
and one has but to look at them to
see that they are as happy as they
are healthy.”

The boys were coming in from
their afternoon walk down the
mountain-side, and all glowing with
just-subsiding fun. Each one, passing
the prior, caught at his hand to
kiss it; but as he would not permit
himself to receive such an
homage, they resorted to the amusing
substitute of kissing their own
hands after they had touched his.

“What beautiful recollections of
their school-days those boys will
carry with them through their
lives!” Mr. Vane remarked, as
they went out over the colonnade to
the <i>Loggia del Paradiso</i>. “In no
way, it seems to me, except by
being educated here, unless one
spend one’s life here, could one become
perfectly familiar with the
riches, visible and invisible, of the
place; and such a familiarity would
be of itself an education, especially
.pn +1
for the impressible minds of the
young.”

The front of the <i>Paradiso</i> fills the
gap in the middle of one side of
the monastery—that part opposite
the church—and is on a level with
the church, or the second story of
the monastery. It is probably
the same width as the church.
Leaning on the parapet there, one
looks off on a view which may well
give the place its name—the beautiful
plain and the beautiful circling
mountains, with the still, blue
splendor of the southern sky gazing
down upon them as if enamored
of their beauty. There was no
need of imagination in such a
place. Simple, literal eyes were
enough to flood the soul with
beauty.

Familiar as he was with the scene,
the prior was sympathetic enough
to say but little; and even Isabel,
whose impressions, being more superficial,
ran a good deal into words,
hushed herself out of respect for
the others.

“Until we reach Rome again,”
the Signora remarked to her friends
as they went down the stairs to the
great court, “I should like to be
excused from all social intercourse,
except the mere being with you
bodily. I don’t want to speak or
be spoken to, except to learn of
this place. We have no right to
talk; we are ghosts. We have come
here in a dream or a vision. Father
Boniface talks, of course, because
he is a part of the place.”

They laughed and agreed.

“But I hope,” the prior said,
“that you are not too ghostly to
taste the water they are just drawing
up now. See how it sparkles!”

Two columns support a cross-piece
over this beautiful well, and
from the centre drops an iron chain
with a copper bucket at each end.
When one goes down the other
comes up, dripping full of airy water.

They all drank silently—each,
probably, to some friend, absent or
present. Bianca blushed as she
drank, and her pretty mouth seemed
to kiss the water. Then, standing
on the upper step of the well, they
leaned over the stone curb and
looked down to where, far below,
the surface of the water shone like
a huge black diamond set in a gray
border.

Tired out with travel and with
pleasure, the ladies were not sorry
when the prior proposed that they
should go down to the house where
they were to sleep.

This house is the only building
on the mountain except the monastery,
and is under the control of the
monastery. It was built merely to
accommodate lady relatives of the
students who might wish to see
their sons, or brothers, or nephews
without the fatigue of coming up
and going down the mountain the
same day, and without suffering the
embarrassment of spending the whole
day in a house inhabited and served
only by men. Now and then some
benefactress or a friend of the superiors
of the monastery has the
privilege of stopping there. The
house is small and plain, and kept
by a <i>contadine</i> and his wife. The
ladies stopping there have their coffee
in the house, but they dine always
in a private dining-room at
the monastery, from whence, also,
their supper is sent down to them
in the evening—supper being after
Ave Maria, when the gates are
closed.

Mr. Vane stayed with the prior,
and the three ladies followed their
guide. Their way led them a five
minutes’ walk back as they had
come up, then turned through an
.pn +1
open gate in the stone wall at the
right, where they found their lodgings.
A <i>contadina</i> with dark cloth
draperies pinned smoothly about
her, and a huge white edifice of
starched linen on her head, overshadowing
a pair of bright eyes,
met them at the gate and welcomed
them with a pleasant voice, but
in a tongue where the soft Roman
consonants seemed to have each
and every one turned itself into
the hardest kind of a Z.

The windows looked out on a
long terrace with a parapet, and
outside the parapet the mountain
dropped steeply to the plain.

A stair, which belonged entirely
to the strangers’ house, led up to the
second floor, and here they found
three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting
them. An hour later, as they
sat at their windows looking out into
the twilight, they saw their <i>donna</i>,
Catarina, come into the terrace with
a huge basket on her arm. Her
head-dress and sleeves shone white
in the light of the rising moon, and
there was a soft richness where the
scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat,
and where the rainbow colors
of the apron-like upper mantle
bound her without a fold. Her
solid step sounded on the stair the
next minute, there was the spurt of
a match in the outer room of the
suite, and, looking through the open
doors, they saw the woman, more
like a picture than any picture they
recollected to have seen, standing
with a curious brass lamp in her
hand, carefully lighting its wick,
the basket she had brought sitting
on the floor at her feet.

She came into the Signora’s room
with that red light all over her from
the lamp she carried in her hand,
smiled so as to show two rows of
snowy-white teeth, and, with a
“<i>Buona sera</i>,” announced that their
supper had come and would be on
the table in a few minutes.

The three went out into the dining-room
to witness the preparations
and listen to the woman’s pleasant
voice as she half-talked, half-sang
an account of her life and adventures
there, her manner of speech
being that so common among the
lower classes of Italy, especially at
the south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly
soft and touching. The
peculiarity of this manner of speaking
consists more, perhaps, in the
ending of the sentences than in
their progress; for they never come
down to the definite tone that ends
a period, but stop on some swinging
note a little higher up, it may
be only half a tone above. It is
the voice of weeping, which never
has a positive tone, as if the whole
gamut were washed over and blurred
by tears.

Talking so, the woman brought
out from her basket a linen cloth
for the table, next a pair of cruets
with vinegar and oil, next a decanter
of white-wine, next an omelette
made with herbs, after that a salad
that looked like sliced cucumbers,
but was something else. Bread followed,
then the necessary dishes.

“I’m ashamed to confess that I
am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a
miserable coming down, but we
won’t say anything about it.”

“My dear,” responded the Signora,
“you are very ungrateful to say
so. Let us be just. Our bodies
have brought our souls up to this
beautiful place, and carried them
about from point to point of it, and
kept as quiet as possible about their
own affairs. Now, if they are hungry,
let us feed them. Poor bodies!
they have the worst of it. They
are extremely useful, and we sublime
creatures are always turning
up our noses at them; they suffer,
.pn +1
and we protest that we want to get
rid of them, when, in nine cases
out of ten, we have wantonly caused
their suffering. Can a body
take care of itself, or even know
how it should be done? No; the
soul has to do it, and ought to do
it in gratitude for house-rent, or
body-rent. Then, at last, the poor
things have got to corrupt, and
be devoured by worms, and go
to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings
will not be felt. It is also
a satisfaction to know that this arrogant
spirit, which is for ever crowing
over its poor companion, will
have to suffer consciously for it all
and pay the uttermost farthing.
You will please to recollect, Miss
Isabel Vane, that if ever you should
have the happiness of going to
heaven, your body will go there
too. Sometimes,” she said, holding
her hand up before the light, which
shone through and made a ruby of
it,—“sometimes I think that my poor
flesh has a glimmering, a presentiment
of the possibility of being one
day glorified.”

“Most worshipful body,” said
Isabel to herself with great respect,
“would you like a piece of that
omelette—a large piece, a half of it,
say, leaving the other half to those
two? Yes? Well, you shall have
it.” And she proceeded with all
possible dignity to help herself to a
hundred and eighty degrees of the
circle of herbs and eggs before her.

The <i>donna</i>, who, of course, had
not understood a word, looked with
astonishment at this shocking piece
of voracity; and when Bianca, in
protection of her client, clasped
her arms around the wine, and the
Signora, with an air of determination,
took possession of the salad,
the poor creature evidently thought
that she was waiting on a company
of maniacs.

“Do let’s laugh,” said the Signora,
and at once set the example.
“We are frightening the poor soul
to death.”

Their supper and their nonsense
finished, the three took possession
of their rooms.

A full moonlight was filling all
the valley, or plain, which looked
like the bottom of an emerald chalice
full of golden wine. A pure
and sacred silence reigned over all—the
silence of peace and lofty contemplation.
Had it been some
such silence that suggested to
Charlemagne, when, almost eleven
hundred years before, he came to
venerate the relics of St. Benedict,
the beautiful thought of bestowing
on the abbot, with all the other
singular privileges he gave him,
that of being the sole mediator between
the emperor and the rebellious
barons—the only person by
whose means they could make their
peace? It was doubtless by virtue
of this ancient title that the prior
had written “Pax” at the head of
his letter to Mr. Vane.

Yes, Charlemagne came up here
ages ago, and popes, and princes,
and kings came, and the Saracens
swarmed up with fire and sword,
and the Lombards and the Normans;
and the Crusaders came to
pray at the shrine before going to
the East. They had seen on the
pilasters of the church the different
crosses in precious mosaic of the
orders of knights which had been
formed under the Benedictine rule,
among them the familiar names of
Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen,
St. James of the Sword, and Templars.
Ignatius of Loyola came up
and stayed fifty days.

“But, <i>signora mia</i>,” said the lady
who was going over all this part, as
she gazed out into the night, “since
you are not going to stay here fifty
.pn +1
days, you will be so good as to
shut your mind and your eyes and
go to sleep.”

The next morning they went to
see the monastery proper, for
which they had a special permission
from the Pope, and spent
hours in the library, archives, printing
and lithograph rooms. It
would be vain to tell what old
books—worth their weight in gold,
printed on creamy vellum in characters
that modern type has never
excelled, if it has equalled—what
drawers filled with scrolls, what
autographs, what illuminations,
they saw. It were vain to fancy
with what feelings one sees for the
first time the writing of Charlemagne,
of Hildebrand, of Gregory
the Great, of Frederick II., of
Countess Matilda. Then there was
the long, long dormitory of the
boys, with a row of snowy beds at
either side, and the immense arched
window at the end framing a superb
outside picture, with Monte
Cairo in the centre, and long, long
corridors that dwindled people
seen from opposite ends, with
cracks made by earthquakes in
their walls, and solid groined arches
that only an earthquake could
shake down. Then the nooks,
courts, and passages, which they
came upon without guessing in the
least in what part of the building
they were; the round window in
the wall—<i>occhio</i>, or eye, they call it—through
which they looked as
through a lens, and saw the three
courts and the colonnades. Finally,
coming down a stair with a
wall at either side and a door at
the foot, they were told: “When
you have crossed that threshold
you cannot return. The cloister
ends there.”

“What!” exclaimed Isabel, “if I
should run out a minute, couldn’t I
come back on to the stairs again for
another minute?”

The prior shook his head. “It
would be excommunication. That
seems unreasonable; but listen:
This is a cloister which women
can enter only by special permission
of the Pope. That permission
is not lightly granted, and is for
but once. Your running back a
minute would do no harm in itself,
but would do harm to the principle.
If you can return in one
minute, you could come back in
five, or ten, or half an hour, or an
hour, or a day, and so on; and so
one visit might be made to cover
an indefinite time. The only way,
you see, is to be strictly literal in
excluding from a second entrance.”

That afternoon they were presented
to the Abbot—“Abbot of
Abbots” he was called in the
palmy days of Monte Cassino—and
received, not only his benediction,
but each a little souvenir of the
place: a tiny photograph of the
tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica,
with a wreath of flowers
pressed round it that had been on
the tomb, and at the back his own
name written, with the date, and
under it “Ora pro me.”

They stood in the church speaking
with him a few minutes, then
went out to the <i>Paradiso</i>.

A storm was coming up from the
east, and round the angle of the
building they could just see that
the mountains in that direction
were obliterated and mists fast filling
the plain. Standing up against
these mists, as if to impede their
progress, was the lower end of a
rainbow, set straight and solid on
the green like a jewelled column.
The cloud advanced and pushed
the column before them.

“It is like the pillar of light leading
the Israelites,” Isabel said.
.pn +1

The cloud unrolled itself above,
and down through the rainbow ran
a crinkling line of white fire.

“How plainly lightning asserts
its own force!” Mr. Vane remarked.
“Seeing it for the first time,
without knowing what it was, one
would know at once that it is an
irresistible power. What an experience
it would be to stand just
near enough to a passing flash to
perhaps hear it hiss through the
air, to be between it and its thunder,
and yet not so near nor so in
its track as to be smitten!”

Little by little the sun was vanquished,
and the rainbow grew dim,
faltered, blushed along the line of
the advancing shadows, and disappeared.
There was an odd murmur
growing up, fine and pervading—the
sound of rain in the plain
below. All the tiny noises of each
falling drop joined in a multitude,
countless nothings making themselves
heard in pauses of the thunder.
It was to solid sound as fine
carving is to plain wood, as embroidery
is to a fine web—a continued
succession of millions of
infinitesimal watery strokes separated
by millions of infinitesimal
silences.

The others went into the house
at the first drop that splashed on
the <i>Paradiso</i>, but the Signora went
back to the portico and seated herself
under its shelter. Behind her
the court of the church looked
weird and strange. The pillars of
the porticos appeared to move as
the lightnings came and went, the
statues and busts behind them
seemed to lean forward and retreat,
and the one window in the
church front looked blue, as if
there were light inside it.

She took herself out of the draught,
and went to lean on the wall between
the doors. In front of her
the grand stairs went down to the
central court, and the gardens shone
green and wet through the colonnades
at either side. On a level
with her, across the space, stretched
the <i>Paradiso</i>, and under the
portico that supported it a large,
arched door led from the court out
on to a beautiful <i>loggia</i>. Two or
three monks, who had been standing
in this <i>loggia</i> watching the
storm, were driven in by the rain,
and in a minute the whole place
seemed to be deserted. The rain
and the lightning had it to themselves
and were washing and purifying
all “so as by fire.”

This one visible witness felt her
soul expand as she gazed. If only
she also might be purified and enlightened
in that time and place!
If the littlenesses of life might be
washed away from her, and only
the realities remain!

“Come, Holy Spirit!” she said,
and blessed herself.

Then, content and confident,
without saying another word, she
waited with her two inarticulate
but eloquent companions—Art,
consecrated to God, and Nature,
informed by God—and felt above
and about the illuminating Presence.
For faith is the rod that
calls the divine Lightning down,
whether it came as a dove, or a
tongue of fire, or a pointing finger,
or a whispering voice.

The landscape of the plain, seen
through the arched door under the
<i>Paradiso</i>, was dim and gray with
rain, or glittering and red with
lightning; the mountain-tops above
it, and the sky, were a changing
tumult of shadows veined with
threads of fire, and rolled hither
and thither in visible thunders.
The white pavement of the court
below changed every instant into
jaspers, the beautiful columns and
.pn +1
curb and steps of the well became
jewels, and one of the copper buckets
that stood on the brink was
like a vessel of red gold brimming
over with red wine.

St. Benedict with his crosier, and
St. Scholastica with her dove, stood
immovable but living, and their
calmness in that tumult was like
a song of triumph. Did he sing
with Moses?—“<i>Thou shalt bring
them in, and plant them in the mountain
of thy inheritance, in thy most
firm habitation which thou hast made,
O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which
thy hands have established.</i>” And did
she reply, like Miriam with her timbrel?—“<i>Let
us sing to the Lord, for
he is gloriously magnified, the horse
and his rider he hath thrown into
the sea.</i>” Such silence in a tumult
seems ever a singing.

When the Signora went down,
slipping from colonnade to colonnade,
dry-shod, the storm was
spent. From the little balcony of
the parlor, where she found her
companions, she saw a grand arch
of rainbow trembling out over the
east, as if astonished at its own
glory, trembling as it grew, but as
strong and bold as light.

Flocks of birds were swinging by
in a great circle, screaming impudently
as they passed the balcony,
as if to say, “Catch us, if you can!”
There was a little parallelogram of
garden under the window, with a
rough pole frame-work supporting
a dripping vine, and, below the
dropping fields, a crest of land and
rock, curling over like a pointed
wave, rose boldly in the foreground;
then, the plain.

Mr. Vane came to stand beside
her, looking at her keenly one instant,
then averting his eyes.

“Well,” he said, “what has the
storm been saying to you up
there?”

“It has washed the drift-wood
out of my path, and made it as
clear and white as one of those
torrent-beds up the mountain-side,”
she answered. “I think I ought
to work a little harder for the future.
Life is short, and I have,
perhaps, sometimes played with my
talents. They were given me for
serious use. When you shall have
left me alone, instead of sitting
weakly down and thinking that it
is rather lonely, I shall begin to
carve a new book out of the next
year. Do you know that year to
come looks to me as the block of
marble looked to Michael Angelo
when he said, 'I will make an angel
of it.’ I am not a Michael
Angelo,” she added, smiling; “but
I am something, and, firmly and
intelligently set to work, I may do
what need not be despised. My
mind is clear.”

He was answered.

If a shade passed over his face,
it was slight. If his lips were compressed
a moment, she did not look
to see. He stood and watched the
rainbow grow and fade, and, as its
colors went out, so faded out of his
life a sweet hope. But he reflected:
“Denials make strong. And
the light that made the rainbow
is not dead.”

“Yes, life is short,” he said presently,
and half-turned away.
“God bless you!” he added and
hastily left her.

The next morning they made
their last visit to the monastery,
and the prior, after showing them
the tower of St. Benedict and the
fine collection of pictures there, had
some of the choir-books brought
into the parlor for them to see.
There are fifty-seven in all of these
great volumes, bound in leather, with
metal corners and knobs. These
are all in manuscript, beautiful
.pn +1
black scores and lettering on white
parchment. Every capital letter
is painted, every one different and
every one beautiful, and occasionally
the page has a border, and in
some cases a picture in the corner,
so exquisitely beautiful that one
could never tire of examining it—such
leaves and flowers, and birds
and figures and arabesques, fine as
the finest pencil and most delicate
imagination could make them, and
so executed that one had to touch
them to be sure they are not in relief.
One long, silver leaf slightly
curled over to show a golden lining;
Bianca stretched her finger to
touch, and drew it back immediately,
fearing to break.

Not a tint was faded of them all,
though they had been in constant
use three hundred years. They
are not used every day now, however.

One page was especially rich—the
first page of the Christmas service.
The whole ground of this inside
the border is a deep velvety crimson,
the score and text being of
gold. On the border imagination
had exhausted itself, and in the left
upper corner is a picture of the Nativity,
delicate and pure, with its
cool, pale mountains of Syria, and
the heavenly faces of the Mother
and Child.

“You should see that at the
Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the
prior said, “with the light of all
the candles shining on it as it lies
open on the desk. It is splendid
then. I copied that picture in the
corner of the page to send the Pope
on his great anniversary,” he added,
“and it took me a year.”

For the prior was an artist as
well, and not only made exquisite
copies from these old manuscripts,
but played the organ, and had the
evening before done the honors
of their grand instrument for his
visitors, displaying its orchestra
stops.

The hours slipped away, and regretfully
at length they took leave
of this beautiful and sacred place,
and the kind host who had made it
so pleasant for them. The donkeys
stood ready at the gate, and they
mounted and went down into the
world again. In the valley, before
going to the station, they stopped
a minute and gazed back with a
mute farewell to Monte Cassino.
The Signora thought, but did not
say aloud: “I will lift mine eyes unto
the hills, whence cometh help.”

The road they took through the
plain to the station ran along the
river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed
to a swift, yellow sluice
that one could toss a penny across,
to be caught by the beggar at the
other side, did not look very imposing
to American eyes, accustomed
to the grand crystalline floods of
the New World; but every drop of
it moved to the tune of a memory,
and farther on it meets the Carnello,
and the two, the ancient Vinius
and Liri, join to make the
Garigliano, the river made famous
by Bayard.

Then back to Rome, through
crowding mountains at first. But,
by dark, the mountains began to
draw back, the level widened, they
passed the city wall by the stars,
and rolled into the <i>Città vecchia</i>.

“Now we must begin to look respectfully
at the guide-book,” Mr.
Vane said the next morning. “We
have been sipping the foam of the
wine as it came. We must drain
the cup, if we can.”

There was nothing more to be
said. Their story was finished, and
the remaining few weeks were but
a study of what all travellers study
in Rome.
.pn +1

“I am laying up riches for my
life,” Mr. Vane said to the Signora.
“I have learned of you to work,
and I hope that the last of my life
will be more useful than the first
has been. These memories that I
am preparing now will be the only
recreation of my future and my
only dream.”

He did not trouble her with sadness
or importunities, but took
his life up with manly cheerfulness,
and she honored him for it and
liked him better than ever. But
never for an instant did she waver
in her decision. Her mind, once
cleared, was cleared for ever. She
would not have married him, nor
any other man, to have possessed
the world.

One bright October day they
left her. There was sadness and
tears, but no heart-break for any
one. Marion’s tender sympathy
threw a rainbow on Bianca’s gentle
sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father’s
arm and dropped her head on
his shoulder, soothing and soothed.

“I shall never leave you, papa,”
she whispered.

Did she suspect what he had
missed?

The Signora watched the train
roll away, then went back to her silent
house, wiping her eyes as she
entered.

“What a pity it is that you will
have to be alone now!” said Annunciata.

“Alone!” the Signora’s eyes
flashed out through the tears. “I
am not alone. I never was alone
in my life!”

She smiled as she shut herself into
her room. “Alone? How little
they know!”

What, indeed, did they, who cannot
live a day without their gossip,
without trying to fill their emptiness
with the husks which make up by
far the greater part of the world’s
talk, of the life of one whose mind
was as a fountain for ever overflowing,
who had eyes in her finger-tips,
and who listened with every pore
of her body? What knew the readers
of daily newspapers of the
hoarded treasures of literature, ever
ready with eloquent voices? What
knew the Christians of one communion
in the year, and one Mass
when there was obligation, of long,
delicious hours in churches when
there was no function to stare at,
nor music to talk through? The
world has no such society as the
cultivated mind can fill its house
with; and there are no receptions
so splendid as those given by the
imagination. Bores never come,
tattlers and enemies never are admitted,
late hours never weary, and
the wine never inebriates. And,
better yet, those who are invited
are always present and ready to
stay. How the possessors of such
a society laugh at the “societies”
of the outer world, and how truly
they can exclaim, “Alone? I never
was alone in my life!”
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=doubts
DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.
.sp 2
The New York <i>Sun</i> gave us
(March 25, 1877) a short but
thoughtful and substantial review
of a little work lately published by
Rev. Dr. Nisbet, of Rock Island,
Ill., on <i>The Resurrection of the Body</i>.
The reviewer very justly affirms that
the author’s conclusions are anti-Scriptural,
and that his method of interpretation
lays the way open to a
general disregard of dogmatic truth;
for if the Bible, as the doctor contends,
does not really teach what
the whole world has hitherto believed
it to teach concerning the
resurrection of the flesh, it is plain
that we can never be sure that we
understand the doctrine of the
Bible, even when it seems perfectly
clear; and, if this be so, we can
have no definite knowledge of
revealed truth. The critic makes
some very pertinent remarks on the
baneful effects that such works as
the one he criticises are apt to
produce; and, although he does
not point out explicitly the root of
the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it
by averring that any interpretation
of Scripture which conflicts with
the universal and traditional interpretation
received in the church is
calculated to shake the very foundations
of faith, and exposes every
dogma to the attacks and sneers of
unbelievers. This is to say that
the Protestant principle of freely
interpreting the Bible without regard
to ecclesiastical tradition leads
to infidelity—a truth which is painfully
confirmed by daily experience,
and which accounts for the sympathy
of all the anti-Christian sects
with Protestantism; but which the
writer in the <i>Sun</i>—an excellent
Protestant, we presume—could not
very consistently insist upon. Yet
the whole tone of his article shows
his sincerity. He is evidently an
intelligent scholar; and though he
finds himself somewhat entangled
in the solution of some important
questions, yet he does not imitate
the folly of such flippant scribblers
as blaspheme what they do not understand,
but he shows forbearance
and circumspection, a wholesome
reverence for religion, and an ardent
love of truth, and expresses
an earnest desire to be taught how
the resurrection of the flesh and
the immortality of the soul can be
successfully established and vindicated
against the allegations of
modern sceptics.

As we anticipate that Protestant
divines will probably not take the
trouble to investigate the objections
of the infidel school with
which they too often sympathize
and of which they are the unconscious
props and promoters, we
will consider the honest appeal of
the writer as addressed to Catholic
thinkers; and we intend to do
briefly what we can, from our doctrinal
point of view, to solve his
difficulties and to set at rest his
doubts. The more so because, as
he remarks, whoever can furnish a
way out of such difficulties will
confer, by so doing, an immense
benefit upon a whole world of
anxious but sincere doubters on
the subject of immortality.

.pm letter-start
“It cannot be denied,” says he, “that
while the Christians generally believe in
some kind of continuance of human existence
.pn +1
after death, there is a great diversity
of opinions among them in regard
to its nature and characteristics. The
men of the primitive church were not
perplexed about the matter, as they were
not about many others which are actively
debated among us.”
.pm letter-end

This introductory remark is exceedingly
important. The primitive
church “was not perplexed”
about the matter. Why? Apparently
because the faithful were in
the habit of accepting the Gospel
with humility and simplicity as it
was given to them by the apostles
and by their successors; because
the Protestant method of interpreting
Scripture according to every
one’s individual bias was not
thought to be consistent with the
profession of Christianity; because
the teachers of the faith did not
contradict one another, as our
modern Protestant preachers and
writers are wont to do to the scandal
and ruin of their bewildered
flocks. When we see that our
Lord’s words, “This is my body,”
can be construed by Protestant
divines as meaning “This is <i>not</i>
my body,” we may form an idea
of what must be the result of the
Protestant system of Scriptural interpretation.
No one can be surprised
that such a system creates
perplexity, fosters debate, and ends
in discord and ultimately in unbelief.
But if there is “a great diversity
of opinions” among Protestants,
such is not the case with us
Catholics. We members of the
universal church are not perplexed
about such matters. We still
believe with perfect unanimity as
the primitive Christians believed;
our teachers teach all the same
Gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ
as transmitted to us by legitimate
channels, not the contradictory
gospels and the doctrinal crotchets
of free-thinking divines. That is
what makes the difference.

The critic whose words suggested
to us these passing remarks
will not fail to see that it is mainly
to the rebellious spirit and presumption
of the Protestant reformers
that the present age owes its
theological perplexities and the
loss of religious unity. Would it
not be better, therefore, to give up
at last the gospels of men, and return
to the Gospel of the primitive
Christians?

.pm letter-start
“They believed,” as our critic points
out, “that at the last day the bodies of
the dead would be raised to life, and that
the faithful would once more, in flesh
and blood, inhabit their former abodes.
The most ancient versions of the Apostles’
Creed teach explicitly the resurrection
of the flesh, and the earliest Christian
apologist, Justin Martyr, writing only a
hundred years after the death of Christ,
defends the doctrine by asking whether
it be any more difficult for God to create
a body anew from its dust than for him
to create it the first time in its mother’s
womb. And Mr. Nisbet concedes that
all the succeeding Fathers of the church
maintain the same view. Tertullian declares:
'The flesh shall rise again wholly
in every man, in its own identity, in its
absolute integrity.’ Irenæus agrees with
him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.”
.pm letter-end

It would appear that these authorities,
to which many more of
the same kind might be added,
should leave no doubt in the mind
of a Christian about the legitimate
interpretation of the dogma of
resurrection. For, when an article
of faith is clearly expressed in the
Gospel and has been uniformly understood
in all ages by the doctors
of the universal church, it is difficult
to see how a man who makes
profession of Christianity can
think himself authorized to twist it
according to his individual bias.
Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has
had the courage to do.
.pn +1

.pm letter-start
“It is remarkable,” says the reviewer,
“with what confidence Dr. Nisbet overrides
this primitive interpretation of
Scripture and declares it to be incorrect.
He allows no weight whatever to the obvious
fact that men living so much nearer
than he does to the days when the
New Testament was written, and with
whom its very language was still in colloquial
use, would be more likely than
he to perceive its true meaning. He
lays great stress upon the famous passage
in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians
(1 Cor. xv. 35-53), which, he thinks,
asserts the resurrection-body not to be
of flesh and blood. But he fails to perceive
that all that Paul is contending for
is a finer and more glorious form of flesh
and blood. Paul’s language is: 'The
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed’ (v. 52). This he further explains
in writing to the Thessalonians:
'We which are alive and remain unto the
coming of the Lord shall not prevent
them which are asleep. For the Lord
himself shall descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel,
and with the trump of God: and the dead
in Christ shall rise first. Then we
which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and
so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1
Thess. iv. 15-17). It was the expectation
of the apostolic church that the Lord
would come again in their time, agreeably
to his prediction in Matthew xxiv.:
'This generation shall not pass, till
all these things be fulfilled’; and in
John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now
is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live.’ They know that the Lord had
raised Lazarus and many others in their
own flesh and blood, and had himself,
after his resurrection, offered his body
to the touch of Thomas; and they would
have had to do violence to their own
reasoning faculties had they conceived
of any different fulfilment of his promises.
When, therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces,
as he does, Mr. Talmage’s picture
of the final resurrection, with its general
scramble of souls for their old bodies,
the flying of scattered limbs through the
air, and their reconstruction in their
pristine integrity, he discredits what has
been for eighteen centuries the accepted
faith of the Christian Church.”
.pm letter-end

One would scarcely expect that
the writer, after so judicious a criticism,
should hesitate to condemn
Dr. Nisbet’s view; and yet he
seems afraid of passing too severe
a judgment on it, as he immediately
adds: “Not that this proves him
to be in the wrong, but only that,
if he is in the right, no dogma,
however venerable, is safe from attack.”

The conception that a man who
professes Christianity may not be
in the wrong while he throws discredit
on the most venerable dogmas
of Christianity is a monstrosity
not only in a religious but also
in a logical point of view. Unless
the expressions of our critic can be
construed as a figure of speech
conveying under a mild and civil
form the merited censure, every
Christian reader will say that the
critic himself is in the wrong.
A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant
of the divine origin and glorious
history of Christianity, might
hesitate about the right or wrong
of tampering with our revealed dogmas,
for he would have to learn
first how the fact of divine revelation
has been ascertained; but a
man who has read the New Testament,
who lives in a Christian atmosphere,
who knows the life, the
miracles, the death, and the resurrection
of Christ, and who consequently
cannot conceal from himself
the great fact of revelation—such a
man, we say, astonishes us when
he assumes that a Christian doctor
may not be in the wrong, though he
deal with revealed truth in such a
loose manner as to expose every
dogma, however venerable, to the
attacks of our modern pagans.
But let us proceed. To show
how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet’s
method of interpretation the reviewer
says:
.pn +1

.pm letter-start
“In fact, men more daring and less
respectful than Dr. Nisbet have employed
his method of reasoning against the
resurrection of what he calls the grave-flesh
to controvert the idea of any resurrection
at all. He assumes as unquestioned
the proposition that human beings
must in some way survive the death of
the body, and is only solicitous to determine
what that way is. But just as
he shows the irrationality of expecting
that the cast-off flesh and blood which
served the soul for a tabernacle during
life shall be taken up again, so do
sceptics undertake to show the irrationality
of expecting any kind of future existence
whatever.”
.pm letter-end

The reviewer is perfectly right.
If the teachers of Christianity are
to be free to twist the word of God
as they please, why shall their followers
and other men be denied
the same privilege? And what can
be the ultimate result of such a
reckless meddling with truth but
universal unbelief? Faith must
rest on unquestionable authority;
when this latter is shaken, faith
is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity,
despondency, and all the
vagaries of a weak, distracted reason.
The present growth of unbelief
is therefore nothing but the
logical development of the Protestant
method of free interpretation,
which has engendered a thousand
conflicting opinions and thwarted
all honest efforts of its followers in
the search after truth. The Catholic
Church alone has a remedy for
this plague of religious scepticism,
for she alone has the power to
teach with authority, as she alone
has faithfully preserved in its primitive
entirety the sacred deposit of
revealed truths.

And now the reviewer comes to
the most important part of his article,
which consists of the objections
urged by the modern unbelievers
against both resurrection and immortality.
He says:

.pm letter-start
“Let us briefly state some of the various
reasons which they adduce, in the
hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other
writer of ability, may be led to meet and
overthrow these reasons, and to furnish
the world at last with a solid and impregnable
philosophical demonstration of
the doctrine of immortality.”
.pm letter-end

It was after reading this passage
that we resolved to write the present
article. Not that we consider ourselves
“a man of ability”; but we
are in possession of truth, and are
confident that we can vindicate it
successfully, though we may lack
the ability of our opponents. Let
us proceed, therefore, without further
observations, to the reviewer’s
arguments.

.pm letter-start
“In the first place,” he says, “those
who deny that there is any immortality
of the individual human soul say it is
contrary to all the analogies of nature to
suppose that the death of the body does
not end its individual being. Throughout
creation, whenever any organization
is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A
new organization may arise similar to the
old one, but it is not that one. A crystal
crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal.
Its particles may be dissolved and
be crystallized anew; but they will form
another and not the same crystal. Every
vegetable runs its career from the seed to
the mature plant, and, when resolved into
its elements, perishes as a plant. If those
elements be made to constitute a new
plant, that plant begins its round as a
new plant, and not as the old one. In
like manner, when animals die and their
bodies decay, they never reappear as the
same animals. They may furnish materials
for new forms of mineral, vegetable,
and animal organisms, but these organisms
are essentially new, and not the old
ones under the new forms. And, in the
same way, these sceptics contend, so far
as our observation goes, human beings
die once and finally, other men are born
and succeed them, but they are other men
and not the men who have died. Whether
their dissolution took place yesterday
or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so
far as our ordinary experience goes, complete
and irreparable.”
.pm letter-end
.pn +1

To answer this argument it suffices
to point out that the resurrection
of the flesh and the immortality
of the soul are two distinct
truths, of which the first is known
to us by divine revelation only, the
second by revelation and by reason.
To say that “throughout creation
whenever any organization is destroyed
it is destroyed for ever,” is
to say that we find nothing in the
order of nature that authorizes us
to infer the resurrection of our
bodies. This, of course, is true; but
what of it? No one pretends that the
future resurrection will be brought
about by natural causes acting in
their natural manner and obeying
natural laws. Resurrection will be
the work of the Omnipotent. We
believe it, not because it agrees
with the analogies of nature, but
because God himself, infallible
truth, has informed us that he will
raise us from death against all the
analogies of nature. We concede,
then, that whenever an organization
is destroyed, it is, in the natural
course of things, destroyed for ever;
and consequently we concede that
the course of nature affords no
proof of our resurrection. But the
course of nature is not the standard
by which we have to judge of
things supernatural. The analogies
of nature did not prevent the resurrection
of Lazarus, of the son of
the widow, and of others of which
we read in the Gospel and in other
Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect
the analogies of nature when
he rose glorious from the tomb, as
he had promised. Hence the argument
from the analogies of nature
has no strength whatever
against the dogma of the resurrection.

Has it at least any weight against
the immortality of the soul? On
the contrary, it proves that the
soul is naturally immortal. For,
though nature can destroy the
organic form, it has no power to destroy
the substances of which the
organism consists. The organic
compound is destroyed, but all the
components remain. If, then, no
substance is ever destroyed by nature,
how can we fail to see that
the human soul, which is a substance,
cannot naturally perish
when the organism of the body is
destroyed? We may be told that
the sceptic does not concede that
our soul is a substance; he rather
believes that what we call <i>the soul</i>
is a mere result of organic movements
which must cease altogether
when the organs are destroyed.
But we answer that, if the sceptic
honestly desires to be enlightened
on this subject, he must not rely on
the assertions of ignorant or perverse
scientists who profess to
know nothing but matter and force;
he must read and meditate what
has been written on the subject by
competent men. If he has sufficient
ability to understand their philosophical
reasonings, he will come to
the conclusion that the substantiality
of the human soul is a demonstrated
truth; if, on the contrary,
he has too little stock of philosophy
to be able to follow such reasonings,
then he has no right to be a sceptic,
and it becomes his duty humbly to
recognize his incompetency, and to
accept without demonstration what
more cultivated minds consider a
demonstrated truth. This last remark
is very important. Scepticism
and unbelief are the offspring of
pride. Men pretend to see the <i>why</i>
and the <i>how</i> of everything; but they
often forget that they are born in
ignorance, and that, as their knowledge
of material things is the fruit
of long and varied experience so,
the knowledge of supersensible
.pn +1
things is the fruit of long and methodic
study. He who has not
studied astronomy, may say very
honestly that he does not know how
to determine the mass of the sun
or the distance of the moon; but
he cannot honestly deny what
astronomy teaches on the subject.
To do this, to declare himself
sceptic, would be accounted folly.
How, then, can those be justified
who, without having applied to
philosophical studies, refuse to accept
the soundest conclusions of
philosophy about the nature of the
soul? If they are at all anxious to
know how to prove the substantiality
of the soul, let them apply to
philosophy; and they will learn
that matter, owing to its inertia,
cannot think, and that the organic
movements cannot be the thinking
principle.

The writer in the <i>Sun</i> answers
the preceding objection in the following
manner:

.pm letter-start
“In answer to this it is usually alleged
that, though the body of a man dies and
decays, his soul survives, and either, as
Dr. Nisbet maintains, continues its existence
in a purer or more ethereal world,
or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining
its potentiality of life, will clothe
itself again, at some future time, with a
bodily form and enter upon a new career.”
.pm letter-end

Let the writer take notice that,
according to the doctrine of the
Christian Church, the soul, when
separated from the body, retains
not a mere “potentiality of life,”
but actual life and the exercise
thereof. The life of the soul does
not depend on the organism of the
body; its spiritual operation has no
need of organs; for reason and will
are not organic faculties, though in
the present life they are associated
with the sensitive faculties which
work through the organs. The
potentiality of life, in the language
of philosophy, means the capability
of receiving life; and it is the organism,
not the soul, that has such
a potentiality.

The writer continues:

.pm letter-start
“This idea of the distinction between
soul and body is as old as the history of
the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated
it by the example of the butterfly
emerging from the hard chrysalis and
winging its flight through the air. Like
the butterfly, the soul of man, they said,
when it casts off its material envelope,
soars aloft in the enjoyment of a purer
atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument
drawn from it, have been adopted
by moderns, and they represent the common
opinion on the subject. The assertion
is that the soul exists within the
body as a separate entity, and that when
the body dies the soul is merely set free.”
.pm letter-end

We wonder if any “argument”
has ever been drawn from the example
of the butterfly to prove that
the soul survives the collapse of the
body. Similitudes are simple illustrations
of things, and they serve to
help the imagination, not to convince
the intellect. Yet the author
seems to believe that the common
opinion which holds the soul to be
a substance distinct from the body
owes its demonstration partially to
an “argument” drawn from the
butterfly; and he undertakes to
show that such an “argument” has
no weight. He says:

.pm letter-start
“But those who maintain this view
fail to note that the butterfly, like the
worm, is visible to the eye and subject
to the laws of matter; and, moreover, that
the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its
function in the economy of creation, perishes
and is never seen or heard of more.
If the soul is enveloped in the body as
the butterfly is in the worm, it should
appear to sight when its covering is removed.
This notoriously does not happen,
and therefore the argument is unsatisfactory.”
.pm letter-end

Of course the “argument” would
be unsatisfactory; and therefore it
.pn +1
is that philosophers do not use it.
But the critic should not condemn
the similitude as wrong on the
ground that “the butterfly is visible
to the eye and subject to the
laws of matter,” whilst such is not
the case with the soul. Similitudes
are used for illustrating something
different from them; hence they
cannot agree in all points with the
things illustrated. When the visible
is used as a symbol of the invisible,
it is by no means pretended
that we can see the one as we
see the other, or that there is in
the one every property of the other.
A genius may be compared to an
eagle; but the eagle has feathers, a
beak, and a tail, which the genius
has not. So the butterfly is visible
to the eye, subject to the laws of
matter, and perishable; and in all
this it differs vastly from the human
soul. But it is not on these points
that the comparison is based.
Hence it is idle to argue from these
points against the use of the comparison.

The writer concludes the preceding
in these words:

.pm letter-start
“The argument from analogy, therefore,
does but little towards supporting
a belief in the future existence of the
soul either separately or in connection
with a restored body.”
.pm letter-end

We admit that the analogies of
nature, as alleged by the writer, do
very little indeed towards proving
a future resurrection; but we have
seen that the same analogies afford
an irresistible proof of the natural
immortality of the human soul:
<i>No power in nature can deprive a
substance of its being; the human
soul is a substance; therefore no natural
power can deprive it of its being.</i>
We have, then, in this argument,
a first demonstration of the
natural immortality of the soul.
But let us follow the reviewer. He
mentions four proofs adduced by
philosophers and divines in favor
of the immortality of the soul—namely,
the reasonableness of immortality,
the promises of Scripture,
the legendary stories of apparitions,
and, in our time, the
phenomena of what is called spiritualism.

.pm letter-start
“Without in any way admitting the
sceptic’s proposition,” he says, “we must
yet recognize the striking fact that in the
construction of the argument from reasonableness,
or the <i>à priori</i> demonstration
of the survival of the soul, our philosophers
have not, so far, got one step
beyond the point arrived at by the old
Greeks two thousand years ago. No one
has written more convincingly on the
subject than Plato in his <i>Phædo</i>, nor is
there any more thorough and exhaustive
presentment of it extant than the one
given by that diligent student of Greek
literature, Cicero, in his <i>Tusculan Disputations</i>.
Plato begins by appealing to
the general belief of men in their immortality,
which is like appealing to the
general belief in fairies and witches as a
proof of their existence. He then argues,
from the soul’s readiness in acquiring
knowledge, that it must have learned
the same things in a previous state of
existence; and hence, as it existed before
the body, it will exist after the body
ceases to be, which nowadays is not
worth refuting. Next he says that the
soul, being uncompounded and invisible,
is indissoluble, and therefore immortal;
but this is begging the question. Finally,
he argues that the soul is in itself
life and the opposite of death, and therefore
cannot die; which is another <i>petitio
principii</i>. In a similar manner Cicero
enumerates in favor of the soul’s immortality
the wide-spread conviction that it
is immortal; the thirst for fame which
inspires heroic deeds, and which would
be absurd if death were the end of all
existence; the volatile nature of the soul,
which preserves it from destruction; and
its superior powers over those of the
body.”
.pm letter-end

We beg to remark that this passage
is full of gratuitous assertions.
What the writer calls “a striking
fact” is not a fact. Our philosophers,
.pn +1
as he himself proceeds to
show, have added much to the reasonings
of the old Greek philosophers.
How can it be true, then,
that they have gone “not one step
beyond the point arrived at two
thousand years ago”? And if this
were true, how could the writer
disclaim any intention of admitting
“the sceptic’s proposition,” considering
that the old proofs of immortality
are, in his opinion, quite
unsatisfactory?

A second gratuitous and unwise
assertion is that to appeal to the
general belief in immortality is
“like appealing to the general belief
in fairies and witches as a proof
of their existence.” To say nothing
of witches (for we need not
enter into this controversy), it is
not true that belief in fairies is, or
has been, general, except perhaps
among nursery children. But let
this pass. There is a difference between
belief and belief. The belief
of men in the immortality of
the soul does not originate in nursery
tales, but in natural reason;
nor is it a belief extorted by imposition,
but a conclusion of which
thinking men find sufficient evidence
in their own nature. It is
because the nature is common that
the belief in immortality is common.
To question it is to ignore
the <i>sensus naturæ communis</i>, and to
forfeit all claim to a fair philosophical
reputation.

A third assertion, equally gratuitous
and manifestly false, is that
we cannot, without begging the
question, infer the soul’s immortality
from its simplicity. It is not
easy to understand how the writer
could fall into such a tangible error.
The simplicity of the soul
and its spirituality are demonstrated
independently of the question
of immortality. This being the
case, it is plain that no begging of
the question is possible in arguing
from the known spiritual simplicity
of the soul to its immortality. The
writer might probably object that
to assume the simplicity and spirituality
of the soul is to assume its
immortality. This is to say that
to assume the premises is to assume
the conclusion. But, if the
premises are only assumed after demonstration,
the conclusion which
they involve will be based on demonstration
and will be demonstrated.
And this is the case with
the soul’s immortality. If the simplicity
and spirituality of the soul
were assumed without proof, the
argument would be worthless; but,
since both are established by independent
considerations, the conclusion
is unquestionably valid.

The fourth gratuitous assertion
consists in denouncing as a <i>petitio
principii</i> the argument which says
that the soul cannot die, “because
it is life in itself.” The words
“the soul is life in itself” mean
that the life of the soul is not, like
that of the body, borrowed from a
distinct vital principle, but constitutes
the very being of the soul and
is involved in its essence. Hence,
if the substance of the soul cannot
be blotted out of existence by natural
agencies, the soul is naturally
immortal; for its very existence is
life. And, since it is known and
admitted that natural agencies are
wholly incompetent to cause any
created substance to vanish out of
existence, the consequence is that
the soul, as Plato very justly remarks,
cannot naturally lose its life.

To complete the demonstration,
however, something more is needed.
For, although the preceding
arguments show that the soul cannot
be destroyed by natural agencies,
they do not prove that the
.pn +1
Author of nature, who has created
it, will keep it in existence after its
separation from the body. In
other terms, it is necessary to show
that the soul is no less extrinsically
than intrinsically immortal.
This the Greek philosophers, owing
to their pagan notion of Divinity,
have been unable to do;
but it has been done by Christian
philosophers, as our writer himself
recognizes. He says:

.pm letter-start
“One argument, indeed, is employed
by Christians which the heathens do not
seem to have thought of—namely, the
necessity of a future existence to compensate
men for their sufferings, and to
punish them for their misdeeds, in this
world, and thus vindicate God’s mercy
and justice. Virtuous human beings, it
is said, are more or less unhappy in this
life, while the wicked are happy; and
therefore we must suppose that so just
and benevolent a being as God will reward
the one class and punish the other
in a life to come.”
.pm letter-end

To this argument nothing can be
objected. God cannot be more
partial to the wicked than to the
good. Such a course would evidently
conflict with his sanctity,
which necessarily loves all that is
right, and necessarily hates all that
is wrong. Hence the prosperity of
the wicked and the trials of the
good, though permitted by God for
our present probation, are not final,
but must be reversed when the
time of probation is over—that is,
at the end of the present life. A
final triumph of virtue and a final
punishment of vice are therefore
as certain to come after this life as
it is certain that God cannot forfeit
his sanctity. Nevertheless, the
writer in the <i>Sun</i> thinks that he
can get rid of the argument by remarking
that, if it proved anything,
it would prove top much.

.pm letter-start
“As if God’s goodness,” he says,
“does not much more require him to
reward the virtuous here, if it requires
him to reward them at all, and as if an
uncertain future punishment, in a problematical
state of existence, would offset
a present sin.”
.pm letter-end

But this reply is extremely futile;
for how can it be proved that
God’s goodness requires him to reward
the virtuous here? The assertion
is quite arbitrary, not to say
absurd; for if God’s goodness does
not actually reward the virtuous
here, it is evident that God’s goodness
does not require that they
should have their reward here.
Then the writer seems to question
the very necessity of reward and
punishment; but he gives no reason
for his doubt, as in fact no reason
could be found for assuming
that the moral law can be either
observed without profit or violated
with impunity. If there be no
retribution, right and wrong are
empty names, virtue becomes vice,
and vice virtue. If no happiness is
to be expected after death, he is
most reasonable and virtuous who
strives to satisfy all his passions,
and he is most vicious and unreasonable
who renounces his present
gratification for the sake of morality.
The sceptic, therefore, who
denies a future life is constrained
logically to admit that all virtue is
foolishness, and all wisdom consists
in self-indulgence and pleasure.
The evident absurdity of
this conclusion shows the falsity
of the opinion from which it proceeds.

The writer imagines also that
the future punishment is “uncertain,”
and that after death there is
only a “problematical” state of
existence. To this we need not
make a new answer, as we have
seen that a future retribution is
absolutely certain and not at all
problematic.
.pn +1

.pm letter-start
“It may still further be said,” adds
our writer, “that when we turn to the
Scriptures, we do not find them by any
means so clear and positive in regard to
the survival of the soul as people generally
suppose. The five books of Moses
are absolutely destitute of all allusion to
the subject. The Jews were told by the
great lawgiver nothing whatever concerning
a life beyond the grave. They
were promised rewards in this world if
they behaved well, and threatened with
punishments in this world if they behaved
ill. Their whole subsequent history
illustrates this fundamental principle.
When they rebelled against Jehovah
and worshipped other gods, they
were smitten with war, pestilence, famine,
and captivity. When they were obedient
to him, they were blessed with
peace and plenty, and victory was granted
them over their foes. In the prophetical
writings, full as they are of rebukes
and warnings, there is no more explicit
teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch;
and, down to the advent of
Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided
themselves of their adherence to the
faith of their fathers, stoutly denied it.”
.pm letter-end

Let us make a few remarks on
this argument. First, were we to
concede that Moses is absolutely
silent about a future life, it would
make no difference as to the question
of the soul’s immortality. For
if we argue with Christians, Moses’
silence is abundantly compensated
for by other inspired writers; and
if we argue with unbelievers, we
know that Moses with them is no
authority whether he speaks or remains
silent.

Secondly, it is not true that “the
five books of Moses are absolutely
destitute of all allusion to the subject.”
We are not going to write a
dissertation on this Biblical question;
it will suffice to point out a
few passages which would have no
meaning apart from a belief in a
future life. We read in Genesis
(xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham:
“I am thy protector, and thy
reward exceedingly great.” Can
these words have any other meaning
than “protector in the troubles
of thy present life, and reward exceedingly
great after the end of the
struggle”? Again we read that
Jacob at the approach of his death,
while blessing his children, exclaimed:
“I will look for thy salvation,
O Lord” (<i>ib.</i> xlix. 18)—that is,
“though I shall soon die, yet my
soul will not cease to rejoice in
the earnest expectation of the Redeemer
who is to come”—<i>Salutare
tuum expectabo, Domine.</i> And the
same patriarch, when mourning for
his son (Joseph), “would not receive
comfort, but said: I will go
down to my son into hell, mourning”
(<i>ib.</i> xxxvii. 35). He therefore
believed that his soul would survive
its separation from the body.
It is not true, then, that the books
of Moses are absolutely destitute of
all allusion to a future life. Nor is
it lawful to argue that, because the
great lawgiver promised rewards
and threatened punishments of a
temporal order, the eternal rewards
and the eternal punishments
must have been unknown to
the children of Israel; for we must
reflect that Moses’ menaces and
promises were made to the nation
or the political body, not to individual
persons, and that the political
body was not destined to last
for ever; whence it follows that
all the promises and all the menaces
addressed to the nation ought
to refer exclusively to the temporal
order.

Thirdly, it is not true that the
prophetical writings do not teach a
future life. We read in Daniel
(xii. 2) that “many of those that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some unto life everlasting,
and others unto reproach.” These
words are decisive. Death is but
a sleep; we shall awake to a new
.pn +1
life, and this future life will last
for ever. “On the last day,” says
Job, “I shall rise out of the earth,
and I shall be clothed again with my
skin, and in my flesh I shall see my
God” (c. xix.) David says: “The
wicked shall be turned into hell,
all the nations that forget God.
For the poor man shall not be forgotten
to the end: the patience of
the poor shall not perish for ever”
(Psalm ix.) “Thy dead men,” says
Isaias, “shall live, my slain shall
rise again: awake, and give praise,
ye that dwell in the dust” (c. xxvi.)
Ezechiel (c. xviii.) intimates to the
wicked that they shall die, while
the just shall live; where <i>living</i>
and <i>dying</i> cannot refer to the
course of natural events, but must
be interpreted as meaning salvation
and damnation. David says
again: “But God will redeem my
soul from the hand of hell, when
he shall receive me” (Psalm xlviii.)
These passages, to which many
others might be added, suffice to
show that our writer is not more
accurate in speaking of the prophetical
writings than he is in
speaking of the Pentateuch.

Fourthly, he does not seem to
know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding
their “priding themselves
of their adherence to the faith of
their fathers,” were nothing but a
heretical sect; they denied the resurrection
of the flesh, just as modern
Protestants deny transubstantiation;
and it is as absurd to appeal
to the Sadducees for the right
understanding of the Jewish faith
as it would be to appeal to our modern
heretics for the interpretation
of the Catholic doctrine.

The writer adds:

.pm letter-start
“The historical books, indeed, show
that in later days the doctrine gained
admission into some Jewish minds, having
most probably been communicated
to them from their Assyrian, Persian,
and Babylonian captors; but the form
it took on was that of the resurrection
of the flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was
erroneously adopted by the Christian
Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament
be silent on the topic, and the New Testament,
as interpreted by contemporary
critics, teaches a doctrine which reason
cannot accept, what is there in the Bible
to require a belief in any resurrection
whatever?”
.pm letter-end

We have shown that the immortality
of the soul was known to the
Jews from the time of the patriarchs.
The Assyrians, the Persians,
the Babylonians, and the Egyptians
were also acquainted with the same
truth, but they seem to have been
altogether ignorant of a future resurrection,
and many of them
thought that their souls were destined
to transmigrate from one
body to another. These errors
may have been communicated to
some Jews by their captors; as we
know that the Sadducees denied the
resurrection, and most of the Pharisees
believed in metempsychosis, according
to Josephus (<i>Antiquit.</i> l.
xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity of
the Jews may have been the source
of these errors, it has certainly not
been the origin of the belief in immortality
and resurrection, which
pre-existed among the Jews long
before their captivity.

As to the argument which the author
draws from Dr. Nisbet’s view
of resurrection, we need hardly say
that, if it may have some weight
against Dr. Nisbet, it can have none
against the Christian doctrine. The
New Testament, “as interpreted by
contemporary critics”—that is, by
Dr. Nisbet—“teaches a doctrine
which reason cannot accept.” What
then? Then, concludes the writer,
“there is nothing in the Bible to
require a belief in any resurrection
whatever.” We are at a loss to understand
.pn +1
the logical connection of
the consequence with the antecedent.
Can we not suppose that
there is something in the Bible
which requires a belief in the resurrection
of the flesh, and that Dr.
Nisbet, whose infallibility is far
from being demonstrated, has failed
to understand it? When a man is
bold enough to say that the Christian
Church has “erroneously adopted”
a doctrine which has been
preached by the apostles and believed
in without interruption for
eighteen centuries by the Christian
world, there is little doubt that such
a man is himself in error, and that
his assertions cannot be made the
ground of any argumentation. On
the other hand, if Dr. Nisbet “contends
for a resurrection in a form
composed of finer substances than
flesh and blood,” he may indeed
err theologically, but we fail to see
how he thereby “teaches a doctrine
which reason cannot accept.” In
fact, reason is incompetent to decide
what mode of resurrection
should be accepted and what rejected;
it being evident that in
a question of this sort the province
of reason is to submit to revelation,
and to accept the doctrine universally
received by the members of
the church. If therefore the Old
or the New Testament, or both,
as interpreted by the Fathers
of the church, teach a doctrine
against which reason has nothing
whatever to object, it is the
duty of every wise and reasonable
man to accept the doctrine without
the least regard to the vagaries of
“contemporary <i>Protestant</i> critics.”
Now, this is the case with the doctrine
of immortality and resurrection.

But our writer has more to say:

.pm letter-start
“Moreover, it is urged, if the survival
of the soul is a fact at all, it is a
fact to-day as much as it ever was, and,
like other facts, susceptible of proof.
There are departed souls enough now, if
there ever were any, to make it easy to
demonstrate their existence. If it be
true, as so many multitudes believe,
that when the body dies the soul of the
man, the woman, or the child who inhabited
it survives as a real man, woman,
or child, with all that is requisite to
personal identity, why, ask the doubters,
does it not in some way manifest itself?
From every home on this planet there
go up daily and hourly passionate demands
for the return of loved ones
whom death has snatched away. Were
they still in the flesh, no obstacle would
prevent their hurrying to join the objects
of their affection; and the sceptic finds
it inconceivable that if, as is said, they
hover about us in spirit form, they
should not make their presence felt in
some undeniable way.”
.pm letter-end

It is perfectly true that the survival
of the soul is, like other facts,
susceptible of proof. Yet not all
facts are proved by the same kind
of proofs. There are, even in the
natural sciences, facts which must
be proved by reasoning, owing to
the impossibility of ascertaining
them directly by the experimental
method. We must not expect,
therefore, that souls, which are
spiritual and invisible, should, after
departing from their bodies, give
sensible signs of their survival in a
different state. Nor do we need
any such sensible proof of their
survival; for we have proofs of a
higher order, by which we show
that the human soul cannot die.
We therefore establish not only the
fact of its survival, but also the necessity
of the fact. On the other
hand, if a soul were to appear before
us, we might suspect the objective
reality of the apparition; at
best we might simply conclude that
such a soul has been kept in existence;
but we would have no
ground for concluding that all
other human souls are likewise kept
.pn +1
in existence, and that they must
remain in existence for ever. In
fact, could not that soul be annihilated
some time after its apparition?
Or could we logically maintain that
the survival of one soul suffices to
prove the survival of all other
souls? It is therefore impossible
to prove the immortality of all human
souls by means of individual
apparitions; to establish it a general
principle is indispensable, and
this principle is drawn from the
very essence of the soul and from
the sanctity and justice of its Creator.

But “why does not the soul in
some way manifest itself”? This
question is very easily answered.
The departed souls are either in
heaven, or in hell, or in purgatory.
If in hell or in purgatory, they are
there like prisoners, and cannot freely
roam about. If, on the contrary,
they are in heaven, they have
none other than spiritual relations
with this world, except by special
dispensation of divine Providence.
And again, why should departed
souls manifest themselves in a sensible
manner? To convince us that
the Scriptural doctrine of immortality
is true? As if our faith in
the word of God were based on the
testimony of our senses, not on the
authority and truthfulness of God
himself. “Because thou hast seen
me, Thomas, thou hast believed,”
said our Lord to his sceptical disciple:
“blessed are they that have not
seen and have believed.” Miracles,
in the present order of Providence,
are not the rule, but the exception:
hence the sensible manifestation of
departed souls, as being above the
requirements of nature, is not to be
made the test of their survival.

“Were they still in the flesh,” we
are told, “no obstacle would prevent
their hurrying to join the objects of
their affection.” Certainly; for if
they were still in the flesh they
would belong to this world; but,
since they are no more in the flesh,
they now belong to the world of
spirits, which is invisible to our eyes
of flesh, and from which they cannot
communicate with us in sensible
forms without a special command
or permission of God. It is
not true that they “hover about us
in spirit form”; this is a pagan conception.
Nor is it true that the soul
survives “as a real man, woman, or
child.” Souls have no sex, and man
cannot be without a body; hence no
departed soul is either man, woman,
or child: it is a soul simply, and its
“personal identity” consists in its
being the same soul which was in
the body.

To the question, “Why do not
souls manifest themselves in a sensible
way?” a second answer can be
given by replying that many souls
have thus manifested themselves.
This answer, good and legitimate
as it is, is ridiculed by sceptical
critics, who, while constantly appealing
to facts, are invariably determined
to spurn all facts contrary
to their theories. Our writer
says:

.pm letter-start
“Equally inconclusive is the little we
have of positive testimony on the subject.
It is true that in all ages there
have been some who have asserted the
power of actually seeing and speaking
with departed souls, and the whole tribe
of spirit-mediums pretend to it now. As
to what has happened in bygone times
it is, of course, impossible now to base
any conclusion upon it. The circumstances
cannot be inquired into, and,
moreover, one single witness coming before
us and submitting his testimony to
our scrutiny is worth more than a thousand
who are out of our reach. The
question is: Does anybody at this day
really have intercourse with the spirits
of the dead? The spirit-rappers and
their followers say Yes, but the great incredulous
.pn +1
world, after hearing all they
have to present in confirmation of their
assertions, still says No. There is so
much fraud and nonsense connected
with the business that the scientific mind
rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena
themselves are clouded with a
suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while
there is a wide divergence of opinion as
to their interpretation, even granting
them to be honestly produced.”
.pm letter-end

We agree with the author that
spiritists have no intercourse with
the spirits of the dead, and we add
that no mortal has the power to
call back to this world a departed
soul. This, we think, is certain
both by authority and philosophy.
Hence, if any spirits are really
made to appear and to answer
questions—which we know to be a
fact, though not so frequent as simpletons
are apt to believe—those
spirits are not the souls of the departed,
but the lying spirits of hell,
who volunteer to play nonsensical
tricks for the amusement and the
perversion of their foolish consultors.
But that departed souls
have now and then appeared
to men in visible form is a
fact established on indisputable
historical evidence. Do we not
read in the Bible that the ghost of
Samuel appeared to Saul, rebuked
his recklessness, and intimated to
him the impending defeat of his
army and his own death? Nor
can it be objected that the ghost
was a devil, for devils do not know
the future actions of men; nor can
it be said that the apparition was a
delusion, for the ghost was seen
by the witch before it was seen by
Saul; and the whole narrative of
the sacred writer is so worded as to
exclude the possibility of explaining
away the fact by such a loose
interpretation. It will be said,
however, that “the scientific mind”
rejects all such facts with absolute
contempt. To which we may reply
that “the scientific mind” has
no right whatever to reject historical
facts. Science is based on
facts; its duty is to account for
them by a sufficient reason, not to
deny them when they transcend our
comprehension. We know that
there is a class of modern scientists
who contend that everything
must be explained by the properties
of matter, and that no exception
can be admitted in favor of supernatural
facts. But we do not see
how this mental disposition can be
called “scientific.” If physicists
refuse to acknowledge all the facts
which transcend the limits of their
sphere, why could not the musician
reject all the phenomena which
transcend his musical knowledge,
or the chemist ridicule all the astronomical
calculations? It is evident
that every science must dwell
within its proper limits, and therefore
no weight can be attached to
the opinions of mere physicists
when they presume to decide questions
entirely extraneous to their
profession. Thus the facts remain,
and all attempts at discrediting
them must be accounted idle and
unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead
and buried, at the voice of Christ
revived. The fact was public and
recognized by Christ’s enemies.
“The scientific mind” will not deny
it. But then, we ask, how could
the soul of Lazarus retake possession
of his body, if it had ceased to
exist? and what else was the rising
of the body from its tomb than a
sensible manifestation of the soul
returned to its primitive office?
We read in the Gospels, in the
Acts of the Apostles, and in ecclesiastical
history of many dead
recalled to life either by Christ or
by his disciples and followers. In
all such facts souls have manifested
.pn +1
themselves. We might mention a
great number of genuine apparitions
well known to all readers of the
lives of saints; but as we have
neither time nor intention to enter
into a critical discussion of the evidence
by which they are supported,
we shall content ourselves with citing
the glorious apparitions of
Lourdes, of La Salette, and of
Marpingen, which, as all the world
knows, are unquestionable facts,
accompanied and followed by a
continuous series of public miracles,
to which “the scientific mind” of
modern thinkers has found nothing
to object, though it has been formally
and repeatedly challenged to
disprove them by its pretended superior
knowledge. Our Catholic
readers know most of the facts to
which we allude; but it is probable
that the writer to whom we reply
is not acquainted with them, and
we would suggest to him to read
M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition
of Lourdes, where he will find,
we trust, sufficient evidence concerning
the reality and nature of the
facts just mentioned. But we repeat
that a Christian and a philosopher
has no need of sensible manifestations
to believe in the immortality
of the human soul. Reason
and the Gospel afford such a strong
evidence of this truth that all
further evidence may seem superfluous.
When unbelievers ask for
apparitions or sensible manifestations,
we may answer them as Abraham
answered the rich man: “If
they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they believe if
one rise again from the dead”
(Luke xvi. 31).

Our writer sums up his arguments
as follows:

.pm letter-start
“The fact, then, seems to be—and we
would earnestly press it upon the attention
of religious thinkers of every kind,
and especially upon theologians and
clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to
deal with such subjects—the fact seems
to be that analogy, reason, revelation,
and human testimony alike fail to establish
the doctrine that man can exist
as a man without a material body. Books
such as that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to
than remove the philosophical difficulties
of the subject so long as they leave
the main question untouched. Moreover,
in explaining away the popular interpretation
of the Scriptures in regard
to it, they tend to produce very much
the same results as have been produced
by the efforts to reconcile Genesis with
geology. The conclusion that the Bible
does not teach science correctly has been
followed by the conclusion that it does
not teach science at all; and so, if we
agree with Dr. Nisbet that what it says
about the resurrection is not to be taken
literally, we shall be in great danger of
rejecting its testimony altogether.”
.pm letter-end

This is to say that the Scriptures,
in the Protestant system of free interpretation,
lose all authority, inasmuch
as the word of man is
thereby substituted for the word of
God. Thus far we agree with the
writer. But that religious thinkers,
theologians, and clergymen should
undertake a new demonstration of
the soul’s immortality and of the
resurrection of the flesh, we consider
unnecessary. Theologians and
clergymen have done their duty on
this point with such completeness
as to make all sceptics inexcusable.
All that is wanted is that the sceptics
themselves undertake to study
the works of such theologians and
philosophers as have answered the
objections of the materialists of the
last century. Scepticism is ignorance.
There is no remedy for it
but study—the study of that special
branch of knowledge on which
the solution of any given question
depends.

Our writer imagines that some
“efforts” have been made “to reconcile
Genesis with geology.”
.pn +1
This, however, is not the case.
The truth is that a class of scientists
have made some “efforts” to
turn geology against Genesis, and
that those efforts have been unsuccessful.
A science which denies
to-day what it considered yesterday
as demonstrated, and which is apt
to deny to-morrow what it teaches
to-day, needs none of our “efforts”
to be reconciled with Genesis.
When the facts of geology shall be
well known, and when the theories
built on those facts shall be logically
correct, then we shall have
no need of “reconciling” geology
with Genesis; for geology will teach
us nothing in opposition to the revealed
origin of things.

As to the conclusion “that the
Bible does not teach science correctly,”
or “that it teaches no science
at all,” we will only remark
that the Biblical record of creation
is a history of <i>facts</i>, not a treatise
of science. Hence the proposition
that the Bible does not teach science
correctly has no meaning,
whilst the proposition that the Bible
teaches no science at all is perfectly
true, although the facts themselves
which it relates must be
looked upon as the groundwork of
geological science.

But our writer seems to take a
different view of the subject. He
says:

.pm letter-start
“Many believers in Christianity deny
that the world was made in six days, although
the Bible says it was made in six
days; deny that a flood ever covered the
tops of the mountains, that there ever
were witches and magicians, and that
Joshua made the sun and the moon
stand still, although the Bible asserts
all these things; why may they not likewise
safely deny as unscientific the dogma
of a future existence of all individual
human beings? This is the dilemma
into which speculations like those of Dr.
Nisbet bring us; and if he and his school
can furnish a way out of it, they will
confer an immense benefit upon the
whole world of anxious but sincere
doubters upon this great subject.”
.pm letter-end

Such is the end of the article we
have been examining. We would
tell the writer that if there are believers
in Christianity who deny
anything revealed by God in the
Bible, such believers are not consistent
with themselves; for why
should they believe in Christianity
if they disbelieve the Bible? If
the word of God in the Old Testament
does not command their assent,
why should the same word of
God in the New Testament cause
them to believe? It is clear that,
if they believed on God’s authority,
they could not reject anything based
on that authority. A belief of
this sort is not divine faith, but
human opinion; it is not submission
to God’s authority, but a denial of
God’s authority in all things which
man chooses to disbelieve; and
consequently such a belief is not
that faith “without which it is impossible
to please God.” It is,
however, the faith of many advanced
Protestants; and thus we are
not surprised that the writer considers
such an irrational form of
belief as consistent with the mutilated
form of “Christianity” with
which he is familiar. But we Catholics—we
heirs of the apostolic
doctrine transmitted to us in an
uninterrupted manner by the universal
church—we believe everything
that has been revealed either
in the Old or in the New Testament.
We do not question the fact
that there have been witches and
magicians, nor do we see any reason
for questioning it; we believe
in like manner what the Bible says
about the Flood, the six days of
creation, Joshua’s great miracle,
and everything else; by which we
mean that those facts which we
.pn +1
read in the Bible, whether we have
a true appreciation of them or not,
are all true, and that the difficulties
we may find in their explanation
arise from our ignorance, which
the modern progress of science has
done very little to dispel. Thus,
while we are free to choose among
the various explanations of Biblical
facts, we all agree in believing the
facts themselves. But, if this is
true of those passages of Scripture
whose meaning is obscure, and
whose interpretation has not been
settled by the authority of the
church or by the <i>consensus</i> of the
doctors, it is not true of those other
passages whose meaning is obvious
and unmistakable, or whose interpretation
has been sanctioned by
the unanimous decision of the universal
church. Hence, while we
may freely discuss the six days of
creation and the astronomical result
of Joshua’s dealings with the
sun, we have no reasonable ground
for discussing or doubting “the
dogma of a future existence of all
individual human souls.” To say
that this dogma is “unscientific”
is to assume what neither has been
nor can be proved; unless, indeed,
we call “unscientific” every truth
which ranges above the compass
of experimental science; in which
case even logic itself would be utterly
unscientific.

Whether Dr. Nisbet or his
school can furnish a way out of the
difficulties complained of by our
writer we do not know. It is probable,
however, that neither Dr.
Nisbet nor any other doctor of the
same school can successfully combat
the invading spirit of infidelity
so long as they do not give up
their Protestant method of reasoning
and their Protestant profession.
Protestantism is itself one kind of
infidelity; it cannot contribute in
any way towards the restoration of
sound philosophical or theological
ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord,
and inconsistency, thus paving
the way for religious scepticism
and its concomitant evils. The history
of Protestantism is sufficient evidence
of the fact. It is vain, therefore,
to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his
school will “confer any benefit
upon the whole world of anxious
but sincere doubters” by establishing
either the immortality of the
soul or the resurrection of the
flesh on impregnable proofs. Let,
then, all anxious but sincere doubters
turn to Catholic doctors and
Catholic books; let them hear
the church—the old, calumniated
church, the column of truth, the heir
of the apostles, of the prophets, of
the patriarchs, and the spouse of
Christ. She will teach them how
to reconcile reason with faith and
religion with science, so as to believe
rationally and consistently
whatever God has revealed, while
preserving the fullest liberty of
judgment in regard to all other
things. Yet we must warn these
“anxious but sincere doubters”
that no benefit will accrue to them,
if they approach our divines or
read our books with that spirit of
contention which is so common
among all the Protestant sects. If
they are “anxious” to know the
truth, they must not rely exclusively
on the strength of their reasoning
powers, but must be ready to
yield to authority in all things connected
with Christian faith. If
they are “sincere,” humility must
be a part of their sincerity.

To conclude: We have met and
answered the reasons alleged by
the writer in the <i>Sun</i> against the
immortality of the soul and the
resurrection of the flesh; and although
we have scarcely developed
.pn +1
the reflections suggested by those
reasons, yet we confidently believe
that our brief remarks will be found
sufficient to set at rest the arguments
of the sceptic. As to the
doctrine of immortality in particular,
of which the same writer
desired “a solid and impregnable
philosophical demonstration,” we
have shown that the human soul
neither can be destroyed by any
created cause nor will be destroyed
by God; accordingly, the
human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically
immortal. Our proofs
have been few, but simple and intelligible;
and we trust that the
writer who gave us occasion to
speak of this subject, if he chances
to read these pages, will soon acquire
the conviction that the doctrine
of immortality was really in
no need of a new philosophical
demonstration.
.sp 4
.h3 id=sannazzaro
SANNAZZARO.
.sp 2
One Sunday morning, while at
Naples, we went to hear our Mass
of obligation in the church of the
Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro
in honor of the divine Maternity
of Mary, and called after
his famous poem, <i>De Partu Virginis</i>.
It stands on the Mergellina,
that <i>pezzo di cielo caduto in terra</i>, as
the Neapolitans say—“a fragment
of heaven to earth vouchsafed”—and
certainly the most beautiful
shore on which the sun shines. It
was this shore that inspired the ardent
Stazio. Not far off is the tomb
of Virgil, and the place where Pollio
lived, and the grove where Silius
Italicus conceived the idea of
his <i>Punica</i>. Here, too, Sannazzaro
had a charming villa which tempted
the very Muses to descend from
the mountain to dwell on the sandy
shore, as Ariosto says:

.pm verse-start
                “Alle Camene
Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”
.pm verse-end

Here he wrote most of his poems
and gathered around him all the
wit and talent of Naples on those
<i>Dies geniales</i>, which were as famous
at that time as the <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i>
of Christopher North at Edinburgh
in our younger days, though
not quite so convivial, perhaps.
This villa had about it a certain
perfume of antiquity of which we
know nothing in these times, and
which we affect to despise. It was
the natural atmosphere of this Virgilian
region, and it had an inspiration
of its own which must be taken
into account in reading the works
of Sannazzaro. He has celebrated
his villa in an ode worthy of Horace.
He did not, however, notwithstanding
his classical tastes,
dedicate his household altar to
Apollo, or even to Venus—he was
too genuine a Christian for that—but
to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro,
whom he reckoned among his
ancestors. When nearly done with
life, he built a church on the spot,
in memory of that divine Birth
which he had so sweetly sung, and
attached thereto a convent of Servite
monks, to whom he gave the
income of eight thousand florins
for the solemn celebration of Christmas
and certain expiatory services
for himself, his ancestors, and King
Frederick III. of Naples. Here
.pn +1
he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro,
and ordered his own tomb to
be built.

We had repeatedly passed the
Church del Parto without being
able to find it, so embedded is it
among houses on the side of the
cliff. And the entrance is from a
side terrace, to which you ascend
by a flight of steps, as to the court
of a private dwelling. This terrace
commands a view that surpasses
all the most vivid imagination
could conceive. The Castel
del Ovo advances directly before
you into the incomparable bay, the
waters of which, generally blue as
the heavens, were at this early hour
all crimson and gold and amethyst,
with great floods of silver coming
in from the sea. Behind them were
islands, such as we see in dreams,
rising out of the magic waves:
Capri, with its marvellous grottos,
clouded with the memory of Tiberius;
Procida, with its fort on the
volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where
the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, beloved
of Michael Angelo, retired
to mourn her husband’s loss, and
beneath which the giant Typhœus,
transfixed by a thunderbolt from
Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long
intervals groaning with pain, and
sending forth in his rage fearful
eruptions of burning lava. On the
inner curve of the bay sits Naples
like a queen, with her palaces, her
citadels, her white villas gleaming
like jewels—her glance all flame,
and her heart all fire. Beyond
rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone
of perfect symmetry, full of mystery
and terror, its summit now flecked
with patches of snow, looking like
great white flowers that bloom

.pm verse-start
“Around the crater’s burning lips,
Sweetening the very edge of doom.”
.pm verse-end

A light vapor, rather than smoke,
issued from the top, no longer
dark and foreboding like the evil
genius whose vase was unsealed,
but of soft, dove-like hues, as if
some pacific herald. At its foot
sleep fair villages among peaceful
olive-trees, wreathed with vines,
and lulled into forgetfulness by the
gentle waves that caress the shore.
Harmonious tints blend earth and
sky and sea, but they are constantly
varying with the rolling hours.
There is nothing monotonous here,
except the languid air which wearily
plays among the odorous trees
without the force to agitate their
branches. Nature is here a genuine
siren, half-earth, half-sea,
whose magic voice wooes many a
wanderer still to forget his native
shore. We feel its charm as we
survey the matchless landscape.
An electric fire comes over the
soul—admiration, wonder, emotions
no words can express. Poetry is
in the golden air, the bright waves,
the enchanting shores, the intense
hues that color everything—yes,
even in the awful scars and lava
streams that furnished the ancients
with their ideas of Tartarus, and
made Virgil place his descent
thereto near the <i>tenebrosa palus</i>—the
gloomy lake of Avernus, formed
from the overflowing of the
Acheron—

.pm verse-start
“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”
.pm verse-end

The church bell awoke us from
this delightful vision, and we entered
the open door. It is a small
building whose walls within are
tinged a delicate sea-green, and
have white mouldings, as if to
harmonize with the foam-crested
waves of the bay without. The
windows are mere lunettes, high
up in the arches, and below are
five or six deep recesses with altars
and paintings. The white marble
basin at the entrance, for holy-water,
.pn +1
looks like a flower on its tall,
slender stem. On it is graven a
shield like a chess-board—perhaps
the arms of some noble of this <i>farniente</i>
land to whom life was a mere
game. We were at once struck by
a singular crucifix on a kind of a
tripod, under a canopy like a penthouse.
Near by stood the <i>Addolorata</i>—the
Madonna of Many Sorrows—in
black like a nun, with
wimple and veil, a stole embroidered
with gold, and a wheel of gilt
arrows piercing the silver heart on
her breast. One poor dim lamp
was burning before her. Opposite
was a more cheerful altar with the
Virgin <i>del Parto</i>, the titular of the
church, gaily dressed after the
Italian taste, and surrounded with
lights and flowers. These two Madonnas
seemed to personify Bethlehem
and Calvary—the Alpha
and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and
between them we knelt
to hear Mass.

The church was nearly full of
people in bright holiday attire,
quite absorbed in their devotions,
and, though mostly of the lower
classes, so-called, they all responded
in Latin to the litany at the
close of the service. Near by us,
in the pavement, was a tomb-stone
with the bas-relief of a boy with a
book under his head, another in
his hand, and one at his feet.
This was a promising youth named
Fabrizio Manlio, who so loved the
Mergellina that, when ill, he wished
to be brought here to die, and
here be buried, as his touching
epitaph relates. But that was
three hundred years ago, and the
father who here records the tears
he shed long since rejoined his
son, and now there is not a smile
the less at sunny Naples. Why
lay aught too much to heart?

In a recess at the right is a noted
painting, generally known at Naples
as the <i>Diavolo di Mergellina</i>. This
is no new fiend, but the old outcast
from heaven vanquished by St.
Michael, the great captain of the
heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo
da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of
the Da Vinci school. The archangel,
“severe in youthful beauty,”
is girded with a vest of heavenly
azure, and from his shoulders spring
broad wings of many hues—green,
yellow, and purple—with rays like
long arrows of gold. His right hand
seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s
dire dread”—but holds
it behind him, while with the left he
thrusts his long spear through the
demon’s neck and nails him to the
ground. His face is perfectly passionless,
as if not even so terrible
a combat could ruffle the serenity
of his angelic nature. The <i>Diavolo</i>
is one of those strange demons that
entice souls down to the gulf of perdition,
common in the middle ages,
with two faces, not Janus-wise, but
with the second face on the bowels,
of most startling character. The
fiend before us has the beautiful
face and bust of a woman, said to
be the genuine portrait of a lady
who became passionately enamored
of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of
Ariano, who lies buried at the foot
of the altar beneath, with the triumphant
inscription: <i>Et fecit victoriam,
halleluja!</i> which may be applied
both to the bishop and the archangel.
The round arms of this fair
demon are drawn up under her
head. Her long, golden locks

.pm verse-start
    “In masses bright
Fall like floating rays of light”
.pm verse-end

around her shoulders and half-veil
her bosom. Her youthful face is
deadly pale, but not contracted,
and her eyes are cold and vigilant.
The lower face, on the contrary, is
.pn +1
old and convulsed, as if crying with
pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like.
The legs are like two scaly
serpents, twisted and writhing,
and the bat-like wings shade off to
a lurid brown and yellow. The
contrast in these two faces is very
striking and has a deep moral. It
is a common proverb at Naples to
compare too tempting a project, or
too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo
di Mergellina.

The high altar of the church is of
inlaid marble. At the sides are
niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo
and Nazzaro, the patrons of
the founder. On what is called the
arch of triumph over the head of the
nave is an old painting of the Annunciation,
the Virgin in one spandrel
with the dove on her hand, and
the angel in the other with the lily
stem. Along the connecting arch
is the distich from Sannazzaro:

.pm verse-start
“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo,
Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have
made peace in the womb of the Virgin.
.fn-

In a neighboring recess is an Adoration
of the Magi, which contends
with that of the Castello Nuovo as
being the one given Sannazzaro by
Frederick of Aragon, painted by
Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to
be the first oil-painting ever brought
to Italy.

We searched a long time in vain
for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels,
flagstones, and mural inscriptions,
all underwent a severe scrutiny;
and, supposing it must have
been destroyed in some political
convulsion, when even death itself
is not respected, we were on the
point of leaving the church when it
occurred to us to go behind the
high altar. We found there a door
which we made bold to enter, remembering
how often we had been
repaid for exploring sacristies and
odd nooks. There was the tomb
directly before us, in the smallest
of choirs in which ever monk lost
his voice “with singing of anthems.”
It is the most quiet, secluded spot
in the world—dim, frescoed, and
crowded with a dozen stalls, on
which cherubs’ heads are carved.
It is more like a little chantry than
a choir, and nothing ever breaks
the silence but the voice of holy
psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of
white marble, chiefly sculptured by
Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli. It
is surmounted by his bust crowned
with laurel. The face is somewhat
haggard, but the features are noble.
He wears a cap like that we see
in pictures of Dante. Beside him
are two <i>putti</i>, one with a book and
the other bearing a helmet, in allusion
to the different ways in which
Sannazzaro distinguished himself.
The sarcophagus beneath rests on
an entablature, below which, in
delicate relief, are Neptune and his
trident—doubtless in allusion to the
<i>Piscatoriæ</i>—and Pan with his reeds,
accompanied by fauns and satyrs,
with jovial faces and shaggy sides,
as if to sing the praises of the author
of the <i>Arcadia</i>. Along the
base of the monument is an inscription
by Bembo, which shows he believed
Virgil to have been buried
at Naples:

.pm verse-start
“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni
Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here,
near Virgil, lies Syncerus, his brother in the Muses.
.fn-

At the sides are fine statues of
Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.

Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired
poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples
in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious
family of Spanish origin
that had fallen from its former grandeur,
.pn +1
but was left not without considerable
means. His mother, on
becoming a widow, withdrew into
the country in order to bring him
up in retirement, uncontaminated
by the world; but he soon displayed
such uncommon abilities that she
was persuaded to return to Naples
and there watch over his education.
It is said he showed a talent for poetry
at eight years of age; but it
must be remembered he belonged to
a land where poesy is like the flowers
that spring up spontaneously
from the soil at every season. Of
course his education was chiefly
classical; for he belonged to an age
when Greek and Latin literature
was regarded as the standard of excellence,
and the very mysteries of
religion were sung in the measure
of Homer and Virgil. When of
sufficient age he chose as his master
Giovanni Pontano, called “the
Trojan Horse” on account of the
great number of illustrious poets,
orators, and warriors that sprang
from his school. Pontano was then
director of the celebrated Accademia
Napolitana, in which he figured
as grammarian, philosopher, historian,
orator, and poet. He was
the literary autocrat of Naples,

.pm verse-start
“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”
.pm verse-end

He was regarded as the favorite
of Apollo and the Aonides, and
from his lips was said to flow a
river of gold:

.pm verse-start
              “Quel bel tesoro
D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle,
Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”
.pm verse-end

His astronomical discoveries were
announced in Latin verse. It is
said he was the first in modern
times to revive the idea of Democritus
that the Milky Way is composed
of myriads of stars.

Sannazzaro succeeded his master
at the Academy of Naples, which at
that time held its meetings at Pontano’s
residence, near which was
the Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of
art, erected by Pontano in honor of
the Virgin and the two St. Johns.
Here were set up the wise maxims
of the founder, graven on stone,
which we translate from the original
Latin:

“It is noble but difficult to restrain
one’s self in opulence.

“He who never forgets injuries
forgets that he is man.

“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful
of Fortune herself.

“Integrity promotes confidence,
and confidence friendship.

“He who decides too hastily on
doubtful occasions repents too late,
though he repent quickly.

“It is in vain the law cannot
reach him whose conscience absolves
him not.

“The sky is not always serene,
nor does prudence always ensure
safety.

“In every condition of life the
chief thing is to know thyself.

“It belongs to the upright to despise
the injuries of the wicked,
whose praises even are a disgrace.

“Let us bear the penalty of our
faults rather than the state should
expiate them to its injury.

“Content not thyself with being
upright, but find others who resemble
thee to serve thy country.

“It is by boldness and conquest
a kingdom is enlarged, and not by
those counsels that seem to the timid
full of wisdom and prudence.”

Such were the maxims instilled
into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind.
They have a flavor of antiquity. The
Academy of Naples still exists, but
holds its meetings in the cell of St.
Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s,
where royalty itself used to attend
the lectures of the Angelic Doctor.
.pn +1
In the church of Monte Oliveto
at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there
is a striking group of figures
in the chapel of the Holy
Sepulchre, gathered in sorrowful
attitudes around the dead Christ—all
life-size likenesses of celebrities
in the time of the artist, Modanin
of Modena. Sannazzaro is represented
as Joseph of Arimathea;
Pontano as Nicodemus; Alfonso
II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand
beside him.

Sannazzaro has celebrated a
young Neapolitan girl in classical
measure, under the Greek names
of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne,
which signify joy, love, and
the immortal; but he veiled his passion,
if it was one, under mythological
allusions. He took as his
device an urn of black pebbles,
among which was a single white
one with the motto, <i>Æquabit nigras
candida sola dies</i>, as if in time
he hoped to please his lady. But
she died young, and he bewailed
her in suitable elegies. In spite of
this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps
only a poetic fancy—it is
sure Sannazzaro was all his life
rather a votary of Diana than of
Venus, as became one destined to
sing the praises of the Purissima.

Admitted to familiarity with Frederick
of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand
of Naples, Sannazzaro was
appointed director of the royal festivities,
and in this capacity composed
dramas in the language of the
<i>lazzaroni</i> for the amusement of the
court. These soon became as popular
in the streets as in the palace,
and were the germs of the
modern Italian comedy, which finds
its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s
farces at San Carlino. One
of these plays is spoken of with
particular admiration, composed in
1492 to celebrate the conquest of
Granada, and acted at the Castello
Capuano in presence of Alfonso,
Duke of Calabria.

Sannazzaro became so attached
to his royal patron that he accompanied
him in an expedition against
the Turks, where he acquired the
reputation of a courageous soldier.
And when the prince was deprived
of the throne to which he had succeeded,
and retired to France, the
poet, more faithful in misfortune
than Pontano to Frederick I., generously
sold two paternal estates to
provide for his sovereign’s wants,
and accompanied him into exile.
It was in the following lines he
bade adieu to Naples, which to
leave is a kind of death:

.pm verse-start
“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,
  Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ;
Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis
  Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui;
Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren,
farewell! Farewell, enchanted gardens of the Hesperides!
Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful of me;
accept these tears of regret from the master who
has naught else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of
my mother; my father’s shade, farewell!
.fn-

Sannazzaro remained with Frederick
III. till his death at Tours,
and then returned to Naples, where
he devoted himself wholly to literature.
The <i>Arcadia</i>, which he finished
in France, was published in
1504. This is a romance of mingled
prose and verse after the
manner of Boccaccio’s <i>Ameto</i>. It
caused a great sensation in Italy,
and is still regarded as one of the
happiest inspirations of the Italian
muse. His pleasant villa on the
Mergellina had been respected during
his exile, and here he established
himself at his return. It became
a rendezvous for all the literary
men of the city. On Thursdays
in particular, when the scholars
and barristers had a holiday,
all that was brilliant at Naples assembled
here for a frugal repast, at
.pn +1
which poems and epigrams were recited.
Sannazzaro was very popular,
and to be his friend was regarded
as a <i>brevet</i> of immortality.

.pm verse-start
“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle
Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero,
Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Let me be depicted in the immortal works of
my glorious Sannazzaro, so worthy of the name of
Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very stars.
.fn-

wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should
be remarked, had, after the fashion
of the time, taken the more classical
name of Actius Syncerus, to
which allusion is made on his tomb.

But the greatest festival of the
year on the Mergellina was the
birthday of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro
had a kind of passion. He
celebrated this anniversary—perhaps
in imitation of Silius Italicus,
who offered an annual sacrifice to
the manes of the bard of Mantua—by
a banquet, to which he invited
his most intimate friends, such as
“Alessandro, the jurisconsult, whose
works, so long popular, furnish curious
details respecting the public
and private life of the Romans; Cariteo,
who sang in his heterodox
style the human soul formed by the
Creator, from which nothing is concealed
in heaven before it assumes
its earthly veil, but which, coming
below, as if fallen from some star
into a human body, no longer retains
any memory of the past; Andrea
Acquaviva, who dismounted
from his war-horse to take the lyre
and drink from the fount of Hippocrene;
Girolamo Carbone, who preferred
the Tuscan language to the
Latin, then so popular, and whose
rhythm is a kind of music to the
ear; and, finally, Pontano, the master
of Sannazzaro, the restorer of
the Neapolitan academy founded
by Panormita.”[#] These repasts
were served by Hiempsal, a young
African slave whom Sannazzaro
had freed and taught to sing the
elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself
had composed. It was after
one of these Virgilian feasts the
poet went to hear Egidio, an Augustinian
monk, preach. He was
as celebrated for his eloquence as
his learning, and was a favorite of
two popes, one of whom (Leo X.)
afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio,
in declaiming with his usual
animation against the vices of the
time, made a happy citation from
Virgil, which delighted his hearer
and led to a friendship between
them. It was this or some other
sermon of his that suggested to
Sannazzaro the idea of his great
poem, <i>De Partu Virginis</i>, to which
he devoted twenty years of his life—a
poem of which Mr. Hallam
says “it would be difficult to find
its equal for purity, elegance, and
harmony of versification.” Pope
Leo. X., who appreciated genius in
whatever way it found expression,
whether by pen, chisel, or pencil,
sent the poet a brief in 1521 to encourage
him in singing the mysteries
of the Christian faith, and to
express his satisfaction that, at a
time when the voice of a monk was
troubling the peace of the church,
the Catholic faith should find a
defender among the laity—another
David, as it were, to smite the new
Goliath and appease with his lyre
another Saul; and he declared the
poem an honor to religion and to
his pontificate. Clement VII. also
wrote him a brief, accepting the dedication,
which alone, he said, was
enough to immortalize the pontiff
thus honored.

.fn #
Audin.
.fn-

The <i>De Partu Virginis</i> is the
most remarkable poem of the Renaissance,
and its publication was
an event in the literary world. It
was everywhere eulogized, and the
.pn +1
author was styled the Christian
Virgil. Egidio of Viterbo, after
reading it, thus wrote to the author:
“When I received your divine
poem, I eagerly hastened to
make myself familiar with its contents.
God alone, whose inspiration
suggested so wonderful a creation,
can reward you suitably—not
by admitting you to the Elysian
Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus
and Orpheus, but to a blessed eternity.”
This poem still merits attention,
if for no other reason, at
least because of its effect on religious
art in the sixteenth century—an
influence which has been compared
to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson
says she can trace it in all the contemporary
productions of Italian
art of all schools from Milan to Naples.
She regards this influence,
however, as perverse. But let us
take a brief glance at a poem which
has excited so much admiration and
criticism down to the present day.

The <i>De Partu Virginis</i> is an epic
poem, in which the birth of Christ
is sung with the harmonious flow,
the variety of imagery, and the elevated
tone of Virgil. But, strange
to say, none of the sacred characters
introduced are called by their
real names—perhaps because unknown
to the Latin muse. Even
the names of Jesus and Mary are
expressed by Virgilian paraphrases.
The former is called <i>Divus Puer</i>
and <i>Numen sanctum</i>; the latter
<i>Alma parens</i>, <i>Dia</i>, and <i>Regina</i>. St.
Joseph is the <i>Senior Custos</i>; St.
Elizabeth the <i>Matrona defessa ævo</i>;
and the Supreme Being is styled
the <i>Regnator</i>, <i>Genitor superum</i>, etc.
The author calls upon the inhabitants
of heaven (<i>cœlicolæ</i>) to reveal
to his limited vision the profound
secrets of the mystery he is about
to sing, and invokes the sacred
Aonides as the natural protectresses
of virginal purity. “Dear delight
of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses
who have never refused me your
favor, allow me once more to take
a long draught at your clear fount.
Ye who derive your glorious origin
from heaven, and have so singular
a regard for what is pure, aid me in
singing of heavenly themes and
celebrating the glory of a Virgin.
Drive away the darkness of my
mind and show me the way by
which to rise to the highest summit
of your celestial mount. These
lofty mysteries were not unknown
to you. You must have beheld the
sacred grotto of the Nativity. You
must have heard the sweet music
of the angels that surrounded it.
And it is hardly credible you did
not admire the splendor of the star
that led from the extremity of the
Orient three powerful princes to
render homage to the new-born
Child.

“I have not herein the less need
of thy aid, thou constant Hope of
men and gods, at once Maid and
Mother! If I have taken delight
every year in adorning the walls of
thy temple with festoons and garlands
of flowers; if, on this delicious
cliff of the Mergellina, that
seems from its proud height to disdain
the waves of the sea and promise
safety to the boatmen who
hail it from afar, I have hewn out
for thee altars of eternal duration;
if, following the footsteps of my
ancestors, I have taken pleasure in
singing thy praises and celebrating
thy honor with the immense crowds
of devout people who, with lively
joy, hallow the for ever memorable
day of thy happy deliverance, guide
my steps in these unfrequented
paths, give me the courage to accomplish
what I have undertaken,
and abandon me not in a task at
once so glorious and so difficult.”
.pn +1

The poet goes on to relate how
the <i>Regnator Superum</i>, seeing the
human race in danger of falling
into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of
Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil
has been brought about by woman,
that by woman it should be repaired.
He therefore despatches one
of his ministering spirits to announce
to the purest of virgins the
sublime destiny that awaits her.
The messenger finds her plunged in
meditation with the prophetic page
of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting
her with reverence, he makes
known the advent of the <i>Numen
sanctum</i> who would deliver mankind
from the horrors of the Styx. Fame
everywhere publishes the tidings of
this mysterious event. Hell itself
is told of it. The Eumenides tremble.
Alecto, Cerberus, and all the
monsters of paganism shudder with
fear. The souls of the Fathers—those
genuine heroes, as Sannazzaro,
after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice.
David himself repeats his
prophetic Psalms, and sings the life
of Christ, his Passion, Death, and
Descent into Limbo.

But it is the great Governor of the
universe himself who reveals to the
inhabitants of heaven his designs
of mercy towards mankind. And
when the time of the Nativity
comes, he summons Joy (<i>Lætitia</i>) to
his presence, whose privilege it is to
appease the anger of the Thunderer
and diffuse serenity over his
face:

.pm verse-start
“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis
Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”
.pm verse-end

and sends her to announce the glad
tidings of the divine Birth. Putting
wings to her feet, she leaves
heaven, guarded by the Hours, and
proceeds to earth, where she reveals
the great event to the shepherds.
Two of them, Lycidas and
Egon, recite a part of the fourth
Eclogue of Virgil, applying it to
the new-born Child. The birth of
Christ is related with delicacy and
poetic grace. There is a sublime
energy worthy of Dante in the lines
that speak of the Incarnation, and
the astonishment of nature in view
of the prodigy. Angels in the air
celebrate it by sports and combats
in the style of Homer’s heroes, with
the instruments of the Passion for
arms. Other angels, like Demodocus,
sing the creation, renovation
of nature, the seasons, etc. The
Jordan, leaning on its urn, is moved
to its depths, and relates to the
Naiads gathered about him the
wonderful event on its shores.
An angel comes to bathe the Child
in its waters. A dove hovers
above. The water-nymphs bend
around in veneration. The Jordan,
amazed, stays its current with
respect, and recalls the prophecy
of old Proteus, that the time would
come for it to be visited by One who
would raise the glory of the Jordan
above the Ganges, the Nile, or the
Tiber. After which the river,
wrapped in its mantle, wonderfully
wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically
to its bed.

This is too brief an outline of
the splendid crown Sannazzaro has
woven for the Blessed Virgin, set
with so many antique gems. Many
have been shocked by the mingling
of paganism and Christianity
in this poem, but to us it is as if
the waters of the Permessus had
been turned into the Jordan. All
these pagan deities and profane allusions
that sprinkle its pages seem
to sing the triumph of Christianity.
They are in harmony, too, with the
Virgilian region in which the poem
was written, as well as with the
spirit of the age. There was such
a passion for antiquity and for
.pn +1
Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth
century that even religion
and art put on a classic air. Nor
was Leo X., to whom it has been
made a subject of reproach, the
only dignitary of the church that
has felt this fascination. St. Jerome
himself was called by the accusing
spirit, <i>Non Christianus, sed Ciceronianus</i>,
and he used to fast before
reading the works of the great orator,
so much did he fear their ascendency.

Virgil was especially dear to the
middle ages on account of the tenderness
and melancholy of his noble
nature and his strange presentiment
of the future. We all remember
the famous passage: “The
last age of the Cumæan song now
approaches; the great series of ages
begins again; now returns the Virgin
(Astrea), now return the Saturnian
kingdoms; now a new progeny
is sent from high heaven.
Be propitious, chaste Lucina, to
the boy at his birth, through whom
the iron age will first cease, and
the golden age dawn on the world.”

The learned at that time regarded
Virgil as a prophet; and the people,
as a magician. It was common
to have recourse to his writings,
as well as Homer’s and other
authors, to obtain prognostics. But
this was not exclusively a mediæval
superstition. It was in use before
the Christian era, and has not
in these days wholly disappeared.
The author of Margaret Fuller’s
life says: “She tried the <i>sortes
biblicæ</i>, and her hits were memorable.
I think each new book which
interested her she was disposed to
put to this test and know if it had
somewhat personal to say to her.”
The church has condemned this
practice, even by a similar use of
the Holy Scriptures.

Dante shared in the general passion
for Virgil. He makes him his
guide—“My guide and master,
thou”—through the lower realms;
not in Paradise, whence he is excluded,

.pm verse-start
“For no sin except for lack of faith.”
.pm verse-end

Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and
planted a laurel—“the meed of
poets sage”—at his tomb, but it
was long since done to death by
the cruel hands of tourists.

A touching sequence was long
sung in the church of Mantua, in
which St. Paul is represented visiting
the tomb of Virgil at Naples,
and weeping because he had come
too late for him.

In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato
was also in great repute. Every
one remembers the festival instituted
in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici
at his villa on the side of
Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian,
and all that was brilliant in the intellectual
world of Florence took
part. The bust of the divine Plato,
presented by Jerome Roscio of
Pistoja, was set up at the end of a
shady avenue and crowned with
laurel, and, after a grand repast,
they all gathered around it and
sang cantos in his honor. Ficino
even pretended to find in Plato’s
writings the doctrines of the Trinity,
Incarnation, Eucharist, etc.
He used to address his audience as
“My brethren in Plato,” and he
makes Christ, in his descent into
Limbo, snatch Plato from the jaws
of hell to place him among the
blessed in Paradise. This reminds
us of the great Erasmus, who says:
“There are many in the society of
the saints who are not in the calendar.
I am every instant tempted
to exclaim: <i>Sancte Socrates, ora
pro nobis</i>, and to recommend myself
to the Blessed Flaccus and
Maro.”
.pn +1

Another of these academies that
sought to revive the antique spirit
was that of Pomponio Leto at
Rome, which has brought so many
unmerited reproaches on Pope Paul
II. because it was for a time suppressed
by him for carrying its
passion for antiquity to a pernicious
degree. One historian after
another has declared him an enemy
of the sciences on the principle
of their tending to heresy!
Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin
all echo the calumnies of Platina
against this pope. M. de l’Epinois
has proved the falseness of this
accusation. As if a pope, as he
says, who was all his life an amateur
of ancient manuscripts, a
numismatist of the first class, and
an able judge of painting and
sculpture, who took pleasure in doing
himself the honors of his collections,
and provided liberally for the
education of poor children that
showed an aptitude for study, was
an enemy of science! Francesco
Filelfo did not think so when he
thus wrote to Leonardo Dati:
“What do not I and all learned
men owe to the great and immortal
wisdom of Paul II.?”

As for the Academy of Pomponio
Leto, there was a general conviction
that it was pagan and licentious
in its tendency, if not in actual
practice. Canensius, in his
life of Paul II., says explicitly:
“The pope dissolved a society of
young men of corrupt morals, who
affirmed that our orthodox faith
was not so much founded on the
genuine basis of facts as on the
jugglery of the saints, and maintained
that it was permissible for
every one to indulge in whatever
pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier
de Rossi, in the <i>Roma Sotteranea</i>,
quotes the following passage
from a letter of Battista de
Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia,
written to Platina a short time after
the affair in question: “Some call
you more pagan than Christian,
and affirm that you follow pagan
morals rather than ours. Others
circulate the report that Hercules
is your deity. Another says it is
Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter,
a fourth that it is Apollo, Venus, or
Diana. They say you are in the
habit of calling these gods and goddesses
to witness, especially when
in the company of those who give
themselves up to like superstitions—people
whom you associate more
willingly with than others.” M. de
Rossi has also found several inscriptions
which prove that a secret
hierarchy was established by
this society, of which it is reasonable
to suppose Pope Paul II. was
as aware as of their other anti-Christian
practices. Additional suspicion
was excited by their secret
meetings from the report at this
very time that a conspiracy was
formed against the life of the Sovereign
Pontiff—the more readily
credited because only nine years
previously the streets of Rome had
been deluged with blood by an insurrection.
However, the pope, so
far from being the <i>farouche</i> and
sanguinary ruler M. Martin styles
him, let off the academicians with
a short confinement, and in 1475
Pomponio and his companions were
once more quietly pursuing their
studies, having profited by so beneficial
a lesson. The academy became
more flourishing than ever,
and counted among its members a
great number of bishops and prelates
of the church.[#] Pope Leo X.
himself, before his elevation to the
papacy, was in the habit of attending
its reunions. Archæology, poetry,
.pn +1
and music all had a part in
them, as well as other sciences,
and all these Leo X. sincerely
loved. “I have always loved letters,”
wrote he to Henry VIII.
“This love, innate in me, age has
only served to increase; for I have
observed that those who cultivate
them are heartily attached to the
dogmas of the faith, and are the
ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding
this love of literature,
especially ancient, Leo X.
himself realized that too excessive
an application to such pursuits
might be prejudicial to the spiritual
life. Though at Florence he participated
in the general admiration
for Plato, after his elevation to the
Papacy he recommended to the pupils
of the Roman College to give
themselves up to serious studies,
and renounce Platonic philosophy
and pagan poetry as tending to injure
the soul. So also St. Odo,
Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil
that it finally became injurious to
his spiritual interests, and, falling
asleep one day while reading one
of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream
a beautiful antique vase full of serpents.
He understood the allusion
and gave up profane reading.

.fn #
See essay of M. de l’Epinois.
.fn-

Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is
only an expression of the tastes of
his age. It may also be considered
in harmony with those of the primitive
church, which adorned the
very walls of the Catacombs with
pagan symbols, and blazoned them
in the mosaics of their churches.
There we find Theseus vanquishing
the Minotaur, beside David slaying
Goliath. The Jordan is represented
as a river-god leaning on an antique
urn, his head crowned with
aquatic plants and his beard dripping
with moisture; Cupids flutter
among the vines around the form of
the Good Shepherd; and Orpheus
is made the emblem of our Saviour.

The <i>De Partu Virginis</i> is like one
of those beautiful Madonnas so often
met with in Italy, not seated in
a humble chair at Nazareth, but
robed like a queen, occupying a
throne covered with mythological
subjects and antique devices—an
emblem of the church enthroned on
the ruins of paganism.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=birthday
A BIRTH-DAY SONG. | TWENTY-ONE.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
        Bright summer sun, to-day
Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud,
O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud,
        Each gathering mist, away.

        Fair, fragrant summer flowers,
Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern,
Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn
        Through all the golden hours.

        Thou deep-voiced western wind,
The stately arches of the forest fill,
Till oak and elm to thy <i>andante</i> thrill
        As mind replies to mind.

        Take up the song and sing,
O summer birds! until the joyous strains
Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains,
        Gurgle in brook and spring.

        And thou, O river deep!
Send from the shore thy message calm and plain,
As, bearing ship and shallop to the main,
        Thy mighty currents sweep.

        Sing, while the golden gate
Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes,
Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes
        Of Manhood’s first estate.

        Yet soft and low! The door
Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads;
The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds
        Is hushed for evermore;

        And shining shapes, that blaze
Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure
The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor
        From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.
.pn +1

        Tell him, O sunshine bright!
How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought
By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught
        Through Virtue’s silent might.

        Tell him, ye blossoms sweet,
How Charity divine her perfume rare
Exhales alike in pure or noxious air,
        With holy love replete.

        O brook and bird and spring!
Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold
Contentment, better far than gems or gold,
        Or crown of sceptred king.

        Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind,
How a brave, earnest spirit may awake
Responsive thought, till distant cycles take
        Their orbits from his mind;

        And thou, O river wide!
Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength
From singleness of aim, until at length
        On its resistless tide

        It bears both great and small
With equal, silent, comprehensive love
To that great sea whose calm no storm can move,
        God’s grace o’er-arching all.

        So may his spirit clear,
Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting
Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing,
        And walk with seraphs here.

        Thou great Triune! thy sign
Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight
Under thy banner, till upon his sight
        Fair Paradise shall shine;

        Till, crown and palm-branch won,
He shall before thee stand without a fear,
Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear
        The Master say, <i>Well done</i>.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=jane
JANE’S VOCATION.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—<sc>St. Augustine.</sc>
.pm letter-end

She sat upon an enormous sea-washed
cliff of granite, in a flood
of golden light from the stooping
western sun behind her. Beneath
her the sea-waves rippled lightly
against the cliff. Far out before
her the broad expanse of sea extended
till it met the sky. But on
neither sea nor sky were the girl’s
eyes fastened. She was looking
steadily across the narrow gulf that
separated the high promontory
where her home was from the fishing
town on the mainland. Behind
her was a farm-house with its
prosaic surroundings, and a few
huts for drying fish were close at
hand. Not far beyond these the
stage-road ran, and coming over
the brow of the promontory was
the lumbering stage.

She did not hear the wheels as
they went rumbling by, and did
not know how closely she was scanned.
Next the driver a youth was
sitting, whose face bespoke the artistic
temperament as plainly as did
the portfolio and hastily-traced
sketch upon his knee. Like a flash
he caught the loveliness of the picture—its
glorious framework of
nature’s beauties, its central point
of that girlish figure in its graceful
<i>pose</i>: the upraised head, the hands
clasped round the knee as she sat
bending slightly forward, the sense
conveyed of absorbed, pathetic
yearning for something more and
higher than the farm life of her
home.

“Who lives there?” asked the
young man of the driver; and the
driver made answer, glancing for
very pleasure at the boyish, handsome
face, stamped, in spite of its
vanity, with the impress of a singularly
clean and happy heart:

“Nobody much, mister: old
Jake Escott and Marm Escott and
Jane. That’s Jane sitting there.
She’s their niece, and the best o’
the lot.”

“Jane!” repeated the youth to
himself; but to the driver he said:
“Do they take boarders there?”

The man chuckled, as if the very
idea was absurd.

“Much as they can do to board
themselves, <i>I</i> guess. Shiftless set.
'Tan’t so much lack of money,
though, as of go-aheadativeness.
’Twould be too much trouble.”

“Think I’d be a trouble?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t
know 'bout that. You’re as clever
a chap and as taking a chap to talk
with as I’ve seen this many a day.
You’re a real true, good-hearted
gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re
city-bred for all that. Reckon
you’d want white napkins every
meal, and all sorts of finified stuff.
Marm Escott couldn’t give you
such. 'Cause why? She’s no idea
what they are.”

“I’ll try it,” the traveller said,
shutting his portfolio decisively and
speaking like one who always had
his way. “Can’t you stop at the
turn—there’s a good fellow—and
let me and my traps down?”

“Well, well! You never meant
to come here; that’s certain. Where
ye bound?”

“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the
driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,”
.pn +1
the youth added merrily. “I’m
come to do what I please, and stop
where I please, and stay as long as
I please. This is the loveliest place
I have seen yet, and I must sketch
it. Why, surely you have carried
passengers before who had no settled
destination, but liked to stop
where it suited them.”

“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response.
“Yes, mister. But never
one quite like you. You’re a wide-awake
chap and a merry, but you
look as dainty as any city lady I
ever met.”

The words were evidently taken
as a compliment, in whatever way
they might have been meant. The
youth slung his knapsack over his
shoulder, concealing the long name
which had puzzled the driver for
the whole journey—Van Stuyvesant
Van Doorm—leaped lightly down
from the coach almost before it
stopped, doffed his cap courteously,
and with a gay farewell was on his
way along a narrow path to the
house.

A woman, remarkable for nothing
except her curiously total lack
of anything noticeable, opened the
door, but into that dull face an actual
sunny gleam of pleasure came
as soon as she saw the blithe young
face before her. The descendant
of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously
again, with an answering
gleam in his very brilliant eyes.
He had been used all his life to
know that people admired him, but
it is to be acknowledged that this
oft-repeated fact had never lost its
charm.

“Is this Mrs. Escott?” he asked.

“I be,” was the succinct reply.

No faintest shadow of a smile
betrayed her hearer’s amusement.
He knew himself master already
of the field. “If you please, Mrs.
Escott,” he said audaciously, in his
most captivating tone and with his
most pleading, obstinate look, “I’m
come to board with you.”

Mrs. Escott stared as one taken
by storm and unable to collect her
scattered forces. “But—but,” she
stammered, “we never take boarders,
we don’t.”

“This exception will prove the
rule, then,” quoth Van. “Oh! for
shame, Mrs. Escott. You never
would have the heart to turn me
away from such a view as this. I
want to sketch it, and I will give
you a sketch of it, and pay you the
highest board into the bargain.”

“But we an’t got nothing fit to
board ye on.”

“Ah? No eggs, then, I suppose,”
suggested Van mildly, pointing at
the hens cackling in the yard.
“No milk, either,” he added as the
lowing of a cow sounded near by.
“No berries to be had for love or
money, eh? And of course there
are no fish to be found in the sea.”

The woman actually laughed.
“I’ll speak to Jake,” she said, then
disappeared, and Van seated himself
on the doorstep and waited
her return without fear of disappointment.

“Jane and I can pick berries,”
he said to himself; and then he
trilled forth gaily, in a voice that
was the envy and admiration of
city circles:

.pm verse-start
“In the days when we went gipsying,
          Long time ago.”
.pm verse-end

The melody pleased him; it
chimed in well with the birds’
blithe song in the trees and the
faint dash of the waves along the
shore. He began the song and
went through it all as blithely and
carelessly as they.

“That’s handsome, now,” an uncouth
voice behind him said when
he stopped at last with a sense of
.pn +1
buoyant delight in his own power.
“That’s handsome, stranger. Sing
like that, and you’re welcome here,
and no mistake.”

This was “Jake,” then, shuffling,
untidy, uncouth as his voice. A
misgiving arose in Van’s mind.
Would the house, the table, his
room, be like Jake and Marm Escott?
But he need stay no longer
than he chose—no longer than one
night; and it was now nearly six
o’clock in the afternoon. So, all
necessary arrangements being concluded,
Jake trundled a dilapidated
wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod
fashion, to the road to “fetch
the stranger’s traps,” and Mrs. Escott,
going to the gate, called loudly,
“Jane! Jane! I want ye, child.”

Van, waiting in the parlor for her
coming, looked attentively about
him. There was almost nothing in
the room to show that any one ever
came there who cared a whit more
for beauty than Jacob Escott himself
did. Rag mats of discordant
hues covered squares and ovals
and rectangular parallelograms of
the pine floor; the walls were decorated
with coarse prints of General
Washington and of the prize ox
of twenty years ago; on the table
was a big family Bible and a Farmer’s
Almanac illuminating the sombre
cover with its sickly yellow,
and on this was a half-knitted blue
yarn stocking.

There was a cheap piano in one
corner, but it looked as though it
was never opened. The windows
were not uncurtained, but, of all
other things there, they set Van’s
teeth on edge with their execrable
attempts at some sort of a painted
landscape; he seized the tassels
vindictively, and pulled the curtains
out of sight, thus letting in
the superb view beyond.

Some one, he discovered then,
had had taste enough to put flowers
in the room. A great handful
of daisies and clovers and delicate
grasses stood on the sill of the window
that looked out to where the
narrow gulf separated the promontory
from the mainland.

“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself;
and as he thought it, he heard
a slow, calm step coming through
the entry, and Jane herself stood in
the doorway.

Involuntarily he bent his head
with such a reverence as he had
never paid to woman before. He
was the cynosure at home among
all ladies, but none yet had won
from him the reverent greeting of
an utter self-forgetful absorption in
another’s presence. The girl who
stood there was not beautiful,
though there was nothing in her
features to displease the artist’s
eye; indeed, the absence of mere
material beauty made more marked
the impression conveyed in movement
and feature and face. Of all
colors in the world—and Van was
passionately fond of color—he loved
best the gold that is sometimes seen
in the western sky near where the
sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that
does not dazzle but rests the eyes
that gaze upon it. Van thought
of that color when he saw Jane’s
face with its look of unclouded
peace.

She lifted her eyes and glanced
at him, at first with a tranquil, unmoved
expression, as though it was
quite indifferent to her who it was
that she was meeting; then she gave
a quicker, keener glance that
thrilled Van with an uneasy sense
that she was reading him through
and through. What was it that
she read? he wondered.

He tried to talk with her as she
moved about the room, engaged in
the very ordinary task of setting
.pn +1
the supper-table. Her language
showed some culture and refinement.
He hazarded the question,
“Are there good schools about
here?”

“I do not know,” she said meditatively.
“There is the district
school.”

“Why does she not say, 'I went
there’?” thought Van. “That
would tell me something about
herself.”

But more and more he found,
as his talk went on, that Jane ignored
herself. It did not appear
to enter her mind that she was anybody
to be thought of or talked
about. He had at first to make
conversation at the supper-table—the
farm, the fisheries, the crops—but
presently Jacob Escott made
bold to ask: “What may be your
occupation, sir?”

And, nothing loath, Van launched
upon one of his pet topics—art
and artists. Even the plain farmer
and his wife enjoyed it. How
could they resist the fascination of
the merry stories, the musical voice,
the face that spoke as clearly as
the words? But Jane hardly listened,
and suddenly a thought
struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk
after all. Can it be that
this farmer’s girl cares for anything
deeper, or is it only that she has
not depth enough to care?”

They rose from the table, and
Van followed Jane to the door.
She did not see or heed him. The
tide was at the full; wave upon
wave came heaving gently onward
toward the land as a child, tired
out with play, comes home to its
mother’s arms to rest; through the
twilight the dark, restless mass of
water and its ceaseless murmuring
alike woke a sense of mystery and
awe; above, in the darkening skies,
a pale half-moon was shining and a
few great throbbing stars. And in
the dim light Van saw Jane’s face,
and it seemed to him as beautiful
and as full of mystery as sea and
sky. Such a look of hunger marked
it! He thought of Niobe, and
of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the
moated grange, but she differed in
some inexplicable fashion from them
all, and then he heard her say below
her breath: “My God! My
God! My God!”

Over and over again—not what
Van had ever fancied a prayer
could be, and yet to his ear more
full of intense personal pleading
than any prayer he had ever heard.
Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen
desire, and suffering were all summed
up in two words; and though
he knew nothing of her trouble,
yet when the aunt’s call for her
came from the room within, Van
started as if he had been struck.
He could not bear to have her
harried back into the dull life of
her home.

“Just mend this, Janey, will you?”
Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse
blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it
for to-morrow.”

The girl’s face was tranquil and
happy again by some sudden transformation.
She took the rough
work—it was not clean work, either;
it had evidently been worn once or
twice, Van saw with mingled disgust
and pity—and, sitting down contentedly
in the dingy room, she began
her mending. She puzzled Van
greatly, she interested him intensely.
As he talked to her uncle he
watched with his artistically-trained
eye each expression of her face.
It varied now and then, though the
strange, yearning look did not return
to it. The peace was there,
and an exquisite happiness.

“She is like a dove,” thought
Van. “She is like an innocent
.pn +1
baby. Oh! if one could take her
away from this.”

But one clue to her character he
was certain that he had found. He
rose up before she finished her work,
and he flung open the old piano and
sat down before it. It was not so
unfit for use as he had feared it would
be, and he knew how to glide skilfully
over the worst notes. And then
he began to try Jane. First he sang
ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson
my jo, John,” “Oh! wert
thou in the cauld blast.”

“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob,
and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted
enthusiasm. But Jane worked
steadily on, and if she heard or
cared Van could not tell, though he
fancied the sweet, dove-like look
deepened upon her face.

.pm verse-start
“The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”
.pm verse-end

The last tender notes of the song
lingered under Van’s fingers, as a
knock was heard at the kitchen
door, and Jacob went to answer it,
followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently
recognized the voice of the
new-comer. There was a scraping
of chairs on the kitchen floor—the
plain indication that somebody
had come to stay awhile. Van
leaned his head forward against
the music-rack, and once again
before his eyes was the scene he
had witnessed in the twilight one
hour before. Could the same person
who sat quietly at her rough
work now be she whom he had
seen and heard then in that passion
of prayer? And while he
mused there rang through his
brain echoes that always thrilled
his music-loving, art-loving nature
with an especial power, and that
seemed now like fit mates for the
darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky,
the girl’s yearning face; and from
the old ivory keys, that grew strangely
full of power and sweetness beneath
his magical touch, rang out
Chopin’s grand funeral march.

The work dropped from Jane’s
hands. He could not watch her
face, for she turned it straight toward
that eastern flower-decked
window that looked out to gulf
and sea; but he saw her fingers
lock tightly into one another and
her form become rigidly still.
When he ended she rose quietly
and went away, and he did not
see her again that night.

But long that night he studied
her, while an unwonted shame of
himself and a keen admiration for
her grew steadily in him, and what
he inferred of her then was confirmed
each day more and more.

“She does not know one-half the
things that I know,” he said, “but
she has it in her to care for the
highest art and beauty. And she
is so noble by nature that she
<i>couldn’t</i> spend her thoughts on a
thousand trifling things that I waste
mine upon. Such a glorious creature
imprisoned here! I’ll do my
best for her.”

Never used to early rising, he
came down stairs the next day to
find his breakfast waiting for him
and the morning of the family half
over.

“Yes, we be early risers,” said
Mrs. Escott. “Leastways, Jake
and Jane be. I’m a poor hand at
it myself. Why, Jane here, she’s
across the gulf and home again
afore six every day.”

“Across the gulf! Before six!”
exclaimed Van.

“Certain sure, Mr. Van. These
Catholics are queer creatures.
Jane’s a Catholic, you know.”

Habitual courtesy quelled the
words of surprise and of pain that
rose to Van’s lips—surprise at finding
.pn +1
a Catholic in this notedly Protestant
fishing settlement, pain at
hearing Jane’s deepest feelings thus
lightly exposed to view. But Jane
showed not the slightest shade of
annoyance.

Now he thought he understood
her better. One of the many marvellous
spells of Catholicism had
been woven about her—some vision
of beauty had thus come into
her hitherto blank life; he would
strive the more now to teach her
of what he blandly deemed the
freer, nobler lights of art and
science, but never should word or
look from him throw scorn or jest
or trifling speech of any kind on
that which was dear to her.

Love at first sight—Van had always
maintained that he believed
in it; he was always falling in love
with any pretty face that struck his
fancy, and then just as easily falling
out of love with an unwounded
heart. But here love and pity and
real reverence all awoke together
and made of him their willing slave.
“I’ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,”
he said, and on the morrow
he stood in the early sunrise on the
beach.

So early was it that Jane herself
was not yet there. He watched
her coming towards her boat, her
eyes cast down, and that hungry,
longing look stamped plainly on
her.

“May I go too?” he said, the
gay, trifling manner gone, and that
peculiarly distinct imprint of a
clean heart shining in his eyes.
Lifting her own sweet eyes, once
again he felt that she read him
through; then, saying nothing, she
bowed assent and stepped into the
boat. And still without a word
she let him take the oars from her,
and, drawing her rosary from her
pocket, she began to tell her beads.
Van thought she never would stop,
and she did not till they reached
the town. Still silent, she led the
way from the shore through some
dull, shell-paved paths to a small
chapel, and, entering, forgot Van
altogether and went with eager
footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed
himself where he could see
her; she sank on her knees before
the altar, and crossed herself, and
lifted up her face. The lips were
parted in a smile of ecstasy, the
eyes were shining bright as though
they saw unearthly loveliness.

What Van saw was this: a square,
low-studded, dingy room, poor
prints of religious subjects, mean
tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding
and hangings, artificial tawdry
flowers, a plain, small altar, a few
squalid worshippers; presently an
aged priest, who said Mass in a
cracked and feeble voice.

“What spell is over her?” thought
Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could
once take her out of it all, home to
wealth and beauty and tenderness,
and to our churches. No need to
tell her that Catholics have beautiful
ones somewhere.”

But on their way back to the
farm she did not speak, and he
could not venture to break the intense
calm in which she was wrapped.
Every evening he read or
sang and played, or talked his best,
in the parlor where the household
gathered, but she never again was
there alone with him, and in the
daytime she was always busy just
when he wanted her society most.
Often he was conscious that what
he said or read or did failed to
make any impression at all upon
her; often while he tried to interest
her he found her gazing toward
that eastern window, and knew that
she did not heed him. He longed
to say: “I cannot see what you
.pn +1
find in that dull church to give your
eyes and thoughts to,” but he could
not say it.

Sometimes when he read, far oftener
when he played grand music—often,
too, when they watched the
sky and sea and listened to the
waves, the noble nature woke responsive
to his call. But it stung
him to the quick to feel his general
powerlessness to move her except
when he roused his best and highest
powers; it stung him to see how
little she cared for the comforts
and luxuries and prettinesses, for
knowledge even and the art, that
were part of his daily existence,
and which he deemed necessary to
him; it stung him to find that the
meanest occupation never made
her discontented, but glad and
bright instead; while what he considered
suited to her condition or
her needs was as nothing to her, and
the yearning which he could not fathom
seldom came into her face
when at her daily labor, but often
when he told himself she ought to
be content and glad with him.

She talked very little to him; she
never seemed to care whether he
came or went, and he—all his
thoughts became engrossed in her.

One afternoon, near the close of
a sultry day, as the first mutterings
of thunder and the first far-off flashes
of lightning shone and sounded
from the dark depths of low-lying
clouds above the sea—when the
winds were rising, and the poplars
showed their leaves’ white faces,
and the white-crested waves broke
in ominously upon the shore; when
Jane’s sensitive nature was awake
and quivering in sympathy with the
gathering storm—Jacob Escott came
hurrying his cattle home to shelter,
bringing with him a letter which
the stage-driver had flung down to
him as he raced his horses by to
town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he
said.

Van opened it carelessly, read it
carefully, then came straight to
where Jane stood, watching with
keen delight the seething sea and
storm-tossed sky.

“Jane,” he said, “listen to me.
They have sent for me to go home
at once. My father is very ill.
Jane, I love you. Will you be my
wife?”

She turned with great displeasure
in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she
said. “Such jesting pains me much.
Even my uncle understands that
now.”

“I am not jesting,” he cried vehemently.
“I speak the truth. I
love you. None but you can ever
be my wife. Give me your promise,
Jane. I love you so.”

At first her look of rebuke waxed
sterner; then for a moment her
eyes met the pleading bright eyes
fastened on her with the look peculiar
to them, that bespoke a singularly
clean heart. She smiled as
one smiles at a child.

“It is impossible,” she said.

Tumultuously he hurried on:
“No, no, not impossible. If I will
promise to read, to study, to be a
Catholic if I can—will you think
of it then? Will you try me?”

“It is impossible,” she repeated.
“You pain me.” And then, with
an effort, as though she spoke of
things too sacred for the common
ear, “By the grace of God,” she
said slowly, “when he makes the
way plain before me, I am to be a
nun.”

“No, no!” Van cried again. “No,
no! Think—listen. Think it all
over again. You do not understand.
Your life has been cramped
here in this poor, mean place.
That is why you want to be a nun.
Come away with me to a life that
.pn +1
suits a soul like yours. I have seen
your craving for higher things.”

The sudden, jagged lightning
cleft the skies. By its glare he saw
her face distinctly, and a noble
scorn was on it, and a righteous indignation.

“Come away with you—from
<i>God</i>!” she said, and in the pause
that followed Van felt himself more
mean than the dust from whence he
came.

“Forgive me,” she said gently.
“I forget. It is you who do not
understand. I do not mind that
this house is poor and mean; my
Lord was born in a stable, and he
died upon a cross. And if I suffer
here and crave for higher things, it
is a suffering which even the cloister
can never cure—far less, then,
you—for I crave to see the face
of God! To love my God, to cease
from sin, to come to my God and
be for ever one with him in his
high heaven—I hunger for it by
night and by day.”

“And if this life suits you so well,
and you must suffer anyhow,” Van
said curiously, “why not stay here
always? or why not come with
me?”

“Mr. Van,” Jane answered, “to
be a nun is my vocation. God
himself calls me. I must do his
will. Forgive me again, but I cannot
talk any more to you about it.
If you did not seem so young to
me—so like a little innocent child,
in spite of all your knowledge—I
could not have said so much.” And
the next minute she was gone, leaving
Van abashed and utterly ignorant
of the high meed of true
praise which she had bestowed upon
him.

He went home to watch for two
long days and nights beside a couch
of foolish delirium and lingering
death; to see a mind of uncommon
intellect and far-famed, exquisite
taste reduced to folly; to see the
eyes stare vacantly at picture and
statue and familiar face alike; and
then to follow the lifeless body to
the grave, and hide it there, clay to
its kindred clay. The young heir
of enormous wealth and princely
possessions paced alone in his father’s
halls that night, and found
no pleasure in the beauty that once
had satisfied him. Even the memory
of Jane’s face was a burden to
him.

“She would have to die too,”
Van muttered. “And, after all, one
could as soon love a St. Catherine
borne by angels as love her. I do
not believe I ever did. And yet if
I did not, I never really loved any
woman.”

Wherein he spoke the truth.

Yet one look of hers haunted him—that
look of settled, tranquil
peace, like the undazzling gold of
the western sky; and while it shone
before him the steady, tranquil
voice echoed through his memory,
“To be a nun is my vocation. God
himself calls me. I must do his
will.”

“I wonder,” queried Van wistfully—“I
wonder what my vocation
is. I’m sure it has never made any
difference to me. I have sketched,
and played, and read, just as I fancied.”

And, with that great grace vouchsafed
him, of which he was so ignorant,
he said like a child: “O God!
what shall I do?”

The answer did not come at
once. He fretted and puzzled; by
and by he began to wonder whether
Jane’s religion had anything to
do with her choice. Besides, if it
was worth a man’s while to think
of changing his religion because he
fancied himself in love with a creature
that some time must die, had
.pn +1
he not reason to think seriously
about it anyhow? What did she
mean when she said she craved to
see God’s face? What caused that
woman of so few words to speak
with such power when she spoke of
that?

Van read and thought, but it was
not the books that enlightened him.
He went one evening where he seldom
went by day, when curious eyes
could watch him—to his father’s
grave. It was a warm evening late
in September. As he passed the
rectory adjoining the church, which
his father, and his father’s father,
and all the Van Doorms of the region
had religiously attended, gay
voices and snatches of music caught
his ear, and he looked up involuntarily.

It was a pretty sight. The gas
had just been lighted, the curtains
were still up. Lonely, sorrowful
Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy,
stood still where he was and
took in the whole picture with an
added heartache.

In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious,
but a <i>home-room</i>, the mother
sat with her baby on her knee.
Van remembered her when she
came a bride to the parish, and he
was only a child of five years old.
It was one of his earliest memories—that
being taken to church
with the promise of seeing the new
young minister’s new young wife,
if he would be very good. That
was twenty years ago, and there
were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’
hair, but her face wore the same
kindly smile that had marked it
then in the freshness of her nineteen
years, and at the piano a girl
of nineteen might have been taken
for the bride brought back again in
her youthful bloom. She was playing
some familiar melody; five or
six brothers and sisters clustered
about her, sang blithely with her;
a toddling child at the mother’s
knee beat time with its chubby fingers
on the younger baby’s chubby
hand. Presently an inner door
opened, and the pastor entered.
There was a cry of “Father! father!”
a general rush to meet him,
frantic, merry embraces from the
children, while the mother smiled
contented, and the father stood
tender and strong in the midst of
his happy flock.

The picture lasted for a brief
space only; with a pretty gesture
of horror the eldest daughter
sprang toward the window and
drew down the shades, lest somebody
should see, and Van stood
alone outside in the gathering
night.

He plodded on dreamily to the
church-yard, and sat down near the
new grave among many, many older
graves where the men and women
of his race lay buried.

“Wife and child,” said Van, with
a long, hard, envious sigh, “father
and mother, and happy home.
And I—”

“Wife and child—father and mother.”
The words repeated themselves
in that curious, echo-like
fashion which words have when
they come to the mind as a part of
a familiar saying, whose whole cannot
be at once recalled, and which
for a time we vainly strive to place.

“Wife and child—father and mother.”
Ah! something else comes:
“Houses and lands.” What is
it? What is Van striving to get?

“Houses and lands.”

He has it.

“No man who hath left house, or
brethren, or sisters, or father, or
mother, or children, or lands for
my sake and for the Gospel, who
shall not receive an hundred times
as much, now in this time: and in
.pn +1
the world to come life everlasting.”

He does not see with his bodily
eyes at all now, but the eyes of his
soul are wide awake, and they see
clear and true.

In which church—Catholic or
Protestant—were the men who, not
by tens or by hundreds, but by thousands
upon thousands, and through
centuries upon centuries, had carried
out to the very letter the
words of Christ, the Bible words?
Which, except through some exceptions
that only served to prove
the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation,
and an action that spoke
more loudly still, set at naught the
teaching of the Master—set at
naught the example of Him who
left all for them?

Van seemed to hear it once
again—the missionary letters read
from the pulpit and published in
Protestant magazines; the pleadings
for clothes for the missionary’s
wife and children; the appeals for
money, or a missionary must leave
his important field because his
family could not be supported
there; the vaunted heroism of
missionaries who endured to see
their children suffer rather than
desert their post. Where were the
men whose heroism was such that
they had no home, no family, no
earthly tie, but stood ready like the
angels—true messengers—to go or
to stay, undeterred by any human
consideration, where God and his
church asked or needed them?

And so it came to pass that Van
understood the mystery of Jane’s
vocation; comprehended that men
and women, young and old, rich
and poor, ignorant and lettered,
heard, as the wedded Peter and
the unwedded John heard once the
voice of Christ call to them, and
literally, like them, left all and followed
him. It came to pass also
that he understood Jane’s suffering;
knew that that call of God
and the accompanying love of God
were a hundred-fold more in this
life than the earthly joys renounced,
and yet that the promise of the
everlasting life spoke of such ineffable
bliss that the longing awakened
for it could only be appeased
in heaven.

Van found his vocation too. He
threw himself, heart and soul, into
true Christian art. His pictures
were seldom seen on the walls of
rich men’s houses, but churches
and convents owned them free of
price. That part of his work, however,
was the smallest part. Money
and time and strength were lavished
nobly with and in aid of
those who are successfully laboring
in our day to show, by research in
catacombs and ruined sacred buildings
and among old missals and
breviaries and parchments, that the
Catholic Church of to-day is the
church of the early Christians and
martyrs.

In Italy he met and married
some one very different from Jane—a
very lovely and good and noble
woman—and Jane to him became
more and more a St. Catherine
borne by angels, and more and
more he wondered that he ever had
presumed to think of offering her
an earthly love.

“Had I been a Catholic then, I
never could have done it,” he told
his wife. “God had called her for
himself, and set his seal upon her.”

And the happy wife said humbly:
“Hers was the higher calling,
dear.”

So when, one day, their only
daughter came to them—a strong,
high-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine
of their home—and told them
that God’s call had come to her to
.pn +1
leave her home for Christ’s poverty,
and all human love for his
love alone, she found no weak resistance.

“Thank God,” they said, “for
the honor he has done us! For
him we gladly bid thee forget thine
own people and thy father’s
house.”

But of Jane they never heard,
except that, when God’s time came,
she left the farm beside the sea.
What need to know more of her,
who was where she longed to be—one
of the great number who lose
all to find All, and, having Him
whom their soul loveth, need nothing
more?
.sp 4
.h3 id=stolberg
COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG[#]
.sp 2

.fn #
Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, since his return
to the Catholic Church, 1800-1819. From
hitherto unpublished family documents. By John
Janssen. Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder & Co.
.fn-

Count Stolberg, a well-known
statesman and writer, a minister of
the Duke of Oldenburg, the friend
of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock,
Lavater, Stein, John and Adam
Müller, La Motte Fouqué, Körner,
and others as distinguished, the
correspondent of most of the German
historians, philosophers, and
<i>savants</i> of his day, became a Catholic,
after seven years’ anxious seeking
for truth, on the 1st of June,
1800, at Münster, in Westphalia, in
the fifty-first year of his age. He
immediately retired from public
life, although circumstances afterwards
brought him before Germany
as a representative man; and
his writings spread through all
classes of his countrymen as a
worthy and dignified exposition
of a religion at that time much reviled,
misunderstood, and in some
cases persecuted. His example in
home-life was as powerful in a
smaller circle as his writings were
in a wider one; and his relations
with his wife and children (he had
eighteen children by his two marriages)
were such as to make it true
of him that he was a model for all
Christian heads of families. His
own tastes were simple and domestic;
he was fond of the country, and
was a childlike companion even to
his youngest children, while to all, as
they grew up, he was a wise friend
and teacher. All his children, except
Mariagnes, his eldest daughter
by his first marriage, became Catholics
with him; those born after his
conversion were of course brought
up in the church. His second wife,
Sophie, Countess von Redern, had
shared his doubts and his experiences
during those seven years of
eager search after religious certainty,
and became a Catholic also; but
while he remained in intimate and
sympathetic relations with his brothers
and sisters, he never influenced
any of them far enough to make
them follow his footsteps. His brother
Christian and his wife Luise
were his most constant and intimate
correspondents; with the former
religion seemed to make no difference,
as his admiration for, and
sympathy with, Stolberg was proof
against anything—indeed, Stolberg
often called him his “other self”;
and the latter, to judge by her letters,
was a woman of more than
common understanding, a student
of science, an observer of the times,
whose mind was open to receive
.pn +1
any new impression that had the
semblance of truth or real progress
in it; an investigating and
impartial searcher, better versed
than most women in classic learning,
and eager for knowledge in any
shape. To give up constant intercourse
with his own family and remove
to a Catholic city was the
hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to
make on leaving the Lutheran
communion; but he considered the
change imperative for the proper
education of his children. In a
letter to Luise announcing this resolve
he says: “There is no dilemma,
but, even if there were, you
will agree with me that a tender
conscience, in a doubtful case, must
always choose against its wishes—I
mean its natural wishes, which
are always suspicious to upright
morals, let alone to Christianity.”
To his friend Princess Gallitzin,
the mother of the zealous missionary
in America, Demetrius Gallitzin,
he says: “It is an unspeakable
joy to me that my brother and sister-in-law
remain bound to me in
the fullest and most unreserved
love, and that not even the shadow
of a misunderstanding has come between
them and me, however painful
to them is the separation from
me, from Sophie, and from the children.”

He took a house in Münster and
made it his home for thirteen years,
living there through the winter and
spending his summers at a country-house
a few miles out of the
city, at Lütjenbeck. His children’s
studies were his first care. Greek
being his favorite study, he made
each of his sons a good Greek
scholar, and kept up his own studies
by a repeated round of all the
great authors, read successively
with each of his many boys. Ernest
and Andrew, the sons of his first
marriage, were his first pupils, and
his own teaching was supplemented
in languages and history by a French
<i>emigré</i>, the Abbé Pierrard, and in
philosophy by some professors resident
in Münster. Stolberg did
not neglect the physical education
of his boys, and would no more
dispense with the daily walk, ride,
or swim than he would with the
studies. His sons were good shots,
too, and in the summer he and they
spent most of their time in the open
air. Their mother writes of them
that they are “truthful, generous,
and good-hearted,” and “that their
tender respect for their great father
increases day by day.” She was
herself a patient and judicious
teacher, and fully recognized how
much harm is done to children,
and the “quiet workings of God’s
influence disturbed in them, by the
expectation of hurried development
and individuality.” Stolberg was already
beginning his literary work in
the interests of religion and education,
and in 1801 was translating
St. Augustine’s <i>De Vera Religione</i>.
The early Fathers were his favorite
spiritual reading; also the Greek
Testament and the Hebrew version
of the Old Testament. He
wisely resolved to lead a retired
life, and not enter into what is called
society; but he gathered round
him a circle of real friends, in intercourse
with whom he spent many
hours, especially in the evenings.
Among these were Princess Gallitzin,
to whom we owe the suggestion
that produced Stolberg’s great
work, <i>The History of the Religion
of Jesus Christ</i>; Prince Fürstenberg,
an old man of very exemplary
life; Kellermann, his friend
and pupil, and the tutor of his
younger sons for sixteen years—a
priest who was the model of his
order; some of the cathedral
.pn +1
chapter, learned and enlightened
men; and many young people,
friends of his children, among
whom the latter afterwards found
wives and husbands, in all cases
happily acceptable to their parents.
Whoever has read the real-life idyl
of <i>A Sister’s Story</i> will see some
likeness between the home of the
La Ferronays and Stolberg’s happy
home. Indeed, his friends were part
of his family, and admission to his
intimacy became the ambition of
all such in Münster as had minds
beyond the common run, and aspirations
beyond those of fashion,
politics, and frivolity. Stolberg’s
dislike to the loss of time involved
in ordinary visits and the inanities
of society is thus described by
himself in 1810:

.pm letter-start
“I am growing more unfit from year to
year for large gatherings. Intercourse
with friends, like the leaves of the Sibylline
books, is more precious the less
time it occupies and the less often it recurs.
To hear social chatter for more
than an hour affects me so that I feel
much like a dead donkey.... How true
are Lavater’s words: 'Even the circle
of good souls seldom gives me a new
impulse, and a thousand trivial pleasures
rob me of true enjoyment. Only solitude
can shadow and cool my spirit,
thirsty and weary from the company even
of loved ones; only solitude can give
what no friend can offer—a new consciousness
and new life, and a feeling
that God loves me.’”
.pm letter-end

This country life which was such
a relief and yearly joy to the whole
family is charmingly described in
Stolberg’s letters. His garden, his
hay-field, his children’s play; his
walks in the beech, oak, and maple
woods; the squirrels in the trees,
the favorite kid of his little girls,
the nightingales, the blossoming
fruit-trees that suggested to him
the saying that the “apple-tree
did not eat of the apple”; the grottos,
rocks, valleys, castles, torrents
of the neighborhood of Stolberg;
the old family house which he had
not seen for twenty-eight years,
and upon which he prided himself
as a possession that had been in
the family for a thousand years;
the beauties of the Erzgebirg, and
the Bohemian hills that lean against
it; the Scotch or Norwegian-like
scenery, wild and grand, of these
mountains with their narrow, fruitful
valleys and green meadows,
fringed with dark pine woods—are
all described with that heartiness
and enthusiasm which real lovers
of the country know, but which, as
Stolberg says, so many others pretend
to, while in reality they see
in nature nothing but a cold show,
a theatre decoration. “They look
complacently as into a peep-show
at the sunrise and the heavens, but
their heart does not swell within
them nor their eyes grow dim.”
He was as fond of childish games,
especially of blowing soap-bubbles,
as he was of beautiful scenery,
and counted it a sign of soul-health
when he was in the frame of mind
to enjoy such games. And now
that we have before us the picture
of the man in his domestic life, who
in his public, political, literary, and
social life was of so much importance
and had so wide an influence,
we will keep mostly to his own letters,
which give full vent to his
opinions on the important events
of the time, and show him forth as
emphatically of the old school, a
model Christian, a thorough gentleman,
but a man of his own generation;
impatient of novelty, a
great admirer of the English constitution,
but a scornful contemner
of the mushroom constitutions of
the Continent; a hot <i>Légitimiste</i>,
but a patriotic German; an uncompromising
and somewhat irrational
.pn +1
foe of Napoleon, over and above
his mere national antagonism
against the great and successful
warrior—for instance, he believed
that “Napoleon’s greatness was
kneaded out of the abjectness of
Europe,” forgetting that a man’s
greatness may lie precisely in the
art of taking advantage of a weakness
inherent in an adversary, and
seizing the right moment to overwhelm
small minds with his stronger
one; a firm believer in the necessity
of his own order, but an
“aristocrat” with lofty and beautiful
theories of what aristocracy
consists in; in a word, a great
Christian and a thorough man.

Besides his Greek and Hebrew
studies, he was fond of English
history and literature, and knew
French and Italian well; Milton
and Young were his favorite English
poets, though he often quotes
Shakspere too, and one of his works,
second only to the <i>History of Religion</i>,
was the <i>Life of Alfred</i>—a man
whom he looked upon as a heroic
model, and whose example he wished
to dwell upon as a guide to his
sons through life. He also translated
the whole of Ossian. His letters
relating to his home-life, his
losses and those of his relations,
the death of his sons and son-in-law,
and of many dear friends, full
as they are of Christian manliness
and resignation, and of moral axioms
that might be taken as mottoes,
we will pass by, as they have
less of individuality than his letters
containing opinions on religion, politics,
and literature, as well as expositions
of theories of his own, all
strongly and conscientiously held.
He firmly contradicted a current
misconception in his time—and, indeed,
a not unfrequent one now—of
the intolerance of the Catholic
Church.

.pm letter-start
“Only for those who confess Catholic
truth,” he writes, “and yet consciously
keep aloof from the Catholic communion,
is there no hope of salvation. Of
others who err in all good faith, my
church teaches me to believe that they
are her members, though unknowingly.
God allows many honest Protestants to
remain in error, and to fancy that the
Catholic Church, that truly merciful mother,
is intolerant against those outside
her pale. It is not the true spirit of
that church to persecute, curse, or burn
the erring. Infallible in her doctrine, as
were also the teachers who sat in Moses’
seat, she still cannot preserve all her
members free from imperfections in their
acts—not even the pope, nor, in the old
dispensation, the high-priest.”
.pm letter-end

In another letter he says:

.pm letter-start
“Far be it from me, as it is from every
Catholic who knows the spirit of his
church, to doubt that among Protestants
also there are and have been holy souls—holy
in the sense in which all true children
of God are holy; ... but my church
teaches me to look upon these as unconscious
members of the true, though to
them unknown, church.”

“Overberg, of whose rarely beautiful
catechism thirty thousand copies have
been sold, especially for schools and
children, expresses himself very pleasingly
on this subject. No well-instructed
Catholic has any objection to make to
this, but even no half-taught Catholic
can, on the other hand, mistake other
altars for that altar of sacrifice which
Malachi prophesied of, and will hold
all other altars only for such as they
really are.... Among unlearned Protestants
(and, as I said before, among a
few learned ones) there are very many
whom the spirit of Protestantism as such
has not touched, who have never been
disturbed, because they have found in
Holy Scripture a full rest and contentment,
and lean with heartfelt love on
Jesus Christ, doing for love of him all
they do, in fullest confidence, and what
flesh and blood would never teach them
to do. Plants that bear such fruit as
this I can only hold to come from roots
watered by the Heavenly Father himself.
You believe [he is addressing Sulzer,
of Constance] that the number of
such souls is small; and such a belief
grieves me, for I think that it drives
.pn +1
many away and discourages them. And,
indeed, such hard suppositions as you
make and insist upon having categorically
answered lead to embittering results.
I speak from experience. For
seven years did I seek for truth with an
upright heart, after God first put it into
my heart to seek. After seven years’
search was I led, through circumstances
that God overruled, to know and confess
the truth. Others have sought longer
and more anxiously, and have not
found what I did, but they serve God in
the simplicity of their hearts better than
I do, and will assuredly find the truth
in the kingdom of light and truth....”

“You see,” he says to his brother, “that
I am not intolerant. But I hope to God
that I shall never be tolerant in the
<i>newest sense</i> of the word—that is, indifferent,
lukewarm, fit to be spat out of the
mouth of Jesus Christ.”... “Do not
let,” he says to his son Caius at Göttingen
University, “yourself be led away
from the rock-founded church by the
many good and worthy Protestants you
meet. Among all in error are many who
are individually children of God, but
they have no church, no sacrifice, no
priesthood, no Eucharist. The helter-skelter
union of both Protestant bodies
(the Lutheran and the Calvinist) must
give serious scandal to the earnest souls
in both, and will, I hope, lead many into
our church.”
.pm letter-end

Of the difference between feeling
and truth he says:

.pm letter-start
“Certain sensations may be real to
one person and unreal to another. Not
so with facts and doctrine. It is the peculiar
character of the true religion that as
it must be the same in all ages, so must
every man be equally able to understand
and embrace it.... I could not believe
in a true religion which it would not be
possible for every human being to believe
in.... He leads some through
rough paths, others through smooth ones;
some towards truth, some through error.
The way of error, <i>as such</i>, is not His way,
although he is always ready to unfold
the truth, to be beforehand with, and to
meet half way, the upright soul who in
all simplicity holds an erring belief.”
.pm letter-end

Indeed, in Stolberg’s experience,
the difference between lukewarm
and conscientious Protestants was
fully shown; for the former reviled
him for his change of religion, while
the latter approved of his following
what he looked upon as truth.
Other misconceptions of Catholic
doctrine he also combated, and
greatly enlightened many of his
friends on the Catholic belief in the
justifying merits of Christ. Holy
Scripture was a source from which
he considered spiritual light to
come, but, as he observed, “the
learned have not yet been able
to see that the healthy eye, like
the concave mirror, gathers into
one point all the scattered rays,
while <i>they</i> split and split until the
last particle of light is lost in shadow.”
Elsewhere he says:

.pm letter-start
“He who is careless of Holy Writ is
careless of the life of the soul, and he is
happy if he becomes conscious, were it
only now and then, of the fact that the
world, whether with its pleasures or its
wisdom, offers him nothing but what is
poisonous to the immortal spirit.”
.pm letter-end

His advice to his son Ernest, who
left home in 1803 to join the Austrian
army, is full of the true Christian
spirit. He recommends him to
practise every virtue that would
make a man perfect, and goes into
many details which, of course, we
cannot follow here, but this sentence
is almost a compendium of
the whole:

.pm letter-start
“A true Christian cannot find true
freedom nor true unsolicitude but in
the possession of a good conscience.
Where the conscience is tender and
watchful it watches alike over every act;
and the more we pay attention to it, so
much the more does it become, notwithstanding
the violence it at first does to
nature, a principle of our life which puts
us in harmony with ourselves, and therefore
makes us truly free.”
.pm letter-end

Elsewhere he says, speaking to another
youth, a friend of his sons:

.pm letter-start
“Lassitude and a want of courage increase
the strength of the enemy; and
.pn +1
discontent concerning the post to which
God has appointed us is unseemly in
any brave man, much more in a foremost
fighter. Not the wish that 'everything
were otherwise,’ but the resolve always to
act well and bravely—or, as Holy Writ
says, 'to walk before God and be perfect’—can
make men of us. That wish unnerves
us; this resolve strengthens us
and gives us a might which remains with
the weapons of the fighter even on the
other side of the grave. He who has
done and suffered much does not dream
of soiling his crown with tears, while he
who has as yet found no opportunity of
doing or suffering has still less a right
to weep.”
.pm letter-end

The melancholy which the
French have aptly called “<i>la maladie
du siècle</i>”[#] was abhorrent to
Stolberg—that unmanliness and
cowardice of mind which became
fashionable through the writings of
atheists, and which in many phases
has spread itself into our present
literature as well as our practice.
He also writes concerning the
same thing:

.fn #
The disease of the age.
.fn-

.pm letter-start
“Every human being has his own history
to work out, and that this should be
thoroughly done does not depend upon
the amount of talent he has, but upon
the will which few bring to it unconditionally
and in a cheerful spirit.”
.pm letter-end

Stolberg was of a healthier school
and generation; he did not see the
beauty and sentiment and romance
of passion running riot, misunderstood
natures, morbid hearts,
vain strivings, and all the paraphernalia
of a moral sick-bed. For instance,
the baneful and unreal excitements
of the theatre were very
dangerous in his eyes, and the evil
custom which even good and well-meaning
people fell into of countenancing
private theatricals, and
letting even their young children
take part in them, was a great sorrow
to him. One of the evils he
deprecated was the rousing of a
false sympathy with imaginary
woes, which ended by undermining
true sympathy with our neighbor’s
actual troubles; another, the vanity
which play-acting fostered in young
people, and the excitement which
rendered them unfit for serious
study and work. It also destroys
the simplicity of the soul and that
modesty which is the chief adornment
of young souls, especially of a
girl’s soul.

.pm letter-start
“Young girls,” he says, “when they
have once overcome their shyness, long
after the same excitement, and are always
wishing to be playing a part. The
truthfulness of their nature is soon lost;
seeming overcomes being, every acted
feeling destroys real feeling; the heart
becomes cold for reality, and is only to
be aroused by supposed passion.”
.pm letter-end

Public theatricals he looked upon
as equally dangerous, and even
wrote against them, praising Geneva
for having, until it became
French, refused to allow the erection
of a theatre within the limits
of its territory. “The special
charm of the stage,” he says, “lies
in its flattery of our lusts, our vanity,
and our laziness.” We have
often heard fine theories advanced
as to the mission and morality of
the drama, but as long as practice
belies these theories it is impossible
to look upon them otherwise
than as a well-meaning Utopia.
Stolberg saw the real harm done,
and not the imaginary good which
some high-minded and exceptional
artists would fain do.

The atheistical and deist philosophy
of the eighteenth century and
early part of the nineteenth were
naturally repugnant to such an upright
mind as Stolberg. He hated
the wilful groping in the dark after
a truth which the “philosophers”
might have found in the Gospels,
.pn +1
had they had the fairness to admit
these on an equality, at least, with
other so-called “proofs.” He called
Steffen and Schleiermacher at
Halle the “new Gnostics,” and
compared their systems to the vain
effort of the fabled Danaides to
pour the ocean through a sieve.

.pm letter-start
“The name of Gnostics sounds ominous,”
he says, “and brings to mind the
Gnostics of the first centuries, with many
of whose beliefs, indeed, the wisdom of
our newest sages astonishingly coincides.
Under their treatment even realities
dissolve themselves in shadow, while
they give to shadows the form and appearance
of realities.”
.pm letter-end

Jacobi was at that time a very
prominent leader of philosophy in
Germany, and Stolberg mentions
him many times in his correspondence
with various persons, evidently
as a representative man.
At one time this teacher, the friend
of Goethe, a sort of Medici among
his disciples near Düsseldorf, where
he had a beautiful house, and still
more beautiful garden—now the
property of the town and the appropriate
scene of artists’ banquets
and popular <i>fêtes</i>—confessed himself,
in the midst of his philosophy,
“a very beggar” in the true learning
of the Spirit. Stolberg often
alluded to this, and, when the
master’s pride had long distanced
the frame of mind in which this
acknowledgment had been made,
wrote of him: “Poor Jacobi! he
was richer indeed when he called
himself poor as 'a beggar.’” In
1812 he writes:

.pm letter-start
“I have just read Jacobi’s last pamphlet.
The one before the last <i>On a
Wise Saying of Lichtenberg</i>, seems to
me in the highest degree satisfactory.
That on <i>The Recension</i> (Jacobi cannot
help putting odd and often trivial titles
to his works) has also excellent points,
but the whole seems to me loose, and
a windy toying with views which he
borrows from Christianity, the whole
system of which, however, he, as far as
in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks
to weaken and annihilate. While he
praises the god-like Plato, he seems
to forget that this philosopher, or rather
Socrates in his platonic <i>Phædrus</i>,
evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains
of waters, for a god-given revelation
whose very possibility itself Jacobi,
on the contrary, strives to reason away.”
.pm letter-end

Schelling’s answer to Jacobi,
however, equally displeased Stolberg,
and he accuses him of making
Jacobi appear, “through certain
wiles of speech, now an atheist,
now a fanatical dreamer,” and of
taking credit to himself for

.pm letter-start
“Having been the first clearly to prove
the existence of God. His God has
been from all eternity the greatest
Force, which contained within itself, <i>in
potentia</i>, but not <i>in actu</i>, that goodness
and wisdom which it developed in later
ages. He falls thus into Count Schmettau’s
error, of a god who has raised himself
from a lower state to the highest,
which theory one might compare with
the career of a field-marshal who has
risen by degrees from the ranks....
Evidently Schelling is a man of much
mind, but of overweening vanity. He
speaks of Christianity with respect, and
probably believes in the divine mission
of Christ, whose system, however, it was
reserved for him—Schelling—fully to explain.
He sent this paper of his to Perthes
(Stolberg’s publisher), and told him
he wished me to read it, and that I should
then have quite another idea of what
his philosophy was, and discover that
he did not hold the views I attributed to
him.”
.pm letter-end

At another time he writes:

.pm letter-start
“The deplorable frivolity of these
times is one of their worst signs. I find
it the saddest of all. Would that one
could hope,

.pm verse-start
“When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the night is past and gone,”
.pm verse-end

that things would come right again.
But moral nights are not as physical
ones. The latter bring us dreams which
the dawn of day dispels. The moral
.pn +1
nights are full of the feverish dreams of
mankind, and they have no certain limit
as to time. They go <i>crescendo</i> from error
to folly, until the awakening at the end
of a completed, comet-like course of
misery.”
.pm letter-end

We have mentioned Stolberg’s
warm love of his country. Prince
Francis Fürstenberg said of him
during the time of the humbling of
Germany under the yoke of Napoleon:
“I know, and have known
in my long life, many of the noblest
men in the nation, but I saw none
surpass Stolberg in genuine love for
the Fatherland. His German and
imperial heart is pure as gold and
shines like a diamond.” The epithet
imperial sounds odd to our
ears; it is an allusion to his belief
that the Empire of Germany, such
as it existed just before the Congress
of Vienna, was the proper
representative and bulwark of the
nation. He blamed the Emperor
Francis very strongly for laying
down his time-honored dignity
later on, and contenting himself
with a local title which severed his
interests materially from those of
Germany at large. He also saw in
this withdrawal of imperial authority
and protection over non-Austrian
countries a danger to the
Catholic faith, and a possible interference
of Protestant powers in the
communications between Catholic
German states and the Holy See.
But concerning the ever-vexed question
of the Rhine frontier his patriotism
was quick and hot; he
wished that in the new partition at
the Congress Alsace and Lorraine
should be given back to Germany,
and lamented the injudicious behavior
by which some of the German
troops had spoilt the evidently favorable
state of mind of the Alsatians
during part of the disturbances
on the frontier.

.pm letter-start
“Eighteen months ago,” he writes in
1815, “the Alsatians were very well disposed,
came to meet our troops with
flags and received them with ringing of
joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the
Badeners, and so on, and behaved so as
to make them hate us. We all talk of
our wish to reunite our once torn-away
brethren with Germany, but we have
angered them instead and are burning
their towns and villages. My hair stands
on end and I could weep tears of blood
at the thought.”
.pm letter-end

Early in the century, a few weeks
after his conversion, Stolberg wrote
thus to Princess Gallitzin:

.pm letter-start
“True patriotism embraces the highest
good of the people in all things: the
blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom,
and of morals. It can never follow the
path of forcible overthrows and of revolution,
nor covenant with an outside
enemy, nor lend itself to the service of
injustice, even when a seeming and momentary
advantage is to be gained by
such service. What a disgrace for us
Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns
among us—the cap-in-hand alliance with
the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading
horror and desolation among us and
knows no right but that of the sword.
What undermines all our strength, and
will sink us even lower and lower, is not
only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement
current among the German
states against the empire and the emperor,
the fawning on the French with
the hope of getting their help to win new
slices of territory, but far more the weakened
character of the whole people, and
their want of moral energy and good
feeling—the result of the unbelieving
philosophy and immoral literature that
have unnerved the nation.”
.pm letter-end

Just as impartially he condemned
in after-years, when German patriotism
had spread with a sudden
rush from the field into literature,
the “coarse Teutonism” which rejected
every refinement of foreign
origin, maligned every foreign custom,
and made patriotism ridiculous
by enjoining upon it to be no
less than rabid. He then defended
all that was reasonable and applicable
.pn +1
to German life, all the praise-worthy
customs, books, and improvements
that fashion had turned
suddenly against. He had earned
a good right to be independent;
for four of his sons fought in the
different German armies that overwhelmed
Napoleon after the retreat
from Moscow, and one, his son
Christian, a brave boy of eighteen,
died at the battle of Ligny. His
two sons-in-law also, fathers of
large families of young children,
were in the national army, and the
greatest enthusiasm was felt by all
the members of the family, old and
young, for the cause which Stolberg
called “ours, God’s, Europe’s,
mankind’s, and the right’s.”

In 1815 he wrote: “True German
feeling it is to welcome all that
is noble and good, out of all ages
and nations, as our own. Every
one now, with narrow minds, is
Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad”;
and concerning his <i>Life of Alfred</i>
he says:

.pm letter-start
“Alfred belongs to us, and therefore
do I wish to hold him up to the veneration
and imitation, and for the teaching,
of my children. But not only do Alfred
and his people belong to us; we should
also make our own all that is great and
noble in the life of all nations, yet without
losing thereby our own individuality.”
.pm letter-end

In 1805 the decree freeing the
serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went
into effect, and Stolberg congratulates
his brother Christian on this
happy event; naturally, the greater
event of the abolition of negro
slavery in the British West Indies
was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced
the more that the <i>Illuminati</i>,
his special aversion, lost thereby
their best weapon against England,
and that the French Declaration of
the Rights of Man could be unfavorably
compared with the English
constitution, on account of a contradictory
law, at that time still in
force, forbidding the liberation of
the negroes in French colonies to
be even mentioned before the legislature.
The alliances, dictated by
fear or by interest, of German sovereigns
with Napoleon were a subject
of great grief and indignation
to him, and he looked upon England
with almost exaggerated admiration
because she withstood the
conqueror. He said “Pitt would
save England against Europe’s
will,” and his confidence in the
general policy of the English
statesman was unbounded. He
had, too, a kind of historical admiration,
if we may so call it, for the
English form of government, which
alone he thought proper for freedom,
but which he did not believe
fit for the wants of every nation,
indiscriminately, on the Continent.
It strikes us, however, that the fact
of the English constitution, in its
then state, being nearly a hundred
and fifty years old had somewhat
blinded his mind to the facts—according
to his theory, rather suspicious,
to say the least—of the
change of dynasty in 1688; for the
Stuarts in England were surely as
legitimate sovereigns, from his
point of view, as the Bourbons in
France, whose least advances, in
the person of Louis XVIII., towards
the modern spirit so incensed
and disgusted Stolberg;
and when he said that “England
alone stood in the breach” against
Napoleon, he forgot that she considered
it her interest to withstand
him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice
egged on the nation against
him. If he had seen anything of
the unreasoning panic which the
threatened invasion caused among
the English, he would have been
less ready to jest at the falling
.pn +1
through of the scheme, which he
called “an expedition to gather mussels
along the British shores.” It
has often been so, we think, among
Continental statesmen and thinkers:
they look upon England with
exceptionally favorable eyes and
weigh her doings in special balances,
forgetting the lawless and riotous
disturbances that she experienced
earlier than other countries, after
which she settled into the solid,
steady, conservative, law-abiding,
slow-to-be-moved nation which she
had been for over a hundred years
when the French Revolution suddenly
broke out. Stolberg, much as
he praised England, almost refused
to see any good in the chaos of new
ideas that were seething pell-mell
together; he saw nothing but the
evident godlessness, selfishness,
pride, and cruelty which marked
that era; and, indeed, he, the man
of another age, the lover of a lofty
ideal which we shall mention presently—the
man who said that “all
politics hinged on the Fourth Commandment”—could
hardly be expected
to allow that out of such
confusion God could glean anything
worthy of being offered to
himself.

Stolberg often called Germany
the “heart of Europe,” and wrote
an ode with that title; but he would
not allow with the innovators that
the “philosophy” of the age was
the true source of the influence his
country should have on the Continent.
Allied to this false idea of
many Germans was the affected
custom, in the early part of the century,
of using the French language
instead of the mother-tongue, even
in the nearest domestic intercourse—a
fault which the Russians also fell
into, but which at present they
have seen the folly of and have
nearly successfully remedied. Stolberg
heartily hated and despised
this foreign intrusion into German
home-life.

.pm letter-start
“Even in my younger days,” he says
with scorn, “I can remember hearing of
a gifted German girl being reproached by
German women with being 'affected’
enough to write 'German’ letters.... Germans
now write to each other, brother to
brother, husband to wife, in French....
Is that not to estrange one’s self from one’s
nearest and dearest? nay, even from
one’s self?”
.pm letter-end

His relations and correspondence
with well-known people of his day
furnish us with his opinions on
many of the writers, <i>savants</i>, statesmen,
and philosophers, the reigning
and rising public men. Of the historian
Johann Müller he says:

.pm letter-start
“No one ever seized the true spirit of
history so early in life as he did....
His life is very interesting; it is true he
showed a good deal of vanity, but also
so much cheerful good-humor that one
does not feel inclined to be hard upon
him for the former. His plan of study,
as he arranged it for himself, and the
scrupulous way in which he followed
it out, seem to me truly noteworthy....
What a comprehensive spirit, what
feeling and sympathy for the true, the
good, and the beautiful! How early, too,
he broke loose from the unwisdom of the
philosophy of the times, and how deep
a religious spirit remained firm in him
in the midst of many disturbances, since
he so clearly understood the history of
the world by the light of that Providence
whose finger he was always tracing
in it! He once said very beautifully
that Christ was the key to the world s
history.”
.pm letter-end

In 1807 he gives the following
opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:

.pm letter-start
“I know Humboldt personally. He
has much understanding, much liveliness,
much industry. But is he not inclined
to be too much enslaved by the
German <i>à priori</i> tendency and by a love
of the scientific form? Is he strong
enough not to let himself be carried
away by the method of modern criticism,
which tends to violent disruption from
.pn +1
all that has gone before, instead of tracing
out the great analogies on the path
of simple observation? Is he <i>quite</i> free
from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism?
Years may have matured
him, but such maturing seldom takes
place when the quick strides of science
make it difficult for wisdom to keep up
with her.”
.pm letter-end

Of Frederick Schlegel’s poetry,
and that of others in the <i>Dichtergarten</i>
(or “Poet’s Garden,” a collection
of fugitive songs by various
poets), he writes:

.pm letter-start
“The rarer and the more beautiful is
the noble, religious spirit that breathes
through the <i>Poet’s Garden</i>, the more do I
wish that its authors might put forth all
their strength. And so it would be, if it
were not for a particular theory which
lies at the bottom of the poetry—a theory
whose foundation I do not know, but
whose evident peculiarity strikes the
eye, bewilders the reader, forces the Muse,
and in its purposed negligence of language
goes so far as even to disfigure it.
The Muse craves freedom above all
things, if she is to express what comes
from the innermost of our heart or our
mind. Every trace of art lames poetry,
and theory often misleads, because it is
born of human philosophy, while poetry
is something divine. Therefore poets
always succeed best in rhythm where the
inspiration is great and noble, and the
quickly-passing images, thoughts, sensations
only group themselves well and
naturally when they are conjured up by
an infallible, all-subduing inspiration,
without the poet knowing how it happens.”
.pm letter-end

Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he
writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the
sense that most of the readers of
that work will endorse:

.pm letter-start
“I marvel at the deep learning, and
often at the penetration, of our friend;
but who will read him? What a bulwark
of tedious researches, the result of which
is often nothing more than a learned
outwork! It is strange that, with this
fault of historical pedantry, he could
not avoid the contrary one of reasoning
<i>à priori</i>, so common to the German professors.
There is much understanding
in the book, and in a few places one is
pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but
this spirit is neither <i>a joyful nor a certain
one</i>. He fails in simplicity. From this
springs his heavy style, despite his
choice use of words. He is too forward
in making hypotheses and foregone
conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship
with the plebeians leads him
to make false and hasty judgments.
His pragmatical tendency makes him
unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation
of the noble amiability of
Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults,
he must ever remain a valuable historian—not
a star of the first magnitude,
but still too good to be a mere <i>famulus</i>,[#]
to gather material for great historians.
Among other things, he lacks
the art of managing his style so as to appear
to be led by it and yet to make it
convey exactly what the writer pleases.
But concerning his principles, some of
which, however, I do not endorse, his
conscience always appears as it is, noble
and tender, while his love of truth follows
him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.
.fn-

It may be interesting to give the
opinion of some of the same men
on Stolberg himself as a historian
and writer. The <i>History of Religion</i>,
which was his great work,
and which he mainly attributed to
the suggestion, encouragement, and
interest of Princess Gallitzin, became
a topic of discussion and interest
all through Germany. Many
were brought by it to the Catholic
Church, and of these most wrote to
him first, asking advice and making
confidences, before they read further
or asked instructions from a
priest. It was a source of deep
thankfulness to him that he had
thus been the means of making
others share in the same blessings
and peace which he had won
through the grace and leading of
God. But his <i>History</i> was no
controversial work; it was very
comprehensive, and embraced the
whole subject of true religion from
the beginning of the world, tracing
.pn +1
the connection between Judaism
and Christianity; the fulfilment of
the prophecies in Christ; the spirit
of aloofness from the world, first
symbolized in the national exclusiveness
of the Hebrews, and then
proved in the persecutions under
the Roman emperors in the struggle
between Christianity and heathendom;
and, lastly, the gradual,
onward sway which the truth at
last won over error, and which,
speaking in a certain sense, culminated
in the conversion of Constantine.
Here Stolberg ended his
history, feeling that his life would
not be spared much longer, and
that he had done his work, so far
as he felt called upon by God to
witness to the truth that was in
him. The unhappy struggles, rents,
and abuses of later church history
he left untouched; surely there
were counterparts to them in earlier
days, but no such embittering
could come from a relation of the
old heresies and divisions as would
have sprung from even the most
impartial discussion of recent and
more local ones. Schlegel took
the greatest interest in this work,
and of the least important part he
spoke thus admiringly:

.pm letter-start
“I am especially delighted at the
strength and simple beauty of your
style; whoso compares it with what is
called nowadays the art of representing
things will easily discover where is to
be found the true source of even this
beauty.”
.pm letter-end

Again, of the second part of the
history (it was divided into fifteen
parts) he says:

.pm letter-start
“I found myself much steadied and
strengthened by the whole, and particularly
enlightened by the exposition on
the Hebrew belief in the immortality of
the soul and on the Mosaic code. May
you in the future of your work, as often
as opportunity allows, return to and
dwell upon the immortality of the soul.
It seems to me the path by which mankind
at present can best be led towards
truth, better than by any other teaching
regarding the Godhead.”
.pm letter-end

He then says that pantheism and
a vague sentimentality had perverted
everything distinctly Christian
into an empty shadow-form, but
that few were so absolutely dead to
all higher feeling as not to distinguish
between the “real personal
immortality, and the mere metaphysical
image of it, without a hereafter,
and without a continuance
of the memory.”

.pm letter-start
“Bring vividly before them the true personal
immortality, and you will often find
those whom you had thought most spiritually
dead and careless to be palpably
roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity
is the central point of Christianity,
and therefore the foundation and source
of all my convictions, views, and aspirations....
The unfolding and representation
of this secret of love (the Trinity)
I have found to permeate every doctrine,
principle, and even custom or
rubric of the Catholic Church; although
even in her pale many good individuals
are less impressed with the divine spirit
of the whole than with some one or
other literal regulation.”
.pm letter-end

Johann von Müller wrote thus
of Stolberg’s work:

.pm letter-start
“It is not a lukewarm, sham impartial
church history, in which one is uncertain
what relation it bears to Jesus
of Nazareth, but the work of a man who
knows what he believes, and would fain
move all men to believe as he does.
Not a church history critically weighing
the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old
Testament against his Godhead from the
New, but the work of a man who sees
everywhere and at all times Him who
was and is, and is to come, and to whom
all power is given in heaven and on
earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly representation
of the deceits and time-serving
devices through which Christianity
crept into the world, and is still able to
maintain herself, the humble handmaid
of statecraft, in these our enlightened
times, but the confession and outpouring
.pn +1
of soul of a man to whom the whole
world is nothing in comparison with the
Saviour of the world. Of the latter he
speaks so that whoever loves him must
love this book, and he who knows nothing
of him will learn from this book
what Christians possess in him. Therefore,
reader, if thou art a reed, driven
before the learned wind of our modern
writings, look to this rock, and see if it
has not a foundation in the needs of
mankind and the love of the Godhead;
and thou who knowest not Christianity,
come and see <i>what it is</i>, as thy forefathers
felt it, as it is yet, mighty in every
childlike heart; and thou who believest,
come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy
heart with the word of life.”
.pm letter-end

Claudius spoke of the book being
read by thousands, and of its
“undoubted influence in strengthening
the Christian faith among the
German people.” A person in
comparatively private life, Major
Bülow, a stanch Bible man, said
that Stolberg’s <i>History of Religion</i>
had been a “welcome surprise to
him, although the style was not always
clear to his understanding,
and he was only fearful lest the
author should not live long enough
to finish it.”

Joseph de Maistre spoke thus of
the work in his <i>Recueil de Lettres</i>,
p. 23:

.pm letter-start
“New researches and discoveries, and
the progress of the art of tracing all up
to the first sources, may correct or supplement
much in his history, may bring a
new light to bear on many of his opinions—for
the work, in spite of its foundation
on, and buttressing by, much study
of a high order, is not meant to be an
exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt
if any, in our century at least, will surpass
the author of this history in pure
love of God and mankind, love to Christ
and his church, and in pure and truly
creative spirit. How striking also are
his observations on the circumstances of
our time, his opinion on the persecution
of the church by the spirit of this world,
on false teachers, on the marriage tie,
and the sanctity of oaths, and many like
things!”
.pm letter-end

Stolberg was rejoiced by these
commendations, but more encouraged
than rejoiced. Mere vanity
was far from him; he thanked God
that he had been able to supply
“what these oft-repeated praises of
good and single-minded men proved
to him to have been really a
want.”

The ideal which we have alluded
to, and which was a great characteristic
of Stolberg’s mind, was that
of the mission and duties of an
aristocracy. He believed that, in
the abstract, the existence and allowed
influence of such a class
was an instinct inborn in man, and
that it was only when the aristocracy
was false to its own principles
that the people could grow antagonistic
to it. His theories on
the subject were beautiful, noble,
poetic, but in his time there had
been so much evil practice that
such theories were nearly swamped
under it. It was natural to his
character, however, to lean more
on the theory than the practice,
and to consider the latter an excrescence
and abuse which might
be done away with, and the ideal
thereby reinstated in its first dignity.
At first sight his theory seems
simply a feudal, mediæval, romantic
one, the dream of a man proud of
his own order, and nursed in prejudices
such as no change in political
relations <i>de facto</i> could uproot
but if we look closer into it, it becomes
a very different and far more
worthy thing—namely, a belief in
the essence of chivalry, a standard
of conduct such as King Arthur’s,
a translation into altered forms and
circumstances of the Gospel rules
of charity, courtesy, and patience.
Here are some of his own sayings
on the subject, on which he reasoned
in a way so far removed from
either fanaticism or vanity that we
.pn +1
place his explanations here as something
wholly special to himself, and
quite different from the ordinary
rhapsodies about the necessity of
various grades of classes:

.pm letter-start
“The ideal of the aristocracy[#] is not
weakened through the unworthiness of
many who are of noble birth. On the
contrary, the just scorn which follows
these men redounds to the honor of
their class, of which one cannot become
unworthy without being despised by all.
Nature gives the aristocracy neither more
understanding nor more physical strength
than she does to other classes; it takes
its worth wholly from an ideal, but not a
mistaken ideal. This, like all that is
great in mankind, is founded upon the
sacrifice of all that is lower for the sake
of attaining the highest.

.fn #
<i>Adel</i>, nobility, from <i>edel</i>, noble, our Saxon
<i>Ethel</i> and <i>Atheling</i>. The word is here translated
by aristocracy rather than nobility—the former being
a word of wider signification, and embracing
the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course
Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called
noblemen.
.fn-

“The aristocracy must give up every
mercantile and lower traffic. Three
things were entrusted to its keeping—agriculture,
of which kings have not
been ashamed, statesmanship, and the
defence of the Fatherland.

“As an ennobled countryman the aristocrat
can pursue the most necessary, the
oldest, and the most innocent work with
better results than the peasant, because
he has more means, more insight, and can
better afford the danger of an occasional
failure. His experience and example
teach and encourage the common countryman,
whom it is the beautiful and
holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten
and to protect, and whose well-being,
morals, and temporal and eternal good
it is his duty to further by every means
in his power. This business is one
which, if he wishes to be respected as a
nobleman, he has no right to evade or
neglect; except temporarily, if he is
chosen as a representative of his province—a
business to which he has also a
special call as a citizen of the state. He
must and ought, however, to take part
in the government, even if he be not
chosen by his province; and either as a
magistrate or only as a land-owner he
can take a prominent part in it. The defence
of his country devolves upon no
one so strongly as upon the nobleman.
This is a worthy and beautiful duty of
knighthood. It is well for that state where
the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence
of the Fatherland as leaders of their
own country people, whose patrons they
are in times of peace, whose heads, judges,
mediators, example, and benefactors they
should be at all times. The old, fair relations
have been rent by false representations,
but they are not effaced....
The aristocracy has an inner worth, no
matter how unworthy are many of its
members. Neither royal nor priestly
anointing can preserve from moral corruption!
Of how much less avail are
mere human, outward means to preserve
the spiritual existence! Indeed, they often
soil it. Let every one who is of
knightly standing strive to prove by his
actions that the ideal of knighthood lives
in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous
behavior, in quick willingness to give
blood and lands for the Fatherland. His
example will not remain without fruit.
He will be far from looking upon certain
virtues as virtues of his condition, and
neglecting to practise others or superciliously
leave them to other classes. If
we hold fast to our knightly calling, the
essence of knighthood will remain to us.
The shell of the thing renews itself from
time to time.... Whatever is worthy
of respect in knighthood has come from
self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace
with the century, the nobleman must be
the equal of the citizen in knowledge,
whenever the two meet in the same field.
If he neglects this, he will see the burgher
reigning as a cabinet minister and
himself reduced to the <i>honor</i> of waiting
in the king’s ante-chamber by virtue
of his birth. And even in war, the
knight’s proper field, how can the nobleman
boast of his superiority to one who
knows more than he does of the science
of war? If the knight covets intellectual
superiority, he must not seek it in
emulation so much as in brave and silent
self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers
must teach his heart this lesson:
<i>Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the
world acknowledge thy worth or no.[#]</i> A
thirst after approbation does not behove
a knight, but steady reliance on
his strength and his intentions.... The
present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever
.pn +1
which will soon be spent.... It
remains for us, each in his own circle,
to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread
it abroad—that is, a true spirit of religion
and that spirit of brave self-denial, of
earnest courage, and discreet worth which
should mark the aristocracy—and at the
same time to encourage among ourselves
a desire not to be behindhand in such
knowledge and in such strivings as elevate
the heart, adorn the mind, and
make us fitter for the callings that specially
beseem us.”
.pm letter-end

.fn #
The italics are ours.
.fn-

It will be readily understood
from the foregoing quotations that
Stolberg had not much sympathy
with a scheme which some German
noblemen had started—that
of a new knight-union or society.
He deprecated the publicity such
a step would necessarily bring upon
them, and saw in it only a hollow,
childish plan of defiance, a
foolish revival of old customs as
powerless in practice as a return
to the weapons of the ancient
knights, a protest against firearms
and the altered arts of
warfare. His enthusiasm was always
dignified and reasonable; it
had no touch of sentimentality
and “playing at” things. To
the last his character remained
the same. Forgiving and temperate
as regarded any wrong done
personally to him, he could not
brook the distortion of truth, and
was in the act of replying to a
libellous pamphlet of Voss, of
Heidelberg, destined to spread
among the public distrust of Stolberg’s
sincerity in his conversion,
when his last sickness overtook
him. He had just finished the
<i>Life of St. Vincent of Paul</i>, which
he had written instead of the autobiography
that his friends strongly
urged him to write. He had objected
that he felt no call from
God to do so, and that, unless one
wrote with the view of God’s call,
vanity and self were too apt to become
the leading motive in the
work. He commended St. Augustine’s
<i>Confessions</i> because they were
evidently inspired by love of God’s
honor only, and a monument of
thankfulness to the One who called
such a sinner to repentance. In St.
Vincent he saw a man of modern
times whom one could hold up as a
model not too exalted and extraordinary,
yet thoroughly humble, perfect,
and holy, to men of his and future
generations.

Stolberg died December 5, 1819,
at the age of seventy, at Sondermühlen,
a country-house for which
he had, four years before, exchanged
his favorite Lütjenbeck, when
French domination was in the ascendant
and he had become an
object of suspicion to the French
spies in Münster.

What his death was to his family
can be easily imagined; it was
hardly less to a large circle of
friends, acquaintances, and even
strangers who knew him only by
name and by his works, but whose
reliance on his advice, example,
and opinion had long been their
best and surest standard of duty.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=hecubap2
FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES. | <i>A free translation.</i> | BY AUBREY DE VERE.
.sp 2
[<i>The Chorus of Trojan Women lament their Captivity.</i>]

STROPHE I.

.pm verse-start
Breeze of the ocean, fresh and free!
  Whither, O whither wilt thou bear
  The Exile, and her great despair?
Thou speed’st, and I must speed with thee!
Say, must some Dorian haven be
  The home of Troy’s unhappy daughters?
  O unbelovèd home!—or where
  The father of most lovely waters,
  Apidanus, goes winding by
  The fruitful meads of Thessaly?
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
ANTISTROPHE I.

.pm verse-start
Or 'mid those isles of old renown,
  Haply bright Delos’ sea-born glades,
      Where deathless palms and laurels spread
      Above their own Latona’s head
    Green boughs (commemoration holy
      Of that twin-birth that lit their gloom):—
      There must I weep a captive’s doom?
  There sing, with gladsome native maids,
    Extorted song and melancholy
      To Dian’s silver bow and crown?
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
STROPHE II.

.pm verse-start
Perchance, a slave in Athens pining,
  On tap’stried walls these hands must trace
    Minerva’s awful steeds and car
    Still radiant from the Ten Years’ war;
  Or blazon there the Titan race
    Beneath the Thunderer’s wrath oppressed,
  And every godlike head declining
    Upon the thunder-blasted breast.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
ANTISTROPHE II.

.pm verse-start
Alas my people, and alas
  My fathers, and my country’s shore!
And thou, O Troy—’tis Fate’s decree—
  Farewell! I see thy face no more!
Alas for thee, alas for me!
  Above thy head the plough shall pass:—
Worse fate is mine, o’er ocean’s wave,
The conqueror’s plaything, and his slave.
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=trueirish
THE TRUE IRISH REVOLUTION.
.sp 2
The Irish people, albeit much
given to intermittent spasms of insurrection,
are at present as peaceable,
and apparently as contented,
as the contending passions of local
politicians and the intrigues of imperial
statesmen will allow them to
be. The constabulary, in their rifle-green
and burnished accoutrements,
continue to be the envy and terror
of the unsophisticated peasant; the
queen’s writ runs unobstructed in
the remotest parts of the island;
“the castle still stands, though the
senate’s no more”; and, save the
sharp crack of a rifle at Dolly-mount
or the more death-dealing
fowling-piece of the sportsman, no
warlike sound disturbs the quiet
slumbers of the weary sentinel or
the superserviceable stipendiary
magistrate.

And yet a revolution has been in
progress in Ireland and in Irish affairs
elsewhere for the last three-quarters
of a century as beneficent
in its effects and as tangible in its
benefits as if blood had flowed in
torrents and the pure atmosphere
from shore to centre of the land
had been polluted by fumes of villainous
saltpetre. We mean that
within the memory of men now
living a radical though gradual
change has taken place in the manners,
habits, and tastes of the Irish
people, but more particularly in
their literature, which after all is
the best evidence of a nation’s ability
to think correctly and express
accurately what their minds are capable
of conceiving.

Looking back to the condition
of Ireland at the beginning of the
century—her domestic legislature
annihilated and seven-eighths of her
people unrepresented in the imperial
Parliament—beyond broken
relics and dim memories of a glorious
past, it can be said truthfully
that she had no literature whatever,
or rather no literature save
what was alien and hostile in tone
and spirit. There were no native
authors except those who had earned
pelf and unenviable notoriety by
decrying Ireland’s nationality, maligning
her faith, and holding up to
the contempt and ridicule of the
world the faults and foibles of her
unlettered peasantry. But, even
had there been men of a different
character, they could not have
found either encouragement or
patronage; for the mass of the population,
thanks to the Penal Laws,
could not read English, and one-half
at least could not even speak it.
.pn +1

The consequence, therefore, was
that every young Irishman who
felt the spirit of literary ambition
stir within him, as soon as he had
attained manhood, hastened to
pack up his scanty wardrobe and
turn his face toward London—then
as now the great intellectual focus
of the United Kingdom. The pioneers
of this movement were generally
men little fitted to represent
their country. They were merely
adventurers, without principle or
honor, facile and versatile, and in
some instances even educated, but,
from previous training and association,
just such tools as Grubb Street
publishers loved to handle and the
lowest class of Britons delighted to
patronize. They were the originators
of the “Denis Bulgruddery”
and “Paddiana” school of
so-called comic literature, and were
useless if they did not caricature
in the grossest manner, on the
stage and in the newspapers and
periodicals, their Catholic fellow-countrymen.
With them a priest
was an ignorant and low-bred tyrant;
the peasant his abject, superstitious
slave. This worthless class,
while it did much to destroy the moral
effect produced by men of a preceding
generation, like Goldsmith,
Coleman, O’Keefe, Sheridan,
Burke, Barry, and other distinguished
Irishmen, did more to instil into
the popular mind of England that
utter misconception of Irish character
and insensate hostility to the
Catholic religion of which we find
at the present day such marked
traces even among fairly intelligent
men.

Those mercenaries were followed
by others of a higher order of intellect
and of greater pretensions,
of whom Crofton Croker and Sheridan
Knowles may be considered
to have been the representatives.
The drama, poetry, and prose fiction
of every description employed
their attention alternately, and in
each they proved true to the baser
instincts of their nature and the
traditions of the faction whence
they had sprung. They were
stanch no-popery men of the
Orange stripe, and, having a Protestant,
English audience to gratify,
they were consistently and
virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish.
When they wished to delineate
their co-patriots, whether before
the foot-lights or in the pages
of cheap novels, they invariably divided
them into two classes: the
high-spirited, accomplished Protestant
gentleman, and the low, grovelling,
ignorant papist. Thus for
many years did they thrive on bigotry
and fatten upon treason to
the land that was unfortunate
enough to have given them birth.
It was only natural that England
should have viewed with complacency
the caricatures of a faith she
had so long and so strenuously proscribed,
and a people whom she
had robbed of the last vestige of
independence; but it is humiliating
to reflect that the works of
such libellers were up to a recent
period popular in Ireland, and that
their comedies and farces “have
kept the stage” even to our own
day.

There were yet other candidates
for fame, who, tired of the provincialism
of Irish towns, or impatient
of the restraints which their peculiar
calling in life had placed upon
them, sought an English market
for their intellectual wares—spoiled
children of genius, men like Maginn
and Mahony, of much learning
and fascinating accomplishments,
fitted to have conferred lasting
honor on their country, but
who, lacking the true spirit of national
.pn +1
dignity and personal respect,
easily fell a prey to one or other of
the contending English parties, and
sank to the level of those who disgrace
the noble profession of letters by
making it subservient to the base
purposes of political factions. This
class contributed much of what is
still to be found brilliant and entertaining
in English literature, but
little that reflects credit on their
character as Irishmen.

Following or contemporaneous
with them came another and a different
school of Irish writers, such
as Lever, Lover, Maxwell, and even
Carleton; for, though the latter in
many of his later works showed a
just appreciation of the vast improvement
taking place in public
taste, his earlier and more popular
productions, apart from their occasional
touches of true pathos and
flashes of genuine wit, were devoted
mostly to caricature and exaggeration.
Charles Lever, who has
written so many books, and who is
yet the most read of all the Irish
novelists of this century, has been
called the best recruiting sergeant
the British government ever employed;
while Lover may be styled
a gifted and versatile buffoon in all
save his lyrics. The first’s highest
conception of an Irish gentleman
was one who broke his arm over a
Galway fence, was commissioned
in the British army, blundered into
all sorts of scrapes and out of them,
hated Napoleon, worshipped “Sir
Arthur,” charged wildly at Ciudad
Rodrigo or Waterloo, and finally—married
an heiress. His best
Irish peasant does not rise above
the grade of Mickey Free or Darby
the Blast, while he seemed utterly
unconscious of the existence of a
very important social element in
all agricultural countries—the farming
or middle class, always remarkable
for their sturdy common sense
and practical views of life. It was
from this portion of his countrymen
and from the hardy mechanics of the
towns that Scott drew his best and
most enduring portraits of Scotch
manliness, shrewdness, and humor.

Lover, though tender and natural
in verse, was singularly unfortunate
in his choice of subjects and
altogether false in his attempts to
develop them. He also ignored
the “middle classes,” and substituted
for gentlemen sentimental non-entities,
and for the free-spoken,
light-hearted, and withal poetical
plebeian, blundering boobies full of
chicane and deception. We can
scarcely believe that the man who
wrote <i>Treasure Trove</i> and <i>Handy
Andy</i> could have conceived such
pathetic songs as “The Angels’
Whisper” and “The Fairy Boy.”

Still, the works of these authors,
though exhibiting many glaring defects,
were a great improvement on
those of their predecessors, and
consequently they have not yet
been consigned to the oblivion
which has enshrouded the productions
of the bigots of the previous
era.

But the revolution in Irish literature
had commenced long before
their advent, and the credit of initiating
it belongs to one who was
not only universally admired and
applauded during his life, but whose
fame continues to augment as time
rolls along, and the memory of his
extraordinary efforts in behalf of
his faith and country becomes
brighter and more enduring. That
man was Thomas Moore, the son
of humble Catholic parents, who, on
account of his religious belief, was
refused a fellowship in the only
university of which his native
country could then boast. Naturally
disgusted at such ostracism,
.pn +1
Moore, at the age of twenty-three,
went to London, and entered upon
that brilliant career in poetry and
prose which has indelibly stamped
his name on the history of the literature
of the nineteenth century.
Never was the force of genius better
exemplified than in the life of
Moore. A plebeian, a Catholic, and
an Irishman in the strongest sense
of those terms; without condescending
to apologize for, or attempting
to palliate, the facts of his
station and belief; with scarcely a
friend or acquaintance in the great
metropolis, and no recognition in
the world of letters, the poet
rose amid an aristocratic, Protestant,
and anti-Irish community to a
position equal to the most gifted
of Scotland’s and England’s men
of genius, and in his <i>Melodies</i> far
surpassed any lyrics that have been
written in our language since or
before his time. In 1808 the first
part of that unequalled collection
of songs appeared, and each successive
instalment but added to
the popularity of the preceding.
From the first they became fashionable,
and consequently popular.
They were sung in the drawing-rooms
of princes and in the cottage
parlors of the shop-keeper
and tradesman. Persons of every
rank in life who knew little of Ireland,
and that little not to her
credit, listened entranced to “Remember
the Glories of Brian the
Brave” or “Oh! blame not the
Bard,” and began to think that a
country that could produce such
airs and so sweet a poet could not
after all be considered very barbarous.
It was but a poor concession,
yet under the circumstances a most
valuable one. It was the first blow
struck against the solid wall of prejudice
with which English society
had surrounded itself.

Next to Moore we place John
Banim, the principal author of the
<i>Tales of the O’Hara Family</i>. Banim,
like Moore, sprang from the
ranks of the humbler classes and
sought in London a field for his rare
genius which was denied him at
home. Though a dramatist of no
mean order, his reputation rests
principally on his novels, many of
which, like the <i>Boyne Water</i>, <i>Crohoore
of the Bill-Hook</i>, <i>The Priest-Hunter</i>,
and <i>The Fetches</i>, are works
of real power, interspersed here
and there with pleasantry and humor,
but always moral, dignified,
and true to nature. The sale of
Banim’s tales and shorter stories
from their intrinsic merit, and perhaps
somewhat on account of their
novelty, was very extensive in England,
and helped to increase the
good feeling towards the Irish people
which the lyre of Moore had
first called into being.

In Gerald Griffin, afterward the
humble Christian Brother, Banim
found not only a friend but a powerful
auxiliary. Griffin, of all the
writers of fiction in the English language,
was the purest and most
actively moral. If we search all his
works—and they fill nine or ten volumes—we
will not find an expression
or an innuendo to offend
the most sensitive. The writings
of the great English novelists of
this century, like those of Scott,
Thackeray, and Dickens, cannot be
said to be positively immoral,
though the author of the justly-celebrated
<i>Waverley Novels</i> often
exhibited marked prejudice, and
sometimes downright bigotry; while
his later rivals, when not satirical or
trifling, can at best claim but a
negative morality for their teachings
and tendencies. But the genius
of Griffin sprang from a pure Catholic
heart filled with love for all
.pn +1
his kind, and consequently he wrote
with a sense of religious responsibility,
and in a spirit of justice and
rectitude rarely to be found so
thoroughly developed in a writer
of fiction in our days. His works
have had a great influence on the
popular mind of both countries.
But, though he first wrote in England,
his sole and absorbing object
was to benefit his countrymen.
When satisfied that the germ of
his laurels had begun to fructify in
a foreign soil, he returned to his
home, where, amid domestic pleasures,
and in daily communion with
the characters he so admirably portrayed
and the scenes of natural
beauty he so loved to describe, he
composed his more important and
finished works.

Meanwhile, another and not less
important impetus had been given
to the rapid change taking place in
popular sentiment regarding Irish
character and literature, and this
was in Ireland itself. The letters of
“J. K. L.”—the learned Dr. Doyle—on
Catholic Emancipation and the
Tithe Question, and those of the
present venerable Archbishop of
Tuam on similar topics, had thrilled
the Irish heart and evoked in
it a feeling of national dignity and
self-reliance that had long lain dormant;
and even the great O’Connell,
amid all his professional and
political labors, found time to contribute
his aid to the new movement.
But it was not till after
1840 that the various rivulets combined
and assumed the proportions
of a mighty flood, which, bursting
through the barriers of ignorance
and prejudice, overspread the entire
land. Then began to appear
the theologians and ecclesiastical
historians of Maynooth and the antiquarian
writers of old Trinity;
the fiery ballads of the <i>Nation</i> and
the graceful and learned essays of
the <i>Dublin Review</i> and <i>University
Magazine</i>. Archæological and Celtic
societies were formed, the hitherto
neglected <i>Transactions</i> of
the Royal Irish Academy were
brought into public notice, and the
musty tomes that were crumbling
to dust and decay on the shelves
of Trinity College library, after their
sleep of centuries, were explored,
collated, and vivified. The names
of Murray, O’Reilly, Petrie, Todd,
O’Donovan, O’Curry, Graves, Wilde,
Meehan, McCarthy, Mangan, and a
host of other lesser lights, became
familiar to the intellectual world
by their profound, subtle, or brilliant
contributions to the literature
of the age. One thing alone
was wanting to complete this grand
national revival: a Catholic university—and
even that soon came,
not as a subordinate worker in the
common cause, but as the leader of
the movement.

Yet, though general education
and popular instruction, in their
own sphere, kept pace with the
mental awakening in the higher
departments of learning, strange
to say, the stage, generally considered
the first to yield to popular
impulse, was the slowest and last
to acknowledge the improved spirit
of the times, and even to this day
clings to many of the antiquated
and bigoted so-called Irish dramas
and comedies with insensate tenacity.
Theatrical managers still
persist in presenting for the amusement
of patrons, a large portion of
whom are Irish, the farces and low
interludes which fifty years ago were
written to gratify the anti-Irish and
anti-Catholic feelings of the lowest
class of London society. A partially
successful effort has been made
recently to redeem this gross and
fatal error; better, or rather less
.pn +1
bad, Irish dramas have of late
made their appearance, and let us
hope the reformation, once set on
foot, will be carried out. There is
no reason why we should not have
Irish dramas as good as Irish poems,
tales, and other works of fiction.
If people will go to theatres,
they ought not be compelled to become
interested spectators of outrages
on faith and morals, and patrons
and supporters of those who
commit the outrages.

Still, casting our memory back
over the history of Irish intellectual
life for more than half a century,
it would be scarcely an exaggeration
to say that since the <i>Renaissance</i>
epoch no country has
given such evidence, in so short a
time, of mental fertility and activity
as that island which was once almost
as famous throughout Europe
for her learning as for the piety of
her children. Ireland has at last a
literature which is not only rich in
ideas and information, but which is
both national and Catholic. Her
history, once so obscure and misunderstood,
can now be studied with
as much ease and satisfaction as
any in Christendom; her antiquities,
formerly the spoil of the ignorant
or the jest of the sceptic,
have been collected, arranged, and
scientifically explained in a hundred
ways; while the lives and actions
of her great and holy men,
from the earliest ages, have received
full, critical, and impartial justice.
And as yet we have only
seen the beginning! If that be
so fair and full of promise, what
may not be hoped for from the
intellectual future of a keen
yet imaginative, brilliant yet conscientious,
witty yet harmless in
their wit, passionate in the wider
sense, yet profoundly religious,
people?
.sp 4
.h3 id=bridesp2
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
.sp 2
.h4
IV. | ST. CATHERINE.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“Whom I shall wed,” said Alexandria’s princess, “rare
  Of beauty must be, past imagining;
  So great I shall not think I have made him king;
More rich, sweet-hearted more, than summer air!”
In dreams she came where courts such state declare
  Of Mother and Son enthroned, that worshipping
  She knelt, though royal: the Child placed a ring
Upon her finger, and she woke—’twas there!

So Catherine became Christ’s. Again she kneels:
  With rose and lily, in white and purple clothed,
  No shining host now hails the heaven-betrothed,
But God’s bolt shatters the sharp torture-wheels.
Then Night and angels her pall-bearers are—
The Bridegroom waits on Sinai lone and far.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h4
V. | ST. MARGARET.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Of all the virgins pure that bear the palm,
  There is not any one more meek and mild
  Than sweet maid Margaret. Tending while a child
The flocks, she drew near, in the mountain’s calm,
To the Good Shepherd, like a trustful lamb;
  She felt that God with man was reconciled;
  She saw diurnal victory undefiled
Of light o’er darkness hoist the oriflamme.

Of Morning. So flashed she, in dungeon drear,
  The Cross uplifted, till the Dragon foul
  Crouched at her feet, in fear of that white soul.
O Pearl of Antioch, so soft and clear!
O Daisy, with the chaste dew on thy lips!
Thou touchest Christ with stainless finger-tips.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VI. | ST. BARBARA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Dioscorus of Heliopolis
  Shut his wise daughter in a lofty tower,
  Jealous of lovers; therein, for her bower,
She caused three windows to be made, in this
Her father disobeying, but said: “It is
  Through three clear windows that the Almighty Power,
  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shower
Light on the soul—with light immortal bliss!”

Scourged, by the gold hair dragged, slain by thy sire—
  A turbaned heathen!—soft as rosy May,
  Yet resolute, and avenged by instant fire,
Christian Bellona! sweet-browed Barbara!
With the Red Mantle of thy fortitude,
Thy Tower and Cannon, be my soul endued!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=macmahon
MARSHAL MacMAHON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.
.sp 2
The inconveniences resulting
from the present system of transmitting
political intelligence from
Europe to this country for the use
of our daily journals are serious.
An event of importance occurs to-day
in London, Paris, Constantinople,
or Rome; the same afternoon
we read what purports to be an
account of the event in our evening
journals, and the next morning
we are furnished with a few more
details, accompanied often by a
leading article hurriedly written
and based, as a rule, upon no other
information than that contained in
the despatches. In twenty-four
hours afterwards the event is almost
forgotten; and by the time
that the letters of correspondents
on the spot, or the journals of the
locality, can reach us, the incident
has become an old story and the
interest excited by it in the first
place has faded away. This manner
of dealing with matters of great
importance would be lamentable,
even if the information contained
in the cable despatches were always
correct, full, and uncolored
by prejudice; but too often the
despatches are models of what they
should <i>not</i> be—that is, they are incorrect
in matters of fact; marked
by omissions of the truth and by
suggestions of falsehood; and disfigured,
in the majority of cases
when the events reported have, or
are supposed to have, some relation
to the interests of the Papal
See, by an ingenious perversion of
the real and natural meaning of the
incidents which they purport to describe.
A heavy responsibility rests
upon the conductors of our daily
journals in this matter—a responsibility
to which we should be glad
to see them more sensitive than
they now appear to be. They know
well enough how it happens that
the bulk of their cable despatches
from the Continent of Europe is
continually affected by an evident
animus against the Holy See whenever
there is an opportunity to display
this feeling; they know well
enough why it is that, whenever
possible, a coloring hostile to the
church, and calculated to excite
Protestant or non-Catholic prejudice
against her, is given to events.

The greater part of the European
despatches of the New York
journals is transmitted from London,
being made up there chiefly
from the despatches of the Reuter
Agency, supplemented by the special
despatches received by the leading
London journals. The Reuter
News Agency, which has its ramifications
throughout all Europe, and is
conducted with admirable skill and
good management as a business enterprise,
is in the hands of Jews;
its agents have peculiar relations
with the governments which stand
in need of their services, and a system
of mutual benefit is kept up
between them; in return for the
monopoly of official news and other
similar favors on the part of the
governments, the agents of the
Reuter company transmit only such
intelligence as is agreeable to the
governments, and with such coloring
as the governments wish. The
.pn +1
relations existing between the Italian
government and the Reuter
Agency are understood to be especially
intimate; and certain it is
that from no capital in the world
has more false and distorted news
been sent forth than that which all
the world has received from Rome
since the Italian occupation of that
city. As for the Continental despatches
taken from the London
journals and sent to New York, it
should be remembered that not one
of the London daily papers is in
the Catholic interest, and that those
whose despatches are most frequently
sent to us—namely, the <i>Times</i>,
the <i>Daily News</i>, and the <i>Pall Mall
Gazette</i>—are inspired by a very lively
hatred and fear of the church. We
believe that the conductors of our
own daily journals are for the most
part actuated by honest motives.
Their heads are sometimes deplorably
at fault, but their hearts are
generally right; and, with rare exceptions,
they are free from the
guilt of wilfully misrepresenting
facts and designedly deceiving their
readers. But too frequently they do
permit themselves to be deceived
or misled, in the manner we have
explained, with respect to the true
meaning and co-relation of political
events on the continent of Europe.

The facts mentioned are, or
should be, perfectly well known in
the editorial rooms of all our journals;
and it is certainly to be desired
that our editors should cease
to take their opinions at second-hand,
and should begin to exercise
their own good and honest judgment
upon events as they occur
abroad. If they were in the habit
of doing this, and if they were furnished
with cable information of a
correct and uncolored character,
they would not, we are certain,
have fallen into the error of regarding
the recent change of government
in France as a wicked, base,
and unprovoked conspiracy to destroy
the republican institutions of
that country, but would have recognized
in Marshal MacMahon’s
action the wise, absolutely necessary,
and not too rapid determination
of that ruler to save the republic,
if possible, while it is still worth
saving, and at all events to save
France and society generally
throughout Europe from the convulsion,
anarchy, and destruction
into which the revolutionists were
so rapidly and surely dragging
them. It is by no means certain
that Marshal MacMahon will now
succeed in the task before him; he
may have waited too long. Nor
are we concerned to prove that the
motives of the Marshal-President in
his dismissal of M. Jules Simon,
and in his selection of his present
advisers, were unmixed; but we
are anxious to show to our readers
that his action was necessary, and
that the good wishes of Americans
who reverence law and order, who
detest red-republicanism and communism,
who cherish religious liberty,
and who dread and abhor
tyranny, whether exercised in the
name of many or of one, should be
on his side. “I am conscious,”
said Marshal MacMahon nine days
after the dismissal of M. Simon—“I
am conscious of having fulfilled a
great duty. I have remained, and
shall remain, absolutely within the
bounds of legality. It is because
I am the guardian of the constitution
that I acted as I have acted.
To attribute to me an intention of
assailing the constitution is a misconstruction
of my character. The
country will soon comprehend that
my sole aim is the salvation of
France and of the government
which she has given herself.”
.pn +1

We believe that these are sincere
and honest words; and we shall
have no difficulty at least in showing
that Marshal MacMahon could
not have acted otherwise than he
did, unless he had been prepared to
surrender the virtual government
of the republic into the hands of
men who are leagued together to
destroy the rights of property; to
degrade marriage; to enslave, if not
wholly to overturn, the church; to
cut her off from her connection
with her earthly head; to reduce
her prelates, if they were permitted
to exist at all, to the condition of
servants of the civil power; to exile
her contemplative and teaching
orders; to take from her the right
of educating her children; and to
drag France, ere long, into an alliance
with the revolutionary associations
in Germany, Italy, Belgium,
Spain, and Russia, which dream of
establishing on the ruins of religion
and of society a new confederation
from which God shall be banished,
and over which Satan shall rule supreme.
Comparatively few of the
constituents of the Gambetta party
in the French Assembly are aware
of the designs of the leaders of this
faction; but enough light has within
the past few weeks been thrown
upon their machinations fully to
justify the President in making a
firm stand against their further progress.

M. Jules Simon refused to aid
the President in executing this determination;
and M. Simon was
removed to give place to a minister
who would co-operate with his
chief. So powerful had the Gambetta
faction become in the Assembly
that the whole of the cabinet
followed M. Simon in his enforced
retirement from office, and the President
was for the moment left
alone. The men whom he called
to his aid, however, and who, indeed,
had encouraged him to dismiss
M. Simon, were prompt in
taking up the fallen reins of office,
and the government, without a
day’s delay, began its work of preserving
France from her worst foes.
The task before them is a most arduous
one, and it has been begun
none too soon. Let us show how
it became necessary that it should
be undertaken at all.

The French Assembly was re-convened
at Versailles on the 1st of
May after the usual Easter recess.
During the vacation events had
occurred which made it probable
that the long-threatened rupture
between the Gambetta faction, or
Extreme Left of the Chamber, and
the conservative elements in the
executive department of the government,
could not be delayed
much longer. The administration
had indeed gone to the very furthest
point of concession in endeavoring
to satisfy the demands of the
Left. The consent of Marshal
MacMahon had been given to these
concessions, but it was known that
this assent had been extorted
from him with difficulty, and that
he was personally of the opinion
that the more was given to the
Gambettists the more would they
ask, and that the true and safe
course was that of steady and uncompromising
resistance to their
unconstitutional and revolutionary
demands. The Left, by skilful
management of the press in its interest;
by the manipulations of the
local public functionaries who had
from time to time been appointed
at its request, or whom it had been
able to purchase; by adroit misrepresentations
and exaggerations
of the policy of the conservative
members of the Assembly; and by
the not infrequent maladroit utterances
.pn +1
and acts of certain of the
imperialist and monarchical members,
had contrived to make an imposing
show of their strength in the
country as well as in the Assembly.
It is no doubt true that, all other
things being equal, a large majority
of the French people would prefer
a republic to any other form of
government. But the republic
which would satisfy them is not at
all the republic which would satisfy
M. Gambetta and his friends.
The republic which the majority
of the French people desire is a
republic in which property would
be safe; in which law and order
would reign; in which God would
be respected; and in which the
church would be free. The republic
of Gambetta would possess
none of these characteristics; but
Gambetta and his lieutenants had
been allowed to assume the attitude
of the especial friends and defenders
of republican institutions, and
many of their members in the Assembly
owed their election to the
votes of good Catholics and sober
citizens. They now felt themselves
strong enough to advance
further, and to wrest from the administration
a still greater share of
power.

Marshal MacMahon was himself
irremovable for three years longer,
only four years of his Septennate
having expired. But it might be
possible, in the opinion of the Gambettists,
to force him to accept a
cabinet which should be dictated
by themselves, and which would
hand over to them the virtual control
of the government. One of
the members of the then cabinet,
they believed, would be useful to
them, and their plans involved his
retention. What was the nature
of the communications which are
said to have taken place in secret
between MM. Gambetta and Simon
cannot at present be known. Nor
can we unveil the mysteries of the
correspondence which has been
kept up during the last few years
between the controlling members
of the French Extreme Left and the
revolutionary leaders in England
and throughout the Continent of
Europe. The operations of the secret
societies are seldom brought to
light until after their work has been
accomplished—and not always even
then. The once famous “International
Society of Working-men” has
ceased to exist for all practical
purposes; but it, at the best, was
only an engine invented and put in
motion by men who still are laboring
in the secrecy of Masonic
lodge-rooms and in the caucus-chambers
of hidden political organizations
to accomplish the destruction
of Christian society and
Christian government. It cannot
be doubted that a certain solidarity
unites the socialists of France,
Germany, Switzerland, Belgium,
Greece, Hungary, Italy, Russia,
Spain, and Portugal, and that they
have the means of acting together.
The Gambetta faction in France by
no means stood alone in their recent
attempt to gain the upper hand in
the administration of the republic;
they had the active sympathy
and the moral support of their <i>confrères</i>
throughout Europe.

Now, the great bulwark of the
conservative republic in France is
the Roman Catholic Church, the
Roman Catholic faith, the Roman
Catholic people. So long as the
church is free and undisturbed in
France—free to pursue her work
of educating her children, preserving
morality, and saving souls—the
French people, of whom all but a
small fraction belong to her, will
remain tranquil and happy, and
.pn +1
they would make short work of
men who proposed to set up in
France a communistic and atheistic
republic. They are quite well
contented with the republic as it
at present exists, and are hopeful of
its future; under it the church for
the first time has been allowed full
right of teaching; and the avidity
with which Catholics availed themselves
of the privileges conferred
by the new university law sufficiently
attests at once their intelligence
and their zeal. Still, the Catholics
in France, like the Catholics
throughout the rest of the world,
have a sorrow and a grievance; and
French Catholics, like all other
Catholics, claim the right to express
this sorrow and to do what is
in their power to redress this grievance.
The earthly head of their
church is a prisoner in his own
city; he has been despoiled of his
patrimony and plundered of his
crown; his jailers threaten from
time to time to deprive him of the
little that is left to him; there is
positive danger that the freedom
of the election of his successor will
be assailed, and that the church
throughout the world may be subjected,
through the malice of her
foes at Rome, to the gravest perils.
The French Catholics conceive that
it is their right and their duty to
protest unceasingly against this
state of things, and to inspire their
government to speak in their name—and,
if occasion arises, to act in
their name—for the purpose of protecting
the Holy Father from further
insults and oppression, and of
seeking to bring about the peaceable
restoration of his independence.
In all this they are strictly within
the limits of their constitutional
rights as citizens of the French Republic.

Let us bring the matter home to
ourselves. Suppose that a petition
should be drawn up praying President
Hayes to instruct our minister
at Rome to represent to the
government of Italy that nine millions
of American Roman Catholics
felt themselves deeply aggrieved
and injured by certain acts of the
Italian government towards the
Pope, and that they considered
these acts all the more unjustifiable
because they were one and all in
open and undisguised violation of
the promises made by the Italian
government to the whole Catholic
world; suppose that this petition
should be signed by every Catholic
man and woman in the United
States and sent to the President;
would it be said, then, that we were
exceeding our rights as citizens,
and that we should be punished
for our temerity? The President
might do as he pleased with the petition;
he might act upon it or cast
it aside—that would be for him to
decide; but could we, as citizens,
be blamed and punished for exercising
the right of petition in order
to make known our feelings upon
a matter which touches us so
closely? Yet this is all that the
French Catholics have done; and
it is because of the solidarity of interests
and of purpose, of hope and
of fear, which exists between the
revolutionists and socialists of Italy
and of the other Continental nations
that the Gambettists in France were
spurred up to make this perfectly
legitimate action of the French Catholics
the pretext for a new and
desperate assault upon the liberties
of the church in France—an assault
under cover of which, and
aided by what seems to us very
much like treachery on the part of
M. Jules Simon, they hoped to
compel Marshal MacMahon to capitulate
to them.
.pn +1

The allocution of the Pope issued
on the 12th of last March had
moved to the very depths the
hearts of Catholics in France, as it
had moved the hearts of the Catholics
of every other land. They felt
that it was impossible for them to
remain silent after hearing that
most pathetic and powerful appeal;
they wished that their reply should
be as emphatic as possible, and that
it should consist of acts as well as
of words. They resolved to draw
up addresses to the Holy Father;
to organize pilgrimages to convey
these addresses, with their gifts, to
Rome; and to devise means whereby
they could express to their own
government their anxious wish that
it would use its influence with the
government of Italy in behalf of
the restoration of the independence
and freedom of the Pope. Each
of these projects was entered into
with commendable zeal; and early
in April the Bishop of Nevers addressed
a letter to Marshal MacMahon,
asking him, in the name of his
flock, to use the influence of France
at the court of King Victor Emanuel
and at other courts for the protection
of the Pope and for the restoration
of his rights. The marshal’s
cabinet at this moment were
greatly under the influence of M.
Jules Simon, the President of the
Council; they were imbued with
the idea that it would not be safe
for them to exasperate the Gambetta
faction; and they persuaded
the marshal to approve a letter addressed
by the Minister of Public
Worship to the bishop, in which entire
disapproval of his appeal was
expressed, with the remark that
“the marshal, as a sincere friend
of religion, saw with pain the clergy
intervening in internal, and still
more in foreign, politics.” The
Gambettists were encouraged by
this mark of weakness on the part
of the government, and prepared
to push their advantage. But the
Catholics did not choose to take
their views of duty from the dictates
of a Council whereof M. Simon
was the chief; and they continued
to organize their pilgrimages
and to draw up and circulate their
addresses to the Pope. On the
19th of April the Bishop of Nevers,
not at all disconcerted by the
rebuke which he had received from
the Cabinet, addressed a letter to
the Mayor of the Nièvre, in which
he explained to that official what,
in his opinion, was the duty of all
good Catholics occupying influential
positions.

.pm letter-start
“The Pope being no longer free in
Rome,” wrote the bishop to the mayor,
“the result is that we ourselves are no
longer free in our consciences, and we
consequently should use all our influence
to obtain a change in such an abnormal
state of things, and the restoration to the
sovereign of our souls of the independence
which he absolutely requires in
order to guide us. We must first instil
these views in the minds of the population
whose interests are confided to us.
We must then concert together to cause
similar convictions to prevail in the various
councils of the country.”
.pm letter-end

On the 20th, at a cabinet council,
the general petitions of the
Catholics addressed to the government
were taken into consideration,
and it was proposed that, in order
to silence the complaints of the
Gambettists, who were declaiming
violently that the circulation and
presentation of such memorials
would embroil France in a difficulty
with Italy, the bishops should be
ordered to forbid the further exposure
of these petitions in their
churches for signature. But the
marshal on this occasion displayed
a little more firmness and the matter
was passed over without action.
.pn +1
A few days before this an event
had occurred in Italy that served
to increase the distrust with which
Marshal MacMahon already regarded
the secret intentions of the leaders
of the Left. In Benevento, near
Letino, and again near Rome, the
government had arrested a number
of socialists who, it appears, were
engaged in a conspiracy for the
establishment of a Red Republic.
The papers found on the persons
of the arrested men were of the
usual inflammatory character, and
set forth, among other things, that
“man ought not to be subjected to
any tyranny, human or divine;
that the principle of private property
is the climax of infamy, because
it creates inequality between
men; that the union between men
and women ought to be free; and
that the state is the denial of the
most sacred principles.” The chief
leader of the band, who was arrested
with about fifty of his adherents,
was a young Milanese named Caffiero,
a man of wealth and position;
and an examination of his
papers disclosed the fact that his
association was only one of a large
number of others spread throughout
Europe, and that the names of
some of the leading radical republicans
of France appeared upon
a list which was believed to enumerate
the advisers and real leaders
of the conspirators. On the 28th
of April, however, the cabinet again
induced the marshal to make another
effort to conciliate the Gambettists,
who had redoubled their
agitation against the Catholic movement,
which had by this time become
very general throughout the
whole country. On that day the
Minister of the Interior issued a
circular to all prefects, directing
them to discourage the signature of
the Catholic protests and petitions
by not allowing them to be publicly
circulated within their respective
jurisdictions. The circular—to
which Marshal MacMahon assented
after much pressure—instructed
the prefects to regard
these petitions and protests as “an
unjustifiable and illegal interference
in the legislative and domestic affairs
of a friendly foreign state,”
and to do all in their power to suppress
them. Gambetta himself
could scarcely have said more; but
the marshal was quite correct in his
opinion that Gambetta would still
ask for more. Meanwhile, the <i>mot
d’ordre</i> to the Gambettists had
gone forth to strike terror into the
hearts of their opponents by public
manifestations. The students of the
Sorbonne were instigated into making
violent assaults upon the Catholic
universities; on the 1st of May
five hundred students assembled in
front of the Catholic university in
the Rue de Vaugirard, where they
insulted the Catholic students and
professors by indecent harangues
and by singing blasphemous parodies
of a hymn to the Sacred Heart;
dispersed by the police, they separated
only to assemble again before
the Jesuit school in the Rue de Shomond,
where the same disorderly
and disgraceful scenes were repeated
until the police arrived and arrested
the ringleaders of the mob.
In all the cities where the Gambettists
were sufficiently numerous
manifestations against the church
and her liberties were organized;
and in some cases the zeal of the
disciples so far outran the directions
of the leaders that it was with
difficulty the latter prevented the
former from outrages which would
have alarmed and disgusted the
whole country.

Affairs were in this condition
when the Chambers reassembled on
.pn +1
the 1st of May. The Left lost no
time in bringing forward their guns
and forcing the fighting. M. Leblond
was put up by them in the
Chamber of Deputies to give notice
of a question addressed to the
government “as to the measures
which it proposed to take to repress
Ultramontane intrigues.” M.
Jules Simon, hastening to comply
with the demands of the men with
whom, as it now appears, he was
secretly in accord, at once replied
that the debate on the proposed
question could take place on the
next day. The Catholic members
of the Chamber seem to have already
distrusted the sincerity of
M. Simon. One of them—the eloquent
and fearless Count de Mun—announced
that he and those who
acted with him insisted upon a
clear understanding of the position
of the government.

.pm letter-start
“We shall insist upon knowing,” said
he, “whether the government accept the
responsibility for the campaign that is
being waged by means of impure calumnies
against the Catholics of France.
The patriotism of French Catholics cannot
be called in question; it is above
suspicion. In what we are doing—in
what we wish to do—we are claiming
but our rights. We demand, however,
that the government, to which we give
our support, should free itself from the
responsibility for the attacks made upon
us, which render our position intolerable.”
.pm letter-end

M. Simon seems to have perceived
that matters were growing serious,
and that he could not much
longer continue to pretend to serve
two masters; but he resolved to
struggle still to maintain his position.
On the following day, after
M. Leblond had put his question
and supported it by a harangue in
which he urged that the government
should at once proceed to repress
by the most stringent means
“the Ultramontane intrigues,” M.
Simon addressed the Chamber in a
speech highly disingenuous and full
of double meanings. It was virtually
an appeal to the Gambetta
faction to permit him to remain in
power in order that he might do
their work; while at the same time
it was an attempt to throw dust in
the eyes of the Catholics by hypocritical
professions of respect for
religion and its rights. The government
had been blamed, he said,
for permitting Catholic newspapers
to assail Italy; but the government
could not prevent this; the law
would punish the writers, if what
they wrote was punishable under
the law. On the other hand, the
government would not tolerate any
attack upon the Catholic religion—“which
it sincerely respected”—and
would protect the rights and
liberties of Catholics. In fact, the
church in France enjoyed to-day
more freedom than at any previous
time. But it was necessary to limit
this freedom. For instance, the
government “tolerates” the existence
of Catholic societies so long
as they are used only for the purposes
set forth in their statutes, but
it had interdicted the Catholic committees
which were employed in
political undertakings and which
had “formidable ramifications.”
Having gone thus far, M. Simon
thought he might as well go a little
further, and he proceeded to make
a statement which was a direct insult
to the intelligence of the whole
Catholic world. “The Catholic
petitions and the demonstration
made by the Bishop of Nevers,”
said he, “<i>were based upon a fiction—namely,
that the Pope is a prisoner in
the Vatican</i>”; “the law of guarantees
has taken every care of the
spiritual independence of the Holy
Father”! And he then went on to
.pn +1
condemn the petitions as “an interference
in the internal affairs of
a neighboring country,” and to remind
the Chamber that the government
had done all in its power to
suppress these lawful manifestations
of Catholic feeling. The government,
he added, would continue to
protect the clergy as long as they
confined themselves to their spiritual
duties, but would in the future
punish them severely “if they encroached
upon the civil power”—that
is, if they continued to exercise
their freedom and to discharge
their duty by protesting against the
acts of the Sardinian robbers, and
by seeking to enlighten the public
mind and conscience as to the real
condition of the head of the universal
church.

This speech of the President of
the Council was a virtual surrender
to the Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta
was determined to force a
more formal and complete capitulation.
On the following day, May
4, he resumed the debate in a speech
which he had carefully prepared,
and which he delivered with great
eloquence and animation. Its spirit
is expressed in the sentence which
was received with the loudest applause
by the Extreme Left: “It is
time that lay society should drive
back the church to that subordinate
rank which belongs to her in the
state.” M. Gambetta, our readers
will perceive, is very far in advance
of M. Cavour. The Italian
statesman dreamed of “a
free church in a free state”; the
French revolutionist demands an
enslaved church in an atheistic
and communistic state. Listen to
him:

.pm letter-start
“The church has set citizens by the
ears, alarmed France, and troubled Europe.
It is always thus: the monarchy
was often compelled to resist the encroachments
of the church, but the republic
must do more, for now the state
is assaulted on all sides in the name of
religion and her very existence is threatened.
The Catholic leaders—ex-ministers,
senators, and members of this
Chamber—have exalted the Pope as the
supreme ruler of France and of the world;
when the Pope has issued an order they
exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and must
be obeyed.’ The Pope on the 12th of
March commanded that an agitation in
his favor should be everywhere set on
foot; immediately we behold deputations
of Catholic royalists calling upon the Minister
of Foreign Affairs, convocations
being held, and petitions circulated in
spite of the feeble pretences of the government
to suppress them. It will not
do to say that the church in France must
have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere;
she shall not have it, for the reason,
among others, that here the church
is bound to the state, and the state is responsible
for the language and the acts
of the bishops. No longer must it be
permitted that the Pope may address
himself directly to France, without having
first obtained the sanction of the civil
power, and without first submitting to
it his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No
longer must the bishops be allowed to
address themselves to mayors and prefects,
conveying to the civil functionaries
of the republic orders received from
Rome. It is useless to say that only a
few of the bishops have done these things;
for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy,
the church is unanimous, and
its submission to Rome is complete.
There is no such thing as resistance or
opposition in the church; the old Gallican
liberties have been swept away by
the Syllabus and by the Vatican Council.
The Pope must not be permitted again
to usurp the rights of the state, as he has
recently done in appointing one of his
bishops chancellor of a French university
and giving him the right of conferring
degrees. I cannot understand how it
happened that the papal instrument making
this appointment was ever permitted
to enter France! We must no longer
endure these things; we must drive
back the church to the place where she
belongs. We need not fear that the people
will not be on our side; if there is
one thing more than another that is repugnant
to France, it is the yoke of
clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly
.pn +1
said that clericalism is the enemy of
the country.”
.pm letter-end

To this bitter harangue M. Jules
Simon had no reply; he contented
himself with declaring that he and
the cabinet were not subject to the
dictation of any power behind the
throne, and that perfect harmony
existed between the marshal and
himself. He hastened to add that
he would accept, in the name of
the government, the order of the
day proposed by M. Leblond, which
was in these words:

.pm letter-start
“The Chamber of Deputies, considering
that the recrudescence of Ultramontane
manifestations constitutes a danger
to the domestic and foreign peace of the
country, calls upon the government to
make use of the lawful means which it
has at its disposal.”
.pm letter-end

This was adopted by a vote of
361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta
won his victory, and, so far as M.
Simon could pledge it, the government
was pledged to carry out the
demands of the foes of the church.
This was on the 4th of May. Marshal
MacMahon, it appears, hesitated
as to his future course; but it appears
also that he was conscious he
had been betrayed into an intolerable
position. He seems to have determined,
from that moment, to dismiss
M. Simon, and to appeal to the
country to sustain him in his refusal
to comply with the unconstitutional
and tyrannical demands of the revolutionists;
but, with what may
seem to some an unwise timidity,
he resolved to wait for some other
act on the part of M. Simon which
might be made the immediate ground
for his dismissal.

He had not long to wait. During
the next few days the sittings
of the Chamber were characterized
by great excitement and tumult.
M. Simon was made the target of
continual attacks; he was accused
of having formerly belonged to the
International Society, and of having
been morally in league with the
Communists who assassinated the
Archbishop of Paris. He defended
himself with vehemence, but his affiliation
with the Gambetta faction
became daily more apparent. He
promised to draw up and send to
the bishops a stringent circular,
warning them that they would be
held to a strict responsibility for all
their future acts. The Committee of
the Budget, on the 12th of May, reported
in favor of according the
sum annually paid for the support
of the church, $10,626,199; but it
accompanied this recommendation
with the remark that it was now the
duty of the government to revive
and enforce a number of obsolete
and almost forgotten laws which
had been enacted, from time to
time, by various governments which
had desired to enslave the church.
If these obsolete enactments should
now be enforced, no French bishop
could visit Rome without the consent
of the government; no subscriptions
for the Pope could be
raised in France; no papal brief
or bull could enter France, and no
council or diocesan synod could
assemble, without the consent of
the government; and the ecclesiastical
seminaries would be compelled
to teach that the civil government
is supreme in all things.
M. Simon, it was understood, was
about to enforce these unjust and
virtually abrogated restrictions, and
the Gambettists were in high feather.
But their exultation was soon
to be changed into disappointment
and rage.

The Chamber of Deputies had
before it a bill modifying the organization
of municipalities, and
another measure for the repeal of
.pn +1
the law on the restrictions of the
press which had been passed two
years ago to secure social order.
The cabinet had consulted upon
these measures and had agreed
upon the line which the ministers
should take in opposing them. To
this agreement M. Simon was a
consenting party; it was well understood
between him and the marshal
that when these measures
came up for decision M. Simon
should explain that the government
could not consent to them. But
the new masters of M. Simon held
him to the engagement he had
made with them; and when these
measures were brought forward M.
Simon found it convenient to be
absent from the Chamber, and the
government was again betrayed.
The patience of Marshal MacMahon
was now exhausted; he was perhaps
glad that M. Simon had so
soon furnished him with a sufficient
reason for his dismissal. Early on
the morning of May 16 the marshal,
having, it is said, passed a
sleepless night, addressed the following
note to M. Simon, and sent
it to him without consulting with
any of the other members of the
government:

.pm letter-start
“I have read in the <i>Journal Officiel</i> the
report of last night’s proceedings in the
Chamber of Deputies. I observed with
surprise that neither you nor the Keeper
of the Seals put forward from the tribune
the reasons which might have prevented
the repeal of a press law, passed less
than two years ago on the motion of M.
Dufaure, and which you yourself quite
recently wished to see applied in the
courts of law. And yet it had been decided
in several meetings of the cabinet,
and indeed in the council held yesterday
morning, that you and the Keeper of the
Seals should undertake to oppose the
motion for the repeal of the law.... In
view of such an attitude on the part of
the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally
arises whether he retains sufficient
influence to assert his views successfully,
An explanation on this point
is indispensable; for I myself, although
not, like you, answerable to Parliament,
have a responsibility towards France
which to-day more than ever must engross
my attention.”
.pm letter-end

M. Simon, upon receiving this
note, saw that between his two
stools he had fallen to the ground;
but he made one more effort to
again deceive the marshal. He
repaired to the Elysée with a letter
of resignation in his pocket; but
before presenting it he asked the
marshal if it were not possible that
they should continue to act together.
“No,” was the reply. “I have
gone as far as I can possibly go in
the wake of you and your allies; I
shall go no further.” M. Simon
then presented his letter of resignation,
which was composed mainly
of rather lame excuses for his absence
from the Chamber on the two
occasions complained of by the
marshal. Immediately afterwards
the other members of the cabinet
resigned, in order to leave the marshal
full liberty of action; and by
the time the Gambettists had eaten
their breakfasts they learned that
they had overshot the mark, and
that, instead of forcing Marshal
MacMahon to accept their revolutionary
programme, they had driven
him to dismiss from his councils
the man on whom they most relied,
and in all probability to surround
himself with men whom they could
neither frighten nor purchase.

The excitement among all the
members of the Assembly was great
as the news spread; and a meeting
of the Gambettists was called for
the same evening, at which a line
of action was laid down. One of
the first things to be done, it was
agreed, was to use the machinery
at their disposal “in order properly
to inspire foreign public opinion,”
.pn +1
so that it might react upon France;
and during the night “the republican
leaders sent to foreign journals
instructions to insert opinions
upon the crisis” which would have
the effect of alarming the marshal
by holding up before him the threat
of the displeasure of Germany and
Italy. The London journals were
especially inspired in this sense;
and it was thus that our own journals,
re-echoing this echo of the
Gambetta caucus, gave their readers
the idea that Marshal MacMahon
had dismissed his cabinet in
order to destroy the republic and
to engage at once in a war against
Italy for the restoration of the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope. The
session of the Chamber of Deputies
on the 17th was excited; and M.
Gambetta once more demonstrated
the foolishness of those who, deceived
by his affected moderation
and calmness during the last two
years, had believed that this <i>fou
furieux</i> had become a decent and
practical statesman. He moved
the resolution which had been
adopted at the caucus the preceding
night, and supported it in a
speech full of fire and venom. The
resolution, which the Chamber accepted
by a vote of 355 against 154,
simply declared that “the confidence
of the majority can only be
enjoyed by a cabinet which is free
in its action and resolved to govern
in accordance with republican
principles, which can alone secure
order and prosperity at home and
abroad”—words with which no one
can find fault. But M. Gambetta,
giving full vent to his rage at finding
himself foiled at the very moment
when he was dreaming of victory,
declared that the dismissal of M.
Simon had been brought about by
the intrigues of “a secret influence
with which no ministry could cope.”

.pm letter-start
“It is not true,” he cried, “that the
President of the republic bears a responsibility
over and above that of the
ministry. We must recall him to an
exact observance of the constitution, and
deliver him from perfidious counsels.
The country wishes to be rid of the
nightmare of those men of reaction who
show their livid faces at all moments of
uncertainty. If the Chambers are dissolved
we have no fear of the result,
but the country may see in it a prelude
to war. Criminals are those who would
provoke it.”
.pm letter-end

No one thinks of provoking war
save M. Gambetta and his friends,
and they are the only criminals.
Marshal MacMahon was not at all
dismayed by this loud talk; on the
same evening the new cabinet was
announced. The Duke Decazes
and General Berthaut, Ministers
of Foreign Affairs and of War in the
former cabinet, retained their portfolios;
the Duke de Broglie was
made President of the Council and
Minister of Justice; M. de Fourtou,
Minister of the Interior; M.
Caillaux, Minister of Finance; M.
Paris, Minister of Public Works;
M. de Meaux, Minister of Agriculture;
and M. Brunet, Minister of
Public Instruction. The cabinet
is a homogeneous and a respectable
one; as long as it remains in
office the country may be certain,
at least, that order will be maintained
and that the plots of the
Reds will be frustrated. During
the morning of the 18th the Gambettists
were very busy in preparing
to give battle to the new cabinet.
But they found themselves again
disconcerted by the firmness of
the President, who, exercising his
constitutional right, sent a message
to both houses, adjourning their
session until the 16th of June. In
this message Marshal MacMahon
explains that he has scrupulously
conformed to the constitution.
He appointed the cabinets of M.
.pn +1
Dufaure and of M. Simon with the
object of placing himself in accord
with the majority in the Chamber;
but neither of these cabinets were
able to unite in the Chamber a
majority capable of causing constitutional
and proper ideas to prevail.

.pm letter-start
“I could not,” the marshal went on to
say, “take a further step on the same
path without making an appeal to the
republican fraction which desires a radical
modification of all our institutions.
My conscience and my patriotism do not
permit me to associate myself even distantly
with the triumph of these ideas,
which can only engender disorder and
the humiliation of France; and so long as
I hold power I shall use it within legal
limits to prevent that consummation, for
it would be the ruin of the country. But I
am convinced the country thinks as I do.
It was not the triumph of these theories
which the country desired at the last elections,
when all the candidates availed
themselves of my name. If it were to be
again interrogated it would repudiate
such a confusion of ideas. I am firmly
resolved to respect and maintain the existing
institutions of the country. Until
1880 I can propose no modification, and
contemplate nothing of the kind. In
order to allow the excitement to calm
down, I invite you to suspend your sittings
for one month. You will then be
able to discuss the Budget. In the
meantime we will watch over the maintenance
of public peace. We will suffer
nothing at home tending to compromise
it; and it will be maintained abroad, I
am confident, notwithstanding the agitations
which disturb a portion of Europe,
thanks to our good relations with all the
powers and our policy of neutrality and
abstention. On this point all parties are
agreed, and the new cabinet holds the
same views as the old. If any imprudence
in the language of the press compromises
the concord which we all
desire, I shall repress it by legal means.
To prevent this I appeal to that patriotism
which is wanting in no class in
France.”
.pm letter-end

Violent were the scenes in both
Chambers when this message was
read, but they were cut short by
the firmness of the new ministers.
M. Gambetta attempted to speak;
his voice was drowned by shouts
of “Down with the Dictator!” In
the Senate M. Simon essayed to deliver
an oration, but the Duke de
Broglie announced that no one
could speak, as the President had
adjourned the session. The houses
separated in confusion, and the
Gambettists occupied themselves
during the next few days in issuing
inflammatory appeals to the country.
The new government began
without delay the task of strengthening
itself by the removal of disaffected
prefects, sub-prefects, and
other department officials, and this
work has been carried out with the
same thoroughness that is displayed
in our own country after a radical
administrative change.

All this is the prelude to an appeal
to the country in the shape
of a general election for a new
Assembly. The people will be summoned
to decide, not whether they
wish a republic or a monarchy, but
whether the republic shall be entrusted
to the extreme radical party
or to those who can and will
save France from the ruin into
which Gambetta and his crew would
engulf it. The decision will be
waited for with anxiety, but without
fear on our part. The French
people, we believe, are sound at
heart, and have no wish to resign
themselves into the hands of men
who fear not God nor regard man
save as a convenient tool for their
own ends. Meanwhile, however,
the utmost circumspection should
be exercised by the new government.
Prince Bismarck is enraged
when he sees France strengthening
herself; he is delighted when he
beholds her weakening herself by
internal dissensions. Thus growls
of displeasure at the check given
.pn +1
to the Gambetta party have already
been heard from Berlin, and the
German press has been instructed
to represent that the new French
administration intends “to restore
the Papacy through the humiliation
of Germany.” The Italian government,
troubled with a bad conscience,
indulges in similar anticipations;
and the first duty of the
Duke Decazes has been to reassure
these cabinets and to point out that
the French government wishes simply
to devote itself to the domestic
interests and safety of France. We
believe that this is the plain truth.
If Marshal MacMahon and his present
advisers are sustained, France
will be saved from domestic ruin,
and her salvation will go far towards
checking the revolution in
other countries.

The time will come, no doubt,
when France will again assert herself
in European affairs, but with a
wisdom gathered from her terrible
reverses and humiliation. For
those reverses she had no one but
herself to blame. They were the
bitter fruit of an overweening pride,
and of the desertion of those eternal
principles of justice and right,
and of the faith that embodies
them, close adherence to which
alone makes nations truly great.
France is coming back to her faith,
and with her faith will return her
greatness, her nationality, her life.
Before, however, she can make her
voice heard in Europe she must
speak in clear, calm, and not discordant
tones. She must be united
in herself, one nation, one people,
with one heart and one soul. It is
this that Germany dreads of all
things, and consequently the threats
and intrigues of Germany and Italy
will be exerted to the utmost in aid
of Gambetta and his faction, who,
indeed, have much strength of their
own. While we are far from thinking
that the contest will be an easy
one, we have little doubt as to the
final issue. The republic of order
in France is the Catholic republic.
The French nation is Catholic. All
the real glories of France are indissolubly
linked with the Catholic
name. Her greatest disasters are
as fatally linked with the party of
which Gambetta is to-day the ostensible
leader. It is time for Catholic
France to gather herself together
and arise in a strength that
she never before had the opportunity
of possessing. The way is
open. She stands now quite untrammelled
from alliances with any
dynasty or name. Her fate lies in
her own hands, and the honest soldier
who has guarded so well her
truest interests will not betray the
trust placed in him by his countrymen.
.pn +1
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Life of the Ven. Clement Mary Hofbauer,
C.SS.R.</sc> By the Author of the
Life of Catharine McAuley, etc. New
York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1877.
.pm letter-end

Father Hofbauer was a second St. Alphonsus
in the Congregation of the Redemptorist
fathers, and the founder of
the institute as existing outside of Italy.
He will probably be canonized; and it
would not be a matter of surprise if the
veneration for his memory in Austria and
the neighboring countries, in case this
solemn recognition is accorded to his
sanctity by the Holy See, should equal
that for St. Vincent de Paul in France.
He was a plain, simple man, of humble
origin, moderate parts and learning, but
truly angelic purity and miraculous sanctity.
The influence he obtained and the
good he accomplished are simply wonderful.
The history of his life is graphically
portrayed by the religious lady who
has written his biography. We could
wish that every priest and every ecclesiastical
student in the United States
might read it. The scandal and mischief
wrought by perverse men of brilliant
intellectual gifts, like Gioberti and
Döllinger, by apostate princes, faithless
prelates, and unworthy or careless priests,
are best repaired by such worthy successors
of the apostles as the Venerable
Father Hofbauer. The study of their
characters and actions is better than the
most thorough course of polemics, as an
antidote to every kind of pseudo-Catholic
liberalism.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Life of Christopher Columbus.</sc>
By Arthur George Knight, of the Society
of Jesus. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1877.
.pm letter-end

Christopher Columbus is, and always
will remain, one of the greatest figures
in history and one of the grandest of
Catholic heroes. He may be said to
have passed through all human experience.
He was born in poverty and
schooled in poverty. His days were
cast in one of those eventful periods in
the world’s history when “the old order
changeth, yielding to the new.” With
ideas in his mind just beyond his time,
and convinced himself of their truth
and power, he had to struggle hopelessly
for years under the most adverse circumstances
before he could imbue other
minds with the ideas that possessed him.
He could only think and talk and plan.
He was powerless to act, for lack of
means. He had the satisfaction of being
regarded as a dreamer by the enlightened
men of his time. At last his
ideas prevailed, and resulted in the discovery
of a new world.

Then came his hour of triumph—a triumph
unparalleled in history; and after
it, more bitter than his early struggles upwards,
ingratitude, contempt, chains, and
misery. There is nothing more romantic
than this story, nothing fraught with more
solemn lessons. Through all, through
triumph as through adversity, through
poverty as through greatness, stands out
the true Catholic, who cherished his
faith above all things, who in all things
looked first to the greater glory of God,
and who from first to last lived the life
of a practical Catholic. Indeed he was
truly a holy man, and strong efforts are
now being made for his canonization.

It seems strange that this great Catholic
figure should have fallen so completely
into Protestant hands. There are
admirable histories of him in English,
works that have won deserved fame for
their authors, but they are all written by
Protestants, who, however well disposed
they may be, must in the nature of things
make mistakes when treating of Catholic
subjects. Grave mistakes have been
made, not by Protestants alone, but by
Catholics also, in the story of Columbus’
life. It is with a view to rectify these
mistakes, and to present to the Catholic
reader the true story of a most important,
edifying, and interesting life that
Father Knight has written the present
volume. He has done his work thoroughly
well, and we have no doubt that
the book will become a favorite with all
classes of Catholic readers.
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Biographical Sketches of Distinguished
Marylanders.</sc> By Esmeralda
Boyle, author of <i>Thistledown</i>, <i>Felice</i>,
etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.
1877.
.pm letter-end

This little volume is replete with interest.
It recalls in graceful language
the memory of men who have honored
by their upright lives and heroic actions
the gallant State that gave them birth.
It is no small boast for Maryland that
no State in the Union has produced more
men distinguished for their ability, patriotism,
and, above all, a high-toned chivalry
which could never stoop to aught
having the flavor of dishonor about it.
These were the men who first won for our
country the recognition of European
scholars and statesmen. Their lofty
principles, their graceful accomplishments,
their scholarly attainments, and
their dauntless courage drew on them
the eyes of the world, and earned for
their mother State the proud reputation
she now enjoys. From the time that
Lord Baltimore landed on her shores to
the present day no public man has disgraced
the fair record or blurred a page
of the history of Maryland. And, indeed,
the beginning of her civilized days was
an eminently fit prelude to her whole
subsequent career. From out of the first
colony established on the banks of the
Chesapeake flowed the doctrines of religious
toleration and equal religious
rights to all men irrespective of clime
and color, at a moment when witch-burning
fires lighted up the settlements
of Massachusetts. The Indians of those
times for once felt that Christianity and
civilization were blessings and not a
cloak to avarice and tyranny. “From
the records left to us,” says Miss Boyle,
“it is evident that these teachers endeavored
by all mild and lawful means to
elevate the hearts of the Indians to a
knowledge of the true God. The Indian
of the present day, dwelling on the
border-lands of civilization, deems the
white man a traitor to his word, an enemy
to the Indian race, and a breaker of
compacts, whose perfidy must be retaliated
upon the innocent by fire and <i>tomahawks</i>.
This is rather a sad commentary
upon the savage or the Christian of our
times. Which is it?”

Miss Boyle appropriately begins her
series of biographical sketches with a
notice of that truly grand historic figure,
Daniel Dulany, the Nestor of the Maryland
bar. The unflinching advocate of
probity and truth, and a strong friend of
freedom, he distinguished himself fitly
for the first time by counselling opposition
to the famous Stamp Act. His eloquence
and fearlessness greatly helped
the cause of the Revolution; for although
he opposed immediate separation from
England, his burning words kindled the
fires of opposition to British rule. The
name <i>parce detortum</i> is the same as Delany
and indicates the Irish stock whence
he sprang.

The paper on Charles Carroll of Carrollton
is extremely interesting. It presents
a very life-like picture of that
great patriot, statesman, and devout Catholic.
We behold the courtly and polished
gentleman, tinged with the airs and
manners of an education acquired in the
gay capital of France. And though fashionable
Paris was at that time the hotbed
of infidelity, and Voltaire ruled supreme,
young Carroll never became so
imbued with the madness of the hour as
to abandon the strong Catholic principles
and spirit pious parents and teachers
had early implanted in his heart.
His name will ever remain an honor to
his native State, and his virtues and loftiness
of character an incentive to her
children to cling to the highest standard
of a true gentleman’s life.

It is evident that Miss Boyle had
abundant materials at hand, for she is
constrained at times to sacrifice method
to condensation; and this, perhaps, is the
worst that can be said of her interesting
volume. The sketch of the Most
Reverend John Carroll, first Archbishop
of Baltimore, is illustrative of this defect.
The writer labored under an <i>embarras de
richesses</i>, and passes too brusquely from
one incident to another.

It is not generally known, nor does
Miss Boyle make mention of the fact,
which has been already announced in
this magazine, that at the time when
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism,
was supplicating George III. to
send more troops to America for the purpose
of suppressing the unholy rebellion
against his majesty’s benign sway, Father
John Carroll, the Jesuit priest, was
on a mission to Canada, seeking the non-intervention
of that colony in the efforts
of the States to free themselves from the
yoke of British tyranny. And yet it is
almost a Methodist article of faith that
the Jesuits have ever been the enemies
.pn +1
of the republic, and the sons of John
Wesley its warmest friends.

William Pinkney, one of Maryland’s
most gifted sons, whose eloquence ranks
him with Pitt, Fox, and Burke, receives a
most fitting tribute from the pen of Miss
Boyle. The history of this wonderful
man should be known and closely studied
by the young men of our time; for
few lives exhibit a more perfect pattern
of true manliness. His struggles against
early poverty and the numerous difficulties
attending the efforts to acquire
knowledge in those times gave earnest
of his future success in life. The late
venerable Chief-Justice Taney spoke of
him in these words: “I have heard almost
all the great advocates of the United
States, both of the past and present generation,
but I have seen none equal to
Pinkney.” Rufus King, having once listened
to him exclaimed in a burst of
enthusiasm “that the speech of Pinkney
had enlarged his admiration of the capacity
of the human mind.” Of such
men is Maryland justly proud, and Miss
Boyle has performed a timely and praiseworthy
task in having brought us face to
face with the heroes of a past generation,
whose memory their native State should
ever delight to honor.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>Sidonie.</sc> (Fromont Jeune et Risler
Aîné.) From the French of Alphonse
Daudet. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.
1877.
.pm letter-end

We understand that this story has had
an enormous circulation in France. This
circulation we are inclined to attribute
rather to the author’s name than to any
special excellence in the book itself.
Alphonse Daudet is one of the pet French
novelists of the day, and it takes much
to destroy a well-earned reputation.
<i>Sidonie</i> is a repulsive story, told with
great skill, and embellished throughout
by those thousand and one delicate artistic
touches, lights and shades, of which
French writers alone seem to possess
the secret. M. Daudet is actuated by
the very laudable design of punishing
vice, and showing in a very strong and
real light the awful, the tragic misery it
brings upon the vicious and the good
alike. All very well. Novelists, however,
who take up this kind of theme—and
many are very fond of it—have an
unpleasant and untrue habit of making
their good people fools or simpletons.
It seems to us that, as a rule, good people,
particularly good women, are remarkably
keen in detecting falsehood and
scenting rascality. In <i>Sidonie</i> it is all the
other way. One detestable little wretch
of a woman, who has not half an ounce
of good in her whole system, sets all the
good people by the ears, destroys the
peace of happy families, ruins a great
business-house, causes the suicide of
several excellent and very charming
characters, and ends by retiring to that
kingdom from which she should never
have been called—Bohemia.

It seems to us a pity that an author
of such real power and skill in delineation
of character and plot as M. Daudet
should waste himself on the unutterably
mean. We are not of the opinion that
this world is given over to the dominion
of the devil and his servants. It is not
heaven to any of us; yet as between the
good and the bad, all things considered,
we believe that the good have the best
of the battle even in this life. Of course
novel-readers must have their villain,
male or female; and the female villain
must, of course, be very, very bad.
Their viciousness, however, could be
shown sufficiently, and the lesson it entails
inculcated, without making them
the pivots on which the world turns.
It is the noble, not the ignoble, who really
move the world; and until the race
of the noble is exhausted, novelists may
as well draw their heroes and heroines
from that class. At least we object to
their being for ever depicted as fools.

The translation of <i>Sidonie</i> is admirable.
It is from the graceful and cultivated
pen of Mrs. Mary Neale Sherwood.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>Legends of the Blessed Sacrament.</sc>
Gathered from the History of the
Church and the Lives of the Saints.
By Emily Mary Shapcote. London:
Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by
The Catholic Publication Society.)
.pm letter-end

This is in every sense a most beautiful
and attractive volume. The author has
collected a large number of legends
connected with the Blessed Sacrament.
These are abundantly and very handsomely
illustrated, and the letter-press
itself is admirable. There is much
more, however, than legends in the
volume. The devotion of the church
to the Blessed Sacrament is traced down
to the very days of the apostles, verified
by ample quotations, and illustrated by
pictures taken from the Catacombs and
.pn +1
the earlier monuments of Christian art.
This is indeed an excellent and most
valuable feature of the work. The whole
is in keeping. The devotion is brought
up to our own days, and its wonderful
growth and development brought out in
a clear and most interesting manner.
The author has done her work skilfully,
gracefully, and reverently. The admirable
preface shows how much she is inspired
by real love for and devotion to
the Blessed Sacrament. The last picture
in the volume is a large and admirably-executed
portrait of our Holy Father
Pope Pius IX.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>The Discipline of Drink</sc>: An Historical
Inquiry into the principles and
practice of the Catholic Church regarding
the use, abuse, and disuse
of alcoholic liquors, especially in
England, Ireland, and Scotland, from
the sixth to the sixteenth century.
By the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, of the
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.
With an introductory letter
to the author by His Eminence Cardinal
Manning, Archbishop of Westminster.
London: Burns & Oates.
1877.
.pm letter-end

The best notice we can give of this
valuable work will be to make a few extracts
from Cardinal Manning’s letter.
His Eminence says it is “the first attempt
to collect the counsels and judgments
of Catholic pastors and writers on
the use of wine and on the sin of drunkenness.”
He believes the book will be
“of signal use in clearing away a multitude
of prejudices, and perhaps some
more reasonable censures, which have
impeded the efforts we are making to
check the spread of intoxication.”
These “more reasonable censures” have
been called forth by the words and acts
of associations not in the unity of the
Catholic Church, and particularly by
Catholics having joined such societies
and adopted their “wild talk, worthy of
the Manichees.” Father Bridgett’s book,
then, “will show how broadly the
Catholic Church has always taught the
lawfulness of using all things that God
has made, in all their manifold combinations,
so long as we use them in conformity
to the law of God. Drunkenness
is not the sin of drink, but of the
drunkard.” On the other hand, “in
every utterance of the church, and in
every page of Holy Scripture, wine is
surrounded with warnings,” says his
Eminence, and adds that our author has
“done well to point out that a new and
more formidable agent of intoxication
even than wine has in the last three centuries
confirmed its grasp, chiefly upon
the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races.”
So that “no exact precedents can be
found in the past action of the church as
to the way of dealing with an evil new
in its kind, and so far more formidable
both in its spread and in its intensity”;
while at the same time “the principles
of the church are always the same, and,
in bringing forth things new and old,
forms may vary, but the mind and action
are immutable.” The cardinal then
proceeds to give his own views of what
should be done. He is in favor of “a
widely-extended organization,” and advocates
total abstinence as the only hope
for multitudes, and a specially meritorious
act of self-denial in those who do not
need it themselves, but embrace it for
the sake of others. But—and to this we
would call particular attention—the
“widely-extended organization” should
comprise, in his opinion, those who are
not total abstainers. He expresses satisfaction
at Father Bridgett having quoted
in the appendix some words of his
own. We quote them, too, because we
most heartily agree with them: “Now,
my dear friends, listen! I will go to my
grave without tasting intoxicating liquors;
but I repeat distinctly that any
man who should say that the use of wine
or any other like thing is sinful when it
does not lead to drunkenness, that man
is a heretic condemned by the Catholic
Church. With that man I will never
work. Now, I desire to promote total
abstinence in every way that I can. I
will encourage all societies of total abstainers.
But the moment I see men
not charitable attempting to trample
down those who do not belong to the
total abstainers, from that moment I will
not work with those men. I would have
<i>two kinds of pledge</i>: one for the mortified
who never taste drink, and the other for
the temperate who never abuse it. If I
can make these two classes work together,
I will work in the midst of them. If I
cannot get them to work together, I will
work with both of them separately.”

Father Bridgett has given in his appendix
“a summary of the principal Catholic
organizations which have lately been
set on foot in these countries” (England,
.pn +1
Ireland, and Scotland). Some of these
organizations include <i>partial</i> abstinence in
their rules. Another society is mentioned
as existing in some parts of Germany,
and approved by His Holiness Pius IX.
and enriched with indulgences. The
members of this last promise total abstinence
from <i>distilled</i> liquors, and <i>sobriety</i>
in the use of <i>fermented</i> drinks.

We hope this labor of love from the
pen of Father Bridgett will have the circulation
it deserves.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>Spirit Invocations</sc>; or, Prayers and
Praises publicly offered at the <i>Banner
of Light</i> circle-room free meetings by
more than one hundred different
spirits, of various nationalities and religions,
through the vocal organs of
the late Mrs. J. H. Conant. Compiled
by Allen Putnam, A.M., author of
<i>Bible Marvel-Workers</i>, <i>Natty: a Spirit</i>,
etc. Boston: Colby & Rich. 1876.
.pm letter-end

<i>Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat</i>
would be an appropriate motto for this
hodge-podge of nonsense and lunacy.
Imagine a sane man being called on to
believe that he is listening to prayers
offered by the spirits of Tom Paine and
Cardinal Cheverus through the same set
of “vocal organs”! It is evident that
the “prayers” were all ground from one
mill, as there is the utmost sameness
pervading them. Tom Paine condescending
to come down from the pedestal
of his celestial greatness, and praying
with unctuous fervor to the God he
blasphemed on earth, is a spectacle highly
refreshing; but more astonishing still
is it to find him surpass Father de Smet
and Cardinal Cheverus in the ecstatic
intensity of a mystical devotion. “We
pray not for more blessings,” exclaims
the pious Thomas; “we only pray that
we may appreciate those already received;
and when we lift up our souls in
prayer, asking that thy kingdom may
come on the earth, we do but ask that
thy children in mortal may know themselves
and their relations to thee.”

It is evident that the author of the
<i>Age of Reason</i> has materially changed
his “spirit” since he exuviated his mortal
coil, or perhaps he has deftly substituted
that of Mr. Putnam, A.M., for his
own. This, we rather suspect, is the case.
Theodore Parker, too, has been to camp-meeting
up above; for a great change
has come over the “spirit” of the frigid
founder of New England transcendentalism.
He prays with a <i>vim</i> that no
leader of a revival at Sea Cliff or Sing
Sing could ever hope to emulate, and
appears shamefully unlike the Rev. O.
B. Frothingham’s ideal of a hero. Some
of the prayers are quite touching, and
sound as if they had been pilfered from
Catholic books of devotion.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>Known too Late.</sc> By the author of
<i>Tyborne</i>, <i>Irish Homes and Irish Hearts</i>,
etc., etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet &
Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This little volume bears the impress
of patient and painstaking care. The
author is the happy possessor of a pure
and pleasant style, and yet throws off
nothing carelessly, as too many with facile
pens are disposed to do. The narrative
is done in subdued colors, and nowhere
is good taste shocked by the utterance
of extravagant or whimsical sentiments.

The plot of the story unfolds itself
quite naturally, and, though the <i>dénoûment</i>
is a hard one to bring about, it is
done so ingeniously as not to appear at
all violent. We can conscientiously say
of this little book that it is a shade in
advance of Catholic stories generally
and is well deserving a perusal.
.sp 2

.pm letter-start
<sc>The Paradise of the Christian Soul.</sc>
By James Merlo Herstius, of the
Church of the B. Virgin Mary in Pasculo
Pastoris, at Cologne. A new and
complete translation. By lawful authority.
London: Burns & Oates.
(For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
.pm letter-end

A most complete manual of prayer for
ordinary use. One cannot tire of it.
The present edition is illustrated; but
the illustrations might easily have been
improved.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 149.—AUGUST, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=crisis
THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE AND ITS BEARINGS.
.sp 2
.h4
I.—QUESTION STATED.
.sp 2
The attention of the world at
large is at present fastened on two
important movements—the war between
Russia and Turkey and the
recent political changes in France.
Both of these have the same origin,
but the aspect of each is different.
No one will dispute that both are
fraught with most momentous interests,
that their development will be
watched with great concern, and
that it is not impossible that their
final issue may change the religious
features no less than the territorial
limits of Europe.

Our purpose in this article is to
confine the attention of our readers
to the affairs of France; not
with the design of narrating the
successive events which brought
about the present crisis,[#] but with
a view to the principles involved in
the struggle and their bearing on
the great interests of Europe, actual
and prospective.

.fn #
See <sc>The Catholic World</sc>, July, 1877:
“Marshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists.”
.fn-

What agitates France at this moment
is not an “ultramontane” and
“clerical intrigue” to restore “the
temporal princedom of the Pope,”
or an “anti-republican” plot of legitimists
to place Henry V. on the
throne of his ancestors, as our daily
newspapers of all political parties
and the weekly Protestant journals
of every sect would have the public
believe. The real political leaders
in France today are representative
of none of these parties, nor
are they champions of their distinctive
principles or advocates of
their cherished measures. They
have other fish to fry. Some of
the newspaper writers and correspondents
would persuade their
readers that the change of front
in France by the government is
owing to the influence exerted by
Madame MacMahon over the President
of the Republic, her husband.
Drowning men catch at straws, and
men who lack common sense clutch
at any flimsy pretext to bolster up a
foolish project.

The day of the supremacy of
such influence in great state affairs
is gone by; and, even were it not,
the character of the men engaged
.pn +1
in this weighty piece of political
strategy is not made of stuff that
would incline them to be led by
the nose by a woman, whatever may
be her reputation for piety or her
supposed or declared inclinations
for legitimacy. We venture the
opinion that the most estimable
Christian wife of the Marshal-President
of the Republic of France
is not wasting her time in fruitless
political intrigues, but employs it
better in telling her beads, in taking
care of her children, and in
works of charity to her neighbor.
All these are random shots.

The raising of such false issues,
however, serves the purpose of
their inventors in throwing the public
attention off the true scent, and
thereby prolonging the opportunity
for them to invent new schemes
against public order and society
under the restored leadership of
the octogenarian, M. Thiers. This
was their manœuvre in 1871, and
“Prince Bismarck regretted the fall
of M. Thiers, because he would
have infallibly thrown France into
the arms of M. Gambetta and
anarchy.”[#] They also afford them
additional chances of escape from
the due and certain punishment
which is impending over them.

.fn #
See Count von Arnim’s pamphlet, <i>Pro Nihilo</i>.
.fn-

These pretexts show also the
craft of those who make them and
the simplicity of their dupes. For
they are well aware that there is a
large class of persons, especially in
Protestant communities, whose prepossessions
are stronger than their
attachment to Christianity, and
there are no absurdities too great for
them to swallow, provided only you
bait them with the cry of “Popery!”
“Vaticanism!” “Clericalism!” As
for those who are caught by the cry
of “anti-republicanism,” they appear
not to understand that a king
without the popular instincts of a
people in his favor is a mere cipher,
and that the age is past and
never again to return, at least in
Europe, when, as an Eastern despot,
the king dare say: “<i>L’Etat, c’est
moi</i>.”

The transformation that has taken
place in the nations of Europe,
the expansion of their narrow lines
of policy into broader political
principles, has been so rapid and
powerful that its force in our day
has passed beyond all possible
human control. These principles
have become profound convictions,
and for not heeding them the people
of France dethroned Charles
X. and Louis Philippe; and were
Henry V. placed to-day upon the
throne of France with the intention
of attempting to restore the
ancient <i>régime</i>, it would be as vain,
even though he should have Marshal
MacMahon and the army at
his command to back him, as an
effort to stem and throw back the
mighty torrents that pour their waters
over the precipice of Niagara.

The tendency of modern society
to a political equality, without distinction
of the privileges of birth
or rank, has its root in the spirit of
Christianity. The Catholic Church,
in this sense, is the most democratic
institution that has ever existed
upon this earth. There is no barrier
in the path for its humblest
member to become its chief in
power and dignity. It is not seldom,
too, that those who have risen
from the lowest walk in life have
been elected to this high position.
The spirit of an age, rightly interpreted,
is the breath of the Almighty
stirring within men’s souls, which
finds its utterance in their voices,
even in spite of themselves. Nowhere
has the Catholic Church
.pn +1
been given such fair play, though
this is yet imperfect, as in the
democratic republic of the United
States. This fact has been recognized
by the supreme pastor of the
faithful, Pius IX., and again and
again he has called the attention of
the world to it.

France has the opportunity under
the presidency of Marshal MacMahon,
if she only knew how to profit
by it, of forming a political government
adapted to the genius and character
of her people and in harmony
with her present wants and future
greatness; to govern herself, if she
wishes it, independently of an emperor
or a hereditary monarch; and
this task will be accomplished, unless
hindered by that enemy of all rational
liberty—a destructive radicalism.
If the young Napoleon,
or the Count of Paris, or Henry
V. ascends the throne of France,
it will be due to the Thierses, the Simons,
and the Gambettas and their
abettors.
.sp 2
.h4
II.—TWO MOVEMENTS IN THE WORLD.
.sp 2
There have been from the beginning
only two fundamental
movements in this world, and these
are becoming in Europe more and
more distinct, powerful, and antagonistic.
The one has its source
in the Catholic Church, which is
the concrete form of the direct action
of God on society in view of
man’s true destination. The other
consists in rebellion against this
divine action, and finds on earth
its headquarters and expression in
heresies, in despotisms, and, more
particularly in recent days, in organized
secret societies.
.sp 2
.h4
III.—FIRST MOVEMENT.
.sp 2
The order and stability of modern
society and civilization are
based upon the truths which find
their root and support in the doctrines
unswervingly taught and uncompromisingly
upheld by the Catholic
Church. Among these great
truths are the divinity of Christ
and the divine establishment and
perpetuity of his church upon
earth; the unquestionable responsibility
of both kings and peoples to
the law of God; the indissolubility
of the marriage tie and the sacredness
of the family; the reign of the
law of justice between man and
man, and, when violated, the strict
obligation of restitution; the sacredness
of oaths and the equality
of all men, without distinction of
rank, color, or race, before God. By
the undeviating application of these
and other great first truths of divine
revelation and of human reason,
at the cost of the lives of millions
of her children; by withstanding
the fierce attacks of the barbarians
of the northern forests of Europe;
by her contest with Mahomet
and his followers; and by her resistance
to the errors and vices of her
inconsistent and disobedient children,
the Catholic Church formed
the conscience of modern society,
founded the nations of Europe,
united them in a universal commonwealth
called Christendom, in
view and as the means of establishing
the reign of God in men’s souls
and upon earth, as preliminary to
the kingdom of heaven hereafter,
issuing finally into the Christian
cosmos.

Such has been the work of the
first movement.
.sp 2
.h4
IV.—SECOND MOVEMENT.
.sp 2
All heresies, all despotisms, all
secret societies have this postulate
in common: that the overthrow of
the Catholic Church is a <i>sine qua
non</i> to their attaining ultimate success.
.pn +1
Hence there is an instinctive
and unanimous sympathy
among their adherents whenever
there is an attack aimed against the
Catholic Church—an unmistakable
sign of their common origin and an
unquestionable proof of their parentage.
Peoples of countries distinguished
for their profession of
universal toleration and championship
of the right of every individual
to the enjoyment of his own
religious convictions will applaud
to the skies the violation of these
principles, provided the persecuted
be only Catholics! Every right
guaranteed by constitutional law,
every principle of divine and human
justice, may be trampled under
foot—yea, with sympathy and applause—provided
those who do so
are animated with hatred for the
Catholic Church! Witness the
public sympathy, both in England
and the United States, with the war
of imprisonments, fines, and banishments
waged against Catholics,
with murderous intent against their
church, by the “iron and blood”
chancellor of the Hohenzollern
Empire; witness the confiscations
and sacrilegious spoliations by the
crew of infidels of Italy, led by a
Mancini, against the church; witness
the banishment of all the
Catholic priests without exception
from its district, in violation of the
federal constitution, by the canton
of Berne, and the robbery of the
churches built by the sacrifices of
loyal Catholics, which are given
over to the use of a rebellious and
insignificant faction by the authorities
of the Swiss so-called republic;
witness, to come nearer home, the
assassination, by the agents of secret
societies, of the President of Equador,
and, within a few weeks, the
poisoning of the Archbishop of
Quito at the altar! There are none
to raise a voice, not to say a cry of
horror or indignation, among these
sticklers for liberty and justice, in
condemnation of this wholesale tyranny,
these cruel persecutions, and
this secret and deadly violence.
This is well known by the atheists,
who aim at the ruin of all Christian
institutions: that to delude a large
class in these so-called liberty-loving
countries, and gain their sympathy,
material aid, and the use and
support of their press, all that is required
to make them run like an
enraged bull at a red rag is to shout
lustily, “Ultramontanism!” “Vaticanism!”
“Popery!”

Herein lies also the interpretation
of the assertion of the governments
actuated by an anti-Christian
spirit and under the influence of
members of secret societies, to
whom they are bound to trim, that
the present attitude of France
is dangerous to the peace of Europe.
That is, the secret designs
of radicalism are detected, and
their plots are in danger of being
checkmated. “Let the galled jades
wince.” At the same time it gives
the explanation of the motives
of Marshal MacMahon, which is
nothing else than to head off the
efforts of these anti-Christian conspirators,
and prevent France from
falling into their hands and the civilized
world from witnessing the repetition
of the atrocities of the Commune
of the <i>petroleuse</i> notoriety of
1871. A large portion of the people,
and with them the press, of
England and the United States, is
duped by cunning and designing
men; and probably, if all were
known, a portion of Bismarck’s
Reptile Fund has found its way to
their shores and done some service.

The present crisis in France is
fraught with her deliverance as well
.pn +1
as that of Europe from the most
desperate and wide-spread organized
conspiracy that has ever existed
in the world. They fail to interpret
rightly public events and to
discern the signs of the times who
take it to mean anything less than
the saving of Christianity and modern
civilization in Europe.

.pm verse-start
                “Let order die!
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end
And darkness be the burier of the dead.”
.pm verse-end

Such is their aim, and it is also
their undisguised and outspoken
word; for these men “know not
how to blush.”[#]

.fn #
If any of our readers wish authentic information
on this point, they will find it abundantly in
a book entitled <i>Les Libéraux Peints par Eux-Mêmes</i>.
Par G. Lebrocquez. Paris: Victor
Palmé, 1876.
.fn-

And these are the chief characteristics
of the second movement.
.sp 2
.h4
V.—THE LINES OF BATTLE.
.sp 2
The explosion of the first mine
laid by secret societies has been
heard in the outbreak of the war
between Russia and Turkey, if we
are to credit Disraeli, than whom
no man is in a position to be better
informed of the decisions gone
forth from their secret revolutionary
headquarters. Unless thwarted
by a counter movement, prompted
by the instincts of self-preservation
on the part of all the Christian
and conservative elements of
European society, we may expect
to hear, as in 1848, the successive
explosions of revolution in Paris,
Vienna, Rome, Madrid, and Berlin;
and being more skilfully planned,
and more extensively spread, and
more powerful, a revolutionary upheaving
of the populations in St.
Petersburg and London as well as
in the lesser centres of Europe, is
not improbable.

Men who read in consequences
their causes will not fail to see the
significance of the position taken
by the President of the Republic of
France; for, whatever may be his
reputation as a politician, his military
sagacity and strategical genius
are unquestioned. President
MacMahon’s change of cabinet is
the first declared, earnest, and decided
step taken to avert from
France and all Europe this great
and threatening catastrophe. For
Jules Simon surreptitiously attempted
to insert the edge of the radical
wedge, whose butt end is made up
of socialism, communism, and anarchy,
into the Republic of France,
which M. Gambetta, his aspiring
and designated successor, would
have energetically and logically
driven home and riven her asunder,
to the delight of her enemies
and to the advantage of her foes.
Let us hope that the President of
France has taken time by the forelock.

The die is cast; there can no
longer be any neutrality or secondary
motives to divide one’s allegiance
between these two distinctly-drawn
camps. He is a traitor to
Christ and a renegade Christian
who stands aloof or hesitates which
side to take when a battle is fairly
drawn between Christianity and
atheism. Every Christian, whatever
may be his peculiar tenets, will
make common cause when the primary
truths of divine revelation
and the first principles of morality
are at stake. All political party
designations will be sunk into oblivion
by men who intelligently and
disinterestedly love their country
and their race, when both society
and civilization are endangered.

The present crisis in France is a
.pn +1
call to both religion and patriotism,
in their best and widest sense, to
unite in a common defence of their
truest and highest interests.

There is no alternative, and he
who does not see this battle imminent
in Europe is like an officer
on board of a ship, lulled in a dream
of false peace or disputing about
the rigging of his vessel when the
enemy is fastening a torpedo to
its bow that will in a few seconds
blow them all into atoms and send
their vessel to the bottom of the
ocean.

The conservative elements, if not
from higher motives, will be forced
to unite from the instinct of self-preservation
to save their property
from the <i>petroleurs</i> and their necks
from the guillotine.
.sp 2
.h4
VI.—THE ISSUE OF THE BATTLE.
.sp 2
This movement in its weak beginnings
in France, regarding only
impending dangers to the state,
will not exhaust itself until it has
restored the Catholic Church to
her normal position in Europe.
This final result is no more intended
by the leaders of the movement
than it was the design of the Allied
Powers to restore the Papacy at the
downfall of the first Napoleon. It
is a divine law that man acts, but
God directs.

.pm verse-start
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
.pm verse-end

There is, then, this increasing purpose
running through the history
of God’s dealings with the human
race: to bring into clearer light the
divine character of his church, his
spouse, rendering it less and less
possible for men to recognize his
existence and not be Christians,
and, being Christians, not to be
Catholics. This is the key of universal
history.

There is not an “ultramontane,”
a “clerical,” or a “papist,” in the
sense in which these words are
used by those hostile to the actual
movement in France; and if its
final outcome be favorable to the
Catholic Church, it is because this
is the nature of things.
.sp 2
.h4
VII.—ERRORS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
.sp 2
Europe for the past century has
been in the state of transition to a
new epoch—a renewal of Catholicity.
This statement is in flat contradiction
with the assertions of
some modern thinkers who claim
the title of philosophers. They
would have us believe that religious
motives—or, as they term it,
“theological motives,” which is the
same thing; for theology is nothing
else than the scientific statement of
religion—are exhausted. This is
equivalent to saying that human
nature is exhausted; for religion is
what lies deepest in human nature,
and consequently all other motives
will be exhausted before those of
religion.

Religion is the very essence of
man’s nature; for it springs from
the intellectual sense of his entire
dependence for existence on an absolute
cause. Religion is, in its
last analysis, reason’s recognition
of God and man’s fulfilment of his
relations to God. Religion and
reason are, therefore, correlative.

Men who pretend that religious
motives have ceased to have a
strong hold upon human nature
labor under a complete hallucination.
First they fancy that those
faculties through which God acts
on the soul, and which bring the
soul in contact with God, have by
some strange freak suddenly become
defunct. That religious motives
to an almost incredible extent
.pn +1
have become extinct in some men’s
souls we, with pain and pity, admit;
that this is the case with the bulk
of mankind is an egregious mistake.
There has seldom been an age when
religious questions occupied so large
a share of intellectual attention as
our own; and religious motives still
influence the bulk of mankind in
their conduct.

It is too true, however, that a
class of men have fatally succeeded,
by a false education and an erroneous
philosophy, in paralyzing the
action of the noblest faculties of
the soul; but this disease is confined
to a small class. Deluded
men! they would have the rest of
mankind to esteem their descent as
a privilege and count their defect
an honor.

The second form in which the
symptoms of this malady manifest
themselves is the eschewing of the
first principles of sound logic. As
“God is a provisionary idea,” or
“man’s intuition of himself projected
into space,” or “the creation of
a wish”—so runs their premise;
and the religious faculties of the
soul having become extinct, they
jump to the most absurd of all conclusions:
“God is extinct,” “the
soul’s immortality is a fable,” and
“religion is a worn-out superstition”!
The inspired Psalmist
wrote in his day that none but
“the fool said in his heart, There
is no God.” Were he now to
come upon earth, he would be surprised
to see the fools of his time
dressed in the garb of philosophers
and proclaiming from the house-tops
as the highest wisdom, “God
is extinct!” These delirious minds
are like the ostrich, which, when
on the point of being captured,
blinds its eyes by thrusting its head
under the sand, and foolishly fancies,
because of its incapacity to see,
it has destroyed its pursuers and
escaped all danger.

.pm verse-start
              “Le nid n’a pas créé l’oiseau.”

“I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl
Is like a beast some evil spirit chases
Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl,
While round about lie fair, green pasturing places.”
.pm verse-end

The eternal God is, and in him
is all that lives, moves, and exists,
and his providence directs all things
to the end for which he called them
into existence.

The world is not out of joint,
nor is the responsibility of setting it
right placed upon the unsteady and
feeble shoulders of inventors of
absurd religions, the cogitators of
false philosophies, or the dreamers
of sterile Utopias.

God is not ousted from his creation
as easily as these ambitious
philosophers, who are so ready to
occupy his place in the universe,
would have the world believe.
.sp 2
.h4
VIII.—MISTAKE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS.
.sp 2
The mistake of a class of speculative
thinkers consists in regarding
the state of transition of society
from one epoch to another—in interpreting
a phase of religion—as
the change and vanishing of the
indestructible elements of all religion.

A certain class of truths suits one
age, awakens the greatest enthusiasm
and profoundest devotion, and
in another epoch falls dead almost
upon the ears of men and hardly
calls forth an audible response.
Epochs differ from epochs in their
aspirations and instincts, like those
of individuals; and this is a law
of the providential education and
growth of the human race. One
race of men differs from another in
its capacity to seize hold of, appreciate,
and give the proper expression
.pn +1
to certain truths, and in
turn is brought to the front ranks
in the providential march of humanity.
And this is the intention
of the Author of the human family.
Men of the same race differ also
greatly from each other; for in the
wide universe there are no two
things in all respects precisely
alike, and in this is seen displayed
God’s creative power.

These separate epochs, this variety
of races, and these differences
among men afford to Christianity
the opportunities and means of giving
expression to the great truths
contained in all religions of which
she is the adequate representation.
For Christianity is the synthesis of
all the scattered truths of every
form of religion which has existed
from the beginning of the world,
and the Catholic Church is its complete
organic, living form. Christianity
is the abstract expression of
the Catholic Church, which, in the
successive centuries of her existence,
has come in contact with
every race of men, and has known
how to Christianize and retain them
in her fold in harmony with their
natural instincts. She has met humanity
in every stage of its development,
from the intellectual and
refined Greek to the man-eating
savage, and, by working on the
foundations of nature, she has
captivated them to the easy yoke
of Christ. The Catholic Church
alone has known how to supply the
defects of human nature and correct
its vices while giving free play
to its instincts and retaining the
charm of its native originality—not
by a superior human sagacity
or a preternatural craft, as sophists
would make the world believe, but
because in her dwells that divine
Spirit which breathed into man’s
nostrils the breath of life, and made
him a living, rational, immortal soul,
and in whom he lives, moves, and
has his being.

God is not extinct nor are religious
motives effete. The mistake
of these theorizers consists in supposing
that the present is the finality
of Christianity, whereas the
hand of God is opening the way
by purifying his church, by directing
the movements of nations and
the issues of the world, in order
that she may shape the coming future
beyond all past experience in her
progressive approach to the perfect
realization of her divine Ideal.

.pm verse-start
“An age comes on, which came three times of old,
When the enfeebled nations shall stand still
To be by Christian science shaped at will.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
IX.—NEW UNITED CHRISTENDOM.
.sp 2
Are the intelligent Christians of
our day sufficiently aware of the
serious character and the extent
of the dangers which are now impending?
Do they appreciate the
import of the questions which engage
and agitate the active intellect
of their contemporaries? Are
they sensible of the weight of their
responsibilities, and ready to lift
their minds and hearts to the grandeur
of the mission of the age in
which their lot is cast?

He who can see things as they
are throughout the world where the
Christian faith has spread, and appreciate
them rightly, cannot help
seeing that a fresh unfolding of the
great design of Christianity in all
its simplicity, vastness, and splendor,
and a stricter application of its
principles in the several spheres of
life, alone are adequate to meet all
the genuine aspirations and satisfy
the honest demands of this age.

The attack is against the primary
truths of reason no less than the
essential truths of divine revelation,
and the defence, to be adequate
.pn +1
and victorious, must at least
be equal to the attack. Thus the
law of reaction is forcing upon the
leading Christian minds a reaffirmation
of natural and revealed
truths with a completeness and a
force which the world has not up
to this time witnessed. There can be
no compromise with the false principles
of atheists in religion, revolutionists
in the state, and anarchists
in society. Their errors must be refuted
and their movements counteracted.
The positive side of truth
must be brought out and clothed in
all its beauty. The true picture
must be presented and contrasted
with the false, so as to captivate
the intelligence and enlist the enthusiasm
of the active minds of the
youth of the age. This is the great
work that, in the economy of God,
is mainly left to the initiative of individual
minds of the members of
his church. It is the work of Catholic
genius illuminated by the
light and the interior inspirations
of the working of the Holy Spirit.
The Church, in every critical or important
epoch in her history, has always
given birth to providential
men; these are her Gregories,
Augustines, Benedicts, Bernards,
Francises, Neris, Ignatiuses, Vincents
of Paul.

As in the past, so in the present,
a new phase of the church will be
presented to the world—one that
will reveal more clearly and completely
her divine character. “It
is the divine action of the Holy
Spirit in and through the church
which gives to her organization the
reason for its existence. And it is
the fuller explanation of the divine
side of the church, and its relations
with the human side, giving always
to the former its due accentuation,
that will contribute to the increase
of the interior life of the faithful,
and aid powerfully to remove the
blindness of those—whose number
is much larger than is commonly
supposed—who only see the church
on her human side.”[#]

.fn #
<i>An Exposition of the Church, in view of recent
Difficulties and Controversies and the present
Need of the Age.</i> London: Pickering. 1875.
<sc>The Catholic World</sc>, April, 1875, p. 128.
.fn-

The reintegration into general
principles of the scattered truths
contained in the religious, social,
and political sects and parties of our
day would reveal to all upright
souls their own ideal more clearly
and completely, and at the same
time present to them the practical
measures and force necessary to its
realization. By this process sects
and parties and antagonisms would
become as far as possible extinct—not
by way of antagonism, but by
the power of assimilation and attraction.
Just as the lesser magnet
is drawn to the greater by cords
of attraction identical with its own,
only more intense, more powerful,
and all-embracing, so the fragmentary
truths contained in error,
when reintegrated in their general
principles, will be drawn to
them and their division disappear.
Christianity once more will be perfect
in one, and, uniting its forces
for the conversion of the world,
will direct humanity as one man to
its divine destination.
.sp 2
.h4
X.—THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
.sp 2
Is not such a consummation the
answer to the devout aspiration of
all sincere Christian souls? Is it
not also the promise of Christianity,
and was it not the object of the most
earnest prayer of its Founder when
upon earth? The Son of God did
not pray in vain.

Underneath all the errors and
evils found among men of all times
.pn +1
is the prime desire for the knowledge
of the truth and the native
hunger for the good. Now, the
absolute truth which contains all
truth, and the absolute good which
contains the supreme good, is God.
God is therefore the ideal of the rational
soul, the term of all its seeking,
and the end of all its wishes.
The perfect union of the soul with
God is bliss.

Again, Christianity does not confine
itself to the reign of God in
the soul; it seeks to establish the
reign of God upon earth. “Thy
kingdom come; thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven,” was
the petition of Christ to his heavenly
Father. His life was not
confined to contemplation and
preaching; he “went about doing
good.”

Genuine contemplation and action
are inseparable. He who sees
truth loves truth, and he who loves
truth seeks to spread the knowledge
and the practice of truth.
Divine love is infinitely active, and,
when it has entered the human
heart and has set it on fire, it pushes
man to all outward perfection and
visible justice. No men have labored
so zealously and so efficiently
for their fellow-men, for the establishment
of God’s kingdom upon
earth, as the saints of God.

The love of God and the love of
man are one. God promises his
reward not to the ignorant, or to
the indolent, or to the indifferent,
but to those who visit the prisoner,
feed the hungry, give drink to the
thirsty, clothe the naked, to the
doing of good works as the evidence
of the true faith.

The Catholic Church teaches to
men their true relations to God
and to their fellow-men, and by
the practical application of the
principles which govern these relations
are removed the errors and
vices which hinder the establishment
of the reign of God in men’s
souls and everywhere upon earth.
The history of civilization since
the moment of the church’s institution
on the day of Pentecost
is nothing else than a record
of the several steps of progress of
society, under the guidance of the
Catholic Church, in reaching this
goal. Whatever elements the nineteenth
century possesses superior to
Judaism, paganism, barbarism, and
Islamism are due to the uninterrupted
action of Christ upon the world
through the Catholic Church. Modern
civilization may be defined as
the result of nineteen centuries of
action of the Holy Spirit dwelling
in the Catholic Church in establishing
the reign of God in men’s souls
and the kingdom of heaven upon
earth. “God is now taking the
dross out of the crucible, so as to
render his people free from all
alloy, and once more to clothe the
church for which our Lord delivered
himself up with beauty resplendent
with glory. And when God
shall have accomplished this, he
will remove the rod of his justice
from the church, and, that his divine
name may no longer be blasphemed,
he will give her victory,
a victory far more brilliant than her
sufferings have been terrible. May
this triumph not be delayed!”[#]

.fn #
Letter of Pope Pius IX. to Mgr. Lachat,
April 27, 1876.
.fn-
.sp 2
.h4
XI.—THE CATHOLIC IDEA OF HEAVEN.
.sp 2
The Catholic Church teaches that
the road to a blessed hereafter is by
striving to establish the kingdom of
heaven upon earth; it is after a life
spent in practical good works that
the soul merits to hear the words,
.pn +1
“Well done, good and faithful servant:
enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord.” But then do all the soul’s
interests cease the moment it has
left this world and entered upon
its future life? Is it true that the
only thought of a true Christian is
to get well out of this world and
all that belongs to it, and give it
no further concern? Is this the
Catholic idea?

Not at all. The Catholic idea is
that as our transformation in God
is perfected, so do all the faculties
of the soul increase. The soul
knows more, loves more, and does
more infinitely in the blessed land
than when upon this earth. The
lives of most of us while here are
only a little better than a sleep.
The soul’s vision of the divine Essence,
and its participation in the
divine Nature, render it, like the
angels, “God’s coadjutor” in the
realization of his ideal in the vast
universe. So far from the knowledge
of this globe, and the affection
towards its inhabitants or interests
in its concerns, being lessened
or lost by the citizens of heaven,
the knowledge acquired and the
affections formed during their life
upon earth are essentially retained,
and are enlarged and intensified;
and on this truth is based the Catholic
doctrine of the communion
and invocation of saints. Hence
to this knowledge and affection
and constant interest taken by
the souls in heaven in the welfare
of this world, and of those from
whom they are corporally but not
really separated, and to their power
to aid them, is owing the adoption
of angels and saints as patrons
by Catholic nations, cities, villages,
towns, and by every individual Catholic.
He who is ignorant of the
Catholic doctrine of the communion
of saints, and who is not within
the Catholic fold, can have no
conception of the intimate and intense,
uninterrupted spiritual intercourse
between the soul of a truly
devout Catholic and the angelical
and saintly inhabitants of heaven.
The church militant and the church
triumphant are substantially one,
form one communion, and their action
is inseparable. The Catholic
idea, then, is this: that the power
of the soul, on entering into heaven,
to aid man upon earth in the
realization of his true destiny is
redoubled; and that this power is
most efficaciously employed in our
favor by the souls of the eternally
blessed. The retrospective action
of the inhabitants of the other
world on the welfare of this world
greatly accelerates its progress, and,
compared with their direct action
while upon earth, it is immeasurably
greater and free from all alloy.
.sp 2
.h4
XII.—FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF MODERN INFIDELS.
.sp 2
The Catholic Church places no
gulf between God and humanity, or
divorce between heaven and earth,
or antagonism between revelation
and reason, or religion and science;
and she repudiates the doctrine
which emphasizes faith at the
expense of good works. Hence
the accusation of modern infidels
against Christianity, as confining itself
exclusively to man’s happiness
hereafter—“a post-mortem happiness”—while
ignoring his actual,
present good—“ante-mortem
happiness”—may have some show
of reason as against Protestant sects,
especially of the Calvinistic sect;
but it is altogether false, and must
be set down to defective knowledge,
when made against the Catholic
Church.

It is through the faithful reception
of the divine action of the
.pn +1
Catholic Church by individuals and
society that the highest good possible
for man here and hereafter can
be surely attained; and this needs
only clearly to be seen to restore
to her true and visible fold all the
descendants of the members separated
from the Catholic Church
by the religious revolution of the
sixteenth century, who are in good
faith.

And it is the bringing out into a
clearer light the divine side of the
church, and to the front those
truths which eliminate the errors
rife in our day and their stricter
application to present evils, that,
by the instinct of the Holy Spirit,
now preoccupies the active intelligent
mind of Catholics throughout
the world, especially in countries
where the dangers are most imminent,
such as France, Germany, and
Italy.
.sp 2
.h4
XIII.—PROMISES, FALSE AND TRUE.
.sp 2
There are two controlling forces,
explain their origin as we may, visible
in the conflicting movements
of human affairs in this world.
The one places man in possession
of the Supreme Good, and makes
him a co-worker with his Creator
in the realization of the ideal for
which God called this great universe
into existence. The other is
instigated by the enemy of God and
the human race, seeking by false
promises to lead man astray.

“You shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil,” was Satan’s promise
to our first parents. This promise
contained what was desirable
for man; God had implanted in the
human soul the aspiration for its
fulfilment. But what the enemy
promised he had not the power to
perform, and the road that he pointed
out as leading to the fulfilment
of the promise led in a wrong direction.

The right answer of our first
parents to Satan would have been:
“We know that God has made our
souls in his own image and likeness,
and that we shall be made participators
of his divine Nature, and
thereby deified; and as our Creator
has endowed us with the gift of intelligence,
we shall also gain the
knowledge of good and evil—for this
is its proper object. And we know
also with certitude that we shall
gain these great rewards by following
the paths which God has pointed
out to us.” Had they thus spoken,
they would have, in the strength
of their innocence and conscious
rectitude, added: “Begone, tempter!
Thou art a liar; for what thou
dost promise it is not thine to give;
and instead of wishing our elevation,
thou seekest to accomplish our
fall and utter ruin!”

As in the beginning, so now, Satan
seizes hold of the noblest aspirations
of the soul, and, by deceiving
men under the guise of a real good,
leads them quite astray. For what
underlies the promises of Protestantism
and its innumerable sects;
and rationalism, so-called, and its
different phases; and the secularists,
positivists, scientists, atheists,
radicals, materialists, spiritists, revolutionists,
evolutionists, socialists,
pessimists, free-religionists, communists,
internationalists, optimists,
theists, nihilists, <i>kulturkämpfer</i>, agnostics,
intuitionists, transcendentalists,
and other sects and parties
too numerous to mention—for their
name is legion, and their confusion
of tongues is as great as that of
Babel—what underlies their promises
is in one aspect true and in
a sense desirable. The right answer
to all their fine promises is
this: “You affirm undoubted truths
.pn +1
and you hold out a desirable good;
but the way that you point out for
realizing the one and attaining the
other is subversive of all truth
and the supreme good, and it will
not reach even what you aim at,
but end in entire disappointment
and anarchy. Put together the
fragmentary truths affirmed by each
of your different religious sects, and
you will find them all contained in
Catholicity. Make a list of all the
honest demands for ameliorations
and reforms in man’s social, industrial,
and political condition—it will
not be a short one—and you will
discover that they have their truth
in the spirit, and are justified by
the teachings and the practice, of
the Catholic Church.” O sincere
seeker after truth! did you but
know it, the path lies open before
you to a perennial fountain of truth,
where you can slake to the full that
thirst which has so long tormented
your soul. O sincere lover of your
fellow-men! there is a living body
which you may see and co-operate
with, whose divine action is realizing
a heavenly vision for the whole
human race, brighter and more
beautiful than the ideal which so
often haunts your lonely dreams!

The divine ideal is a God-given
aspiration to your soul, but the way
to realize it is not by building up a
tower of Babel.
.sp 2
.h4
XIV.—CONCLUSION.
.sp 2
The evolution of Catholicity
which is now coming slowly to
the light will gather up all the rich
treasures of the past, march in response
to every honest demand of
the interests of the actual present,
and guide the genuine aspirations
of the race in the sure way to the
more perfect future of its hopes.

This sublime mission is not the
self-imposed work of any man or
party of men, but the divinely-imposed
task of religion, of the present,
visible, living body of Christ,
the church of God. None other
has the power to renew the world,
unite together in one band the
whole human race, and direct its
energies to enterprises worthy of
man’s great destiny. Marshal MacMahon,
Duke de Broglie, or any
one else, legitimists, imperialists,
Orleanists, republicans, anti-republicans,
these men and these
parties in France may contribute
more or less as instruments to
the initiation of the new order
of things in Europe, but that is
all. They will betray the cause of
God and the interests of humanity,
if they should attempt to turn it to
any individual account or to any
partisan triumph, whether called
religious or political. The enemies
of the church may place hindrances
in her way, but they cannot stop
her in reaching her goal. God
alone rules and reigns.

God has spoken his “thus far
shalt thou go, and no further” to
his enemies and to all the persecutors
of the church of Christ. When
God arises, his enemies will flee
and be scattered. Their strength,
compared with that of his children,
is as the strength of a rope of sand.
Their power is gained by secrecy,
and their influence by threats and
deeds of violence; for their real
numbers constitute but a small fraction
of the French, German, Italian,
and Spanish or any other people.
The present struggle will render
this fact evident to all the world.

Strange destiny that of France,
to be the leader of Europe both
for good and for evil! France was
the first nation converted to Christianity
in western Europe, and the
first to proclaim herself, as a nation,
infidel. France will be the first to
.pn +1
recover from her errors and give
the initial blow that will end in the
overthrow of the enemies of modern
civilization and Christianity.

The Marshal-President of the
Republic of France, the brave soldier,
the man without fear or reproach,
is not the man to betray
his high trusts through any personal
ambition, or to any party,
legitimist, Orleanist, imperialist,
Gambettist, or whatever may be
the name which it bears on its
banner.

The mission of the President of
France is to keep ambitious men and
partisans at bay, and afford the best
elements and the truest interests of
all France a fair expression and the
opportunity of forming a stable and
suitable political government. The
Catholic Church has been made to
suffer too much and too long from
crowned emperors, royal dynasties,
and political factions in France and
elsewhere to identify her great
cause with theirs.

France, under the providence of
God, is slowly being taught to
stand on her own feet, to assert her
true manhood, and to practise self-government.
The political virtues
the French people have practised,
and the self-control they have displayed,
since the formation of the
republic, have discomfited their
enemies, increased the admiration
of their friends, and won the applause
of the civilized world.
France never was so really great
as she is at this moment.

The purity of the motives of the
President of the Republic, the disinterested
love of his country, and
his undaunted valor have never
been impeached, nor has his escutcheon
ever borne the slightest
stain. His sagacity and prudence
have never been at fault. That he
has a will Jules Simon has learned
to his cost. Patrick MacMahon, the
marshal of the armies of France and
the first President of her Republic,
possesses evidently all the distinguishing
qualities of the first commander-in-chief
of the American
army and the first President of the
Republic of the United States—George
Washington. The French
people can safely trust for one term,
and not unlikely for a second, their
liberties, their interests, and their
honor to the keeping of such a man.

France will find in her president
a providential man, and his name
will go down to posterity with the
title of our own great patriot, the
noblest of all titles—“MacMahon,
the Father of his Country.”

The turning point of a new era
for Europe and of the renewal of
Catholicity is entrusted by divine
Providence to the hands of the
eldest daughter of his church—France!
In the answer of France
to the present issue lies the secret
of the weal or the woe of the future
of Europe.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=redmond
PHIL REDMOND OF BALLYMACREEDY.
.sp 2
“Whisht!” exclaimed the blind
hostler attached to the Derralossory
Arms. “There’s a car rowlin’ along
the Bray Road, an’, from the sperrit
that’s in the baste, it’s Luke Finnigan
that’s dhrivin’ him. Ay,
faix,” he added with a self-satisfied
chuckle, “an’ that’s Luke Finnigan’s
note. I’d know it from this
t’ Arklow.”

A wild whoop and a sound of
wheels in the direction indicated
announced the approaching vehicle,
and, ere the sightless hostler could
grope his way from the snug corner
in which he had been ensconced by
the roaring kitchen fire—it was the
middle of July—an outside car
dashed up to the principal door of
the hotel, stopped with a jerk as if
on the edge of a precipice, and the
driver, throwing the reins upon the
neck of the panting horse, cried
out as he gaily entered the hostelry:

“Now, thin, Misther Murphy, be
nimble wud the liquor. There’s a
rale gintleman goin’ for to stand,
an’ I’m as dhry as a cuckoo.”

Upon the vehicle sat a young
man whose exquisitely-fitting frock-coat,
faultless linen, diamond studs,
soft hat, and square-toed boots bespoke
the American. He was fair,
with soft and expressive eyes, and
wore a <i>Henri Quatre</i> beard which
admirably became his long and pensive
face.

“Yer welkim to the County
Wicklow, sir,” cried the hostler, who
had approached the car and was
engaged in giving a drink to the
jaded animal. “It’s an illigant
place for rocks an’ rivers an’ threes
an’ scenery. Sorra a forriner that
cums into it but is loath for to lave it.
It takes a hoult av thim.”

“It is a very, <i>very</i> beautiful
place,” exclaimed the new-comer
enthusiastically, as he sprang to
<i>terra firma</i>. “So green, so fresh, so—but
you cannot enjoy it, my poor
fellow!” suddenly perceiving the
sightless orbs which were turned
toward him.

“It’s many a day sence I seen it,
sir,” responded the man, with a
weary moan in his utterance—“many
an’ many a day.”

“Thrue for him,” added the
driver, emerging from the hotel and
swabbing his mouth with the back
of a bronzed and blistered hand,
while bright beads twinkled like
fallen stars in his merry eyes.
“He’s dark sence he was a gossoon!
An’ it’s a sight for to see him along
wud the horses in the stable; he’ll
go into stalls, an’ the bastes kickin’
thim to smithereens, but sorra a
word they’ll say to him, though
they’d be afther knockin’ sawdust
out av any other tin min. He
thravels the roads day an’ night. To
be sure it’s all wan to him in regard
to his bein’ dark, but he’ll
work his way down to Lake Dan
below—ay, an’ to the Sivin Churches,
begor.”

“God is good to me, sir,” said the
hostler; “an’ whin it plazed him for
to take me eyesight, he gev me
sight in me ears an’ hands.”

“Here, my poor fellow.” And the
stranger placed a coin in the other’s
horny palm.

“A five-shilling bit! Och, thin,
may the saints light ye to glory, an’
.pn +1
may ye never die till they sind for
ye! It’s lonely they’ll be till ye go
to thim.”

By this time the car was surrounded
by a motley group of
tatterdemalions of all ages, sizes,
and sexes, in every stage of decrepitude
and every variety of raggedness.

“Throw a few coppers to an ould
widdy, an’ the Lord reward ye!”
exclaimed one.

“Ye’ll never miss a fourpenny
bit,” added another.

“A sixpince to an orfin will take
a bag o’ coals from undher ye in
purgathory,” chimed in a third.

“Give us the price av an ounce
av tay,” droned a fourth.

“More power to the stars an’
sthripes! Three cheers for Ameriky,
boys!” roared a leathern-lunged
dwarf, throwing a rabbit-skin cap
into the air. This appeal was responded
to with an enthusiasm that
brought the fire into the stranger’s
eye. Turning round upon the
steps of the hotel—along, thatched,
whitewashed, two-storied building—he
made a sign as if desirous of
addressing the assemblage.

“Be jabers! he’s going for to
spake.”

“I riz him wud the stars an’
sthripes,” joyously chuckled the
dwarf.

“Faix, it’s more nor a speech we
want,” wheezed a little old fellow on
crutches.

“The Home-Rulers has stuffed
us like turkeys.”

“Ordher! Ordher in the coort!”
yelled the dwarf. “Be aisy, Billy
McKeon. Lave off scroogin’ me,
Mary Nayle, an’ let the cripples in
front.”

A few additional <i>facetiæ</i>, and the
silence became complete.

The new-comer had removed his
hat, and his massive white forehead
stood out from beneath his soft
brown, curly hair.

“I thank you for the cheer which
you have given for the country of
my birth.” (“That’s half a crown
to me, anyhow,” muttered the
dwarf.) “I hope that cheer was
an honest one. It was not my
intention to bestow ten cents among
you, as I do not encourage mendicants;
and once a beggar, always a
beggar.”

This was received with very audible
manifestations of dissatisfaction.

“Musha, but ye’ve come far
enough for to tell us that,” growled
the old man with the crutches.

“I <i>have</i> come a long way to tell
it to you,” retorted the stranger,
“and I’ll tell you more. It is positively
sickening to travel through
this beautiful country, on account
of <i>you</i> and the like of you. From
Cork to Killarney, from Killarney
to Dublin, from Dublin to—”

“Boys, let’s make up a subscription
for him,” interrupted a little
fellow whose rags depended for
support upon a straw rope—technically
termed a “suggawn”—fastened
around his waist.

“Th’ hostler 'll hed it wud five
shillin’s,” observed a bystander
with a droll, malicious grin.

“Begorra, we’ll tell the landlord
for to put it in the bill.”

“Are ye goin’ for to give us anything?”
demanded the dwarf. This
query was backed up by a unanimous
murmur of approval.

“I am.”

“Well, that’s raysonible, anyhow.”

“I’m going to give you some
sound, wholesome advice,” said the
stranger.

A yell of anger, disappointment,
dissent, and derision followed this
announcement. Crutches were
.pn +1
brandished, sticks flourished, fists
shaken, and general denunciations
upon this “nagurly” conduct were
indulged in, in terms as pungent as
they were personal.

“You won’t hear me?” he resumed
during a lull in the storm.

“Sorra a hear.”

“Well, good-afternoon.” And
making them a low bow, he turned
into the house, whither execrations
loud, prolonged, and deep rapidly
followed him.

The accommodations at the “Derralossory
Arms”—for so the hostelry
was named—were somewhat pretentious.
Opening a door with the
word “coffee-room” imprinted thereon
in brazen letters, the new-comer
found himself in a long, low-ceilinged
apartment. A cracked mirror, the
surface of which was scratched
from frame to frame, like an ice
rink, by amorous owners of diamond
rings, stood over the mantel-piece,
and above it a smoke-dried
card containing the announcement
of the meets of the Wicklow Harriers
of the preceding season. Upon
a mahogany sideboard shone a
brave array of glassware interspersed
with pickle-jars and some mysterious
specimens of the ceramic art.
Facing the sideboard was a huge
antiquated sofa whose springs revealed
themselves like the ribs of
a half-starved horse, and opposite
the sofa an ancient but uncompromisingly
upright pianoforte. But
not upon the mirror, sideboard,
sofa, or piano did the eyes of the
stranger continue to rest. The
window had been lowered, and a
young girl was leaning her arms
upon the sash, gazing out upon
the tatterdemalion crowd beneath.
Her figure was <i>petite</i>, but of that
faultless outline which no amount
of drapery can conceal. A long
plait of lustrous brown hair hung
down her back. She was attired in
black, and a huge Puritan cambric
collar and cuffs adorned her wrists
and neck.

“If her face is as her figure, she
must be enchanting,” thought the
new-comer.

“He should have given them
<i>something</i>,” she murmured half
aloud. “Poor creatures! hoping
and fearing is weary, weary work.”
And she slowly faced him.

He gazed at features as regular
as the classic model, and whose
paleness almost imparted to them
the calm, impassive beauty of marble.
She flushed and was about to
withdraw when he blurted forth:

“I—I beg your pardon, but I
overheard what you said. I am not
so mean as you think.” And striding
to the window and attracting the
attention of the mob, who received
him with a yell of derisive defiance,
he flung a handful of silver among
them.

A scarlet flush mantled over her
face and throat. “I was but speaking
to myself, thinking aloud—and—but
nevertheless on the part of
those poor miserable people, I beg
to thank you, sir. <i>I</i> am sorely to
blame, and your generosity only
rivets the fetters that bind them to
beggary.” And with a low courtesy,
old-fashioned but witching grace
itself, she swept from the apartment,
leaving the stranger lost in
admiration.

“What is that young lady’s name
who was here just now?” he asked.

“Her name is Miss O’Byrne—wan
av th’ ould anshint O’Byrnes that
fought hard agin’ the Danes an’
Crummle—bad cess to thim, body
an’ bones!” replied the waiter.

“Does she live near this place?”

“Beyant four mile, over be the side
o’ Lake Dan. It’s an illigant place,
wid no ind av ruins, an’ a darlin’
.pn +1
ghost that walks whinever sorra is
comin’ to the race; an’ be me song,
they’ve supped lashins av it.”

“Is Mr. O’Byrne wealthy?”

“Well, now”—here the waiter
scratched a very shock head—“he’s
not rowlin’ in goold, but he’s warm
and”—brightening up—“as proud
as a paycock. But there, I’m forgettin’
me message to ye.”

“To <i>me</i>? exclaimed the stranger
with a start, half hoping it might be
from Miss O’Byrne.

“Yes, sir. There’s two gintlemin
cum here in regard o’ the fishin’,
though sorra a haporth they ketch;
an’ they cum regular wud rods an’
hooks an’ nets, an’ all soarts av
cumbusticles. Wan av them is an
attorney, a gay man, an’ th’ other
houlds a situation in the Four Coorts
beyant in Dublin, an’ he’s as nice a
mannered man as there’s in the
four walls o’ Wicklow this blessed
minit.”

“But the message?” interrupted
the stranger.

“That’s it. Yer to dine wud
thim—no less. Misther Minchin
tould me to prisint his respects an’ to
hope ye’d favor him wud yer company;
an’ don’t be hesitatin’, mind
ye”—here the waiter winked an indescribable
wink, such as an augur
might have indulged in consequent
upon a successful omen; “there’s
lovely chickens, an’ the elegantest
bacon, wud a filly av cabbage, an’
a dancing leg o’ lamb.”

“But I don’t know these gentlemen,
and—”

“Permit me to introduce myself,
sir,” exclaimed a small, elderly man
with a merry eye, a bulbous nose, a
very stiff, old-fashioned stock, and a
stiffer rim of shirt-collar which kept
his head as erect as though he was
hung up by the chin, entering and
bowing very courteously. “Minchin—Dominick
Minchin. Hearing
from this shock-headed retainer that
you were a stranger, and having experienced
on more occasions than
one, especially during piscatorial excursions,
the thrice-accursed loneliness
of an inn, I beg, sir, that you will
favor us by coming where glory
waits you and—a bit of dinner.”

This was uttered with a quaint
cheeriness that bore everything before
it.

“Really, sir, I am quite impressed
by your consideration, and accept
your invitation most gratefully. My
name is Philip Redmond.” And
he handed the other his card.

“Redmond is not an American
name, sir?”

“No, sir; my father was Irish.”

“Anything to the Redmonds of
Ballymacreedy?”

“I am Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”

Mr. Minchin seized him warmly
by both hands and shook them repeatedly.
“By Jupiter, sir! this is
positively glorious—sublime, sir!
I knew your father well; and when
he thought fit to part with his property—”

“His property parted from <i>him</i>,
Mr. Minchin. It is gone, and I am
now here to try and repurchase it at
any cost. However, we’ll talk of
that by and by. I <i>feel</i> that dinner
is not very far off, and that you are
only half as anxious about it as
I am.”

Mr. O’Hara, Mr. Minchin’s companion,
was a tall, handsome, florid-faced
man of about five-and-thirty,
with a profusion of sandy hair
which stood out from his head like
quills upon the fretful porcupine, and
a smile like sunlight. In five minutes
Redmond was as much at
home with the two anglers as if he
had known them all his life, and
had planned two excursions with
them.
.pn +1

“I’m afraid you’ll have some
trouble about getting back this property,”
observed O’Hara. “It’s
now in the possession of a man who
doesn’t want money, and who
would call you out if you proposed
to purchase it.”

“Every man has his price, has he
not, Mr. O’Hara?” asked Redmond.

“True; but there are exceptional
circumstances connected with this
case which hedge it round with an
impenetrable <i>chevaux de frise</i>.”

“Of what nature?”

“Family pride, which will never
consent to confiscate the old acres.”

“But the lands of Kilnagadd
and Derralossory belonged to our
family.”

“That may be, Mr. Redmond,
but they were part and parcel of
other territory before the Redmonds
came north of Vinegar Hill.
I know all about them, as I rented
a fishing lodge from one of the
tenants, and, being anxious to purchase
it, inquired into the title.”

“I made my dying father a solemn
promise that I would get back
the old place. Money is no object,
Mr. O’Hara. My father operated
both in real estate and in gold,
and died wealthy, so that a few
thousands will not balk me.”

“You can try it,” was the rejoinder,
accompanied by a shake of
the head.

It was late when they separated,
Minchin warbling “The young May
moon,” and insisting upon shaking
hands with the “young boss,” as
he designated him, over and over
again.

The summer’s morning was bright
and balmy, and Redmond, after a
yeoman’s breakfast—consisting of
trout fried with bacon, fresh eggs,
and tea in which the cream was
pre-eminent—started out into the
glorious sunlight which was irradiating
hill and dale, mountain and
valley. The forget-me-nots told
their tale to the crystal pools, the
graceful ferns languidly embraced
the lichen-covered stones, an occasional
cur basking in the heat and
glow opened a lazy eye as Phil
passed along the road, and compromised
a bark with a prolonged
yawn. The hawthorns threw their
shadows across the path, and the
“blossoming furze unprofitably
gay” sent forth that fresh, quaint,
and delicious perfume that tells us
with speechless eloquence that we
are out in the bright green country
and away from the heat and turmoil
and loathsomeness of the over-crowded
human hive. Having promised
to join his newly-found
friends at Lough Dan, Phil took
the steep and romantic road that
leads to the lake direct from the
village of Roundwood. Far away
to the left in the summer haze lay
the picturesque village of Annamoe,
and farther still the sweet, sad
valley of Glendalough, guarded by
the giant Lug na Culliagh, while
the deep-tinted groves of Castle Kevin
lent a delicious contrast to the
purple heights of the heather-covered
Derrybawn; on his right the
grim gray crags of Luggelaw, and,
as he gained the crest of the hill,
the blue waters of Lough Dan lay
mirrored beneath him, reflecting
the giant shadows of Carrig-na-Leena.
The exquisite loveliness
of the scene fell upon the young
American like a dream or a perfume.
It was refreshing, yet almost
intoxicating. He thought of
the color glories of the Hudson in
the fall, of the blood-reds and
orange-yellows and wine hues of
the autumn foliage, and they seared
his mental vision when he came
to contemplate the soft, cloudy
.pn +1
green, the odor-laden atmosphere,
pure yet filmy as a bridal veil, and
the delicious completeness of the
<i>coup d’œil</i>, so satisfying, so soothing,
and so enravishing. Somehow
or other he associated all this perfection
with the fair young girl
whose pale face and mantling blush
still haunted his imagination like a
sweet strain of music. These scenes
were a suitable setting for her beauty.
She would comprehend them,
she would commune with nature in
this wild, secluded spot, so lonely
and yet so lovely. As his ideas
glided in this rosy channel, his revery
was suddenly disturbed by
the sound of wheels, and close upon
him came a basket-phaeton attached
to a very diminutive pony. His
heart gave one violent bound—the
object of his immediate and gushing
thoughts was the occupant of
the vehicle. Would she pass without
noticing him? There had been
no introduction. He could expect
no recognition, and yet—

Chance fills up many a gap in
life, solves many riddles, and hastens
many <i>dénoûments</i>.

The pony, evidently a wilful,
over-petted, hand-fed little brute,
took it into its stubborn head that
a rest at this particular spot in the
road would admirably suit his inclinations;
and as he feared no whip,
and, save a gentle chuck upon the
reins and a solemn admonishment
from his fair mistress, his whim
could be indulged in with comparative
impunity, he proceeded forthwith
to carry his idea into execution,
and stopped with a jerk right
opposite where Philip Redmond
stood.

“Do go on, Doaty!” exclaimed
Miss O’Byrne, shaking the reins.
“Do go on, there’s a pet. You
shall have a lump of sugar when we
get to stable.”

Doaty shook his head and stolidly
gazed at the lake beneath him.

“Permit me to try and persuade
him,” said Phil, stepping forward
and lifting his hat, which, by the
way, doubled up in his hand, clumsily
concealing his face and utterly
destroying his bow.

“Oh! thanks; I seem destined
to give you trouble, sir.”

This was a delicate recognition.

“I have to thank you for making
me the most popular man in Roundwood,”
retorted Redmond. “I feel
like the lord lieutenant. I held
quite a <i>levée</i> this morning.”

“And your courtiers, instead of
looking for place, were seeking for
pence.”

“A distinction without much difference.”

“Except in the viceroy,” she
laughed.

Doaty was as good as gold—at
least so thought one of the party—and
manifested no intention of
budging an inch.

“What a tiresome pony!” exclaimed
Miss O’Byrne. “I shall
have to beat him.”

“Let me try and get him along.”
And Phil, taking hold of the shaggy
mane, lugged the unwilling Doaty
along in the direction of the lake.

“This is really too bad, sir,” remonstrated
Miss O’Byrne. “I cannot
tax you in this way.”

“It is no tax, I assure you. I
have nothing on earth to do but to
revel in the especial sunshine of
this moment.”

This was said with ever so slight
an emphasis; nevertheless it bore
a scarlet blossom in the rich blush
which came whispering all over
the young girl’s charming pallor.

“You—you are a stranger here?”

“I am, and yet I ought not to be.”

“This savors of a riddle.”

“Very easily solved. My fore-fathers
.pn +1
hunted these hills and fished
that lake. My father was reckless,
extravagant, and new men
came into possession of the old
acres. My father emigrated, and
made a great deal of money in
New York, and—”

“I have been in New York,” interposed
the young lady.

Here was a bridge for thought-travel.
Here was a market for the
disposal of mutual mental wares.

“Did you like it?” he asked.

“Like it!” she exclaimed enthusiastically.
“Who could dislike it?
It is the most charming city, perhaps
excepting Paris, that I have
ever lived in. And how are Fifth
Avenue and Broadway, and the ash-boxes?”
she added with a ringing
laugh.

Doaty made another stop, and
no earthly inducement would stir
him until he so willed it himself.
His fair mistress relinquished the
idea and the reins, and, stepping
from the vehicle, clambered, with
the assistance of Redmond, to a
moss-grown bank, from which she
pointed out some objects of special
interest in the scenery.

“That is Billy Doyle’s cottage
at Shinnagh, down far in the valley
by the edge of the lake. See the
amber thatch glowing in the sunlight,
and the red flag. That flag
shows that poor Mr. Fenler is on
the lake fishing.”

“Who is poor Mr. Fenler?”
asked Phil.

“He is a man who was a great
merchant in Dublin, but who lost
all his property, and his wife and
all his children. He saved as
much from the wreck as enabled
him to purchase one-half of that
cottage—the slated half—and to
support himself. He came here
seven years ago, having made a
vow <i>never</i> to leave the valley again.”

“And has he kept it?”

“Religiously. He goes nowhere,
and spends his whole time in fishing.
Do you see that golden strand
at the head of the lake?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is a legend about
that which you should hear. Any
old crone in the valley will do it
ample justice.”

“I should prefer to hear it from
a fairy on the hill,” said Redmond
gallantly.

“<i>Pas des compliments</i>, although
yours was nearly French.”

“You beat me at my own weapons,”
laughed Redmond. “But
whose palatial residence is that
right over in the cleft between
those two hills?”

The fire lighted up in the young
girl’s eye, the delicate nostril expanded,
the rich, ripe lips quivered,
as she proudly replied: “That is
my home.”

<i>Her</i> home—the nest in which
she had been nurtured. What a
precious flower in that gloomy valley!
What a world of love and
joy and beauty in that lone and
sequestered spot!

“I envy you,” murmured Phil.
“The tranquil loveliness of your
home is—” he was going to send
the words from his heart to his lips,
but luckily they encountered Prudence
upon the road, and altered
themselves to suit that cold, passionless,
interfering busybody—“is—just
as it ought to be. <i>You</i> have
made no vow to leave this valley?”
he added.

“No, but I have often thought
it.”

“Such a determination would be
a calamity, Miss O’Byrne.”

“How do you know my name?”
she quickly demanded.

“I asked the waiter after you
had left.”
.pn +1

“Now for an exchange,” she
laughed. “Let us trade. What is
<i>your</i> name?”

“Philip Redmond, son of Redmond
of Ballymacreedy.”

“Why, that is Ballymacreedy,”
exclaimed the young girl, pointing
to a fir-covered mountain, upon the
side of which, as though perched
on a shelf, stood a gaunt, uncompromising-looking,
square-built mansion,
all roof and windows.

Phil Redmond’s feelings, as he
gazed on the home which he had
never known save by hearsay, were
of a very varied and conflicting
nature. He had pictured it a feudal
stronghold towering over an
extensive lake such as America
boasts of—a diminutive ocean—a
battlemented castle, with keep and
moat and drawbridge, ivy-grown in
the interests of the picturesque,
and plate-glassed in the interests
of modern sunlight.

“Good heaven!” he exclaimed
involuntarily, “how unlike what I
conceived it to be. What a cruel
disappointment!”

So rudely were his ideas shattered,
and so bitterly the pride of
baronial halls mortified, that the
poor fellow’s heart felt quite crushed.
Whether Miss O’Byrne saw
this or whether Doaty saw it is
not the question here; but <i>certes</i>,
that admirable little brute gave a
loud neigh as a trumpet-call to
Redmond’s scattered senses, and
evinced for the first moment during
the preceding half-hour a desire
to proceed upon his homeward
journey.

“Papa does not visit, Mr. Redmond,”
said Miss O’Byrne as she
grasped the reins upon resuming
her seat in the basket upon wheels,
“but I shall ask him to call upon
you, when I may hope for something
like a formal introduction.
How half an hour flies upon the
wings of <i>sans cérémonie</i>!” And with
a delicious inclination of the head,
half-saucy, half-dignified, and wholly
<i>piquante</i>, she disappeared at a
turn of the road leading into the
valley.

“Heigh-ho!” sighed Philip Redmond
of Ballymacreedy.

While all this—shall we say nonsense?—was
going on upon the hill,
Mr. Minchin and his <i>fidus Achates</i>,
O’Hara, were busily occupied upon
the lake; and although not a single
rise greeted their longing vision,
like true sportsmen they lived in
hope.

“That’s a very good style of
man,” observed O’Hara.

“Redmond?”

“Yes.”

“The son of an Irish king, sir.
By Jupiter! a fine fellow. A noble
fellow!” exclaimed Minchin, whacking
the lake with his line in emphasis.

“He’ll go back to New York without
as much of his father’s property
as would sod a lark.”

“You are still of opinion that
the O’Byrne will not sell?”

“He’d burn the land first,” was
the sententious rejoinder.

“Well, sir, the next best thing
that Redmond can do is to purchase
Glenasluagh. It adjoins Ballymacreedy,
and he will enjoy the
right of fishing the Clohogue—an
enjoyment fit for the gods. Yes,
by George! fit for the gods.”

“I never thought of that. Are
you sure it’s for sale?”

“A scoundrelly attorney, one of
those pitiful miscreants with whom
it is my bane to be officially associated,
knowing that I loved the
gentle sport, endeavored to curry
favor with me by mentioning this.
I listened to the scoundrel and
made inquiries elsewhere—in fact,
.pn +1
I own I felt my way towards the
Clohogue myself, but the figure
was too high, sir.”

“We must put Redmond on to
it at once.”

“There’s our man crossing the
bridge. George! how I envy him
his sensations upon beholding this
cherished spot, 'where all save the
spirit of man is divine.’” And Minchin
glowed again in the summer
light.

Redmond instinctively paused
upon the quaint old lichen-covered
bridge, in the worn interstices of
which dainty little ferns of emerald
green toyed with the pale blue
loveliness of the forget-me-not, and
gazed across the sheening waters
of the tranquil lake. All was sleeping
in sunlight, even the deep, clear
shadows of the purple-covered
mountains, while the melodious
hum of glowing insect-life lent its
peculiar charm to the peaceful surroundings.

The boat, by direction of Mr.
Minchin, was turned for the bridge,
and a few lazy strokes from the oar
of the ragged urchin who acted as
waterman brought it bump against
a projecting bowlder which served
as a landing-place.

“The top of the morning to you,
Mr. Redmond!” cried Minchin.
“You are just in the nick of time.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and we
were about to pass the rosy. This,
sir, is a very dry country.” And
the cheerful old biped laughed
until the crags of Shinnagh re-echoed
his jovial hilarity. At this
moment a cart attached to a donkey
appeared upon the bridge,
and two formidable-looking hampers
jostled each other for supremacy.

“Jump in, Mr. Redmond. We
shall take our pick on that lovely
little neck of land just under the
stronghold of the O’Byrnes yonder.”

“Have you room for two friends
of mine?” asked Phil.

“Any friend of yours is my
friend, sir,” exclaimed Minchin with
the pompous mannerism of the old
school.

“Then lend a hand,” to the boat-boy,
“to get these hampers on
board.”

“What does all this mean?” asked
Minchin as the baskets were
safely stowed away.

“A liberty I have taken,” said
Philip. “I want you and Mr.
O’Hara to lunch with me to-day,
as I dined with you yesterday.”

“O’Hara,” exclaimed Minchin,
“what <i>shall</i> we do with this dog?
Pitch him into the lake, hampers
and all?”

“I should say not,” laughed the
other.

“'My foot is on my native heath,’”
cried Redmond; and, taking an
oar, a pull of twenty minutes keel-grated
them upon a silvery strand
beneath the shady foliage of a gigantic
horse-chestnut tree.

“A lobster-salad, George!” cried
Minchin, unloading the basket.
“A chicken-pie, Jupiter! A magmain
of salmon! Why, hang it, man!
this never was raised at the Derralossory
Arms.”

“How was it done?” asked
O’Hara.

“I sent a man into Dublin for
it.”

“Ah!” with a long-drawn breath
of admiration. “You Americans
do things in the right way.”

“By the nine gods! champagne,”
ejaculated Minchin as he extracted
the golden-necked bottles from
their wicker cradles. “Heidsieck
extra dry. I am extra dry too.
<i>Per Bacco</i>, Redmond! you <i>are</i> the
son of an Irish king.”
.pn +1

Where is the mortal who does
not enjoy a picnic?—that picnic
where the food is laid upon the
grass, and with the green leaves or
the sky for a canopy; where fingers
do service for forks, and the wild
flowers for napkins; where the food
is ambrosia and the drink nectar.
<i>Ay de mí</i>, we have changed all that,
and now we must have silver and
cutlery and napery, and servants to
wait upon us, and hot dishes <i>ad
nauseam</i>. We must don our best
and encase our sweltering hands
in delicate-hued gloves, and icy
etiquette now reigns where nature’s
happy freedom heretofore
presided.

They were busily engaged with
the chicken-bones, and Redmond,
as host, was uncorking the second
bottle of champagne, when Minchin
exclaimed: “Jupiter Olympus!
here’s the O’Byrne and his
daughter.”

Now, to be caught, under ordinary
circumstances, in a stooping
posture, wrestling with an infrangible
wire, almost black in the face,
and with the drumstick of a chicken
stuck saltier-wise in your mouth,
your hat anywhere, and your hair
in the wildest and most elfin disorder,
is embarrassing enough in
all conscience; but, in the condition
of feeling under which our romantic
hero labored, to be thus detected
was simply horrible. As Redmond
beheld the tall and stately form of
a man of about fifty, with a pair of
fierce black eyes beneath still fiercer
brows, advancing towards him, and
by his side, gliding with that graceful
undulation which is almost exclusively
confined to the women of
Spain, the young girl for whom the
portals of his heart had been cast
wide open, his desire to sink beneath
the daisies was about the
only sensation left to him.

“We have invaded the land of
the O’Byrnes,” said Minchin, rising
and bowing to the <i>châtelaine</i>.

“You seem tolerably well armed,”
observed the O’Byrne, casting a
comical glance at the champagne
bottles.

“Permit me the honor of crossing
swords,” cried Minchin.

At this moment Miss O’Byrne
interposed by exclaiming: “That
gentleman is Mr. Redmond of
Ballymacreedy.”

The O’Byrne took a short, sharp
survey of Philip from beneath his
shaggy brows, and, advancing with
outstretched hand:

“Mr. Redmond, I am glad to
meet one of the old stock. You
resemble your father very strongly.”

“You knew my father, sir?” asked
Redmond eagerly.

“Yes.” The monosyllable spoke
for itself. It shut down on the subject
like an iron door.

“The old stock are thinning out,
like my brown hairs,” laughed Minchin.

“<i>Apparent rari nantes in gurgite
vasto</i>,” was the rejoinder.

“<i>Per Bacco!</i> you must taste the
Falernian. I am Dominick—”

“Minchin,” interposed the
O’Byrne, “the best angler in Wicklow.
We disciples of the rod and
reel scarcely need a formal introduction.”

Somehow or other, while the
O’Byrne and Dominick Minchin
were bandying quaint and courtly
compliments, Philip managed to
pull himself together and to engage
in conversation with the
daughter of the house.

“You perceive, Mr. Redmond,
how fate is against our being introduced—so
dead against as to compel
me to make you and my father
acquainted as if you and I were
old friends.”
.pn +1

“I <i>do</i> feel as if I had known you
for ever so long, and that a void—”

“Do look at the trout jumping.
What perfect circles they make in
the still water!”

She had interrupted with a woman’s
tact. Redmond was unversed
in the subtle distinctions which
form the rungs of the ladder of
love. Most of the girls whom he
met in society were as so many
agreeable nothings—exquisitely-attired
statuettes, whose ideas were
bounded by silk, satin, feathers, and
lace. With them he had nothing
in common save the weather and
ice-cream; and being imbued with
a feeling of aversive contempt for
the whole sex, the revelation of
light and love which now burst
upon him revolutionized his whole
being and begat an enthusiasm
that forgot impossibilities. A
child of nature sounds very well in
poesy, but the article attired in
broadcloth is very rapidly put down
as a bore, if not a nuisance.

“I drink with you on one condition,”
said the O’Byrne to Minchin,
who presented a bottle at his head.

“Condition me no conditions,
chieftain!”

“I shall; and the condition is
this: that you, with Mr. Redmond
and Mr. O’Hara”—to whom he had
been introduced by Minchin—“will
help me to punish a cooper
of claret after a seven o’clock dinner.”
O’Hara excused himself on
the plea of being compelled to
reach Dublin by the night mail
from Rathdrum. Minchin called
a number of the Olympian deities
to witness that so superb an offer
should not be lightly considered,
and Redmond thought of his dress
and hesitated to say yes, when his
whole soul was in that solitary
word.

“I want to have a gossip about
New York, and surely you will not
refuse me that boon?” urged
Miss O’Byrne, and this decided the
question.

“Are you of the true faith, Mr.
Redmond?” she asked, as some
hours later, in acting as <i>cicerone</i>
through the old castle, she took him
to the private chapel.

“I should be a recreant Redmond
if I were not,” was his
proud reply.

Coolgreny, the stronghold of the
Clan O’Byrne, was as picturesque as
a round tower, an ivied keep, a battlemented
outer wall, a dry moat,
a veritable carpet of bright flowers,
solemn old yew-trees whose branches
had supplied many a sturdy bow
wherewithal to resist the incursions
of the O’Tooles, and a rookery,
could make it. As he crossed the
drawbridge and gazed at the oaken
door with its rusty iron rivets, at
the massive archway telling an imperishable
tale, at the inner quadrangle,
its gray stone lighted up by
blood-red geraniums and deeply,
darkly, desperately blue forget-me-nots,
and from thence to the high-bred-looking
girl by his side,
Philip Redmond felt the old blood
in his veins as the old, old story began
to whisper itself to his heart.

They passed into the old banqueting-hall,
rich in oaken tracery
and wainscoted up to the ebon-colored
ceiling. Portraits of doughty
warriors in the grim panoply of
battle-axe and shield, suits of Milan
steel, and buff jerkins of the later
periods adorned the walls—formidable
O’Brinns who stood in
many a gap, and fought the rocky
defiles of Auchavana inch by inch;
who displayed their prowess on
many a tented field; who followed
the fortunes of the luckless house
of Stuart even after the unhappy
disaster at the Boyne; and who,
.pn +1
nobly fighting, fell against the hated
usurpation of the Orange William.
Here, too, were soft, silken-bearded
representatives of the house who
attached themselves to the Irish
Brigade and covered themselves
with glory at Lannes and Fontenoy.

“Now for the ladies, monsieur!”
exclaimed Miss O’Byrne. “I see
that you are lost in admiration of
my male ancestors. Prepare now to
be enchanted by the beauty of their
wives and daughters.”

“I need no preparation,” said
Phil with a low bow. “I see all
their perfections concentrated in
their charming descendant.”

“Admirably done!” cried the
young lady, with heightened color;
“but 'bide a wee.’ Look at that
little dame. There is fire for you.
She was Countess of Ovoca in her
own right—a Geraldine. She defended
this castle against two attacks
of Cromwell’s crop-eared curs,
and when it was intimated to her
that the defence jeopardized her
husband’s life, she <i>naïvely</i> replied:
'I could replace my husband, but
I could not replace Coolgreny.’
'Wasn’t that complimentary to that
ill-looking fellow opposite leaning
upon his sword? I <i>do</i> believe that
he steps out of that frame occasionally
for the purpose of upbraiding
her, poor dear!”

Redmond laughed heartily as he
replied that he thought the cavalier
was likely to get the worst of it.

“Here is a Lely—my great, great,
great, ever-so-great grandmamma.
Isn’t she lovely? Look at her cool
blue pastoral drapery, her bright
brown hair, her matchless eye, and
her ivory complexion.”

“I am looking at her,” said Redmond,
gazing earnestly at Miss
O’Byrne, “and she is lovely.”

It was as if the portrait had been
painted for herself.

“Mr. Redmond, you are incorrigible.
I absolutely refuse to act as
<i>cicerone</i>. Tyrconnel was madly in
love with her.”

“Of course he was; and if he
wasn’t he ought to have been,”
laughed Philip. “Pray who is that
sparkling brunette, with the color
glowing beneath her swarthy skin,
and with the head and hair of
Cleopatra?”

“That is Mistress Lettice
O’Byrne, who received King James
in this very hall, as, blood-stained
and travel-sore, he honored our
poor house by resting here after the
disaster of the Boyne. He heard
Mass in our little chapel before he
started at daybreak.”

They wandered from portrait to
portrait, she chatting gaily, brilliantly,
until they came directly opposite
that of a very young man attired
in a gorgeous hussar uniform.

“This is a picture of today,”
said Redmond. “Who is he?”

A bright diamond-drop welled into
her eyes as she replied:

“It is my only brother. He
took service with our kinsman,
Field-Marshal Nugent, in Austria,
and fell at Magenta. God be merciful
to him!”

“Amen!” And the response was
a prayer, so fervently and reverentially
was it uttered.

“Let us go to the chapel and
say an <i>Ave Maria</i> for the repose
of his soul.” And, leading through
a long, dark passage, and thrusting
aside a scarlet velvet curtain which
hung over the entrance, she ushered
Redmond into the church. Pure
Gothic, the oaken traceries of its
pulpit and chancel rails were worthy
of the hand of Verbruggen,
while the altar, of white marble,
was decorated with constellations
of the rarest hot-house flowers and
plants.
.pn +1

As they emerged from the chapel
the hideous clamor of a gong announced
that dinner would be served
in a quarter of an hour, and Redmond
was ushered by his host to
an apartment to prepare as best he
might for the all-important ceremony.
For after all “the dine” is
a very serious piece of business,
and it is only such foolish young
fellows as Redmond—who spoiled
his appetite at luncheon—or such
delicately-nurtured young ladies as
Miss Eileen O’Byrne, who can afford
to turn up their noses at the
mention of the word, and wish with a
sigh that the noble institution yclept
eating had never been invented.

When Redmond descended to
the drawing-room he was formally
presented to the Rev. Father O’Doherty,
the parish priest “of as wild
a district as lies between this and
New York,” gaily added his reverence.
“I am proud to meet you,
sir; and let me tell you that the
Redmonds of Ballymacreedy have
left a name behind them respected,
loved, and honored. Have you
come to stop with us?”

“Not—that is, I’m—I’m so enchanted
with all that I have seen
of Ireland, and with <i>all</i> whom I
have met here”—he sought the eye
of his hostess (it should be mentioned
that her mother had died
in giving birth to Eileen)—“that if
I do not return to it, it will not be
my own fault.”

This was doing pretty well—much
better than he could have hoped.
It was very <i>prononcé</i>, but Phil
liked to be understood. He was
straight in everything, and was perfectly
prepared to step into the
O’Byrne’s library and explain himself
right away. But he was not
to get the chance. Father O’Doherty
took the <i>châtelaine</i> into dinner
and presided at the foot of the
table. The dinner was not <i>à la
Russe</i>, and, although served with
extreme elegance, the guests were
allowed the privilege of seeing
what they were about to partake
of, and to make a judicious selection
according to palate. The wine
was, as Minchin subsequently remarked,
“of the rarest and choicest
vintage.” To hear <i>her</i> speak, to listen
to the music of her laugh, to
gaze upon her when her looks were
turned in another direction, was rapture
to poor Philip, who drank his
wine, eating nothing, being wholly
and solely absorbed in the radiance
of her presence. It was rack
and torture to him when she arose
to leave the room, and, as he opened
the door to permit her egress,
the words, “Do not remain too long
over your wine,” rang into his senses
like a peal of sweet bells.

“Push the claret, Mr. Redmond,”
exclaimed his host; “you may get
richer but you won’t get softer wine
across the Atlantic.”

“<i>Per Bacco!</i> this is bottled velvet,”
said Minchin, smacking his lips—“the
odor of the violet, and the
gentle tartness of the raspberry.
By the nine gods! a bottle of this
makes a man look for his wings to
fly, sir—to fly like a bird.”

After some considerable time,
during which Minchin and the
O’Byrne had indulged in a very
serious potation of the Château
Lafitte, “Are you here on a pleasure
trip, Mr. Redmond?” asked
Father O’Doherty.

“Well, my good fortune has
made it one of pleasure, but I came
originally on business. I came to
endeavor to rescue some of my
poor father’s property,” replied
downright Phil.

“What do you mean by <i>rescue</i>,
Mr. Redmond?” asked the O’Byrne,
flushing darkly red.
.pn +1

“I mean, to purchase it from the
man who now holds it.”

“Oh!” And his host tossed off a
bumper of the wine. “Do you refer
to Ballymacreedy?”

“I do, and to the lands of Kilnagadd
and Derralossory.”

The beetling brows of the Irish
chieftain met in a black scowl.

“And suppose this man who
holds these lands were unwilling to
sell?”

“Oh! every man has his price,”
said the unconscious Philip.

The O’Byrne rose, and, stretching
himself to his full height, haughtily
exclaimed:

“When I sell one rood of Ballymacreedy,
Kilnagadd, and Derralossory,
may I be shattered into
fragments like that wine-glass,”
casting, as he spoke, the crystal goblet
upon the oaken floor, where it
shivered into ten thousand pieces.

Had a thunderbolt fallen upon
the <i>épergne</i>, and, splitting roof and
ceiling, descended into their midst,
the luckless hero of this narrative
could scarcely have been less scared
and astonished. The admonitory
winkings of Minchin, the ankle-rubs
of the good priest, had been lost
upon him. He had rushed upon
his fate and had impaled himself.
Fool that he was, never to have
conjectured that the haughty possessor
of the land of his ancestors
was the fiery, fierce old chieftain
who now sat scowling at the ceiling
and quaffing goblet after goblet of
the rich red wine! Everything
pointed to the fact—the conversation
of the previous evening, the
exclamation of Eileen upon the hill
overlooking Lough Dan, the references
of Father O’Doherty. He
was a senseless idiot, and had planted
the thorn of offence where he
would have sown the bright seed
of friendship. Could he apologize?
How? Could he explain? He
must.

“The fact is—” he commenced,
when his host pulled him up:

“A word of advice to you, Mr.
Redmond. When you enter a
man’s house do not turn appraiser
and play the amateur auctioneer.”

“But-” burst in Phil.

“Pardon me. If you consider
that because you have scraped a
few greenbacks together—Heaven
knows how; <i>I</i> don’t want to inquire—that
you can come over here to dictate
insulting terms to a man with
reference to his own goods and
chattels, upon his own hearth, let
me tell you, sir, that—”

“Hear <i>me</i>,” exclaimed Father
O’Doherty. “I am certain that
our young friend had no intention
of giving annoyance when he made
those observations.”

“On the honor of a man,” roared
Redmond, who was in a white
heat of mortification, “I meant no
offence, and furthermore—”

“Let us drop the subject, sir, and
go to the drawing-room for coffee,”
said the O’Byrne, rising.

“But I will <i>not</i> drop the subject
until I explain myself.”

“Mr. Redmond, do not press my
endurance in my own house.” And
the haughty host motioned to the
door.

“Not a word,” whispered Father
O’Doherty. “You can make it all
right by and by, and if <i>you</i> fail <i>I</i>
will succeed.”

Still, Philip was not satisfied.
He was the outraged party. He
demanded redress for a cruel
wrong. Was he to remain in the
pillory and be pelted with the mistrust
and dislike of the man whom
of all others he was most desirous
of conciliating. What would <i>she</i>
think of him when her father came
to tell her his version of the affair?
.pn +1
Would <i>he</i> not suffer and stand convicted,
however innocent he might
be? It was maddening, and Redmond,
following his host, brusquely
demanded a few minutes’ conversation.

“'Forbid it, Heaven, the hermit
cried!’” exclaimed Minchin, playfully
seizing our hero by the
shoulders and twisting him teetotum-fashion,
while the priest engaged
the attention of the O’Byrne in another
direction.

“Are you mad, Redmond?” said
Minchin in a low tone. “On this
subject he has a craze. Why, in the
name of Jupiter Olympus, did you
introduce it?”

“Am I to lie under the imputation
of being a peddler, an auctioneer,
a blackguard?” asked the
other excitedly.

“The thing will be as dead as
Queen Anne in five minutes, if you
will only let it cross the Styx.”

“But I did not know that Mr.
O’Byrne was the present proprietor
of Ballymacreedy.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“I would not be listened to.”

“It’s easily explained.”

When Redmond entered the
drawing-room the host was speaking
to his daughter, and that it was
about him he had little doubt from
the expression of surprise, pain, and
anger which flitted across her face.

Determined not to be baffled in
his purpose this time, he strode
across the apartment, and, confronting
the O’Byrne, said:

“If you will kindly permit me a
word of explanation—”

“<i>Do</i> take a cup of coffee, Mr.
Redmond,” interrupted Miss
O’Byrne; “and—and you will excuse
me if I—I wish you good-night.”
And courtesying very low,
she turned from him and swept out
of the room.

A choking sensation seized our
hero. A something in his throat—anger,
mortification, bitter mortification—clutched
him and held
him fast.

“I’ll be hanged if I’ll stop here
any longer!” he said; and so earnest
was his rage that, without waiting
to bid his host farewell or to hint
his intention to Minchin, he strode
out into the quadrangle, through
the arched entrance, across the
drawbridge, and onwards he knew
not in what direction, reckless,
hopeless, and hatless.

Why had he met her? His path
had been calm and peace. Why
had she treated him in this way?
What had he done to <i>her</i>? <i>He</i> knew
how her father would vamp up his
version of the story. Was ever innocent
man so deeply wronged?
He would leave Ireland next day,
and place the broad Atlantic between
him and this—ay, this lovely,
bewitching girl. Why was she so
captivating? Where did the charm
lie?

Thoughts all-conflicting, all-contradictory
surged through his brain
as he marched onward. The summer
dew failed to soothe his fevered
mind; the soft night-wind sighing
across the Shaughnamore mountain
did not cool his burning brow. The
gray dawn of glorious day still
found him plodding onwards, and
the sun was high above the horizon
when he entered the picturesque
little village of Enniskerry. He
had left Coolgreny fifteen Irish
miles behind him across the mountains.

When he had succeeded in arousing
the inmates of the Powerscourt
Arms, he demanded writing materials
and a messenger.

“Is it pin an’ ink at this time
o’ day, sir?” demanded the sleepy
handmaiden.
.pn +1

“Yes; here’s half a crown for
you. Open your eyes and hurry
up.”

He wrote the following note to
the O’Byrne, and despatched it by
a ragged gossoon, who started on his
errand, up the hill that leads by the
Dargle, like a mountain deer. He
also forwarded an order for his luggage
to the landlord of the Derralossory
Arms.

.pm letter-start
<sc>Sir</sc>: As you would permit me no explanation
last night, I <i>insist</i> upon making
it now. I did not know that you
were the possessor of the lands of my
forefathers until you yourself announced
it. In thanking you for your hospitality
I cannot refrain from saying that I wish
I had never enjoyed it, as it has been a
source of intense pleasure and likewise
of bitter pain.

I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

<sc>Philip Redmond</sc>.
.pm letter-end

The messenger returned in a few
hours with his luggage.

“Did you deliver my letter at
Coolgreny?”

“I gev it to wan av the boys,
sir.”

“Did you see any of the—family?”

“None o’ them, barrin’ Miss
Eileen’s pony that does be dhruv
be her in a sthraw shay, yer honner.”

Happy pony! thought Redmond,
as he gazed into the past and beheld
Doaty coming to a standstill
despite the musical remonstrances
of his mistress.

“They axed me if your honner’s
name was Ridmond, an’ I sed I
didn’t know; an’ I was axed if ye
cum wudout a hat, an’ I sed yis.
'That’s him,’ sez Luke Byrne, the
boy. 'A low-sized man,’ sez he. 'No,’
sez I, 'he’s a cupple o’ yards high
anyhow’; an’ Luke tould me they
wor draggin’ the lake beyant at Shinnagh
for ye, an’ that Miss Eileen
was roarin’ an’ bawlin’ the whole
mornin’.”

A thrill went through every fibre
in Redmond’s body as this last
announcement fell upon his ear;
and although the idea was coarsely
expressed, that the tender girl
might be sorrowing for him caused
an unutterable sensation of joy.
She could not believe him capable
of insulting <i>her</i> father beneath the
same roof which shut the stars
from her; and yet—pshaw! he
would shake the whole thing off as
a disagreeable yet delightful dream.

His immediate resolve was to
proceed to Dublin, and from thence
to Queenstown and back to his
native shores; but second thoughts,
always so sober, so full of judicious
counsel, whispered that the long,
lonely days and nights upon the Atlantic
would but serve to increase
his fever, and that his best chance lay
in the distracting influence of European
travel. Seven o’clock that
evening found him on board the
mail steamer for Holyhead; and as
he gazed at the soft outlines of the
Wicklow hills receding from his
wistful glance, and thought of <i>her</i>
in that secluded, peaceful valley, he
would willingly have parted with a
moiety of his existence to be once
again in the sunlight of her presence.

.tb

While our hero was on the road
to Enniskerry Father O’Doherty
found an opportunity for comparing
notes with Minchin, and, fully
convinced of the truthfulness of the
young American’s statement, proceeded
at once to disabuse the diseased
mind of the O’Byrne. This
he ultimately succeeded in doing,
but not without a deal of powerful
and full-flavored argument. “I do
believe, Father, I took too much
wine. Where is Mr. Redmond, until
I make the <i>amende honorable</i>?”
.pn +1

“Strolling about the grounds, I
believe.”

“Let us go in search of him.”

“You can go, O’Byrne; I want to
have a chat with my fair young
child,” said the clergyman, who had
witnessed Eileen’s stately courtesy
and exit.

Minchin and O’Byrne strolled
out into the summer night, making
sure of finding Redmond on the
terrace overlooking the moat.

“We have bail for his appearance,”
said Minchin, “as his hat is
decorating the antlers of a lordly
stag in the entrance hall.”

The two gentlemen smoked their
cigars as they leisurely went in
quest of the missing one, and from
terrace they proceeded to garden,
from garden to pleasaunce, and from
pleasaunce to gate-house, but no
trace of him could be found. “He
is in the stables,” suggested the
O’Byrne; and they returned to the
enormous quadrangle in which the
houses were quartered, but none of
the helpers had seen him, and the
stables were all locked for the night.

“He is a romantic, hot-headed
young dog, and is just taking a
cooler. He will turn up by and
by, I warrant me; or mayhap he
has hied him to my lady’s bower.”
And Minchin laughed at the conceit.

“Where is Redmond?” asked
Father O’Doherty, as they regained
the drawing-room.

“We were going to ask you,”
said the O’Byrne. “Where is Eileen?”

“The poor child has a bad headache
and has gone to lie down.”

“Come along, Mr. Minchin, and
we’ll take our <i>cruiskeen lawn</i>. In
the meantime I shall send some of
the men to scour the wood in pursuit
of this invisible guest. I needn’t
ask you to join us, father?”

“No, sir; a little wine at dinner
is my <i>quantum</i>.”

As the night rolled over considerable
uneasiness was felt about
Philip’s non-appearance; but Minchin’s
theory, that he had, in his
agitation, returned to the Derralossory
Arms <i>minus</i> his hat, was gladly
accepted, and the O’Byrne insisted
upon driving with Minchin into
Roundwood in order to set matters
right.

It is scarcely necessary to say
that the worthy proprietor of the
hostelry had nothing of Redmond’s
but a small nickel-mounted valise,
which he described as set in solid
silver.

This increased the anxiety, and
as a portion of the lands of Coolgreny
abutted upon the lake in
sheer precipices of two and three
hundred feet, fears began to be entertained
that poor Philip in his
ignorance of the country might
have taken this unfortunate path.
There was nothing for it but to
await the advent of daylight, and
then to scour the country, and, if
necessary, to drag the lake at this
particular place.

The morning brought no Redmond,
and as traces of recent footsteps
were very distinct in the
neighborhood of the precipice, and
the heather rudely torn away at
the edge of the cliff, as though by a
despairing clutch, the idea that he
had fallen into the lake grew into
a certainty. A grapnel was got
ready, and the melancholy process
of dragging rapidly commenced.

The relief which Redmond’s letter
brought produced immediate reaction.
Father O’Doherty at once
started with his car to Enniskerry,
with a very courteous note from
the O’Byrne and a message from
Eileen, but arrived about an hour
after our hero had quitted the village.
.pn +1
Later on, when the good
priest had returned with this intelligence,
the O’Byrne telegraphed
to the Shelborne Hotel, Dublin, on
chance, writing also to that address.
Philip was on board the
steamer when the telegram arrived,
and in London when the missive
reached Ireland’s capital. Had he
received either, he would have
flown back to Coolgreny; but it
was not to be.

.tb

It was Sunday forenoon, and a
great human wave surged out of
the Madeleine Church, Paris. Instinctively
one pauses beneath that
noble portico and gazes across the
Place de la Concorde, taking in the
glittering Boulevard and the whole
brilliancy of the <i>coup d’œil</i>. Philip
Redmond had been amongst the
worshippers, and was now on his
way to the Hôtel du Louvre, so different
in every respect to the white-washed,
thatch-covered hostelry
in the heart of the County Wicklow,
and at the door of which he
was introduced to the reader. He
had indulged in a lazy tour, commencing
with the quaint old cities
of Belgium, whence he proceeded to
Cologne and up the Rhine to Mayence,
and after a wandering of two
months found himself in the gay
and fascinating capital of the world.
Philip’s wound had been healed;
his heart ceased to throb at the recollection
of the “tender light of a
day that was dead”; and if the
image of Eileen O’Byrne did come
back to him, he felt inclined to
place himself in the pillory of his
own thoughts and pelt himself with
ridicule. It was a delightful thing
to be heart-whole. He had played
with fire and had passed through
the red-hot furnace, badly burnt,
no doubt, but cured at once and
for ever. He used to amuse himself
by imagining what the effect of
his letter upon the haughty chieftain
might be, and would not <i>her</i>
vanity be ruffled by the utter absence
of the mention of her name? He
had done his <i>devoir</i> in stating that
the day was one of intense enjoyment;
this <i>she</i> could easily translate
by the aid of her own dictionary.
Heigh-ho! it was a pity the dream
did not last a little longer, he
thought, as he prepared to descend
the steps of the church upon that
lovely August forenoon. As he
descended, his foot became entangled
in the skirt of a young girl
right in front of him. He turned
to apologize—his heart gave one
fearful bound and his brain reeled
till he became dizzy. He felt himself
grow pale and cold, but, lifting
his hat with a cold salutation, he
passed down and onwards. It was
Eileen O’Byrne!

When he reached the hotel—and
he felt as if treading on air—he repaired
to his apartment and flung
himself into a chair in a whirl of
conflicting emotion. The old wound
which he had imagined healed
had broken out afresh beneath
the sad, reproachful glance of those
lovely gray Irish eyes. There was
but one chance left, and that was to
fly. To be in the same city, country,
hemisphere with her would be torture.
He felt as if some great sea
should divide them, and then that
the joyous serenity of the last few
weeks would be restored to him. He
had very little packing to do, as he
had not unpacked, and he at once
proceeded to the <i>bureau</i> to settle his
bill. As he was passing along a
corridor in order to reach the <i>vestiaire</i>,
he became almost rooted to
the ground. A turn in the passage
brought him face to face with her
whom he was doing his uttermost
to avoid. She was deadly pale,
.pn +1
and she passed him with a scarcely
perceptible inclination of the head,
cold, glacial, haughty. There was
a cry of anguish in Phil Redmond’s
heart, and, acting upon an unconquerable
impulse, he turned after
her and almost fiercely demanded:
“What <i>have</i> I done to deserve this?”

The same bright rush of crimson
which flashed across her face like a
rosy sunset when first he met her
covered her now as she panted
forth:

“<i>You</i> seemed to wish it so.”

“<i>I!</i>” And Phil Redmond blurted
out something with reference to explanation
and unfair treatment in
his usual <i>brusque</i> way.

.tb

It was chill October, and a huge
log burned in the cavernous fire-place
in the banquet-hall at Coolgreny.
The claret was upon the
ebon-colored oak table, and round
it sat no less a party than that
which was assembled upon the
memorable night when Phil Redmond
so innocently brought the
wrath of his host upon his devoted
head.

“To think,” said Minchin in a
state of ecstatic glow, “that we
should meet here under such
remarkable circumstances. Ye
gods!”

“Yes,” said the O’Byrne, rising,
“I wanted the same party exactly,
and I have been fortunate. You
all heard me swear that I would
never sell a rood of Ballymacreedy,
Kilnagadd, or Derralossory; but”—with
a smile—“that oath does not
prevent my giving them away, and,
please God, when you, Father O’Doherty,
unite my honest young friend
Philip Redmond to my only child,
he shall be restored to the lands of
his fathers through his wife.”
.sp 4
.h3 id=temporal
THE BEGINNING OF THE POPE’S TEMPORAL PRINCIPALITY.
.sp 2
The Vicar of Jesus Christ is by
virtue of his office, and by divine
right, of necessity in his own person
a sovereign. He is exempt
from all subjection to any temporal
power, and perfectly free in respect
to his own person and the full exercise
of his spiritual supremacy,
to which kings are as much subject
as other baptized persons, and nations
as individuals. The right of
acquiring property and domain, in
a manner which does not violate
any other human right, is inherent
in this personal sovereignty, and
carries with it all the rights of eminent
domain, so that whatever is
acquired in this way becomes inalienable
except by a voluntary
cession. The possession of actual
sovereign dominion over a sufficient
territory is evidently the logical
and natural complement of this
personal sovereignty, yet is not
acquired except by some legal, human
act, similar to that which subjects
any given domain in particular
to any other given individual
or corporation. The possession of
spiritual sovereignty united with
the temporal dignity and power of
a civil monarch is, manifestly, the
most dangerous and liable to abuse
of all the attributions which any
individual ruler or dynasty of supreme
rulers can be supposed to
have received as a stable and permanent
right. The danger is increased
.pn +1
in proportion to the magnitude
and duration of the spiritual
empire and the political monarchy
united with it. We are
obliged, therefore, to believe that
Jesus Christ, as the Sovereign Lord
of the world, when he founded such
an institution, provided efficaciously
for the protection of Christian
society against this danger and
liability to abuse. This he could
not do without exercising a special
and supernatural providence over
his earthly vicariate, the Papacy.
Yet, according to the analogy of all
other departments of the divine
government, this special providence
ought to be reduced to a
minimum and made as little miraculous
as possible, by a wise ordering
of natural and secondary causes
in reference to the desired effect.
In point of fact, we see, from the
history of the Papacy, that God
has permitted it to exhibit as much
of the weakness and imperfection
of all human things as was consistent
with the fulfilment of the end
of its institution. His supernatural
overruling of the natural course
of events has been limited to this
result. And the preservation of
the Holy See from perversion by
human passions into a merely
earthly power, an empire of this
world, has been accomplished in
great part by the difficulties and
struggles which have always environed
the possession of the greatest
of human dignities and powers—the
papal sovereignty.

From Nero to Constantine the
Popes were obliged to struggle with
the heathen emperors in order to
conquer their liberty at the cost of
martyrdom. From Sylvester to
Gregory the Great they were obliged
to struggle with civil and ecclesiastical
princes for the recognition
and maintenance of their spiritual
supremacy. The temporal and
civil domain necessary for the stable
possession and exercise of the
personal, sovereign independence
of the Pope as Supreme Pastor of
the church was not given until its
necessity became manifest. It
came in the natural course of
events, without violence or miracle.
Its tenure was precarious and constantly
disputed, and has so remained
until the present day. Our
present purpose is to sketch the
history of the struggles by which
the first Popes who were kings of
Rome secured the dominion of the
patrimony of St. Peter as an inalienable
right recognized by the
international law of Christendom.

The temporal domain of the
Popes began with the natural and
gradual acquisition of landed property,
which in those times carried
with it princely authority over the
tenants and inhabitants of estates.
Not only the Popes but the principal
bishops in Italy and other countries
became in this way dukes and
counts. The sovereign rights of
the emperors lapsed through a long-continued
neglect to fulfil the essential
duties of sovereignty, and
there was no other royal power in
Italy which succeeded to them in
a legitimate manner. The ruling
power devolved naturally upon the
local princes. The Roman people
turned toward the Pope as their
immediate bishop; just as the people
of Ravenna, Milan, Treves, Cologne,
and many other cities did
to their own bishop, because he
was the chief of their aristocracy,
and also the protector of the people,
and was the only one who was
both willing and able to take the
place vacated by their former rulers.
The Western Roman Empire ceased
to exist when the Heruli under
Odoacer took and sacked Rome,
.pn +1
making themselves masters of Italy.
Odoacer was in turn conquered
and killed by the Ostrogoth Theodoric,
who was nominally the lieutenant
of the Greek emperor, but
in reality conquered Italy for himself.
When the empire revived
under the able administration of
Justinian, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths
was subdued and overthrown
by the great general Belisarius.
A new invasion of Lombards,
or Long-beards, from Germany
put an end once more to the
imperial dominion in Italy, with
the exception of a certain part called
the exarchate, which had its
capital at Ravenna. The authority
of the Lombard kings was very
limited and precarious, and under
their sway the duchies and marquisates
and independent municipalities
of Italy assumed that character
of autonomy which made
Italy ever after incapable of anything
except a federative unity.
The Lombards were at first Arians,
but the conversion of their beautiful
and accomplished queen, Theodolinda,
by St. Gregory the Great
was the beginning of a general reconciliation
of the whole people to
the Catholic Church, and of the
complete extinction of the Arian
heresy in Italy. The Popes never
acknowledged the sovereignty of the
Lombard kings over the city and
duchy of Rome. The Greek exarch
at Ravenna, as the representative
of the emperor, was recognized
as having lawful jurisdiction, and a
magistrate delegated by him, called
a duke, resided in Rome. The actual
authority of these representatives
of the ancient imperial power
and of their master at Constantinople
became, however, continually
more and more a restricted and almost
nominal formality, until it was
altogether extinguished by the fall
of the Greek exarchate. A few
passages from the Italian historian
Cantù will show in a clear and
brief manner how the temporal sovereignty
of the Popes in Rome resulted
naturally and necessarily out
of the new order of things which
issued from the universal disorder
and confusion that prevailed:

.pm letter-start
“At the time of the descent of the
Lombards upon Italy the country lacked
a head possessing general authority,
and the Roman people, as well that portion
of them who had been subjugated
as those who were still free, had no
other eminent personage to whom they
could look except the Pope. He possessed
immense domains in Sicily, Calabria,
Apulia, the Campagna, the Sabine
territory, Dalmatia, Illyria, Sardinia, in
the Cottian Alps, and even in the Gauls.
These domains being cultivated by farmers,
he exercised over them a legal jurisdiction,
appointed officers and gave
orders; and, besides, his revenue enabled
him to distribute succors in times
of dearth, to furnish asylum to refugees,
and to pay troops. After the conquest
had interrupted the communications between
Rome and the exarch of Ravenna,
the Pope remained the <i>de facto</i> head of
the city where he resided; he corresponded
directly with the Byzantine court;
made war and peace with the Lombard
kings; and, moreover, by putting himself
in an attitude of resistance to their
conquests, <i>he became the representative of
the national party</i>. The chair of St. Peter
awaited only a pontiff who should feel
all the importance and display all the
dignity of his high position. Such a
man was Gregory the Great” (580-603).

“Italy, at this time, had no more stability
in its civil institutions than France.
The Lombards had occupied a large
part of it in the first burst of invasion;
but the partition which they made
among several dukes, though it served
to consolidate their possession, prevented
them from completing their conquest.
As the king was elected from among
these different nobles, without any hereditary
right, there was a revolution at
every vacancy; moreover, the dukes obtained
continually more considerable
privileges by favoring one or another
among the competitors—so much so
.pn +1
that those of Benevento and Spoleto
acquired complete independence. The
only thing they all desired was to remain
in tranquil enjoyment of absolute
authority in their particular domains, or
to make war for their own personal aggrandizement
in power and wealth, and
not in obedience to the king’s command;
so that the king could with difficulty
induce them to follow him in any military
enterprise against the Greeks for
the purpose of expelling these from Italy,
or against the Franks, who molested
them unremittingly, either for the sake
of pillage or at the instigation of the
Eastern emperors.... The Greek exarch’s
administration extended over the
Romagna, the marshy valleys of Ferrara
and Comacchio, over five maritime towns
from Rimini to Ancona, and five other
towns between the shore of the Adriatic
and the Apennine slope, over Rome,
Venice, and almost all the cities on the
sea-coast. Some cities, for instance
Venice, made themselves independent,
while others were constantly menaced
and often invaded by the Lombards.
When these latter were involved in foreign
or civil wars, the exarchs would
avail themselves of the chance to repossess
the places they had lost, but were
always speedily driven back into narrow
limits, without ever enjoying peace, and
subject to the necessity of making every
year short truces, for which they frequently
had to pay a tribute of three hundred livres
in gold. When the means failed for
paying tribute and the wages of the soldiers,
they ran down to Rome and plundered
the treasury of the church, or pillaged
the sanctuary of St. Michael at
Monte Gargano, which was an object of
great veneration to the Lombards....

“Another power remained in Italy, as
yet imperceptibly growing up, but destined
to be developed during the course
of the century and to cast lasting roots
amid the ruins of the others. The Popes
had always shown themselves hostile to
the Lombard domination and desirous
of preserving the invaded provinces to
the empire. Gregory the Great had employed
for this effect his authority, his eloquence,
his treasure, and his skill in the
arts of diplomacy; his successors followed
his example, and whenever they were
menaced by the Lombards they implored
without delay the aid of Constantinople.
Preserving toward the emperor the submission
which they had constantly exhibited
while Rome was the capital of the
world, they asked his confirmation of
their election, paid him a fixed tribute,
and kept at his court an apocrisiarius,
who treated with him respecting their
affairs; but their dependence on distant
sovereigns and feeble exarchs, upon
whom the people looked with an evil
eye, kept on continually diminishing.
Thus the authority of the Popes, who
were at the head of the municipal institutions
which had been preserved in the
city, rendered that of the Duke of Rome
almost a nullity, and approached to a
species of sovereignty.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Cesar Cantù’s <i>Univ. Hist.</i>, French translation,
vol. vii. p. 418, vol. viii. p. 214.
.fn-

Alboin, the first Lombard king,
was murdered soon after his conquest
by his own wife, in revenge
for the death of her father, Cunimond,
chief of the Gepidæ. He
was succeeded by Clefis, who was
assassinated after reigning eighteen
months. The Lombard dukes were
disposed to do without a king, and
elected no successor to Clefis, until
the necessity of uniting in war
against their enemies compelled
them to elect Autharis, the son of
Clefis, the prince whose wife was
the celebrated Queen Theodolinda.
Autharis died one year after his
marriage, and Theodolinda was requested
by the dukes to choose a
new spouse and king from among
their number. The choice fell upon
Agilulph, Duke of Turin. His
son and successor, Adoloald, was deposed
and Ariovald, Duke of Turin,
elected in his place, to whom succeeded
Rotharis, Duke of Turin, the
second husband of Gundeberga,
widow of Ariovald, and who was followed
by his son Rodoald, the last
of the descendants of Theodolinda.
The nobles and people were so much
attached to the memory of this
pious queen that they sought for a
new king in her family, although it
was not Lombard, and elected her
.pn +1
nephew, Aribert of Asti, of the
Agilolphingian tribe settled in Bavaria.
At his death the kingdom
was divided between his two sons,
from whom it was wrested by Grimoald,
Duke of Benevento. His son
Garibald was dispossessed by Perthurit,
one of the sons of Aribert.
Cunibert, Luitpert, Ragimpert, and
Aribert II. completed the list of the
Agilolphingian kings. Ansprand, a
partisan of Luitpert, who had been
dethroned by his rival Ragimpert
and imprisoned by Aribert, conquered
Aribert, and after a short
reign of three months was succeeded
by his son Luitprand, who reigned
thirty-two years (712 to 744) and
was the greatest of the Lombard
kings.

With the reign of Luitprand begins
the epoch of the decisive events
which resulted in the final severance
of all the bonds of political dependence
which united Rome with the
Greek Empire, in the establishment
of the formal and legal monarchy
of the Popes, and the overthrow of
the Lombard dominion in Italy by
Charlemagne.

Luitprand was a sovereign in the
strict sense of the word, through
his ability and energy of character
even more than by the recognized
title to the royal dignity which was
vested in his person. He undertook
and carried out a thorough reformation
in the political administration
of his kingdom, re-established
order, extirpated the germs of
disunion and civil war, secured the
obedience of his subordinate dukes,
and preserved a good intelligence
with the Popes and the church.
His ultimate aim was the union of
all Italy in one kingdom under his
own laws, including all the remaining
Greek possessions and the city
and principality of Rome. The first
great step toward the fulfilment of
this design must obviously be the
conquest of the Greek exarchate.
In this undertaking he had the
sympathy of the Roman aristocracy
and people, though not that of the
Popes. The remnant of the old
Roman nation existed at this time
almost entirely in the ancient capital
and its adjacent territory. The
Roman Empire really perished from
no other cause than the general extinction
of the Roman race. As
the barbarians swarmed into Italy
the best part of the old Italians
took refuge in Rome, where the old
spirit, the old manners and institutions—so
to speak, the Roman essence—was
concentrated and preserved
to effect a new and peaceful
conquest of the world. This Roman
nation desired to have its own
autonomy and to be subject neither
to the Roumanians of the east nor
the barbarians of the west. They
had no thought of accepting Lombard
sovereignty over themselves,
yet they were eager to see the
Greek domination in Italy terminated,
and therefore desired Luitprand’s
success in the enterprise of
overthrowing the exarchate. For
Rome they desired independence.
The Popes, however, would not take
any measures for making Rome a
sovereign state, until divine Providence
directed the course of events
to this end as a natural and necessary
result, without any positive act
on their part renouncing civil allegiance
to the empire.

The course of events actually
favored most opportunely and remarkably
the designs of Luitprand
and the wishes of the Roman people.
The unutterable folly of the
Emperor Leo the Isaurian drove
him to an attack on the religion of
the Romans and the sacred person
of the pontiff. He ordered the
exarch Paul to enforce submission
.pn +1
to the heresy of the Iconoclasts by
military power. Pope Gregory II.
excommunicated Leo and exhorted
all the Catholic princes and people
of Italy to stand firm in defence
of the faith and discipline of the
church. They obeyed his voice so
readily and with so much zeal that
the absolute and final extinction
of the Greek dominion in Italy was
only averted by the mediation of
the Pope himself. As Luitprand
and the Lombards, profiting by the
general uprising against the imperial
authority, became stronger and
advanced toward a more entire
subjugation of Italy, they became
more dangerous to the independence
of the Holy See than were the
feeble dukes and exarchs who represented
the distant emperor. The
king even allied himself with the
exarch for the subjugation of the
proud republic which disdained to
be subject to either Greek or Lombard,
and besieged the city of
Rome. Pope Gregory II. went to
Luitprand’s camp, and the majesty
of his presence, together with the
force of the arguments which he
addressed to the noble and Catholic
mind of the king, produced such an
effect upon him that he cast himself
at the feet of the pontiff, imploring
his benediction and promising
peace. In company with the
Pope, Luitprand went to St. Peter’s
Church, where he laid upon the
tomb of the apostle his royal mantle,
bracelets, coat of mail, dagger,
gilded sword, golden crown, and silver
cross as a gift to St. Peter and
the church. Nevertheless, he renewed
his attempt to make himself
master of Rome ten years later
during the pontificate of Gregory
III., and continued during the
pontificate of Zacharias his occasional
irruptions into the exarchate
of Ravenna and the duchy of
Rome, although in every instance
he yielded to the voice of his conscience
and of the Vicar of Christ,
desisting from his purpose as often
as he renewed it, and making restitution
of the towns which he had
conquered. His successor, Rachis,
undertook anew the enterprise of
subjugating the exarchate, but was
so much affected by the remonstrances
of the Pope that he abdicated
his dignity and withdrew
with his wife and children into a
monastery. His brother and successor,
Astolpho, actually achieved
the conquest of the exarchate,[#] and
put an end to the Greek dominion
in that part of Italy. Henceforth
the Byzantine emperors had no
authority in Italy except in Calabria
and Sicily. Astolpho next
turned his attention toward Rome
and made a formal demand of allegiance
on the senate and people,
supported by a large army. The
city was strongly fortified, and all
its people were determined to make
a stubborn defence of their independence.
Astolpho would not
lend his ear to any negotiation,
help was demanded in vain from
the Greek emperor, and in these
sore straits Pope Stephen III. betook
himself for aid and succor to
Pepin, the King of the Franks.

.fn #
The term exarchate is here used in its restricted
sense.
.fn-

Gregory III. had once before invoked
the help of Charles Martel
without any result. Since that
time the Frankish nobles had referred
to Pope Zacharias the question
of their right to set aside the
effete dynasty of the Merovingians
and to substitute in its place the
family of Charles Martel. The
Pope had answered that the royal
title ought to be given to the one
who actually possessed and exercised
the royal authority and functions.
.pn +1
The new Carlovingian dynasty
was thus formally established
in France with the sanction and
benediction of the Pope. And the
time was now come for these powerful
kings, Pepin and Charlemagne,
to step forward as the eldest sons
of the church, to secure the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope, and to
inaugurate that close relationship
which has ever since existed between
the kingdom of France and
the Holy See.

Pope Stephen, although old and
in extremely feeble health, went to
France, where he was received with
a spontaneous and splendid ovation
by all ranks of the people, from
the highest to the lowest. The
Pope performed the solemn ceremony
of the anointing of the king,
the queen, and the royal princes,
and conferred upon Pepin the dignity
of patrician of Rome. A solemn
assembly of the magnates of
the kingdom was held at Quiercey,
at which the king and nobles bound
themselves to place the Pope in
possession of the sovereign dominion
of Rome and the exarchate.
Pepin first attempted peaceful negotiations
with Astolpho, and, these
being absolutely refused, crossed
the Alps with an army, and compelled
him to make a treaty of
peace with the Pope, by which he
renounced all claim upon the Roman
principality and the exarchate.
Astolpho, however, disavowed and
violated his engagements as soon
as Pepin had withdrawn his army.
Again (755) Pepin crossed the
Alps and suddenly appeared
with an overwhelming force before
Pavia. Severer conditions of
peace were this time imposed upon
Astolpho—a mulct of one-third
of his treasure, a yearly tribute of
12,000 gold <i>solidi</i>, and hostages for
the fulfilment of his promises.
French and Lombard commissaries
were appointed to visit the whole
territory assigned to the Pope and
receive the keys of all the cities.
Pepin made a solemn and festal entry
into Rome amidst universal jubilation,
and laid a formal document
of investiture of the pontifical
domain, together with the keys of
the towns, upon the tomb of St.
Peter.

Astolpho died suddenly from an
injury received by a fall from his
horse, very soon after these events
(756). Rachis came out of his
cloister with the design of regaining
the crown which he had resigned.
The majority of the princes favored
the election of Didier, Duke
of Brescia, who secured the influence
of the Pope and of the envoys
of Pepin in his favor by a solemn
promise under oath to execute the
treaty made by Astolpho and to
cede some additional territory to
the Holy See. He was accordingly
elected King of Lombardy, but
failed to fulfil his engagements and
passed the seventeen years of his
reign in perpetual efforts to secure an
undivided sovereignty over all Italy.
At last, taking advantage of the
death of Pepin and of Pope Stephen
III., and of cabals and factions
among the Romans in reference to a
new election, he made an open and
violent effort to seize the dominion
of Rome and the entire principality.
He was deterred from actually consummating
his intention by an armed
entry into the city, where there
was no force which could have prevented
it, simply by the threat of
excommunication, and withdrew to
Pavia. The end of the Lombard
kingdom was now near at hand.
Pope Adrian, the Italian people,
Charlemagne, and all except a few
adherents of Didier were in accord
on this subject. Charles crossed
.pn +1
the Alps with a large army, evading
the troops which guarded the passes
by means of a secret defile, and
easily took possession of the whole
territory, Pavia only excepted, which
held out for a year under Didier
and his gallant son, Adelchis. Pavia
at length surrendered, the Lombard
kingdom was abolished, Didier
was confined in a French monastery,
where he became a monk in
earnest for the rest of his life, the
donation of Pepin to the Holy See
was confirmed, and Charles returned
home to prosecute that brilliant
career which made him before the
end of the century the monarch of
almost the whole of Europe.

The temporal kingdom of the
Pope was now established in a definite
and stable manner, with the
universal recognition of Catholic
Christendom. Nevertheless, as a
civil institution it was still exposed
to the inward and outward vicissitudes
and dangers to which all
states are liable from the very nature
of things. It was necessary
that some great political power,
distinct from the papal sovereignty,
should hold over the See of St.
Peter the ægis of protection. The
providence of God, therefore, soon
raised up that power which was
consecrated by the name of
.sp 2
.h4
“THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.”
.sp 2
During the last year of the eighth
century Adrian’s successor, Pope
Leo III., was obliged to implore
the aid of Charlemagne to repress
the turbulence of Roman factions.
Leo was received by Charlemagne
at Paderborn, in the midst of a
brilliant assemblage of nobles and
a vast army, with all possible veneration
and honor, and returned to
Rome escorted by princes and prelates
and a guard of honor, to await
the promised visit of the king. In
December, 799, Charlemagne came
to Rome, a great council was assembled,
and all the measures which
were necessary for restoring and
confirming order in the pontifical
state were adopted. The Christmas
festivities were celebrated with
the greatest possible pomp and
splendor, and while Charlemagne
was kneeling before the tomb of
the apostles Leo suddenly and unexpectedly
approached him and
placed on his head a golden diadem.
The people burst forth into
the acclamation: “Life and victory
to Charles, the great and pacific
Roman emperor!” In the
bull which Leo published on the
same day he says: <i>Quem Carolum
auctore Deo, in defensionem et provectum
sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ
Augustum hodie sacravimus</i>.

In a former article[#] we have
sketched an outline of the destinies
and vicissitudes of Rome during
the period of the decline of the
Carlovingian dynasty and the rise
of the German Empire. We have,
therefore, now presented in a general
view the history of the rise
and consolidation of the temporal
sovereignty of the Popes between
the two great eras of St. Gregory I.
and St. Gregory VII. From that
time forward the political history
of the Papacy relates chiefly to the
rise and subsequent decline of the
temporal power of the Pope over
all Christendom, until at last, in
the disruption of political unity
among European states, the Holy
See is once more subject to the
same struggle for independence in
its immediate patrimony which preceded
the period of its mediæval
power. The confederate union of
the European nations under the
.pn +1
moral presidency of the pope and
the political primacy of the emperor
was gradually transformed, by
the waning of the imperial power
which became restricted to Germany
and at last subsided into a
mere royal dominion over Austria,
and the diminution of the spiritual
power of the Holy See by the
schism in Christendom, into a
weaker sort of alliance, held together
by common interests and
mutual treaties. So long as this
continued the Pope retained his
place among the other sovereigns
as one of the Italian princes, with
a personal pre-eminence and a moral
influence derived from his spiritual
supremacy over the Catholic
nations, and over the Catholic
population in those nations which
were not Catholic. Sound policy
and the necessity of preserving an
equilibrium in Europe caused the
powerful monarchs of the great
states to protect the independence
of the Pope against one another,
and to restore it when it was invaded.
The disruption of the last
bonds of European alliance in our
own day has left the Holy See and
the church once more a prey to
secular tyranny exercised by a new
German emperor, and a new Lombard
king, without protection or
defence from any political power.
As Rome and Christendom went
up together, so they have gone
down together. And if a regeneration
or restoration in the actual
present or the future is destined for
Europe and the rest of the world,
it must be accomplished in both
together; for they are inseparable
parts of one whole. The history
of the past is therefore a guide for
judging the present and forecasting
the future. The question of the
temporal sovereignty of the Pope
in the Roman state is essential and
pre-eminent in the discussion of
the principles of a reconstitution of
the family of civilized and Christian
nations. The complete independence
and liberty of the Pope
as supreme head of the church, and
of the church itself, are intrinsically
the most important of all
rights and interests; and with these
the temporal sovereignty of the
Pope is necessarily connected so
intimately that it becomes indirectly
and extrinsically of equal
importance, being, in fact, practically
identified with them. We
have, therefore, in our preceding
historical sketches prepared the way
for showing how this sovereignty
of the Pope over Rome and the
whole territory which he claims as
subject to his crown is an indubitable
and inalienable right, which
must be restored and secured to
him as the indispensable condition
of religious and political order and
well-being.

.fn #
“The Iron Age of Christendom,” <sc>The Catholic
World</sc>, July, 1877.
.fn-

We shall not attempt to reconcile
this proposition with the doctrine
of a divine or natural right of sovereignty
inhering in the multitude
of every nation or a majority of
them. At the present time this doctrine
is not maintained by sensible
and moderate advocates of a constitutional
form of government and
of popular franchises. The sovereignty
may lawfully reside in the
multitude politically organized, as
it does in our republic, but it is
not by virtue of divine or natural
right coalescing from the separate,
individual rights of the units who
make up the mass. The right of
Mr. Tilden to the Presidential chair
was not asserted on the ground that
he received a majority of the popular
vote, which he did receive without
question, but on the ground
that he received a majority of the
votes of the electors who were
.pn +1
really competent to vote for the
appointment of a President, according
to the Constitution. We might
make a plausible argument to show
that the Roman people have always
consented to the papal sovereignty,
except during intervals of political
madness, and actually at the present
time would re-establish it, if they
were free to do so. But the right of
the Pope cannot be maintained on
a theory, which would reduce it to
a popular concession revocable at
any time by the will of his subjects.
Some good Catholics may hold the
doctrine of popular sovereignty as
above defined, but they do so inconsistently;
for, although it is not
directly contrary to the Catholic
faith, it is incompatible with the
principles and practice of the Holy
See and the church, and the doctrine
of every authority respected
by sound and loyal Catholics who
are instructed in the science of
political ethics. In certain circumstances
the will of the people suffices,
alone or in concurrence with
other causes, to convey or transfer
lawful dominion. We have shown
how, in the case of the papal
sovereignty, the Roman people
did, voluntarily, withdraw or refuse
allegiance to all other princes
and eagerly give it to the
Pope. We have shown, also, how
other causes concurred in establishing
his right as a fact, and placing
him in actual possession of the sovereignty,
without prejudice to any
other really existing legitimate
right. The Pope possessed all
the rights belonging to his position
as the chief land-owner and prince
among the Roman princes. He
possessed the right, as head of the
church, to have no temporal prince
placed over him who could control
or hinder the exercise of his spiritual
supremacy. Moreover, he possessed
a great many imperfect rights
or claims upon the allegiance of the
Roman people arising from the
services he had rendered to the
state in preserving, defending, and
succoring it in circumstances when
it was near extinction, from his superior
ability to govern the state,
and the fitness of things making it
expedient, and even necessary, for
the public good that sovereignty
should be vested in his person.
The action of Pepin was that of
one who defended the Roman people
in the right of their independence
against tyrants and aggressors,
and defended the general right
of his own and other nations to the
independence and tranquillity of
the Roman Church as the centre of
Christendom. The action of Charlemagne
was similar, and his overthrow
of the Lombard kingdom
was justifiable by the right of conquest,
the consent of the greater
part of the people of Italy, and the
necessity of providing for the welfare
not only of Italy but of all
Europe. His final act of settlement
in the beginning of the year
800 had still greater force and legitimacy
as the act of the king of
Europe, in which all the great
estates of his realm concurred, the
whole people of Western Christendom
applauding, and the Eastern
empire tacitly consenting. The
possession of a temporal principality
by the Pope became thus a fact,
which was so connected with natural
and divine rights of various
kinds that it became a perpetual
and inviolable right. This is the
only way in which sovereign rights
can become vested in any kind of
lawful possessor or political person.
There is no such thing as a right to
civil sovereignty immediately delegated
by God or springing out of
the constitution of nature directly.
.pn +1
Scarcely any one can be found, even
among legitimists, who maintains
any such origin for sovereign rights.
There is a natural and divine right
to good government inherent in
the social and political order.
There is a divine right, having a
natural basis, in the Catholic Church
to good government, which is specifically
secured by the divine
appointment of the form of government,
as a hierarchy subordinated
to a supreme head. This right
takes precedence of all others. As
those rights which are more particular
cede to the more general, all
rights whatever must give way to
the universal right of all Christians
and all mankind, that the Vicar of
Christ shall be left free and independent
in the possession and
exercise of his spiritual supremacy,
and that all men shall have liberty
of obeying him as the vicegerent
of God on earth. The Roman people
have a right to good government,
the Italian people have a
right to national well-being, all Europe
has a right to the advantage
of a due political equilibrium and
alliance among nations. All these
advantages were secured by the establishment
of the sovereignty of
the Pope in Rome. It grew up and
became strengthened, and sustained
itself for ages, as an essential
part of the political constitution of
Europe. Whatever pretence to
right, legitimacy, stability, or sanction
of any kind can be made by
any European institution, the same
is applicable to the temporal principality
of the Pope. But, beyond
all this, it is necessary to the spiritual
independence of the Holy See,
and therefore protected by the
sanction of a higher right and a
higher law. It has been given to
God and accepted by his vicegerent,
and has thus become sacred,
inviolable, irrevocable. It is like a
cathedral, an altar, the sepulchre
of a saint. It is the property of the
universal church, of Christendom,
and of God. As such it is under
the protection of ecclesiastical, international,
and divine law; it is
within the domain of right and of
morality, and therefore appertains
to the Catholic religion; is included
in the order which is subject to
the spiritual supremacy of the Pope.
In this order he is the supreme
judge and lawgiver, infallible in
defining and declaring the law, sovereign
in the judgments and decrees
by which he applies it to particular
questions and concrete matters.
The Pope is therefore the
supreme judge, the Catholic episcopate
being associated with him in
the same tribunal, by whom alone
the right and the necessity of the
temporal sovereignty of the Holy
See can be determined. The consent
of the Catholic people adds
moral weight to this determination,
and the political action of states
gives it the necessary physical force
for its execution. But there is no
appeal from the judgment of the
Pope himself on his own rights as
sovereign in the Roman principality,
either to bishops, sovereigns, or
people. His own judgment has
settled the right of the Roman question,
and it is the duty of all Catholics
to adhere to that judgment. The
Pope will not cede his sovereignty,
and the Catholic people will not
consent to its cession or to its violent
occupation by any usurper.

The history of the destinies of
Rome in the past shows that the
recent calamities of the Holy See
do not warrant the expectation that
its temporal sovereignty has passed
away to return no more. It has
proved itself to be indestructible
amid all the vicissitudes of Europe.
.pn +1
When Rome is shaken and disturbed,
the civilized world is thrown
into commotion. As we are writing,
the Russian army is crossing
the Pruth, and it cannot be doubted
that we have reached one of
the most momentous epochs of history.
When our readers are perusing
what has been written, another
fold of the scroll of time will have
been unrolled, perhaps thickly written
over with records of great events.
We have read this morning the significant
utterance of Von Moltke on
the necessity of arming more German
troops for the defence of the
empire. Some may take Châteaubriand’s
gloomy view of things and
think that Europe is hastening on
a funeral march to the tomb. If
this be so, then there is no refuge
for the Pope but the catacombs.
If atheism, despotism, revolution,
and anarchy are going to hold a
wild revel amid the ruins and monuments
of a Christendom which was
but is no more, then Rome will be
involved in the common ruin. But
“when Rome falls, the world.”
However, we do not feel obliged,
as yet, to despair of Europe, Christianity,
or civilization. If there is
a resurging movement after a temporary
convulsion, Rome will be
the centre of it, and the successor
of Pius IX. will reap the advantage
of his long watch by the tomb of
St. Peter. We believe in the triumph
of the Catholic Church over
infidelity, heresy, schism, revolution,
and despotism; over Judaism,
Mohammedanism, and heathenism.
The restoration of the Pope’s temporal
kingdom is necessary to this
triumph, and therefore we believe
it will be restored. We hope for
a pacification of Europe after the
war which has now begun is terminated.
Civilized mankind is tired
of war, and the almost bankruptcy
which is universally produced by
the enormous military establishments
of the nations of Europe, it
would seem, must enforce at length
disarmament and bring about a period
of amicable alliance and devotion
to the arts of peace, the study of
the welfare of the people as the end
of government, the moral sway of
principles which are not only patriotic
but Christian and Catholic. In
such a state of things the moral influence
of the Holy See would naturally
rise to a higher point than it attained
even under the mediæval system.

As for Rome and Italy, their temporal
prosperity, so far from being
sacrificed, would be promoted, by
the re-establishment of the pontifical
state and the overthrow of the
visionary fabric of Cavour and Mazzini.
We certainly desire to see all
just national aspirations of the Italians
satisfied. We are glad that
Austrian domination in Italy has
ceased. But all history seems to
show that a confederate unity of
distinct states is the only order suited
to Italy, and that a monarchical
unification is foreign and hostile to
the genius and conditions of the
Italian people. But, whatever may
be done by the Italians and the European
princes who will be left masters
of the situation and arbiters of
national interests after the conflict
now impending, in respect to the
rest of Italy, the domain of the
Pope must be restored to him in
its integrity and placed under the
protection of the law of nations.
This is the indispensable condition
of the restoration of Europe from
the condition of decadence into
which it has fallen, and no doubt
the providence of God will force
upon the rulers of the world the recognition
of this truth in due time
and by the course of events wholly
beyond their foresight or control.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=albap2
ALBA’S DREAM. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC. | PART II.
.sp 2
When it was known in the country
that M. le Marquis had joined
the army as a common soldier, the
consternation was great; but when
it was known why he had done so,
surprise gave way to bitter indignation
and regret. The Marquis
de Gondriac gone to risk his life
for the son of a low plebeian, generally
supposed to have been a pirate!
The marvel was how the
world stood still while such a scandal
was enacted in its face. As to
the widow, nobody thought of congratulating
her. If Marcel had gone
out and been shot, they would have
pitied her, within reasonable bounds;
but now every man’s hand was
against her and her son—even the
women felt the sweet font of pity
dried up within them when they
thought of what might come of
this. But the people, despite their
wrath, were loath to take so gloomy
a view of the future.

“The bullets have a sense of
their own,” said Peltran; “they
know who to hit first and who
last, and who never to hit. Look
at M. le Comte, how they respect
him! He has seen more fighting
than ever the Caboffs did, and yet
the bullets have never touched a
hair of his head. It’s my belief
the things are alive and know what
they are about.”

No one contradicted this sapient
remark; for Peltran was not a pleasant
person to contradict.

Marcel Caboff had never been
popular, but from this time forth
he was branded as a sort of potential
malefactor; if M. le Marquis
died, Marcel would be his murderer,
and Marcel’s life would not be
worth an old song in Gondriac.
The only people who did the
young man justice and had the
courage to take his part were Virginie
and Alba. Since the night
of the storm a friendship had
sprung up between Marcel and
Alba which had grown to more
than friendship on his side. Alba
was a lovely maiden now; impulsive,
untutored as the waves that
her nature seemed attuned to, wild
as the sea-birds whose lot she sometimes
envied when they beat their
wings, rose up from the rocks, and
took flight across the sea.

“I wonder you can stay here and
live this idle, humdrum life when
you might be away seeing the great
world,” Alba said to him one day,
as they met upon the cliff and
walked on together.

“You wish I were away, do
you?”

“Oh! no; only I wonder you
don’t go. I should, if I were a
man.”

“It is harder on me than you
think,” said Marcel bitterly. “I
did my best to get away; but mother
went on her knees and said I
would kill her if I went. It was
hard to resist that; but it makes
me feel angry with her when I
think of what has come of it. I
know the people hate me and call
me a coward. Alba,” he said, turning
suddenly round, “you don’t
think me a coward, do you?”
.pn +1

“No, Marcel; if you had not
been braver than any man in Gondriac,
except your father, you would
not have come out in the boat that
night. How dare they call you a
coward when they remember it!”

“They don’t remember it. Everybody
has forgotten it but you.”

“M. le Marquis has not forgotten
it.”

“I wish he had. That is what
has brought all this misery about.
If he had not remembered, I
should be away with the <i>grande
armée</i> now, and should either die a
glorious death like my brothers, or
come home by and by with the
cross, and perhaps a wound or two.
Then everybody would know I was
a brave man, and mother would
have had something to be proud
of.”

“Yes,” said Alba dreamily; she
was watching a ship that flecked
the horizon far away like a great
swan, its white sails flapping against
the sky, the sea-gulls following in
its wake, as it cleaved the wave.

“Would <i>you</i> have been proud of
me?” asked Marcel.

“Yes,... perhaps.”

“You would not have cared a
straw, I believe,” he said, angry
and hurt at her indifferent tone.

“If you had been killed? Indeed
I should, Marcel. I should
have been very sorry; but what is
the good of being sorry now, when
it is never going to happen? Look
at that ship out there! With what
a dip she shears the water! How
fast she goes! Her sails are like
wings. I wish I had wings!”

“You are always wishing for impossible
things,” said Marcel, huffed
at this summary dismissal; “you
were wishing you were a man a little
while ago, and now you want to
be a bird. Why don’t you wish for
something I could give you?”

“<i>You</i> give me! You could not
give me any one of the things I wish
for!” Alba flung back the waves
of swart hair from her low, broad
brow and laughed derisively.

“How do you know that? I
have plenty of money, and money
can buy everything—everything reasonable,
that is. Suppose a fairy
were to come and say she would
give you whatever you wished;
what would you ask for?”

“I would ask her first to make me
perfectly beautiful, perfectly good,
and perfectly happy,” began Alba.

“Why, you are all that already,
you foolish girl!”

“You think so; but you know
nothing about it. I would ask her
to make me as rich and powerful
as a queen, and to make everybody
pay me homage—not because
I was rich and powerful, but because
they loved me! Oh! I should
like to be loved more than anybody
ever was in this world before. And
I should like to live in a beautiful
castle, like the castle yonder, and I
should fill it with beautiful things,
and make it a real fairy palace to
live in.”

“And who would you like to live
in it with you? You would not
care to live in it all alone?” inquired
Marcel, bewildered by these
ambitious aspirations that left himself
and his money-bags altogether
out of the reckoning.

“Well, first, I should like to have
petite mère, of course; then ...
then I should ask the fairy for a
brave and handsome prince, who
would come and woo me as they
do in the story-books; he should
be handsome and clever and good,
or I should not care for him; but
if he was all that, I should love
him with all my heart and soul,
and we should be as happy as the
days are long!”
.pn +1

Marcel heard her to the end, and
then began to consider if there was
not some one item in the capacious
list that came within his possibilities.

“If another castle would do instead
of this one—you know you
never <i>could</i> have this one—I would
go and buy it for you, Alba, and
you might have as many pretty
gauds to fill it as you liked. We
have lots of gold and silver things
and pictures up there”—nodding towards
the Fortress—“and if I asked
mother she would give them to us—to
you, I mean.” Alba’s laugh
rang like a silver echo all along the
cliff.

“And the prince—where would
you get him?”

“Must he be a prince? Would
not a brave man who loved you
and was ready to do your bidding
in everything, who would spend
his whole life in trying to make you
happy—would not that do instead?
Must he be a prince, Alba?”

He took her hand and held it,
and she did not struggle to release
it. They were standing at the foot
of a rock that cast a long, black
shadow far out upon the sea; the
west wind blew into their faces;
Alba’s scarlet hood had fallen back,
and her hair drifted in a heavy
stream behind her, as Marcel bent
over her, waiting to hear his fate.
He might have read it in her blank,
scared looks, in her startled, reluctant
attitude. If there had been
hope for him, would she have
shrunk away and drawn closer to
the rock, as if asking it to protect
her?

“I have been too hasty,” said
the young man penitently; “I
should have spoken to Mère Virginie
first. Forgive me, Alba, and
say only if I may go to her now
and ask you for my wife?” He
still held her hand, and, mistaking
her silence, made an effort to slip
his arm around her. The movement
acted on Alba like the sting
of a snake; she escaped from him
with a cry, and sped along the cliff
like a deer flying from the hunters.

“My child, you have been foolish,
and so has Marcel; but there
is no need to cry or be unhappy
about it,” said Mère Virginie when
Alba had sobbed out the terrible
story on her breast. But Alba was
not to be comforted. She had been
living in dreamland, and now awoke
to find the hard ground under her
feet instead of golden clouds. Of
course she had dreamt of love and
lovers, and her heart, or that vague
yearning which as yet took its place,
had become enamored of the
dreams, visions that lay safe beyond
the disenchanting present, wrapped
in the golden haze of distance; and
now this rude awakening had dispelled
them, and brought home to
the dreamer that she had reached
that border-land that lies between
the mystery of morning and the
revelation of noon; the pearly
mists had rolled away in an instant,
and the blaze of the mid-day sun
was upon her, chasing the fairy
phantoms and making sober realities
pitilessly clear. She had been
dreaming of a lover in some remote
time and place, and, lo! he was at
her side; he had been close to her
all along—an ugly, common man,
who seemed made on purpose to
mock the visions of her fancy. And
yet this incident, which threw Alba
into such despair, had been for
many a day the fond anticipation
of her mother’s heart.

“Why need it frighten you to
find that Marcel loves you and
wants to have you for his little wife,
my child?” said Virginie. “Don’t
shudder and cling to me as if he
.pn +1
were going to drag you away this
very moment! You shall never
leave me, unless you do it of your
own free will. But remember, darling,
that I may have to leave you;
and then what will become of
you?”

“You leave me, petite mère?”
And Alba looked up at her in dismay.

“It must come to that some day.
I am old and you are young. I
have a trouble here that reminds
me of this often, and then I lie
awake of nights, thinking of my little
one, and praying God to give her
a friend, the best and truest friend a
woman can have in this world, to
take care of her before I am called
away.”

“Mother, if you go I will go too.
I could never live without you!
What should I do here if you were
gone? Nobody wants me, nobody
loves me in the whole world but
you.”

“Marcel loves you, my child, and
he will be that good friend, if you
will let him.”

“Marcel! Marcel! As if he could
replace you! I don’t love him; I
don’t care if he went to the wars
and never came back again.”

“If you married him you would
soon learn to love him; his goodness
would soon win your love.
And then remember, Alba, how
happy he could make you. You
often long to have beautiful things—pearls
and jewels and splendid
dresses—and you sigh to go away in
the ships that we see setting sail for
distant lands, and to see fair cities,
and the great mountains, and the
countries where it is always summer
and the flowers never die.
Marcel would give you all these
wishes; and then he would let you
be so good and generous to the
poor!”

“I should not care for pearls and
pretty things, if I had to marry
Marcel,” said Alba. “I should not
like to go to distant cities with
him; and if he loved me like a real
lover, he would let me be good to
the poor without making me his
wife.”

How was the anxious woman to
argue with this sweet, foolish innocence?
If she could but teach the
child to believe in the happiness
that was at her feet, and persuade
her to become Marcel’s wife, how
easy it would be to die! How terrible
it was to have to leave her
unprotected and alone! Virginie’s
heart overflowed in tears as she
thought of it, and the hot drops
trickled down her face and fell on
Alba’s.

Alba looked up quickly. “Petite
mère!” she said.

Throwing her arms round Virginie
and kissing the wet cheeks
again and again, “I will marry
him! I will do anything, only don’t
be unhappy, don’t cry! O mother,
mother! what is it?” she cried, starting
up in terror; for Virginie had
fallen back and was gasping for
breath. She pressed the child’s
arm, and with her eyes bade her be
still. The spasm of pain passed
away after a while; but when she
tried to speak the words came
faintly in broken sentences.

“Petite mère! what is it?” entreated
Alba, scarcely reassured.
“May I call Jeanne? Shall we
send for the doctor?”

“No, my darling, it is nothing;
I am well now,” said Virginie, with
a sickly smile that belied her words.
The sharp pang had, it is true, subsided,
but she was still ashy pale and
could only speak under her breath.
Alba watched her intently for some
minutes, and then, twining her arms
round Virginie’s neck, she laid her
.pn +1
head upon her breast, nestling to
her like a bird.

“Mother,” she whispered, “would
it really make you happy if I were
to marry Marcel?”

“My darling, it would make me
happier than anything else in this
world.”

“Then I will marry him, petite
mère.”

“My child!” Virginie’s face
lighted up with a beaming joy.

“I will marry him to please you.
There, now, promise me not to be
unhappy, not to lie awake at night
fretting, and never to have any
more pains at your heart!”

“But, my darling, I would not
have you do it to make me happy.
It is your happiness I am thinking
of, not my own. Don’t you think
you could learn to love Marcel after
a while?”

“Petite mère! how can you ask
me? Foolish, ugly Marcel, whom
everybody laughs at and calls a
coward! But never mind. I will
marry him, since he wants me and
you wish it; I promise you I will.”

“You are a foolish child to speak
of Marcel so,” said Virginie; “those
who laugh at him are the fools, and
you know he is not a coward. As
to his ugliness, what does that matter,
if he is faithful, and fond, and
good?”

Alba pondered this philosophy
for some minutes; then she said:
“When will he want to marry me,
petite mère?”

“Not for a long while yet, my
darling. You are both very young;
there’s time to wait.”

“How old am I?”

“You were sixteen in September.”

“And how long will you let me
wait?”

“Till your seventeenth birthday
is passed, at least.”

“Nearly a whole year! Then I
have all that time to be free and
happy!”

“And if at the end of that time
you have not learned to care for
Marcel, I shall not ask you to
marry him at all,” said Virginie.
The ecstasy which the reprieve had
called forth sent a pang through
her heart, and made her ask herself
whether, after all, she was doing
wisely and well in forcing upon
the child a lot from which her sympathies
recoiled so violently.

“Not marry him at all!” repeated
Alba in amazement; but she
added quickly, with one of those
sudden changes of manner that
were familiar to her sensitive and
mobile nature: “I think, petite
mère, I had better not wait for the
year. Instead of growing easier, it
might grow harder by thinking over
it all that time. You know you always
tell me that when one has a
disagreeable thing to do, it is better
to do it at once and be done
with it; one only makes it worse
by looking at it. I think it would
be better if I were to marry Marcel
at once and get it over.”

Virginie was aghast at the combination
of strength and utter childish
ignorance of the true nature
and bearings of the sacrifice in contemplation
which Alba’s reasoning
revealed. In the bottom of her
heart the mother believed this repugnance
would pass away, and
there was no cruelty in coercing the
child’s will at the outset, in order
to bend it to her real happiness;
but unless it could be so bent, Virginie
would rather die trusting her
treasure to God’s guardianship than
force it into any man’s keeping.

“We will say no more about it
for the present, my child,” she
said; “we will leave it in the hands
of God for another year.”
.pn +1

“And you will be happy now,
petite mère?”

“Yes. I feel more tranquil about
my darling’s future.”

“And Marcel—must I tell him?”

“No, you must not mention to
him or to any one what we have
been saying. I will speak to him
myself.”

So there was no engagement, no
promise exchanged; not a word of
thanks or of rejoicing passed between
him and Alba; but Marcel
knew how docile she was to the
power of love, and she loved her
mother with a strength and depth
of feeling that knew no limits and
measured no sacrifices. He did
not mean to be accepted as a sacrifice.
He had faith enough in his
love to believe that before the year
was out it would have conquered
the coy heart of his lady-love and
brought her a willing captive to his
side. Meantime, he would leave
none of the stratagems and tactics
of honorable warfare untried.

Alba was fond of books; he sent
for all those he could hear of that
were likely to interest her, and she
and Virginie read them together in
the long evenings, and talked over
them, until their days were brightened
by the scenes of travel and
story which the books described.
He knew she loved jewels and shining
silks, and he went to Paris himself
and selected pretty trinkets of
every kind—a necklace of pearls,
and rings of emeralds and rubies,
and silks of soft and brilliant colors—and
he would carry them to the
cottage, and shyly lay them down
without saying a word. Alba seldom
noticed them till he was gone,
when she would open the parcel
and examine its contents; but Mère
Virginie seemed to take more pleasure
in the gauds than she did.
This went on for three months.
Then, one morning, Alba, who had
been out since sunrise, sitting on
the rocks and watching the tide
come in and the creamy surf break
upon the shore, entered the cottage
and said abruptly:

“Mother, I won’t take any more
presents from Marcel, and I want
to give him back all those we have.
I can’t keep them; I can’t indeed.”

“You have made up your mind
never to marry him?”

“I will marry him whenever you
wish it. It is not that, only I can’t
take his gifts; they make me miserable.
I hate them!”

“My darling, I will send them
back to him, if you wish; but it will
hurt him very much, poor fellow!—he
took so much trouble to get
them for you, and you used to
love pretty things. How often have
I not heard you long for the rings
and flowers and shining silks we
have seen in the fine shops at
X——? Many a time you have
wished a fairy or a lover would
come and give them to you! Do
you forget?”

“Ah! that is just it,” said Alba,
with a light laugh that was full of
pain; “if a lover gave them to me,
I dare say I should like them well
enough.”

“But Marcel is your lover?”

“Poor Marcel! It is so funny
trying to think of him like that.
He is so awkward and stupid and
ugly; a real lover would be quite
different. But I don’t want one
now; I don’t indeed, petite mère.
Only please send Marcel back his
gifts. They make me feel as if he
were bribing me to be fond of him,
and I should not care a bit more
for him if he gave me the loveliest
jewels in France. I don’t care any
more for jewels. I used to long to
be happy myself, but now I only
care to make you happy. You
.pn +1
promised me to be very happy when
I married Marcel?”

This was dreadful. This was
not what the mother meant when
she prayed for the marriage that
Alba contemplated with such pathetic
resignation, as if it were a
sacrifice or a torture that every day
brought nearer to her. There were
still eight months between her and
the dreaded fate, and Virginie was
strongly moved to tell her at once
that she was released. It seemed
cruel to poison the child’s life all
that time on the chance, which apparently
grew less as the months
went on, of her getting to love
Marcel at the end of the year.
But, again, this marriage was the
one prospect of security and happiness
which the future opened out—quiet,
substantial happiness such as
the mother longed to see her in
possession of. If Alba flung it
away, there was nothing before her
but a lonely, loveless life of unprotected
poverty. It was best to be
patient, to keep silence a little longer.
Virginie, meantime, had faith
in the power of her own love, and
she would never cease imploring
heaven to take the destiny of her
darling into its safe-keeping.

.tb

Hermann de Gondriac had now
been five years absent, and those
years had been an uninterrupted
series of triumphs for him; he had
borne a charmed life on every battle-field,
and come off unharmed where
all around him were stricken. But
the chances of war prevailed at last,
and the news came to Gondriac
that M. le Comte had been seriously
wounded and was coming
home. His left arm had been shattered,
and, though the skill of the
emperor’s surgeon had saved him
from amputation, he was in great
suffering and condemned to the
severest precautions. A few bonfires
were lighted on the cliffs to
bid the home-comer welcome, but
this was all the people ventured on.
M. le Marquis, it was said, had been
in the same engagement with his
son, but had come out of it unhurt.

That winter was a fierce one all
through France, and Gondriac suffered
terribly; the bleak gray sea in
a perpetual roar, and the winds
beating on its wild, open coast.
Food and fuel were scanty, and but
for the presence of the young lord
at the castle many amongst the
fishermen’s families must have perished
and starved. No one had
yet seen him; the great physician,
who came from Paris at intervals,
forbade his going beyond the
southern side of the park until
spring came with sunshine and
blossoms. But Hermann could
not have been more actively present
amongst his people had he
been walking daily in the midst of
them. He seemed to know by inspiration
what they wanted, and
food and clothing were dealt out
from the castle in unlimited supplies.
There were toys for the children,
and medicine and strengthening
wine for the sick, and books for
those who could enjoy them, until
the people came to think that the
bird of the fairy-tale must be true,
and that their young master had
the tell-tale messenger at his orders.

Alba busied her poetic fancy in
making pictures of what Hermann
was like. She had not seen him
since she was a child and he a tall,
slim lad. Now that he was a man
and a hero, she longed to behold him
again. Even to look at a hero from
a distance would be something—life
was so tame, and all the people
she knew were so commonplace.
Was he proud and stern and
abrupt in speech, as they said the
.pn +1
emperor was? Or was he gentle
and honey-tongued like the knights
of old?

One morning a man rode in from
X—— to the castle bearing important
news to M. le Comte. Important
news indeed: the emperor
was coming the next day to inspect
the fortifications of a neighboring
seaport. It was settled at
once in Gondriac that M. le Comte
would go to meet his majesty. No
physician could hinder him in that,
come what might of it.

Alba had heard nothing of this
great event which was stirring the
country for fifty miles round. She
and Virginie lived a life apart up
in their sea-nest, and old Jeanne
was not given to gossip, but did her
marketing without waste of words,
and brought home little news in
her basket.

It was a lovely morning; the
sun shone brightly on the sea; the
breakers were scampering in, not
loud and angry, but tossing over
one another in masses of creamy
foam. Alba loved these laughing
seas, and would sit for hours on the
rocks, watching the tide ride in on
the silver horses. To-day the salt
breath of the ocean and the mellow
west wind excited her like wine,
and carried her off to the old
dreamland where she seldom ventured
now. She was away on the
dancing billows, sailing to the land
of the sun with a noble knight by
her side. Virginie sat there with
maidens serving her; there was
music on shore, and crowds waving
glad farewells. Alba began to
sing as she walked briskly along
the cliff, building her castle in
fairy-land. But the Fortress standing
out like a spectral prison, with
the ivy blown inside out on its
grimy walls, sent a sudden chill
through her and put out the sunlight.
There was a figure at the
window watching her. She turned
hastily back, walking quickly until
she got down the slope, when she
almost flew across the moor, on and
on till she was safe in the shelter of
the park. O that figure, how it
pursued her! How the Fortress
threatened her! If she could but
fly from them for ever, and never
hear of Marcel Caboff any more!
She had fancied latterly that the
prospect of being his wife and living
with old Mme. Caboff in the
gloomy, rat-haunted place was less
odious to her than it used to be;
but to-day the thought nearly drove
her mad. She had sped along as if
some evil fate were behind her, and
she was tired; there was a moss-grown
oak close by, and she sat
down on the trunk to rest. The
wind rustled the dead leaves at her
feet and swept the topmost branches
of the pines; then the anthem died
softly away and all was silent.
The place was very still; nothing
stirred but the insects in the grass,
and the zephyr high up above her
head, as it rose and fell in swift,
Æolian breathings. In the distance,
with a forest of trees between,
lay the castle, its battlements
and towers and flying buttresses
rising majestically against
the sky—a high romance of chivalry
and war chronicled in stone; to
Alba the door of an enchanted
realm whose portals she might
never pass. No wonder men were
heroes who lived in homes like this;
how easy it must be to lead grand
lives where the very walls are
heralds and witnesses urging to
noble and knightly deeds! The
present owner of this splendid house
was worthy in all this of his proud
ancestors. What a royal act of
heroism it was of the old Marquis
to enlist as a common soldier out
.pn +1
of gratitude to a dead man and pity
for his widow! Then Alba thought
of Marcel, of the poor, tame creature
he showed beside this race of
knightly nobles, and she despised
him, and fell to wondering how it
would be when she was his wife.
Gradually the castle melted away,
and in its place rose the Fortress,
dark and frowning, and it lowered
on her like a doom, and Marcel
and his grim old mother stood at
the window beckoning her to advance.
Alba flung herself down
upon the trunk and buried her face
in the moss, and began to cry passionately.
She cried a long time,
being full of pity for herself, and
there was no one within reach that
she need check her sobs.

“What has happened? What is
the matter with you, child?” said a
voice close to her.

She started up in terror. Yet
the speaker was not at all terrible
to look at—a gentleman in the
brilliant uniform of the Imperial
Guard, young and handsome, with
a most commanding air, and carrying
his left arm in a sling. When
Alba rose it was his turn to start.
Lying there in an attitude of child-like
<i>abandon</i>, shaken with sobs, her
scarlet hood thrown back and her
masses of black hair falling in loose
coils over her neck and face, he
had taken her for a little girl; he
had called her child, and, lo! she
was a full-grown maiden, and lovely
beyond words, despite her tears and
her dishevelled mien. He bowed
to her as he might have done to a
queen.

“You are M. le Comte!” said
Alba, pretty much as she might
have said to a celestial apparition,
“You are the Archangel Gabriel!”

“Hermann de Gondriac, your
humble servant, mademoiselle.”

She stared at him through the
big tears that hung like dew-drops
from her lashes, her soft, large
glance modest, yet unabashed as if
it were gazing on a picture. The
knighthood in Hermann recognized
the maidenhood of that fearless
gaze and did it reverence, but he
could not quench the glowing admiration
of his own. How liquid and
pure they were, those black stars
with which she stared at him, those
soul-lit eyes that met his without
dismay, too innocent to quail beneath
their burning light! Why
should they quail? Were they not
looking at a vision, a dream transmuted
into substance? This was
the young chief whom she had pictured
to herself so often, whose lineage
and prowess were the pride of
all the people. Only how much
grander the reality was than anything
she had fancied! What a
martial air he wore in his gold-embroidered
uniform, with his spurs
and clanging sword and plumed helmet,
the stars upon his breast—every
inch a warrior and a knight!

“You have hurt yourself, mademoiselle;
you are in pain,” said
Hermann. “Can I send to the castle
for assistance for you?”

“Thank you, monseigneur; I
have not hurt myself.”

“Yet you were crying?”

“It was not with pain.” This
time Alba dropped her lids and
blushed.

“Forgive me; I did not mean to
intrude upon you.” Alba stood
looking down like a guilty child,
her cheeks aflame, her lips quivering
with the sudden conflict between
fear and shame, and a strange
emotion that thrilled her like sweet
music. “Who is she?” thought
Hermann. He remembered, years
ago, a child whom his father raved
about, wondering how a plebeian
stem could have put forth so fair a
.pn +1
flower. Could this be she? The
<i>curé</i> had told him of the girl’s rare
beauty as a sad and anxious burden
on his mind, and of the mother’s
being ill and in need of generous
wine, and he had ordered the best
in his cellar to be sent to her.
Half unconsciously, as when we
try to catch some forgotten air by
humming it under our breath, he
murmured, “Alba....”

She looked up with a start, and
then they both smiled.

“How did you guess I was
Alba?” she said, her shyness gone
in an instant.

“I did not guess, I remembered.”

“How wonderful! I should never
have remembered you, monseigneur.”

“That is not surprising. I am
changed since you saw me.”

“And so am I, am I not?”

“Yes, more changed than I could
have believed.”

“Ah?” Did he mean for the
better or the worse? The man read
the question in her eyes and answered
it:

“You are far more beautiful
than I expected.”

“Beautiful!” she repeated, and
her face lighted up.

“I was frightened when I saw
you; I took you for a fairy princess,”
said Hermann, yielding to
the irresistible temptation of pleasing
her.

Alba’s face clouded over. “Now
I know you are laughing at me,
monseigneur; you don’t believe in
fairies, and you know very well I’m
not a bit like a princess.”

“I have seen many a one who
would have given a great deal to
be like you,” said Hermann.

“Like me! I thought princesses
were all so happy!”

Hermann smiled. “Sometimes
they have hearts,” he said.

“Sometimes! And does that
make them unhappy?”

He turned to walk under the
trees, tacitly inviting her to do the
same.

“It endows them with the power
of loving,” he answered absently.

“But I thought....” She hesitated;
it was difficult to put the
thought into the right words.

“You thought that love always
led to happiness?” said Hermann,
finishing the sentence for her, while
he looked at her with a curious
glance. Why had she come to cry
in this lonely place?

“I don’t know what it leads to.
I shall never know,” said Alba very
gravely.

M. le Comte smiled. “Tell me,
Alba, why were you crying so bitterly
just now?”

She turned away her head and
made no answer.

“Tell me, sweet Alba,” persisted
the young man; “perhaps I can
help you if you are in trouble.
Trust me with your secret. As I
am a soldier and a gentleman, I will
defend you if I can. Tell me, is
there some one you care for who
does not know it?”

She shook her head. “It is not
I who care.... I wish I could,
but I have tried my best and I <i>cannot</i>
love him!” The tears welled up
again and were flowing freely.

“Who is forcing you to love him?
Tell me his name and I will protect
you from him. I swear to you I
will!” And Hermann, with a soldier’s
instinctive gesture, put his
hand to his sword, while his eye
kindled with chivalrous anger.
Alba thought him the ideal of a
noble knight, as she looked at him,
terrified and enchanted.

“He is not forcing me, monseigneur,”
she said, “and you can
do nothing to help me. I have promised
.pn +1
to marry, and I must keep
my word.”

“You shall not, by heaven, if it
makes you wretched! He is a
cowardly dog who would hold you
to your word against your will,”
protested the count hotly.

“He is not forcing me; but I
have promised,” repeated Alba.

“And you cannot love him?”

“No! and I have tried so hard....
But mother says that when I
am his wife it will be different....”

“Yes, it will be worse, a thousand
times worse! Alba, tell me this
man’s name; trust me with your
secret,” said Hermann, changing his
angry tone to one of soft persuasion.

“I dare not,” said Alba in a
frightened whisper; “you would go
and kill him.” The great, swart eyes
were looking up at him, full of trust
and admiration.

“Kill him, child! Do you think
me so terribly wicked? Do I look
like a murderer?”

“It would not be murder in you.
You are a warrior; you don’t think
it wrong to kill men. That is what
warriors are for; but I should not
like you to kill poor Marcel.”

“Marcel!... Marcel! I seem
to know that name,” said the count,
musing. “Has he no other?”

“Yes, Marcel Caboff,” replied
Alba in a confidential tone; “but
you must not hurt him, monseigneur.
Oh! I wish I had not told
you.”

Hermann started and muttered
something between his teeth which
she did not hear, but his look frightened
her.

“Marcel Caboff! the fellow whom
my father ransomed at the risk of
his own life!” said the count. “And
he would force you into marrying
him! By heaven! he shan’t. I
will foil him there.”

“O monseigneur, monseigneur!
you will not kill him,” pleaded
Alba, clasping her hands and
appealing to the murderer with a
scared face. “It is not his fault—it
is not indeed, monseigneur!”

“I don’t mean to kill him; I
would not touch a hair of his head,”
said Hermann. “But why do you
say it is not his fault? Does he not
love you? Does he not want you to
marry him?”

“He does, oh! so dreadfully.
But I should not mind that. It is
mother whom I have promised. It
is to please her that I must marry
him,” said Alba, and her breast
heaved with big sobs, and all the
floods were let loose again.

Hermann longed to draw her to
his breast and kiss away the tears—she
was such a child in spite of her
sixteen summers and their full-blossomed
beauty! But he checked
the impulse. There is no majesty
so imposing as the majesty of
childhood. “Alba,” he said, “I
will save you from Marcel Caboff
without hurting him or any one.
You shall not marry him, unless you
come to wish it yourself. Are you
sure that if he gave you up you
would not change your mind and
wish him back again?” This was
Hermann’s estimate of woman’s nature;
true, his experience had been
gathered among types as different
from the one before him as the flowers
of a hot-house are from the
primrose of the woods.

“I should never wish him to
come back; I could never love
him,” said Alba—“never, never,
never.”

“Then I swear to you on my
sword you shall not marry him!”
said the count impetuously. “Now
tell me, Alba,” he resumed, seeing
that she did not speak, “is
there not some one you would like
.pn +1
to marry better than this fellow
Caboff? Tell me the truth. If
you had a brother, you would not
mind telling him. Try and fancy
I am your brother.”

Fancy him her brother! Alba’s
fancy had taken many an aerial
flight, but never such a one as this.

“Who is he? What is his name?”
said Hermann in a whisper, bending
closer to her.

But she shook her head. “There
is no one, monseigneur.”

“Oh! I don’t believe that; you
are afraid to trust me. There is
surely some one else who wants to
marry you?”

“No one, monseigneur, but Marcel.”

“Alba, look at me!” She turned
and looked at him like a docile
child. “Have you never seen any
one whom you could love or whose
heart you would care to win?”
He was gazing deep down into the
two dark pools of light, as if he
thought to see into her soul through
them. She did not shrink from the
searching glance, but dwelt in it
for one long moment; then, as if
the flame in Hermann’s eyes leaped
out and flashed upon her with
too intense a radiance, revealing
the spring of some sweet mystery
in her heart and his, the white lids
quivered and dropped, and a deep
blush rose to Alba’s face. They
were alone. The voices of the
wood were hushed; the dead
leaves ceased to rustle at their
feet; the zephyrs paused in the
branches overhead; the silence
grew and deepened, filling the solitude
with an overpowering presence,
till each seemed to hear the
beating of the other’s heart. Suddenly
the sound of a horn, followed
by a noise of wheels crushing
the gravel in the distance, broke
the spell and admonished Hermann
that he must be gone. He lifted
Alba’s hand to his lips, and without
a word of farewell turned from her
and struck across the park towards
the castle.

Alba watched him out of sight,
and then turned and wended homewards.
Her heart beat with wild
throbs of joy; the spirit that had
been dead within her all these miserable
months woke up, quickened
to a new birth, and overflowed in
song. The flute-like voice trilled
out over the lonesome moor like
the carol of a bird let loose; but
as she drew near the confines of
the heath the Fortress came in
sight and checked her song. Was
it so certain that Hermann could
set her free? and how? What
would her mother think of it? how
of this wonderful meeting and monseigneur’s
promise? Alba slackened
her steps and took to pondering.
A moment ago she was impatient
to pour into Virginie’s ear the
story of the interview, to repeat
every word Hermann had said, to
convey, as far as it was possible, the
impression he had made upon her,
to describe his manly beauty, his
warlike aspect, his gentle courtesy,
the incomparable sweetness of
his voice, the chivalrous kindness
of his manner, never doubting but
that Virginie would sympathize in
this new delight, as she had done
in every little joy that had gladdened
her child’s young life. But
suddenly a change came over Alba—something
vague, and undefined;
a sense of doubt, of warning, of
intangible fear. She had done
nothing wrong, and yet the still,
small voice was whispering inaudible
reproach as if she had. Could
Virginie be angry with her for
speaking to monseigneur? How
could she have avoided it, how refuse
to answer his persistent questions,
.pn +1
so kindly and so courteously put?
He had entreated her to trust him!
Alba stood amidst the breezy waves
of heather, and recalled him as he
bent near her and lowered his voice
and bade her look at him. How
he had seemed to read her through
and through! “Have you never
seen any one whose heart you
would care to win?” She murmured
the words softly to herself, and
the sound of them was like the
echo of his voice, and called up the
hot blush to her cheeks again.
There was nothing wrong in monseigneur’s
asking her the question.
Why, then, did she feel afraid to tell
her mother of it? Musing for a
moment on this mystery, Alba remembered
how he had said: “Try
and fancy I am your brother.”
Virginie could not be angry at that,
surely. “I will tell her that, and
say nothing about the other,” muttered
Alba to herself; and, satisfied
that this was a safe way out of the
difficulty, she walked on briskly till
she was close upon the confines
of the moor. Then the sound of
a carriage coming down the road
made her stop till it should pass.
It was an open calêche preceded
by outriders. Alba recognized the
occupant at once, even before his
hand was raised in courtly salutation
as he flashed by. Her heart
beat fast, and sent the blood to her
cheeks and brow, dying them crimson.

“Perhaps I had better say nothing
at all to petite mère,” was her
reflection as she crossed the road
and began to climb the cliff. “He
told me to trust him; perhaps he
would be angry if I spoke until he
bade me.” And so it was decreed.
The tyrant had stepped in, and at
his first whispered prompting the
discipline of a life gave way.

It was not many days after this
wonderful morning when an event
occurred which threw all the sweet
romance of life into the shade, and
made Alba forget her own cares
and hopes in concern for the great
sorrow of another. M. le Marquis
was dead. He had died, not actually
on the field, but of a wound
received in battle. The young
lord’s grief was like a madness, they
said. Those about him said that
in the first frenzy of despair he had
called on Marcel Caboff and cursed
him as the murderer of his father.
Whether this was true or not, Gondriac
believed it, and bitter words
were spoken against the widow’s
son in all the country round. Bitter
words are like the wind; they
fly, and have a faculty for reaching
those whose aching nerves most
dread their sting. The widow
heard what was said of her son and
felt it keenly; it was cruel, yet it
was just; it was a hard price to pay
for Marcel’s safety, but she could
not reckon it too high. If only she
might pay it alone! They are all
alike, these mothers. Mme. Caboff
was a vain, hard woman, but the
mother in her was all soft and generous
and beautiful. She came to
Virginie for sympathy—not for herself,
but for Marcel. It was her
doing, M. le Marquis’ death, not
his. Why would not people visit
her sin upon herself, and not upon
her boy? But Virginie and Alba
would be kind; they had always
said that Marcel was no coward.
Virginie gave the poor woman what
comfort she could; but Alba was
not there. She could not bear the
sight of Marcel’s mother; for the
thought of Marcel was now unendurable
to her. It might be unjust,
and yet it was true to say that he
was the murderer of M. le Marquis,
of Hermann’s father. The news
had thrown her into such a paroxysm
.pn +1
of distress that Virginie was
terrified, not holding the key to it.
It was right that she should be sorry,
and natural that she should be
shocked, but this agony of grief was
unaccountable. Virginie took her
in her arms, and soothed her with
caresses and endearing words, and
then bade her go and rest awhile.
But Alba, as if instinct warned her
of the coming visit, hastened out of
the house, and fled across the moor
until she was safe in the shelter
of the park, and then she flung herself
down on the moss-grown trunk
that had a memory of its own, and
buried her face in the primroses
and cried her heart out in pity for
Hermann.

After this it was impossible to
mention Marcel Caboff’s name in
her presence. “I loathe the very
thought of him, mother! I would
rather die than marry him!” she
said; and Virginie felt that Providence
was against her, and surrendered.
Marcel took back his gifts,
and quarrelled with his mother, and
went away from Gondriac. People
said it was shame and remorse that
drove him forth; but Alba knew
this was not true, and, now that he
had set her free, she pitied him.

.tb

M. le Marquis was borne to the
grave amidst such honors as the
proudest Crusader of his name
might have envied. It was with
the jubilant pomp of a coronation
rather than the mournful pageant
of a burial that they laid him to
rest. For his people would have it
that he was a martyr; he had gone
out to die of his own free will,
sacrificing himself out of gratitude
to the dead and charity to the living.
The population flocked in
from thirty miles round to attend
the funeral. Five hundred men
followed the crimson-draped car
with palms and laurel branches;
children clad in white bore crimson
banners that fluttered in the breeze,
while their voices rose in hymns of
victory, giving glory to God and
the Christian soldier; the voices of
the multitude made response in
chorus, and the waves, breaking in
low thunder against the rocks,
sounded their everlasting <i>amens</i> as
the procession wound its way by
the sea-shore to the cemetery.

And now Hermann de Gondriac
was alone, the head of an ancient
house, wealthy and young, but as
poor in that which makes life rich
as the poorest of his peasantry. If
he could but have girded on his
sword, and, escaping from solitude,
have drowned his grief in the excitement
of the camp! Spring
came, and the fields were carpeted
with wild flowers, and the woods
were full of music. But Hermann
was seldom seen abroad; he lived
indoors, amidst his books, the people
said; but, in truth, the young
lord’s chief companions were his
thoughts, angry, rebellious thoughts,
that made him chafe most bitterly
against his forced inaction. The
park was vast as a forest, and he
never went beyond it. Often, in
his moody walks, he strayed to that
spot close upon the moor where he
had first seen Alba lying upon the
mossy trunk. The charm of her
beauty and her daisy-like simplicity
had wrought upon his heart more
deeply than he was aware. For
days after that meeting she had
been ever in his thoughts. He said
that he was thinking only of how
he might rescue her from a cruel
fate; no doubt it was to help him
to this issue that he returned to the
spot where she had stood, and conjured
up her image, till the nymph-like
figure with the dark eyes and
witching smile seemed to float visibly
.pn +1
before him, and listened for her
voice until he thought he heard it
in the sighing of the wind.

Then came the thunderbolt of his
father’s death, and Alba and all the
world were forgotten. But grief cannot
hold its sway in human souls
beyond a given time. As the days
go by they bear away its sting
upon their wings, that touch the
bleeding places with a balm.
Hermann was young, and as the
weeks passed youth vindicated itself,
and rebelled against the stagnant,
lonely life, and longed for action
and for the sweet companionship
of kindred youth. If he could not
fight, he could at least love; but
who was there at Gondriac to love?
The merry comrades of the bivouac
were out of call, and when he returned
to the midst of them he
would find his place filled up;
others would have come and gone
again, and risen in command and
won place and distinction, while he
was out of sight, a prisoner to a
stiff arm, as good as a dead man. He
hated himself with bitter vexation.
One morning he betook himself in
one of these savage moods to wander
in the park, and, not heeding
which way he went, strayed to that
lonely walk under the shadow of
the old trees near the moor. Some
one, meanwhile, was watching him,
crouched timidly behind a furze-bush,
admiring his quick, military
stride, thinking how grand and
lion-like was that angry toss of the
head which every now and then relieved
his bitter thoughts.

The air was fresh, and yet warm
with that delicious warmth of some
spring days that come like heralds
of the summer, gathering up all the
sweets of earth into one fragrant
breath, wooing us with soft, furry
zephyrs, and the scent of opening
blossoms, and the melody of young
birds learning to sing. Alba had
been tempted across the heath to
the park, where the trees had
put out their bright green foliage
that looked so lovely sparkling
in the sunlight. Perhaps, too,
though she did not own it, there
was a lurking hope in her heart
that she might catch a glimpse of
Hermann in the distance. If so,
she was not disappointed. There
he was, walking under the pine-trees,
but, happily, with his back
to the heath, so that he did not
see her! She dipped quickly behind
a furze-bush, and disappeared
from view just as he turned, and,
coming through the trees at an angle,
stepped out on the pathway.
A nightingale began to sing in the
distant copse; but Alba, as she
cowered behind her bush, thought
the crystal trills and the loud call-note
less musical than the sound of
Hermann’s foot-fall crushing the
gravel close to her hiding-place—so
close she almost feared he would
note the shadow of her pink skirt
upon the grass, or mayhap overhear
the palpitation of her heart. But
presently the foot-falls died away,
and the nightingale and the zephyrs
had it all to themselves again.
She waited some minutes—an hour
it seemed to her—before she ventured
to look up; but at last she
did, and there, within a few paces,
straight before her, stood Hermann.
He had left the pathway and taken
to the noiseless grass under the trees.

“Alba!”

There was a ring of joy in the
greeting, as the young lord came
forward, holding out his hand.

“Why have you never come?
I have been here again and again
in hopes of seeing you!”

He was a true knight and meant
no harm; but in his joy at seeing
the sunbeam on his path he forgot
.pn +1
that he had no right to be so glad
or to let Alba see it.

“I did not forget my promise,”
he said, leading her into the park
and turning to walk by her side;
“but I learned soon after that
there was no need for me to interfere.
Caboff left the place, they
told me.”

“Yes, monseigneur, people said”
... she hesitated. “They were all
so sorry for you, and Marcel could
not bear it, because they hated him—poor
Marcel! It was not his
fault; he never was a coward.”

“You are sorry now that he is
gone! Perhaps he will come back?
No doubt he will, if you ask him.”

“I will never ask him; but I am
sorry for him,” she replied, and then,
looking up at Hermann with those
soul-lit eyes that had a language of
their own like music, she added
timidly: “But I was more sorry for
you, monseigneur.”

“Alba!” He took her hand and
kissed it. It was very sweet to be
so near him, Alba thought. They
walked on together, hand in hand,
without speaking for a while. The
grass was soft beneath their feet,
and the trembling sunbeams stole
through the trees and touched
their faces with golden shadows,
thrilling and pure and full of gladness,
as the touch of nature is when
it stirs the chords of young vibrating
hearts. “If I could but comfort
him!” she was thinking, till the
thought grew so loud within her
she feared he would overhear it.
But we are deaf to those voices
that lie “upon the other side of silence.”
Hermann, as he held the
warm, soft hand within his own,
was wondering how it came to pass
that yonder on the barren cliffs a
flower so rare and delicate had
grown, and been trained to so much
grace and ease by a woman who
was called Mère Virginie. Then
he remembered his father’s words
about the royal flower on the plebeian
stem, and, thinking of him, he
sighed. Alba looked up quickly, offering
all her soul’s wealth of sympathy
through her eyes, and Hermann
bethought to himself how delightful
it would be to have this sympathetic
creature always at his side. But
he thought also of the emperor and
the world, and wondered what these
potentates would say were he to
pick up the jewel from the dust
and set it in his coronet. Bonaparte
had a way of choosing mates for his
officers as he chose sites for his
battles, and ordering them to marry
as he ordered them to charge;
but Hermann felt he was not one
to be cowed by the imperial match-maker,
and there was something rather
inspiriting in the idea of defying
the despot if he attempted to
meddle with his life outside the
camp. Why should he not gather
this wild flower, if he chose? Had
his father lived, it would have been
different; but now he was free,
there was no one to whom he need
sacrifice the promptings of his
heart, be they wise or foolish.
The world and the court might
laugh; it was not from amongst
them he cared to take a wife; he
wanted to be loved, to be wed for
his own sake, and not for the good
things he had to offer. But did
Alba love him?

“Alba,” he said, “now that Marcel
is gone, who is to be the favored
suitor?”

“No one, monseigneur; I told
you so before.”

“But I did not believe you. I
don’t believe you now.”

“Why should I tell you a lie?
I never told one in my life.”

She spoke without anger or offended
pride; but Hermann saw that
.pn +1
he had pained her, and there was a
purity of truth about her that rebuked
his denial, though it was spoken
in jest.

“Forgive me, dearest! I wanted
to hear you say it again. I wanted
to be certain there was no one else
you cared for.”

He bent toward her caressingly,
and, looking under her hood, saw
two big tears slowly trickling down
her cheeks.

“Alba....”

What an idle boast seems this
about the freedom of the human
will! Our most pregnant words,
our weightiest actions, spring far
oftener from impulse than from deliberate
resolve; a touch, light as
the feather floating on the summer
breeze, will stir the fountain and
make its waters overflow; a word
spoken when we had meant to be
silent will change the current of
our life, and push us to a step that
can never be retraced. An hour
ago Hermann de Gondriac no
more dreamed of offering his hand
to Alba than he did of burying
himself in the Grande Chartreuse;
but those two tears were the drops
that made the fountain overflow,
and, in the sudden flood of tenderness,
pride, prudence, everything
but love was swept away.

“Alba,” he whispered, clasping
her in his arms and gathering her
to his breast—“Alba, I love you.
Will you come to me and be my
wife?”

Was she awake, with the solid
earth under her feet, or were those
whispered words the music that
our fancy makes in dreams? But
the music did not die away, nor
did the clasping arm melt from
her, as do the embraces of those
loved ones who visit us in sleep.

“You love me!” she said, looking
up into his face with her large,
warm glance, pure and trusting as
a child’s—“you love me!” And
the sunbeams went on singing it in
shadow music on the grass, and
the cuckoo called it through the
woods, and the trees in their murmurous
song repeated it, and the
clouds, as they sailed over the zenith,
traced it in silver lines upon
the sky—“You love me!”

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
.sp 4
.h3 id=magdalen
MAGDALEN AT THE TOMB.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Deep sombre clouds roll up to shroud the night,
For in the silence of a guarded tomb
Rests the rich promise of a Virgin’s womb;
And hearts that hoped are shrunk as buds by blight,
Till, like a soul which gains from Heaven delight,
The radiant morn dispels the woeful gloom,
And casts o’er hungry Earth a new perfume.
A white-robed Angel, pinion-fring’d with light,
Beside the empty grave bade one rejoice,
Who, coming from the cross, outran the morn,
In loving haste the body to adorn;
But found it gone—and wept. Oh! hasty choice
Of tears, for one who was the first to turn
Her eyes upon her Lord, and hear his voice.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=medea
FROM THE MEDEA OF EURIPIDES. | <i>'A free translation.</i> | BY AUBREY DE VERE.
.sp 2
[<i>The Chorus dissuades Medea from slaying her children.</i>]
.sp 2
STROPHE I.

.pm verse-start
O race renowned in ancient story,
  Race from the blest Immortals sprung,
  Athenians, ye who all day long,
Feeding on wisdom and on glory,
Walk lightly through that climate fine,
  Where, as the fabling poets say,
  The yellow-tressed Harmonia
Brought forth the Muses nine;
That sage and virgin choir whose shell
You hear so often, love so well:—
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
ANTISTROPHE I.

.pm verse-start
To you white Aphrodite sends
    Her Loves, to make you wise and kind;
For they are Wisdom’s choicest friends;
And here they say the goddess wreathed
  Her fragrant locks with rosy twine;
    And here they sing that, passion-fraught
    And o’er Cephisus’ stream reclined,
Along the flowery vale she breathed
    Sweet airs from that cold current caught
Upon her balmy lips divine.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
STROPHE II.

.pm verse-start
Medea, dream not that the city
  Of sacred founts and streams can e’er
    Give harbor to a wretch like thee:
Pity them, ruthless mother, pity!
    See but thy guilt as others see;
  By all things great and good, forbear!
  We clasp thy knees, and bid thee spare
    The babes that laughed upon thy knee!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
ANTISTROPHE II.

.pm verse-start
They are thy children! They will call
  Aloud, aloud upon their mother!
    How can’st thou hear that pleading cry?
  In vain thou striv’st:—thou can’st not smother
A mother’s love. Thy hand will shake;
Thy heart will bend; thy heart will break,
    Thy frenzy melt away and die,
When twining round thy feet they fall
    In that despairing agony.
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=gothic
THE STORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.
.sp 2
When, centuries hence, historians
endeavor to delineate the characteristics
of the present century, it
is more than probable that the features
that will most strike them will
be those of innovation and change.
Progress in every science, rapid
advance in material prosperity,
sweeping reforms in laws and governments,
political and social changes
not a few, will appear to have
pretty well filled up the records of
the busy century that is fast drawing
to its close. To those, however,
who look more closely into
the minor though oftentimes important
details that contribute in a
great measure to influence the character
of an age, it will be evident
that, if change and revolution have
to a large extent reigned paramount
in this century, neither has
it been altogether wanting in a
just recognition of the past, and in
a serious revival of some of the
best features of that past.

These thoughts have been suggested
by the perusal of Sir Charles
Eastlake’s <i>History of the Gothic Revival
in England</i>—a work in which
is displayed a thorough knowledge
of the subject combined with an
agreeable style and a high artistic
taste, which cannot fail to interest
even those whose predilections are
for other styles of architecture.

The revival which it describes
has not been confined to England;
in both France and Germany progress
in Gothic art has made rapid
strides during the last thirty years.
In the production, indeed, on the
history and theory of the pointed
style France is perhaps in advance
of England; but nowhere else has
the revival been so universal and
so practical as in the latter country,
nowhere else has it reached a
point which could justify an author
in attempting its history. So
many Catholic associations are linked
with Gothic architecture, so
many fond recollections of a glorious
past are called up by the
mere name, that it is only natural
that Catholics should take a special
interest in its revival, should feel
justly proud of the large part that
some of their co-religionists have
had in that revival, and should refer
with feelings of pleasure to the
influence brought to bear upon it
.pn +1
by the adoption of many Catholic
doctrines and practices by their
Protestant brethren.

American readers cannot be indifferent
to the history and fortunes
of edifices where their ancestors
prayed in those happy days when
unity of faith prevailed; nor can
they fail to take an interest in the
history, which we propose to sketch,
of those years during which a handful
of earnest men struggled, and
struggled successfully, to revive the
glories of a style that had been
rendered for ever illustrious by
such names as Cologne and Chartres,
Amiens and Salisbury, Notre
Dame and York Minster.

Many were the fair buildings that
graced the broad lands of merry
England at the commencement of
the reign of Henry VIII.; stately
churches and splendid monasteries
adorned her towns and nestled
among her wooded hills and valleys;
the one same principle of art
had presided over their structure—happy
symbol of the one faith to
whose service they ministered. Before
the end of that reign what a
transformation had come over the
face of the land! One of the first
acts of the Reformation had been
the suppression of the monasteries
and confiscation of their property.
Cromwell and his band of impious
followers but too faithfully carried
out the orders of their royal master;
the venerable and beauteous
piles on which the pious munificence
of ages had lavished their
skill and their treasures were soon
reduced to bare and crumbling
ruins. Nor did the spoliation end
here; the zealous reformers of God’s
church were not slow in condemning
as idolatrous the rich and brilliant
decorations and ornaments
that filled the cathedrals and
churches, and thus these sacred
edifices were shorn of all the costly
treasures that devotion had accumulated
to honor the abiding presence
of a heavenly King, in order
to fill the coffers of a licentious
monarch.

It was not, however, the material
ruin and desecration of its finest
buildings that struck the severest
blow at Gothic art; it was rather
the loss of that faith which had witnessed
its earliest efforts and had
inspired its grandest works. When
the cold blast of Protestantism
swept away one after another each
Catholic dogma and each Christian
belief, the sources of Gothic inspiration
were dried up, its very <i>raison
d’être</i> ceased to exist. Not that the
Catholic Church has in any way
adopted one style of architecture
as the <i>only</i> fitting one for her use;
she has equally sanctified by her
solemn ritual and her sacred ceremonies
the colonnades of the Greek
temple, the dome of the Italian basilica,
and the pointed arch of the
Gothic cathedral. But this last, if
we may use a comparison, seems
somehow more especially her own
child; the others are but children
of adoption—wayward children that
she has rescued from pagan parents.
She has not watched over
them from their birth, nor seen
them grow up under her fostering
care to the vigor and strength of
manhood.

It naturally took some time before
the spirit of a form of art
which was then the only form could
completely disappear from the
country; for we must recollect
that in England at the time of the
Reformation not only ecclesiastical
but civil and domestic architecture
was entirely Gothic. As there
were for several centuries no new
churches built—for the usurped edifices
of Catholic days more than
.pn +1
sufficed for the needs of Protestant
piety—it was in domestic structures
that the spirit of the style lingered
longest in a practical form.

.pm letter-start
“Even down to the reign of James I.
the domestic architecture of England, as
exemplified in the country-houses of the
nobility, was Gothic in spirit, and frequently
contained more real elements of
a mediæval character than many which
have been built in modern times by the
light of archæological orthodoxy. Inigo
Jones himself required a second visit
to Italy before he could thoroughly
abandon the use of the pointed arch.
But its days were numbered when in
1633 the first stone was laid for a Roman
portico to one of the finest cathedrals of
the middle ages, and Gothic architecture
as a practical art received what was
then no doubt supposed to be its death-blow.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Eastlake, p. 5.
.fn-

From this period the practice of
Gothic art gradually died out.
Classic and Italian architecture,
which had received a fresh impulse
from the French Renaissance, rapidly
came into fashion. Architects
studied no other style, for the very
good reason that the public admired
no other. It was henceforth
considered the criterion of good
taste to abuse as barbarous all
the productions of mediæval art,
and the test of good Protestantism
to look upon them as superstitious
and popish. It is indeed surprising
that so many of the wonderful
productions of a period no
longer understood or appreciated
should have been allowed to come
down to us unaltered by “classical”
remodelling. What saved
them and at the same time preserved
the spirit of the old art from
total extinction is thus told by Sir
C. Eastlake:

.pm letter-start
“By a strange and fortunate coincidence
of events, however, it happened at
this very time, when architects of the
period had learned to despise the buildings
of their ancestors, a spirit of veneration
for the past was springing up
among a class of men who may be said
to have founded our modern school of antiquaries.
Sometimes, indeed, their researches
were not those of a character
from which much advantage can be expected....
But, luckily for posterity,
the attention of others was drawn in a
more serviceable direction. Up to this
time no work of any importance had
been published on the architectural antiquities
of England. A period had arrived
when it was thought necessary, if
only on historical grounds, that some
record of ecclesiastical establishments
should be compiled. The promoters of
the scheme were probably little influenced
by the love of Gothic as a style.
But an old building was necessarily a
Gothic building, and thus it happened
that, in spite of the prejudices of the age,
and probably their own æsthetic predilections,
the antiquaries of the day became
the means of keeping alive some
interest in a school of architecture which
had ceased to be practically employed.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
<i>History of the Gothic Revival</i>, p. 6.
.fn-

Amongst the earliest names that
attained to a certain celebrity by
their researches and writings may
be mentioned those of Mr. R. Dodsworth
and Mr. W. Dugdale, joint
authors of the <i>Monasticon Anglicanum</i>,
a work first published in 1655,
and which still retains much interest
for the modern student, as it includes
many records and views of
buildings which have long since
perished. Another writer whose
name deserves mention was Antony
à Wood, born 1611, whose <i>History
of the Antiquities of Oxford</i> was
a book of considerable importance,
connected as it was with a university
where Gothic architecture was
so nobly illustrated and where the
traditions of the style lingered long
after its true principles were forgotten.

During the next two hundred
.pn +1
years the annals of Gothic art are
indeed meagre; from time to time
we have the record of some antiquarian
research, and at rare intervals
we hear of some uncouth attempts
at Gothic building remarkable
only for the egregious mistakes
they display.

Early in the eighteenth century
we find the name of a remarkable
man connected with one of these
crude attempts at mediæval art—that
of the celebrated Horace Walpole,
Earl of Oxford, the author of
the first work of modern fiction
whose scene is laid in the middle
ages. His labors in the fields of
literature and art were not profound.
Eccentricity seemed the
most marked feature of his taste;
and, as may be well imagined, his
famous Gothic house, Strawberry
Hill, which has remained almost
unaltered to the present day, is a
strange monument of what debased
art can achieve. The fact, however,
that a man of his position,
and enjoying the reputation he did,
could patronize a form of architecture
which had fallen into almost
universal contempt could not have
been without a powerful effect on
the public mind—an effect which
may be traced in the erection during
the next fifty years of a certain
number of mansions throughout the
country in that style which Pugin
loved so much to call “Brummagem
Gothic.”

Towards the end of the century
some useful books on architectural
archæology appeared, such as Carter’s
<i>Specimens of Ancient Sculpture
and Painting</i>, Hearne’s <i>Antiquities of
Great Britain</i>, Gough’s <i>Sepulchral
Monuments</i>, Halfpenny’s <i>Gothic Ornaments
of the Cathedral of York</i>,
B. Willis’ <i>History of Gothic Architecture
in England</i>.

.pm letter-start
“It was something at least to draw attention
to the noble works of our ancestors,
which had long been neglected and
despised; to record with the pencil or
with the pen some testimony, however
inadequate, of their goodly form and
worthy purpose; to invest with artistic
and historical interest the perishing
monuments of an age when art was pure
and genuine.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
<i>History of the Gothic Revival</i>, p. 71.
.fn-

When the nineteenth century
opens, we find these works already
producing practical fruits; for we
see several architects of note, such
as Wyat, Nash, and Smirke, attempting,
and not without some success,
the erection of edifices of Gothic
design. Nearly always, however,
their efforts were confined to domestic
structures for private individuals—a
proof how completely the
taste was confined to the upper
classes and was still unappreciated
by the general public. If they did
not often attempt to <i>build</i> new
churches, unfortunately they did
not hesitate to restore and <i>improve</i>
the venerable cathedrals
and churches of the past. Wyat in
particular has a heavy burden of
responsibility to bear on this score;
for many were the noble buildings
that long bore the traces of acts of
vandalism and ignorance associated
with his name.

How, indeed, could we expect
better things in ecclesiastical architecture
at a time when religion was
at so low an ebb in England? As
each generation had passed away
the lingering memories of the old
faith and the old ritual had vanished
one by one; the last remnants of
Catholic feelings and practices had
disappeared under the influence of
the cold formalism of the Puritans
and the colder indifferentism of
those who succeeded them. When
we read the following description,
given by Sir C. Eastlake, of a Protestant
.pn +1
church and Protestant worship
as he recollected them during
the early years of the present century,
we cannot feel surprised that
there was a lack of inspiration
among church architects:

.pm letter-start
“Who does not remember the air of
grim respectability which pervaded, and
in some cases even still pervades, the
modern town church of a certain type,
with its big bleak portico and muffin-capped
charity-boys? Enter and notice
the tall, neatly-grained witness-boxes in
which the faithful are empanelled; the
'three-decker’ pulpit placed in the
centre of the building; the lumbering
gallery which is carried round the three
sides of the interior on iron columns; the
wizen-faced pew-opener eager for stray
shillings; the earnest penitent who is
inspecting the inside of his hat; the
hassock which no one kneels on; the
poor-box which is always empty. Hear
how the clerk drones out the responses
for a congregation too genteel to respond
for themselves. Listen to the complicated
discord in which the words of the
Psalmist strike the ear after copious revision
by Tate and Brady. Mark the
prompt, if misdirected, zeal with which
old ladies insist on testing the accuracy
of the preacher’s memory by turning out
the text. Observe the length and unimpeachable
propriety, the overwhelming
dulness, of his sermon.”
.pm letter-end

Alas! as far as exterior worship
was concerned, the Catholic chapels
of this period were in an
equally sad condition; but from
how different a cause! Centuries
of persecution had not been able to
stamp out the Catholic faith, but
penal laws still in force, though not
rigorously carried out, forced it to
hide away in back streets and lanes,
always avoiding whatever might
attract public notice, lest it might
awaken again the dormant flames
of bigotry. Add to this the state
of poverty to which, in many places,
the Catholic body was reduced, and
we need not wonder at the desolate
aspect of the chapels, if the
miserable structures that oftentimes
were used for divine service deserved
the name. <i>They</i> possessed,
however, the presence of that God
who had not disdained the poverty
of a stable nor the humble offerings
of poor shepherds; in like manner
he looked with indulgence on the
mean and scanty ornaments that in
these sad times decorated his altars,
and on the cold and desolate walls
within which persecution had
forced him to make his dwelling.
He was pleased to await the time
when happier days and gentler laws
should once again permit his worship
to be freely celebrated with
all the glory and pomp of by-gone
years. Such days were rapidly advancing,
and Catholics were not
slow in availing themselves of each
relaxation of penal statutes, each
favorable turn of Protestant bigotry,
to improve their churches and to
carry out more fully their sacred
ceremonies—a task of no small difficulty
on the part of a community
so ill supplied with the riches of
this world, and so long, from cruel
necessity, forced to content themselves
with a simplicity almost akin
to that of the early Christians.

The dawn of the revival, which
was now at hand, was marked by
some writers of eminence whose
theoretical works contributed much
to prepare the way for it. Their
writings were distinguished from
those of the earlier antiquarians
by a more practical knowledge of
building and a more exact delineation
of the details of the edifices
they describe. Mr. J. Britton may
be looked upon as a link between
the two schools, as he had some
of the characteristics of both. He
was the author of numerous works
on the English cathedral and other
Gothic edifices, all illustrated with
really artistic drawings. They
.pn +1
were, however, more designed to
create a taste for ancient art
among the reading public than to
assist the professional architect.

.pm letter-start
“While Britton was thus enlisting the
sympathy of the amateur world two architects
were engaged in preparing a
practical and valuable work for the use
of professional students.

“The examples of Gothic architecture
which had hitherto been selected for
publication were chiefly those which
either served to illustrate a principle in
the history of the style, or possessed
some picturesque attraction in the way
of general effect. But neither of these
were of real service to the practical architect,
who required geometrical and
carefully-measured drawings of ancient
roofs, doors, and windows to guide him
in his designs and to help him in reviving
a style the details of which had been
as yet most imperfectly studied. Pugin’s
(father to the celebrated Welby Pugin)
and Wilson’s specimens of Gothic
architecture supplied this want. It was
a happy accident which brought these
men together, the one eminently qualified
as a draughtsman for the task, the
other equally fitted to undertake its literary
labor.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Eastlake, page 88.
.fn-

The writer whose name next appears
on the roll of champions of
Gothic art is one whose memory is
enshrined in the hearts of all English
Catholics—Dr. Milner, Vicar-Apostolic
of the Midland district,
better known to most people for
his holy life, his ardent zeal, and
his controversial power than as a
writer on architecture. In this latter
capacity, however, he deserves
a foremost place among those who
prepared the way for the great revival
which unfortunately he did
not live to see accomplished.

His <i>Survey of the Antiquities of
Winchester</i> revealed much erudition
and a thorough appreciation of ancient
art; but by far the most important
part of it was the short
but now famous essay it contained,
“On the Rise and Progress of the
Pointed Arch.” In it the author
uses for the first time the appellation
now become so general as applied
to the architecture of the
middle ages—viz., <i>the pointed style</i>.
His next work was an important
<i>Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture
of England during the Middle
Ages</i>. In this work the author not
only proves himself an antiquary
but a man of taste. A work more
important still, and one productive
of the most serious results, was a
short pamphlet entitled <i>A Dissertation
on the Modern Style of Altering
Ancient Cathedrals, as Exemplified in
the Cathedral of Salisbury</i>. In it
he protests in vigorous language
against the miserable degradation
of the old churches accomplished
under the name of restoration; nor
does he spare Wyat, the leading
spirit in these unfortunate <i>improvements</i>.
No one before the days of
Welby Pugin had so enthusiastically
entered into the spirit of the
old art, so thoroughly appreciated
its beauties, and so ably defended
its principles, not only against its
avowed enemies, but against the
ignorance of many of its would-be
admirers. So outspoken, indeed,
was Dr. Milner’s language in this
pamphlet that it shocked the staid
members of the Society of Antiquaries,
before whom it was to have
been read, and was in consequence
withdrawn—not, however, to lie
mouldering in its author’s desk, but
soon to appear in print, and to
work even more important effects
on the future than its author ever
contemplated.

Dr. Milner died in 1826, the very
year that W. Pugin, then a youth
of fourteen, was displaying one of
the earliest proofs of his taste for
mediæval art in devoting long hours
.pn +1
to the studying and sketching of
the old castle of Rochester.

How little did the gray-haired
bishop dream of the wonderful revolution
this youth, as yet unknown
to fame, was to accomplish within
a few years. Little did he think,
when he saw arising the humble
walls of his Gothic chapel at Winchester,
that the day was not far
distant when a Catholic architect
would revive throughout the land
the glories of that style which Dr.
Milner had so well defended in
days when it was neglected and
abused.

One more name of importance
must be mentioned before we attempt
to trace the outline of Pugin’s
career; we again quote from
Sir C. Eastlake:

.pm letter-start
“Midway in point of time between
Milner and Pugin, and possessing,
though in a minor degree, the talents of
both, Thomas Rickman, as an architect
and author, plays no unimportant part in
the history of the revival. His churches
are perhaps the first of that period in
which the details of old work were reproduced
with accuracy of form. Up to
this time antiquaries had studied the
principles of mediæval architecture, and
to some extent classified the phases
through which it had passed, while architects
had indirectly profited by their
labors when endeavoring to imitate in
practice the work of the middle ages.
Rickman united both functions in one
man.... In the science of his art he
will not, of course, bear comparison with
Willis. In the analyzing of its general
principles he must yield to Whewell.
In capability of invention he ranks, even
for his time, far below Pugin; but it
may be fairly questioned whether, if we
consider him in the twofold capacity of
a theorist and a practitioner, he did not
do greater service than either his learned
contemporaries or his enthusiastic disciple.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Page 122.
.fn-

Had Rickman done no more
than write his <i>Attempt to discriminate
the Styles of English Architecture</i>,
he would have been worthy of a
high place among those who contributed
to revive Gothic art. He
supplied by this book a want long
felt by architects and by those interested
in architecture. Of learned,
or rather unlearned, dissertations
on the origin of the pointed
style there were plenty, but of those
short and useful volumes to which
have been aptly given the name of
<i>hand-books</i> there was a complete
absence. Rickman’s book gave in
a small compass a very complete history
of the various phases of Gothic
architecture in England; the main
divisions into periods which he
adopted being so good that they
have remained unaltered to the
present day. The work was illustrated
with very fair engravings,
and no architect who had perused
it could any longer plead ignorance
as an excuse for the monstrosities
that were so often produced in
those days under the name of
Gothic.

His work on French Gothic, the
fruits of a journey through the
North of France with his friend
Whewell, afterwards the famous
Master of Trinity, is full of interest
and contains an elaborate and carefully-drawn
comparison between
the mediæval remains in France
and England.

With Rickman ends that gloomy
night which had so long, with faint
flashes of light now and again, enveloped
the science and art of
Gothic architecture; a dawn as
sudden as it is bright foretells a
day of more than ordinary brilliancy.

Ignorance and prejudice, which
had so long reigned supreme in
England in all matters concerning
true religion and true art, were fast
giving way before the researches
.pn +1
of conscientious science, and as a
result we see two great movements
marking the first quarter of the
present century—the Tractarian
movement and the Gothic revival;
the one religious, the other artistic.
Of the first it does not enter into
our plan to speak here, though it
would no doubt afford a highly interesting
study to trace out the mutual
influence these two movements
have exercised on one another; for
it is impossible not to perceive that,
on the one hand, the inquiry into
the principles and form of ancient
art led naturally on to an inquiry
into the ancient formularies and
practices of the faith which had inspired
that art; and that, on the
other hand, the revival of the long-forgotten
ritual of the old faith led
directly to the restoration and refurnishing
of those temples that
were so intimately connected with
it. Before entering on the life of
Pugin, which constitutes the culminating
point in the great artistic
revival we are attempting to sketch,
we cannot do better than quote the
opening words of the chapter in
which Sir C. Eastlake traces his career,
as it clearly proves the importance
he attaches to the labors of
this great man:

.pm letter-start
“However much we may be indebted
to those ancient supporters of pointed
architecture who, faithfully adhering to
its traditions at a period when the style
fell into general disuse, strove earnestly,
in some instances ably, to preserve its
character; whatever value in the cause
we may attach to the crude and isolated
examples of Gothic work which belong
to the eighteenth century, or to the efforts
of such men as Nash and Wyat,
there can be but little doubt that the revival
of mediæval design received its
chief impulse from the energy and talents
of one architect whose name marks
an epoch in the history of British art,
which while art exists at all can never
be forgotten.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
P. 145.
.fn-

Augustus Welby Pugin, the architect
to whom these words apply,
was born in London on March 1,
1812. We have already spoken of
his father, and of the important
place his illustrated works occupy
in the history we are tracing; he
was a French refugee and a Protestant,
and his son was brought up
a Protestant. Although the elder
Pugin had little professional practice,
he seems to have attained to a
position of ease by the sale of his
works and the instruction of pupils.
His son was educated at Christ’s
Hospital, on leaving which he entered
his father’s office, having from
his earliest years shown a great
taste for drawing. He soon mastered
the first elements of his profession
and became of much use to
his father, already showing that
earnestness in all he undertook that
was so characteristic of him in later
years. His taste for mediæval
art received a fresh impulse from a
professional tour he made in 1827
with his father through Normandy,
which gave him the opportunity of
studying the beauty of Gothic ornament
in some of its most splendid
productions.

While still a mere youth his cleverness
in designing attracted attention,
and he received a commission
from the royal upholsterers to
prepare designs for the new furniture
for Windsor Castle, which it was
determined should partake of the
character of the building. The drawings
he gave were probably better
than what most architects of the
day could have produced, yet in
the writings of his after-years he
always frankly pointed out their
faults.
.pn +1

A love of variety and a strong
taste for roving interrupted for a
short period his architectural studies.
He devoted for a time his
energies to scene-painting, and with
much success when the subjects
were of a mediæval character. Next
we find him carried away by an
extraordinary passion for the sea,
and he actually for a certain period
commanded a merchant schooner
trading between England and Holland.
Having been wrecked, however,
on the Scotch coast, his seafaring
ardor was somewhat cooled,
and he returned to the labors of
his original profession.

His talents were soon rewarded
by increasing practice, many architects
being glad to avail themselves
of his wonderful, one might almost
say innate, knowledge of Gothic ornament.

A most serious and important
event in Pugin’s life, and one having
much influence on his future
career, occurred about this time—his
conversion to the Catholic religion.
There can be no doubt that
his intense love of the past and his
enthusiastic admiration of the glorious
monuments of the ages of
faith strongly biassed his mind towards
this determination, though
of course it was not these considerations
alone that led him to take
so important a step. His after-life
proved how thorough was his faith
and how sincere his piety.

This change of religion affected,
in more ways than one, the professional
career of Welby Pugin. From
a pecuniary point of view it probably
made little difference to him—as
his talents were such as to insure
for him constant work, and
he already possessed independent
means. But by this step he sacrificed
what was far dearer to him,
his future fame as an architect.

Never was there a more splendid
opening for architectural talent
than that very time when Pugin, in
the first dawn of his genius, embraced
the Catholic faith. Everything
had combined to prepare a revival
of Gothic art. The materials were
already collected and awaited but
the hand of a man of genius to
make a practical use of them. The
ritualistic movement had awakened
the desire to restore the old and to
build new churches. Rich men
were ready to give unbounded
wealth to further the enterprise.
Had Pugin remained a Protestant,
had he preferred fame to conscience,
he might have found an
easy road to it by availing himself
of an opportunity so worthy the
gifts of one eminently fitted to be a
leader in a movement that combined
religion and art. He preferred
to return to the faith that had inspired
those mediæval times he so
fondly loved, and to risk his future
reputation by offending that feeling
which is so strong in Protestant
England against converts. The
Catholic who for centuries has kept
his faith they can tolerate, nay, admire;
but one who was their own
and deserts them they find it hard
to forgive.

Not only did Pugin, in thus affronting
public opinion, bias the
judgment of his contemporaries and
of future critics, but he actually, by
attaching himself to the poorest religious
body in England, deprived
himself of the means of adequately
displaying his power.

During the next years that composed
the short career of Pugin we
find him working with an activity
and enthusiasm that showed how
all labor connected with his art
was to him a labor of love. His
pen and his pencil were alike devoted
to its service. In 1836 he
.pn +1
published his celebrated <i>Contrasts</i>—a
work in which he compares with
keen irony and scathing satire the
buildings and institutions of the
past with those of the present; in
the sketches which illustrate it he
delineates with wonderful humor
all the weak points of modern architecture.
His style of writing
was flowing and easy, always highly
picturesque and enthusiastic, but
sometimes slightly inclined to exaggeration
and eccentricity. It
was this that made it so difficult
for him to write without giving offence
sometimes even to his own
friends and co-religionists.

His next work was his <i>True
Principles of Pointed Architecture</i>.
It is but a short volume, consisting
of two lectures delivered at St.
Mary’s College, Oscott, but it forms
a most complete elementary treatise
on Gothic art, founded on the two
great principles enunciated in its
first page: “1. That there should be
no features about a building that
are not necessary for convenience,
construction, or propriety; 2. That
all ornament should consist of enrichment
of the essential construction
of the building.”

It is clearly shown that in these
principles lies the true secret of all
correct pointed construction and
ornament, and that any analysis of
Gothic work undertaken without
taking them into consideration
must inevitably lead to erroneous
conclusions.

The truth of these principles is
now universally admitted in works
that treat of pointed architecture,
but to Pugin belongs the honor of
having first laid them down and
having shown how important they
were to the right understanding of
the lessons handed down to us in
the wondrous structures of the past.

His next work was <i>An Apology
for the Revival of Christian Architecture
in England</i>. It is a brilliant
defence of Gothic art, intended
specially to prove that it is still
“the only correct expression of
the faith, the wants, and climate of
our country.”

As a specimen of Pugin’s amusing
style when describing the incongruous
productions of modern
architecture, we cannot do better
than quote the description of a
nineteenth-century cemetery contained
in this book; we only wish
we could reproduce the delightful
picture that accompanies the text:

.pm letter-start
“There are a superabundance of inverted
torches, cinerary urns, and pagan
emblems, tastefully disposed by the side
of neat gravel walks, among cypress-trees
and weeping willows.

“The central chapel is generally built
on such a comprehensive plan as to
be adapted (in the modern sense) for
each sect and denomination in turn as
they may require its temporary use; but
the entrance gate-way is usually selected
for the grand display of the company’s
enterprise and taste, as being well calculated
from its position to induce persons
to patronize the undertaking by the
purchase of shares or graves. This is
generally Egyptian, probably from some
associations between the word catacombs,
which occurs in the prospectus
of the company, and the discoveries of
Belzoni on the banks of the Nile; and
nearly opposite the Green Man and Dog
public-house, in the centre of a dead-wall
(which serves as a cheap medium of
advertisement for blacking and shaving-strop
manufacturers), a cement caricature
of the entrance to an Egyptian temple,
two and a half inches to the foot, is erected,
with convenient lodges for the policeman
and his wife, and a neat pair of cast-iron
hieroglyphical gates which would
puzzle the most learned to decipher;
while, to prevent any mistake, some
such words as 'New Economical Compressed
Grave Company’s Cemetery’ are
inscribed in <i>Grecian</i> capitals along the
frieze, interspersed with hawk-headed
divinities, and surmounted by a huge
.pn +1
representation of the winged Osiris
bearing a gas-lamp.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
<i>An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture</i>,
p. 12.
.fn-

In 1844 he published his next
important work, <i>The Glossary of
Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume</i>.
It is a thoroughly practical
book, designed to supply correct
descriptions and patterns for
the use of those who manufacture
the various ornaments employed in
the ritual of the church, which were
at that time of the most incorrect
forms and in the worst taste.

His other literary productions
were numerous but of less importance,
being for the most part of a
controversial character, and we pass
on to examine, as far as our limited
space permits, Pugin’s career and
influence as a practical architect.
Catholic emancipation, in freeing
the church from the galling restraints
to which she had been so
long subjected in England and Ireland,
opened for her a new era of
liberty and prosperity in those countries.
True, she did not regain that
wealth which had been sacrilegiously
torn from her at the Reformation;
still, she was enabled, through the
generosity of her children, to expend
large sums in the construction of
churches somewhat more worthy
of the august mysteries she celebrates
than those poor edifices she
had been so long forced to use.

As a Catholic of undoubted talents,
Pugin soon found that his architectural
capacity was appreciated
by his co-religionists, who entrusted
to him the construction of
all their principal churches. Few
among them, indeed, were, by their
size or importance, calculated to
give full scope to Pugin’s genius;
nevertheless, to the smallest building
he always devoted long study
and attention and a scrupulous
fidelity to the principles he had
laid down in his writings, although
in many cases it was extremely difficult
to do so, owing to the small
amount of money that could be
expended on the work. Among
the many churches he designed we
may mention, as the best specimens
of his skill, the cathedrals of Birmingham,
Southwark, Nottingham,
Killarney, and Enniscorthy; the
churches of St. Wilfrid’s, Manchester;
St. Marie’s, Liverpool; St.
Giles’, Cheadle; St. Bernard’s Abbey,
Leicestershire; St. Augustine’s,
Ramsgate.

In all these churches the exterior
beauty has been more or less sacrificed
to interior ornament and decoration,
Pugin preferring to devote
all the money possible to beautifying
those parts which were most
closely connected with the presence
of his God, when the funds
did not permit him to adorn fully
both exterior and interior. This
has often led his critics to misjudge
his capacity as an architect; even
Sir C. Eastlake falls into this error,
and, though a sincere admirer of
Pugin, does not hesitate to assert
that “of constructive science he
probably knew but little.” That
his greatest power lay in ornament
and detail may no doubt be true;
still, we are fully convinced that
had he found the same opportunities
of displaying his knowledge as
a scientific architect, and had he not
been trammelled by the constant necessity
to keep down expense, he
would have amply proved to the
world how unfounded were these
accusations.

In comparing Pugin with the architects
who have succeeded him
people often forget the difficulties
<i>he</i> had to contend against. He had
to revive and educate the whole
.pn +1
series of artisans whose combined
labors are required to construct the
smallest Gothic edifice—sculptors,
carvers, iron-workers, painters, and
decorators. When he began his
career as a practical architect he
had to design every smallest item
required for his buildings, and, what
is more, often personally to superintend
their manufacture; a lock, a
screw, a nail of correct pointed design
were then things that had no
existence.

If we take up now a book of that
period, we can scarcely believe that
ignorance and absurdity could go
so far as to call Gothic the designs
we see there depicted under that appellation.
It is solely to Pugin’s
untiring energy, to his conscientious
love of his art, and to his wonderful
fertility of invention—gifts which
even his adversaries cannot deny
him—that we owe the change that
has been wrought in a few years.

The important progress in metal
work, which now places at the disposal
of the architect and builder
material and designs almost equalling
the best products of the middle
ages, is completely due to him;
in this, as in another long-lost branch
of art—glass-staining—he found in
Mr. J. Hardman, of Birmingham,
one thoroughly competent by his
practical knowledge and refined
taste to assist him in carrying out his
reforms.

How many other branches of industry,
connected directly or indirectly
with mediæval art, could be
mentioned in which the influence
of Pugin’s labors can be traced!—the
production of encaustic tiles, silk
embroidery, wood-carving, the manufacture
of church plate and furniture
of all kinds, even household
articles and jewelry. Sir C. Eastlake
truly remarks: “Those establishments
which are known in London
as ecclesiastical warehouses owe
their existence and their source of
profit to Pugin’s exertions in the
cause of rubrical propriety.”[#] He
might have added with equal truth
that the many beautiful objects we
admire in them owe their existence
to the principles he established by
his writings and to the endless models
which his unrivalled facility of
invention placed at the disposal of
the public.

.fn #
<i>History of the Gothic Revival</i>, p. 153.
.fn-

If a proof were wanting of the
hold that the revival of which Pugin
was the leading spirit was taking
on public opinion, it is the fact
that a Parliamentary committee, in
drawing up the terms of the competition
for the plans of the new
Houses of Parliament, stipulated
that the designs should be Gothic
or Elizabethan. It has often been
regretted that Pugin did not take
part in this competition, and his
reasons for not doing so have never
been quite satisfactorily explained.

Barry, the architect selected for
the new buildings, showed his appreciation
of Pugin’s capabilities and
his esteem for his talents by applying
to him for designs for all the
important interior decorations and
furniture. The beauty of these
parts shows how well suited he was
for the task; many consider them
the most perfect parts of the edifice,
the exterior, notwithstanding its
real merits, having numerous faults—some
of them, it is true, inherent
to the style adopted—Tudor or perpendicular.

Besides the many churches and
other religious edifices which Pugin
designed, he devoted considerable
attention to domestic architecture;
and among the best specimens he
left may be mentioned Bilton
Grange, Adare Manor, and Scarisbrick
.pn +1
Hall, Chirk Castle and Alton
Towers; the last two he only
restored and altered. But perhaps
his happiest effort in this style was
his own house at Ramsgate, which
is, in every detail, a perfect specimen
of a mediæval residence,
strongly illustrating how deeply
imbued Pugin was with the spirit
and traditions of the past. So
thoroughly Gothic were all his feelings
and tastes that we firmly believe
it would have been impossible
for him to design a building in any
other style.

With Pugin’s death, which occurred
in 1854, we shall terminate
this short sketch of one of the most
wonderful revivals of the present
age. We have told how Gothic
architecture became extinct as a
practical art, how its theory was
forgotten and misunderstood for
centuries, its very name kept in remembrance
only by a few rare lovers
of antiquity. We have traced
the first dawn of a change in public
taste, originated by the serious
works of men versed in the history
of ancient art, and inspired by a
love of its grand productions.

In what a different position we
leave it now! The master spirit that
had breathed a new life into its
almost inanimate form has passed
away; his mortal remains are sleeping
in the hallowed transept of that
beautiful church at Ramsgate, the
designing and decorating of which
had been to him such a labor of
love; but, unlike many reformers, he
had lived to see his cherished
dreams realized; he had lived to
see the mystic steeple and the high
pitched roof once more ascend to
heaven from the crowded cities and
the wooded fields of his country;
he had lived to see a long array
of distinguished names consecrate
their gifts to that one style he had
loved and for which he had labored.
.sp 4
.h3 id=pyrenees
ALONG THE FOOT OF THE PYRENEES.
.sp 2
We followed the old Roman way
along the foot of the Pyrenees—a
delightful route, picturesque on
one side and fair on the other, and
everywhere abounding in historic
and legendary memories. Every
age has left its impress here, as
every geological period has left its
strata in the mountains. Many of
the cultivated hills are crowned
with the ruins of feudal times.
The plains are blooming with a
thousand traditions and marvellous
events that have sprung up from
the contests with the Moors in the
eighth century. Numerous remains
of ancient art are constantly
coming to light from the soil to
prove that, during the Roman occupancy
of the land, many wealthy
patricians established themselves
in this region, at once attractive to
the eye and favorable to health.
The Visigoths also, who once held
possession of the country, have left
behind them memorials of their
barbarity in the martyrs who are
still honored; and the Huguenots
and Revolutionists ruined churches
and cloisters that are still deplored.

At length we came to Martres-Tolosanes—the
ancient Callagorris—an
industrious place on the left
bank of the Garonne containing
about two thousand inhabitants.
Clouds of smoke hover over it by
day, and flames and sparks stream
up at night, from the numerous
.pn +1
potteries which supply all the
neighboring region with dishes and
tiles, and pave all the by-roads with
broken crockery. The streets are
narrow, and the begrimed houses
seem inclined to stray off on the
road to Spain, as if to breathe the
pure mountain air. There is an
interesting old church here that
was consecrated in the year 1309.
The baptismal font is an ancient
sarcophagus, set up on four pillars,
its sides divided by colonnettes,
between which are holy emblems
and other carvings. In one chapel
there is a sculptured retable over
the altar, with the shrine of St. Vidian
supported by chained Moors—not
covered with precious stones,
or a work of art, like so many of
the shrines of Italy, but a mere urn
of gilded wood. On great festivals
this is taken down and placed before
the grating of the sanctuary,
surrounded by lights and flowers.
The bust of the saint is placed above
it, the head shaded by nodding white
plumes to give it a martial character,
in view of St. Vidian’s achievements,
the face painted more or less
after nature, the shoulders covered
with a gilded mantle of imperial
fashion, and the neck adorned with
a collar, or necklace, of blue and
white crystal—probably the offering
of some devout peasant. In another
chapel, on such days likewise
full of flowers and tapers, is St.
Vidian’s ivory comb exposed in a
kind of monstrance, as if the object
of particular veneration. It is
rudely carved, and the teeth which
used to disentangle the long blond
locks of the warrior after battle are
of portentous size and length, and
jagged from the conflict. But those
were not days of gentle measures.
This comb is of considerable celebrity
in the country, not merely on
account of its original use, but also
because of the curious tale that
hangs around it.

In the golden ages, when kind
Heaven directly intervened in human
affairs more frequently than is
thought to be the case now, and
did not suffer sacrilegious deeds to
go unpunished, a peasant woman of
the neighboring canton of Cazères,
who had come to Martres to attend
St. Vidian’s fair, went into the
church to pay her devotions at the
shrine, and, finding it empty, was
induced by some diabolical inspiration
to steal the wondrous comb,
which was not then kept under glass
as now. She hid it under her scarlet
<i>capulet</i>, and, rejoining her husband at
the market-place, set out for home.
The afternoon was drawing to a
close. Some rays of the declining
sun still brightened the gray tower
of Mauran among the mountain
oaks, but the evening shadows had
begun to gather in the valley below.
Accordingly, they hurried
along the road that bordered the
river, the irons on their shoes clattering
over the stones and giving
out an occasional spark. The woman’s
feet, however, often faltered,
and, contrary to custom, her tongue
was mute. But this was no affliction
to her husband, and he pretended
not to observe it. At
length, on crossing the boundary
that separates Martres from Cazères,
he suddenly found himself
alone, and, hearing a cry, looked
around. His wife remained fastened
on the line, as if by some invisible
influence, with one foot in the
parish of Martres and the other in
that of Cazères, without the power
of moving. He hurried back to
her assistance, but, in spite of herculean
efforts, he could not move
her an inch, more than if she had
been Lot’s wife. Night was now
coming on fast. Not a ray of the
.pn +1
sun was left on St. Michael’s tower,
and they were only half way home.
A cart from the mountains came
by, drawn by three cows, and he
begged the driver’s assistance.
The woman seized hold of the cart.
The driver goaded the cows. They
were usually gentle and tractable,
as becomes the female nature, but
they now set off as if suddenly gone
mad, leaving the poor woman behind,
her arms nearly dislocated
with her efforts, but her feet still
glued to the ground. Then came
along some Spaniards with their
mules covered with gay tassels
and bells. New efforts were made
to remove her. She clung desperately
to bridle and harness, but
the mules so reared and kicked
that she was obliged to give up the
attempt. “Certainly the devil must
have a hand in this,” said the husband.
The woman rent the mountains
with her cries, and at length
was forced to confess the deed she
had done. It was evidently a case
in which the spiritual powers alone
could be of any avail, and, as she
could no more go back than forward,
her husband sent to Martres
to make known the case and ask
the benefit of the clergy. As St.
Vidian would have it, they were all
keeping solemn vigil at his shrine,
and, taking the torches that stood
around it, they came hastening out
with cross and banner, and as soon
as they took possession of the relic
the woman had stolen, her feet recovered
their liberty. After this
the comb was kept under lock and
key, and, at a later day, was placed
in the reliquary where it now is.
Of course so stupendous an event
caused a great sensation in the valley,
which had not been so stirred
up since the Norman invasion, and
made the comb not only an object
of universal curiosity but of increased
veneration. The legend is
related to this day. It is pretended
that the women of Cazères are
a little spiteful about it, and dress
their shining black hair with much
more care than their neighbors at
Martres, probably to show they
have no need of the comb of St.
Vidian.

St. Vidian figures everywhere in
this region. Charming legends,
handed down from father to son
for ages, have thrown quite a veil
of poetry over numberless places.
They are not very clear as to the
precise place of the saint’s birth, but
they are quite positive that he was
one of the <i>preux</i> who served under
Charlemagne, and had even a dash
of imperial blood in his veins. In
his youth he became a hostage for
his father, who had been taken prisoner
by the Basques of Luceria,
then idolaters. They sold the
young Frank as a slave. An Englishman
bought and adopted him,
and as soon as Vidian was sufficiently
inured to the use of arms he organized
a crusade against Luceria,
which he pillaged and completely
destroyed. Of course such a feat
recommended him to his imperial
kinsman. Charlemagne invited
him to his court and created him
duke. About this time the Saracens
crossed the Pyrenees and began
to ravage the plain of Toulouse.
Vidian joined the imperial hosts
who came to the rescue of the land,
and entrenched himself with his
followers at Martres, then called
Angonia. He defended the place
so bravely against the enemy that
for a while it was supposed saved,
but, surprised by an ambuscade
near a fountain where he had gone
to stanch his wounds, he was slain
after a stout resistance, and the
town taken and devastated. When
it rose from its ruins it took the
.pn +1
name of Martres in memory of those
who were martyred in trying to defend
it.

It is certain that all this part of
France was once overrun by the
Moors. They, and the Normans
after them, probably destroyed not
only most of the ancient Christian
churches, but the monuments left
by the Romans. History has not
recorded all the efforts made to repel
them, but a confused memory
of the struggle has been left in the
minds of the people, and, colored
by time and the warm southern imagination,
these memories have become
a genuine cycle of poetic traditions,
not the less founded on fact
because only written with the sword
and blood of their ancestors.

The country around Martres is
full of character and beauty. The
Garonne, fresh from its mountain
sources, winds through the verdant
plain. To the south are broad terraces
and wooded hills, and behind
is the grand barrier of mountains,
their summits all crystal in the
morning light, and at evening all
rose and amethyst. No wonder the
Romans thought it rivalled Italy,
and established themselves here.
On one of the neighboring plateaus
have been found the remains of a
magnificent Roman villa that must
have belonged to some wealthy
person of luxurious and cultivated
tastes, to judge by the objects
brought to light from time to time.
In 1826 a vault was found by a laborer,
and excavations were systematically
made which led to the
discovery of sumptuous apartments
paved with mosaics and marble,
with remains of columns, statues, and
bas-reliefs, and fine bathing-rooms
with furnaces and earthen pipes,
and all the accessories of Roman
luxury. Among the works of art
that have been found here are about
forty busts and medallions of Roman
emperors and empresses from
Augustus down; a white marble
statue of a reclining naiad; the
beautiful head of another statue
called the Venus de Martres; medallions
of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva,
Cybele, and Atys; large bas-reliefs
of Serapis, the labors of Hercules,
etc., and several bronzes. These
form quite a gallery of ancient art
in the museum at Toulouse, where
we saw them in the old cloister of
Augustinian friars.

Beneath one of the plateaus is a
pretty fountain with a cross near it,
in the midst of gentle undulations
of verdure, shaded by a grove.
Here St. Vidian had his encounter
with the Moors and was slain. The
pebbles in the spring are said to be
still stained with his blood. Every
year his exploits are celebrated
here by a mimic battle between the
Moors and Christians, in which
nearly all the male population take
part. It is said the brilliant costume
of the Saracens is so attractive
to the younger portion that
they show a lamentable disposition
to enter the service of the infidel.
However, by dint of cautious measures,
both armies are kept about
equal. They consist of nearly one
hundred and twenty-five men each,
of whom fifty are horsemen. The
Moorish cavaliers wear red and
white turbans with silver trimmings;
green stomachers adorned with a
yellow crescent; orange coats
turned out with red facings; girdles
of scarlet silk; and blue pantaloons
of Oriental amplitude. It will at
once be perceived that nothing
could be more gorgeous. The infantry
are less pretentious. They
content themselves with the white
pantaloons of the French hussar,
but make up for this with bright
orange vests a Mameluke might
.pn +1
envy. The Christian knights wear
a black pasteboard helmet with a
silver cross on the front, a blue
tunic, and a tin cuirass that is quite
dazzling in the sun. The foot-soldiers
are dressed in gray, with
blue caps, and a silver cross on
their breasts. Both armies are furnished
with tall lances, and each
has its standard. That of the
Moors is green and orange. On
it gleams the ominous silver crescent.
The Christians’ is blue and
bears the redoubtable figure of St.
Vidian.

The battle takes place on St.
Vidian’s day. The relics of the
saint are exposed in the church.
High Mass is celebrated with the
utmost pomp. Even the followers of
Islam are so unfaithful to their traditional
intolerance as to attend
and present arms at the Elevation
of the Host, in utter disregard of
the Prophet. Mass over, the clergy
and people go in procession to the
miraculous fount, bearing the shrine
and chanting the hymn of St. Vidian.
There they bathe the bust
of the saint in memory of his
wounds. These traditional services
concluded, the military ardor
of the soldiers begins to assert itself.
The two armies draw up on
the neighboring field. Prodigious
acoustic performances are made on
the drum of the commune. Military
evolutions begin. The banners fly.
Red, yellow, and blue uniforms
flash across the green field. The
cavaliers show themselves true paladins.
Such curveting and prancing
have not been seen since the
days of Charlemagne and Haroun
al Raschid; at least, on such
steeds—mostly farm horses the
worse for wear. Sometimes the
contest becomes too warm and real.
However, their ardor never lasts
longer than is warranted by tradition.
The Moorish flag is invariably
captured by the Christians, and
the battle-field deserted till the next
anniversary of St. Vidian’s martyrdom.

Vigilantius, the first heresiarch
that troubled the peace of Christian
Gaul, was a native of Callagorris.
He was of a roving turn and a lover
of novelty. In early life he
crossed over into Spain and there
became an inn-keeper. Then we
hear of him as a priest at Barcelona.
He made the acquaintance of St.
Paulinus (afterwards of Nola) in
Spain, who was induced to give him
a letter of recommendation to St.
Jerome. Furnished with this, he
went to the Holy Land, but there
he took sides with the enemies of
St. Jerome and attacked the monastic
life, celibacy of the clergy, the
veneration of relics, the use of candles
in the daytime, etc. St. Jerome,
sarcastically referring to his
original calling, told him the faculty
of testing wine and that of expounding
the Scriptures were not quite
the same, and advised him to acquire
the elements of grammar and
the other sciences, and then learn
to be silent. His countrymen do
not seem to have been influenced
by his example, however, but have
always been remarkable for their
confidence in the saints and veneration
for relics.

Five or six miles beyond Martres
we came to St. Martory, so
named from a holy monk of the
East whose beautiful legend is related
by St. Gregory. One evening this
saint, on his way to a neighboring
monastery, overtook a poor leper
forced by fatigue and disease to
rest by the wayside. Filled with
intense compassion, St. Martyri, as
he is otherwise called, spread his
cloak on the ground, placed the
leper thereon, and, carefully wrapping
.pn +1
him up, took him on his
shoulder and proceeded on his way.
The abbot of the monastery, seeing
him coming, cried: “Hasten, my
brethren, to open the gates. Behold
Brother Martyri coming, bearing
the Lord.” While they were
gone to execute his command the
leper descended from the good
monk’s shoulders, and, taking the
form under which the Redeemer is
usually represented, he addressed
him in these words: “Martyri,
thou hast had pity on me on earth;
I will glorify thee in heaven.”
And, while the monk was gazing at
him in speechless amazement, he
ascended to heaven. When St.
Martyri entered, the abbot asked
what he had done with the
person he was carrying. The saint
replied: “Oh! had I known who
he was, I would have held him by
the feet!” And he related how light
he had seemed on the way. The
body of St. Martory is still revered
in the church.

Not long after leaving St. Martory
we came in sight of the towers
of St. Gaudens at one end of a
broad plateau, once the place of
a Roman encampment. Behind it
are the mountains that enclose the
beautiful valleys of Aure and Campan,
the Pic du Midi, and the whole
of the mighty chain that binds sea
to sea. Below is a vast plain, fertile
and smiling, supposed to be
the bed of a lake in which the
waters of the Neste once mingled
with those of the Garonne. On
the other side are to be seen the
ancient thermal place of Labarthe,
overlooked by a feudal tower and a
village that dates from the fourth
century, called Valentine, in honor,
it is said, of Valentinian II., who
was assassinated in Gaul Narbonnaise
in 392. Here and there in
the fields are found remains that
attest the importance of the place
under the Romans—fragments of
tombs, bas-reliefs, and antique vases.
At one corner of the church
of Valentine is the head of a Roman
soldier with his helmet on, and near
it a white marble urn. Inserted
in the wall of the church is a marble
slab with a Latin inscription,
thought to be of the fourth century,
which may be thus rudely rendered:

“Nymphius, whose limbs are
cold and stiff in eternal sleep, reposes
here. His soul is in heaven.
It contemplates the stars, while his
body is left to the repose of the
tomb. His faith dispelled the
darkness that seemed to envelop
it. O Nymphius! the renown of
thy virtues raised thee to the very
stars and placed thee in the zenith.
Thou art immortal, and thy glory
will be perpetuated in ages to come.
The province honors thee as its
father. The entire population
made vows for the preservation of
thy life. At the celebration of the
games due to thy munificence the
spectators on the gradations of the
arena testified their joy by acclamations.
Once thy beloved country,
at thy command, assembled its
magistrates and spoke worthily by
thy lips. Now our cities, deprived
of thee, are plunged in mourning,
and the senators, in consternation,
are incapable of action. They are
like the human body that, deprived
of its head, falls lifeless and inert,
or a flock without its shepherd
that knows not which way to direct
its steps. Serena, thy spouse,
abandoned to grief, erects this
monument to thee, and finds in this
pious duty a slight solace for her
pain. Thy companion for eight
lustres, she only thought and acted
by thee. At thy side life seemed
sweet. Now, abandoned to her
sorrow, she sighs for the eternal
.pn +1
life, hoping that which she now
possesses may be brief.”

What a tale might be woven out
of the epitaph of this old Roman,
who died fourteen hundred years
ago in this remote valley—made up
of domestic bliss, political honors,
the happiness that virtue alone can
bestow, and an untimely death
mourned by the public and, above
all, by the gentle-hearted Serena!

The Romans knew how to choose
their sites. Nothing can exceed
the charm of this region, especially
in the month of May, when we visited
it for the first time. The fresh
valleys, the clear streams, the unexpected
views at every turn, the
harmonious outlines of the landscape,
are a perpetual delight to
the eye. The fertile plain of Valentine
especially is so lovely that
all the mountain-tops seem crowding
together to gaze at and admire
it, and they send down their purest
streams to preserve its freshness
and beauty.

On the sides of the plateau that
overlooks Valentine a young shepherd,
named Gaudentius, led his
flocks to pasture in the latter part
of the fifth century. His mother,
a holy woman of the name of Quitterie,
had brought him up in the
practice of the most fervent piety.
The country at that time was in
possession of the Visigoths. Euric
had succeeded to the throne by
slaying his brother, Theodoric II.
He was a man of great military
genius, who extended his conquests
in Gaul from the Loire beyond the
Rhone, and carried war beyond the
Pyrenees with so much success that
he conquered most of the Peninsula.
Toulouse was thus made the
capital of an immense empire that
extended from Provence to Andalusia.
Euric was a fanatical Arian,
and, attributing his success to his
fidelity to his principles, he began
a violent persecution of the Catholics,
though they constituted a large
part of his subjects. Executioners
were frequently his missionaries,
and one of these summarily opened
heaven to the young shepherd Gaudentius,
who, refusing to apostatize,
gave a last look at his mother, who
encouraged him, and submitted to
martyrdom. His remains were
carefully transported to the place
of his residence, and, after the
downfall of the Visigoths, an oratory
was erected over his grave.

Such miracles were now wrought
through the instrumentality of St.
Gaudens that his fame extended
all through the country, people
came to live around his tomb, and
a village soon sprang up that took
his name. More than a thousand
years passed away without diminishing
the affluence at St. Gaudens’
tomb, but in the sixteenth century
the town was taken by Montgomery
the Huguenot, the church stripped
of its ornaments and greatly injured,
the statues broken, the tombs
desecrated, and most of St. Gaudens’
relics thrown into the flames.
But that was a way of reforming
the Huguenots had.

.pm verse-start
“N’est ce pas réformer, quand on trouve une église
Trop riche, lui ravir ses trésors anciens?”
.pm verse-end

says the old Plainte de la Guienne
of 1577 with a bitterness that is
quite natural. The bullet-holes
made in the church are still pointed
out. This is a noteworthy
building of the Romanesque style,
with round arches, clustered columns,
and carved capitals. Each
aisle ends in a chapel, and a choir
is at the apsis. Over the altar is a
statue of the Virgin that, before
the Revolution, belonged to the
neighboring abbey of Bonnefont,
now completely destroyed. This
.pn +1
statue is the production of Pierre
Lucas, the founder of the academy
of art at Toulouse. A priory was
formerly attached to the church
of St. Gaudens, dependent on the
abbey of St. Sernin at Toulouse,
but it has been totally destroyed.
The old cloister of Pyrenean marble,
built by Bernard I., Bishop of
Comminges, and of the race of its
counts, has also been destroyed.
Of the tombs that once lined the
arcades, only one here and there is
left, with its touching mediæval inscription,
and perchance some consoling
emblem of religion, such as
a cluster of grapes on a vine branch,
recalling the Saviour’s words, “I
am the vine and ye are the branches”;
the monogram of Christ; the
Alpha and Omega, etc.—symbols
of hope graven on the cold marble
tomb. And there is an ancient
portal over which used to hang
the horseshoes of Abderahman’s
steed, which, according to tradition,
plunged and reared when his master
attempted to pillage the shrine
of St. Gaudens, and thus lost its
shoes. The horse of Montgomery
seems to have been of a coarser
nature, and as insensible as his
ferocious owner to the spiritual influences
around the tombs of the
saints.

There is a kind of mournful pleasure
in sitting down among the
ruins of such old cloisters, listening
to the echoes of past times, and
trying to decipher the pious inscriptions
on the tombstones among
the rank grass, and to divine the
history of those who lie beneath—once
centres of fond affection,
but now forgotten and unknown.
Through the rifts in the wall is
seen the peaceful rural valley, with
the Pyrenees in the distance, resplendent
in the light; and the contrast
between all that is graceful
and sublime in nature, and the desolation
of this spot once beautified
by art and hallowed by religion, is
exceedingly touching. How peaceful,
how religious, this cloister must
have been, where paced the silent,
prayerful monk among the tombs!
And there is a sacredness in its
present desolation that appeals to
the heart; if the solemnity of the
ancient arches is wanting, there is
no lack of beauty in the lovely vistas
among the picturesque mountains
and delicious valleys.

St. Gaudens is a place of four or
five thousand inhabitants, with old
blackened houses full of industry.
The country around is densely populated,
and at certain seasons many
go into the neighboring districts
to add to their slender earnings.
The young men have a commercial
taste, and all through the Pyrenees
you meet peddlers and colporteurs
from St. Gaudens, hawking their
small wares with amusing pertinacity.
The girls, too, in harvest-time
descend to the neighboring
valleys to offer their services, and
there are many popular <i>rondeaux</i>
that allude to them.

.pm verse-start
“Las fillos de Sen Gaoudens nou n’an d’argent,
Las qui nou n’an qu’en bouléren:
  Faridoundaino, qu’en bouléren.”
.pm verse-end

—The girls of St. Gaudens are
penniless, and those without money
desire it. Tum-te-tum, yes, desire it.

.pm verse-start
“Aou pays bach, anem! anem!
  Coillé d’argent!
En sega blat et dailla hen,
  Faridoundaino, n’en gagnaren.”
.pm verse-end

—Down to the valleys let us go,
go! Money to seek, by reaping
grain and raking hay. Tum-te-tum,
we shall gain some.

On the outskirts of St. Gaudens
is shown the house where St. Raymond
was born—the celebrated
founder of the order of Calatrava,
which rendered such glorious services
.pn +1
to Spain, and thereby to all
Christendom, in the struggle with
the Moors. It is a humble birthplace
for one who gathered under
his banner the haughtiest grandees
of Spain. His companion, Durand,
was also a native of St. Gaudens.
They both became monks at the
noted abbey of Escale-Dieu, where
they inured themselves by austerities
for the mission Providence had
in reserve for them. There would
seem to be but little in common
with the peaceful pursuits of the
Cistercians and the valiant exploits
of the knights of Calatrava, to
those who know nothing of the
bracing discipline of monastic life.

Not far from St. Gaudens is the
chapel of Notre Dame du Bout-du-Puy—a
place of pilgrimage, enriched
with indulgences by Pope
Innocent XI. It is under the continual
guardianship of a hermit.
This Madonna is particularly invoked
by people in danger of death.
Among the <i>ex votos</i> on the wall is
the picture of a child carried away
by a neighboring torrent, the mother
kneeling on the bank with
eyes and arms raised towards heaven,
where Mary appears, commanding
the waves to bring back
her child.

We have mentioned the tower of
Labarthe. The viscounts of this
name were the lords of the Four
Valleys for several centuries, and
played an important <i>rôle</i> in the
history of Bigorre. The fifth Vicomte
de Labarthe married the
grand-daughter of Eudoxia, the
daughter of Emmanuel Comnenus,
Emperor of Constantinople, who
died at Rome in the odor of sanctity,
and was buried at the church
of the Vatican. Geraud de Labarthe,
Archbishop of Auch, put on
the cross and accompanied Richard
the Lion-hearted to the Holy Land
as the prefect of his army. One of
the glories of this race is Marshal
Paul de Labarthe, Lord of Thermes,
who lived in the sixteenth century
and saw six kings succeed each
other on the throne of France. He
took part in the siege of Naples,
and, made prisoner by the corsairs,
endured a severe captivity
for two years. He afterwards distinguished
himself in the Piedmont
war and fighting in Scotland against
the English, and was finally created
Marshal of France. He was so
noted for his humanity that the
Huguenots said he could not hold
his place as governor of Paris because
he was “too little inclined to
slaughter.” Some of his descendants
still live in Bigorre.

On our way to Bagnères de Bigorre
we stopped to visit the abbey
of Escale-Dieu, at the bottom of a
deep valley enclosed among the
hills. The name is derived from
<i>Scala Dei</i>—the ladder of God—a
ladder to aid man in his ascent to
heaven! No name could be more
appropriate for a monastery where,
as Wordsworth says, paraphrasing
the words of St. Bernard:

.pm verse-start
“Man more purely lives; less oft doth fall;
More promptly rises; walks with nicer tread;
More safely rests; dies happier; is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal
A brighter crown.”
.pm verse-end

This abbey is on the banks of
the Arros, a river noted for its impetuous
character and sudden overflows.
It has its source in the valley
of Oueil, the ancient <i>Vallis
Oculi</i>—so called from its shape,
where it is said three barons once
could breakfast together without
leaving their own domains. Near
by is a little hamlet called Mayleu,
on the edge of a torrent, where on
stormy nights pale lights are said
to wave to and fro on the current,
which the mountaineers say are
.pn +1
caused by the soul of an old miser
that agitates the waters—emblem
of his restless life, spent in grasping
the goods of others with insatiable
avidity. His influence surely
extends all along the Arros.

The valley of Escale-Dieu was
given to a community of Cistercian
monks in the twelfth century by
Beatrix, Countess of Bigorre, in
order, as she says in her charter,
that she “might be accounted as a
sister in Christ by the brethren of
Escale-Dieu in their watchings, and
fastings, and prayers, and obtain
the redemption of her soul, her
husband’s, her father, Centulle’s, her
mother, Amable’s, and other relatives’.”
The Cistercians were famous
as agriculturists, and in bestowing
on them large tracts of
land the old lords of the middle
ages ensured the best means of
bringing the country under cultivation
and humanizing the inhabitants.
The monks built a church
here under the invocation of SS.
Peter and Paul, which was consecrated
October 23, 1142, by the
Archbishop of Auch, in the presence
of the Countess Beatrix and
her husband, many abbots and
neighboring lords, and an immense
crowd of people. This church became
the St. Denis of the counts
of Bigorre, who doubtless thought
to rest here in peace till the end of
the world; for the abbey was at that
time so remote from the highways
of travel that its solitude was almost
unbroken. The Countess
Beatrix was one of the first to be
buried here, but her tomb was
broken open at the Revolution, and
the remains, spared by centuries,
fell into dust at contact with the
air.

The first abbot of Escale-Dieu
was a son of the Vicomte de Labarthe,
and his successors, over
forty in number, were mostly from
the great families of the country.
The house was immediately dependent
on the Holy See, and the
Sovereign Pontiff forbade any one
to rob, burn, make any arrest, commit
murder, or do any violence on
its domains.

One peculiarity about its history
is that, contrary to most great monasteries,
no town or village ever
sprang up around it. It remained
solitary in its valley, studying “the
secret lore of rural things” and
pruning the wings of Contemplation,
unconscious that Providence was
to give it a mission in the world
seemingly incompatible with the
spirit of the order. The monks became
so numerous, however, that
two colonies were sent across the
Pyrenees under the charge of St.
Raymond and Durand, to found
the abbeys of Yergo and Fitero.
In 1147 the town of Calatrava, the
bulwark of Andalusia, was taken
by Alfonso, King of Castile, and
entrusted to the care of the Knights
Templars, who held it for ten years.
Then the success of the Moors
made them fear they would not be
able to defend it any longer, and
they resigned the place to the king.
The latter, embarrassed at having
it thrown on his hands, offered it
to any one who would undertake
its defence. St. Raymond, indignant
to see knights, vowed to the
defence of religion, thus abandon
the post of danger, asked the honor
of taking their place. The king
willingly consented. St. Raymond
went through the provinces preaching
a kind of crusade, and twenty
thousand soldiers ranged themselves
under the Cistercian banner. Their
success made him conceive the
idea of cementing the union of the
knights with his order. The abbot
of Escale-Dieu did not at first approve
.pn +1
of the design. “What an
idea,” said he, “for solitaries by
profession to convert a monastery
into a school of war, and flatter
themselves tumultuous exercises
can be combined with the silence
of prayer and the chanting of
Psalms!” A chapter of the Cistercian
order was held, but the Kings
of France and Castile, and the
Duke of Burgundy, overcame the
scruples of the abbot, and the pope
issued a bull authorizing the affiliation
of the Knights of Calatrava
with the Cistercian Order as lay
brothers. All the houses in Spain
were subjected to the rule of the
abbot of Escale-Dieu, who had the
right of visiting and inspecting
them till the secularization of the
knights.

The most brilliant era in the
history of Escale-Dieu is the thirteenth
century. Two saints had
sprung from the house (for we
must not forget St. Bertrand of
Comminges, one of the most popular
saints of the Pyrenees, whose
tomb is still honored in the town
called by his name); it held rule
over ten monasteries in Spain; and
it was greatly enriched by the
neighboring lords, particularly by
the counts of Bigorre, who made it
their burial-place. The Countess
Petronilla, so famous for her five
husbands, was a great benefactress
of the house. Besides endowing it
during her life, she bequeathed it,
at her death, all her gold and silver
vessels and reliquaries, her jewels,
rings, and precious stones, her
dresses (probably for vestments),
sheets, and blankets. Her first
husband was Gaston, Viscount of
Bearn, who took sides with Count
Raymond of Toulouse, but was reconciled
to the church before his
death. The second was Nuñez
Sancho of Aragon, whom she repudiated
under pretext of consanguinity.
The third was Guy de Montfort,
son of the great opponent of
the Albigenses, who was killed at
the siege of Castelnaudary. The
fourth, Aymar de Rançon, who died
about the same time as her second
husband. And finally, Boson de
Matas, Lord of Cognac. After these
five chapters she died at the Abbey
of Escale-Dieu in great need, it is
thought, of expiatory prayers and
good works. Henry III. of England
was captivated by the beauty
of her daughter Amate, and three
other princes sought to obtain her
hand in marriage; but she married
Gaston VII. of Bearn, and two of
her daughters, by the intermediation
of Abbot Bernard of the house
of Castelbajac, married princes of
Aragon.

One of the viscounts of Lavedan
also became a benefactor to
the abbey, and in his deed of conveyance
declares he gives it the
soil, the rocks, the vegetation, the
fruit, leaves, all that rises from the
land towards heaven, and all it contains
in its depths.

Rising over the valley of Escale-Dieu
are the ruins of the old feudal
castle of Mauvezin, like a vulture’s
nest on the cliff, overlooking
the whole country. It was once
considered impregnable, and was,
after that of Lourdes, the most important
fortress in Bigorre. From
this castle went many a valiant
knight to the Crusades. One of
them, in making his preparations to
go beyond the seas with St. Louis,
gave to “God and Madame St. Mary
of Escale-Dieu” fifty sols of Morlaas
money[#] from the rents of the
thermal springs of Capvern.

.fn #
A sol Morlaas was worth about 2.4 francs.
.fn-

In early times the abbey found a
kind protector in the castle; but
.pn +1
when, at a later period, it became
the stronghold of freebooters, who
only issued forth to pillage the lowlands
and fat abbeys, the good
monks of Escale-Dieu had reason
to call it a <i>Mauvais Voisin</i>—a bad
neighbor—a name that has ever
since clung to it.

When the English took possession
of the country after the treaty
of Brétigny, the Black Prince established
a garrison of soldiers
here, who rendered themselves as
famous for their brigandage as for
their heroic exploits. When the
Duke of Anjou and Duguesclin
went to the Pyrenees in 1374 to
root the English out of the land,
the castles of Lourdes and Mauvezin
long resisted their stoutest
efforts. The latter was besieged by
eight thousand men, but the castle
was so strong that it would have
held out a long time, had not the
supply of water been cut off by the
capture of the outer cistern. The
garrison now suffered all the horrors
of thirst under a burning sun.
Froissart says the weather was excessively
warm, and not a drop of
rain had fallen for six weeks.
There was no choice but to surrender.
Captain Raimounet de
l’Epée, the commander of the fortress,
like the true Gascon he was,
made the best of his fate, and offered
to yield up the castle on conditions
that were the most advantageous
to himself and his soldiers.
Unwilling to lose any of his plunder,
he stipulated that they should
be allowed to depart in freedom,
taking with them all they and their
sumpter-horses could carry. The
duke consented, saying: “Go
about your business, every man to
his own country, without entering
any fort that holds out against us;
for, if you do, and I get hold of
you, I will deliver you up to Josselin
[the executioner], who will
shave you without a razor.”

Raimounet had fought well for
the English, but he had an eye to
the main chance, and he now showed
the nature of his bravery by entering
the service of the Duke of
Anjou and continuing, under the
<i>fleurs-de-lis</i> of France, the pillaging
he had so long practised under
the leopards of England. What he
had not seized in the name of St.
George he now took in honor of
St. Denis, and thus filled both pockets
at once. He died fighting by
the side of the Duke of Anjou
under the walls of Naples.

The sixteenth century, so fatal to
innumerable churches and monasteries
in France, did not spare the
abbey of Escale-Dieu. The Huguenots
now invaded the peaceful
valley and proved far worse than
the old troopers of Raimounet de
l’Epée. The first band came in
1518 and burned the stables and
the abbot’s residence. In 1567 a
more formidable company appeared
that put the monks to flight and
took possession of the abbey, which
they made the centre of their operations,
issuing suddenly forth
from time to time, like birds of
prey, to plunder some church, or
monastery, or well-garnished priest’s
house. Blasphemies now resounded
beneath the arches only accustomed
to the voice of prayer and
psalmody. All religious emblems
were destroyed. The sanctuary
angels feared to tread witnessed
their orgies. At length, by the
combined efforts of some of the
lords of Bigorre, they were routed
from the abbey, but before leaving
they set fire to it and nearly destroyed
it. In this destruction was
included the fine old Romanesque
church of the twelfth century,
where St. Raymond and St. Bertrand
.pn +1
had so often prayed, and the
cloister they had so often paced in
silent meditation. It is a poor
comfort to know that the leaders of
this sacrilegious deed were taken
and executed at Toulouse. The
monks returned to Escale-Dieu,
but only to find it in ruins. In the
course of time, however, it was rebuilt,
but in an inferior style, as
suited their diminished means, and
the house led a precarious existence
till the French Revolution,
when it was once more ravaged,
the very tombs violated, and the
monks for ever dispersed.

The abbey is now owned by a
layman who is more interested in
agriculture than archæology. It
contains, however, but little that is
ancient. At the end of a long file
of poplars you see the dome and
white walls of the church, a building
of the seventeenth century, now
a grange. There is a flower-garden
on the site of the ancient cloister,
and in the walls are encrusted a few
of the old columns with palm-leaves
sculptured on the capitals, emblem
of spiritual victory. And the hallowed
name of Escale-Dieu, which
once gave laws to Spanish knights,
is now degraded to a mere post
station.

Mauvezin itself became the hold
of the Huguenots under Captain de
Sus in 1584, and they made the
castle more than ever worthy of its
name. They extended their ravages
as far as St. Bertrand of Comminges,
and the name of their leader
became a terror in the land. Now
the castle is in ruins, which are
as melancholy as its history. The
square, massive tower that withstood
so many attacks is roofless, windowless,
and dismantled. Beneath is the
vaulted dungeon where the prisoner
once groaned in vain—dark and
hopeless as the tomb. Over one
of the doors of the tower is an escutcheon
on which the arms of
Foix are quartered with those of
Bearn, with the inscription <i>Fébus mé
fé</i>—Phœbus made me; for here
lived for a time the famous Gaston
Phœbus of Bearn. The kite and
the osprey inhabit it now. The
hoarse notes of birds of prey well
suit the place where once resounded
the war-cries of Raimounet de
l’Epée and Captain de Sus.

Two leagues from Mauvezin is
Bagnères de Bigorre, one of the
most popular watering-places in the
Pyrenees. Here “<i>Esculapius est sans
barbe et sans rides</i>” says the poet
Lemierre. Long before you arrive
you see the tower of the Jacobins
rising into the air light and slender
as a column. It is a clean, attractive
town in a circular valley surrounded
by hills cultivated to the very
top, or covered with woods whose
shady paths are full of mystery.
The valley is watered by several
streams, and cooled by mountain
breezes that are delicious in summer.
Numerous canals convey the
waters of the Adour through most
of the streets of the town, giving a
certain freshness to the air, and a
supply of water for domestic purposes.
An old author attributes
the foundation of the place to
Venus and Hebe, and says it was
here the god Mars came to be healed
when wounded at the siege of
Troy. It was, at least, frequented
by the Romans, who gave it
the name of <i>Vicus Aquensis</i>. Their
homages to the nymphs who guard
the springs are still to be seen
graven on marble, such as: <i>Nymphis
pro salute sud, Sever. Seranus</i> V. S.
L. M.

Like most of the towns of this
region, Bagnères was formerly held
by the Visigoths, Saracens, Normans,
and English one after the
.pn +1
other, but seems to have been spared
by the Huguenots, who perhaps
were more afraid of offending the
water-nymphs than the saints. The
people, it is said, propitiated their
leaders by sending them occasionally
a tribute of butter and maize.
The town, notwithstanding its antiquity,
has but few ancient remains.
There is a feudal tower or two that
formed part of the old fortifications,
necessary when, as Froissart says,
it was so often worried and beset
by the garrison at Mauvezin. The
old church of the Templars is standing,
but used for profane purposes.

There are many agreeable promenades
around Bagnères. One of
these is to a green hollow among
abrupt cliffs, called the <i>Elysée-Cottin</i>,
from Madame Cottin, who was very
fond of this quiet nook. It was
here she is said to have conceived
the noble character of Malek Adhel,
which so delighted us in our youth,
and wrote not only <i>Mathilde</i> but
some of her other works. It is a
charming retreat with a fountain in
the bottom of the valley, in her time
shaded by fine beeches and ash-trees,
which have since been cut
down.

The Allée Maintenon is so called
in honor of Mme. de Maintenon, who
accompanied the Duc du Maine
here for his health. This Allée begins
at the end of the town, and,
climbing a steep hill, proceeds along
the plateau of Pouey till it comes
to a spot where you can see the
whole plain of Bigorre, and the
waters of the Adour dashing down
the steep sides of the mountains.
Here, taking the road to Campan,
you soon come to the place where
once stood the Capuchin convent
of Médoux, founded in the sixteenth
century by Susanne de
Grammont, Marchioness of Monpezat.
It was particularly renowned
for a miraculous statue of the Virgin,
honored under the name of
<i>Sancta Maria in Melle dulci</i>, corrupted
into Notre Dame de Médoux.
The convent was destroyed
during the Revolutionary period,
but the Madonna, so dear to popular
piety, was saved and now adorns
the high altar of the church of
Asté. The people say it was miraculously
transported through the
air and thus saved. It is of white
marble, and a genuine work of art,
by an Italian sculptor. It was the
gift of one of the viscounts of Asté,
who were generous patrons of the
monastery. The expression and
pure outline of the face, the dignity
of the attitude, and the graceful
flow of the drapery excite the
admiration of every visitor.

A modern villa now occupies the
place of the convent. It is in the
midst of a fine park watered by a
stream that comes pouring out of
a cool grotto. Nothing could be
more delightfully rural. Not far off
is an old feudal tower, and beyond
is Baudeau, the birthplace of Larrey,
the favorite surgeon of Napoleon.
The Vicomte de Castelbajac
has sung the beauties of this spot
where once stood

.pm verse-start
“Une chapelle hospitalière
Toujours ouverte au pélerin,
Jamais il n’y frappait en vain;
Et le malheur et la misère,
La pauvre veuve et l’orphelin,
Y trouvaient toujours la prière
Et l’aumône du Capucin.”
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=cathedralwoods
“CATHEDRAL WOODS,” | MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Hushed grow our voices as our footsteps fall
  These darksome woods’ high fretted roof beneath,
  Whose living arches, sprung from living sheath,
Are organ-pipes for winds to play withal.
We leave, without, the meadow’s autumn glare—
  Its Tyrian wealth of asters prodigal,
  Its pomp of scarlet-robed cardinal,
Its gentian that doth heaven’s livery wear.
So leave we, too, the sparkle of the sea,
And land-locked beach where waves break lazily.

Herein we seem among the hills at rest;
  Their balm by breath of salt wind undefiled;
  Freshness of streams, and strength of great rocks piled,
Seem by our souls in this calm shade possessed,
Where hemlocks stretch their dusky branches o’er
  The scattered rocks, whereto the green moss clings,
  Catching the prisoned sunbeam as it flings
A miser’s portion of its golden store,
As if it feared to break the shadow deep,
To mar some vigil these grave giants keep.

Here only mountain incense seeming fills
  The lofty arches, by sea-wind unbent,
  That rise as if with height still nobler blent:
Some peak, cloud-piercing, 'mid the sunlit hills
Whose glamour holds us fast, whose blossoms lie
  The darkness of the broken rocks amid,
  Whose written speech in these lithe ferns is hid,
Whose forests whisper in the winds’ low sigh.
Should any bird this inland silence break,
Sure in his song the mountains’ soul would wake.

Hearken! breaks through the silence soft a sound
  Faint as the thought of half-forgotten dream.
  Not speech so sad is that of mountain stream
That from all loftiest heights doth reckless bound,
.pn +1
Scattering its broken life in shining drift
  Of constant dew that mocketh at the sun.
  Nor breathes the wind in such low, measured tone
When doth it lightly leafy branches lift—
This wakes and dies in mournful monotone:
The sea’s vast life dashed out against a stone!

Some law this chant seems ever to obey—
  Advancing, swells, now sinketh in retreat,
  Sad-voiced like life that knoweth but defeat,
Yet still with patient purpose keeps its way.
Joy-burdened silence of the hills, farewell!
  And salt sea-wind, thy carven choir reclaim!
  Brave sun, set all these dusky trunks aflame!
Lost are our mountains in yon ceaseless swell
That, shoreward rolling, lapsing quietly,
Holds all the strength of the untiring sea.

The land grows little, and we crave the blue
  No earthly shade e’er shutteth from the sun,
  The barren sands whereon the light waves run
But rest not, bidding evermore adieu,
And evermore returning, bringing gifts
  They give and take, and still give o’er again.
  We crave the vastness of the salty plain!
As sea-bird on unbreaking billow drifts
Our hearts with that soft plashing throb in time—
Longing, we list our dim cathedral chime.

One well might paint the hemlock solitude,
  The quiet shadow that the sunshine breaks;
  Even in color give the song that wakes
At windy touch amid the peaceful wood.
Limned all might be, indeed, so cunningly
  That one should hear the babble of glad stream,
  E’en catch the climbing mountains’ happy gleam;
But—who could paint the murmur of the sea?
Who dream, amid these dark boughs closing o’er,
The song eternal of the broken shore?
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=juliette
JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
Marriage is in one respect not
unlike greatness: some are born to
it, some achieve it, some have it
thrust upon them. And the last-named
some are apt to find it as
unprofitable an acquisition as to
Napoleon the Little it proved to
be the nephew of his uncle.

Now, M. de Boisrobert was a
born bachelor, and, left to himself,
a bachelor he would have died.
But who shall gainsay fate? Upon
him gayly baccalaureating Fate
fixed her eagle eye and made up
her mind that he should marry.
Not without reason has Fate been
made a female. When a person of
that charming but inflexible sex
makes up her mind that any bachelor
of her acquaintance shall marry,
we know what happens. Married
M. de Boisrobert accordingly was,
with what direful consequences to
the poor gentleman the reader
shall see.

Up to his forty-fifth year Messire
Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert,
Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange,
had lived the happy life of a country
gentleman upon his estates in
Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied
with himself and with the world.
Indeed, he had every reason to be
satisfied, possessing as he did a
fine château, a princely income, an
honorable name, an easy conscience,
and the respect of all who knew
him. From the summit of his towers,
look which way he would (and
his sight was keen, as so good a
sportsman’s should be), he could
scarce fix the boundary of his
domains. Farms, meadow-land, and
woodland, his broad acres stretched
for many a mile along the blue
waters of the Eure; upon his pastures
fed sheep and cattle by the
hundred; in his stables neighed
scores of gallant steeds. Yet, strange
to say, with all his wealth, envy
had no word for him, nor was he
even decried more than it was fitting
a rich and handsome bachelor
should be. Certain maiden ladies
of uncertain age, to whose charms
he had, perhaps, been ungallantly
cold, sometimes, indeed, made light
among themselves of his pretensions
to noble birth. That, truly, was
the simple gentleman’s weakness,
and he loved to style himself after
the stately fashion written above.

“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!”
Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting
(or is it tattling the ladies call
it?). “He was never aught but
plain” (“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule
would giggle, pointing the <i>mot</i>
with her crochet-needle. Ah! thou
thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule,
of his beauty when the embroidered
slippers, and watch-pockets, and
what-nots worked by thy own fair
fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged
the château and made largesse for
its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert
till his father, the notary, got an
army contract and left him money
enough to buy the wood in which
his dismal old château is buried—the
stingy old hunks!”

Now, this was not entirely true;
and these fair Ariadnes were, to
say the least, uncharitable. But it
.pn +1
must be remembered, for the credit
of the sex, that these events took
place very long ago—so long ago,
indeed, as the time of that great
and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le
doyen des Rois,” as he called
himself—whose majesty was like
the sun (which orb, indeed, depicted
in the act of illuminating the world,
he modestly took for his device),
and whose grandeur was indisputably
shown in the fact that he could
eat more for dinner than any man
in his kingdom.[#] In point of fact, no
small number of his loving subjects,
owing to their sovereign’s majestic
and princely appetite, had rarely
anything to eat at all. But to return
to our sheep.

.fn #
Read the monarch’s usual <i>menu</i> in the memoirs
of the Princess Palatine, who seems to look with a
certain <i>naïve</i> admiration on the trencher prowess of
her august kinsman: “The king devours with
ease at a single meal four basins of different kinds
of soup, a pheasant whole, a partridge, a dish of
salad, two slices of ham, some mutton with gravy,
a plate of pastry, and for dessert (<i>O dura messorum
ilia!</i>) a quantity of hard-boiled eggs and fruits of
every sort, the whole washed down with abundance
of wines.” Here, at least, he might justly
claim to be <i>nec pluribus impar</i>.
.fn-

M. de Boisrobert was not
stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed,
and even profuse, hospitality
endeared him to all the men
about him, who had, no doubt,
their own private reasons for liking
him, as some of the women had
theirs for looking upon him with a
different feeling. The manner of
his living was almost lordly; and
when he was at home, it was nothing
but junketing and merriment
from month’s end to month’s end.
An enthusiastic sportsman himself,
his stables and his kennels contained
the best that money could buy;
while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers,
and his beaters were a small
army in themselves. Being so rich
and so generous, he was naturally
looked upon with great respect, and
even liking, through all the country
round; and many a man who had
little reverence for aught besides
would doff his hat most humbly to
the well-furnished larder of that excellent
M. de Boisrobert.

It must be said, however, that in
his case—what is unhappily not always
true—this respect was rightly
his, for better reasons. Amiable,
simple, and sincere, a scrupulous
observer of his word, his charity
was greater than his hospitality,
and his piety was as unbounded as
his wealth. Every morning he was
first at Mass in the little village
church of Boisrobert, whose excellent
<i>curé</i> was his favorite and, it
may be said, his only intimate associate.
His best friends, indeed,
he counted among that admirable
class, whose sterling and unobtrusive
virtues he thoroughly appreciated.
It was strange that so
worthy a <i>penchant</i> was destined to
lead him into the great danger of
his life. Of the great folks our
friend was a little shy; and as for
the small farmers and <i>hobereaux</i>, or
“squireens” (to borrow from the
familiar speech of Ireland a word
which alone fitly translates it), who
made the bulk of the neighboring
landed proprietors, their tastes and
habits were little congenial to his
own. So good Father Bernard and
he were much together; and a
pleasant sight it was to see the two
friends placidly angling, side by
side, for the fish which somehow a
French angler seems quite as well
satisfied never to catch; or, in the
bright summer evenings, playing
bowls with all the zest of school-boys
on the village green. No
more welcome guest than Father
Bernard entered the gates of the
Château de Boisrobert; and when
the November nights grew chilly,
and the logs were piled high and
glowing in the wide Norman hearth
.pn +1
(its owner always quoted Horace
at such times, and old Mère Chicon,
the housekeeper, knew as well as
any one that <i>dissolve frigus</i> was the
Latin for “stir up the fire and fetch
a bottle of Burgundy,” and had
had, indeed, many bouts thereanent
with the village schoolmaster, in
which that worthy was not always
triumphant), our hero liked nothing
better than to engage his friend
in a contest at chess, or <i>trictrac</i>, or
<i>piquet</i>, or, over a jug of Norman
cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to
discuss the movements of the court,
with which he professed to be in
constant communication.

That was, as we have said, the
honest gentleman’s foible—almost
his sole one; he secretly worshipped
rank, and often sighed to think
that he, who might—and, he sometimes
added to himself, should—have
been a De Rohan was only a
De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman,
by virtue of the lands his money
had bought. Yet, if not the rose,
he had at least lived near the rose.
The son of a notary himself, he
was yet distantly connected with
one of the noblest names in France,
as he was by no means slow in
making folks aware.

“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,”
he would say in an off-hand
way, pronouncing the name <i>tout sec</i>,
like the provincial ladies in the
<i>Roman Comique</i>, though to his face
he never ventured to address him
otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my
good cousin De Beaumanoir
writes me that he is to visit Saint-Aignan
at his country-seat, and will
have me to be of the party.”

Or, mysteriously: “The army—but
this, you conceive, my friend, is
between ourselves—a secret, mind
you, of state—the army moves on
Flanders this week. I have it direct
from Beaumanoir.”

It was then, as you may read in
Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common
ambition of provincial gentlemen
to be thought on familiar
terms with the great folks of the
court. Truly, an extraordinary
time!

At these <i>naïve</i> confidences the
<i>curé</i>, who knew his friend’s failing,
but respected his virtues, smiled,
if at all, to himself.

But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence
for his noble kinsman went further
than talking of him in season and
out of season. He gave a more
substantial proof of his regard in
making him his sole heir. “The
money should go with the title,” he
said; “the family must be kept
up.” It seemed to him a little
price to pay for the privilege of
being admitted for a month or two
in the year to the rather frigid hospitality
of the Hôtel Beaumanoir,
of being nightly snubbed by the
bluest blood in France, and of
having down a great man or two
for a day in the shooting season, to
convert the Château Boisrobert to
his enamored fancy into a new
Versailles. His noble cousin he
would gladly have had stay longer;
but the count, after yawning through
forty-eight hours of <i>ennui</i>, invariably
left. The lands of Boisrobert
he wanted; its simple and placid
life he could not stomach. His
palate was seasoned to higher flavors.

Not to put too fine a point on it,
M. the Count de Beaumanoir was
as insolent, imperious, and ungrateful
a scoundrel as was to be found
in a court where gentry of his pattern
were rather a drug. Had it
not been that he enjoyed the confidence
and familiarity of a still
greater rogue than himself—no less
a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the
brother of the Most Christian King—he
.pn +1
would long since have come to
grief. He was more than suspected
of a share in the mysterious
poisoning of the hapless Henrietta
of Orleans, and it was only the
credit of his patron and his own
well-known courage and skill as a
swordsman that kept these doubts
from taking form.

Such was the heir whom our
worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected
for the reversion of his vast
estates; and his promise once given,
the count determined that it should
be kept.
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
Daybreak of a pleasant morning
in October, 1681. In the court-yard
and stables of the Château
de Boisrobert, and in the great
farm-yard near by, all is bustle and
confusion. Grooms and footmen,
herdsmen and farm-servants, are
scurrying to and fro, with lanterns
and lighted torches, through the
gray dawn, tumbling over one another
in their haste, shrieking
out contradictory orders at the top
of their lungs, clamoring and making
all the noise possible, as though
they had taken a contract for the
purpose and felt they had but a
limited time to fulfil it. In the
farm-yard the heavy Norman
horses are being harnessed, with
collars that would be in themselves
a load for a horse of our degenerate
days, to the unwieldy Norman
carts, already loaded with huge
sacks of wheat and barley; further
on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing
and bleating and bellowing tell
where Pierrot and Hugues are
marshalling their herds; in the
court-yard, saddled and bridled,
are stamping and snorting the
steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert
and his bodyguard of two
armed domestics to the great fair
of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself booted
and spurred for the journey,
that gentleman stands upon the
terrace of the château, overlooking
these preparations; chiding here,
encouraging there, animating all by
word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert
has not been a nobleman long
enough to forget that he is a farmer,
and prefers to be his own steward.
He finds it saves time and
temper as well as money.

By dint of much exhortation and
shrill volubility of expletives in the
curious Norman <i>patois</i> all is at last
in readiness, and they are off, with
many tender partings and tearful
embraces between Blaise and Madelon,
and much scolding from Mère
Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent
adjurations to the <i>Bon Dieu</i>
to bring them a good market and
a safe return. The latter prayer
may seem superfluous, as the distance
is but thirty miles and they
are a stout party. But it is the
day of the famous Mandrin, most
redoubtable of robbers, and of the
terrible <i>chauffeurs</i> who extort the
farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting
his feet at his own fire; so there
is some room for trepidation in the
bosoms of the simple peasant-girls
whom this animated company soon
leave behind.

We have not space to follow the
great cavalcade as it goes bellowing
and baaing and shrieking and
<i>sacrréing</i> over the white roads between
the hedges and the apple-orchards
to the great fair. We cannot
even stop with M. de Boisrobert
at the tidy little <i>auberge</i> of the
Pomme d’Or for the welcome <i>déjeuner</i>
of <i>soupe aux croûtes</i>, to be followed
by ham, and perhaps a <i>poulet</i> with
the freshest of eggs and salad, and
the most delicious of cheeses, and a
most refreshing draught of cool
.pn +1
cider from the great stone jug.
Nor can we do more than glance at
the humors of the fair—much like
other fairs, for the matter of that—with
its inevitable jugglers and
tumblers and charlatans, swallowing
flames as if they were sausages,
and pulling endless yards of
ribbon from their mouths, to the
delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies
and gingerbread hawkers; its
shrill-voiced peasant women, in
high Norman caps, selling eggs and
poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers
piping out:

.pm verse-start
“Si le roi m’avait donné
Paris sa grand’ ville,”
.pm verse-end

or some other favorite <i>chanson</i> of
the time. These joys we must pass
lightly by, to say that, before the
afternoon was well over, M. de
Boisrobert had already sold his entire
venture at an excellent profit,
and it was rumored about the fair
that he would go home richer by
20,000 francs (equal to 80,000 now)
than when he came. The interest
in the lucky capitalist increased;
it extended even to his horses, and
one or two simple rustics went so
far as to push their way, during the
temporary absence of the grooms,
into the stables, there to gaze in
open-mouthed admiration upon the
steeds that had the honor of bearing—so
history renews itself—M.
Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.

The hour for departure drew
nigh. As the days were getting
short and the homeward ride was
long and lonely, and, as already
hinted, far from safe—few roads in
France were safe in those days
after nightfall—M. de Boisrobert
commanded an early start. He
himself was to ride on ahead, attended
only by his two mounted
valets, leaving the wagoners and
herdsmen to follow more leisurely
with the carts. The horses were
accordingly brought forth and saddled,
and the worthy squire was
just setting foot in stirrup when
he was accosted by a <i>curé</i>, who, calling
him by name, politely craved
leave to ride with him, as their road
lay in the same direction. M. de
Boisrobert assented more than
gladly, for not only was company
desirable, but a <i>curé</i> the company
he most desired, and which could be
accepted, as would not have been the
case with every comer, without suspicion.
So they set forth together.

The <i>curé</i> turned out a most
agreeable travelling companion, and
M. de Boisrobert secretly felicitated
himself on the chance which had
thrown them together. So charmed
was he with his new-found friend
that, when the latter pressed upon
him the offer of a supper and a bed
at the vicarage, he wavered, until
reminded by the sum he had about
him of the wisdom of pushing on.
But even while he doubted came
a most distressing mishap. The
horse ridden by one of the servants
stumbled, fell, and, before his rider
had fairly scrambled to his feet,
rolled over stone dead. There was
nothing for it but to mount Blaise
behind Constant, and so get on
as best they might. But, lo and
behold! scarcely had Constant
drawn rein for the purpose than,
with what seemed to the startled
hearers almost a shriek, the beast
he bestrode set off at a furious
gallop, which soon left his luckless
rider on the ground with a broken
leg. And, strange to say, the poor
animal had run but a few yards further
when he too stopped, staggered,
and—<i>pouf!</i> before one could say
Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in
Norman French, he is as dead as
.pn +1
the very deadest of door-nails or
herrings.

Whatever M. de Boisrobert may
have thought of this odd coincidence,
he had little leisure to dwell
upon it; for the next instant his
own steed was in convulsions, and,
barely giving him time to spring
from the saddle, like the others rolled
over dead. How account for
so singular a fatality? Had some
poisonous weed got into their fodder?
had some venomous reptile
stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy
doubts crept into the good
gentleman’s mind—had they been
foully dealt with by reptiles in human
form who meant to waylay and
rob, if not murder, the travellers?
If the latter, it would be indeed
most prudent to accept the
good <i>curé’s</i> hospitality. His house
was luckily not far off, and the disabled
servant being first made comfortable
in a wayside cabin, and
the sound one despatched to the
nearest town for a surgeon, M. de
Boisrobert and the <i>curé</i> took their
way to the home of the latter.

Night had fallen when they
reached it, but enough light still remained
to show that it was a partly-ruined
château, dating probably
from the time of the Crusades.
One wing had been so far reconstructed
as to be habitable, and the
ancient chapel, the <i>curé</i> explained,
had also been put in order to serve
as the village church. “My parish,”
he added with a sigh, “is too poor
to build a better.” A moat, still
filled with green and stagnant water,
surrounded the walls; a few
planks served for a pathway across
it, where once had hung the feudal
drawbridge; a dark and snake-like
ivy crawled up the crumbling walls;
dense woods cast about it a funereal
gloom. Altogether its outward aspect
was sombre and forbidding in
the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert
could not repress a shudder or
stifle a sinister presentiment as he
looked upon his quarters for the
night. Had his host been anybody
but a <i>curé</i>, he would have felt like
drawing back even then.

A little old man, who filled in the
modest household by turns the
comprehensive functions of butler,
valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook,
and general factotum, took their
horses in silence, but with a curious
glance at the visitor the latter
could not help remarking, and the
<i>curé</i> led the way to the drawing-room.
This was a lofty, vaulted
apartment almost bare of furniture,
on the walls of which flapped
dismally a few tattered pieces
of tapestry, the relics of old-time
grandeur. A faggot or two crackled
and sputtered feebly on the
gloomy hearth. Near it, busied
apparently over woman’s work of
some kind, were seated an old woman
of repulsive aspect and a
young girl, the latter of whom the
<i>curé</i> introduced as Juliette, his
niece, and, briefly requesting her to
entertain their guest, excused himself
to see to the latter’s entertainment
for the night.

And now, as the heroine of this
exciting history has at last arrived—a
little tardiness, as you know,
messieurs, must be forgiven to her
sex—it seems only becoming that
she should have a chapter to herself.
.sp 2
.h4
III.
.sp 2
Lovely? Of course she is lovely.
What a ridiculous question! Who
ever heard of a heroine who wasn’t
lovely, still less a heroine who was
also the niece of a rob—<i>Peste!</i>
The cat was almost out of the bag
that time—so nearly out, in fact,
.pn +1
that we may as well slip the noose
and let her go at once. Scat! And
now, the author’s mind being freed
of an enormous load, he breathes
more freely and announces that
our luckless M. de Boisrobert has
literally fallen into a den of thieves.
For what purpose otherwise that
artful hint about the rustics prying
into the stables, the horses falling
dead upon the way, the elaborate
setting forth of the gloom and desolation
hanging like a pall over the
ruined château—to what end, do
you suppose, was all this expenditure
of literary artifice, except
to prepare the reader’s mind for
some blood-curdling and harrowing
event? But the <i>curé</i>? the <i>curé</i>?
Why, simply no <i>curé</i> at all: a
wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there
were then but too many in France.[#]

.fn #
It should be said here that the main incident on
which this tale is founded is true, and that this
sacrilegious disguise was in those days frequently
assumed by French robbers the better to disarm
suspicion. The fact is in itself a striking testimony
to the implicit confidence which the clergy of France
have always inspired, and deserved.
.fn-

Of this, however, as yet M. de
Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled
with vague forebodings of evil he
could neither define nor reason
down, he felt but little in the humor
for talk, and still less—being, as you
remember, in his tenth lustrum—for
flirtation. So, after one or two
wise remarks upon the weather, or
the state of the crops, or the latest
opera, or whatever other topics
gentlemen-farmers then chose to
break the ice of conversation with a
pretty girl, had been answered <i>more
virgineo</i> with shy blushes, or faltering
monosyllables, or embarrassed
and embarrassing silence, M. de
Boisrobert betook himself to the
window to look out upon the surrounding
country. A full moon
threw upon every object a lustre
like that of day, and—ha! what
is this he sees in the court-yard?
Can that be his host, the <i>curé</i>,
talking so confidentially to those
exceedingly sinister-looking chaps
(one of whom he now remembers to
have had pointed out to him at the
fair as a coiner of base money, the
other as a more than suspected
thief), and handling those three exceedingly
long and ugly-looking
poniards!—ugh! how their keen
edges glitter in the moonlight as
the rascals run their dirty thumbs
along to try their temper.

M. de Boisrobert turned from
the window with a gesture of affright
and despair, and beheld Juliette
standing before him, no longer
a timid child but a lovely and
courageous woman, one finger upon
her lip, the other pointing to the
ill-featured duenna, who had had
the good manners to go to sleep.
In a few rapid whispers, and still
more eloquent gestures, she explained
the danger and her unalterable
resolve to save him or perish in
the attempt. Whether it was her
words or her beauty, M. de Boisrobert
felt instantly reassured. Indeed,
had he known anything of
the course of such adventures, he
must have felt so from the moment
he laid eyes on her. For what
other purpose except to save him
could he suppose so lovely a creature
was to be found in so vile a
den? And let it here be said for
the benefit of scoffers that the present
writer is well aware how often
this incident has been used for purposes
of fiction—at least ten thousand
times in the English language
alone. Yes; but does not the very
frequency of its use prove it to be
founded on fact, that some time or
other it was true? Very well; this
is the time it was true. Besides,
who has said that Juliette is to succeed
in her noble but rash endeavor?
.pn +1
Suppose—now just suppose—she
were to fail; in which of your
fictions do you find a stroke of
originality like that? If the historian
were revengeful; if he had a
mind to distort facts, as historians
in very remote ages are said sometimes
to have done—well, well, we
shall see.

In her hurried warning Juliette
had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert
that it was meant to put a
sleeping potion in his wine, and
afterwards to enter his chamber
and kill him while still under the
influence of the drug.

“Do not for your life refuse to
drink,” she added, “but be careful
to eat the apple I shall offer you
after it, and which will contain the
antidote to the drug.”

Scarcely had she ended when the
pretended <i>curé</i> came in with his precious
comrades, whom he introduced
as parishioners. (“A fit flock for such
a shepherd!” thought poor M. de
Boisrobert.) Supper was served at
once, and all went as the young
girl had foretold. The wine was
drunk and the apple duly presented
and eaten with a confidence that
must seem truly sublime under the
circumstances, remembering, too,
that one of M. de Boisrobert’s remote
ancestors had lost his entire
patrimony through accepting a similar
gift from a near female relation.
Feigning weariness and sleep, the
traveller begged to be excused and
was shown to his room.

No sooner was he alone than he
began to examine his means of defence
and offence. The flints, of
course, were taken from his pistols
and the bolts removed from the
door—they would be poor robbers,
totally unworthy the attention of
an enlightened reader, who would
neglect such obvious precautions
as these. Somewhat disconsolately
M. de Boisrobert looked under the
bed and into the wardrobe, but
found no comfort there. Then he
piled all the furniture against the
door, drew his sword, said his prayers,
set his teeth, thought of Juliette
(O middle-aged and most forlorn
of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.

He had not long to wait. Scarcely
had he taken position when a
stealthy tread outside, a fumbling
at the latch, and probably a strong
odor of garlic penetrating through
the keyhole, announced their arrival.
The door was first softly, then
strongly, pushed, and then, as the
unlooked-for resistance showed
their plot was discovered, a furious
volley of oaths was followed by an
onset that made the barricade
tremble. Now should we dearly
love to entertain the reader with
the description of a terrific combat <i>à
l’outrance</i>—also <i>à la</i> Dumas—wherein
M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting
his foes’ approach, falls upon
them with such ferocity that in a
twinkling he has one spitted like a
lark, another cloven to the chine,
and the third in headlong flight and
bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked
sorely in tender places by the relentless
sword. But, alas!—such is
the fatal limitation of your true
story—nothing of the sort took
place. On the contrary, our hero
was in all probability horribly frightened
and thoroughly glad to see a
secret panel suddenly slide back,
and a white hand thrust through
the opening, while the sweetest
voice he had ever heard begged
him to make haste. To seize that
hand—and who shall blame him if
he pressed it to his lips?—to dart
through the opening—quick! quick!
good Jean!—to close the panel, is
the work of an instant. Scarcely
is it shut when cr-rack! crash!
.pn +1
bang! go door and barricade,
and the foiled assassins are heard
stamping and swearing furiously
about the deserted room. If you
could but have seen their faces and
heard—no, it would not have been
edifying to hear their language.
But the fugitives are safe. Need it
be said that the foresight of the
faithful Jean (who, of course, follows
his young mistress, having, indeed,
waited this long time in the robber’s
den only for a chance to be on
hand in this emergency) had provided
horses, on which they soon
reached Evreux, where they lodged
an information, which, there being
no police there to speak of, led to
the prompt arrest of the ruffians.

Placing the lovely Juliette in a
convent, M. de Boisrobert returned
home. But it was observed that
he hunted less than formerly, that
he was often closeted with Father
Bernard and his notary, and that he
spent much time in settling his affairs.
Need the result be told? What in
the world is a middle-aged bachelor
to do whose life is saved by a
lovely maiden of spotless virtue?
For, be it known, the fair Juliette,
left an orphan only a week before,
had, by her dying father, a rich
farmer of Brézolles, been consigned
to the guardianship of this wicked
brother, whose evil courses he was
far from suspecting. All that is as
plain as a pikestaff; as it is that in
less than six months after, just long
enough to get the trousseau ready
(from the Worth of the day, of
course) and to see the wicked uncle
comfortably hanged, the bells of
Friar Lawrence’s—we should say
of Father Bernard’s—little church
at Boisrobert rang out a merry
answer to the problem last propounded.

When the distant echoes of these
wedding chimes reached the ears
of M. le Comte de Beaumanoir at
Paris, he was not at all angry, as
people thought he would be. Oh!
dear, no. On the contrary, he
only smiled, showing a remarkably
fine set of teeth. So that people
said he was a brave man, this poor
M. le Comte, and not by any means
as black as he was painted. And, indeed,
a great many folks began to
commiserate him and to abuse M.
de Boisrobert.
.sp 2
.h4
IV.
.sp 2
Well?

Well what?

Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir
showing his teeth?

Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing
at all. That’s the trouble, you see,
of telling a true story: one’s imagination
is hampered at every step.
It would have been most delightful
and exciting to have invented a
frightful tale of the count’s vengeance;
how he slew his recalcitrant
kinsman, immured his weeping
bride in a dungeon for life, and
laid waste the lands of Boisrobert
with fire and sword, etc., etc. But
the truth is, he did nothing of the
kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily
drawn, and he was glad to get
away with his worthless life. The
false <i>curé</i> confessed before his
death that the count had suborned
him to kill his kinsman as he returned
from the fair, promising him
a sum equal to that which he
would be sure to find on M. de
Boisrobert’s person, and even suggesting
the disguise. He little
thought that the very scheme he
fondly imagined was to secure him
his coveted inheritance was destined
really to lose it to him for
ever. So ever come to grief the
machinations of the wicked! This
last escapade was a little too much
even for courtly morals, and Monsieur
.pn +1
was quietly advised to hint
to his murderous favorite that his
health would probably be the better
for a change of air.

And the fatal consequences resulting
from this marriage?

Yes, yes, of course; how stupid
to forget it! Well, a cynic might
say that for a bachelor to marry
at all, especially at forty-five—but
never mind the cynic. Their married
life was surely not unhappy?
Let us hope not. Do Romeo and
Juliet ever throw teacups at each
other over the breakfast-table because
that duck of a spring bonnet
is not forthcoming? In romances
certainly not; but in true stories—hem!
Let us trust, however, that
peace reigned eternal over the domestic
hearthstone at the Château
de Boisrobert. But his marriage
had cost its owner an illusion—a
life-long illusion; and that is a painful
thing at forty-five. Disenchantment
seems to come harder as one
gets older and has anything left
to be disenchanted of. He ceased
to believe that rank and birth are
the same as goodness, or even greatness,
and it cost him many a pang,
and no doubt a great deal of real
though whimsical unhappiness, to be
forced thus suddenly and radically
to readjust his scheme of life. But,
in spite of the adventure which
gave him a wife, perhaps because
of it, he never lost his faith in <i>curés</i>
or in Juliette; and the games of
bowls and of <i>trictrac</i> were all the
pleasanter for the sweet face that
thenceforth lit them up, and the
romping curly-pates that disturbed
them and in time effaced from their
fond father’s memory his lingering
regret for the loss of a noble heir.
.sp 4
.h3 id=toaubrey
TO AUBREY DE VERE. | AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,
  Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,
  Whose shattered windows let in all the glare
Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed
With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.
  Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace
  Of art, believing, to the holy place
That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.
With weary feet I trod the broken floor,
  With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down,
  When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,
Burning a hidden altar clear before:
Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true!
Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=colonization
COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.
.sp 2
God has apparently chosen the
United States as the theatre for the
demonstration of the truth that the
Catholic Church is the church of the
people. She has always been the
church of the people; many of her
most severe persecutions have been
caused by the stand she has taken
in behalf of popular rights and individual
freedom against the tyranny
of kings and the exactions of nobles.
But never before has she been furnished
with so large a field for the
manifestation and development of
her popular and democratic character
as has been prepared for her
here. It is her destiny, we believe,
to save the republic from the ruin
to which the sects and their offspring,
the atheists, would lead her.
Even those of our Catholic readers
who may not fully share this belief
will admit that, to all seeming, the
Catholic Church is destined to play
an important part in the future history
of our country—at least that
she has grown in numbers, material
wealth, and social influence during
the last thirty years to an almost
marvellous degree.

A better or more certain method
of accomplishing the work of the
church in the United States could
scarcely have been devised than
the congregation of a large share
of the Catholic emigration in our
great cities. The Catholic Church
in the United States is not “a foreign
church” in any other sense
than the Bible, or Shakspere’s
plays, or Homer’s poems are “foreign”
books; she is, as they are,
and far more than they are, the
common inheritance of all, and she
is as much at home here, and as
rightfully at home, as she is or ever
was in any other land. Indeed, the
church of God is not and cannot
be foreign to any of God’s creatures.
But a large proportion of her children
in the United States at present
are either of foreign birth or are
the descendants of foreign-born
persons in the first or second generation.
These people did not
bring the Catholic Church with
them to America: they found her
here; she had always had an existence
here since Christopher Columbus
planted the cross upon San
Salvador, and since the Jesuit
priests sailed up the St. Lawrence
and down the Mississippi rivers.
If, however, the emigration which
has poured into this country since
1840 had not arrived, or had it
come from non-Catholic countries,
and had the growth of the church
here been dependent wholly, or
even chiefly, upon the natural increase
of American Catholic families
and upon converts from Protestantism
or heathenism, the church
in America to-day would have been
numerically insignificant; which
is only the same as to say that, if
emigration had ceased after the
first European exodus, the population
of the United States to-day
would be equally insignificant.

We may form some idea of what
the progress of the church under
these conditions would have been
here by remembering what it has
been in England since the cessation
of the active persecutions
which followed the Reformation.
There are about 1,800,000 Catholics
.pn +1
in England to-day. Of these
not less than 800,000 are Irish,
French, German, Spanish, and Italian
emigrants or their children;
the remaining 1,000,000 represent
all the converts of English birth, as
well as the descendants of the old
Catholic families who always retained
the faith. Half a century
has elapsed since the English Catholics
were emancipated from the
last remnant of the persecuting and
restrictive legislation which had oppressed
them since the days of
Elizabeth. During this half-century
the church in England has
been free—free in its own government,
free in its work of propagating
the faith and of bringing back
the English people to the religion
which their fathers had cherished
for a thousand years.

Yet, with some advantages that
Catholics in the United States did
not and do not yet possess, the
growth of the church in England
during the last fifty years has been
vastly less than the progress she
has made in this country during
the same period. In 1830 there
were more Catholics in England
than in the United States; since
then the church in both countries
has been equally free, with the advantages
at the start on the side of
England. But now the Catholics
in the United States outnumber
those in England more than fourfold.

In 1830, according to the most
trustworthy estimates, there were
600,000 Catholics in England and
475,000 in the United States; now
they number two millions there and
from six to seven millions here. In
England to-day the church has a
cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops,
and 2,064 priests; in the United
States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops
and bishops, and 5,297
priests. In England, according
to the English <i>Catholic Directory</i>
for last year, there were 997 Catholic
churches, 7 theological seminaries,
312 ecclesiastical students, 15
colleges, 38 asylums, and 5 hospitals.
In the United States, according
to the American <i>Catholic Directory</i>
for the same year, there were
5,292 Catholic churches, 34 theological
seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical
students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums,
and 95 hospitals.[#]

.fn #
These figures, as far as they relate to the institutions
of the church in England, are probably
not entirely correct. The <i>Register</i> from which
we have quoted contains no tabular statement of
these institutions, and we have been compelled to
arrive at the totals by an enumeration of our own,
the accuracy of which has been rendered doubtful
by the confused manner in which the statistics of
each diocese were given. However, our figures
cannot be very greatly at fault.
.fn-

We have drawn out this comparison
for the purpose of accentuating
our former remark that the
marvellous growth of the church in
the United States during the last
half-century has been mainly due
to emigration from Catholic countries.
Had it not been for these
accessions, it is doubtful, in our
opinion, whether the church in the
United States would to-day equal
in numbers the church in England.
But would its growth have been so
great, so pronounced, so commanding
to the attention of all beholders,
had this emigration been directed
away from the cities and dispersed
throughout the rural and
agricultural sections of the country?
A little reflection will, we
think, show that this question must
be answered in the negative. It
would have availed the church
nothing had these emigrants been
placed in their new homes under
conditions where the preservation
of their faith in any practical form
would have been almost impossible;
where they would have been deprived
of the care and counsel of
.pn +1
their spiritual guides and of the
sacraments necessary for salvation;
where their children would have
remained unbaptized, their marriages
have been degraded to civil
contracts, and their souls starved
and enfeebled by the absence of
the Bread of Life. Yet that this
would have been the fate of the
great majority of them, had they
not congregated in the cities, cannot
be doubted, unless, indeed, God
had chosen to work another miracle
in their behalf and to create for
them a miraculous supply of priests—a
supply so large that every little
hamlet in the far-off wilds of the
West and North should have been
furnished with a spiritual director.

Some boast of having even nine
millions of Catholics in the republic;
but it can be shown that there
are perhaps half as many more
Americans now living who are the
children of Catholic parents in the
first or second generation, but who
have lost their faith and grown up
as Protestants or without any religion
at all, chiefly because their
parents had gone into districts
where there were no priests, and
where the exercise of their religion,
save as a spiritual meditation, was
impossible.[#] It was only when the
Catholic emigrants began to arrive
here in large numbers, and to dwell
together by hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands in the
great cities, that it became possible,
humanly, to provide for their religious
wants and for their Catholic
education. How nobly they have
themselves furnished the material
means for this work the statistics
given above show. They have
mainly done it for themselves. In
England the Irish Catholics, in
their works of charity and in the
erection of their churches, have often
been aided by the contributions
of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics;
but in America the foreign-born
and the descendants of
the foreign-born Catholics have for
the most part built their own
churches, their own convents,
seminaries, and schools, and have
received but little aid from their
co-religionists of native ancestry.
Indeed, in some instances within
our own knowledge it is the latter
who have been the beneficiaries of
the former; and many an American
Catholic to-day is indebted to
the charity and self-denial of German,
French, and Irish Catholics
for the services of the priest who
was the means of his conversion,
and for the erection of the church
in which he hears Mass. We repeat
that all this was made possible
by the congregation of our Catholic
emigrants in the cities, and that
.pn +1
the most deplorable consequences
would have followed had not this
congregation taken place.

.fn #
A very ingenious statement was published
some time ago in one of our journals, setting forth
what was believed to be “the constituent elements
of the population of the United States in 1870.”
This statement may be thus summarized: In 1784
the entire white population of the United States
was 3,172,000 persons; of these 1,141,920 were of
Irish birth, 751,280 were of other Celtic races, 841,800
were of Anglo-Saxon extraction, and 427,000
were of Dutch and Scandinavian birth. The total
immigration to the United States from 1790 to
1870 was 8,199,000 persons, of whom 3,248,000 came
from Ireland, 796,000 from Anglo-Saxon races; and
4,155,000 from all other sources. The total population
in 1870 was 38,500,000; and this vast number
was thus analyzed:

.ta l:40 r:12
Joint product in 1870 of Irish colonial elements and subsequent Irish immigration, including that from Canada |                14,325,000
Joint product in 1870 of Anglo-Saxon colonial elements and subsequent Anglo-Saxon immigration |                                4,522,000
Joint product in 1870 of all other colonial elements and all subsequent immigration, including the negroes  |                    19,653,000
 |                                             —————
 |                                            38,500,000
.ta-

From these figures was drawn the somewhat
startling deduction that the population of the United
States in 1870 was composed of 24,000,000 of Celtic
birth or origin (Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, and
Italian), and that of these 14,325,000 were of Irish
birth or origin, 4,522,000 of Anglo-Saxon birth or
origin, and that the remaining 9,978,000 were of
neither Celtic nor Anglo-Saxon extraction. We are
not in any way responsible for the accuracy of
these figures; but that they express at least an
approximation to the truth we do not doubt.
.fn-

It is not, moreover, in spiritual
matters only that our emigrants
have been wise in congregating in
the cities. One must remember
the condition in which the great
majority of them landed here during
the years when emigration was
at the flood-tide, and then compare
with that their present state and the
future which is before them and
their children. They were desperately,
or apostolically, poor, because
they came from lands where it was
impossible for them to acquire anything
beyond the means of bare
subsistence. They were uneducated,
because they had been the
subjects of governments whose
studied policy it was to keep them
in ignorance. They had neither
the capital nor the knowledge necessary
to render them successful as
independent agriculturists. Labor
was most abundant in the cities,
and in the cities they remained.
What have they done there? If
you seek their monument, look
around you! Behold not only the
57 Catholic churches (12 of them
built almost or quite exclusively by
Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians,
1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen,
and 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries,
the 22 convents, the magnificent
Protectory, the theological
seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22 select
schools, the 19 asylums, the 4
homes for aged men and women,
the 4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial
schools of which the city and
diocese of New York alone boast;
but the great business houses, the
large manufactories, the numberless
smaller though important factories,
stores, and shops belonging
to the foreign-born and foreign-descended
population of this metropolis;
make a similar examination
of what this class of our citizens
have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore,
Boston, Hartford, Portland,
Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit,
Milwaukee, St. Paul, Albany, Buffalo,
Newark, Philadelphia, St.
Louis, Chicago, San Francisco,
and twoscore more of our large
cities; and then compare these
truly magnificent religious, moral,
charitable, commercial, and industrial
results with all that the same
people could have accomplished
had they been scattered as sheep
without shepherds throughout our
Western and Northern wilds, destined
to lose their faith, deprived
of the support and strength which
common association and common
interest afford, and doomed, most
probably, to lives of hopeless poverty
and unremunerative struggle.
God has been too good to them,
and to the country in which they
have become so important a factor,
to permit this, and what the arrogance
of man has so often stigmatized
as folly has proved to be the
highest and best wisdom both for
eternal and for temporal ends.
The whole number of foreign emigrants
who have landed in the
United States during the first 75
years of this century was 9,526,966.
We showed in a former article[#]
what proportion of these has remained
in the cities; and we have
now pointed out some of the results
of this congregation.

.fn #
“The European Exodus,” <sc>The Catholic
World</sc>, July, 1877.
.fn-

We must not be understood, however,
to convey the idea that a very
considerable proportion of our foreign-born
Catholic citizens have
not made homes for themselves in
the rural districts of the country,
under conditions which rendered it
possible for them to continue the
.pn +1
active exercise of their religion,
and that the happiest results have
not followed. In the New England
States, in New York, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania, in Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin,
Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota, the
number of Irish and German Catholic
farmers—well-to-do, prosperous,
and faithful—is very large.
In the New England States the increase
of this class has of late been
marked. The farms throughout
this section are generally small;
their native owners, especially when
they are young men, find it difficult
to extract from them incomes large
enough to supply their desire for
the luxuries of life; they are often
anxious to try their fortunes in the
cities or in the West; whenever one
of them offers his little estate for
sale the purchaser is most likely a
German or Irishman, whose wants are
more modest, and who finds it quite
possible to derive from a farm of
twenty or thirty acres a comfortable
subsistence for his family. This
change in the proprietorship of the
soil in New England has gone on
to an extent much larger than is
generally known; and one would
labor under a serious mistake who
supposed that the foreign-born and
foreign-descended population of
New England was altogether, or
even unduly, congregated in the
cities. There are in New England,
according to the last <i>Catholic Directory</i>,
539 Catholic priests, 508
churches, 167 chapels and stations,
with a Catholic population of about
890,000 souls; and it is evident
from an examination of the list of
the churches that a large proportion
of them are in the small towns
and rural districts of these States.
It may be unwelcome news to our
Protestant readers, but it is true,
that nearly 25 per cent. of the present
population of New England is
composed of Roman Catholics. It
may be still more unpleasant for
them to learn that nearly 70 per
cent. of the births in that region
are those in Roman Catholic families.
New England, indeed, promises
to be the first portion of the
country which is likely to become
distinctively Roman Catholic. The
immigration into New England is
small, but it is mostly composed of
Catholics; the increase of population
is very largely Catholic; the
emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic.
From this digression
from our main subject we return
with the remark that the rural Catholic
population in the Middle and
Western States—a population largely
composed of foreign-born citizens
and their descendants—constitutes
a most important factor in
the material strength of the Catholic
body, and that, as we shall show,
the future course of foreign emigration
should, and most probably
will, tend mainly to increase this
class.

The late decline in emigration to
the United States, and the present
lull, amounting almost to stagnation,
which has taken place in it,
together with the fact that there is
abundant reason to suppose that
this lull is but temporary and that
emigration will again ere very long
pour in upon us, suggest some reflections
respecting the changed
character which that emigration
will probably assume, the changed
conditions under which it will be
carried on, and the changed duty
of the Catholic body in the United
States towards it. What was so essentially
necessary in the past will
be necessary, under these new conditions,
no longer; what was so often
impossible in the past will now
become generally easy of accomplishment.
.pn +1
The Catholic Church
in the United States has passed
through the stage of its infancy and
feebleness, and has entered upon
the period of its manhood and
strength. Firmly planted throughout
the land, it fears nothing and
can watch over and abundantly
protect the faith and the education
of its children. In every State and
Territory, save Alaska, at least one
bishop; in seven States two bishops;
in five States three bishops; in
one State six, in another State eight
bishops, and with more than 5,000
priests—surely with this army of
shepherds the sheep and the lambs
of the flock can be fed and guarded
from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism,
and bigotry. God has
built up his church in the republic
in the manner, and chiefly through
the agencies, which we have pointed
out, and has thus fitted her,
armed her, and made her strong
for the great work which still lies
before her. That work is the conversion
of the non-Catholic portion
of our fellow-citizens; the nurture
of Catholic children; and the care,
the protection, and, if need be, the
conversion of the emigrants who,
in the future, are to come to us from
the Old World. It is only with this
latter branch of her duty that we
now deal. Emigrants to the United
States have hitherto arrived
here chiefly as isolated individuals,
or at best as isolated families.
There have been some attempts at
colonization—that is, in bringing in
one company a large number of individuals
and of families, destined
to migrate together to a spot already
selected for them, and which
they are to occupy as a community.
Most frequently these attempts at
colonization have been successful.
Where they have failed the failure
has been due to some incapacity
or dishonesty on the part of the
agents who had the matter in
charge, and not to any vice in the
system itself. There is evidence
to show that emigration in future
will be to a great extent, and may
be almost wholly, conducted on the
colonization principle. We have
already said that emigration from
Ireland in the future would most
probably be confined within small
limits; but if anything could stimulate
it, it would be the development
in Ireland of wise plans for colonization,
carried out by men of probity,
experience, and practical wisdom.
Our chief sources of emigration,
however, for some years to
come, are likely to be England,
Scotland, Germany, France, Austria,
Bohemia, Switzerland, Sweden,
Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland,
and Russia. There are causes at
work which even now are stimulating
emigration from each of these
countries, and these causes may attain
great strength. As an instance
of the curious manner in which apparently
insignificant causes, originating
at a distance, produce large
effects, we may mention the fact
that the shipping of fresh meat from
this country to Great Britain—an
enterprise only in its infancy—has
already so seriously unsettled the
relations existing between landlords
and farmers in England and Scotland
that the latter are declaring
their inability to make both ends
meet, and are turning their thoughts
towards emigration. So general
and so serious is this feeling that
the leading journal of Scotland has
sent to this country a trusted member
of its permanent staff (the
editor of its agricultural department
for many years), with instructions
“to make the fullest possible inquiry
into everything connected with
the stock-raising department of agriculture”
.pn +1
in the United States, extending
his researches to Texas,
“where he proposes to examine
thoroughly the system of cattle and
sheep breeding and raising carried
on in that State on so immense a
scale, and to obtain all the information
that is to be had with respect
to the breeds of cattle, the methods
taken to improve the quality of the
stock, and Texan agricultural methods
and circumstances generally.”
He is then to visit other
States for the same purpose, and
“all along his route he will take
note of all the phases and conditions
of agriculture, and of the
suitability of the States for advanced
farming.” The results of his
investigations, published in Scotland
and England, will enable the
farmers there “to determine the
full significance of the competition
of American cattle-growers in the
British dead-meat market,” and in
all probability determine many of
them to emigrate to this country,
with their capital and their skill, to
engage in this competition on the
American side.

Farming in England and Scotland—especially
in Scotland—has
long been a precarious and hazardous
business; and now the reduction
of four or six cents a pound in
the price of beef which has been
caused by the importation of about
1,000 tons of American beef and
mutton every week at Glasgow and
Liverpool, threatens to be the last
straw to break the back of at least
the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists
likewise depend to a great
extent for their profits upon the
money received for their cattle,
and they, too, will feel as severely
as their Scottish friends the ruinous
consequences, to them, of a reduction
of twenty-five per cent. in the
market value of their principal commodity.
Thus the emigration of
the well-to-do farmers of the United
Kingdom is likely to be stimulated,
and these agriculturists, most probably,
would need but little persuasion
to induce them to emigrate,
if they emigrated at all, in colonies,
and not as isolated families or individuals.
So, also, as respects the
future emigration from the Continent
of Europe. Different causes
are at work in each of the countries
above named, but they all
tend to the same result.

We have already hinted that the
emigration of the future will be of
a different class from the emigration
of the past. At the present
moment, and probably for some
time to come, it would be dishonest,
cruel, and unwise to encourage
the emigration to this country of
people without capital—those who
must earn daily wages in order to
live. Hitherto the great majority
of our emigrants have been people
of this class, and most fortunate is
it that they came in such vast numbers.
The time will again arrive,
no doubt, when this class will be
once more necessary and welcome
among us, and when they will
come, as they have come before,
in thousands and tens of thousands.
But at present they are not needed
here; to bring them hither would
be cruel to us as well as to themselves.
The emigrants whom we
need, and who are for some time
most likely to come, are those who
possess considerable worldly wealth
at home, but who, like the English,
Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom
we have spoken, find it difficult to
provide sufficiently for their increasing
families, or wish to secure
for them, in the New World, better
fortunes than they can hope for in
the Old. On the European Continent,
and especially in Germany,
.pn +1
other causes are at work which are
morally certain to promote emigration.
The war in the East may be
localized—although all the probabilities
point to a different conclusion—but
even now it has increased
the burdens which oppress the
German people, and rendered the
“blood-tax” that they are compelled
to pay heavier and harder to
bear. There is probably no intelligent
man in Germany who does
not look forward to a not distant
day when that country will be again
engaged in a desperate conflict;
and meanwhile the military service
exacted from every German citizen,
and the cost of maintaining the
army, press with a crushing weight
upon the country. A thoughtful
and experienced writer in one of
our daily journals—a writer who,
if we mistake not, has himself had
extensive experience in the organization
of emigration enterprises—thus
treats of this subject:

.pm letter-start
“But it is in Germany that the fears
awakened throughout Continental Europe
will contribute most powerfully to
a renewal of interest in the subject of
emigration among classes to whom this
country even now presents all requisite
advantages. The stern methods employed
by Bismarck to repress emigration
movements—his interference with
the freedom of American citizens who
dared to speak of the attractions held
out by the fertile West, and his suppression
of whatever seemed likely to facilitate
emigration to the United States—were
all called forth by the anxious desire
of people to escape the liability to
military service. The military glories of
the empire had charms for the cities,
which acquired delusive appearances of
prosperity. Among the population of
rural districts the situation was different.
The burdens and penalties of war,
and of a system which exacts incessant
preparation for war as a condition of
national safety, have among these people
stimulated the feeling in favor of
emigration to a degree which the action
of the Imperial Government has imperfectly
controlled. The dread, vague before,
will now be a reality. What, as a
mere contingency, has sufficed to foster
the wish to leave the Fatherland is now
so near a certainty that the movement in
favor of emigration needs but a guiding
hand to assume large proportions. And
the emigration available is of the description
which, discreetly operated
upon, should be attracted rather than
repelled by the considerations which
have driven wage-earners back to Europe.
Those who would gladly get out
of Germany to save their sons from service
in the army look to the land for a
livelihood, and would form valuable accessions
to the Western States. As far
as Germany is concerned, the difficulty
is in reaching this class. Agencies that
might be freely used in England or Holland
are in Germany unavailable. All
that seems possible there is to provide
authentic information through channels
which would not conflict with local law
or incur the suspicion which, in view of
recent experience, interested representations
are likely to excite. Might not
our consular agencies be utilized, not as
emigration bureaux, but as means of
supplying to those who seek it information
in reference to lands and farms in
the West and South, and to other matters
connected with the opening or purchase
of farms, and stocking and working
them? The laborious head of the
Statistical Bureau some years ago compiled
a volume of statistics which to the
working-men of the Old World was invaluable.
The manual at present needed
would deal with the phases of the
emigration question, and would be much
more than an accumulation of figures.
It would be more legitimate than half
the matter which emanates from the department
and is printed at the public
cost; and it would contribute to a revival
and increase of the only immigration
which can be honestly encouraged
in the face of hard times.”
.pm letter-end

The French have never shown
much anxiety for emigration; but
the arrivals of emigrants from that
country have increased during late
years, and were slightly larger last
year than in 1875. In France the
burdens which are felt in Germany
are also a cause of suffering, if not
.pn +1
of complaint; and emigration from
France, if the proper means for
stimulating and directing it were
employed, might reach large proportions.
In Holland causes like
those to which we have alluded as
potent in Great Britain exist. The
emigration from Russia has hitherto
been of a peculiar character; it has
consisted mainly of the Mennonites,
whose anti-war principles impelled
them to escape from the military
service exacted from all Russian
subjects, and from which only
the temporary and partial concessions
of the czar exempted some of
them. The mission now undertaken
by Russia is of a character which will
compel her ruler, ere he has finished
his task, to press every one of
his subjects into the military service,
directly or indirectly. The
desire for emigration from Russia
may be expected to increase, although
some time will probably
elapse before large results can be
hoped for from it. The emigration
from Austria has thus far been
small. The total arrivals of emigrants
from that country at the
port of New York during the last
30 years have been only 21,677, of
whom 1,210 came last year and
1,088 in 1875. But Austria is a
country especially fit to emigrate
from, and the incentives which are
powerful in Germany will ere long
be felt in Austria also. From Switzerland,
Norway, Sweden, Belgium,
Denmark, and Poland emigration
of the better class may with reason
be anticipated; and even from Italy,
which has sent us 42,769 emigrants
since 1847, considerable accessions
may be expected.[#]

.fn #
During the year ended December 31, 1876,
157,440 immigrants arrived in the United States,
of whom 102,960 were males and 54,480 females.
Their ages were: under fifteen years, 26,608; fifteen
and under forty, 111,764; forty years and upward,
19,068. The countries of last permanent
residence or citizenship of the immigrants were:
England, 21,051; Ireland, 16,506; Scotland, 4,383;
Wales, 294; Isle of Man, 8; Guernsey, 1; Germany,
31,323; Austria, 6,047; Hungary, 475;
Sweden, 5,204; Norway, 6,031; Denmark, 1,624;
Netherlands, 709; Belgium, 454; Switzerland,
1,572; France, 6,723; Italy, 2,980; Malta, 2;
Greece, 24; Spain, 597; Portugal, 816; Gibraltar,
16; Russia, 6,787; Poland, 854; Finland, 22;
Turkey, 59; Arabia, 13; India, 22; Burmah, 9;
China, 16,879; Asiatic Russia, 83; Japan, 6;
Asia, not specified, 14; Egypt, 3; Liberia, 14; Algeria,
9; Africa, not specified, 17; Quebec, 15,545;
Nova Scotia, 3,200; New Brunswick, 1,494;
Prince Edward Island, 437; Newfoundland, 58;
British Columbia, 484; Mexico, 532; Central
America, 14; U. S. of Colombia, 20; Venezuela,
37; Guiana, 3; Brazil, 28; Argentine Republic, 6;
Chili, 20; Peru, 11; South America, 10; Cuba,
880; Porto Rico, 17; Jamaica, 23; Bahamas, 559;
Barbados, 32; other West India Islands, 43; Curaçoa,
14; Azores, etc., 960; Bermudas, 29; Iceland,
30; Mauritius, 3; Sandwich Islands, 20;
Australasia, 1,261; East Indies, 16; and born at
sea, 23.

During the month ended April 30, 1877, there
arrived at the port of New York 7,353 immigrants,
of whom 4,553 were males and 2,800 females.

The countries or islands of last permanent residence
or citizenship of the immigrants were as
follows:

England, 1,500; Scotland, 191; Wales, 46; Ireland,
1,364; Germany, 2,184; Austria, 286; Sweden,
415; Norway, 67; Denmark, 171; France,
241; Switzerland, 183; Spain, 58; Italy, 350; Holland,
60; Belgium, 26; Russia, 35; Poland, 34;
Hungary, 37; Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland, 25; Cuba, 19; Sicily, 18; India,
14; Mexico, 8; U. S. of Colombia, 4; Venezuela,
Bermuda, and born at sea, 3 each; Greece, China,
and Peru, 2 each; Turkey and Iceland, 1 each.
.fn-

We have before us a collection
of documents relating to colonization
in the West and Northwest.
One of them describes the admirable
plan of the Coadjutor-Bishop of
St. Paul for Catholic colonization
in Minnesota. In a powerful letter
addressed, on the 16th of September
last, to the President of the
Board of Colonization of the Irish
Catholic Benevolent Union, the bishop
dwells upon the evils which
have followed the settlement of our
Irish emigrants in the large cities—evils
which we have no wish to belittle;
but he also confesses that
the misfortunes of those who went
into the rural districts were equally
deplorable. He remarks:

.pm letter-start
“Those who—exceptions to the rule—did
move forward into the country, in
search of homes on the land, suffered in
.pn +1
many instances from the absence of
proper and systematic direction no less
than their companions in cities. They
lost their faith. They strayed away from
church and priest, from Catholic associations,
and in certain States to-day
there are whole districts where you
hear the purest of Celtic names, and
where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims
himself a Catholic or smiles at
the mention of the old land.”
.pm letter-end

And then, after a charming picture
of a certain little Irish Catholic
colony in the West, of which he
says that, beginning in poverty and
hardship twenty years ago,

.pm letter-start
“To-day those families are prosperous—rich;
their children are as innocent
and as true as if they had always
breathed the atmosphere of the most
Catholic of lands; the number of families
has doubled, through mere natural
increase; their district of country is for
ever secured to the church,”
.pm letter-end

Bishop Ireland goes on to say
that the results of his own colonization
labors in Minnesota may
be thus described:

.pm letter-start
“We began last February. Our first
step was to secure the control of 117,000
acres of land, situated in Swift County,
belonging to the St. Paul and Pacific
Railroad. There was at the time in the
county about as much more vacant government
land open for settlement under
the pre-emption and homestead acts. The
price of the railroad land was fixed, so that
during the time it was to remain under
our control the company could not advance
its figures. We at once placed a
priest in the colony, whose duty it was
to direct and advise the immigrant as
well as to minister to his spiritual wants.
An office was opened in St. Paul, where
the immigrant would be received on his
arrival from the East, and where all letters
of inquiry would be answered. Two
weeks after publication of our plans had
been made in the Catholic press, immigrants
commenced to arrive, and up to
the date at which I am writing over
eight hundred entries have been made
by our people on government land, and
about 60,000 acres of railroad land have
been occupied. We permit no speculation,
so that each quarter section generally
represents a family, persons, as a rule,
being allowed to take more land only
when they have grown sons, who soon
will themselves need a home.”
.pm letter-end

He then gives a letter from the
register of the Land Office, showing
that the number of land entries
made in Swift County from
January 1 to June 1, 1876, was
1,317, and saying that over 800 of
these were made by “your people.”
The register adds:

.pm letter-start
“In this connection allow me to bear
testimony to the intelligence, integrity,
and good order always manifested by
your colonists in all their business relations
with this office. I can now call to
mind no instance in which one under
the influence of liquor has been in this
office. Cases of profanity are extremely
rare; in no instance have we had trouble
or contention with any one. They are
model colonists. I know this opinion
to be shared by all who come in contact
with them.”
.pm letter-end

The bishop adds:

.pm letter-start
“We have already in the colony two
churches; one more will be built in
spring. Two promising towns have
sprung up—De Graff and Randall. In
De Graff there are some forty houses,
stores or residences, a large brick-yard,
a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent
school are to be put up during the
winter. The settlers, whom I had the
pleasure of visiting a month ago, are
full of hope and delighted with their
prospects. Last spring Swift County
was a wild, untenanted prairie; to-day
on every side new houses and freshly-broken
ground meet the eye. Our expenses
in organizing and directing the
colony were large; still, we were able to
meet them by direct revenue from the
colony itself. Each settler paid a small
entrance fee, and we sold town lots.
We have also reserved from sale some
choice sections of land, which can at
any time, if there is need, be disposed
of at a high advance over the original
price; so that we are safe against all
losses in our enterprise. As soon as a
settlement is formed the land advances
at once in value; one farm bought in Swift
.pn +1
County last spring at two dollars per acre
has been sold since at nine dollars per
acre, and a settlement that embraces three
or four hundred families always affords
room for a valuable town-site. The two
excellences which I deem our Minnesota
plan possesses are the following: We
had control of the land; this is necessary
to ward off speculation and preserve
the land for our own colonists. No
sooner would twenty families be settled
in a district than the surrounding land
would be bought up by speculators or
strangers, if you had not complete control
over it in some manner. Next, we
began the colony with a priest on the
spot; the presence of a priest does more
than any other agency to attract immigrants
and to encourage them in their
difficulties. We have been so well satisfied
with our work in Swift County that
our programme for next year includes
the opening of two new colonies.”
.pm letter-end

Our space does not permit us to
summarize even the accounts of the
other Catholic colonization movements
which have come under our
notice. These movements are serious
and important, and those engaged
in them should take every
possible precaution to prevent them
from falling into the hands of careless,
incompetent, or dishonest persons.
The work, it appears, will
have two chief departments—the
home and foreign agencies. The
former will undertake and supervise
the task of selecting and securing
proper localities for colonies,
and of procuring as settlers families
and individuals already resident
here, but whose interests would
be promoted by their translation to
these new homes; the foreign agencies
would be employed in diffusing
the necessary information among
the classes in Europe who would
be most likely to emigrate, and
who would be the most desirable
emigrants, and in inducing them to
join new colonies already established
or to form others of their own.
The <i>Catholic Advocate</i>, of Louisville,
Ky., in some well-considered remarks
on the subject, says:

.pm letter-start
“Now, it is our opinion that a great
impetus could be given to this good
work if the directors of the colonization
project could so manage as to awaken
the Irish people at home to the value of
the movement; if they could have their
plans placed in all their development
before that class in Ireland from which
emigration recruits its numbers. This
could be best and most efficiently done
by inducing the formation of corresponding
organizations in the old country.
There are very many thousands of people
in Ireland, with farming-stock worth two
and three and four hundred pounds sterling,
holding their lands by an insecure
tenure and at a rack-rent, who would
come out to this country to-morrow, with
all their valuables converted into gold, if
they knew or understood the advantages
of the colonization scheme. As it is
now, they only hear about it. It comes
to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off
echo. It is not brought forcibly to
their notice. Its benefits are not urged
upon them personally. There is no persuasion
about it, and it is as a dead interest
to the great majority of the people,
who, if they only knew and understood
it thoroughly, would grasp at it.
The British government was very earnest
in its efforts to colonize Australia
and New Zealand some years ago, and
the advantages it had to offer were far
and far away from those offered by the
Catholic colonization movement amongst
us. But how did the British government
act? It sent agents amongst the
Irish and English and Scotch, prepared
with maps and pamphlets and lectures,
to impress the value of their project upon
the people at home and put it immediately
before their eyes. What was the
consequence? Numbers of emigrants
came forward, and of a class which had
the means to colonize, and they settled
in Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand,
where they are to-day prosperous
and promising. We do not say that
paid agents should be sent to Ireland
for the purpose we indicate, but it would
be very easy to communicate with influential
persons there to put before them
the value of forming organizations in
connection with Bishop Ireland’s scheme,
with the St. Louis scheme, and any others
.pn +1
that may be started. What is required
is emigrants with some capital, and this
is the way to get them.”
.pm letter-end

Bishop Ireland, in the letter from
which we have already quoted, sets
forth at some length what such a
body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent
Union could do in this work.
It could constantly agitate the subject
of colonization, and it could
establish a national bureau of information,
which would collect information,
publish pamphlets, secure
the co-operation of bishops and
priests, and open colonies of their
own. But the “crowning stone in
the work of colonization,” in the
bishop’s opinion, would be “the
formation of joint-stock colonization
societies.” He says:

.pm letter-start
“By no other means can the poor
among our people—those most in need
of homes—be colonized. However successful
our Minnesota plan may seem to
have been, it does not reach the poor.
We have received hundreds of letters
from most deserving persons, to whom
we were obliged to answer that we had
no place for them in our colony. How
many there are who have simply means
to bring them West, but who can neither
pay for land nor maintain themselves
while waiting for the first crop! A joint-stock
company would give them land on
long time, at reasonable rates of interest,
and would also advance them small
sums to assist them in opening their
farms. The plan might be somewhat as
follows: The executive power of the
company should be in the hands of most
reliable business men. Stockholders
would be promised that their money
would be paid back in five years, with
interest at six per cent. per annum, and,
in order that men of all classes might
take part in the work, shares would be
put at low figures. The inducement to
take shares is that good is done to our
fellow-countrymen without any loss to
ourselves. The company purchases a
tract of land; cash in hand, the land
would cost but little. Immigrants, in
purchasing it from the company, would
give back a mortgage, promising to pay
the full price in four or five years, with
interest at eight per cent. per annum.
An industrious settler could not fail to
meet such obligations. If he failed to
do so, the land reverts to the company,
worth much more than it was when first
purchased. The company derives its
expenses from the two per cent., which
it charges the settlers over what it pays
its shareholders; but to protect itself
the better it could sell the land at a
slightly increased figure, especially a
few choice pieces; it could also lay out
for its profit a town-site, and sell the
lots.

“There should be colonies in every
State where cheap lands are to be found.
The movement should be made general,
our entire Irish Catholic people entering
into it: one class coming forward with
advice and money, the other profiting, for
their own good and that of their religion,
of the assistance offered to them. What
is to be done must be done quickly.
The time is fast passing when cheap
lands can be had in America. Already
the tide of immigration—bearing, alas!
but a small number of our people—has
crossed the Missouri, leaving in its wake
but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied
land, and reaching even now the
limits of the arable lands of the continent.
Patriotism and religious zeal are
two great incentives to action for Irish
Catholics. Colonization is a work upon
which both can be most easily brought
to bear.”
.pm letter-end

Already one such joint-stock
company has been formed—on the
10th of April last—in St. Paul, in
which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop
of that see have taken
shares.

It will henceforth be the duty of
the church in America to see that
no Catholic family landing on our
shores and seeking a new home in
our Western States and Territories
shall be permitted to stray beyond
her control, but shall be conducted
to localities where her priests are
already prepared to receive them,
and where their fellow-citizens will be
bound to them by the ties of faith.
Catholics in this land are already
about as one in six. We receive
.pn +1
accessions every day from the ranks
of the Protestant sects; few, if any,
of our own number fall away from
us; the emigration of the future, to
a great extent, will be in our hands.
Thus will the church in America—where
to-day, to use his own words,
our Holy Father “is more truly
Pope than in any other land”—grow
in strength and beauty, and thus
will she be prepared, when the hour
comes, to save the republic for
which her sons, from the hour of
her birth until now, have shed their
blood, and given their toil and their
prayers, in unstinted measure.
.sp 4
.h3 id=thrush
A THRUSH’S SONG.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
              Underneath a leafy cover,
                Green with morning-wealth of June,
              Wanting still, like gift of lover
                Craving even greater boon,
Deeper chords of light to perfect summer’s fulness, love’s high noon;

              Just apart from all the glitter
                Of a busy crystal world
              Where, amid quick human twitter,
                Pond’rous engine huge arms hurled,
Leaping shuttle wrought bright fancies, girded wheels obedient whirled;

              Just a little from the glimmer,
                From the footfalls’ tuneless tread—
              With the distance ever dimmer—
                Rose, so calm o’ershadowèd,
Sound of lusty drum and hautboy, with clear flute voice interlaid,

              Notes exultant loud outpouring
                Chant of nations, lightly bound
              With frail melody, up soaring
                O’er the people gathered round,
Resting from the glare a little, from the wearing sight and sound.

              Ears of loyal Briton tingling
                Hark’ning there, “God save the Queen”;
              Erin’s children’s tears commingling
                At “The Wearing of the Green,”
Thinking of a loveless bondage, truer trust that might have been.

              Sounds of wrathful people seeming
                Storming through the “Marseillaise,”
              Stirred a land, nigh dead in dreaming,
                Through Hortense’s song of praise,
Through its wailing sadness tolling bells of old chivalric days.
.pn +1

              Through sad France’s slumber breaking
                Germany’s triumphant hymn,
              Armed peoples, eager waking,
                Watching Rhine-lights growing dim,
Hearing clear a weary nation struggling sore with spectres grim.

              In the nations’ anthems swelling
                Ever twanged some chord of wrong:
              Broken notes in anguish welling
                Even in our starlit song—
Shadowy notes from swamp and prairie mingling with the suffering throng.

              Stilled at last the music’s clamor,
                Drum and hautboy laid to rest,
              Softly through the silence’ glamour
                Stole the light wind of the west,
Gently parted the green branches, tenderly each leaf caressed.

              And a sudden thrill of sweetness,
                Mellow, careless, glad, and clear,
              Love’s noon-song in its completeness,
                Poured in peaceful nature’s ear
From a thrush’s throat of silver—happy song without one tear—

              Fell like precious, heav’n-dropped token
                'Mid the elements of strife,
              'Mid the melodies, grief-broken,
                Blare of trumpet, shriek of fife—
Only with undarkened blessing was the thrush’s singing rife.

              Where the ways were broad and ordered
                England’s Indian blossoms flamed;
              Here, where guarding thickets bordered,
                Bloom of May June’s sunshine claimed,
Lifting, 'mid the throngs of people, glance, half-fearing, half-ashamed;

              Trembling at the cymbals’ crashing
                Through the ancient solitude,
              Till the thrush’s sweetness flashing,
                With its wild-wood joy imbued,
Seemed a covenant from heaven, arc of promise, rainbow-hued.

              In the upper silence singing,
                Hidden minstrel, unafraid,
              In the sunlit branches, swinging,
                By the west wind, whispering, swayed,
All the lower tumult silenced in the clear, blue depths o’erhead;
.pn +1

              Whence the peace of heav’n, descending,
                Filled the bird’s song, true and clear,
              Lightsome duty sweetness lending,
                Joy o’erbrimming in its cheer,
Freedom on his pinions resting, sunshine soft, and heaven near.

              Careless strength and free heart blending
                In each note’s melodious mirth,
              Calm within a pure soul bending
                Praising for its heavenly birth,
For its gift of soaring pinions, lightening so the bonds of earth.

              With that clear and sudden sweetness
                Sober fancies swept along,
              And its wild-wood, perfect meetness
                Seemed our country’s truer song—
Sunshine soft, and heaven near it, and no undertone of wrong.

              So, methought, her clear voice, ringing,
                Should in strength of freedom rise,
              With the sweetness of its singing
                Every evil exorcise;
Blessing for her children winning through her nearness to the skies.
.pm verse-end

<sc>Philadelphia</sc>, June, 1876.
.sp 4
.h3 id=cluny
THE CONGREGATION OF CLUNY. | TRANSLATED FROM SCHOEPPNER’S “CHARACTER-BILDER DER GESCHICHTE DES MITTELALTERS.”
.sp 2
At the close of the ninth century
the great wealth of the Benedictine
Order in France had produced
a relaxation of discipline
and a departure from regular observance
in many of its monasteries
which brought it into a state of
decadence. One principal source
of this degeneracy lay in the want
of all organic union binding together
the distinct monasteries, each
one of which was exclusively subject
to its own abbot. It is true
that in earlier times the bishops
exercised a certain jurisdiction
over them; but this was seriously
impeded by the fact that the abbot
was frequently equal to the bishop
in power and in external consideration.
The pope was too distant;
disorder could strike deep root before
any information would reach
him, and even then he was ordinarily
able to employ only indirect
methods of remedying the evil.
This seems to have been felt by all
those who, from the tenth century
onwards, endeavored, by various additional
statutes, explanations, and
stricter applications of the Rule of
St. Benedict, to bring back those
who were subject to it to a more
conscientious fulfilment of the obligations
of their religious profession.
At the time when the Carlovingian
dynasty, represented in the person of
Charles the Simple, was verging toward
extinction, William the Pious,
.pn +1
Duke of Aquitaine and Count of
Auvergne, in concert with his duchess,
Ingeburga, formed the plan of
founding a new monastery. He
took counsel respecting the carrying
out of his design with Hugh,
Abbot of St. Martin’s at Autun.

In company with the duke and
duchess Hugh made an exploration
of their domains in search of
a suitable location, and selected a
meadow on the banks of the little
river Grosne, near an agreeable
cascade, where a chapel in honor
of the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter
had been already erected. The
duke objected that this was his
favorite hunting-ground, and that
the noise and tumult of deer-chasing
would frequently disturb the
quiet of the monastery. “Well,
then,” replied the abbot, “drive
away the hounds and bring in the
monks; you well know which of the
two will bring you the most favor
with God.” The duke cheerfully
assented to this proposition, and
took measures for the erection of a
monastery in honor of the apostles
SS. Peter and Paul upon this territory,
of which he had but recently
acquired the possession.

At the recommendation of Hugh,
Berno was invited from a neighboring
monastery to become the
first abbot. He was succeeded by
Odo, the son of a Frankish knight,
who had been brought up at the
court of Duke William, had afterwards
devoted himself to the religious
state, and was at the time of
his election in the maturity of his
manhood. Odo saw that in many
monasteries the end of the religious
vocation had been entirely forgotten,
and, in order that he might restore
the primitive discipline of St.
Benedict, he determined to reform
the monastic state in accordance
with its original spirit and intention,
and to induce the monasteries
in his own vicinity to adopt his
reformation. He was a man well
fitted to undertake such a task, by
his personal austerity, his self-devotion
to the good of others, and
his extraordinary charity, which
was so great that he was ready at
any time to bestow all he had upon
the poor, without any thought of
reserving on one day what might be
necessary for the next. The influence
of his personal character, and
the effect of his active efforts during
a prolonged life, were so
great that a number of monasteries
became affiliated to the one
over which he immediately presided.
He is, therefore, properly
speaking, the founder of the Cluniac
Order.

His meek and humble successor,
Aymard, won for himself by his
amiable virtues the confidence of
all the brethren of the order, and
the favor of the great and powerful,
who were profuse in conferring
upon it liberal gifts, charters of
protection and privilege. His
successors in office, Majolus, Odilo,
and Hugh I., were all equally eminent
by their able administration,
their great influence in all the most
important ecclesiastical and political
movements of their time, and
their high favor with emperors,
kings, and princes. Emperors,
kings, popes, and bishops maintained
intimate relations with the abbots
of Cluny, and all the great
and powerful nobles of the country
sought their advice in matters
of importance. Three Sovereign
Pontiffs were taken from Cluny to
fill the chair of St. Peter. When
the son of a king was obliged to
become a fugitive, he sought for a
refuge at Cluny, and princes who
were weary of life and disturbed by
remorse of conscience came there
.pn +1
to do penance among the brethren.
The rulers of foreign countries were
lavish of their donations to the
order, the popes were equally munificent
in conferring marks of
their high favor, and bishops were
eager for the affiliation of the most
important monasteries in their dioceses
with Cluny. The immense
revenues which flowed into its coffers
from all countries in the world
became at last proverbial.

The internal discipline and external
splendor of Cluny were maintained
in an undisturbed permanence
and stability for a period of
two centuries. At the end of that
time both were grievously shattered
by the disastrous administration
of the unworthy Abbot Pons, a
man of worldly levity in character
and manners, haughty and ambitious
in his disposition, whose
whole course of official conduct
was such as to threaten the complete
downfall of the order. After
a length of time he was formally
impeached and tried at the tribunal
of Rome, by which he was deposed
from his office as abbot.
Disregarding this sentence, he seized
anew on the possession of the
monastery of Cluny by force of
arms, but was soon after overpowered
and cast into a prison, where
he was carried off by a sudden
attack of fever.

After a short period of only three
months, during which the abbatial
chair was occupied by Hugh II.,
Peter the Venerable was placed
over the Cluniac Order, which he
ruled for thirty-nine years, precisely
during the period of St. Bernard,
who was his intimate friend, and
whom he survived about three
years. His activity, prudence, and
universal reputation, the intellectual
power, deep learning, and exalted
virtue which merited for him
the appellation of Venerable by
which he is designated in history,
sufficed not only to heal Cluny
from the wounds inflicted on it by
the Abbot Pons, but to raise the
whole order to its highest summit
of importance, and to make the
monastery which was its centre
flourish in a state of unexampled
spiritual and temporal prosperity.
If we consider the many journeys
which this great abbot undertook
on affairs of the utmost importance
connected with the public interests
of the day, it would seem that he
was exclusively a statesman; his
vast correspondence seems sufficient
to have employed the time
of one whose whole attention was
given to counselling all sorts of
persons seeking his advice by letters;
his theological works are like
the productions of one actively occupied
in study; the strictness
with which he observed and enforced
upon his subjects in the cloister
the monastic rule indicates a contemplative
ascetic; his administration
of the temporalities of his monastery
presents him in the light of
an able financier and man of business.
The world was filled with
his fame, and his order attained
the highest zenith of its glory during
his administration, which ended
at his death, during the Christmas-tide
of the year 1156.

All the special rules of the Cluniac
Order were based upon the
Rule of St. Benedict. The ecclesiastical
chant and the service of
the choir employed much more
time and attention, according to
the customs of Cluny, than in other
Benedictine monasteries. As far
as possible, uniformity was enforced
in the different houses after the
model of the mother-house. Besides
the special prayers which
each one said according to his own
.pn +1
devotion, one hundred and thirty-eight
psalms were prescribed to be
recited daily, which was usually
done while engaged in performing
the various tasks; and even in the
great heats of summer, on the days
when talking was permitted, there
was only time for a recreation of
half an hour. Every negligence or
mistake in the choir-service received
instantly a reproof. This was
regarded as a spiritual military service,
in which no individual caprice
or negligence could be tolerated.
Special care was exacted on the
greater festivals of the church, and
their high importance was recognized
by the greater length of the
choral song, the reading of longer
lessons, and a more fervent devotion.
During High Mass no Low
Masses were allowed to be said, so
that no one could in that way consult
his own convenience and escape
from the public and solemn
celebration. The moment of the
departure of one of the brethren
from this world was treated as a
specially solemn occasion. As soon
as he had received Extreme Unction
a wooden cross was put under
his head in place of a pillow. All
who could possibly attend were
obliged to assist at the last agony
of the dying man, and, although at
other times running through the
corridors was strictly forbidden, it
was specially ordered whenever
the passing-bell announced that one
of the brethren was about to depart
this life. Special revenues
were devoted to all charitable purposes,
and their conscientious expenditure
strictly enjoined. There
was a particular endowment for
eighteen poor men who were perpetually
supported by the mother-house.
Six brothers were appointed
for the service of the poor, one of
whom waited on them, another
acted as porter of their hospital,
two others furnished the wood out
of the forest for their fires, and two
had charge of ovens for baking
bread, to be given away in alms
to the poor. Everything remaining
on the tables of the refectory
after the meals was taken by the
almoner for distribution among the
poor. A cover was laid for each
one of the most distinguished benefactors
at every meal, even though
they were living at a great distance
or had been long dead, and all
their portions were taken for the
poor. Twelve loaves, each weighing
three pounds, were prepared
each day for widows, orphans, feeble
and aged persons. On Holy
Thursday the ceremony of foot-washing
was performed for as many
poor men as there were brothers in
the community, all of whom were
afterwards served at dinner. On
certain special occasions, and on
all the festivals when the table of
the brethren was better served than
usual, more abundant alms were
distributed. The almoner was
bound to make a weekly visitation
of the houses in the village near
the monastery, that he might find
out every poor person who was
sick, and furnish him with food,
wine, and medicines. The number
of poor persons who regularly received
aid was estimated at seventeen
thousand. The Abbot Odilo
sold the ornaments of the church
and a crown presented by the German
emperor Henry II. in order
to relieve the wants of the people
during a famine. The subordinate
monasteries were required to imitate
in this generous alms-giving
the example of Cluny, and a similar
observance of hospitality was
also exacted. Precise rules were
laid down for the reception of visitors
of different ranks and conditions,
.pn +1
who were continually arriving
at the monastery on foot or on
horseback. If they were ecclesiastics,
they were not only invited to
partake of the hospitality of the
monastery, but also to participate
in its religious exercises. Every
one who travelled on foot received
a certain amount of bread and wine
on his arrival and at his departure.
If the poverty of the house did not
permit anything more than a temporary
shelter and a friendly reception,
this, at least, was to be cheerfully
given to every one. The
prior was not to consider what was
within his means, but to go beyond
them in providing for the wants of
strangers. Frequently, when they
had consumed all the provisions of
the larder, the monks had to endure
hunger until new supplies,
which often came unexpectedly,
were furnished by royal and noble
benefactors.

The life of the monastic brethren
was austere. Besides the regular
and very long choir-service, which
no one was dispensed from attending,
the fasts were frequent. The
flesh of quadrupeds was never allowed,
and on the ferial days and
the entire period from Septuagesima
to Easter, not even fat could
be used in preparing the food.
The principal article of their daily
diet was beans, with an occasional
allowance of eggs and cheese, and
more rarely of fish. After night
prayers no one could taste food or
drink anything without special necessity
and permission. The violation
of these rules and of the law
of strict poverty was considered as
a grievous transgression, exposing
the offender to excommunication
and privation of Christian burial.

Obedience, the pivot of all the
virtues of an ecclesiastic, was regarded
as having a higher and
more extended obligation for religious.
Its disregard was esteemed
worthy of the severest punishment,
and the incorrigible were subject
to expulsion. Priors and other officials
were twice admonished, and
afterwards deposed without any hope
of restitution. The observance of a
strict rule of silence was regarded
as a specially efficacious help to
the acquisition of perfect spiritual
virtues, and, in the opinion of the
Abbot Odo, monastic life was utterly
worthless without it. Absolute
silence was invariably observed
during meal-times, and during all
times of the day throughout Lent
and several other penitential seasons.
The Cluniac monks became
so expert in the use of the sign-language
through their disuse of
speech that they might have dispensed
with talking altogether without
the least inconvenience. The
most perfect silence and stillness,
undisturbed even by hasty and noisy
walking through the cloisters, reigned
throughout the monastery.

Every fault must be expiated by
penance, or at least an acknowledgment
before the abbot. Those
who were late must remain standing
or prostrate until a sign was
given to them to repair to their
places. The tardy at table received
also a penance. Public offences
received public penances, in order
that every one might have sensible
evidence that the community was
vigilant in observing the behavior
of each individual member. Smaller
offences were punished by solitary
confinement, making a station
at the church-door, or exclusion
from the common exercises. Those
which were more serious were punished
by flagellation, and, if the offence
had been public, the penance
was administered at the door of
the church while the people were
.pn +1
assembling for Mass, and the cause
of it announced to them by an
official of the monastery. For the
gravest faults the culprit was put
in irons or imprisoned in a dark,
underground dungeon. St. Hugh’s
maxim was that a monastery is
not dishonored by the faults of its
members, but by their impunity.
Several brothers were appointed to
make the rounds of the monastery
at intervals, and to declare in chapter
every disorder which they observed,
whereupon due penance
was inflicted on the delinquents.
This duty devolved on the prior
for the first hour of the night, and
at intervals during its progress, with
a special charge of watching that
all the doors were properly closed
and fastened.

Such a special care was observed
in regard to cleanliness that the
most particular housekeeper could
not be more thorough or exact
in a well-regulated private family
than were these monks of Cluny in
their domestic arrangements. This
care for cleanliness showed a deep
psychological insight into the close
connection between this exterior
virtue and interior purity, which is
often endangered and damaged by
a slovenly disregard of outward
propriety. Articles of clothing
and all the bed and table furniture
were regularly changed according
to an invariable rule. Careful supervision
was observed towards the
novices in respect to their personal
neatness in such minute particulars
as washing, combing their hair, etc.,
and conveniences for these purposes
were provided in abundance
for all, that they might easily make
use of them when they came in
from work to go to the choir or
the refectory.

The clothing was very plain, in
contrast to the worldly elegance
and vanity in dress which prevailed
in many other religious communities,
but all the different articles of
dress were provided in abundance,
with two complete outfits for each
one. The winter clothing was
made to suit the season and the
climate, warm and comfortable; for
the men who made the regulations
of Cluny were not so narrow-minded
as to adhere scrupulously to
purely exterior customs which
were suitable to Italy but utterly
unfit for the ruder climate of the
North.

The sick were cared for with the
most tender solicitude, six brothers
were deputed to the service of the
infirmary, and the best ass in the
stables was set apart to haul wood
for the fire. The infirmarian was
always provided with spices and
wholesome herbs to make the food
of the sick more appetizing and
wholesome. Meat was provided
for them every day, and even on
fasting-days. A certain part of the
presents made to the monastery
was assigned to the purchase of
comforts and delicacies for the sick
and weakly. They were dispensed
from the rule of silence, and only
required to refrain from abusing the
privilege of talking. The abbot
and grand-prior were required to
make frequent visits to the sick,
and the cellarer was bound to see
each one, in company with the infirmarian,
every day, and inquire what
kind of food he wished for and in
what way it should be prepared.
As soon as one was released from
the infirmary he came to the chapter,
and, standing up, said to the
prior: “I have been in the infirmary
and have not kept the rules
of the order according to our obligation.”
The prior answered:
“May God pardon you!” whereupon
the convalescent brother went
.pn +1
to the place of the penitents and
recited the seven penitential psalms
or seven <i>Pater Nosters</i>.

As for the interior legislation and
administration of the order, a general
chapter was held at Cluny once a
year, where all the abbots, priors,
and deans of the entire congregation
were bound to appear under pain
of deposition, those only who lived
in distant countries being exempted
from attendance oftener than once
every two years. Every question
which related to the rules was submitted
to this chapter, and to the
votes of all the brethren of the monastery
of Cluny. Each one was
obliged to make known in the chapter,
without any regard to personal
considerations, whatever he had
noticed in any of the houses or in
any individual member of the order
which was worthy of censure, and
was protected from any unpleasant
consequences which might possibly
ensue afterwards to himself from his
disclosures. All priors whose administration
or personal conduct
was censurable were deposed by the
chapter; and, finally, they made an
examination of all the novices of
the congregation.

As soon as the chapter was dissolved
the supreme power reverted
to the abbot of Cluny. He appointed
all the priors and confirmed
all the abbots-elect, being
strictly forbidden to receive any
presents or perquisites in connection
with any such official act.
He could make such regulations as
he saw fit in all the houses; all his
sentences upon individual delinquents
which were in conformity
with the canons were binding; and
in the interval between the capitular
assemblies he could depose
from all offices without appeal. He
was bound to share as much as
possible in the common life of the
other monks, to be with them in
the common dormitory and at the
common table, and to use the same
food, the only mark of distinction
being that he was served with wine
of a better quality and with two
loaves at dinner.

Next in rank and authority came
the grand-prior, appointed by the
abbot with the counsel of the elders
of the monastery and the assent of
the chapter. Under the abbot’s
supreme direction he presided
over all the spiritual and temporal
offices of the monastery, with a
special oversight of those brothers
who were charged with out-door
employments on the cloistral domains.
Every year, after the vintage,
he made an inspection of all
the farm-lands, examined the stores
laid up in the barns and cellars,
and directed the division of the
fruits of the harvest for the use of
those who resided in the outlying
farm-houses, and for the general
use within the monastery.

The interior order of the house
was under the oversight of the
prior of the community, who had
several assistants, and in case of
absence a deputy. The rule prescribed
that no account should
be taken of birth or other personal
considerations of human respect in
the choice of prelates and officers,
but only of moral virtue, experience,
and prudence. No abbot or prior,
not even the abbot-general of the
congregation, was allowed to travel
without some of the brethren in his
company, as witnesses of his conduct
and associates in fulfilling the
devotions prescribed by the rule.

We can form some estimate of
the extent of the monastic buildings
of Cluny from the circumstance
related in history, that in
the year 1245 Pope Innocent IV.,
with twelve cardinals and his entire
.pn +1
suite; also two patriarchs, three
archbishops, eleven bishops, with
their respective suites; farther, the
king of France, with his mother,
wife, brother, and sister, and the
whole of their retinue; the emperor
of Constantinople, the crown-princes
of Aragon and Castile,
several dukes and counts, and a
crowd of knights, ecclesiastics, and
monks, were accommodated within
the precincts of the monastery
without encroaching on any part
of it which was ordinarily occupied
by the community or incommoding
any of the brethren.

The fine arts were made to contribute
to that which is their highest
end—the service of religion—in
the Cluniac Order more than in
any other contemporary institute.
They were all employed in harmony
and unity with each other to
enhance the splendor of the divine
service. The candles and lamps
by which the church was lighted
were placed in costly hoops beset
with precious stones. Instead
of candelabra, trees artistically
wrought in bronze stood near the
altar, having the lighted candles
prescribed for the solemn ceremonies
blazing among their branches.
Paintings covered the walls; the
windows were richly ornamental
and filled with colored glass.
Costly tapestry and hangings, beautifully-carved
stalls, a decorated
pavement, chimes of bells of unusual
size, reliquaries of gold whose
beauty of workmanship even surpassed
their costliness, chalices,
ciboriums, and monstrances of
gold, sparkling with jewels, vestments
heavy and stiff with cloth of
gold, and all else that was magnificent
in sacred art and decoration,
made the church of Cluny a theme
of praise and admiration throughout
all France. It was probably
at the date of its erection the largest
in the world, and rested upon sixty-eight
columns, each eight and one
half feet in diameter. Thirty-two
of these pillars supported the vast
dome, and the whole edifice, which
was built in the peculiar form of an
archiepiscopal cross, was regarded
as one of the most splendid monuments
of the Roman style of architecture
in France. Sculpture, carving,
and painting rivalled each other
in the decoration of this magnificent
church, and there still remained
at the beginning of the present
century a representation of the
Eternal Father on a gold ground in
the vaulting of the apse, ten feet in
height, which retained all its original
brilliancy of color. The choir-stalls,
which were of a comparatively
late period, were two hundred
and twenty-five in number at the
time of the suppression—showing
how numerous the community had
become—and the towers were filled
with a great many bells, the largest
of which were melted down to cast
cannon during the religious wars.
At present but little remains of this
grand structure in a state of ruin.
During the French Revolution the
whole was sold for building material
for the sum of twenty thousand
dollars, and thus rude force destroyed
this grand work of the spirit of
Christianity.

The cultivation of science was
fostered in the Cluniac Order with
much greater care and zeal than in
some of the other monastic bodies.
Its founders were more solicitous
for the promotion of intellectual
labor than for material industry.
The Abbot Peter wrote: “In virtue
of a special privilege, the
abbots of Cluny from ancient times
promoted literary occupations with
zeal and energy. It is not the desire
of winning a high reputation
.pn +1
which stimulates them to write
books, but the feeling that it would
be shameful to neglect the imitation
of their predecessors, the holy Fathers
of the church, and thus to
prove themselves degenerate sons.”
Under such superiors the brethren
were not deterred by any ill-grounded
scruple from applying themselves
to the study of the heathen
classics, and in fact considered this
study as a valuable auxiliary to the
investigation of the Sacred Scriptures.
The works of the great
ecclesiastical writers were fully appreciated
and diligently perused,
and the valuable manuscripts collected
in the library of Cluny were
not considered as a mere assortment
of curiosities for the sake of
show, but as useful implements for
the cultivation of science, and in a
generous spirit of liberality were
freely lent to other monasteries for
the sake of making copies or recensions.
The books used for the
church service were written out in
a beautiful, ornamental text, richly
adorned with initial letters executed
in the most elaborate style of
art; and those who were engaged
in this kind of work, if it would
not admit of interruption, were excused
from choir for the time being.
The ability and industry of the
Cluniac monks in collecting manuscripts
and preserving precious
monuments of ancient history
have been recognized even in later
times, and abundant documents
of that zeal for the promotion
of science which was not damped
by the earnestness with which
religious discipline was enforced
have come down to our own day.

The confraternity of Cluny,
which had speedily risen to a high
consideration throughout France,
attained to a higher and more solidly-established
reputation during
the period extending through nearly
forty years of the administration
of Peter the Venerable. The renovation
of the Benedictine Order in
its original spirit which had been
effected by the Cluniac reform became
renowned in other countries
as well as in France, and awoke
the desire of attempting to accomplish
the same happy results elsewhere
by the use of similar methods.
Every founder of a new monastery
in France desired to introduce
the rule and submit to the
supremacy of Cluny. Kings, princes,
and bishops urged upon the
already existing monastic communities,
especially when they had
fallen into disorder, incorporation
with the Cluniac congregation.
During the rule of Peter the Venerable
it was increased by the
addition of three hundred and
fourteen monasteries, collegiate
foundations, and churches, and at
its most flourishing period it embraced
within its limits more than
two thousand distinct houses. At
the time of the Crusades it extended
itself even beyond the sea. Cluniac
houses were founded in the valley
of Josaphat and on Mt. Tabor,
and in the time of Abbot Peter a
monastery in a suburb of Constantinople
was united to the mother-house,
over which he presided.

Men of all conditions who desired
to do penance for their sins,
to seek a refuge from the dangers
of the world, or to find spiritual direction
and come under a holy influence
for their own sanctification,
sought to make reparation and deserve
the grace of God by rich
gifts to Cluny, to consecrate themselves
to God in some house of the
order by the religious vows, or to
secure for themselves by becoming
affiliated to it a share in the sacrifices
and prayers perpetually offered
.pn +1
within its sacred enclosures. It
is related that Count Guy of Macon,
who had been a bitter persecutor
of the order, one day presented
himself at the gates of Cluny
in company with his son, several
grandsons, thirty knights, and the
wives of each one of the noble group
respectively, all of whom demanded
permission to take the vows of religion.
Under the sixth abbot,
Hugh I., three thousand monks
were present at one general chapter.
The crowd of applicants for
admission became so great that
Hugh VI. was once compelled to
issue an edict forbidding the reception
of any new candidates during
a term of three years. Under Peter
the Venerable the number of
monks resident at Cluny increased
from two hundred to four hundred
and sixty, some of whom, however,
led a solitary life as hermits in the
neighboring forests.

The popes were lavish in their
grants of privileges to Cluny and the
monasteries connected with it.
Alexander II. decreed that no bishop
or prelate should have the
right of excommunication in respect
to the Cluniac congregation.
Urban II. allowed the use of episcopal
insignia to the abbot, and
Calixtus II. conceded to him the
special privileges of a cardinal.
The brethren of the order were
even permitted to have the celebration
of Mass continued for their
own benefit during an interdict.

There is nothing which shows
more clearly the high esteem in
which Cluny was held than the decree
of Pope Innocent IV. in the
third session of the Council of
Lyons: that accredited copies of
all the official documents relating
to the diplomatic intercourse of
emperors, kings, and other princes
with the Roman Church should be
deposited in its archives. This
important and precious collection
was still in existence at the outbreak
of the Revolution.

The history of Cluny has a very
great importance in connection
with the general history of the mediæval
period, but especially with
the great ecclesiastical reformation
of Gregory VII., which was prepared
by the interior working of
the order within the church. For
many prudential reasons the fact
that the great ecclesiastical movement
of the eleventh century had
its source in the monastery of Cluny
was kept out of sight as much as
possible; but it is proved by abundant
evidence, and Gregory VII.
himself, who was its prior when St.
Leo IX. persuaded him to return
with him to Rome in 1049, speaks
of the peculiar and intimate relations
between Cluny and the Holy
See.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=bridesp3
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
.sp 2
.h4
VII. | ST. AGATHA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“She hath no breasts—is cruelly maimed withal:
  What shall we do for her, when spoken for,
  Our little sister? Sheathe her, if a door,
In boards of cedar; if she be a wall,
Build up a house of silver,[#] and instal
  Her worship”—so the monks. O bleeding core
  Of maidenhood, thy Spouse and King shall pour
Balm in thy wounds, the lilies’ growth recall!

When Etna belched forth Phlegethon, and rolled
  Its molten flanks upon Catania,
The saint’s veil they did reverently unfold
And wave it in the face of fire—Behold!
  Piled black against the convent’s wall to-day,
  That Red Sea curdled by Saint Agatha!
.pm verse-end

.fn #
Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9.
.fn-
.sp 2
.h4
VIII. | ST. LUCIA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
“What’s this? Two human eyes upon a dish?
  Wretch! what dost mean?” “Lucia sends thee these;
  She greets thee: 'Be no longer ill at ease;
They are thine! When mine, a spirit devilish,
With them, with pink bloom and pale limbs, did fish
  For men’s souls.’” Quick! to her—ere horror freeze.
  Her wan lips smiled beneath the bandages:
“Thou hast languished for mine eyes—have, then, thy wish!”

She raised the fillet—the youth dropped as dead.
  “Look up!” a sweet voice spake, “and praise the Lord!”
He obeyed trembling—O illumined head!
  Low with an altered spirit he adored.
Thenceforth an angel’s eyes, her own instead,
  Lighted her to her martyrdom’s reward.
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h4
IX. | ST. URSULA.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
A bower of woven palms! In white arrayed,
  Marshalled beneath that verdant canopy
  By fair-haired Ursula of Brittany,
Eleven thousand martyrs, each a maid!
For England’s heir, Etherius, had obeyed
  His bride’s will, honoring her virginity.
  To Rome on pilgrimage, by river and sea,
They sailed, and prettily the bold mariner played.

Saint, dear to tender years! thou and thy doves
  Fell pierced with many arrows, and the Rhine
  With blood of innocents ran red as wine—
Still teach that to the pure Death’s kiss is Love’s!
  Still teach it, though thy mortuary shrine
May moulder, while the stream to ocean moves!
.pm verse-end
.sp 4
.h3 id=eros
THE UNKNOWN EROS.[#]
.sp 2
.fn #
<i>The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes.</i> London:
George Bell & Sons. 1877.
.fn-

There seems a growing and
lamentable tendency among English
poets in these days to divide
themselves up into schools. We
have the Tennysonian, the Swinburnian,
the Rossettian, as a little
earlier we had the Lake school,
the Byronic, and so on. In these
schools of poetry, as in schools of
painting, there are certain marked
features peculiar to each and forming,
as it were, the common property
of that one. Certain tones and
colors belong to this: subdued
grays, royal purples, dim and far-away
lights on meadow and mere.
Another is a lustier flesh-and-blood
school: its men and women are
decidedly, though musically, improper.
The choice expressions
and tender care that the other
lavishes on the beauties of nature
this one devotes to a maiden’s
hair, or her cheek, or her nose, the
droop of her lashes, or the arch
of her brow. A third affects the
mystic in matter and form; the
more incomprehensible it is, the
finer the poetry. It is like the
“vague school” in painting. One
is sometimes puzzled to know
whether the picture be a battle-piece,
a landscape, a portrait, or a
nightmare on canvas. And so
they go on.

This follow-my-leader tendency
is unquestionably a mark of feebleness.
It would be so in any art;
it is obviously so in an art that
springs from inspiration, and is
thus necessarily original. A poet
is comprehensible; a school of poets
is absurd. Imagine a school of
Homers, of Virgils, of Dantes, of
Shaksperes, of Miltons, of Byrons!
Why, the world could not hold
them.

Weak as our days may be in
.pn +1
original poets, they are strong at
least in numbers. Probably, unless
in the days of good Queen
Anne, never before did such a
constant and voluminous stream of
English verse roll through the
press. Most of it falls still-born on
the market; yet nothing seems to
discourage the poets. From Tupper
to Tennyson they publish and publish
and publish all the time. Yet
there is not a living English poet
to-day—unless Aubrey de Vere,
whose best work has been his latest—who
did not establish whatever
fame he has almost a quarter of a
century ago, and whose poems
since that period have not shown a
marked and steady decline.

In the author of <i>The Unknown
Eros</i> we find a man who has
certainly something new to say;
who follows no leader; who has
thoughts, and a mode of expressing
them, all his own; who cares
less for how than for what; whose
work compels attention, and who
depends in nowise on the jingle
of words, the tricks of adjective
and rhyme—the ballet-dancing, so
to say, of the English language—for
his attraction. Indeed, in respect
of form he is far behind the other
poets of the time. He almost disregards
it. Yet, as will be seen,
the strange dress that he has chosen
for his creation fits it admirably,
and moulds itself at will to the
strenuous freedom of the combative
athlete, the scorn of a man of
fine feelings and bright intelligence,
the meditative mood of the student,
or the softer movements of a
lover. His instrument is now a
clarion call to battle, now a lover’s
lute, now a dirge. It has the
strength and simplicity of the Gregorian
chant, which in a few notes
and changes expresses the heights
of inspiration and exultation, the
depths of dread, the saddest sorrow
of the human heart.

The volume is a collection of
odes, written at various and long
intervals apparently, and in a style
of metre resembling somewhat that
of the minor poems of Milton. It
has often the regular irregularity
of the Greek chorus, with much of
the latter’s elasticity, brightness,
flexibility, and crystalline texture.
In all this it is novel—markedly
and successfully so. It is more
novel, however, in subject-matter.
It is refreshing to come across a
man, a poet especially, who can
drop out of the commonplace, and
do it without affectation. So accustomed
have we grown, however,
to the commonplace that we follow
him at first with difficulty.
His “Eros” is indeed an unknown
god to the run of readers. He is
no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery
bow and fire-tipped dart to smite
and melt the hearts of sweet young
lovers. He does not slumber in
summer meads, or rove listlessly
by laughing streamlets, or roguishly
haunt the bosky dells, or float
adown the slanting sunbeam to
flame on the unwary and capture
their hearts and kindle them into
passion while they languish in the
soft arms of Mother Nature. His
God is not this pagan deity. He
is remote, obscure, harsh-seeming.
The poet’s song is no pleasing love-tune.
It is martial, high, far away,
up on crags remote and to be reached
only by thorny paths with bleeding
feet and straining eyes, and
hearts that faint many times on the
way. True love is banished from
the earth, the poet seems to think;
and in place of him, high, pure,
serene, with his head lifted up and
bathed in the clear light and refulgence
of heaven, and his feet
only touching the earth, men have
.pn +1
set a toy, a plaything, a fair bestiality.

“What rumored heavens are
these,” he asks,

.pm verse-start
“Which not a poet sings,
O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze
Of sudden wings
Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space
To fan my very face,
And gone as fleet,
<i>Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat</i>,
With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace
To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,
What portent and what Delphic word,
Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,
Is this?
In me life’s even flood
What eddies thus?
What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood
Like a perturbed moon of Uranus
Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;
And whence
This rapture of the sense
Which, by thy whisper bid,
Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign
A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;
This subject loyalty which longs
For chains and thongs
Woven of gossamer and adamant,
To bind me to my unguess’d want,
And so to lie,
Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,
For hopeless, sweet eternity?”
.pm verse-end

The hard questions here put the
poet answers, to some degree at
least, in other odes. In the “Legem
Tuam Dilexi” (p. 43) he
sings:

.pm verse-start
“The 'Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feud
With life, and the braced mood
Of power and joy and love;
Forbidden, by wise heathen ev’n, to be
Spoken of Deity,
Whose Name, on popular altars, was '<i>The Unknown</i>,’
Because, or ere It was reveal’d as One
Confined in Three,
The people fear’d that it might prove
Infinity,
<i>The blazon which the devils desired to gain</i>;
And God, for their confusion, laugh’d consent;
Yet did so far relent,
That they might seek relief, and not in vain,
<i>In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Was there ever a truer picture
painted by man of the curse of
lost souls and the hopeless relief
they find “in dashing of themselves
against the shores of pain”—that
relief that the demented seek
in beating their weary brains out
or letting out the stream of the
tired and useless life into the dark
ocean of infinity, severing with
maddened and sacrilegious hand
the little knot that separates Time
from Eternity? And what stronger
picture of the prevalence of evil
and the inherent tendency in the
fallen world to rebel than this:

.pm verse-start
“Nor bides alone in hell
The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.
But for compulsion of strong grace,
The pebble in the road
Would straight explode,
<i>And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space</i>.
The furious power,
To soft growth twice constrain’d in leaf and flower,
Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far
Beyond the dimmest star.
The same
Seditious flame,
Beat backward with reduplicated might,
Struggles alive within its stricter term,
And is the worm.”
.pm verse-end

And here follows the response to
the search after the “Unknown
Eros”:

.pm verse-start
And the just Man does on himself affirm
God’s limits, and is conscious of delight,
Freedom and right,
And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,
By day and night,
Buildeth new bulwarks ’gainst the Infinite.
<i>For, ah, who can express
How full of bonds and simpleness
Is God,
How narrow is He</i>,
And how the wide waste field of possibility
Is only trod
Straight to His homestead in the human heart,
And all His art
Is as the babe’s, that wins his mother to repeat
Her little song so sweet!
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
                                Man,
Darling of God. Whose thoughts but live and move
Round him; Who woos his will
To wedlock with His own, and does distil
To that drop’s span
<i>The attar of all rose-fields of all love</i>!
Therefore the soul select assumes the stress
Of bonds unbid, which God’s own style express
Better than well,
And aye hath borne,
To the Clown’s scorn,
The fetters of the three-fold golden chain....”
.pm verse-end

What “the three-fold golden
chain” is that binds “the soul select”
to God no Catholic needs to
.pn +1
be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice,
in a world where self-sacrifice,
whether we like it or not, is necessary
and must be endured, brings
us nearest and makes us likest to
Him, the true Eros who “emptied
himself for us.” These lines will
help us to read the riddle of the
“Unknown Eros,” “some note” of
whose “renown and high behest”
the poet thinks might thus “in
enigma be express’d”:

.pm verse-start
“There lies the crown
Which all thy longing cures.
Refuse it, Mortal, <i>that it may be yours</i>!
It is a spirit though it seems red gold;
And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.
Refuse it, though refusing be despair;
And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.”
.pm verse-end

This thought again is more fully
wrought out in the conclusion of
the same ode, “Legem Tuam Dilexi”:

.pm verse-start
                      “... For to have naught
Is to have all things without care or thought!
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
And lastly bartering life’s dear bliss for pain;
But evermore in vain;
For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)
Is Love’s obedience
Against the genial laws of natural sense,
Whose wide self-dissipating wave,
Prison’d in artful dikes,
Trembling returns and strikes
Thence to its source again,
In backward billows fleet,
Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet;
Thrilling each vein,
Exploring every chasm and cove
Of the full heart with floods of honeyed love,
And every principal street
And obscure alley and lane
Of the intricate brain
With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet
Of the primordial heat;
Till, unto view of me and thee,
Lost the intense life be,
Or ludicrously display’d, by force
Of distance, as a soaring eagle, or a horse
On far-off hillside shown,
May seem a gust-driv’n rag or a dead stone.”
.pm verse-end

To those who read these lines
carefully it will not be necessary
to say that the author is a Catholic.
His name, though modestly withheld
from the present volume, is
not unknown. It is many years
ago since Coventry Patmore sang
his sweet love-songs, <i>The Betrothal</i>
and <i>The Espousals</i>.

They were received favorably
enough by the critics—far more
favorably, indeed, than have been
many higher and greater poems on
their first appearance: Keats’ <i>Endymion</i>,
for instance. Then a strange
silence struck the poet, and he was
dumb.

If the present volume is the
growth of all these silent years, Mr.
Patmore has not suffered by his
solitude. Between his earlier
work and the present there is no
comparison. Indeed, it takes a
very careful reading of the first
to detect therein the germ of the
strong growth and most beautiful
flower that compel admiration to-day.
Those were nothing more
than the story, told with all the
fond minuteness of a gentle, ardent,
intelligent, and chivalrous young
lover, of his first true love; of the
flowery paths and pleasant ways
that led up to it; of the gracious
nothings that make that time so
sweet and ever memorable to the
lovers; the lone communings, the
tremulous doubts, the bitter-sweet
emotions, the sun and shade, the
laughing April showers that weave
Love’s many-colored web and
make a brief paradise for the new
Adam and Eve, with no serpent
lurking in the grass—all this is
told delightfully and with delight.
The verse is sweet and pleasant
and flowing as the subject; but it
is a song to while away a drowsy
hour, not to cause us to halt and
listen in the busy march and fierce
strife of life. We glance over them
with lazy pleasure as we watch
the gambols of children in the sun.

These later poems are of a far
different and more solemn nature.
The poet has lived much, felt
much, suffered much, joyed much,
thought and meditated much in
this long interval. He has been
.pn +1
lifted to the heights of heaven; he
has been dashed back to the gates
of hell. He has been tossed on
the waves of Doubt and felt the
brotherhood of Despair. He has
lost her who first taught him to
sing; whose gentle glances thrilled
the tender chords of his nature and
moved them to utter sweet music.
Here is her picture:

.pm verse-start
“But there danced she, who from the leaven
  Of ill preserved my heart and wit
All unawares, for she was heaven,
  Others at best but fit for it.
I mark’d her step, with peace elate,
  Her brow more beautiful than morn,
Her sometime air of girlish state
  Which sweetly waived its right to scorn;
The giddy crowd, she grave the while,
  Although, as ’twere beyond her will,
About her mouth the baby smile
  That she was born with linger’d still.
Her ball-dress seemed a breathing mist,
  From the fair form exhaled and shed,
Raised in the dance with arm and wrist
  All warmth and light, unbraceleted.
Her motion, feeling ’twas beloved,
  The pensive soul of tune express’d,
And, oh, what perfume, as she moved,
  Came from the flowers in her breast!”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
“The Angel in the House,” <i>The Espousals</i>,
p. 61.
.fn-

Here is she ten years later:

.pm verse-start
“Her sons pursue the butterflies,
  Her baby daughter mocks the doves
With throbbing coo: in his fond eyes
  She’s Venus with her little Loves;
Her step’s an honor to the earth,
  Her form’s the native-land of grace,
And, lo, his coming lights with mirth
  Beauty’s metropolis, her face!
Of such a lady proud’s the lord,
  And that her happy bosom knows;
She takes his arm without a word,
  In lanes of laurel and of rose.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
<i>The Espousals</i>, p. 73.
.fn-

And here at last is her “Departure,”
as told in the latest volume:

.pm verse-start
“It was not like your great and gracious ways!
Do you, that have naught other to lament,
Never, my Love, repent
Of how, that July afternoon,
You went,
With sudden, unintelligible phrase,
And frighten’d eye,
Upon your journey of so many days,
Without a single kiss or a good-by?
I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;
And so we sate, within the sun’s low rays,
You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,
Your harrowing praise.
Well, it was well, my Wife,
To hear you such things speak,
And see your love

Make of your eyes a growing gloom of life,
As a warm south wind sombres a March grove.
And it was like your great and gracious ways
To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,
Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash
To let the laughter flash,
Whilst I drew near,
Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.
But all at once to leave me at the last,
More at the wonder than the loss aghast,
With huddled, unintelligible phrase,
And frighten’d eye,
And go your journey of all days
With not one kiss or a good-by,
And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d,
’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
<i>The Unknown Eros</i>, pp. 63-65.
.fn-

It goes without saying that such
a loss must tell with incalculable
force on a man of intense sensibility.
Trials of this kind best prove
a man. Some they crush; others
they humiliate only to exalt. If
we may judge by the silent testimony
of the book before us, his
great loss made this man greater.
He felt, if not for the first time,
more keenly than ever before, how
uncertain and passing is all merely
human happiness. The known
Eros that had charmed his life
suddenly passed away “with sudden,
unintelligible phrase,” and in
the darkness that fell upon his soul
his humbled eyes were opened to
the unknown Eros who was near
him all the while.

But, beyond and beside this, between
the publication of his earlier
poems and the latest his conversion
to the Catholic faith took place.
So we judge, at least, from internal
evidence in the books. Here was
a new and most powerful agent introduced
to act upon his nature.
Moreover, the world had moved in
the interval. Many and mighty
changes had taken place in the
world, and they did not pass unfelt
or unobserved by the silent poet.
But before we come to these we
will give one more response to his
questioning of the oracle before
.pn +1
whom of all he burns his incense.
In the “Deliciæ Sapientiæ de
Amore” he sings joyously:

.pm verse-start
“Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see....
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Bring, Love, anear,
And bid be not afraid
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,
And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;
For I will sing of naught
Less sweet to hear
Than seems
A music in their half-remember’d dreams.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
... The heavens themselves eternal are with fire
Of unapproach’d desire,
By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,
In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.
O, spousals high;
O, doctrine blest,
Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;
This know ye all
Who can recall
With what a welling of indignant tears
Love’s simpleness first hears
The meaning of his mortal covenant,
And from what pride comes down
To wear the crown
Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Therefore gaze bold,
That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,
Thorough the Palace portals, and behold
The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.
O, hear
Them singing clear
'Cor meum et caro mea’ round the 'I am,’
The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb
Whom they for ever follow there that kept,
Or, losing, never slept
Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight
The standard white.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Gaze and be not afraid,
Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.
The full noon of deific vision bright
Abashes nor abates
No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.
’Tis there your Hymen waits!
There where in courts afar all unconfused they crowd,
As fumes the starlight soft
In gulfs of cloud,
And each to the other, well-content,
Sighs oft,
'’Twas this we meant!'
Gaze without blame,
Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.
There of pure Virgins none
Is fairer seen,
Save One,
Than Mary Magdalene.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Love makes the life to be
A fount perpetual of virginity;
For, lo, the Elect
Of generous Love, how named soe’er, <i>affect
Nothing but God,
Or mediate or direct</i>,
Nothing but God,
The Husband of the Heavens:
And who Him love, in potence great or small,
Are, one and all,
Heirs of the Palace glad
And only clad
With the bridal robes of ardor virginal.”
.pm verse-end

The Love that our poet has
been seeking, has found, and here
hymns in strains that at times are
truly little short of seraphic, will
now be known to the reader; and
we leave this high, ethereal Court
of Love that is human indeed, yet
more than human, to glance at
other and more ordinary, though
still lofty, subjects which the poet
has touched.

In a sense it is really refreshing
to find that he is not always in the
skies; that he is very human and
made of flesh and blood like ourselves.
Indeed, so human is he
that he openly confesses, in a poem
of matchless beauty and delicacy,
to having found a substitute for his
dead wife. Ordinary men, who are
not poets, yet who nevertheless
have hearts, will give a rough reading
to the exquisite ode, “Tired
Memory” (p. 93), wherein the poet,
lamenting his wife, and confessing
truthfully, albeit sadly, that

.pm verse-start
                “In our mortal air
None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,”
.pm verse-end

and seeking round “for some extreme
of unconceived, interior sacrifice,
whereof the smoke might
rise to God,” cries in agony:

.pm verse-start
“My Lord, if thy strange will be this,
That I should crucify my heart,
Because my love has also been my pride,
I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss,
Wherein She has no part.”
.pm verse-end

“And I was heard,” he adds, let
us hope untruthfully; for the “crucifixion
of his heart” took the
shape apparently of a second wife,
thus:

.pm verse-start
“My heart was dead,
Dead of devotion and tired memory,
When a strange grace of thee
.pn +1
<i>In a fair stranger</i>, as I take it, bred
To her some tender heed,
Most innocent
Of purpose therewith blent,
And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such
That the pale reflex of an alien love,
So vaguely, sadly shown,
Did her heart touch
Above
All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.
And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,
Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,
And made me weak,
By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,
And Nature’s long-suspended breath of flame,
Persuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,
Awhile to smile and speak
With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine...”
.pm verse-end

But this is not so much the humanity
to which we referred. We
think that three characteristics will
strike the readers of these odes: 1,
the high spiritual nature of many;
2, the deep pathos and human love
of others; 3, the lofty scorn and
fierce sarcasm displayed, mistakenly
sometimes, in certain of the
odes.

The poet is an Englishman of
Englishmen, and, only for his Catholic
faith, it seems to us that he
would be one among the prophets
of despair, whose name is legion
and whose day is the present.

.pm verse-start
“O, season strange for song!”
.pm verse-end

he cries in the Proem;

.pm verse-start
“Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue
As other kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,
Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong
The voice that was their voice in earlier days?
Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,
The note which those that seem too weak to sigh
Will sometimes utter just before they die?”
.pm verse-end

To speak frankly, we do not
think it is. We do not think England’s
soul is parting yet. We
think there is much good left in
this world for England to do; at
the very least there is much atonement
to be made for the many and
great evils and national crimes—among
others that greatest of all,
apostasy—for which that soul has
to answer. She can do much, she
has done something, toward making
this atonement; and the time of
grace was never nearer to her than
at present. Nevertheless, it is impossible
to deny the intense pathos
and exquisite beauty of the following
sad lines:

.pm verse-start
“Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,
There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,
Her ancient beauty marr’d,
And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,
<i>Horror of light</i>....”
.pm verse-end

In the sixth ode, entitled “Peace,”
he returns to this theme:

.pm verse-start
“O England, how hast thou forgot,
In dullard care for undisturbed increase
Of gold, which profits not,
The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace!
Honor is peace, the peace which does accord
Alone with God’s glad word:
'My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Beneath the heroic sun
Is there then none
Whose sinewy wings by choice do fly
In the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,
To tell the sleepy mongers of false ease
That war’s the ordained way of all alive,
And therein with good-will to dare and thrive
Is profit and heart’s peace?
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
Remnant of Honor, brooding in the dark
Over your bitter cark,
Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,
Upon the corpses of so many sons,
Who loved her once,
Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,
Who could have dreamt
That times should come like these!”
.pm verse-end

We do not altogether go with
Mr. Patmore in this invective, however
much we may admire its
form. England has certainly acted
meanly in many important European
questions of late years.
She will probably so act in many
more in the future, if she finds it
advisable or profitable. And it
is a poor excuse to ask what other
European nation has not acted or
would not act, had it the chance,
equally meanly with England. We
may be very wrathful about the
matter; we may have some very
hard things to say against England
for not drawing the sword in certain
cases; yet between the nation
that is too ready to fight and
.pn +1
the nation that guards severely
what are strictly its own primary
interests without fighting, we certainly
prefer the latter. The
bloody road is a sad road to
glory, and its end is never seen.
While, then, we may for the moment
side with the passionate poet who
sits down in his studio and hurls
his wrath in words of flame against
the ministry for not leading the
country into war and reviving ancient
glories, as they are called,
on second thoughts, while still,
perhaps, thoroughly disgusted with
the ministry and the meanness of
their ways, we become gradually
reconciled to the situation, and
thank Heaven, though of course not
the ministers, that we can sleep
quietly in our beds. It may be
an ignoble sense—doubtless it is;
yet if it prevailed a little more generally
throughout the world just now,
the world would not, in the long
run, be the sufferer from it.

There is another peace against
which Mr. Patmore declaims in
no measured terms in “The Standards.”
This was written soon after
the launching of Mr. Gladstone’s
first pamphlet, not so much against
“the English Catholics,” as the author
states in a note—he would do
well to remember that the world
is a little larger than England—but
against <i>Catholics</i>: against the
Catholic Church and its chief.

.pm verse-start
              “... That last,
Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills,
Was no uncertain blast!
Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,
And minatory murmurs, answering, mar
The Night, both near and far,
Perplexing many a drowsy citadel
Beneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell,
With armed jar
And angry threat, surcease
Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!
Lo, yonder, where our little English band,
With peace in heart and wrath in hand,
Have dimly ta’en their stand,
Sweetly the light
Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,
Whence, o’er the dawning Land,
Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate
’Gainst the black flag of Hate.”
.pm verse-end

This call is most spirited and
trenchant and bold. We can only
find space for the strong end:

.pm verse-start
“The sanction of the world’s undying hate
Means more than flaunted flags in windy air.
Be ye of gathering fate
Now gladly ware.
Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought,
The brilliant shall be brought;
The white stone mystic set between the eyes
Of them that get the prize,
Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone
Which shall be thrown
Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.”
.pm verse-end

“1867” is a poem strongly
written and of marked character,
but with which we cannot agree.
It was called out apparently by the
passage of the bill extending the
suffrage by the conservative ministry
under the leadership of Mr.
Disraeli. It is—so we read it, and
we see no possibility of reading it
otherwise—a direct and bitter attack
on a rational extension of the
popular liberties, which we take to
be radically wrong in conception:

.pm verse-start
“<i>In the year of the great crime</i>,
When the false English Nobles <i>and their Jew</i>,
By God demented, slew
The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,
One said, Take up thy Song,
That breathes the mild and almost mythic time
Of England’s prime!
But I, Ah, me,
The freedom of the few
That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,
Can song renew?”
.pm verse-end

.tb

Let us here say that if a man
cannot attack Mr. Disraeli, or the
Earl of Beaconsfield, on higher and
fairer ground than on that of his
being “a Jew,” he may as well let
that statesman alone. A man who
adopts this very small, very cheap,
and very common mode of attack
is not worthy the hearing of sensible
men. Addressing the “outlawed
Best”—by the bye, the poet
is very arbitrary and perplexing in
.pn +1
his use of capitals—England’s nobles,
presumably, Mr. Patmore
says:

.pm verse-start
“Know, ’twas the force of function high,
In corporate exercise, and public awe
Of Nature’s, Heaven’s, and England’s Law,
That Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign,
Which kept you in your sky!”
.pm verse-end

Does he mean that the “Best”
are restricted to the English nobility?
If he does mean this, he is
quite wrong; if he does not mean it,
then the lines immediately following
are meaningless:

.pm verse-start
“But, when the sordid Trader caught
The loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught,
And soon, to the Mechanic vain,
Sold the proud toy for naught,
Your charm was broke, your task was sped,
Your beauty, with your honor, dead.”
.pm verse-end

And so the ode goes on to hope
that

.pm verse-start
“Prayer perchance may win
A term to God’s indignant mood
And the orgies of the multitude,
Which now begin....”
.pm verse-end

We cannot help thinking, if God’s
name must be introduced in the
matter, that he is not especially
indignant with Mr. Disraeli and
the English nobles and people at
the extension of the suffrage, and
that for this reason to stigmatize
1867 as “the year of the great
Crime” is nonsense. As for “the
sordid Trader,” there has always
been a considerable admixture of
the “Trader” in the composition
of the English government, noble
or ignoble. The first Napoleon’s
estimate of the English as “a nation
of shopkeepers” was not an
ill-judged one; and never was that
government, at least since Reformation
times, so pure and its members
so honest as to-day, when “the
sordid Trader” has a large hand
in the administration. We do all
honor to the spirit of chivalry; we
do not object to class distinctions
in countries where such distinctions
are historic and hereditary; but
we recognize manhood wherever
we find it, and set it above all accidents
of time or clime or artificial
restrictions. At the end of the
ode, however, the poet rises above
his smaller self to a strain that is
noble and true:

.pm verse-start
'And now, because the dark comes on apace
When none can work for fear,
And Liberty in every Land lies slain,
<i>And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign</i>,
And heavy prophecies, suspended long
At supplication of the righteous few
And so discredited, to fulfilment throng,
Restrain’d no more by faithful prayer or tear,
And the dread baptism of blood seems near
That brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace,
Hush’d be all song,
And let Christ’s own look through
The darkness, suddenly increased,
To the gray secret lingering in the East.”
.pm verse-end

We could linger with delight
over many passages in these odes,
and dwell with pleasure on the
peculiar depth, conciseness, and
expressiveness of the phrases used,
the mere words often which the
poet chooses. His power of condensation
and deep philosophic comprehension
and observation constantly
strikes one. The concealed
art of the whole is marvellous. But
this, we have no doubt, will, from
the copious extracts we have given,
strike the reader as it has struck us.
And we hasten on to quote a few
more passages and take leave of
the book.

We have called attention to the
poet’s scorn. It is very bitter, and
is at its best when it attacks not so
much persons or matters which are
at least open to question as when
it deals with obvious shams and
pretentious littleness. What could
be better than this placid treatment
of the modern scientific school
which can see nothing more than
its telescope and its instruments
disclose to it?
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“Not greatly moved with awe am I
To learn that we may spy
Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.
The best that’s known
Of the heavenly bodies <i>does them credit small</i>.
View’d close, the Moon’s fair ball
Is of ill objects worst.
<i>A corpse in Night’s highway</i>, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst;
And now they tell
That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst
Too horribly for hell.
So, judging from these two,
As we must do,
The Universe, outside our living Earth,
Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth,
Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep,
<i>To make dirt cheap</i>.
Put by the Telescope!
Better without it man may see,
<i>Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight,
The ghost of his eternity</i>.
Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye
The things which near us lie,
Till Science rapturously hails,
In the minutest water-drop,
<i>A torment of innumerable tails</i>.
These at least do live.
But rather give
A mind not much to pry
Beyond our royal-fair estate
Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great.
Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,
Pressing to catch our gaze,
And out of obvious ways
Ne’er wandering far.”
.pm verse-end

At other times his strong humanity
seems to die in him, the
struggle of life seems small and
profitless, and the many ends that
move us weak and purposeless as
children’s plans. “Here, in this
little Bay,” he says:

.pm verse-start
“Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, <i>the lie shall rot</i>;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
<i>When none cares whether it prevail or not</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Of course we need not remind
the poet that it is just the duty of
honest men to see that the truth
prevails and the lie rots, for his
poems are a very pæan of Truth
and its high offices; but in this as
in others of the odes he gives complete
expression to the weariness
that at times creeps over all who
are struggling for the right. It is
like the song of the tired mariners
in Tennyson’s <i>Lotos-Eaters</i>.

Again he sings:

.pm verse-start
“Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest
Of mankind’s progress; all its spectral race
Mere impotence of rest,
<i>The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self</i>,
Crest altering still to gulf
And gulf to crest
In endless chase
That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place!
Ah, well does he who does but stand aside,
Sans hope or fear,
And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear,
And prophesies ’gainst trust in such a tide:
For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,
Whose message is that he sees only naught!
Nathless, discern’d may be,
<i>By listeners at the doors of destiny,
The fly-wheel swift and still
Of God’s incessant will</i>,
Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell,
<i>The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell</i>.”
.pm verse-end

We can quote no further at any
length, though we find something
to attract us in every ode; and the
more we read the odes the more
we find in them, the more we admire
them, and the clearer they
become. Though independent of
each other, a secret string of purpose,
of aim and aspiration, of a
yearning after something that the
poet has not yet quite caught or
cannot as yet fully express, becomes
apparent. To this is due much of
the obscurity and dimness that at
first offend the eye. Closer study,
however, reveals a throbbing passion,
a high ideal, gleams of light
from heaven, the flashes of a bright
intelligence warmed by a pure
heart and looking from and through
all things earthly heavenwards.
We have seen no man of late who
can lash the follies and lay bare
the falsehoods of the time so thoroughly.
A man of intense and
rooted convictions, he may make
mistakes sometimes, but at least
he makes them nobly. He is very
human, as we have already said.
Indeed, there are touches here and
there in some of the odes that are
strongly sensuous, and the two last
.pn +1
poems, “The Rosy Bosom’d Hours”
and “The After-Glow,” were better
omitted from the volume. Their
littleness offends and breaks with a
discordant jar on the high and serene
atmosphere through which we
have been passing. It is almost
like what the introduction of one
of Offenbach’s airs would be into
a solemn Mass. From the poet
whose “Proem” is pitched in so
high a key as this:

.pm verse-start
“Therefore no 'plaint be mine
Of listeners none,
No hope of render’d use or proud reward,
In hasty times and hard;
But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throat
At latest eve,
That does in each calm note
Both joy and grieve;
Notes few and strong and fine,
Gilt with sweet day’s decline,
And sad with promise of a different sun,”
.pm verse-end

we certainly expected no such stuff
as the following, addressed to his
bride:

.pm verse-start
“At Dawlish, 'mid the pools of brine,
  You stept from rock to rock,
One hand quick tightening upon mine,
  One holding up your frock.
.pm verse-end

.tb

.pm verse-start
I thought, indeed, by magic chance,
  A third [day] from Heaven to win,
But as, at dusk, we reach’d Penzance,
  <i>A drizzling rain set in</i>.”
.pm verse-end

There is so much that is high
and noble and full of great promise
in this new writer—for such he
really is—and we have been so
honest in our admiration of it, that
we feel all the more at liberty to
point out some of the blemishes
that mar a work of rare excellence
and strange beauty. Here and
there throughout the volume are
lines and couplets that linger lovingly
in the memory; as, for instance:

.pm verse-start
“Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe the trodden ground
Till passion’s buried floods be found....”
.pm verse-end

And again:

.pm verse-start
“Till inmost absolution start
<i>The welling in the grateful eyes,
The heaving in the heart</i>.”
.pm verse-end

What could be more tenderly
and naturally expressive than those
two last lines? Or than this:

.pm verse-start
“<i>Winnow with sighs</i>, and wash away
With tears the dust and stain of clay.”
.pm verse-end

Often have we heard aspirations
of the following kind, but never
sweeter than this:

.pm verse-start
“Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go,
Ye Winds that westward flow,
Thou heaving Sea
That heav’st ’twixt her and me,
Tell her I come....”
.pm verse-end

The poet yokes all Nature to
the wings of his fancy, and makes
it the loving slave of his Love.

How simple, yet how subtly told,
is this great truth:

.pm verse-start
“Who does not know
That good and ill
Are done in secret still,
And that which shows is verily but show!”
.pm verse-end

And this deep reflection contains
a volume:

.pm verse-start
“How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:
<i>But not all height is holiness,
Nor every sweetness good</i>.”
.pm verse-end

Here is a proverb, only too often
verified:

.pm verse-start
“One fool, with lusty lungs,
Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues,
Shall ne’er undo.”
.pm verse-end

In “Victory in Defeat” he says—how
truly!—

.pm verse-start
“Life is not life at all without delight,
Nor has it any might;
<i>And better than the insentient heart and brain
Is sharpest pain</i>;
And better for the moment seems it to rebel,
If the great Master, from his lifted seat,
Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant, 'Well!’”
.pm verse-end

We hope to hear again and soon
from Mr. Patmore. If he can
avoid a certain obscurity that will
repel many who would be sincere
and honest admirers of so noble a
writer, it will be better for himself
and those whom he addresses.
Even as his work now stands we
.pn +1
are happy to say of it, in closing
our review, what a true poet whose
name often adorns these pages has
said: “Many parts of the book
seem to me both to ascend higher
and descend deeper than almost
anything we have had for a long
time.”
.sp 4
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Priesthood in the Light of the
New Testament</sc>. By E. Mellor, D.D.
New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.
.pm letter-end

The author in the preface of the book
before us says that his lectures were
prepared at the request of the Committee
of the Congregational Union of England
and Wales, and though not considered
as exhausting the subject, yet they
furnish a contribution toward the settlement
of the question of the priesthood
and its claims; which settlement in the
author’s aim means toward doing away
altogether with the priesthood and its
claims. After a careful perusal of the
volume, we must confess that we think
the contribution exceedingly small, and
not calculated to settle anything at all in
the reverend gentleman’s sense. For the
doctor’s lectures are a rehash of all the old
objections brought forward against the
priesthood, from the time of the Reformation
downwards; and which have been
time and again triumphantly refuted by
our controversialists; but of which refutation
the author takes no heed, as
if such men as Bellarmine, Petau, Suarez,
Thomassin, and a host of others down
to our day had never existed. If the
author had wished to bring towards the
settlement of the subject a <i>real</i> contribution,
the proper course for him to pursue
would have been to state the objections,
to bring forward the answer to each one
of them given by our controversialists,
to show the futility and untenableness
of their answer, and to conclude that
the objections yet hold good against the
subject. His having, therefore, of a set
purpose, or most innocently, ignored
those answers leaves the question just
where it was, and no one the wiser or better
by the author’s lectures.

It is not possible for us in the brief
space of a passing notice to attempt a
refutation of all the objections he rehashes
so carefully. It will suffice to
remark that all his objections, even if
nothing at all could be said against them,
would prove nothing <i>positive</i> against the
priesthood. For they may be classified
under two heads. The first are those of
purely negative character, which, as they
prove nothing in favor of the priesthood,
neither do they prove anything against
it. Under this head we put the old
objection, drawn from the Epistle of
St. Paul to the Hebrews, which exalts
the priesthood of Christ above the Jewish
priesthood, and which says <i>at least</i>
nothing against the Christian priesthood,
which is identical with that of Christ.

The other class of objections is when
our author examines the positive proofs
brought in favor of the Christian priesthood.
These proofs, so clear, so satisfactory,
so weighty, the author dismisses
very summarily by throwing doubt on
the meaning of the words, after the fashion
of the Protestant method. One
example will suffice to prove our assertion.
Examining the text, “Receive ye
the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive,
they are forgiven them; and whose
sins you shall retain, they are retained,”
he disposes of it as follows: “It is not
needful to enter into a consideration of
the meaning of the words [as if the question
was not just about the <i>meaning</i> of
the words; or as if our Lord was speaking
merely for a joke] which set forth
the high powers of the apostles; whether
the sins they were to remit or retain were
spiritual sins [are there any corporal
sins?], or ecclesiastical ones, or both.
The question before us is, be the function
here referred to what it may, to
whom was it accorded and by whom was
it meant to be exercised? Almost every
word in the passage has been a battle-field.”
We would remark on this passage
that there is no reason for waiving
the question, be the function here referred
.pn +1
to what it may, when our Lord says expressly
it <i>is</i> to remit or to retain sins; that
it is evident from the text, if words or
language mean anything any more, that
this function was to be exercised by
those to whom our Lord spoke, and by
those whom they preceded, as the apostles
were essentially first and representative
men; but it is useless. We only
wish to call the attention of our readers
to the fact that, if a text clear and palpable
in itself, proving a truth or a dogma,
can be disposed of in this manner, no
Christian truth can stand any longer, and
we may as well have done with all
Christian revelation. For suppose we
want to bring a contribution towards
the settlement of the question of the Divinity
of Christ, all we have to do is to throw
doubts on the meaning of the words of
those texts which assert it, and the contribution
is made, and so on to the end
of the chapter.

We think we have made our statement
good, that our author has proved nothing
in his book against the Christian
priesthood, as all his objections are of
a negative character.

But we will exceed him in liberality,
and grant for a moment that those
texts by which we assert the nature and
prerogatives of the priesthood prove
nothing in its favor, as his negative objections
prove nothing against it. What
then? Has he gained anything by our
concession, or has he made any step forward
towards the settlement of the question?
Not at all. There will always be
the fact of the existence of the priesthood,
in the full exercise of all its claims, staring
him in the face. How to account
for that fact? Our author sees the difficulty,
and admits that to account for it
by urging an ambitious conspiracy on
the part of the presbyters or bishops is
absurd, that such a conspiracy could not
have succeeded in establishing itself
(page 74), and endeavors to account for
it by a bias of humanity towards the
priesthood identical with a bias towards
selfishness and sins. And he goes on
developing the thought by saying that
the priesthood was called into being by
ill-defined terrors of the future, by a fear
of God not yet cast out by love, by the
irksomeness of the duties of self-discipline,
by the intolerable oppressiveness
of the sense of personal responsibility
seeking relief by its transference to
others.

Whether all these reasons can produce
a bias towards the priesthood in humanity
identical with the bias it has unfortunately
towards selfishness and sin,
we will leave to the author to assert.
We think that all those reasons, when
well understood and stated properly,
dispose humanity towards the priesthood—in
fact, create an instinct for it—and
that that instinct is a legitimate,
noble, generous craving of the human
heart; and to say that they create a bias
identical with a bias to sin is to show
the most supine ignorance of human nature,
of the history of mankind, and the
true philosophy of history. But let that
pass; do all these reasons account for
the existence and claims of the priesthood?
According to the author himself
<i>they do not</i>. For he says himself all this
contributed to prepare the way for a
transformation of that religion which
knows no earthly mediator (page 75).

Well, Dr. Mellor, you have accounted
for the preparation of the way, but not
for the fact of the existence of the priesthood.
When and how did it come into
existence? Who were the first who
hatched it? Where was it established
first? Who were the first Christians
they imposed it upon? How did they
succeed in persuading them to accept it?
Was there any opposition on the part of
the Christians who first heard of such a
thing? Must not the imposition on any
Christian people of a priesthood well
organized into a compact body, strong
and valiant, and exceedingly sensitive
about its rights and claims, have been
brought about by a conspiracy of somebody
or other? And have you not said—page
74—that to account for the existence
of the priesthood by a conspiracy is absurd?

We wish to advert to another theory
before closing these remarks. He is not
satisfied to have proved <i>more suo</i> that the
priesthood has no place in the New Testament;
he strives to prove that it was
congenial with the whole spirit and nature
of it, and the proof, he alleges, is
drawn from the words to the Samaritan
woman: God is a spirit, and in spirit
and truth he must be adored; that is, by
having recourse to an invisible church,
is the sense he attaches to those words.
Of course, if the church is not a visible
body, the mountain placed on the top of
mountains, we must necessarily do away
with the priesthood and sacraments, etc.,
.pn +1
for they can have no scope in an invisible,
abstract thing. But in that case why
not abolish Christ the Emmanuel, the
God-man?

We could easily enough prove the
congeniality of the priesthood with
Christianity by showing to the reverend
doctor that all the works of God are
<i>permanent</i>. That the Incarnation is permanent
in the church, and that Christ
the High-Priest is permanent in the
Catholic priesthood, and discharges all
the functions necessary to bring all men
to salvation in all time and space, in it,
and through it, and so forth. But we
fear the reverend gentleman has not philosophy
enough to understand us, and
we forbear. We will not, however, conclude
our remarks without thanking the
reverend lecturer for the polite courtesy
which he uses towards the Catholic
priesthood: first, using the <i>nom de guerre
popish</i> whenever he has occasion to make
mention of it; and, secondly, for associating
it with the priesthood of the English
Episcopal Church. In the lecturer’s
mind, perhaps, it was to do honor to
the Catholic priesthood by confounding
it with the other. It is a goodly company,
no doubt, and we ought to be
highly flattered; but we respectfully decline
through excess of modesty such
unmerited honor, and would rather keep
by ourselves, if it is all the same to the
reverend doctor.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the
Board of Education of the City
and County of New York, for the
Year ending December 31, 1876.</sc>
.pm letter-end

Much has been written on the school
question within the past few months;
not, however, by opponents of the
public schools as they exist here, but by
those who pay for them—the taxpayers.
Four million dollars for the Department of
Public Schools alone is a great load. This
tax increases yearly, and no doubt will
soon reach the fifth million. The strange
enthusiasm that led sects to trample on
the religious convictions of their neighbors
also led them to make light of
the burden that came with the victory.
But five millions is terrifying. Why not
six? Will there be no end to the increase?

Perhaps the originators of the present
school system recognized the moral baseness
of severing the instruction which
may enable the child to act with judgment
from the training which teaches
him moral responsibility for the judgment
as well as for the action springing
from it. They certainly desired to accomplish
indirectly the chief end of education
by placing the school machinery in
the hands of philanthropists who serve
without pay or emolument.

The result has been a gradual complication
of the common-school system, so
as to include technical education, and
even the higher branches of learning.
Years ago a Free College was successfully
engrafted. Next came a Normal College
for young ladies. In order to render
this latter offshoot permanent, it was
deemed necessary to provide the graduates
with positions in the common
schools. The first step was to raise the
standard of proficiency for a teacher’s
certificate; the next, to declare that the
college diploma was sufficient evidence
of qualification, without a public examination
by the city superintendent. The
report tells us that “under the by-law by
which the graduates are licensed to teach
without a second examination, the city
superintendent and the president of the
college have performed their duties in
perfect harmony.”

When the mode of testing the qualification
of applicants who are not Normal
College graduates is discussed, the report
states, “a system of rigid examinations
in the superintendent’s office precludes
the possibility of incompetent
persons being foisted upon the system
through political or social influence.”

Nor is this the only injury to the common
schools. The favored graduates
are not to be allowed to work for the
low salaries received by primary teachers
during the past thirty-five years.
An <i>adjustment</i> of salaries is demanded.
These primary teachers must receive as
large a sum as grammar-school teachers.
This simply means an increase in the
cost of the common-school system.

If that system, as it now exists here,
answer to the purposes for which it was
intended, it is high time for that fact to
appear. Yet the gentlemen who have
charge of the board, from the president
down, seem strangely to disagree on
most important matters. Without committing
ourselves to one side or the other
in the discussion, we take a few instances.
The grammar schools surely form a very
important branch of the system. Here
is how the president treats of them in
.pn +1
the report: “Our primary-school teachers
have a lower rate of pay than our
grammar-school teachers, and the primary
schools have been used as training
places for the better-paid positions in
the grammar schools. The plan for uniformity
in salaries in these two departments
has received serious consideration
by a committee of the board, and deserves
to be carried out. The majority
of our pupils receive all the education
they have in the primary, <i>and never enter
the grammar schools</i>. This majority deserves
the first consideration. Instruction
and discipline are no more difficult
in one than in the other, and in neither
department is the range of knowledge
required to be mastered extensive.”

The president asserts that the common-school
system only succeeds in furnishing
primary instruction to a majority of
pupils, and he would seem to imply
that the enormous sum of four million
dollars should be spent on the primary
schools, reserving, of course, a sufficient
sum for the Normal College.

Lest his opinions as to the range of
knowledge required in a teacher should
dishearten those who are toiling through
Normal College, he inserts a few lines for
their benefit: “An erroneous idea seems
to prevail that a primary teacher can
dispense with the higher studies. The
truth is that this class of teachers more
than any other class needs trained faculties
and sound judgment, and these
are only obtained by the discipline of
hard and close study. Normal study and
normal practice, to be effective, must be
based on the broad foundation of a liberal
education.”

Compulsory education the city superintendent
pronounces a complete failure,
while those who are paid to enforce it
consider it successful. In the discussion
some interesting facts are brought
to light. The city superintendent states:
“Many parents, finding that our schools
are unable to govern their wilful and unruly
children, send them to the parochial
schools. In connection with this, it is
proper to call the attention of the board
to the fact that, while the average attendance
of pupils in the schools immediately
under its care has, during the past
year, increased less than two and a half
per cent., in the corporate schools it has
increased more than five per cent. It is
also of interest to observe that, at the
close of 1875, the number of pupils enrolled
in the Catholic parochial schools
was 30,732, while in 1867 it was only
16,342, showing an increase, in less than
ten years, of nearly 90 per cent.; while
the increase in the attendance of the pupils
in the public schools has, during
the same time, been only about 13 per
cent. The increase in attendance at the
corporate schools, during the same period,
has been more than 57 per cent....
The question, therefore, very properly
suggests itself, why should a system
for compelling pupils to attend the
schools be sustained at great expense to
the city while there is no effective means
of controlling and educating those children
after they have been brought into
the schools?”

These are but a few of the spots uncovered
in this interesting report. Never
was the want of harmony in the system
more manifest. The iniquity of taxing
a people for what it cannot use, and
turning over the amount collected to the
keeping of gentlemen who care more
for pet schemes than for the real object
for which the tax was levied, becomes
more and more apparent. Higher education,
technical education, and compulsory
education are battling vigorously
for larger shares of the funds; and the
battle seems likely to end when the
funds are made large enough to satisfy
all demands. In the meantime the
common-school system is slowly dying
out. The primary schools are becoming
departments for the employment of normal
school graduates, and the grammar
schools feeders for the colleges.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>A Question of Honor: A Novel.</sc> By
Christian Reid, author of <i>A Daughter
of Bohemia</i>, <i>Valerie Aylmer</i>, <i>Morton
House</i>, etc. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. 1876.
.pm letter-end

A well-written novel, thoroughly American
in its tone, its incidents, and its
characters, and yet availing itself of none
of the peculiar “isms” which form the
chief stock in trade of our native novelists—shunning
alike the “woman question”
and the shallow metaphysics of “free
thought,” depending for no share of its interest
upon suggested immorality or social
license, and vivacious in its dialogues
without any reliance upon the slang which
generally does duty in place of wit—was
something for which some sad experience
in recent fiction had forbidden us to
.pn +1
hope. That Christian Reid is already
well known to the novel-reading public
is evident from the title-page of <i>A Question
of Honor</i>, but that is the only one of her
stories which we have read. We find in
it everything to praise and nothing to
condemn. It is thoroughly well written,
to begin with, its descriptions of scenery
being particularly artistic and well done.
The author attempts nothing ambitious
in the way of character-drawing, but her
men and women live and have a true individuality.
Their souls are not dissected
after the manner with which the New England
school of fiction has made us too
familiar for our comfort, but their manner
of life and speech and thought is indicated
with a firm, graceful, and un-provincial
touch which is extremely
pleasant. Altogether, the book belongs
to the best class of light literature.
There is nothing in it to shock taste or
to jar prejudice, and everything in the
way of grace of style and purity of thought
to recommend it. So much being said
by way of praise, we may add that the
author, who is evidently a Catholic, has
drawn a picture of social life which is,
no doubt, true to a reality of a better
kind than the ordinary novel of the day
aims at, but which is nevertheless un-Christian.
Her characters are neither
underbred nor vicious; with two exceptions,
they are simply a rather pleasing
variety of pagans. We do not quarrel
with that, considered as a faithful transcript
of reality. But we shall find it
a cause for real regret if a writer so
graceful and possessing so much genuine
ability does not some day give us something
better than a mere transcript of
lives that might have been lived and
ideals that might have been attained had
the Creator never stooped to the level of
his creatures in order to show them the
one way in which he would lift them to
himself.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Biographical Sketches.</sc> By the graduating
class of St. Joseph’s Academy,
Flushing, L. I. (Translated from the
French of Mme. Foa.) New York: P.
O’Shea. 1877.
.pm letter-end

Translation from the French is a literary
exercise which cannot be too highly
commended to young students. The
publication in book-form of such students’
translations can scarcely be too
severely condemned. Young ladies and
young men “graduate,” as it is called,
at an age ranging from seventeen to
twenty or twenty-one. They are then
popularly supposed to have “finished”
their education, whereas not much more
has been done than to set them on the
right road of learning and appreciating
what real education is. Indeed, if so
much has been accomplished, both the
pupils and their teachers may be congratulated.

To set these young persons straightway
at book-making is a grave mistake—how
grave may be gathered from
the following specimens of translation
which half a glance at the volume before
us reveals.

The cover informs us that these are
“Gems of Biography.” The first gem is
entitled “Michael Angelo Buonarotti.”
The opening page introduces us to “an
old domestic” and “a young <i>man</i> of
fifteen or sixteen” “at the <i>door</i> of the
Castle of Caprese.” In page 2 the
“young man” of fifteen is a “young
<i>interlocutor</i>.” In the same page “to intercept
the passage” is used in the
sense of to block up the passage. In
page 3, “to cover his curiosity” is used
in the sense of to hide or conceal his
curiosity. In page 4 we have this elegant
sentence: “I don’t think that either
of you does anything wrong in the place
you go.” In page 5 the young man of
fifteen, who was an Italian of four centuries
back, indulges in this peculiar bit
of slang: “One is not perfect at it <i>right
away</i>.” A little lower on the same page
he says of Michael Angelo: “He is
even quicker than I <i>in piecing</i> his man.”
“<i>Mr.</i> Francis Graciana” and “<i>Mr.</i>
Michael Angelo Buonarotti” occur
quite frequently. “Canosse” is always
made to do duty for Canossa, “Politien”
for Politian or Poliziano, etc. Such
phrases as “You are not <i>de trop</i>, Signor
Graciana,” constantly occur; but we
have no patience to examine further.

Expressions such as these—and they
characterize the book, with the exception
of “The Mulatto of Murillo,” which
runs fairly enough—should not have
been allowed to pass in a written composition;
but to embalm them in a printed
volume is simply an act of cruelty. The
sketches in themselves are good for nothing
and were not worth the trouble of
translating, inasmuch as they have been
far better given in English over and over
again. “Flushing Series” is the threatening
.pn +1
legend on the cover. If this volume
be a specimen of what is to come,
we trust sincerely that we have seen the
last of the “Series.” Catholic education
is too serious a subject for trifling.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Wonders of Prayer</sc>: A remarkable
record of well authenticated answers
to prayer. By Henry T. Williams.
New York: Henry T. Williams, Publisher.
.pm letter-end

It is not often that an author is his
own publisher. In the present case this
may have been a matter of necessity;
but it should not have been so, for the
volume is interesting enough. It is a
collection of anecdotes, the authenticity
of which Mr. Williams personally vouches
for, showing that God answers in an
immediate and direct manner the requests
of those who in faith ask him for
temporal blessings. “They demonstrate,”
says the author, “to a wonderful
degree the immediate practical ways of
the Lord with his children in this world;
that he is far nearer and more intimate
with their plans and pursuits than it is
possible for them to realize.” We have
no disposition to scoff at the stories related
by Mr. Williams, although the
style in which they are told often provokes
one to mirth. There is but one
true faith in the world, but there are
many people who hold more or less of
this faith without knowing it. “<i>Souffrons
toutes les religions, puisque Dieu les
souffre</i>,” said Fénelon; and our Holy
Father, the Pope, has not unfrequently
expressed his affection as well as his
pity for good Protestants. No doubt
many of the people who are spoken of in
this book were very good Protestants.
And we are glad to observe in it this
passage: “The present is the age of
miracles as well as the past. Fully as
wonderful things have been and are constantly
being done this day by our unseen
Lord as in the days of old when he
walked in the sight of his disciples.”
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Little Pearls; or, Gems of Virtue.</sc>
Translated by Mrs. Kate E. Hughes.
New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
.pm letter-end

Will be found very entertaining and
instructive reading for our young folks,
and we recommend it as suitable for
a present at the distribution of school
prizes. We think, however, that the
name of the writer whose work is translated
should have appeared on the title-page.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Beside the Western Sea</sc>: A Collection
of Poems. By Harriet M. Skidmore
(“Marie”). New York: P.
O’Shea. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This gifted lady has done well to collect
her scattered poems into a volume.
They are chiefly of a devotional character,
and, though unequal, none of them
are without merit, some of a very marked
kind. She has the gift of song, and
she sings easily and gracefully on almost
any subject. The following, though one
of the shortest and least ambitious of the
collection, strikes us as a very sweet
poem, and affords a fair idea of the author’s
powers. Its title is “The Mist”:

.pm verse-start
“I watched the folding of a soft white wing
  Above the city’s heart;
I saw the mist its silent shadows fling
  O’er thronged and busy mart.
Softly it glided through the Golden Gate
  And up the shining bay,
Calmly it lingered on the hills, to wait
  The dying of the day.
Like the white ashes of the sunset fire,
  It lay within the West,
Then onward crept above the lofty spire,
  In nimbus-wreaths to rest.
It spread anon—its fleecy clouds unrolled,
  And floated gently down;
And thus I saw that silent wing enfold
  The Babel-throated town.
A spell was laid on restless life and din,
  That bade its tumult cease;
A veil was flung o’er squalor, woe, and sin,
  Of purity and peace.
And dreaming hearts, so hallowed by the mist,
  So freed from grosser leaven,
In the soft chime of vesper bells could list
  Sweet, echoed tones of heaven;
Could see, enraptured, when the starlight came,
  With lustre soft and pale,
A sacred city crowned with 'ring of flame,’
  Beneath her misty veil.”
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Roman Legends</sc>: A Collection of the
Fables and Folk-lore of Rome. By
R. H. Busk, author of <i>Sagas from
the Far East</i>, etc. Boston: Estes &
Lauriat. 1877.
.pm letter-end

These are very graceful and interesting
legends. They furnish glimpses
that could not otherwise be well obtained
of the peculiar constitution, habits
of mind and thought, of the common
people in and about Rome. For the
most part they are such as have not
hitherto found their way into literature,
being taken as they fell from the lips of
narrators to whom they had been household
.pn +1
words, handed down from one generation
to another. The task of eliciting
them seems to have been no easy one,
but its results are pleasant enough to earn
honest gratitude for the years of labor
which have been spent in gaining them.
The tales themselves range under four
categories, concerning which the author
notes that the Romans are rigidly exact
in adhering to, never by any chance
giving a fairy-tale if asked for a legend,
or a fairy-tale if inquired of concerning
ghosts. They comprise legends; ghost-stories
and local and family traditions;
fairy tales and <i>ciarpe</i>, or gossip. The
book is particularly rich in stories of St.
Philip Neri.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Philip Nolan’s Friends</sc>: A story of the
change of Western Empire. By Edward
E. Hale. New York: Scribner,
Armstrong & Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This volume traces the course of a
journey into the heart of the great South-west
at the beginning of the present
century. This tract was still the border-land
of the Aztec kings. Throughout
its vast extent Spanish heroes had wasted
their lives in <i>ignis-fatuus</i> searches.
Rich discoveries of gold did not reward
their diligence, and they resigned so inhospitable
a region to a new order of
pioneers. Even to this day the names
of places bear token that the zeal of the
Spanish missionaries was in no way inferior
to that of the sons of Loyola along
the St. Lawrence. Such was their indomitable
perseverance that twenty-seven
missions had been established
in this region previous to 1626, and a
century later the missionary spirit carried
the Gospel among the Apaches, Moquis,
and Navajoes.

The heroine’s escort through this <i>terra
incognita</i> to Americans is ample, the
weather delightful, and we do not care
to question the adequacy of the motive
for the expedition. Nor does it matter
that we are led to believe that Philip
Nolan possesses a sterling character,
though what he says or does, or what
apparent influence he has over the
course of events, would hardly justify
this conclusion.

The novel is readable, but not by any
means artistic. The author lacks the
power to create a character that can
think and act like a human being. He
wishes us to believe his heroine possesses
beauty, sensibility, and vivacity;
but he lacks the subtle power to invent
actions and conversations which impress
individuality, and we gather our notions
of the lady more from his suggestions
than from the movement of the story.
This seems to be the author’s weakness:
his figures act and he suggests the motives
and impulses.

His male characters miss no opportunity
to abuse the missionaries. They
regard the “black-gowns” as the cause
of Indian rascality and Spanish treachery.
Ill-luck is always traced to them,
and the torrents of abuse poured on the
servants of God lend the only touches
of nature that may be found in the author’s
passive figures. Of course these
outbursts of hatred reveal the true character
of the adventurers. They are border
ruffians.

The book is partly historical. It treats
of a transition period. The allegiance
of the inhabitants had suffered a violent
dissolution. A border element existed,
mainly recruited from the United States.
This element was of service in manufacturing
public opinion, and, in this way,
might have hastened the transfer of the
Louisiana tract to its natural owner, the
United States. We are inclined to the
opinion that Southern interests would
have brought about the transfer without
the assistance of European complications
or scenes of border treachery.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Reply to the Hon. R. W. Thompson,
Secretary of the Navy, addressed
to the American People.</sc> By F. X.
Weninger, D.D., of the Society of
Jesus. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
.pm letter-end

In this pamphlet of eighty-six pages
Father Weninger has undertaken the
almost unnecessary task of replying to
Mr. Thompson’s book, <i>The Papacy and
the Civil Power</i>. If there is anything in
that book to refute, it refutes itself. Mr.
Thompson, however, over and above the
rashness of attempting such a book at
all, was rash enough to quote Father
Weninger. The natural result is the
present pamphlet. The pamphlet is addressed
to “the American people.” If
the American people take it up, they
will be rewarded by some lively reading.
The reverend author says at the conclusion:
“We have handled our adversary
throughout the whole discourse without
gloves.” No reader of the pamphlet will
be inclined to dispute that statement.
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Pearl among the Virtues; or,
Words of Advice to Christian
Youth.</sc> By P. A. De Doss, S.J.
Translated from the original German
by a Catholic priest. Baltimore:
John Murphy & Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This work, written by one of the Jesuit
Fathers banished from Germany, is an
excellent treatise on the angelic virtue,
which he considers from almost every
point of view in a solid, instructive, and
highly interesting manner. No more
useful book could be placed in the hands
of the youth of either sex.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>God the Teacher of Mankind: A
Plain, Comprehensive Explanation
Of Christian Doctrine.</sc> By Michael
Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati,
and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers.
1877.
.pm letter-end

We have received advance sheets of
this new and most interesting work by
the indefatigable Redemptorist father to
whom Catholics in this country are so
much indebted for works that are really
useful as well as popular. The book
is too important in itself and on too important
a subject to be dismissed with
a hasty notice. We shall return to it
later.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Edmondo</sc>: A Sketch of Roman Manners
and Customs. By Rev. Fr. Antonio
Bresciani, S.J., author of <i>The Jew of
Verona</i>, etc., etc. Translated from the
Italian. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &
Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This is a powerfully-written story that
cannot but excite the liveliest interest
on account of its faithful and beautiful
description of Roman scenery and vivid
delineation of Roman life and customs.

The translation is well rendered, but
we do not approve of the omission of
two chapters from the writings of such
an author as the learned Bresciani.
Such men do not write anything that can
be cast aside without loss to their readers
and admirers.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Dora.</sc> By Julia Kavanagh.

<sc>Bessie:</sc>

<sc>Silvia.</sc> By the same author. D. & J.
   Sadlier & Co.
.pm letter-end

We have not read any one of these
three stories, and can only acknowledge
their receipt. From others that we have
read by the same author we think it safe
to recommend these to persons who are
fond of novels. Julia Kavanagh is, to
our thinking, one of the purest, most
graceful, and most interesting story-writers
of the day.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Catholic Keepsake.</sc> A gift-book
for all seasons. Baltimore: John Murphy
& Co. 1877.
.pm letter-end

The best encomium we can bestow on
this collection is to say that it is worthy
of its name. The numerous sketches and
stories are short, entertaining, and
very agreeably written, even though a
little ancient.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Bessy; Or, the Fatal Consequence of
Telling Lies.</sc> By the author of <i>The
Rat-Pond; or, The Effects of Disobedience</i>.
Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.
1877.
.pm letter-end

A plain, simple story for children,
and, as the title designates, with a moral
attached.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>The Story of Felice.</sc> By Esmeralda
Boyle. London: Trübner & Co. 1873.

<sc>Songs of the Land and Sea.</sc> By Esmeralda
Boyle. New York: E. J. Hale
& Son. 1875.
.pm letter-end

In these poems Miss Boyle displays
much true poetic feeling and a gift of
melodious utterance.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. | VOL. XXV., No. 150.—SEPTEMBER, 1877.
.sp 2
.h3 id=translators
AMONG THE TRANSLATORS. | VIRGIL AND HORACE.
.sp 2
The number of versified translations
of Greek and Latin poets
which the English presses continually
put forth must be a never-ending
surprise to the practical American
mind—if, that is to say, the
practical mind ever thinks of so
manifestly useless and absurd a
thing at all. Authors are supposed
to write and publishers to print
for the purpose of making money;
that either should work to any other
end is a proposition which to the
practical mind is simply bewildering.
Yet one would think there can
be but little money in laboriously
turning into English a quantity of
school-books which no one reads
except at school, and whose only
value is in their being in a foreign
tongue. Original poetry is bad
enough; the verdict of the practical
mind on that point is pretty apt
to be one with the view taken by
Heine’s rich uncle, to whom the
poet, at the height of his fame, was
but a <i>Dummkopf</i> (may not the
uncle, alas! have been right?); but
poetry at second hand, the “old
clo’” of the Muses, Apollo’s second
table, the cold victual of Parnassus,
a disaerated Helicon—the practical
mind can only gasp at the notion
(which, by the way, strikes it
in quite another shape than the poetical
one we have chosen to give
it, but just as effectively) and seek
to renew its faith in human nature
over the credit column of its ledger.

Another class of minds, too, not
quite so practical—a class that has
been at college, we will say, that
knows Virgil and Horace by name,
or even by certain quotations (<i>arma
virumque</i>, <i>pallida mors pulsat</i>,
<i>atra cura</i>, etc.), and can read Greek
letters at sight, but on the whole
thinks Huxley a greater force in
the world to-day than Homer—the
cultured class, in short, about which
some of our newspapers make so
much to-do—can understand why
the great classic poets should be
turned into English verse (for the
benefit of those who have not been
at college), but not at all why such
versions should be multiplied. If
you want Virgil in an English dress,
.pn +1
there’s your Dryden; or Homer,
there’s Pope—say our person of
culture is from an extreme northern
latitude, geographically or mentally,
he will perhaps put Chapman
here, and pooh-pooh Pope with a
reference to Bentley. Do you desire
Horace in the vulgar, there’s
good old Francis—pray, what better
do you ask? What better, indeed,
can you expect to get? Just
look at your <i>Cyclopædia Septentrionalis</i>
and see what it tells you!
So what is the use or the meaning,
what is the reason of being, of
your Theodore Martins and your
Coningtons, your Morrises and
Cranches? What is there to be
had of them all but vanity and
vexation of spirit, and time and
money mislaid?

Somewhat in that way, we take
it, a good many folks, even of the
book-buying, nay, of the book-reading,
sort, must feel over every fresh
announcement of a translation of
one or other of the favorite classic
poets. And as the supply of such
things is in the long run, by a
beneficent law of nature, tempered
to the demand, and the mind of the
book-buying many reacts upon, and
often rules, the ardor of the book-making
few—“book” in Lamb’s
sense, be it understood—it is not
surprising that the list of American
translators should be of the
scantiest. Mr. Cranch’s bold venture
of last year—a blank-verse
rendering of the <i>Æneid</i>—had few
precursors or precedents. There
is Mumford’s blank-verse Homer,
which Professor Felton praised, and
Professor Arnold, strange to say,
seems not to have seen; and Mr.
Bryant’s blank-verse Homer, which
everybody praised and a smaller
number read. Then, some years
since, a Philadelphian gentleman
put forth still another version of
the <i>Iliad</i> in what he said was English
verse, although the precise metre
of such lines as

.pm verse-start
“For Agamemnon insulted Chryses”;
“But Agamemnon was much displeased”;
“Wounded is Diomed, Tydeus’ son,
Ulysses, also, and Agamemnon.”
.pm verse-end

unless it be hexameter—everything
you cannot scan in English verse
is hexameter, just as everything you
cannot parse in Greek is second
aorist—we have been unable to determine.
We have heard, also, of a
version of Horace by a professor in
some Southern university, but this
we have not seen. Are there any
others? Mr. E. C. Stedman ten
years ago printed specimens of a
projected translation of Theocritus,
in English hexameters, of considerable
merit; but his reception
does not seem to have encouraged
him to go on. And that is all, a
little Spartan band of four or five
to oppose to the great host of British
translators from Phaer to Morris.
The practical mind may feel
reassured of its country.

It is true that these English versions
are often reprinted here; but
it is only the chiefs of the army—those
who shine pre-eminent among
their fellows,

.pm verse-start
  “sicut inter ignes
Luna minores,”
.pm verse-end

or who are already known to fame
for triumphs in other fields. Prof.
Conington made something of a
critical furor by the bold breaking
away from rule and precedent in
his choice of a metre, though Dr.
Maginn, in his Homeric ballads,
had given him the hint. In like
manner our booksellers have reprinted
and our book-buyers bought
Mr. Morris’ <i>Æneid</i> (we beg his
pardon—<i>Æneids</i>), not because it
was a new translation of Virgil, but
because it was a new work of the
.pn +1
latest popular poet; just as they
printed and bought Mr. Bryant’s
Homer because it was the latest
work of our oldest living poet, as
they printed and bought Lord
Derby’s <i>Iliad</i> because it was the
work of a nobleman, and not only
that, but of a leading European
statesman, and therefore, in both
aspects, a very surprising and desirable
thing for our people, who
have never been used to connect
that sort of accomplishment with
the idea they had formed of a nobleman,
still less with their notion
of a statesman. But we did not
reprint or buy Mr. Worsley’s, or
Prof. Newman’s, or Prof. Blackie’s,
or Mr. Wright’s Homer; and even
if we printed, it is to be feared
we did not extensively buy, Mr.
Cranch’s <i>Æneid</i>, although in the
way of buying English <i>Æneids</i> we
might have done worse. Why?
Not, certainly, because any of the
versions named lacked merit, but
because they appealed to us on
their merits simply, without any
outside helps to popularity, and we
would none of them. The fact is,
we do not care in the least for
Homer or Virgil, and we care a
great deal for Morris and Bryant—that
is to say, while they are topics
of talk; and it is one of the social
duties, which persons of culture
would die almost sooner than fail
in, to have something, or even nothing,
to say about the ordained subjects
of fashionable gossip.

But in England it is otherwise.
There is in that country a large
class always to be counted on to
buy any translation of a favorite
classic which has successfully run
the gauntlet of the reviews. This
class is made up of diverse elements.
First, the translators themselves,
who in England form no inconsiderable
percentage of the literary
public; for every other graduate
of either university who has
not been a stroke-oar—that is
honor enough to win or give—seems
to feel within him a sacred
void unfilled, a mysterious yearning
unsatisfied, a clamorous duty unperformed,
until he has translated
some classic author in whole or in
part. Every translator, of course,
buys the publications of every other
translator to chuckle over his failures
or—let us do them justice—to
applaud heartily and generously
the happy dexterity which conquers
a difficult passage. Then, too, even
scholars who have Homer and Horace
at their fingers’ ends, who
think in Latin and dream in Greek,
who dare to take liberties with the
digamma and speak disrespectfully
of the second aorist—even they to
whom the best translation of a
classic is as corked claret? or skim-milk—may
still buy Prof. Conington’s
<i>Æneid</i> or Lord Lytton’s Horace
for a better reason than the
pleasure of finding fault with it.
They know, none better, that, as
the former puts it, a translation by
a competent hand is itself an “embodied
criticism” and commentary;
and even scholars, after twenty centuries
or so of criticism and commentary,
and even of mutual vituperation,
have not yet quite made up
their minds as to the meaning, or at
least the shades of meaning, straight
through of any poet of antiquity.
This is not to say that we have not
here, too, scholars who might buy
a translation for the same reason;
but in neither country, perhaps, are
there so many as to be much of a
stand-by in themselves.

But the mainstay of the English
translator is that sort of fashionable
sentiment in favor of classical learning
necessarily fostered in a country
where the university is a working
.pn +1
element and influence in political,
social, and literary life. This
sentiment is not so powerful or
wide-spread as it once was; as it
was, let us say, when a couplet
made Mr. Addison a secretary of
state, or a burlesque made Mr.
Montague a minister and Mr. Prior
an ambassador—an improvement
still on the age when Sir Christopher
Hatton danced himself into
the chancellorship. But it is still
powerful; and the university is still
such a force in English life as it
never has been, as it probably
never will be, here. The Oxford
and Cambridge debating clubs used
to be regularly looked to, and are
still, perhaps, now and again beaten
up, by experienced huntsmen for
embryo statesmen, much as the
metropolitan manager will scour
the provincial stage for an undiscovered
star. University men edit
the leading organs of public opinion;
university men fill the desks
in Downing Street and the Parliamentary
benches in Westminster
Hall; university men yawn day after
day in the club-windows of Pall
Mall, and night after night in the
dancing and supper rooms of Belgravia—no,
not the supper-rooms;
that is, perhaps, the one spot of
the fashionable world where young
England forgets to yawn. Like
enough, the learning of many of
these sages is no deeper than the
lore of our own pundits from Yale
and Harvard; and not a few of
them, no doubt, would be far more
at home criticising the boat-race
in the Fifth Æneid (the contestants
in which they would probably characterize,
in their delightful idiom,
as “duffers”) than construing the
Latin it is told in. Such is the
proud result of modern university
education in a free and enlightened
Anglo-Saxon community. Nevertheless,
though the university may
not actually give learning, it creates
a sentiment in favor of learning; it
develops almost unconsciously a
taste for it. One may say that it
is next to impossible for any man
to go through college without taking
in some sense of classical culture—through
the pores, as it were—which
shall ever after give him a
feeling of companionship, a kind
of Freemasonry, with authors he
could never read. To have lived
among books, in an atmosphere of
books, is itself in some sort an education.

Now, with this feeling for learning
diffused throughout a great nation,
showing itself in its chief organs
of public opinion, in its selection
of public officers, and even to
some extent in its popular elections,
and centring above all in a
great city, the headquarters of all
the social, political, and literary
activity of the nation—its book-making,
book-branding, book-buying
centre—we come to see why
translations from the classics should
have more vogue across the water
than with us. If a cabinet minister
choose to beguile his leisure by
turning Aristophanes into English,
it is but fit that society, before having
him in to dinner, should know
something about it, if only to avoid
such a slip as is told of Catalani.
The <i>prima donna</i> was seated, as a
great compliment, next to Goethe
at a state dinner, but not knowing
the divine Wolfgang—or, indeed,
much of anything but some operatic
scores—gave her mind to the potage
rather than to the poet. A
friend nudged her: “Why do you
not talk to M. Goethe?” “I don’t
know him, and he’s stupid.”
“What! not know M. Goethe, the
celebrated author of the <i>Sorrows of
Werther</i>?” “The <i>Sorrows of Werther</i>!
.pn +1
Ah! M. Goethe,” cried the
<i>diva</i> with <i>empressement</i>, turning to
the great man, “how can I ever
thank you enough for your charming
<i>Sorrows of Werther</i>! I never
laughed so much at anything in
my life.” She had seen a parody
of that immortal work in a farce at
Paris. Here, when our cabinet minister
lets loose his intellectual surplus
on exposures of Popery, society
runs no great risk. Everybody
can talk a little Popery—an
easier subject, on the whole, to talk
or write about than Aristophanes;
and one knows pretty well what
our cabinet minister’s book is about
without the fatigue of failing to
read it.

Of the feeling we have mentioned
the taste for quotation in Parliamentary
debate is a good test.
An apt illustration from Horace or
Virgil had at one time almost the
force of an argument. “Pitt,” says
the late Lord Lytton, in the excellent
preface to his unrhymed version
of Horace’s <i>Odes</i>, “is said
never to have more carried away
the applause of the House of Commons
than when, likening England—then
engaged in a war tasking all
her resources—to that image of
Rome which Horace has placed in
the mouth of Hannibal, he exclaimed:

.pm verse-start
“'Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damna, per cœdes, ab ipso
  Ducit opes animumque ferro.’”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Even as the ilex, lopped by axes rude
Where, rich with dusky boughs, soars Algidus,
Through loss, through wounds receives
New gain, new life—yea, from the very steel.”

—Horat. <i>Carm.</i> iv. 4, Lord Lytton’s Trans.
.pm verse-end
.fn-

Pitt, indeed, is famous for such
felicities. In his speech on resigning
the chancellorship in 1782, after
claiming “to have used his best
endeavors to fulfil with integrity
every official engagement,” he continued:
“And with this consolation,
the loss of power, sir, and the loss of
fortune, though I affect not to despise,
I trust I shall soon be able
to forget.”

.pm verse-start
“Laudo manentem: si celeres quatit
Pennas, resigno quæ dedit ...
                ... probamque
Pauperiem sine dote quæro.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Constant I praise her, but resign
With equal mind her gifts.
When, swift deserting me and mine,
Her ready wing she lifts,
And, <i>wrapped up in my virtue</i>, wait
Fair Poverty’s undower’d estate.”

—Horat. <i>Carm.</i> iii. 29.
.pm verse-end

The original of the line italicized Pitt modestly
omitted.
.fn-

Sir Robert Walpole had worse
luck in attempting a like feat on
his retirement, made not so gracefully
in the shadow of a threatened
impeachment.

.pm verse-start
“Nil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culpæ,”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Conscious of no wrong done, no crime to pale at remembered.”

—Horat. <i>Ep.</i> 1. i.
.pm verse-end
.fn-

he quoted, and was at once taken
up by his rival, Pulteney, who offered
to bet him a guinea that the line
read <i>Nulla pallescere culpa</i>. Walpole
lost, and, tossing the coin to
Pulteney, the latter, before pocketing
it, held it up to the House with
the grim remark: “It is the first
money I have received from the
treasury for many years, and it
shall be the last.”

It may well be that there is less
of this sort of thing nowadays, when
Parliamentary illustrations, among
the younger members at least, seem
to be drawn more extensively
from natural history than from ancient
poetry. Yet it is but a few
years since Mr. Gladstone, on going
out of office, created a sensation in
his turn by his application of Virgil’s
fine line,

.pm verse-start
“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Rise from our ashes thou unknown, the predestined avenger.”
.pm verse-end
.fn-
.pn +1

We cannot very well imagine a
leading Congressman summoning
Horace to enforce his argument,
say, on the vital necessity to the
nation of repealing the Seventh
Commandment until such time as
his constituents at Podunk can
get enough of their neighbors’ currency
to make resumption and patriotism
convertible terms. Not
only would he be doubtful of being
understood, but he would be awed
by that practical-minded public
opinion at home which severely
discourages in its chosen representatives
such frivolities as unknown
tongues. He would see behind
the Speaker’s desk the grim phantom
of the honest Granger transfixing
him with a spectral finger, and
asking him in hollow tones if he
was sent to Congress to talk gibberish
or to get that little appropriation;
he would see the still
more appalling phantom of the local
editor grimly sharpening his
quill and squaring himself for another
of those savagely sarcastic
articles about our erudite Congressman,
who spends his time—the time
we pay for, etc.—muddling his
brains—the few brains, etc.—over
obsolete rubbish in the Congressional
Library, while he neglects his constituents’
interests and allows that
little bill, etc., etc. He sees all
this, and, instead of Horace, he
quotes Josh Billings, and everybody
is satisfied.

Now, this is not meant to the
dispraise of either the Congressman
or his constituents, but only to
show that here political is divided
from literary life in a way quite unknown
in England. The scholar
in politics is a fond illusion of
youthful enthusiasm. Our politicians
do not write; our literary
folks do not go to Congress. A
stray editor, to be sure, now and
then gets in, tumbling over, as it
were, from the Reporters’ Gallery,
or a flourish is made of sending
Mr. Motley or Prof. Lowell minister
to some foreign court; but these
are spasmodic exceptions, and usually
result in a way to confirm the
rule. We have no counterparts to
Disraeli, or Gladstone, or Mr. Lowe,
or Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or
the Duke of Argyle. Perhaps, however,
a new era is dawning with the
present Secretary of the Navy, who
spells his literature with a “P.”

We have said enough—the reader
may think more than enough—to
show why translations from the
classics should flourish better in
England than here, and also, by implication
at least, why of all classic
authors, with the one exception of
Homer, Horace and Virgil should
most have taken the translators’
attention. From one or other of
these are all the Parliamentary
quotations we have given; and it
is indeed, we believe, considered
what our English friends call “bad
form” to quote in debate any
other Latin or Greek. The cause
of this popularity it is easy to see.
Horace and Virgil, in the usual
college curriculum, are put into
the student’s hands just as he has
got over his initial struggles with
the language, and his mind is a
little freed to feel some of the
beauties as well as the difficulties
of the author—to know that the rose
has fragrance as well as thorns.
Homer, on the contrary, from his
comparative ease, comes much earlier
in the Greek course, and becomes
so much the more distasteful
to the learner as Greek is harder
than Latin; its very letters are
aliens to his eyes, its alphabet is a
place of briers and brambles. It is
hard to get over these early dislikes.
St. Augustine confesses a
.pn +1
hatred for Homer thus implanted
in his school-days which he could
never overcome, while he declares
Virgil to be the greatest and most
glorious of poets—a censure echoed
by Voltaire, who pronounced the
<i>Æneid, le plus beau monument qui
nous reste de toute l’antiquité</i>, and asserts
that if Homer produced Virgil,
it was his finest work.

Both in Virgil and Horace there
is much to captivate a youthful
mind and everything to keep the
affections won. The story of the
<i>Æneid</i> is not only full of life and
color and motion, with plenty of
fighting, which all boys love of
course, but, despite its later-discovered
want of a reasonable hero or
heroine, its episodes—the Trojan
horse and the sharp street-fight in
fallen Ilium, the mysterious journey
through the shades under a
spectral moon, the races in the
Fifth Book, the midnight scout of
Nisus and Euryalus, the plucky
young Iulus fleshing his maiden
shafts at the siege in Book Ninth,
the gallant onset and tragic fate of
the young champions Lausus and
Pallas—all are apt to take the boyish
imagination; and in older
years the haunting melody of the
verse, the pensive grace that suffuses
the telling of the story, renew
and rivet the early charm.

Horace, too, is full of matter that
even boyhood can taste and manhood
never tires of. The lovely bits
of rural landscape scattered like so
many cabinet pictures through the
odes—the sweltering cattle standing
knee-deep under the oak-boughs
in the pool of Bandusia,
the bickering, pine-arched rivulet
by whose side Dellius takes his
nooning; the sunny slopes of Lucretilis
dotted with sheep; the romantic
beauty of the Happy Isles—do
we not all recall the delight
we felt when these enchanting little
sketches first smiled on us
from the weary drudgery of Tacitus
and Thucydides like vistas of
fresh meadow and woodland and
cascade caught by the wayfarer
from the hot and dusty highway?
We did not so well relish then,
in that out-door time of life, the
warm little interiors that contrast
and set off these: the glowing fire-side
piled high with logs, made merry
with old Falernian, and laugh
and joke and friendly talk, while
the rain beats upon the roof and
the snow whirls about Soracte, and,
drawing closer to the cheery blaze,
we hug ourselves in the “tumultuous
privacy of storm”; the jolly
dinner-parties, where we help to
quiz Quinctius for his gravity or
chaff that harebrain Telephus out
of his affectation of wisdom; the
more sober feasts with Mæcenas
or Virgil at the little Sabine Farm—but
these, too, we soon get to
know, and linger over them with
fond familiarity. Then, too, we
win to the secret of that genial
though pagan philosophy which
comes home to the “business and
bosoms” of all of us, and whose
precepts are so pithily expressed
we cannot forget them if we would:
that there is a time when folly is
the truest wisdom; that he alone
is happy who is content with little;
that a wise man takes care of the
present and lets the future take
care of itself, because, as Cowley
puts it,

.pm verse-start
“When to future years thou extend’st thy cares,
Thou dealest in other men’s affairs”;
.pm verse-end

that we must pluck the blossom of
to-day, or we may never have a
chance at the morrow’s.

.pm verse-start
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  Old Time is still a-flying,”
.pm verse-end

says Herrick, a later Horace. As
.pn +1
we grow older and graver his sympathetic
companionship keeps pace
with us still, and in his deeper
tones there are hints which even
Christian civilization need not disdain
to add to its scheme of a lofty
and noble life.

So it is that England for three
centuries back—indeed, ever since
she began to have a literature to
house them in—has been trying to
naturalize and domesticate these
Roman poets. In this, however,
Virgil had nearly a century the
start of Horace, owing, no doubt, to
the nature of his great work, which
appealed to the romantic impulses
of that early time. Indeed, long
before either the <i>Æneid</i> or the <i>Iliad</i>
was generally known in Europe, the
stories of both had been made over
into the form of romances: the
former by Guillaume de Roy in
French, the latter by Guido de
Colonna in Spanish. De Roy’s
<i>Livre d’Eneidos</i>, translated into
English and printed by Caxton, “no
more resembles Virgil,” cries the
good Bishop of Dunkeld wrathfully,
“than the devil does St. Austin.”
It was probably to clear the fair
fame of his beloved poet that the
bishop brought out his own quaint
and spirited Scotch version in 1513.
The first complete English translation
came out in 1558; but in the
previous year appeared the Second
and Fourth Books, done into blank
verse by the Earl of Surrey, notable
as the first-known blank verse in
the language, unless we are to take
as such the unrhymed, alliterative
metre used by Longland in <i>The
Vision of Piers Ploughman</i>. It is
thought to have been Surrey’s design,
had he lived, to translate the
remaining books. Had he done so,
he would have added an ornament
to our literature.

As it is, the distinction of giving
the first full translation of the
<i>Æneid</i> to the language rests with
a Welshman—Dr. Thomas Phaer.
He himself, however, did only the
first nine books and part of the
Tenth; when dying, the work was
taken in hand and finished, with the
Thirteenth or supplementary book of
Maffeo Veggio, by another physician,
Dr. Thomas Twynne. English
doctors then and afterwards
seem to have had a propension towards
the Muse. Dr. Borde, Dr.
Thomas Campion (“Sweet Master
Campion”), and Dr. Thomas Lodge—they
seem to have had a propensity
to be named Thomas also—were
only the first of a long line of
tuneful leeches, ending with our
own Drs. Holmes and Joyce. Is
there any occult connection between
physic and Parnassus, between
rhyme and rhubarb, between
poetry and pills? and is Castaly a
medicinal spring? Phaer’s version,
which is printed in black-letter, is
in rhymed fourteen-syllable verse,
or “long Alexandrines”—a metre
which Chapman afterwards took
for his Homer, and to which Mr.
Morris, the latest translator of the
<i>Æneid</i>, has reverted.

The long Alexandrine has perhaps
as much right as any to be
called the English national metre
in the sense in which we call the
Saturnian verse the national metre
of the Latins. Chaucer took his
heroic couplet from the Italian or
French, and Surrey, no doubt, had
from the same source, or perhaps
the Spanish, the hint for his blank
verse. A curious parallel might be
drawn between Surrey and Ennius,
who, like him, introduced a new or
“strange metre—the Greek hexameter—and,
like him, by doing so revolutionized
the versification of his
country. Another point in common
is that each has been reproached
.pn +1
for his action. Ascham impliedly
finds fault with Surrey because
he did not choose hexameters or
unrhymed Alexandrines instead
of his unrhymed verse of ten or
eleven syllables; and certain of
those dreadful German scholars,
who know everything and a few
things besides, assure us that Ennius
dealt a fatal blow to Latin poetry
when he foisted on it a metre
unsuited to its genius. One
can hardly help speculating on the
result had Virgil had to content
himself with the <i>horridus numerus
Saturnius</i> as the vehicle of his tenderness
and elegance, or if Hamlet
had had to soliloquize in the metre
of Sternhold and Hopkins. Would
the rude instrument have cramped
the player, or would the genius of
the player have elevated the instrument?
As Macaulay points out,
the old nursery line,

.pm verse-start
“The queen is in her parlor eating bread and honey,”
.pm verse-end

is a perfect Saturnian verse on Terence’s
model:

.pm verse-start
“Dăbūnt mălūm Mĕtēllī Nævĭō pŏētæ.”
.pm verse-end

How would Mr. Gladstone’s menace,

.pm verse-start
“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,”
.pm verse-end

have sounded in that shape?
Should we recognize, do you think,
those

.pm verse-start
                        “Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty,”
.pm verse-end

done up in long Alexandrines or
in such hexameters as those of
Master Abraham Fraunce, which
moved Ben Jonson to dub him a
fool:

.pm verse-start
“Now had fiery Phlegon his dayes revolution ended,
And his snoring snout with salt waves all to be-washed,”
.pm verse-end

or even in Sidney’s or Spenser’s,
which were, in truth, little better?
No doubt Virgil and Shakspere, being
great poets, would have subdued
what they worked in to their own
artistic uses. Yet all the same let
us be thankful to the humbler artisans
who furnished to their hands
pipes fit for them to play on, and to
make such music as the world shall
never tire of hearing. It should
be added that the likeness between
the English and the Latin reformer
does not extend to the degree of
refinement attained by each. In
this respect Surrey is much the
more advanced. Ennius never
got over the barbarism of excessive
alliteration which seems to mark
the early metrical efforts of all
peoples.

.pm verse-start
“Sicut si quando vincleis venatica velox”;
“Sicut fortis equus spatio qui forte supremo”;
“Quai neque Dardaneis campeis potuere perire
Nec cum capta capei, nec cum combusta cremari.”
.pm verse-end

The last passage Virgil copied, as
he did many others, and it is instructive
to see how his more polished
taste tones down his predecessor’s
jingle:

.pm verse-start
¸           “Num Sigæis occumbere campis,
Num capti potuere capi? num incensa cremavit
Troja viros?”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Was there no dead man’s place for you on that Sigeian plain?
Had ye no might to wend as slaves? Gave Troy so poor a flame
To burn her men...?”
.pm verse-end

—<i>Æneid</i>, vii. 294 seq., Morris’ Trans. p. 175.
.fn-

Surrey’s blank verse has the
quaintness of his age, but not its
defects of taste. Martial, writing
about two centuries after Ennius,
sneers at him, much as Ennius
had sneered at his predecessor,
Nævius—he who lamented that
Latin poetry was to die with him!

.pm verse-start
“Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi Roma Marone.”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
“And Rome reads Ennius while Virgil lives!”
.fn-

Pope, writing nearly the same
length of time after Surrey, has
only praise for him: “Surrey, the
.pn +1
Grenville of a former age“—at
least, Pope meant it for praise.”

To return to Phaer. It may be of
interest to the reader to contrast the
manner of the earliest and latest
English translators of the <i>Æneid</i>.
Venus’ admonition to Æneas (ii.
607) is thus given by the Welsh
doctor:

.pm verse-start
“Then to thy parent’s hest take heede, dread not, my mind obey:
In yonder place where stones from stones and bildings huge to sway
Thou seest, and mixt with dust and smoke thicke stremes of reekings rise,
Himselfe the god Neptune that side doth furne in wonders wise:
With forke three tinde the wall vproots, foundations allto shakes;
And qvite from vnder soile the towne, with ground-works all uprakes.
On yonder side with Furies most, dame Juno fiercely stands,
The gates she keeps, and from the ships the Greekes, her friendly bands,
In armour girt she calles.
Lo! there againe where Pallas sits, on fortes and castle-towres,
With Gorgon’s eyes, in lightning cloudes enclosed, grim she lowres,
The father-god himself to Greekes their mightes and courage steres,
Himselfe against the Troyan blood both gods and armour reres.
Betake thee to thy flight, my sonne, thy labours’ ende procure,
I will thee never faile, but thee to resting-place assure.
She said, and through the darke night shade herselfe she drew from sight;
Appeare the grisly faces then, Troyes en’mies vgly dight.”
.pm verse-end

Mr. Morris gives it thus:

.pm verse-start
“And look to it no more afeard to be
Of what I bid, nor evermore thy mother’s word disown.
There where thou seest the great walls cleft and stone turn off from stone,
And seest the waves of smoke go by with mingled dust-cloud rolled,
There Neptune shakes the walls and stirs the foundings from their hold
With mighty trident, tumbling down the city from its base.
There by the Scæan gates again hath bitter Juno place
The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel,
Calls up her fellows from the ships.
Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o’er topmost burg on high,
All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky;
The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might
The Danaans, crying on the gods against the Dardan fight.
Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou mayst, and let thy toil be o’er;
I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father’s door.

“She spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured.
Then dreadful images show forth, great godheads are abroad,
The very haters of our Troy.”
.pm verse-end

The half-lines respond to the imperfect
verses in Virgil, which, in the
fashion of the Chinese tailor, both
Mr. Morris and his forerunner conscientiously
copy. Phaer has other
oddities, such as “Sybly” for Sibylla,
“lymbo” for Hades, “Dei Phobus”
for Deiphobus, and “Duke Æneas”;
while every book is wound up with
a <i>Deo Gratias</i> by way of colophon.
Let us hope it was not too fervently
echoed by his readers. Indeed,
Phaer’s version is better than its
fame.

“After the associated labors of
Phaer and Twynne,” says Warton in
his <i>History of English Poetry</i>, “it
is hard to say what could induce
Richard Stanihurst, a native of
Dublin, to translate the first four
books of the <i>Æneid</i> into English
hexameters.” The remark shows
less than the wonted perspicuity
of the historian of English poetry.
What induces any translation, except
the belief (the fond belief!)
that the work it aims to do has not
yet been done? Master Stanihurst,
like many other learned men then
and since, was firmly persuaded that
the hexameter was your only measure
for a translation of Virgil. But there
are hexameters and hexameters, and
Master Stanihurst’s were unluckily
of the other sort. A poet who proclaims
his intention to “chaunt manhood
and Garboiles,” and gives us

.pm verse-start
“With tentive list’ning each wight was settled in hark’ning”
.pm verse-end

for

.pm verse-start
“Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,”
.pm verse-end

or
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“You bid me, ô princesse, to scarifie a festered old sore”
.pm verse-end

as an equivalent for

.pm verse-start
“Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,”
.pm verse-end

must be content with “audience
fit though few.” Sir Philip Sidney
and Gabriel Harvey and a few other
choice spirits, all bitten with the
same flea, patted poor Stanihurst
on the back and told him that what
Nash called “his [and their] foul,
lumbring, boisterous, wallowing measures”
had “enriched and polished
their native tongue.” But the rest
of the world laughed with Nash, and
may still for that matter; for Stanihurst’s
version is full of conceits even
droller than Phaer’s. “Bedlamite”
for <i>furiatâ mente</i>, “Dandiprat hop-thumb”
for <i>parvulus</i>, Jupiter “bussing
his pretty, prating parrot”—<i>i.e.</i>,
Venus—and Priam girding on his
sword Morglay, are some of them.
The last shows how the glamour of
the Gothic romances, in which Virgil
figured sometimes as a magician—the
<i>Sortes Virgilianæ</i> long outlived
their origin—still hung about even
the learned, of whom Stanihurst
was indisputably one— “eruditissimus
ille nobilis” Camden calls him.
It may be interesting to add that
he was a Catholic, a friend of Campion
the martyr, and died in exile
because of it.

Stanihurst seems to have played
the part of horrible example to all
after-translators; for although Surrey’s
metre has been repeatedly used,
and Phaer’s of late by Mr. Morris,
and we might add by Prof.
Conington (for his octosyllabic verse
is but a variation of the Alexandrine,
which skipped capriciously from
twelve syllables to sixteen[#]), the
hexameter has never again, so far as
we know, been applied to rendering
the <i>Æneid</i>. Yet the measure which
in English goes by that name seems
far better adapted, <i>pace</i> Mr. Arnold,
to the pensive grace of Virgil than to
the grave majesty of Homer. It may
be true, as scholars contend, that it
by no means reproduces the effect of
the Greek or Roman hexameter, and
it may be equally true, as other
scholars tell us, that we have no
conception of what was the effect of
the Greek or Roman hexameter on
the Greek or Roman ear—though
the second objection might, in malicious
hands, prove an embarrassment
for the first. Yet as we read Homer
and Virgil there is no doubt that
hexameters can be—indeed, that
such have been—constructed which
do go far to reproduce the effect of
Homer and Virgil, according to the
modern reading, upon the modern
ear. Grant that this is an entirely
wrong effect; that either Homer or
Virgil, hearing his verses read in
modern fashion, would be sure to
clap hands to ear, and cry out in
an agony with Martial:

.fn #
See Warton, <i>Hist. E. P.</i> sec. 1.
.fn-

.pm verse-start
“Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus;
Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus”;[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“My piece you’ve been spouting! I ne’er should have known:
Next time, if you love me, do say it’s your own.”

                        —Mart. <i>Epigr.</i> i. 39.
.pm verse-end
.fn-

it is yet the only effect we are ever
likely to get until the day of judgment;
and what are you going to do
about it? Of course it is hopeless
to try to imitate Homer’s sonorous
harmonies—the καλὰ τὰ Ὁμήρον
ἔπη, as Maximus Tyrius calls
them, the lovely Homeric words—the
πολυφλοίς βοιο θαλάσσης and
ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο. It is not
in ours or any other tongue
but Homer’s own to do it. But
Mr. Arnold has shown that we can
imitate afar off his rhythm and metrical
effect, and why should we
not do that? If anybody can give
us hexameters that please the English
.pn +1
ear and make it fancy, without
being conscious of too much elongation,
that it is listening to the faintest
echo of Homer’s mighty lyre or
Virgil’s silver string, why, let us
have them, prithee, and a <i>fico</i> for
the grammarians.

In this desultory review of Virgilian
translators we mean to confine
ourselves to the <i>Æneid</i>; but we
may say in passing that the <i>Eclogues</i>
were, about 1587, put into unrhymed
Alexandrines by Abraham
Fleming, who thus nearly anticipated
the metre Prof. Newman, after
much experimenting, hit on as the
proper one to render Homer, and
which, as Prof. Marsh says, has the
disadvantage (or the merit?) to
American ears of suggesting our
own epic strain of <i>Yankee Doodle</i>.
Fleming, however, as will be seen
from the following quotation, taken
from the beginning of his Fourth
Eclogue, only dropped into our
national music occasionally:

.pm verse-start
“O Muses of Sicilian ile, let’s greater matters singe!
Shrubs, groves, and bushes lowe delight and please not every man.
If we do singe of woods, the woods be worthy of a consul.”
.pm verse-end

While Virgil was thus engrossing
the attention of Elizabethan scholars
Horace lay comparatively neglected,
although it was an era of
translation, as transitional periods in
the literature of a country are apt
to be. Nearly all the Latin poets
then extant were done into English
before the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and the Greek
series began sonorously with Chapman’s
Homer soon after. Even
that most perfect of all actual or
possible poets, as her courtiers called
her—Queen Elizabeth—tried her
hand at it in a translation of part
of the <i>Hercules Œteus</i> of Seneca.
But no complete version of Horace
seems to have appeared prior to
Creech’s towards the end of the
seventeenth century. In 1567,
however, Thomas Drant published
<i>Horace, his Arte of Poetrie, Pistles,
and Satyres Englished</i>. In his preface
is one quaint remark, to the
truth of which all Horatians will
bear witness: “Neyther any man
which can judge can judge it one
and the like laboure to translate
Horace and to make and translate
a love booke, a shril tragedie, or
a smooth and platleuyled poesye.
Thys I can truly say, of myne owne
experyence, that I can sooner translate
twelve verses out of the Greeke
Homer than sixe out of Horace.”

The first version of the <i>Odes</i> was
that of Sir Thomas Hawkins, about
1630. This, though it seems to
have been popular enough to go
through several editions, was far
from complete, the lighter odes
being omitted as being “too wanton
and loose.” Our own edition, which
is the fourth, dated 1638, contains
about two-thirds of the odes and
epodes. Here and there we find a
tolerably good verse:

.pm verse-start
“What man, what hero [Clio] wilt thou raise
With shrillest pipe or Lyra’s softer lays?
  What god whose name in sportive straine
  Echo will chaunt thee back againe?”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #
<i>Carm.</i> i. 12.
.fn-

This will compare not too disadvantageously
with the latest version—Lord
Lytton’s—which, indeed,
is not especially good:

.pm verse-start
“What man, what hero, or what god select’st thou,
Theme for sweet lyre or fife sonorous, Clio,
Whose honored name shall that gay sprite-voice, Echo,
      Hymn back rebounding?”
.pm verse-end

As a rule, however, Sir Thomas is
stiff—a fault common to almost all
translations of the easiest of lyrists
up to a much later period. Yet in
this century there were many versions
of single odes, epistles, and
satires, some of which have scarcely
ever been surpassed. Such, for instance,
.pn +1
were Ben Jonson’s rendering
of Ode IV. 1, <i>Ad Venerem</i>, and Milton’s
of I. 5, <i>Ad Pyrrhum</i>, severally
included by Mr. Theodore Martin
and Lord Lytton in their respective
versions as beyond their skill
to better; Dryden’s fine paraphrase
of III. 29, <i>To Mæcenas</i>, which Mr.
Martin, non sordidus auctor, pronounces
finer than the original; and,
on a lower plane, however, Roscommon’s
version of the <i>Art of Poetry</i>.
Of these, Milton’s has been said to
touch the high-water mark of translation,
and is indeed very elegant
and close.

Ben Jonson’s set translations are
often injured by a rigid strictness
which Horace might have warned
him against:

.pm verse-start
“Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres,”[#]
.pm verse-end

.fn #

.pm verse-start
“Nor word for word translate with painful care.”
      —Horat. <i>De Arte Poet.</i>, Francis’ Trans.
.pm verse-end
.fn-

and which evoked Dryden’s protest
against “the jaw-breaking translations
of Ben Jonson.” Yet even in
fetters he danced better than most;
and some of his translations, notably
the one mentioned above and
one of Martial, <i>Liber, amicorum
dulcissima cura tuorum</i>, it would be
hard to pick flaws in.

In Jonson’s day, however, there
was no mean between word-for-word
rendering and the loosest
paraphrase, until Denham laid
down something like the true rule
in his verses to Fanshawe on the
latter’s translation of Guarini:

.pm verse-start
“That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word for word and line for line....
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations, and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.”
.pm verse-end

Cowley, who translated largely
from Horace, runs to the opposite
extreme from Jonson: his versions
are as much too free as Jonson’s
are too close. Yet some of his
single lines are unmatched for felicity
and force:

.pm verse-start
“Hence ye profane, I hate ye all,
Both the great vulgar and the small”
.pm verse-end

(a phrase which has passed into a
proverb) for <i>Odi profanum vulgus
et arceo</i>; “The poor rich man’s
emphatically poor” for <i>Magnas inter
opes inops</i>; “From his toucht
mouth the wanton torment slips”
for <i>Fugientia captat Flumina</i>;
and, best of all, perhaps, “He
loves of homely littleness the
ease” for Martial’s <i>Sordidaque in
parvis otia rebus amet</i>—which shows
how a deft translator can, without
leaving his original, breathe into it,
so to speak, a beauty it scarcely
had—such lines as these make
us regret either that Cowley did not
translate more or that he was unable
to transfer to his own poetry
more of the same simple elegance of
thought and word.

All of Cowley’s contemporaries
were not so happy, however, as he
in their attempts to better Horace,
though many tried it. One of
them, Sir Edward Sherburne, claps
a periwig on Mt. Soracte:[#]

.fn #
Horat. <i>Carm.</i> i. 9. One of the best versions of
this ode is that of Allan Ramsay, in the Scotch
dialect.
.fn-

.pm verse-start
“Seest thou not how Soracte’s head
(For all his height) stands covered
With a white periwig of snow,
While the laboring woods below
Are hardly able to sustain
The weight of winter’s feathered rain?”
.pm verse-end

He had evidently been reading and,
with Dryden, admiring Sylvester’s
<i>Du Bartas</i>:

.pm verse-start
“And when the winter’s keener breath began
To crystallize the Baltic Ocean,
To glaze the lake, to bridle up the floods,
And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods.”
.pm verse-end

The conceited style then in
vogue was not well fitted to do justice
to Horace’s <i>simplex munditiis</i>,
.pn +1
although he was now universally
read and esteemed—“The next
best poet in the world to Virgil,”
Cowley calls him—and has left the
mark of his genial influence on all
the writers of the time. One finds
the Horatian sentiment running
like a golden thread through the
minor poetry of James and Charles
I., at times informing whole poems
with a pithiness of phrase and a
dignity which Horace might call
his own. Such are Marvell’s ode
on <i>The Return of Cromwell</i>, such
Shirley’s “The glories of our blood
and state” and “Victorious men
of earth, no more”—all three
among the finest productions of
their kind in the language.

After the Restoration the business
of translation was resumed
with vigor. Dryden in his Virgil,
and, somewhat later, Pope in his
Homer, set a fresh model which was
followed by all their successors until
Cowper’s Miltonic <i>Iliad</i> came
to break the spell and pave the way
to the modern style, which aims
to combine freedom with fidelity,
ease of manner with correctness of
meaning, and so far as possible to
reproduce the author himself, form
as well as matter. Creech’s Horace
was hardly a success, being stiff and
ungainly without being particularly
close, and, while showing in its
metre some sense of the poet’s
rhythmical grace, scarcely attempted
to render the characteristic delicacy
of his wording—that <i>curiosa
felicitas</i> we all have heard of. In
this—and indeed in every—respect
the version of Dr. Francis, which
came out about half a century later,
was greatly superior as a whole to
any previous one, and took with
Horatians a position the best of
its successors has found it hard to
shake. Indeed, with such of the
poet’s lovers as date from the golden
age of Consul Plancus, Francis
is still the paramount favorite, and
you will talk to them in vain of the
merits of Robinson or Lytton, of
Conington’s fluent ease or Martin’s
sprightly grace. Francis is in the
main faithful, generally pleasing,
and always respectable at least, but,
like most of his rivals, he lacks
a certain lightness of touch, an
airy gayety of treatment in the minor
odes which no one, we think, has
hit off so well as Mr. Theodore
Martin. They are, as that accomplished
writer says, in many instances
what would be called now
<i>vers de société</i>, and their chief value
rests in the poet’s inimitable charm
of manner. Unless some notion of
this can be given, the translator’s
labor is lost, and he offers his
readers but a withered posy from
which color and perfume alike are
fled.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=albap3
ALBA’S DREAM. | BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC. | PART III.
.sp 2
Gondriac had seen many strange
things come to pass of late years:
stupendous things, as when M. le
Marquis climbed up the cliff like a
common man to condole with old
Caboff; wonderful things, as when
M. le Marquis was rescued by old
Caboff in the storm; tragic things,
as when he went forth and died in
the place of young Caboff; but
nothing so untoward as this had
ever happened at Gondriac before:
M. le Marquis was going to marry
Alba. The wonder was both lessened
and heightened by the romantic
story concerning Alba’s
birth, which was spread through
the village simultaneously with the
announcement. The fatherless girl,
who had owned no name but Alba,
was the daughter of a nobleman,
who had been affianced by his
family to a great heiress, but who
fell in love with a penniless orphan
and married her secretly; a
few months after his marriage he
was ordered off to Egypt with Bonaparte
and was killed in his first
engagement. The young wife lived
to give birth to her child, and then
died, leaving it to the care of an
old friend of her mother, a childless
widow, whom the Revolution
had ruined, and who now gained
her bread by needlework. Virginie
accepted the charge, and adopted
as her own the little one, whose
sole provision was a pittance which
the father had been able to secure
to his wife as a dower. Her heart,
hungering for some one on whom
to lavish its great capacity for loving,
bestowed upon the baby more
than a mother’s tenderness; she
loved it with a love that seemed to
gather up into one passion all the
loves that a woman’s heart can
hold. She left the shelter of her
native place, where all had known
her from her childhood, and where,
in spite of her poverty, she held her
head high, and went to live at Gondriac,
where no old familiar face
would smile upon her, but where
her secret would be secure, and
none would know that she was not
Alba’s mother. This was the story
she told Hermann when he asked
her for Alba’s hand.

“I thought to let the secret die
with me,” she said, “and that the
child might have loved me to the
end as her own mother; but now
she must hear the truth. To me she
will always be my child, my very
own—as truly mine as if I had given
her birth.”

“Let her know nothing until she
is my wife, and then I will break it
to her,” replied the young lord;
“and I doubt but she will love you
more dearly still when she learns
the truth.”

Alba was very happy—so happy
at times that it was more than she
could bear; she would often heave
great sighs for very bliss as she sat
upon the rocks, her hand clasped
in Hermann’s.

“Why do you sigh, my Alba?”
he asked her once reproachfully.
“Are you afraid I shall not make
you happy?”

“I am afraid of being too happy;
.pn +1
I am so happy now that I
could die of it. And by and by,
when I am your wife, and you will
never leave me, and that all I used
to long for when I believed in fairies
shall be mine—I feel as if the
joy of it must kill me. Hermann,
we will try to be very good together,
will we not? We will do
our best to make everybody good
and happy. There shall be no
poor people here, and when they
are sick we will have a good doctor
to come and take care of them,
and I will go and nurse them myself.
I hope they will all love me.
Do you think they will? Sometimes
I am frightened lest they
shouldn’t care for me any more
when I am a great lady, living in a
castle.”

“You foolish child! They will
care ten times more for you then,”
said Hermann, “because you will
be able to do so much for them.”
Then, looking at her with a smile
at once tender and suspicious,
“What a greedy little thing it is for
love!” he said. “You can’t care
for me as I do for you, Alba, or
else my love would be enough for
you; I don’t long for anybody’s
love but yours.”

“It is not so much that as that
I long to make them happy,” explained
Alba; “and how can I do
that until I can make them love
me?”

They quarrelled over this philosophy
of hers, and then made
plans for the future.

“You will take me to see all the
beautiful places you have told me
of, will you not?” said Alba.

“I will take you round the world,
if you like it—that is, if you don’t
get tired of it before we are half
way.”

“Tired! with you? I should
never be tired—never, never, never.”
She repeated the word in a
low voice, as if speaking to herself,
while looking dreamily out over
the sea, where a ship, with her
white sails set, was drifting away
into the sunset.

“Where shall we go to first?”
said Hermann.

“To Egypt, I think; or perhaps
to Italy—I am dying to see the
city with the streets of water, and
Spain, where the palaces grow, and
Moorish temples; but let us go
first of all to Germany and see the
countries where you won the battles.
I should like that best. O
Hermann, Hermann! how happy we
shall be.” And then, as if her
heart were overfull of joy, she began
to sing. Hermann liked this
better. Those silent, rapturous
moods sometimes frightened him,
as if they were a demand for something
that he could not give. M.
de Gondriac was as much in love
as a man could be, and so far he
would have no difficulty in making
his wife’s happiness his chief concern;
but he was quite aware that
this was not to be achieved by the
usual commonplace means. Something
more than ordinary love, let
it be ever so tender and chivalrous,
was needed to satisfy the cravings
of a heart like Alba’s. She worshipped
him as the noblest of men; and
it was no easy thing to realize this
ideal. Would he be able to achieve
it, to live up to her exalted standard
through the coming years,
when the glamour of young love’s
idealizing mists should have cleared
away, and his wife would be at leisure
to observe him with her clear,
intelligent eyes?

But a cloud was gathering over
these sunny days of courtship. M.
de Gondriac was summoned to Paris
by the chief of the War Office.
The call, of course, brooked no delay.
.pn +1
His arm, though nearly healed,
still incapacitated him from
joining his regiment; but he must
go in person and certify to this.
Though they might admit him unfit
for active service, he might be
retained in attendance on the emperor;
Bonaparte liked to have
high-sounding names upon his personal
staff. But Hermann would
not alarm Alba by suggesting this
possibility. They parted in sweet
sorrow, looking forward to meeting
soon again.

Alas! is it a decree of fate that
the course of true love never shall
run smooth? Are poets prophets,
or do the loves of all humanity conspire
to make their voice an oracle?
The days went by, and Alba waited;
but Hermann neither came nor
wrote, and they could get no tidings
of him. Had he been ordered
to the frontier, in spite of his disabled
arm, and killed or taken prisoner?
Doubts crowded upon Alba’s
heart until they almost stopped
its pulses. But Virginie feared
even worse than this, and, if her
fears were true, there was no comfort
in store. M. de Gondriac had
felt strong enough to brave the emperor’s
displeasure at a distance;
but how when he stood face to face
with it, with the power of that magnetic
will, with the ridicule of his
equals, with the blandishments of
refined court ladies? Was his love
of the metal to challenge these antagonistic
forces and prevail?

Spring passed, and summer, and
now it was harvest-time; the reapers
waded through the yellow fields,
the sickle was singing in the corn,
the grapes hung heavy on the vine.
But no news came from Hermann.
Alba pined and drooped, and at
last fell ill. The doctor came from
X—— and saw her, and said that
it would be nothing; it was weakness
and oppression on the heart;
she wanted care and nourishment.
But no care revived her. She grew
weaker and weaker, and the low
fever came, and there was no
strength left to battle with it. But
Virginie would not see the danger;
when the neighbors came for news,
she would answer, with a smile on
her wan face: “Thank God! no
worse. The child is very weak; but
last night she slept a little.” Thus
twenty days went by, and then
there came a change, and on the
twenty-first day, as the Vesper bell
was tolling, the <i>curé</i> came, and Alba
was anointed as a bride for heaven.
The old man wept like a child
as he blessed her and departed.
“God comfort you, Mère Virginie!”
he said, laying his hand heavily on
the mother’s head. But Virginie
was like one in whom the faculty of
pain or of despair was paralyzed.
“She will not die, M. le Curé. God
is merciful; his heart is kind,” she
said. When the sun was going
down, Alba spoke: “Mother, bring
me his picture and the pearls he
gave me; I should like to wear
them once before I go....” They
brought the pearls and decked her
in them; they smoothed back the
moist, dark hair and crowned her
with the queenly coronet; they
clasped the necklace round her
throat and the bracelets on her
arms, while she lay quite passive,
as if unconscious of what they were
doing. Never had she looked so
beautiful as at this hour in the
deepening twilight, with the shadow
of death stealing on her and touching
her features with a celestial
pathos. Virginie could not but see
it now. Alba was going from her.
But, no! it should not be. No,
there was a God in heaven, a merciful,
all-powerful God; it should
not be. He would save her child
.pn +1
even at this extremity. She had
not cried to him loud enough before,
but now she would cry and he
should hear her, now that she knew
how dire was her need of him. She
knelt down at a little distance from
the bed and began to pray. It was
terrible to see her; to see how despair
and faith wrestled within her.
The agony of the strife was visible
in her face; it was pale as death,
and the big drops stood upon her
brow, that was contracted as by
breathless pain; her eyes were
open, fixed in a rigid stare as on
some unseen presence; her white
lips, drawn in, were slightly parted,
as if to let the words escape that
she could not articulate; her hands
were locked together, bloodless
from the fierce grip of the fingers.
Old Jeanne cowered in the corner
as she watched her.

An hour went by. The tide was
coming in; the waves were washing
on the shore with the old familiar
sound. The moon rose and
stirred the shadows on the plain;
its light stole through the latticed
window and overflowed in a silver
stream upon the bed, illuminating
it like a shrine in the darkened
chamber.

“Mother!” murmured Alba
faintly.

“My child!”

“Kiss me, mother.... I am
going....”

“Alba! my child!... O God!
O God! have pity on me....”

But Alba had passed beyond the
mother’s voice.

.tb

There are cries, we sometimes
say, that might wake the dead—cries
that sound like a disembodied
spirit, as if a human soul had broken
loose with all its terrors and hopes
and concentrated life of love and
agony, and, escaping in a voice,
traversed the void of space and
pierced into the life beyond. Those
who have heard that cry will remember
the silence that followed
it—a silence like no other, infinite,
death-like, as if the pulse of time
stood still, hearkening for the echo
on the other side.

The neighbors came and grieved.
“How beautiful she is!” they whispered
to one another, as they stood
by the couch where Alba lay smiling
in her death-sleep and decked in
her bridal pearls. “No wonder our
young lord loved her. How strange
that he should have left her! Has
she died of love, I wonder?”
Many thought more of Virginie
than of Alba. “She will die of
grief,” they said. For Virginie had
not shed a tear, not uttered one
wail of lamentation, since that great
cry that followed Alba into the dark
beyond. She and Jeanne had arrayed
her in her bridal dress—those
splendid robes of silk and lace
which her lover in his pride had
prepared for her; it was a foolish
fancy, but the mother, remembering
how her lost one had loved
these splendors, seemed filled with
a vague idea that they might even
now give her some pleasure. When
this was done she sat with her
hands lying loosely locked together
on her knees, gazing on the dead
face, as mute and motionless as if
she were dead herself. Yet some
said they noticed a strange look
like a gleam of disbelief in her eyes
now and then, as if she thought
death but mocked her with some
kind intent.

The night and the day passed,
and the night again, and to-day at
noon the dead bride was to be
borne away. Friends crowded in
for a last look; then, as the hour
drew near, there was a movement
without, a sound of voices chanting
.pn +1
in the distance, the tramp of feet
approaching, and they knew it was
time for them to go. But Virginie
still sat there, pallid, immovable,
like a statue set up to stir pity
and reverence in the hearts of the
beholders. Mme. Caboff laid a
hand upon her arm and pressed
her gently to come away. “The
child is not dead, but sleepeth,”
she said; “take comfort in that
thought.”

Then Virginie rose like one
waking from a trance, and that
strange gleam of disbelief which
some had noticed in her eyes was
now visible to all. “Go ye away,
my friends,” she said, “and leave
me here awhile with my child and
God.” There was no murmur of
dissuasion, though many thought
that grief had made her mad; the
majesty of grief subdued them to
obedience, and one by one they
passed out of the room in silence.

Then Virginie knelt down and
lifted up her voice in a last supreme
appeal to God.

“She is not dead, but sleepeth!
Was that a message from thee,
Lord? Thou hast whispered it to
my heart before. And what if she
were dead—are not death and sleep
alike to thee? Canst thou not
wake from one as easily as from
the other? She is not dead, but
sleepeth! When the Jews laughed
thee to scorn, thou didst glorify thy
Father and raise the dead girl to
life again, and all the people blessed
thee. Thou didst pity the widow
and restore her son, though she
knew not of thy presence nor believed
in thee. Wilt thou be less
pitiful to me, who believe and cry to
thee? Son of David, look down upon
me, have pity upon me, and awake
my child! She is not dead, but sleepeth.
Canst thou not wake her from
this sleep as readily as thou didst
raise Lazarus from the grave where
he had lain four days? Christ crucified!
Redeemer! Saviour! Father!
hearken to my prayer and
have mercy on me! By thy pity for
the widow, and for Lazarus’ sisters,
and for thy own Mother at the foot
of the cross, and for John and
Magdalen, and for thy murderers,
have pity on me and call back my
child! She is not dead, but sleepeth.
Father! by the birth of thy
dear Son, by his thirty-three years’
toil and poverty, by his bloody
sweat, by his scourging, by the
nails that were hammered into his
hands and feet, by the lance that
cut into his heart, by his death and
sleep in the sepulchre, by his victory
over the grave, by his resurrection
and his reign of glory at thy
right hand, hear me and give me
back my child! She is not dead,
but sleepeth. Lord! I believe in
thy name, I believe in thy love, I
believe in thy mercy and omnipotence.
I believe; O God! help
thou my unbelief. The child is not
dead, but sleepeth.”

She rose from her knees, and,
pressing the crucifix with one hand
on the breast of the dead, she held
the other uplifted with priest-like
solemnity. There was a pause of
intense and awful silence; the
chanting without had ceased; every
ear was strained, every heart stood
still, listening to the prayer they
dared not say <i>amen</i> to. Then
Virginie’s voice arose again, sounding
not like hers, but rather like a
voice that came from some depth
of life within, beyond her, and
making the mute void vibrate to its
solemn tones: “<i>Alba! in the name
of the living God, awake!</i>...”

Then silence closed upon her
speech, and every pulse was stilled
to a deeper hush.... The white
lids quivered, the sleeper’s breast
.pn +1
heaved beneath the pressure of the
cross, sending forth a soft, long sigh,
and Alba was awake.

“Mother!”

And now a cry arose from without
the cottage which must surely
have been heard in heaven; for the
rocks took it up and bore it out to
sea, and the waves rolled it back to
the reverberating shore, and deep
called unto deep, and louder and
louder it rose and rang, until it
thrilled the welkin, and heaven sent
back to earth the shout of jubilee
and praise.

But there was one who did not
join in it. When the first ecstasy of
her thanksgiving was past, and Virginie
had clasped the loved one in
her arms, and felt the warm blood
returning to the cold lips under her
kisses, she saw that Alba was like
one whose spirit was not there; her
eyes were open in a wide, intense
gaze, as if straining to see beyond
their ken, her ears were deaf to the
sounds around her, hearkening for
a voice that others could not hear.

“My child, my darling, let us
give thanks together!” Virginie
said when they were once more
alone. But Alba turned her eyes
upon her mother with that far-off
gaze that seemed to reach beyond
the veil. “Mother,” she said,
speaking in low, fearful tones—“mother,
why did you call me
back? Did you not know I was
with God? I was with God,”
she continued in the same hushed
tones; “I was in heaven with the
angels and all the blessed ones, so
full of happiness that I have no
words to speak of it.”

“Tell me what you saw, my
child. It was a dream; but God
sometimes gives us visions in a
dream.”

“It was no dream, mother. I
was dead. My soul had left my
body and taken flight into eternity.
I stood before the throne and saw
the vision of God. But of this I
cannot speak.”

Alba paused like one whom reverence
made dumb, and then continued:
“I sang. O the joy of
victory that thrilled through me as
I lifted up my voice, and heard it
amongst all the voices of the blessed!
That was the wonder. Voice
upon voice uprose, till all the hosts
of heaven were singing, and yet
you heard each singer distinct from
all the rest; each voice was different,
as star differeth from star when
all are shining. And there was
room in the vast space for silence.
I heard the silence, deep, palpitating,
as when we hold our breath
to listen, and I heard the songs as
they rolled out in full organic numbers
from the countless choir. I
heard my own voice, clear and
sweet and loud like the clarion of
an archangel; thousands of nightingales
singing as one bird in the
stillness of the summer night were
nothing to it! And then the joy of
recognition and of love—the very air
was warm with love. Every spirit
in the angelic host—the saints, the
prophets of the old law, the martyrs
and confessors and virgins—all
loved me and knew me with an individual
knowledge, and I knew
them. And—I know not how it
was—though all were resting in a
halcyon peace, none were idle;
they were busy at some task in
which the faculties of mind and
soul, new-born and glorified and
quickened a thousand-fold, were
eagerly engaged. I seemed to see
that they were governing the world
and caring for the souls of men—of
those chiefly whom they loved on
earth. For this I know: that no
true bond is broken by death; the
loves of time live on into eternity;
.pn +1
the sorrows of earth are felt and
pitied up in heaven, and the blessed
clasp us in their cherishing sympathies
closer than they did on
earth. For the life in heaven is
manifold, and, while the blessed
citizens toiled, and sang as if their
very being were dissolving into music,
their souls were dwelling in the
light of the vision of God, feeding
on its beauty in unbroken contemplation.
All was activity, and a
fulness of life compared to which
our life is death, yet all was steeped
in peace, in rest unutterable. O
mother! why did you call me back
from it?”

“It was a dream, my child; your
soul was in a trance; perhaps it
was at my prayer God woke you
from it in time. But, Alba, are you
not glad to be with me again? It
seems to me that even in heaven I
should have missed you!”

“I did not feel that I was parted
from you; you seemed nearer to
me there than when I was on earth.
But, mother, I saw standing near
the martyrs, yet not of them, a soul
arrayed in crimson—that flaming
light that I call crimson, not knowing
its real name—and she stretched
forth her arms to greet me with
a greater joy than all the rest, and
she called herself my mother?”

Virginie’s heart stood still. Had
heaven betrayed her secret? If so,
it were vain to try to hide it any
longer. She told the truth to Alba.
“And now,” she said, “you will
love that mother in heaven better
than you love me!” There was a
look of humble, beseeching misery
in her face as she said this that
was most pitiful. But Alba did
not answer; that far-off gaze
was in her eyes again. At last,
slowly turning them upon Virginie,
she said: “Now I can understand
why you called me back. If you
had been my real mother you
would have let me go; your love
would have been brave enough to
part with me, to suffer when you
knew that I was happy.”

There was no anger in her voice,
no reproach in her look; but the
words held the bitterness of death
to Virginie, and pierced her heart
like blades of poisoned steel.

.tb

The mystery of the young
lord’s silence ceased to occupy
the first place in local gossip, now
that a more exciting theme had
been provided, but it held its place
in Virginie’s mind and was seldom
out of her thoughts.

“Would it not be a great joy to
you to see him again?” she said to
Alba.

“I should be glad of it, mother;
but the time is so short it matters
little whether I see him here or
not.”

“You never loved him, Alba.”

“I loved him with my whole
soul; I loved him too well. I would
have died for love of him.”

She had died for love of him, the
mother thought.

“And yet you do not care to see
him again?”

“I am satisfied to wait until we
meet in heaven.”

The spark was dead; it was useless
trying to blow the cold ashes into
a flame. Virginie devoured her
heart in uncomplaining silence. If
Alba’s reproach was merited, if
her love had been at fault, tainted
in its origin with egotism and cowardice,
then it was meet that she
should suffer and expiate the sin.

But Hermann, meantime, was on
his way to Gondriac. He had not
been killed or wounded or faithless;
he had been confined at Vincennes
by order of the emperor, in
hopes that solitude might help him
.pn +1
to see the folly of this intended
marriage, and bend his stubborn
fancy to the reasonable will of his
imperial master. The experiment
had failed. The emperor was dethroned,
a captive now himself, and
M. de Gondriac was free and speeding
on the wings of love to claim
the reward of his fidelity.

Before he reached the cottage
on the cliff he had learned the
story of Alba’s—resurrection, was
it?—of her having passed in spirit
through the gates of death, and
come back to life so changed men
hardly knew her for the same.
“It was a trance,” the <i>curé</i> said,
when Hermann stopped on the
road to take his greeting.

“It was death, monseigneur,”
said the fishermen who gathered
round his saddle-bow. “She died
of love, and the mother’s prayer
called her back to life; but the
child left her heart in heaven and
pines to be gone again.”

Hermann sent his horse on to
the castle and made his way up
the cliff, pondering this strange
story. She had died of love of
him, they said in their simple superstition,
and was pining to die
again. Sweet Alba! He would
make her life such a paradise of
love that she should have no reason
to regret her glimpse of heaven.
As he drew near the low,
thatched cottage the purr of Virginie’s
spinning-wheel came to him
with the old familiar welcome.
He opened the door and entered
unannounced.

“Monseigneur!” She dropped
her yarn with a cry.

The glad surprise subsided, Hermann
in a few words explained all,
and then heard the details of the
wonderful tale Virginie had to
tell.

“You will find her somewhere
on the rocks,” she said. “It may
be that the sudden sight of you will
startle her dead heart into life and
bring back a thrill of the old happiness;
if not, I pray God to take
her to himself, for the sight of the
child’s patient misery is killing
me.”

But M. de Gondriac had no such
dismal apprehensions as he went
out to seek his beautiful one. How
would she meet him? Would it
be with the old shy glance of pleasure,
giving him her hand to kiss,
and forbidding any tenderer caress
by that air of virgin pride that sat
on her so queenly? Or would joy
break down the barriers and send
her bounding into his arms? He
trod the sandy grass with a quick,
strong step, but the sound of his
footfalls fell upon her ear unheeded;
she sat motionless, with her
face set towards the sea till he was
at her side.

“Alba!”

Then she looked up, and a pale
blush, faint as the heart of a white
rose, clouded her face.

“Hermann!”

He caught her in his arms and
kissed her, and she took his caress
as she might have done a brother’s.
The placid tenderness of her manner
chilled him.

“Alba! my wife! You are glad to
see me back again!” he said, still
holding her close to him and looking
into her eyes for some answering
sigh, some flash of the old coy,
shrinking fondness; but they looked
back into his limpid, calm, passionless
as a dove’s. She smiled and lifted
up her face to kiss him. He bent
down to receive it, but that proffered
kiss was like the iron entering
into his soul. The Alba whom he
had left was not here; she had
gone, he knew not whither, and in
her place another being had come—a
.pn +1
shadow of the woman who had
loved him with all a woman’s tenderness.
He sat down beside her
and related the history of his life
since they had parted, all he had
suffered for her sake, and how light
he held the suffering now that the
reward was his; and she listened
calmly, and spoke her gratitude
with a gentle humility that was
very touching. Then they were
silent for a while, Alba apparently
not caring to speak, Hermann
longing to do so, but not daring to
say what his mind was full of. At
last Alba broke the spell.

“You know that I was dead,”
she said; “I should be in heaven
now, if mother had not called me
back.”

“My darling! I will make a
heaven for you on earth.”

“I once thought that was possible.
I thought that heaven could
give me nothing better than your
love; but now I know that all the
love of earth is but a shadow, a
mockery compared to the love of
heaven. It is nothing, nothing beside
it! O Hermann! when we
talk of happiness we are like blind
fools. We don’t know what happiness
means.”

“Alba! you have ceased to love
me, or you would not speak so!”

“I love you as well as ever—nay,
better than I did before; but, O
Hermann! I should have loved you
so infinitely better up in heaven.
If you knew what the life of love is
there!”

She clasped her hands, and her
dark eyes shone with a supernatural
light, as if the brightness of glory,
invisible to him, were reflected
there.

“You will tell me about it, darling,
but not now,” he said, a terrible
dread seizing him. “I want
you to think of me a little now, and
not so much of heaven. We must
fix our wedding-day; it shall be
soon, shall it not? There is no
need for any delay.”

“No, there is no need,” she repeated.
Then, after a pause, she
said, looking calmly into his face:
“Hermann, why should we not
wait to wed one another in heaven?”

“There is no marrying or giving
in marriage there,” he replied: but
he had grown ashy pale, and the
chill of a horrible fear was in his
heart, deepening with every word
that Alba spoke.

“You are angry with me,” she
said, misunderstanding his pallor
and the changed expression of his
face. “O Hermann! don’t think
that I have ceased to love you. I
love you with all my heart. I have
never loved any one, never could
love any one, but you. Say you
are not angry with me!”

“No, darling, I am not angry;
but I thought we were to be so
happy together, and I see that you
are changed. But, Alba, I will not
hold you to your promise; you
shall not marry me unless you wish
it.”

“I do wish it. I wish to make
you happy. I have no other wish
on earth now.”

He kissed her without answering,
and they went home.

The terrible fear which for a moment
possessed him was soon dispelled.
Alba was not mad. Whatever
was the mysterious change that had
come over her, her reason was unimpaired.
But all else was changed:
the conditions of life had become
reversed, the spiritual relations
between the seen and the unseen
were in some way disturbed,
and things thrown out of their natural
proportion. But the nature of
the experience by which this change
had been wrought eluded Hermann’s
.pn +1
grasp, baffling reason while
it compelled belief. Belief in
what? Had Alba’s spirit, infringing
the laws that rule our mortal
state, broken loose from its prison,
and been permitted to stand before
the gates of pearl and taste of
those joys which it hath not entered
into the heart of man to conceive,
and then been sent back to
earth, home-sick as an exiled angel?
Was this thing possible? Is anything
not possible to Him who bids
the lilies blow and the stars shine,
and who holds the sea in the hollow
of his hand? Hermann de Gondriac
did not stop to investigate
the mystery. His was one of those
human souls whose deepest convictions
lie dormant in their depths,
not only unanalyzed but unrecognized,
for want of a voice to question
them. He loved Alba, and
he would trust to his love to mend
the broken spring and reconcile to
the happiness of earth this heart
enamored by the bliss of heaven.

.tb

The wedding-day rose bright
and fair; a golden glow was on
the flood; the sun shone on the
breakers, turning the green to sapphire
blue, while the tide flowed
in, swelling the anthem of the
dawn; the yellow woods round
Alba’s home glistened like a golden
zone, fit symbol of the enchanted
life awaiting her within their magic
ring. No sad Vesper bell was tolling;
merrily the silver-footed
chimes, like messengers of joy,
tripped on to meet her on the
morning air, as she came forth,
once more arrayed in bridal pearls.
A train of little children, clad in
white and piping canticles, went
on before, strewing flowers upon
her path.

Pale as a lily in her snow-white
robes was Alba, her dark eyes
glowing with a light that was most
beautiful; and when the bridegroom
turned to greet her at the
altar, her smile, they said, was like
the smile of an angel.

The wedding rite began; the
ring was passed, the solemn words
were spoken: “<i>Until death do
part ye....</i>” Then Alba, with a
cry of joy, as when we greet some
vision of delight, fell forward and
was caught in Hermann’s arms.

“Farewell, beloved!... Mother,
farewell!...”

“Alba! my wife! O God! can
it be possible?...”

But loud above the lover’s wail
and that of all the people Virginie’s
voice was heard in tones more
of jubilee than lamentation: “Thy
will be done, O Lord! Blessed be
the name of the Lord!”

.tb

That night the moon rose late;
the sea-gulls, poised above the
purple flood, heard the waves wash
softly on the noiseless shore; the
stars came out and looked into
the shining sea below; the rocks
gleamed white as snow-peaks in
the moonlight, and all the land lay
listening to the silver silence.
From out its depths a voice was
calling, though only those who
hearkened heard it, and the voice
said: “Thou shalt see His face, ...
and night shall be no more, and
they shall not need the light of the
lamp, nor the light of the sun, because
the Lord God shall enlighten
them, and they shall reign for ever
and ever.”

THE END.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=italy
ITALY. | WRITTEN AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Amid those shining ways of Italy
  I thought of one who walks with bandaged eyes,
  Led by some loving guide who, in sweet guise
Of eloquent speech, makes blinded vision see
The very lines that make tall towers fair,
  The peaceful saints that guard cathedral door—
  In death still keeping watch the people o’er—
Lifting tired souls to holy heights of prayer.
Even frail nest familiar form doth wear
  Built far above upon the shoulders broad
  Of sculptured friar, bearing light the load
His brother birds give, trustful, in his care.
So, poet-led, seemeth scarce need of eyes,
Pictured earth’s loveliness in words so wise.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The blinded wanderer sees the far-off light
  Of shadowy Alp, and his the lingering glow
  That breathes in western skies along the low
And gleaming marshes darkening with the night.
Not bluer to fond eyes that see most clear
  Are Naples’ waves than break they in his sight;
  Nor floats St. Peter’s dome in softer light,
Seen from the Pincian, than its image fair
Rests in the pilgrim’s heart that in Rome sings
  Its <i>Nunc dimittis</i>, whether it hold dear
  For Brutus’ sake the city, or revere
The holier presence shadowing with strong wings
The mighty one, earth’s new Jerusalem,
Whose virtue fills her very garment’s hem.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
III.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
He sees the shadows o’er the valley creep—
  Nay, even knows he, through his guide’s clear speech,
  Where, at each hour, the ilex shade shall reach.
Though blinded, he can feel the sunshine steep
.pn +1
The hill he climbs; fair Italy’s soft air
  Grow yet more soft with pity for poor eyes
  That only feel the brightness of her skies,
Not know the infinite depths that glisten there.
And quick his ears catch sound of falling stream,
  Twitter of leaves in Vallombrosan woods,
  Bird-carol flung from chestnut solitudes;
While soft-voiced waves, like music in a dream,
Now tread with rippling touch Sorrento’s shore,
Now rise and fall Venetian stairway o’er.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
IV.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
He hears in Roman mouth the Tuscan speech;
  Hears Naples chant the light of Syracuse,
  Siena’s tongue, in guileless praise let loose,
In its pure utterance ancient glory teach.
And tells the poet to the wondering heart
  Old histories of older Latin days;
  Of distraught Italy’s sad, stormy ways
When feud and treason tore her sons apart,
When Dante ate the exile’s bitter bread,
  When eagles dark swept down upon the land,
  And lilies white, that should all stain withstand,
With deeds unworthy were discolorèd.
While from the Vaudois’ shivering mountain crown
The echoes of their bard-sung wars sweep down.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
V.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Singeth the poet of still nearer days
  When all the little lands fade one by one,
  Like wan stars melting 'neath Sardinia’s sun—
While, for her crowning, 'mid the strangers’ praise,
Hastes Italy unto the Capitol.
  Life of her sons laid down for her new life,
  Maidens their soldiers arming for the strife,
Weeping the field where love and banner fall.
Sings he of carbine and of bayonet
  That gleam and darken on Perugian hills,
  Of sorrow that a frightened city fills,
And priestly robe with blood defenceless wet.
White Roman robe earth’s shadow marketh dark—
World-licensed target for the poets’ mark!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VI.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The pilgrim hearkens to his guide’s strong words,
  Basks in their sunshine, thanketh for their dew,
  Yet wonders, could his eyes behold the blue
As well as ears can mark the song of birds,
.pn +1
If something still he lacks he might not find—
  Some perfect key of heavenly harmony
  That should attune all sad discordancy,
In true accord the clashing fragments bind.
Soft fall the <i>Angelus</i> bells on listening ear,
  The <i>Miserere</i>, in distress divine,
  Wails from the heart of city Leonine.
Feels he the light that makes his darkness clear,
Grasps he the chord of pure and infinite blue
His picture lacks to make its color true.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VII.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
So, poet-led, I trod Italian ways,
  Seeing the glimmer of pale olive-trees,
  Drifting, entranced, o’er warm Sicilian seas,
Hearkening Siena’s perfect speech of praise,
Drinking of Trevi’s fountain, o’er and o’er,
  Yet craving ever something still more rare,
  Some gift of grace that Italy must wear
To make her so the heart’s-best evermore;
Some crown above her hills, than her blue seas
  More luminous, beyond her painters’ fame,
  Or passionate poets’ soaring words of flame,
More than all proudest earthly destinies.
So drowned, amid the peal of Saxon bells,
Thought of that life wherein her true soul dwells.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.h4
VIII.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Seemed it as if the poet built a shrine—
  Lifting its towers in the radiant air
  The doves might haunt to make it seem more fair,
Lifting its columns that an art divine
With watching saints should crown, setting its floor
  In firm mosaic, where, alas! inwrought
  Should forms misshapen of ungentle thought
Sadden the Roman sunshine wandering o’er,
That, creeping onward, still should hope to kiss
  The gladder sunshine of St. Philip’s feet.
  Heaped high the altar with all flowers sweet—
Rich Italy’s unstinted loveliness—
Kindled the lamp before the inmost shrine,
Withheld the presence of the Guest Divine!
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=lavedan
THE SEVEN VALLEYS OF THE LAVEDAN.
.sp 2
On the 4th of July, 1876—the
day after the coronation of Notre
Dame de Lourdes, <i>la plus noble
dame qui fut jamais</i>, to use the
expression of an old chronicler—we
set out for the springs of Cauterets.
South of Lourdes the
mountains seem to stand apart to
afford a passage to the headlong
Gave. Here begins the Lavedan,
the old <i>Pagus Lavitanensis</i>, which
comprises seven valleys that extend
to the very frontier of Spain. This
was the ancient country of the
Sotiates, who were famous for their
horsemanship, as Lavedan has always
been for its horses. In the middle
ages it became a vicomté, which
dated from the early Carlovingians
and flourished for more than
seven centuries. The vicomtes
of Lavedan figured in all the great
wars of their time, particularly
against the Moors in Spain, and
became so powerful as to defy the
Count of Bigorre, their own liege
lord. They displayed great valor,
too, against the English, who for
sixty years held the citadel of
Lourdes that commanded the entrance
to their valleys, as well as
several fastnesses among the
mountains. We find members of
their race among the bishops, abbots,
and Knights-Templars of the
province, as if able in every path
of life to assert their capacity.
The last of the old lords fought
with Dunois the brave under the
banner of Joan of Arc at Orleans.
His only grandchild married
Charles de Bourbon, a favorite of
Henry IV.’s. The glory of this
family, however, is mostly confined
to the Pyrenees, and might never
have come down to modern times
had it not been for the faithful
chroniclers of the Lavedan
monasteries. It is, in fact, first
mentioned in 945 in a cartulary
of the abbey of St. Savin, of which
it was a benefactor.

Hardly had we entered the valley
of the Lavedan before we saw,
on an isolated mount at the left,
the dismantled tower of Hieou, one
of the signal-towers that, in times
of border warfare, used to transmit
messages from the Spanish frontier
to the heart of France. The
shores of the Gave were deliciously
fresh, but the mountains on both
sides are at first treeless and uninteresting.
Nothing grows on them
but the purple heather, and patches
of odorous shrubs that perfume
the valley. Here and there on
their sides are great heaps of black
slate from the numerous quarries.
But these mountains have a certain
austere charm of their own, not unbefitting
sentinels that guard the
approaches to the grotto of the
Virgin. We passed group after
group of pilgrims returning from
the recent celebration, with red
crosses fastened to their breasts, or
blue-and-white badges of the Immaculate
Conception, saying their
rosaries or singing a hymn. They
invariably saluted us politely as
we drove past, and two bronzed
mountaineers whom we stopped for
information sped us on our way
with the pious wish: “May God
accompany you!”

After several leagues the mountains
became wooded, and a bend
.pn +1
of the river, along which we kept,
brought us into the delightful
basin of Argelés, one of the valleys
of the Lavedan. This is the Eden
of the Pyrenees. On the mountain
slopes grow the walnut and the
oak. The roads are shaded with
long lines of ash-trees. The meadows
were covered with rich harvests.
The thickets were blooming
with roses. The houses were almost
buried among fruit-trees of
all kinds. Every now and then we
came to a tall cross with the insignia
of the Passion, or some wayside
niche with its Virgin and fresh
flowers before her. We passed the
square tower of Vidalos on a height,
and farther on came to the ancient
castle of Vieuzac, once a military
post that kept alive the signal-fires
in troubled times. On every hand
were quaint-looking villages with
pretty chapels half-hidden in the
folds of the mountains, each with
some old monument, or older tradition,
to which it fondly clings.
From Agos to Pierrefitte, only
about six miles, there are ten
charming villages set in a framework
of mountains no poet could
describe. They close around this
happy valley, as if to shield it from
all outward influences. During
the Huguenot ascendency in the
neighboring province of Béarn it is
said no taint of the new religion
ever found its way into this valley.
At the north is Mount Balandraü,
easily ascended, that affords a fine
view of the country, which is full of
wonderful contrasts. The Gave
winds swiftly through the most
beautiful of valleys; on every hand
are the mountains, sometimes like
a vast rampart of verdure, sometimes
swelling up, one after the
other, like great waves, with a high
peak occasionally, jagged as a saw,
and in the distance the eternal
glaciers glittering in the sun and
feeding the numerous cascades and
torrents that lash the mountain
sides.

To this peaceful valley came St.
Orens from his native Spain, in the
fourth century, before whom, according
to the Spanish legend, a
supernatural light burned and a
mysterious hand pointed the way.
And it was yonder umbrageous
mountain that, when he sought to
escape from the fame of his sanctity,
opened at his approach and
hid him in its bosom.

Here, too, four centuries after,
came St. Savin, son of the Count of
Barcelona, when he forsook the
grandeurs of the world for a cell in
the wilderness. A few years since
there were vestiges of his cell at
Pouey Aspé, after a thousand years;
and tradition points out the fountain
that sprang up from a blow of
his staff when the stream that flowed
past his cell dried up in the
summer. His tomb is still honored
in the abbey church of St. Savin,
which is one of the most conspicuous
objects in the landscape, with
its queer steeple, shaped like an
extinguisher.

No tourist fails to visit St. Savin:
the archæologist on account of its
old Romanesque church of the
tenth century; the artist for its
picturesque site; the pious to
honor one of the most popular
saints of the seven valleys; and the
political economist because, in the
middle ages, this abbey was the
nucleus of a little republic of eight
villages, called the Pascal of St.
Savin, the inhabitants of which had
from time immemorial the right of
universal suffrage, and where even
the women, without the advantages
of modern progress, were admitted
to vote!

The abbey of St. Savin—that is
.pn +1
what remains of it—stands on the
side of a mountain amid dense
groves of chestnut-trees. According
to the old cartularies, it was
founded by Charlemagne on the
site of the Palatium Æmilianum
erected by the Romans after the
conquest to keep the country in
subjection, but ruined by the Saracens.
Roland himself is said to
have received hospitality from the
monks. Pulci, in his <i>Rotta di Roncisvalle</i>,
relates how he delivered
them from the giants Alabastre and
Passamonte, and their brother Morgante
only escaped being cleft in
two by submitting to be baptized
in the church. This monastery,
renowned in legend and song, was
burned to the ground by the fierce
Normans, and it was more than a
century before it rose from its
ashes. It was restored by Raymond
I., Count of Bigorre, about
the middle of the tenth century.
He gave the house to the monks of
St. Benedict, and bestowed on them
the valley of Cauterets, on condition
that they would build a
church there in honor of St. Martin,
and provide accommodations
for those who should frequent the
springs. He also made over to
them his rights to the game in the
<i>pascal</i> valleys, as well as certain
claims on the produce of the dairy.
The abbey became likewise an object
of bounty to other neighboring
lords, who confided in St. Savin
when alive, and in death wished to
lie near his hallowed shrine. Cornelia
de Barbazan, grandmother of
a Vicomtesse de Lavedan, had great
devotion to St. Savin, and gave the
monastery one-half the abbey of
Agos. The other half belonged to
Arnaud de Tors, a lord who only
had two children, and they were
deaf mutes. He offered them both
to God and St. Savin, and subsequently
his wife, himself, and all
he possessed. Cornelia’s husband
outlived her, and on his death-bed
asked the monks of St. Savin for
the monastic habit, and gave them
also all he owned at Agos. The
kings of Navarre, the vicomtes of
Béarn, and Henry IV. himself
proved themselves the zealous patrons
of this monastery.

The abbey of St. Savin became
the intellectual as well as moral
centre of the valleys around. Several
of the abbots were noted for
their sanctity, and most of them
were from good families. They
figured among the great lords of
the province, and when they visited
the little states of their republic
the people came out to meet them
with young maidens bearing flowers
in a basket. They had certain
feudal rights over the eight villages,
but bound themselves, on taking
possession of their office, to respect
the customs and privileges of the
inhabitants, believed to have been
handed down from the beginning
of time. The people were none of
them serfs, but all free citizens who
had the right of deciding by majority
of votes every question that affected
the interests of the republic.
Each village was a little state by
itself, and sent its representatives
to the general assembly, which was
held in the cloister of St. Savin.
The women themselves, as we have
said, had a voice in public affairs.
An old record of 1316 says that
when the people of Cauterets came
together in the porch of the church
to decide whether they should
yield to the abbot’s proposition to
change the site of the town and
baths, they all consented, except
one strong-minded woman, named
Gaillardine de Fréchou, who stoutly
held out against the lord abbot.
Women seem to have been regarded
.pn +1
in these valleys as something sacred.
In the old statutes of the
country, drawn up by the abbot of
St. Savin and other dignitaries of
the province, one of the articles
declared that if a criminal took refuge
under a woman’s protection,
his person was safe, on condition
of his repairing the damage. She
gave him asylum, as if a temple, or
had something of the nature of a
divinity! This code also forbade
the creditors seizing the oxen and
agricultural implements of the laborer.
The people elected seven
judges to try all criminal cases, but
the abbot exercised the higher prerogatives
of justice. He never stained
his hands with blood, however;
it was the Count of Bigorre alone
who could impose the sentence of
death. The abbot had special
rights, also, which he jealously
guarded as a means of revenue.
The pastors of the eight villages
could say Low Mass for their flocks
and administer the Holy Communion,
but High Mass had to be attended
at St. Savin, where the children
were also brought to be baptized
and the dead for burial, unless in
exceptional cases. The obligation
of baptism and burial at St. Savin
was not confined to the Pascal, but
extended to the sixty villages of
the valleys of Argelés and Azun.
The people had the privilege of
hunting in the forests and fishing
in the streams—and the game and
trout are not to be despised in these
days—but the abbot had a right to
the skins and a shoulder of certain
animals, and an annual tribute of
fish.

The monks of St. Savin were
noted for their hospitality, and they
often received visits from those
who frequented the baths of Cauterets.
In the sixteenth century
they welcomed Catharine of Navarre
in spite of her <i>Contes</i> and
taste for the doctrines of Calvin;
and in the seventeenth the poet
Bertin, who, in his light, scoffing
way, has celebrated “the long dinner
and short Mass of the good abbot
of St. Savin,” though he does
not seem to have attended the
latter, brief as it might have
been.

Margaret of Navarre had been
staying at Cauterets, where she is
said to have composed the <i>Heptaméron</i>.
She set out thence for
Tarbes, but the bridges had all
been carried away by rains, which
she says were “so marvellous and
great that it seemed as if God had
forgotten his promise to Noe not
to destroy the earth again by water.”
The preface to her work says:
“After riding all day she and her
suite towards evening espied a belfry,
where, as well as they could,
but not without great trouble and
difficulty, they succeeded in arriving,
and were kindly received by
the abbot and monks of the abbey,
called St. Savin. The abbot, who
was of an excellent family, lodged
them very honorably, and, as he
conducted them to their rooms,
made inquiries as to the dangers
they had undergone. After listening
to their account he told them
they were not alone in their misfortunes,
for there were two young
ladies in another apartment who
had escaped great danger. These
poor ladies, at half a league from
Pierrefitte, had met a bear descending
from the mountain, from which
they fled at such speed that their
horses fell dead on arriving at their
place of refuge.”

When the princess left St. Savin
the abbot furnished her party with
“the best horses in Lavedan, thick
Béarn cloaks, substantial provisions,
and excellent guides across
.pn +1
the mountains, which they were
obliged to traverse partly on foot,
in spite of the horses, and, after
great sweat and labor, arrived at
Notre Dame de Sarrance.”

The sceptical poet Bertin, too,
thought his visit worthy of recording:
“We chose that day to pay
our brief devotions at the Abbey of
St. Savin; that is to say, to dine
there at the expense of St. Benedict.
The steeple of the Abbey
comes in sight between Pierrefitte
and Argelés. The road ascends
amid the trees, a little rough, but
cool, impenetrable to the rays of
the sun, and watered by an infinite
number of living streams that come
down from the mountains. It may
be well to say that some of us were
in a carriage and others on horseback,
but the greater part were
perched, well or ill, as the case
might be, on donkeys. Our arrival
was triumphant. The ladies were
received by the prior to the sound
of the organ, the only instrument
he could strike up, thanks to the
talent of his cook. He likewise
presented them a bouquet of flowers
and made them a compliment....
The house is well built, spacious,
and in the finest position in
the world. From the upper terrace
of the garden the eye wanders
over the magnificent plain of Argelés,
which bears comparison, to
say the least, with the famous valley
of Campan. The day was spent
very agreeably, but almost wholly
at table. We returned a little late
in the evening, without any other
accident but the loss of one of our
donkeys, which took it into its head
to die on the way, under the pretext
that he had been overworked
in the morning and could go no
farther. We celebrated in couplets,
half sad, half merry, to which
every one contributed:

.pm verse-start
“'Le trépas de la veielle ânesse,
Qu’on magnétisa, mais en vain
(Trop sotte était la sotte espèce);
Le long dîner, la courte messe,
La chère fine, et le bon vin,
L’enjoûment et la politesse
Du bon prieur de St. Savin.’”
.pm verse-end

None of the local traditions or
documents contain anything to the
disparagement of the monks of St.
Savin, and their memory is still
dear to the inhabitants of the valley.
Madame de Motteville, lady
of honor to Anne of Austria, when
she came to the Pyrenees on the
occasion of Louis XIV.’s marriage,
visited St. Savin, and thus
speaks of it: “There is an abbey
here of great importance and renown.
It is well built and the
monks lead an exemplary life.”

The abbatial church escaped at
the Revolution, and the tomb of
St. Savin was respected. But it
became the property of the government,
and it was not till 1874
that it was purchased by the Bishop
of Tarbes. The greater part of
the abbey has disappeared. The
old chapter-hall, however, is still
standing. It is of the twelfth century,
and has six low arches supported
by two central pillars, cylindrical
in form. This hall opened
into the cloister, which has been
totally destroyed. The fine Romanesque
church is in good preservation.
Around the deep embrasures
of the entrance are symbolic
animals of evil import somewhat
coarsely sculptured, such as
the scaly dragon of adverse influence,
a bear devouring a sinless
child, and the screech-owl, symbol
of Jews, traitors, and the foul
fiend:

.pm verse-start
“En cest oisel sunt figuré
Li felon Jeve maleur”
.pm verse-end

—by this bird is figured the felon
Jew malign. And, in fact, the Jews
closed their eyes, like the owl, to
.pn +1
the light, not to recognize the Messias.

We descended by several steps
into the church, into which the sun
was streaming from the rose window
at the west. The tomb of St.
Savin is at the apsis, beneath a
gilded canopy of rich design. It is
of schist, about six feet long and
three broad, and rests on double
columns of marble, which have
carved capitals. It was long used
as an altar, according to the custom
of the early church. Above
is an ancient statue of the Virgin,
said to have been brought from the
East by the Crusaders, and in another
part of the church is a revered
crucifix of great antiquity. One
of the most interesting ornaments
is a painting in eighteen compartments
that presents a complete
epitome of St. Savin’s life, and is
curious for its details of costume
and architecture. Here we are
told how St. Savin was sent by his
mother, the Countess of Barcelona,
to complete his education at the
brilliant court of her brother, the
Count of Poitiers, who received him
with great favor and entrusted his
son to his care. St. Savin, for
whom, young as he was, life had no
illusions, inspired his cousin to lead
a simple, unostentatious life in the
midst of worldly luxuries, and the
latter, not satisfied with this taste of
self-renunciation, soon betook himself
to the convent of Ligugé, near
Poitiers. His mother, in despair,
threw herself at St. Savin’s feet,
crying: “Give me back my child!
It is you who have robbed me of
him. You have a mother; think
of her grief should you abandon
her for ever.” Alas! this was the
very thing the saint was thinking
of, but he could not resist a higher
will. He soon followed his cousin’s
example, and they took the
monastic habit together. St. Savin’s
heart, however, yearned for
a more profound solitude, and a
celestial inspiration directed his
steps toward the Pyrenees. Coming
to the valley of the Gave, he
followed its windings till he reached
a spot overshadowed by three
lofty mountains that were covered
with snow nearly all the year
round—cold, stern, wrapped in
gray mists, and infested with wild
beasts. Here he looked down on
the lonely valley once inhabited by
his countryman, the great St. Orens,
and resolved to build his cell in
a place so favorable to meditation
and prayer, and give himself up to
a life of austerity. He trod the
rough mountain paths with bare
feet—he who had been brought up
in the court of princes. His only
garment lasted him thirteen years.
He dug a grave seven feet long
and five deep, and there he slept,
or lay buried in divine contemplation.
Chromasse, a neighboring
lord, angry to see a stranger on his
lands, sent a servant to drive him
away, but the latter only rendered
St. Savin incapable of obeying by
the blows he inflicted on him. Both
master and servant were punished
for their cruelty. The former was
struck blind, and the latter became
possessed by the devil. The moral
condition of the servant particularly
excited the compassion of the
saint, who obtained his deliverance
by the power of prayer.

An old legend says that when St.
Savin wished to have a light in his
cell he used to hold a torch to his
breast, and in that furnace of divine
love it was at once lighted.
This torch used to burn all night
long without being consumed, and
only grew pale when the morning
light came to surprise the saint lost
in prayer.
.pn +1

St. Savin, in his last illness, was
attended by Sylvian and Flavian,
two monks from the neighboring
abbey. When he felt his end was
drawing near he requested to see
Abbot Forminius, who, detained
by important business, sent word
that he would come on the following
day. The dying hermit replied
that the morrow would be too
late, for then a higher occupation
would engross him. As soon as
his condition became known a
great number of priests and monks
hastened to his cell. He received
the Body of the Lord, and, with his
arms stretched towards heaven
and a face radiant with joy, he fell
asleep in the midst of a prayer
which he finished in heaven.

All the people of the neighboring
valleys followed St. Savin’s
body to the grave. The repentant
Chromasse himself joined the
procession, and, pressing close to
the bier, he touched with trembling
hands the body of the saint, and
his eyes, so long closed to the
light, instantly recovered their
sight.

Such is the legend of St. Savin,
who became of so much repute in
these mountains that it is not surprising
his name should be given to
the abbey where he was buried.

From a terrace before the church
is a superb view of the vale of Argelés,
around which rises mountain
above mountain; the lowest
rich with vegetation, the upper
peaks bare and covered with eternal
frosts. Not far off are the remains
of the old feudal castle of
Baucens, formerly inhabited by the
Vicomtes de Lavedan, lords of
the Seven Valleys. Madame de
Motteville, who stopped here, compares
it in her <i>Mémoires</i> to the palace
of the fairy Urgande.

Just below St. Savin is the village
of Adast with the château
de Miramon, the heiress of which
married Despourrins, the bucolic
poet of the Pyrenees, who composed
here, in the idiom of the valley,
pastoral songs full of grace and
feeling, which have made his name
popular in the mountains, where
they are still sung by the herdsmen.
Béarn and Bigorre contend for the
honor of being his birthplace, as
the Greek cities of old for that of
Homer. Here Boieldieu, struck
by the beauty of the country and
its poetic associations, wished to
found an academy of artists. His
plan was, as he wrote his friend
Berton in 1832, “to buy an old château
in the beautiful valley of Argelés,
as finely situated as that of
the poet Despourrins. The sight
of so glorious a landscape would
rouse the torpid imagination, and
perhaps awaken in the exhausted
brain fresh inspirations that might
rival the vagaries of certain artists
of the new school. The sky of the
Pyrenees ought to be as propitious
as that of Italy. The Pic du Midi
is not a volcano, but it is covered
with flowers. And Marboré, the
Brèche de Roland, and the Cirque
de Gavarnie, with its cascade that
falls down twelve hundred feet, are
monuments capable of electrifying
the imagination as well as St. Peter’s,
the Coliseum, and the Pantheon
at Rome.”

On a promontory near Miramon
is the votive chapel of <i>Piétad</i>,
with its Romanesque lucarnes and
low arches, that dates from the
ninth century. It was saved at the
Revolution by the mountaineers,
among whom, as in Spain, Our Lady
of Sorrow (or of Pitié, as she is
called here) is especially popular.
There is, too, the chapel of Soulon,
with its crenellated tower, and near
by the hermitage of St. Aoulari,
.pn +1
with its Roman apsis—a rural oratory,
once supported by the offerings
of pilgrims and a field that yielded
three sacks of wheat, but where
services are now held only on certain
festivals of the Virgin.

On the other side of the Vale of
Argelés stood the hermitage of St.
Orens between two cliffs, where, in
the tenth century, the Countess Faquilie
of Bigorre built a monastery,
that this great saint might come to
her aid on the dread day of judgment;
but only a few picturesque
ruins now remain on the edge of a
frightful abyss. An old charter
enumerates the gifts of the countess
for the support of this abbey,
called St. Orens of Lavedan:
fields, vineyards, books, vestments,
and sacred vessels. Nay, more:
twenty cows with their calves, six
horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and a
donkey. The neighboring lords
verified the boundaries of the land
she gave, and swore thereto by six
saints popular in the mountains:
St. Saturnin, St. Paul, St. Andrew,
St. Martin, and St. Orens.

St. Orens rivals St. Savin in popularity
in southwestern France,
where many churches and convents
still bear his name. Nor is his
fame confined to this region. St.
Hugo consecrated a chapel to his
memory in the magnificent church
of Cluny. In Spain there is a
church bearing his name at Huesca,
which claims to be his native place.
In it is the tomb of St. Patience, his
mother. And we remember seeing
a marble statue of St. Orens beside
the shrine of St. Isidro in one of
the finest churches of Madrid.
The Spanish say St. Orens was the
brother of the great St. Lawrence,
so honored by the church universal;
but the traditions of France only
speak of him as the son of the Duke
of Urgel, who crossed the Pyrenees
to bury himself in the solitude of the
mountains. Here he found a cave
in a melancholy valley—the Val
Caprasie—where the only noise to
break the everlasting silence was
the torrent that escaped from Lake
Isaby. No place could have been
better suited to the poetic soul of
St. Orens; for a poet he was. His
hymns and other writings are still
admired in our day, and his Latin
poem, entitled <i>Commonitorium</i>,
has recently been translated into
French. Fortunatus mentions it:

.pm verse-start
“Paucaque perstrinxit florente Orientius ore.”
.pm verse-end

This is a treatise of Christian morality
in elegiac measure. It is
pleasant to read it in the place
where it was written and among
people whose ancestors probably
first read it. We quote one passage,
worthy of being written over
the doors of the hospitable monasteries
that bear his name, in one
of which we have so often found
shelter: “Fail not to receive under
thy hospitable roof the traveller
overtaken by darkness. When
thou art naked, thou desirest a garment
to cover thee; thirsty, a cup
to refresh thee. Let similar wants,
therefore, excite thy compassion.
Share thy mantle, thy loaf with the
unfortunate.”

It is said that this saint, so benevolent
to others, exercised such
severity towards himself as to gird
his body with an iron chain and
recite the Psalter daily standing in
the icy waters of Lake Isaby. He
may be cited as an early example
of the benefit of hydropathy, for he
lived to a good old age in spite, or
in consequence, of the rigors of penance.
He erected a flour-mill on
the borders of the lake for the use
of the people around, which tradition
says lasted most miraculously
seven centuries without ever needing
.pn +1
the slightest repair. The remains
of it are still pointed out with
respect by the herdsmen of the valley.
And the stone on which the
saint used to kneel in his cave has
been carefully preserved; for nothing
can exceed the tenacity with
which these mountaineers cling to
their ancient traditions and memorials.
It is worn by the knees of
generation after generation who
have knelt to pray where St. Orens
prayed fourteen hundred years ago.

St. Orens became noted throughout
the province for his sanctity
and eminent abilities, and the inhabitants
of Auch, after three days
of fasting and prayer, chose him as
their bishop. The messengers they
despatched to the mountains found
him cultivating the earth. “Deign,
O Lord!” cried he, planting his
spade in the ground, “deign, I beseech
of thee, to manifest thy will
in an unmistakable manner.” And
in an instant the handle became a
bush, which put forth branches and
was covered with foliage. The
saint no longer hesitated, but departed
with the messengers. When
he entered the city of Auch all the
sick are said to have been instantly
healed. He found his diocese partly
under the influence of paganism,
and showed his zeal in demolishing
the altars of the false gods. He
saved it also from the ravages of
the Vandals at the beginning of the
fifth century, and was deputed by
the king of the Visigoths to avert
the danger that threatened Toulouse,
on which the Romans were marching.
He is believed to have saved
that city by his prayers, and his
statue was afterwards placed over
one of its gates out of gratitude.
A portion of his relics is likewise
borne through the streets in the
magnificent annual processions for
which Toulouse is famous.

St. Orens is said to have regretted
the solitude of this peaceful
mountain valley, and once, when
overwhelmed with the responsibility
of his office, he secretly escaped
and fled to his cave. His people,
however, went in pursuit of him
and succeeded in bringing him
back. But the time of release
came. On his death-bed he had a
wondrous vision of Christ surrounded
by a multitude of angels, and
while in mystic converse with them
his soul took flight for heaven.
He was buried in the church of St.
Jean de l’Aubépine at Auch, and
his tomb became famous for miracles,
particularly in cases of epilepsy
and diabolical possession.

A Benedictine monastery was
built here in the tenth century and
called St. Orens’ Priory. Its third
prior, Bernard de Sédirac, afterwards
Archbishop of Toledo, had
the remains of St. Orens exhumed
and placed in a coffer covered with
silver bas-reliefs relating to the
saint’s life. This <i>châsse</i> was suspended
on the wall of a chapel behind
the high altar, and could only
be reached by means of a ladder.
Notwithstanding, it was robbed of
its silver covering some time after
by two soldiers, one of whom exclaimed
in the true modern spirit:
“What! workest thou miracles at
this late hour?” But he speedily
expiated his sacrilege. He was
seized inwardly with a terrible fire
that soon consumed him. After
this the pavement beneath was
covered with bristling iron spikes
to prevent another profanation.
But the relics of St. Orens, that had
escaped the Moor and the Norman,
and were even spared by the iconoclasts
of the sixteenth century,
were less fortunate at the Revolution,
when the church of which they
were the glory, with its tombs of
.pn +1
the early bishops, and the mausoleum
of Sancho Mitarra, the
scourge of the Moors, from whom
sprang the great family of the Armagnacs,
so celebrated for their
power and their misfortunes, was
mostly destroyed, together with a
part of St. Orens’ Priory.

The last prior of this monastery
was a member of the illustrious
house of Montesquieu, one of the
most ancient in the province. His
brother, a writer of some merit,
when the family name and arms
were claimed by the sires of Boulbène,
instituted a lawsuit against
them, and wrote a work to prove
his descent from Clovis, which led
the Count de Maurepas to exclaim
with affected alarm after M. de
Montesquieu had gained his suit:
“Now, we really hope you are not
going to claim the throne of
France!” And among the epigrams
that rained on him when he
was made a member of the French
Academy was the following:

.pm verse-start
“Montesquiou-Fezensac est de l’Académie.
Quel ouvrage a-t-il fait? Sa Genéalogie!”
.pm verse-end

The prior was one of the deputies
of the Etats-Généraux, and made
himself conspicuous for his mild,
persuasive eloquence. One day
Mirabeau, perceiving the effect of
his discourse, cried out: <i>Méfiez-vous
de ce petit serpent: il vous séduira</i>!
After being in exile twice
he was, at the Restoration, made a
duke and peer of France.

How dear St. Orens’ memory
still is in the diocese he once governed
we well know who have
spent several years of our life there.
How joyous is the 1st of May, on
which his festival falls! His relics
are exposed at the priory, a procession,
with lights and music,
gathers around the place where his
shrine once stood, and at night
bonfires are lit on the other side of
the Gers and the people dance in
the open air.

But to return to the pastoral valleys
of the Lavedan. Out of Argelés
you pass into the valley of
Azun, one of the least known, but
one of the most picturesque in the
Pyrenees. It is high up among the
mountains and divided by the
deep and turbulent Gave.[#] The
entrance was once defended by the
castle of Vieuzac, the ruins of which
remain, associated with the memory
of the too famous Barère. The
valley is inhabited by people of
primitive manners with few artificial
distinctions. Here every year,
at Carnival time, is to be seen the
peculiar dance of the country called
the <i>Ballade</i>, performed by the
young men, who often assemble
from different villages in short vests
gaily adorned with ribbons, with
the most efficient <i>balladeur</i> at their
head, playing on the fife and tambourine
and waving their flags.
The tambourine of the Pyrenees is
a primitive instrument of pine
wood, as simple as the lyre of
Apollo, and with the same number
of strings, which the performer
beats with a little rod. These
dancers are escorted to the edge of
their villages by young girls, who
welcome them at their return and
lavish praises on those who have
distinguished themselves. They
are presented with eggs, ham, and
butter in all the villages they pass
through, on which they feast the
following day.

.fn #
Gave is the general name of these mountain
streams.
.fn-

Among the curious old usages of
this valley, before 1793, was the
tribute of butter to the shrine of St.
Bertrand of Comminges, a popular
saint in the Pyrenees, where he labored
in the eleventh century.
.pn +1
The people of Azun were then almost
out of the bounds of civilization,
and for what religious instruction
they had they were chiefly indebted
to the holy hermits of the
neighboring mountains. It is said
that when St. Bertrand came to
preach among these rough mountaineers,
he was treated with so
much indignity that the tail of his
mule was cut off, for which the land
was cursed with sterility for several
years. Touched by the repentance
and sad condition of the inhabitants,
the saint, by his prayers,
obtained the cessation of their punishment,
and they, in their gratitude,
promised to give him henceforth
all the butter made the week
before Whitsuntide. This vow was
kept for nearly seven centuries. A
canon and two prebends from St.
Bertrand’s came every year to the
valley in acknowledgment of this
tribute, bringing with them water
that had been passed through the
saint’s pastoral staff while chanting
some orison in his honor. This they
gave to the people as a remedy for
disease among cattle. These deputies
never failed to pass before the
house, which is still standing, where
St. Bertrand had been so disrespectfully
treated. The master stood in
the door and humbly prayed them
to enter and partake of the refreshments
he had prepared, which they
did with emotion, like angels of
peace and reconciliation.

At the farther end of the valley
of Azun, not far from the Spanish
frontier, rise the dome and square
tower of Notre Dame de Pouey-la-Hun,
that stands on an isolated
peak overlooking the village of Arrens,
between the two roads that
lead to Spain and the province of
Béarn. The present edifice is comparatively
modern, but its foundation
is so remote as to be lost in
obscurity. You enter by a fine
porch supported by four marble
pillars, and are at once surprised at
the richness of the interior. The
walls are brown and gold, and the
pillars, carvings, statues, and the
very mouldings of the blue arches
are all gilded, producing a most
brilliant effect. Around the nave
are two galleries, one above the
other, for the men, who are generally
separated from the women in
the churches of Bigorre; at least,
in the villages. The pavement is
the unhewn granite cliff, which is
worn quite smooth by the feet of so
many generations of worshippers.
It descends like an amphitheatre,
enabling every one to see the altar
distinctly. Across it is a groove,
worn by a mountain stream at certain
seasons of the year. All the
joys and sorrows of the valley are
brought to the feet of Notre Dame
de Pouey-la-Hun, and numerous
pilgrimages are made here at certain
seasons of the year.

In 1793 orders came to destroy
this venerated chapel, but when the
emissaries entered it they were saluted
by mysterious voices among
the arches, as if reproaching them
for their blasphemies and imprecations,
and, terrified by the unearthly
sounds, they at once made their
escape. There was nothing supernatural
in this, however. It was a
mere stratagem on the part of the
peasants to save their beloved chapel,
and they boast of it to this day.

During the troubles with Spain
this chapel was used as a military
post, and consequently much injured.
As soon as it was no longer
needed for this purpose the government
again decided to demolish it
and sell the materials. The people
became excited, and the women
assailed with stones the agents sent
to examine the building, who fled
.pn +1
for their lives. Then a pious widow,
to save it from further profanation,
bought it for about fifteen
thousand francs, which was nearly
all she had, and, when she died,
bequeathed it to her nephew, a
priest, till better days should arrive.
Time and neglect were beginning
to leave their traces on
the chapel when Queen Hortense
came to the Pyrenees. She had
just lost her son, the Prince Royal
of Holland, and the wild, melancholy
grandeur of these mountain
valleys harmonized with her sadness.
She was particularly pleased
with the quaint village of Arrens
and its picturesque chapel, and
made a sketch of the landscape
herself. The devotion of the people
to the Virgin of Pouey-la-Hun
touched her, and she sympathized
in their wish it should be reopened
for public worship. She went
there to offer her vows, and founded
an anniversary Mass for her
son, which was to be celebrated
with all possible solemnity, as recorded
by the authorities of the
place. This was shortly before the
birth of Louis Napoleon. She
never forgot her visit to Pouey-la-Hun.
She alludes to it in her travels,
and excited the interest of the
government in its neglected condition.
In 1836 it was made over to
the Bishop of Tarbes, who founded
a seminary here under the care of
missionaries from Garaison, who
have rendered it one of the most
popular chapels in the Pyrenees.

But to return to the basin of
Argelés. The valley of Cauterets
begins at Pierrefitte. A carriage-road
has been hewn along the steep
mountain side on the very edge of
a precipice, three or four hundred
feet deep, at the bottom of which
rushes a fierce torrent that breaks
into foam over the sharp rocks that
encumber its bed. On each side
of this gulf rise steep cliffs almost
perpendicularly, down which dash
here and there miniature cascades,
all in a foam. A bend in the river
enables you to look back through
the gorge over the wild Gave, the
waters of which are of the color of
beryl. Nothing could be more
delicate than the tint of the foam.
Beyond the bold arch of the bridge
at Pierrefitte can be seen the fair
vale of Argelés, forming a lovely
picture framed by the lofty palisades
of this wild pass. We left
the carriage and wandered on afoot,
gathering the eglantine and other
wild flowers, inhaling the delicious
mountain air, and drinking the
cool waters of its numerous streams.
By moonlight the scene is particularly
sublime. The gloom of this
narrow gorge shut in by the lofty
mountains, the deep shades of the
forests that cover them, and the
abyss below, with the ceaseless rush
of the mad stream, produce a profound
impression on the mind.
We remember driving through it
on one occasion at midnight. The
full moon hung over the mountains
of Gavarnie, its light streaming
down here and there into the
gorge with mysterious, enchanting
effect. Before us was the peak of
Péguère, like an enormous pyramid
with one tremulous star above,
its summit bathed in the soft radiance,
while its furrowed sides and
unfathomable gulfs were veiled
with a thousand shadows. As you
wind up the Côte du Limaçon, the
whole Gave is beaten into spray
among the huge rocks. Here the
lateral mountains recede somewhat,
and you shortly come to the triangular
valley of Cauterets, completely
shut in among majestic
mountains. Its springs were well
known to the Romans, and some
.pn +1
pretend that Cæsar himself visited
them. It is more certain that the
kings of Aragon and Navarre did,
as well as the ancient lords of Bigorre
and Béarn. The little town
is more sumptuous now than when
under the rule of the abbot of St.
Savin. Wooden cabins have been
replaced by marble edifices, and
the artificial appliances of modern
times substituted for the primitive
observances of St. Orens. But one
gives a sigh now and then for the
good old simple days when the
lord abbot, to prevent all imposition
on the stranger and the poor,
forbade the sale of provisions except
on the public square. The
wine, too, which had to be of good
quality, could only be sold a <i>liard</i>
more on a pint than at St. Savin,
and if false measure was given a
fine of ten crowns was imposed on
the vender, one-half of which went
to the poor and the rest to the
abbot.

Cauterets is a very agreeable residence
in the season. Here you
meet strangers from all parts of
the world, and there is a certain
charm in the unrestrained intercourse.
At certain hours, of course,
every one goes to partake of the
waters and to bathe. There are
pleasant walks along the banks of
the Gave, and fatiguing ones up
the steep mountain sides. At table
you have trout from the river and
game from the forests, fowl and vegetables
from Argelés, apples and
plums from St. Savin’s, peaches
from Béarn, and berries of rare
flavor from the mountains. Buried
in this quiet valley, away from all
human agitations, in daily communication
with nature, that puts on
here its fairest aspect, the invalid
returns to a simple, inartificial life
which produces more effect than
the waters. Rousseau thought no
violent agitation whatever, no vapors
of the mind, could long resist
such a place of residence, and he
was astonished that the salutary
air of the mountains was not numbered
among the chief remedies of
medical and moral science.

The valleys of Barèges and Gavarnie
also belong to the Lavedan.
Another gorge near Pierrefitte leads
to them, which is even gloomier
and more savage than that of Cauterets.
A little more than a century
ago it was inaccessible to carriages,
but since, by a miracle of
engineering, a road has been constructed
along the edge of the precipice,
and when it cannot find
room on one side it springs boldly
across the abyss to the other by
means of a bridge from which you
look down a terrific depth at the
Gave, that roars and struggles
along with scarcely room enough
in its bed. The road thus crosses
and recrosses the river seven times.
It was completed in 1746, when a
carriage was for the first time seen
in the gorge. Anything more wild
and melancholy than this defile
cannot be conceived. The mountains
rise perpendicularly up on
both sides, with nothing growing on
them but a few wretched pines
twisted by the winds. The height
of these grim walls, the depth of
the abyss over which you hang,
the gloom, the silence only broken
by the roar of the torrent, appall.
From time to time you see an isolated
house, and at length the village
of Viscos, hanging like an eagle’s
nest on the rocks. There are
two ferruginous springs in the
gorge, but they cannot be utilized
on account of their position.

Just as you are beginning to
yield to the horrors of this wild
pass, it opens, and you soon come
to the sweet, fresh valley of Luz,
.pn +1
one of the most beautiful in the
Pyrenees. It is three thousand feet
higher than the Vale of Argelés.
Here the Gave is a peaceful, well-behaved
stream. Its shores are
planted with long lines of decorous
poplars. The meadow is dotted
with trees and covered with harvests.
Lofty mountains keep guard
around, the lower ones wooded and
crowned with the ruins of some old
castle, the upper covered with glaciers.
In the depths of this valley
is the town of Luz, with narrow,
tortuous streets, and at the right,
on the side of the mountain, is the
fashionable watering-place of St.
Sauveur. The church of Luz, built
by the Knights-Templars in the
twelfth century, looks like a fortress
with its battlements and great
square tower. As in many churches
of this region, there is a low,
narrow door, now walled up, by
which the Cagots—those unhappy
pariahs of the Pyrenees—were once
obliged to enter. This proscribed
race is known to have existed in
the time of the early French monarchy.
It is said that they descended
from the Goths or some
vanquished nation, which made
them an object of contempt. They
were denied citizenship and obliged
to live apart and wear a red
badge on their breasts, shaped
somewhat like a duck’s foot. The
church endeavored to triumph over
this prejudice by reminding the
people that all men are brethren.
She would not allow the Cagots,
though they were deemed infectious,
to be banished from the
churches, but gave them a separate
place till they should be regarded
with more favorable dispositions.
They had their own stoup, and it
was a defilement to pass through
their door. In one church of the
diocese of Tarbes the archdeacon
with the other clergy, to do
away with this odious distinction,
passed through their door at some
public procession, and the people
were obliged to follow. From that
time they passed indifferently
through either door. The race is
nearly extinct now, or has gradually
become almost identified with
the other inhabitants.

Ascending one of the church
towers to the battlements, you find
broken lances, stirrups, and other
accoutrements—perhaps left behind
by the old Knights. There are
also four cannons placed here by
the Leaguers to defend the edifice
against the Huguenots, who always
made churches the principal object
of attack.

East of Luz, on a high mount,
are the picturesque ruins of the
Castle of Sainte Marie, which once
defended the valley, likewise attributed
to the Templars. This
was one of the last holds of the
English in Bigorre. It is also associated
with Burke of the “Sublime
and Beautiful,” who surely
found both in this incomparable
valley. Was it in France that he
found reason to prefer “the furniture
of ancient tyranny, even in
rags,” to the torrent of liberty that
swept it violently away?

St. Sauveur is built in a curve of
the mountain side, and its houses
on the cliffs and terraces produce
a charming effect. It is only ten
minutes’ walk from Luz, through a
long avenue of Lombardy poplars,
across a marble bridge over the
Gave, and then up a spiral <i>rampe</i>
which affords a new and more extensive
view at every step. You
see the verdant meadow, pretty
hamlets on the mountain slopes,
foaming cascades, on every hand a
landscape varied, brilliant, and imposing.
.pn +1

The first to discover the virtues
of the thermal springs of St. Sauveur
was a bishop of Tarbes who
took refuge here when his diocese
was ravaged by the Huguenots of
Béarn in the sixteenth century.
Surely he had need to drink of
their soothing waters! After experiencing
their virtues he placed
the following inscription over the
principal spring: <i>Vos haurietis
aquas de fonte Salvatoris</i>, whence
the name of St. Sauveur. But the
place did not become a fashionable
resort till the present century. At
the Restoration the French aristocracy,
diplomatic highnesses, and
military officers flocked hither to enjoy
the scenery and allay the fever
of their uncertain political life by
drinking of the sulphurous waters.

Not far from Luz, on a verdant
hill, are the ruins of a hermitage
where from time immemorial lived
a succession of hermits down to the
end of the eighteenth century. Beside
it was the chapel of St. Pierre,
held in great veneration by the
mountaineers, who, on solemn occasions,
went there to pray for
some special blessing or be delivered
from some evil. The statutes
of Luz forbade under severe penalty
any person over twelve years of
age to ring the bells of this chapel
without orders. They required,
moreover, a general procession to
be made here on St. Mark’s day in
order to “obtain a blessing on the
fruits of the earth, peace with the
neighboring valleys, power to resist
the devil and all wickedness, and
strength to perform those works
agreeable to God by means of
which is attained the glory of Paradise—Amen.”
When the bells rang
out on the 25th of April, the master
and mistress of every house in the
valley were to present themselves,
as well dressed as possible, in the
church of Luz, and thence proceed,
reciting a prescribed number of
<i>Paters</i> and <i>Aves</i>, to the hermitage,
where the Mass of St. Mark was
said and a portion of the four Gospels
read. Those who failed to
take part in the procession of
“Monsieur Saint Marc,” without a
legitimate excuse, were obliged to
pay a fine of two quarts of wine
and half a pound of wax.

St. Peter’s chapel was latterly restored
by Napoleon III. under the
name of St. Pierre de Solferino.
The last hermit who lived here was
a Capuchin named Father Ambrose,
who consecrated himself to God at
the age of sixteen and was all his
life a model of holiness. When he
took possession of his cell he exclaimed:
“I wish to live here as in
a tomb—to be counted as nothing—to
live unknown, a simple, prayerful,
abject life, in utter ignorance
of all that is passing in the world.”
How complete his renunciation of
the world was, how profound the
peace he found here, may be seen
by two works he left behind, which
breathe the deep piety of his nature.
They are entitled: <i>Traité de la
Paix Intérieure</i> and <i>Traité de la
Voie de l’Ame</i>. In the latter he
says: “It is in the silence of the
passions, interior calmness, exemption
from unruly desires, and the
government of one’s self that true
happiness consists.” This work
acquired great renown. The Queen
of France accepted the dedication,
and nine or ten editions were published
during the author’s life without
disturbing his profound humility
or love of solitude. He died
here in the odor of sanctity, in 1778,
at the advanced age of seventy.

One of the excursions generally
made from Luz is to the hermitage
of St. Justin, the first bishop of
Tarbes, who fled from persecution
.pn +1
to the summit of this lofty mountain,
where he and his companions built
three cells and gave themselves up
to austerities and prayer. They
were succeeded by other hermits
for ages. The ruins of their cells
are still to be seen. St. Justin,
says the Martyrology, “rendered
himself glorious by the multiplication
of his talents.”

At the foot of the castle of Sainte
Marie is the gorge to the valley of
Barège along the river Bastan,
which you follow a few miles,
through the poplars and willows,
till you come to the village at the
head of the valley, which is here
so narrow as to leave barely room
for a single street. Nothing could
be sterner and wilder, and the
place would long ago have been
abandoned to the bears and the
elements but for the reputation
of its mineral waters. It is, in
fact, nearly abandoned in the winter,
when a part of the village is
generally carried away by the avalanches
or the inundation of the
most insubordinate of streams. It
was Madame de Maintenon who
came here with the Duc du Maine,
that gave a reputation to the
springs of Barèges. Louis XV.
built a military hospital here, as
the waters are efficacious in the
healing of wounds.

The heiress of Barèges in the
middle ages married a knight named
D’Ossun, but the mountaineers,
unable to tolerate the rule of a
stranger, resolved to slay him.
He was warned and took flight.
All the mountain passes were
guarded, but he had, says the legend,
a wonderful horse, by means
of which he leaped from cliff to
cliff, and thus made his escape.
This place is still called the Pas
d’Ossun. The house of Ossun was
famous for its warriors. Pierre, a
member of this family in the sixteenth
century, was a great captain
and chiefly contributed to the victory
at Dreux. Disheartened at
one moment, he followed the example
of his fellow-soldiers who were
flying from the battle-field, but a
feeling of honor brought him back
and he covered himself with glory.
He could not, however, forgive
himself for a moment of weakness,
and, in punishment, suffered himself
to die of hunger.

There are numerous hollows
among the Pyrenees called <i>Oules</i>
(a word in <i>patois</i> signifying a large
pot or kettle), around which the
mountains rise almost perpendicularly.
These basins are also called
<i>Cirques</i>. The most famous, as well
as most perfect, is that of Gavarnie,
surrounded by the mighty walls of
Marboré with its towers and embattled
summit. The emotion that
seizes one in this sublime spot is
unparalleled. But its chaos of terrific
aspect, its mountains with their
glaciers, the famous Brèche de Roland,
and the thread-like cascade
that falls down so many hundred
feet—the source of the Gave that
flows past the grotto of Lourdes—have
too often been depicted to
need repetition. The scene is to
be felt, not described. Here end
the seven valleys of the Lavedan
on the very boundaries of
Spain.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=job
JOB AND EGYPT.[#]

.fn #
V. <i>Le Rédempteur et la Vie Future, dans les
Civilisations Primitives.</i> Par M. l’Abbé Ancessi.
Paris: Leroux.
.fn-

There is perhaps no fact more
important in the history of the human
race, or which, in its striking
corroboration of revealed truth, is
worthy of higher consideration, than
the accumulation of proof, resulting
from the exhumation of past ages
by modern research, that there are
certain beliefs which are the inalienable
inheritance of the great human
family—beliefs which modern scepticism
attacks by a process of false
reasoning incomprehensible to any
simple and upright nature.

For some years past the sacred
texts have been put to the proof by
tests of a character as severe as they
were unexpected; and thus, from
the moment that the key was obtained
for deciphering the inscriptions
of a far-remote antiquity, it was not
without eager anxiety that the judgment
was awaited which science
was about to pronounce.

But on this occasion, as always
when interests of this description
are at stake, the first conclusions
were too hastily arrived at, and
precipitation led to mistakes.

After the vain attacks made on
the one hand, and the groundless
anxieties raised on the other, with
regard to the question of the zodiacs,
it was soon found that greater
circumspection as well as more accurate
criticism must be brought to
the examination of evidence before
it could be quoted in proof or disproof
of any theory. Since that time
the lapse of a century has witnessed
a vast accession of documentary
testimony, and it may be affirmed
that up to this moment the whole
concurs in establishing the veracity
and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures.
As the inscriptions of the
kings of Assyria bear witness to the
fidelity of the Bible narrative, and
the Babylonian tradition of the
Creation, the Fall, the Tree of Life,
the Tower of Babel, and the Deluge
confirm the grander, more logical,
and simpler account given in the
Book of Genesis, so do the annals
and theological teachings of ancient
Egypt testify to the truth of those
doctrines contained in the inspired
writings of which they are the traditional
echo—an echo mute for
ages, and but now reawakened as
if to add its protest against the
miserable scepticism which is one of
the signs of a degenerate and decaying
world.

M. l’Abbé Ancessi, whose work
on the sacerdotal vestments of Israel
and Egypt we have already
noticed,[#] has lately published one
of more extensive interest, the object
of which is to establish from
the most ancient documents in existence,
outside the Holy Scriptures,
that the dogmas necessary to the
religious and moral life of man were,
from the very origin of society, the
heritage of our forefathers, and that,
more than a thousand years before
Moses, well-nigh all our doctrines
and all our hopes existed in the most
remote civilization in the universe;
and from thence to draw the conclusion
that these doctrines and principles
would not have remained indestructible
in the human mind,
diversified and restless as it is, had
.pn +1
they not been a part of itself, the
foundation of its nature, and one
final reason of its being.

.fn #
<sc>The Catholic World</sc>, Nov., 1876, p. 213.
.fn-

The author proceeds to group
the Egyptian belief with respect to
God, a Redeemer, and the life to
come around the well-known text
in which Job, overwhelmed by the
reproaches of his friends and the
weight of his misfortunes, despairing
of consolation in this world,
declares his certainty of a life to
come, where, after death, he will
meet with a powerful Avenger,
who will put his enemies to shame
and make his cause triumph, end
his trials, and recompense his virtues
by the supreme blessedness
of the Vision of God.

The argument of Baldad the Suhite,
put briefly, is that <i>The impious man
is always unfortunate in this world</i>,
with its counterpart, <i>Whoever is unfortunate
is impious</i>; but, in spite of
this most imperturbable of theorists,
Job is conscious of his own innocence,
and after listening to a long
outpouring of eloquent imagery,
amid the desolate splendors of
which there shines no ray of hope
or comfort for him, he bursts forth
like a tempest:

.pm letter-start
“How long, then, will you afflict my
soul, and break me in pieces with your
words?... Have pity, have pity upon me,
at least you my friends, for the hand
of the Lord hath touched me.... Who will
grant me that my words may be written?
who will grant me that they may be
marked down in a book with an iron
pen, and in a plate of lead; or be graven
with an instrument in the rock? For I
know that my Redeemer liveth, and that
he shall stand at last upon the dust.
That these bones shall again be covered
with their skin; that in my flesh I shall
see God. I myself shall behold him;
mine eyes shall behold him, and not another.”
.pm letter-end

This rapid incursion into the
world beyond the tomb, with which
the Semitic races were never familiar,
and which they appeared in
thought to avoid with a singular reserve,
contains all the solution of
the redoubtable problem; but though
the question was settled, the arguments
of the pitiless sages began
again with renewed volubility, until
the voice of God himself interposed,
on behalf of his servant, to
silence them.

The words quoted above contain
evident allusions to traditions
and dogmas which appear to have
become obscure or been forgotten
among the Semitic races. This
profession of faith remains isolated,
without a precedent which explains
it; there is, in fact, nothing analogous
to it in the most ancient texts
of the Pentateuch, in the Songs of
Israel, or the promises and teachings
of the prophets.

In the family of Israel, with the
Mosaic legislation, the primitive
world closes and another begins.
The doctrines and hopes freshly
implanted by God develop like a
plant from its seed, each part being
necessary to the other parts; but
amidst all the Hebraic literature
the Book of Job and his profession
of faith remain isolated, and on this
account the value of both have
been disputed by persons interested
in lessening their importance.
From this point of view, therefore,
it is of moment to find an analogous
doctrine in the outlying records of
a remote antiquity, and to discover
the edifice from which this fragment
has been detached.

On the rolls of linen and papyrus
preserved in the tombs of
Thebes or of Serapeum we find
not only the belief mentioned in
the Book of Job, but the very expressions
there made use of. On
these rolls not only is this belief
repeated in a multitude of forms,
.pn +1
but a community of traditions in
the two great families of Sem and
Cham is also proved.

Long centuries had elapsed since
their dispersion; they were separated
not only by their intervening
deserts, but by their difference of
language, customs, laws, and worship;
and yet, where the Semitic
text is obscure, we have but to compare
it with the writings left by the
old Egyptians to make clear its
meaning.

The opening words of the quotation
above apparently allude to
some contemporary usage well
known to the patriarch and his
friends, but still not in use among
themselves: “<i>Who</i> shall grant that
my words may be written ... and
engraved in the flint-stone?” M.
Ancessi asks if we have not here
an allusion to the <i>styles</i> or small
obelisks which then abounded in
the temples and tombs of Egypt,
and which, if not in use among the
tribes of the land of Uz, had nevertheless
been seen by these families
of shepherds in their distant wanderings.
Besides the great inscriptions
commemorating the conquests
of the Pharaos, there are, in or
near the Egyptian temples, at the
gates of the tombs, or within
the sepulchral chambers, innumerable
smaller monuments placed
there by private individuals, and
inscribed with their confession of
faith. Of this we shall speak further
on.

Numerous passages in the Book
of Job seem to indicate that he had
visited the land of Egypt,[#] and,
among these, allusion is made to
the tombs of the “kings and counsellors
of the earth,” with whom he
would fain “be at rest,” and “with
princes, who possess abundance of
gold and fill their dwellings with
silver”[#] (alluding to the Egyptian
custom of heaping precious objects
in the tombs for the use of
the departed at the resurrection).
Like them, Job desired to leave his
tablet, in which, after the manner
of the commemorative obelisks of
the valley of the Nile, he would
declare the innocence of his life,
his faith in a divine Avenger, in
the resurrection of the body, and
the vision of Him who recompenses
the just and punishes the wicked.

.fn #
Job viii. 2. Take, for instance, the description
of the papyrus (Job viii. 11); the allusion to the
rush-boats which are used on the Nile (ch. ix.
26), and to the hippopotamus, under the name of
Behemoth, the Hebrew translation of the Egyptian
<i>pihémout</i>, or river-horse, and which is described
as “sleeping in the shadow of the lotus, in the
covert of the reeds, and in the marshes;... compassed
about by the willows of the brook” (Job xl. 16).
Again, in ch. xxviii. 1-11, there may be an allusion
to the mines worked by the Egyptians on Mt.
Sinai, where also are numerous inscriptions left by
that people on the rocks.
.fn-

.fn #
Job iii. 13-15. In the papyri of Neb-Qed in the
Louvre, in a gallery parallel to the great hall where
the sarcophagus is placed, we see a coffer, a mirror,
a collyrium-case, a pair of sandals, a cane, a vase for
unguent, another for ablutions, a third for perfumes.
The kings and queens took with them into the
tomb also their jewels and richest garments, so sure
were they of their resurrection. The ordinary
dwellings of the Egyptians were small, built of
wood or unbaked bricks, but their tombs, the
“<i>Eternal Abodes</i>,” were of granite. Not a house,
not a palace of ancient Egypt is now standing, but
their tombs and sepulchral pyramids will probably
last as long as our planet. The Hebrews, after the
example of the Egyptians, appear to have had
treasure buried with them. Josephus relates
that Herod, being in want of money, made a nocturnal
descent into the tomb of King David. He
found there no money, but “<i>aurea ornamenta
multumque supellectilis prætiosæ, quæ omnia abstulit</i>.”—<i>Ant.
Jud.</i> lib. xiv. cap. vii. p. 724, Ed.
Oxford.
.fn-

The funereal inscriptions of ancient
Egypt are of two kinds:
those written on rolls of papyrus
or linen bands, enveloping the body
of the mummy or enclosed with it
inside the sarcophagus; and the
incised monuments of stone or
granite, erected in the chambers
or cut in the walls of the tombs and
temples and at the entrance of the
pyramids.
.pn +1

Almost all the texts[#] found upon
the mummies are extracts from a
book which Champollion called the
<i>Ritual</i>, but which is now styled the
<i>Todtenbuch</i>, or Book of the Dead;
the term “ritual” being confined
to the liturgical manuals relating
to the ceremonies of inhumation,
etc., some curious copies of which
may be seen in the Louvre.

.fn #
The faithful in the middle ages were frequently
interred with their profession of faith, the
<i>Credo</i> and <i>Confiteor</i>, or sometimes also the very
text from the Book of Job which we are about to
consider.
.fn-

The <i>Todtenbuch</i> is a collection
of hymns, prayers, and theological
instructions, divided into one hundred
and sixty-five chapters, with
their titles and rubrics. These rubrics,
as in the Catholic missals
and breviaries, consist of a few
words in red ink to guide the celebrant.
The titles of the chapters
are also in red. The lines are usually
vertical, and, in the richer
copies, the upper margin of the roll
is adorned, by the side of the title
of each chapter, with an illustration
or vignette representing the subject
there treated. Finally, a whole
page is taken up by a picture of the
judgment of souls and the ingathering
of the harvest in the blessed
fields of Ker-Neter.

These texts were to be recited
by the soul during its journey, as a
safeguard from danger and to purify
it at the moment of the solemn
judgment which should decide its
eternal destiny. The manuscript
is intended to assist the memory of
the departed. Under the twelfth
dynasty these texts were often engraved
on the sarcophagus itself.

Thoth, the God of Wisdom, was
said to have dictated the <i>Book of
the Dead</i>, the greater portion of
which Bunsen does not hesitate
to relegate to prehistoric times.[#]

.fn #
Bunsen, <i>Egypt’s Place in Universal History</i>,
vol. v. p. 110.
.fn-

In support of this supposition, M.
Deveria notices two very ancient
annotations. The first of these, at
the sixty-fourth chapter, states that
this portion of the <i>Book of the
Dead</i> was found at Hermopolis,
written in blue, on a cube of <i>Baakes</i>,
under the feet of the god, where
the royal son Hardanouef found it
in the time of King Menkera when
making the inventory of the temple.
The second annotation tells
that chapter one hundred and thirty
was found[#] in the pylone of the
great temple in the reign of King
Housapti, who was the fifth monarch
of the first dynasty, and Menkera
built the third pyramid. Thus,
at these periods, certain parts of
the <i>Todtenbuch</i> were discovered as
antiquities, the memory of which
had been lost; and certainly we
find on the wooden mummy-coffins
of the eleventh dynasty long passages
from it, proving, therefore, its
composition to have been long anterior
to the Shepherd Kings, and
consequently long before Abraham.

.fn #
<i>Catalogues des MSS. Egyptiens</i>, p. 51.
.fn-

The obelisks, or inscriptions in
stone, have not, however, the impersonal
and theological character
of the writing on the rolls. On the
obelisks the name of the departed
is usually inscribed side by side
with the names of his family, parents
or children, and his titles and
occupation are there given. At the
head of the monument he is represented
making an offering to Osiris,
his judge, or his children are there
depicted offering libations before
the image of their father and reciting
the liturgical hymns for his
soul.

It is not rare to find the dead
himself asking for prayers. The
funereal obelisk of Neb-oua at
Boulag ends thus: “To the living;
.pn +1
to the ancients of the earth; to the
priests; to the panegyrists; to the
divine fathers; to all who see this
obelisk: make for me your songs,
beloved of Osiris, the Eternal
King. Say: May the delicious
breath of life breathe in the face of
Neb-oua, the first prophet of Osiris,
the acknowledged just one.”[#]

.fn #
<i>Notice des Princip. Monum.</i> Par M. Mariette.
.fn-

Again, on the lid of a sarcophagus
in the same museum (No. 978)
we find a “Prayer to be said by
every person who draws near to
this tomb: May God give thee
light,[#] and may its beams shine
into thine eyes; may he breathe
into thy nostrils the breath which
thou must breathe to live.”

.fn #
As this formula recalls the <i>Lux perpetua liceat
eis</i> of the Catholic, so also we find on the
tombs of Egypt the <i>Requiescat in pace</i>.
.fn-

The personal details, which vary
upon every obelisk, are accompanied
by formulæ taken from the
<i>Book of the Dead</i>, which recall the
faith of the departed in the resurrection
of the body; the rewards
and punishments of a future life;
the judgment, presided over by
Osiris, his redeemer; and the hope
of an eternity of happiness flowing
from the beatific vision.

Here we have, in fact, the profession
of faith of the patriarch Job,
a further examination of which will
show us that the analogy is carried
into the minutest details. In regard
to it we will first consider
briefly the Egyptian doctrine about
God and the Redeemer.

Although nothing was originally
more simple than the theology of
Egypt, yet nothing could well be
more confused and perplexing than
it became as the commentaries of
the schools and the mythological
superfetations of each temple developed
in the course of time. From
its earliest to its latest days Egypt
believed in one God, personal, uncreated,
almighty, the author and
watchful preserver of the universe.
How, then, it may be asked, can
its exuberant polytheism be reconciled
with this doctrine? In
traversing the galleries filled with
long ranks of the Egyptian deities—Thoth
with the head of an ibis
and the hawk-headed Horus being
conspicuous among them—we pass
along the stony piles of these antique
and impenetrable monstrosities
as if under the influence of a
nightmare, while the words of liberated
Israel echo from distant ages
in our ears: “Os habent et non
loquentur; oculos habent et non
videbunt; manus habent et non
palpabunt; pedes habent et non
ambulabunt; non clamabunt in gutture
suo.” And we ask what there
can be of just and true behind the
strange forms of these old-world
phantoms.

The answer is contained in the
fact that the Egyptians attributed
to God different names and forms,
according to the aspects and attributes
to which they wished to give
prominence, while, under each of
these names and forms, God, in his
inalienable infinity, remained always
the same; and, as if they had
anticipated our perplexities at the
sight of these battalions of divinities,
they have taken exceeding
pains to instruct us on this point.
As the Eternal, God had one name;
as Creator, he had another; as Providence
or Preserver, another; and
as Judge and Redeemer of souls,
the name of Osiris. In each sanctuary
the one God of the whole
country, living in a Triad which,
without division of substance, expressed
the phases of his threefold
existence, was worshipped under a
particular form and name. He had
a special worship, rites, chants, and
.pn +1
ceremonial, unknown in the neighboring
temples; but the hymns and
inscriptions constantly dwell on the
fact that each temple and each ritual
was in honor of the only God,
to whom belong all temples, and to
whom all prayers are addressed.[#]

.fn #
An historical fact which exercised considerable
influence on the religion of Egypt, and which helps
to explain the multiplicity of the names given to
the Deity, was that the whole of Egypt which
Menes united under his sceptre was divided into
<i>nomes</i>, each having its capital city; and each of
these regions had its principal god, designated by
a special name, but under these different names the
same doctrine always remains of a divine unity.
Thus by the side of the political there was also a
kind of divine feudality. Tum reigned at Heliopolis,
Osiris at Theni and later at Abydos, Ammon
was over Thebes, and over Memphis Phtah.
Each of these gods, identical in substance with the
gods of the other nomes, easily allowed this fundamental
identity. Ammon of Thebes gave hospitality
in his temple to Min or Khem of Coptos, to
Tum of Heliopolis, and to Phtah of Memphis, who
on their part received Ammon with equal readiness
into their own sanctuaries.
.fn-

.if h
.il fn=p769.jpg w=80% alt='The One who alone is: there is of him no second.'
.ca <i>The One who alone is: there is of him no second.</i>
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: <i>The One who alone is: there is of him no second.</i>]
.if-

The Egyptians knew that the
Deity is an unfathomable mystery
and can have no name. “His
name,” say the texts, “is mysterious
as his being.” Considered
from this point of view, he is called
<i>The Hidden
One</i>—Ammon,
whose image is
enveloped in an
impenetrable
veil. In his uncreated essence God
is invisible, but he has revealed himself
in his acts, expressive of his
wisdom, power, and goodness, and
each of these attributes presents an
accessible side, by which the mind
can take hold of the incomprehensible,
see the invisible, and name the
nameless One. Having in himself
all powers and every form of greatness,
his names and forms are without
number, and the texts, as in
the Hymn to Ammon, expressly
designate him as <i>The Many-Named</i>—the
<i>Multitude by the Names</i>.[#]

.fn #
“The habit of reuniting in one worship the different
forms of the Divinity continually led to their
fusion into one personality. Sevek, of Fayom, associated
with Ra, became Sevek-Ra; Phtah was
fused with Sokari under the name of Phtah-Sokari,
and Osiris, being afterwards joined to these, made
Phtah-Sokar-Osiris. All the divine types were reciprocally
interpenetrated and absorbed into the
supreme deity. The names and forms of God were
indefinitely multiplied, but God, never.”—G. Maspero,
<i>Hist. Anc.</i>, ch. i. p. 29.
.fn-

The true name of God appears
to have been, with the Egyptians as
with the Hebrews, the greatest of
mysteries. Probably it was not allowed
to be written; in any case,
as in the papyrus Harris, its utterance
was forbidden. “I am He
who makes trial of the warriors, he
whose name is known to none. His
name must be kept in silence on
the borders of the river: whoso shall
utter it, he shall be consumed. His
name must be silent upon earth.”

We find this
in the hymn to
Ammon,[#] and
the remainder
of this text
leads us further into the doctrine
of a Trinity which Egyptian theology
had preserved amidst other
primeval traditions.

.fn #
See papyri in the museum of Boulag.
.fn-

.pm letter-start
“Creator of the pastures whereon the
cattle feed, and of the plants which
nourish man; he who provides for the
fishes of the sea and the birds of heaven,
who gives the breath of life to the germ
yet hidden in the egg, who feeds the
flying insect and the creeping thing,
who provides the stores of the mouse in
his retreat and of the birds in the forest[#]—homage
to thee, the author of all, who
alone art, ... who watchest over men
when they repose, and seekest the good
of thy creatures; God, Ammon, the
preserver of all; Tum and Armachis
worship thee in their words, and say, Homage
to thee, because of thy immanence
in us; prostration before thy face, because
thou producest us; ... the gods
bow before thy majesty, and exalt the
soul of him by whom they were produced,
happy in the immanence of their
generator,” etc.
.pm letter-end

.fn #
Conf. Job xxxviii. 39-41.
.fn-

It will be perceived that Tum
and Armachis appear to form, with
Ammon, a triad, of which the persons
.pn +1
are distinct without being
separate, each person being represented
as reposing in one divine
substance, of which each is an aspect,
of which each expresses an attribute,
and of whose indivisible essence
each forms a part.[#]

.fn #
At Heliopolis the divinity appears under three
forms: Atoum, the Inaccessible God; Choper, the
Creator (the scarabæus God); and Ra, the Manifestation
of God—the visible sun. It was not until
later that we find a feminine divinity.
.fn-

It is not to be supposed, however,
that this lofty and abstract
conception was appreciated by the
multitude, with whom, on the
contrary, the numerous names and
forms of their deity degenerated
into a monstrous polytheism, and
who, in spite of the reiterated affirmations
of the hymns and inscriptions,
crowded their altars with
fantastic idols.

But for the depositaries of the
sacred doctrine there was but one
God, living in the midst of the divine
triads, uncreated, and the
principle of life. He was also the
principle of truth: “Hold nothing
as truth but the Eternal and the
Just.... Man is only the appearance;
and the appearance is the
supreme lie.... What is the First
Truth? He who is one and alone,
the Lord of Truth and Father of
the gods.”

The explanation to this formula
is to be found in the other text
which supposes the Word to be the
principle of the divine persons:

.if h
.il fn=p770-a.jpg w=80% alt='Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods.'
.ca <i>Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods.</i>
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: <i>Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods.</i>]
.if-

Hermes Trismegistes, commenting
upon the above, says: “He
who made the world made it not
with his hands, but with his word.”
And again:

.pm letter-start
“The luminous Word (<i>Verbum</i>), which
emanates from the Intelligence, is the
Son of God.... The Intelligence of
life and light engendered, by the Word,
another creative Intelligence, the god
of fire and fluids, who in turn formed
seven ministers, enveloping in their circles
the sensible world, and governing
it by what is called destiny. This
spirit is necessary to all; he gives life to
all, sustains all. He flows from the holy
source, and unceasingly comes to the
aid of the spirits and of all things living.”[#]
.pm letter-end

.fn #
We seem to have here a vague idea of the Holy
Spirit, with his Seven Gifts, which are resplendent
in the world of nature as well as in the world of
grace.
.fn-

This spirit, Tum, or Tum Cheper
(creator), is described in the texts
as “Master of understanding, ...
giving to all things their motion:
when he wrought in the abyss of
the waters,[#] then was produced the
gladsomeness of the light. The
gods rejoiced at its beauty.”

.fn #
“And the spirit of God moved over the waters”
(Gen. i. 2).
“And God saw the light that it was good” (Gen.
i. 4).
.fn-

The Author of the universe is
also worshipped as the principle of
Goodness under the name of Oun
Nofrè—the Good Being; and the
inscriptions reiterate the appellation:

.if h
.il fn=p770-b.jpg w=50% alt='The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves.'
.ca <i>The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves.</i>
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: <i>The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves.</i>]
.if-

“His love is in the south: his
graces in the north: all hearts are
transported with his beauty....
When he traverses the heavens in
his bark, and travels in peace
through celestial space, his rowers
are in gladness.”[#]

.fn #
Hymn to Ammon-Ra.
.fn-

Again, in the wisdom of his secret
counsels, God is described as
holding in reserve all that may
happen in the future. “He is that
.pn +1
which is, and that which is not,”
says the <i>Todtenbuch</i>; “for that
which is, is in my hand, and that
which is not is in my heart.”

It has been necessary to dwell
at some length on the Egyptian
doctrines respecting the nature of
God and his relation to the world
before approaching another feature
of exceeding interest in their theology—namely,
<i>the history and office
of the Redeemer</i>.

This mighty Liberator, the first
hope of whom was given by God to
our first parents, appears under various
forms in the traditions of all
the peoples of a distant antiquity,
and among these traditions the
most ancient and the most pure is
certainly that of Osiris, whose noble
and beneficent attributes raise him
above all the divinities of other
nations, represented as coming to
bring succor to man. The Doctors
of the church were themselves
struck with admiration before this
august figure, and did not hesitate
to identify the name of Osiris with
that of our Lord Jesus Christ,[#]
being convinced that the belief respecting
him was but an echo of
the primitive revelation. It would
indeed be difficult to explain otherwise
its correspondence to the Messianic
prophecies given later to the
chosen people, or the analogies of
the Osirian teaching with the accomplishment,
in the life of our
Lord, of the hopes which, during
long centuries, it kept alive in the
countless generations of Egypt.

.fn #
This fact, which appeared inexplicable temerity
on the part of Tertullian, is justified by what has
of late years been discovered from original documents,
which correct the classical misrepresentations
of Egyptian theology.
.fn-

The special attribute of Osiris is
<i>goodness</i>; it is he who is <i>Oun-Nofre</i>
the Good Being <i>par excellence</i>; it is
he who, with Tum (or Phtah) and
Thoth, partakes of the divine essence,
and is called, like Ammon,
<i>Neb-oua—the Lord alone</i>.

In the papyrus 3292 in the Hall
of Tombs in the Louvre is the following
passage: “Hail to thee,
Osiris, ... the great eldest Son
of Ra, Father of fathers,... King
of immeasurable time and lord of
eternity.... None knows his name;
innumerable are his names in the
cities and the nomes.[#]... Hail to
.pn +1
thee, ... the one who didst rise from
the dead. He is the lord of life,
and we live by his creations; none
can live without his will.” The
second aspect of the life of Osiris
is his sojourn upon earth in human
form, his death, and passage into
the land of the departed. Plutarch
tells us that Osiris, lord of time,
made himself man and reigned on
earth, giving his people wise and
holy laws; that he taught them
agriculture and reverence to the
gods, going through all the country
to instruct his subjects, whose attention
he won and whose manners
he softened by the penetrating
charm of his words and by music.[#]

.fn #
It is of these innumerable names that the
Egyptians formed their long litanies, which are, as
it were, the type of those of the Catholic Church.
M. Ancessi mentions having heard at Cairo some
wandering musicians chanting under his window
an old legend in the simple rhythm in which the
melodic phrase, incessantly repeated, has a close
resemblance to the Catholic litanies.

The following is a comparatively small portion of
the papyrus of Neb-Qed, where the departed, arrived
in the hall of Supreme Justice, enumerates
the faults which he has avoided, proclaiming,
at the same time, some of the titles of Osiris:

“O thou who marchest, [<i>who art</i>] <i>come forth
from An</i>! I am without fault.

“O consumer of shadows! <i>come forth from the
double retreat</i>; I have not slain any man.

“O purity of the face! <i>come forth from Rastou</i>;
I have committed no fraud on the measures of corn.

“O Two Lions! <i>come forth from heaven</i>; I
have committed no fraud in the dwelling of justice.

“O Flame! <i>come forth in turning backwards</i>;
I have told no lie.

“O Rampart! <i>come forth from the mysterious
abode</i>; I have done nothing worthy of condemnation.

“O thou that vivifiest the flame! <i>come forth
from Hat-Phtah</i>; my heart has had no evil intentions.

“O thou that turnest back the head (etc)!... I
have been no detractor.

“O mystery of the leg! <i>come forth from the
night</i>; I have not given way to anger.

“O light of the senses! <i>come forth from the
mysterious region</i>; I have had no intercourse with
a married woman.

“O blood! <i>come forth from the chamber of the
lotus</i>; I have not been depraved.

“O thou who perpetually renewest that which is!
<i>issued from Khem</i>; I have not been violent....

“O thou who hidest words!... I have not been
prodigal of words.

“O Nofre-Toum in Ha-Phtah-Ka. I have not committed
abomination.

“O thou who art unchanging! <i>issued from Dadou</i>;
I have done no outrage against the gods.

“O thou who sendest forth the heavenly river!
come forth out of Saïs; I have not made the slave
to be maltreated by his master.

“O thou who vivifiest intelligent beings! I have
not defrauded the loaves in the temple.

“O beautiful Neb-Ka! I have not profaned the
meat of the gods.... I have not taken off the
wrappings of the mummies.... I have not taken
away milk from the mouth of the infant.

“O thou whose eyes are like a sword! I have committed
no fraud in the abode of justice.”

Each title given to Osiris alludes to some mystery
or teaching in the Egyptian theology.
.fn-

.fn #
Music amongst the ancients was, far more than
it is with us, an agreeable pastime. Socrates
declares that philosophy is nothing but a sublime
music: ὡς φιλοσοφίας μεν οὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς.
In the third book of his <i>Republic</i> Plato goes much
further, and affirms that the musician alone is truly
a philosopher: ὄτι μόνος μουσικός ὁ φιλόσοφος.
The chanted poems and traditions were for ages
the depositaries of the laws, ritual and history of
a nation.
.fn-

Even according to the myths,
however, righteousness does not
long prosper upon earth. The
Principle of Evil, enraged against
him, compassed his painful death
when his life upon earth had attained
twenty-eight years[#]—often
represented by twenty-eight lotus-flowers
in the inscriptions, and
fixed by the traditional age of the
Apis.

.fn #
It has hitherto been difficult to discover the
circumstances of the death of Osiris, or the primitive
tradition of his sufferings, about which several
legends have successively prevailed. The one
given by Plutarch cannot be of great antiquity. In
the Isle of Philæ, which, if we may so express it,
had a special <i>devotion</i> to Osiris, the history of his
life is given in a series of bas-reliefs in a small
sanctuary on the west of the great temple, his
death and resurrection forming the principal subjects.

There is a splendid passage relating to this god
in Plutarch, ch. lxxix., <i>Treatise on Osiris and Isis</i>.
.fn-

But for Osiris, as for the true
Saviour, the hour of death is the
hour of victory. He rises again,
and reigns henceforth, king of an
eternal kingdom.

The priests and faithful of Osiris
could not endure the attempts
made by travellers and philosophers
to find a resemblance between
this pure and lofty divinity to any
of their own disreputable gods, or
to fix in the depths of the earth and
the abode of the dead the dwelling-place
of him who had “no kind
of communication with substances
subject to corruption and death.”
No other god had in Egypt so
many temples and worshippers as
this the favorite deity of the country,
since, besides its own local
divinity, each of the nomes worshipped
Osiris and Isis, and thus
the “Protector of souls” was, from
the Mediterranean to the cataracts,
the god of all the Egyptians.

The anniversary of the death of
Osiris[#] was every year observed
with lamentations throughout the
land, until the hour of his resurrection,
which was hailed with joy,
festivities, and triumph; this people,
always so anxious and interested
about the future beyond the
tomb, having for the “Lord of the
life to come” the most deep and
tender devotion. For, of all the
phases of his worship, that which
occupied the largest place and exercised
the profoundest influence on
the religious life of this great nation
is connected with the office of
Osiris in regard to each separate
soul. All the funereal inscriptions
dwell upon this. Osiris was not
only their saviour but their judge.
In the paintings and sculptures,
.pn +1
and the vignettes of the ritual, he is
usually represented enthroned in the
Hall of the divine Justice, where,
enveloped, all but the face and
hands, in the shroud which had enfolded
him in the tomb, and holding
in his right hand the hyk, or
pastoral staff (not unlike an episcopal
crosier), and in the left a
double-thonged scourge, he awaits
the soul of the departed. At his
feet are the divine balances, wherein
will be weighed the heart of the
dead. At the threshold of the hall
Maat, the symbol of justice and
truth, receives the soul and presents
it to the Judge.

.fn #
Most nations of antiquity have known the traditional
mystery of a god suffering, dying, and rising
again. The worship of Adonis, long prevalent
among the Syrian races, penetrated, under the name
of Thammuz, even into the sanctuary of Israel
(Ezek. viii. 14). Macrobius speaks of it also among
the Assyrians, and of the lamentations of Proserpine;
and the same belief is to be found in the long
poems of India. It is also probable that the Moabite
worship of Beelphegor was analogous to that of
Osiris, Adonis, and Thammuz (see Numb. xxv.
2). Women are here, as in Egypt, at Byblos, and
Athens, especially charged with his worship.
.fn-

The soul’s first words on being
brought into the presence of its
God were: “I am the Osiris [such
a one],” giving his earthly name.[#]

.fn #
In the papyrus Neb-Qed we find as follows:
“Words, on entering the Hall of Double Justice to
see the face of the gods, spoken by the Osiris Neb-Qed.
He said: Hail to thee, great God, Lord of justice!
I come into thy presence to behold thy beauties
... <i>on the day of the giving account of
words</i> before the Good Being. I place myself in
your presence, my lords; I bring you the truth.”
.fn-

This assimilation of the faithful
worshipper with his divine type is one
of the most elevated and touching
characteristics of the Egyptian doctrine;
nor does anything analogous
to it exist in any other religion of antiquity—it
is only in Christianity
that we find it again. In the same
way that the Christian is a living
member of Christ, sharing in his life,
rights, and merits, bearing his
name, taking refuge behind the
person of his Saviour, so does the
worshipper of Osiris become a living
member of his liberator, and
another Osiris; and at the hour of
death the soul calls for aid from him
who had also passed its dark portal
and come forth again victoriously.

Nothing is more touching than
the prayers addressed by these
suppliant souls to their protector;
thus we read, in a papyrus of the
Louvre: “Amensaouef the departed
says to Osiris: Receive in
peace this Osiris, Amensaouef justified....
Open to him thy gates,
that I may enter there when my
heart shall desire: may the guardians
of thy pylones not fight
against me, and may I not be
thrust back by thy guards, that I
may see God in his beauty; that I
may serve him in the place where
he dwells.”

To obtain a right to these favors,
the soul, as in the litany already
quoted from the Book of the Dead,
recalled its innocent life; in the
<i>Book of the Breathings</i> the dead
continues his justification by enumerating
his good works: “O gods
who dwell in the lower hemisphere!
listen to the voice of the Osiris
[such a one]; he is come before
you. There is in him no fault; no
testimony arises against him....
He gave bread to the hungry and
water to the thirsty; he gave
clothes to the naked;[#] he offered
peace-offerings to the gods and
oblations to the <i>manes</i>.”

.fn #
Cf. Job xxix. 12-17, and xxxi. 16-22.
.fn-

According to the result declared
by the unerring balances, judgment
was given, and the name of the
righteous written down by Thoth in
the Book of Life. The just had
right to enter into the “Mysterious
Retreat,” the place of eternal bliss,
to eat the fruit of the tree of life,
<i>Astu</i>, and rest in its shadow; to
drink the waters of the river of
life, to sit down at the heavenly
feast with Osiris, and to find the fulness
of happiness in the contemplation
of the face of God. The impious
were driven to endless punishment
in the fiery gulfs of <i>Amma</i>,
while “intermediate souls” were
purified, by an expiation proportioned
to their faults, in the Lake
of Fire.
.pn +1

The most curious document,
after the <i>Todtenbuch</i>, which Egypt
has bequeathed to us on the subject
is the long MS. entitled <i>The
Book of that which takes place in the
Lower Hemisphere</i>.[#] The author
there describes, as if he himself had
visited them, all the various localities
of these regions of darkness.
In it we advance, with Osiris and
his dead, along the gloomy paths
which frequently remind us of the
wanderings of Dante. The way is
divided into twelve “Hours” with
their corresponding stations, and is
peopled with mysterious phantoms
and mythological forms, who sometimes
stop the travellers and at
others favor their progress. It is
said at the seventh hour: “Who
knows this, the panther devours
him not.”[#] The name of this hour
is, “He who repulses the reptile, who
wounds the serpent Ha-her.”[#]

.fn #
M. Deveria has given a summary of this book,
in his <i>Notice des Manuscrits du Musée du Louvre</i>.
.fn-

.fn #
It is also a panther that Dante encounters at
the entrance of the forest which is the commencement
of the mysterious realm of Death. The Egyptian
texts mention also the lion, of which the Catholic
liturgy retains the remembrance in the
Offertory for the Mass for the Dead: <i>Domine Jesu
Christe, libera animas defunctorum ... de ore
leonis, ne absorbeat eas Tartarus.</i>
.fn-

.fn #
Each hour of this night has a name, according
to the mystery accomplished in it. The eighth
hour is characterized by the defeat of the great
serpent, cast into the abyss. One of his names is
<i>Apep</i>—<i>he who lifts the head</i>, the <i>proud one</i>, represented
by a serpent pierced with arrows.
.fn-

The most detailed description of
the Egyptian hell is given in the
third register of the eleventh hour.
There we are shown seven goddesses
standing, each armed with a
sword;[#] the flames which spring
from their mouths fall into seven
gulfs, wherein condemned souls,
hieroglyphic symbols of spirits,
heads cut off, etc., are confusedly
mingled amidst the fire. Each gulf
is designated in retrograde characters
by the word <i>Had</i>, reminding
one of the Greek Hades; and each
goddess has a name which indicates
her powers and functions. It was
this hell that was called also <i>the
second death</i>—an expression preserved
by tradition to the days of
Christianity, and repeated by St.
John in the Apocalypse, in which
we find almost all the ancient formulæ
of the religious beliefs of
primitive times.

.fn #
“In that day, fear ye before the sword; the vengeance
of the sword is burning; that ye may know
that there is a judgment” (Job xix. 29).
.fn-

We have now briefly to consider
Osiris under the aspect of <i>the Risen
One</i>. When, like the sun overcoming
the shades of night, he rises from
the dead, he is called Horus; and
although the texts insist upon the
absolute identity of the divine personality
who manifests himself
under these two aspects, Horus
nevertheless, in the mythological
form of the doctrine, is called his
son—the Avenger of his father
Osiris.

This formula, “I am Horus, the
Avenger of his father,” occurs repeatedly
throughout the <i>Todtenbuch</i>;
the Avenger being the God
himself awakening from the tomb
under a new form, and taking possession
of the second life that knows
death no more; that which happened
to Osiris being repeated in
each departed soul, of whom he
was the type and the Saviour.

Later on Egyptian mythology
furnished Osiris with assistants for
this combat with death. The
<i>Book of the Lower Hemisphere</i> represents,
at the tenth hour of the
journey through the lands beyond
the tomb, and at the moment when
the trial is about to end, four
gods, each bearing a bow and arrows,
with the legend: “These
with their bows and arrows, going
before the great God, open to him
the eastern horizon of heaven.
This great God says: Choose out
.pn +1
your arrows, draw your bows;
wound for me mine enemies who
are in darkness at the gate of the
horizon.”[#] This combat is renewed
for each soul, and the avenging
God invariably intervenes with his
attendant spirits. M. Ancessi considers
that we have here an unexpected
and natural commentary
upon the words of Job, “<i>I know that
my Avenger liveth</i>,” and proceeds to
examine the sense of the word <i>goel</i>,
or avenger, of the Hebrew text.

.fn #
Cat. of Egypt. MSS., <i>Book of the Lower Hemisphere</i>,
p. 15.
.fn-

In the social order of the wandering
tribes a traditional law regulated
that, in case of murder, it
rested with the family of the victim
to take vengeance on the murderer.
It was for the son to avenge his
father, or, in default of a son, the
nearest relative, who thus became
the <i>goel</i> of the slain. It is easy to
imagine the terrible effects of this
fatal law, which still prolongs itself
through centuries, and sometimes
does not end before a whole tribe
has been cut off.

But besides the earthly avenger,
there was another—God himself,
who intervened at the hour of
death to adjudge the punishment
of the wicked and take in hand the
cause of the departed. Such is, in
fact, the character of the mysterious
protector whose aid is claimed by
Job when he exclaims, “I know
that my <i>Goel</i> is living”; he can
count upon him, as in his tribe
he counts upon the never-failing
avenger of the cause of the oppressed.[#]

.fn #
Osiris surrounded his children with so much
solicitude that he is represented as even sending
his attendants to visit their sepulchres. We find,
for instance, the following in papyrus 3283 of the
Louvre: “Said by Osiris to the gods of his suite:
Go, then, and see this dwelling of the departed,
that it may be thus constructed; hasten it for the
moment of his heavenly birth with you; respect
him; salute him, for he is honorable.” It is curious
to find so early the <i>dies natalis</i> of our martyrologies.
.fn-

We need only allude to the frequency
with which, in all poetical
and imaginative nations, a metaphor
becomes a myth, to perceive the
facility with which the idea of the
resurrection of Osiris became the
birth of Horus in the cradle of his
father’s tomb. Thus there was a
violent death; there was a son;
the next step naturally transforms
Horus into the avenger.

How often is it the case that a
word of apparent unimportance,
having found its way into a dogmatic
explanation, ends by entirely
disfiguring its sense, like a graft left
by an unknown hand in the bark of a
tree, and which produces a complete
change in its fruit![#] Thus, as time
goes on, we find grouped around
Osiris, Horus the Avenger, who is
called his son, Isis and Nephtys,
who are his sisters, forty terrible
assessors who surround his tribunal
and aid him as judge, besides a
multitude of details which compromise
and disfigure the ancient doctrine;
while the text of Job preserves
the mysterious germ of the
Osirian doctrine in its simplicity
and grandeur, and then applies it
in prophetic allusion to the death
and resurrection of Messias the
Redeemer.

.fn #
“How often would the Catholic faith have
hopelessly foundered amidst the innovations which
the heretics and sectaries of all times have attempted
to foist upon her, had not an infallible authority
watched over her and secured her integrity!
I know nothing more convincing as to the necessity
of this doctrinal magistracy than the incessant variation
of the religions of antiquity. From a distance,
and at first sight, they seem to have changed
the least; whereas, on the contrary, their history
has been nothing but a gradual and perpetual
change, the laws of which it may not be impossible
some time to discover.”—<i>Le Rédempteur et la Vie
Future.</i>
.fn-

An additional probability that
the words of Job contain an allusion
to this doctrine is to be found
in the remarkable identity of the
remaining portion of this text with
the formula of the Egyptian papyri.
.pn +1
After his affirmation of faith in a
living Redeemer Job immediately
adds, with the theologians of Egypt:
“In my flesh I shall see God, whom
I, I shall see for myself; mine eyes
shall see him, and not [those of]
another.”

The passages in the <i>Todtenbuch</i>
and funereal inscriptions are numberless
in which we find it said of
the departed:

.if h
.il fn=p776.jpg w=70% alt='This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees (God).'
.ca <i>This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees (God).</i>
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: <i>This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees (God).</i>]
.if-

Again: “I come to thee, Lord of
gods and men; I come to contemplate
thy beauties.” “I behold
the great God in the interior of his
tabernacle; in this day of the judgment
of souls.”

The resemblance is so striking
between the Hebrew and Egyptian
texts that comment is needless;
nevertheless, we would guard
against the supposition that the
ideas uttered by the patriarch were
borrowed from Egyptian theology;
for, besides that in the words of
Job there is the absence of any
myth or secondary personage whatever,
it appears certain that these
doctrines, preserved in greater purity
in their primitive form among
the Semitic races, may be traced
back to the time of the separation
of the families of Sem and Cham,
whom they respectively accompanied
into their distant wanderings
as their most precious heritage; but
whilst the scribes and doctors of
Egypt gradually enveloped them
in an exuberant mythology, the
pastoral tribes of Sem preserved
them in the simplicity of the first
ages.

And yet all these doctrines, which
are proved to be the heritage of
humanity, would have been lost
and buried with the Egyptian dead
had it not been for the intervention
of Christ. In vain for three
centuries did the loftiest intelligences
of Greece weary themselves
in studies whose result was to
prove that man was incapable of
forming true notions of God, the
soul, and our destinies from the
chaos of systems which enveloped
the original revelation when our
Lord brought to the human race
the realization of its venerable traditions
and the faith of its earliest
days.

Let it not be objected that the
doctrines of the Redeemer were
more ancient than his advent and
known to man before he taught
them upon earth; for man having
always had the same duties to fulfil
in regard to his future destiny, of
necessity God did not leave him in
ignorance of them from the time
of his origin; and when, later on,
they were forgotten, and the whole
world lay in darkness, then arose
the Light of which a faint reflection
in the firmament had long heralded
the approach, though clouded most
before the dawn.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=millicent
MILLICENT.
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
About two years ago we were
sitting in our sunny <i>salon</i> in the
Avenue Gabrielle, my mother and I,
she reading, I at my harp, when
Tomlins, our English maid, opened
the door, her face all alight with
suppressed laughter.

“Well, Tomlins?” said my mother.

“Please, ma’am, it were <i>such</i> a
joke!” said Tomlins. “I was a-comin’
past the porter’s lodge when
I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard
to explain himself, and he 'adn’t
'alf a dozen words o’ French, he
'adn’t; and the <i>concierge</i> he could
make neither 'ead nor tail of what
he was wanting to say; and it <i>was</i>
that funny I couldn’t for the life of
me but burst out a-laughin’!”

“That was a shame! You should
have gone to the gentleman’s assistance,
instead of laughing at him,”
said my mother reprovingly; “he
would have done so had he seen
you in a difficulty.”

“I think he was Hamerican,
ma’am,” said Tomlins, in a tone
which clearly indicated that she
thought this fact an extenuating
circumstance of her misbehavior.

“That makes no difference,”
said my mother; “you know enough
of French, such as it is, to have
been useful to him, and you should
have come forward. But how do
you know he was an American?”

“He wore a white 'at, ma’am, and
that’s what Henglish gentlemen
don’t use to, leastways not this time
of year. He be the family that has
took the flat down-stairs for the winter.”

“Oh! he is a neighbor, then!”
remarked my mother; and, turning
to me, she added: “Perhaps I ought
to go down and see if we can be of
any use to them?”

“Indeed, mamma,” I replied hastily,
“you will do nothing of the sort!
We have had enough of American
acquaintances. These are most
likely enormously rich people, whose
neighborhood, if we knew them,
would be nothing but a bore.”

“We have known some very rich
ones who were exceedingly pleasant,”
urged my mother.

“Yes, and that is why I have registered
a vow never to know another—not
if I can help it, at least,”
I replied. “Just as you have grown
to care for them they sail away
across the Atlantic, and you never
see them again! No, please, let us
have nothing to do with these people
down-stairs! They may be
perfectly charming, and, if they are,
all the more reason for keeping
clear of them.”

“This is all very selfish and not
at all like you,” persisted my mother.
“These people are at our
door, strangers, and at the mercy of
the <i>concierge</i>, who will fleece them
and worry them till they are driven
wild; it is a real act of charity to
come to their rescue. I will send
Tomlins down with my card.”

I gave up the contest. I knew
that, when there was an act of kindness
to be done, it was no use trying
to oppose my mother, especially
on such selfish grounds as my present
ones. The card was sent
.pn +1
accordingly with a message, and
about ten minutes later up came
the whole tribe—Dr. Segrave, Mrs.
Segrave, and Miss Sybil Segrave.
They were simply beside themselves
with gratitude. Their delight on
discovering that there was a deliverer
at hand, under the same roof
with them, was quite affecting.
How they ever found the courage
to come and face the situation at
all, with such a lively horror of its
consequences, was a matter of great
surprise to us. Miss Segrave spoke
French fluently, but this accomplishment
apparently was reserved solely
for ornamental purposes; her
disconsolate parents had evidently
not thought of pressing it into such
vulgar service as parleying with the
<i>concierge</i> and the cook—two domestic
enemies before whom they
had already learned to shake in
their shoes.

There was something about the
three that smote my heart at once.
There was a freshness, a frankness,
a spontaneous trustfulness that it
was difficult to resist. I made a
stand for it, nevertheless, and was
as coldly unresponsive to their exuberant
warmth of manner as was
consistent with politeness. The
doctor, however, took me by storm,
and in one minute and a half I had
capitulated.

He was only doctor by courtesy;
he had taken every degree that
could be taken, but he had only
practised as an amateur, being, as
my prophetic soul had warned me,
“enormously rich.” He was about
fifty-five years of age, tall, slim,
dark, but he had a quizzical expression
of face, a twinkle in his
eye, and a spring in his manner
that made you forget he was not a
boy.

Mrs. Segrave was a complete
contrast to him. Middle-sized,
stout, and unfashionable in appearance,
she had the gentleness and the
kindliness of half a dozen mothers
rolled up into one; her voice was
low, her manner simple almost to
homeliness, but full of that easy
self-possession that stamped her at
once as a lady—a most winning
woman.

Sybil—O Sybil! How shall I
describe her? She was not a beauty,
and yet she made the effect of being
one. There was a brilliancy
about her that is indescribable; it
lighted up the room the moment
she entered. Pull her to pieces, and
she was nothing; take her as a
whole, and she dazzled you. Her
features were irregular, her complexion
was nothing particular, but
there was a sparkle, a glow, a grace
about her altogether that were
more striking than the loveliest coloring
or the most perfect symmetry.
I can see her now as she appeared
to me that first day, standing on her
high heels, a little behind the doctor
and Mrs. Segrave, her black
eyes glancing right and left like
flashes of lightning, her scarlet
feather, set like a flame in her black
velvet hat, illuminating her olive
skin, and her gold-brown silk dress
glistening like a separate patch of
sunshine in the sunlit room. A
most picturesque creature she looked.
I longed to hear her speak.
No one was kept long waiting for
this in Sybil’s presence.

“This is the very kindest thing I
ever heard of!” said Mrs. Segrave,
holding out her fat little hand to
my mother.

“You have saved a family man
from suicide, my dear madam!”
said the doctor in the heartiest
tone.

“Father!” protested Sybil, “there
you are making <i>such</i> a character for
us! Mrs. Wallace will set us down
.pn +1
as a family of mad Americans.
I assure you, Mrs. Wallace, we are
all perfectly in our right minds, and
<i>very</i> grateful to you.”

This sortie broke the ice into
splinters. We all laughed, shook
hands, and sat down, and the doctor
began forthwith to pour out his
troubles. Their name was legion.
He had not been twenty-four
hours in the house, and the <i>concierge</i>
had already driven him to the verge
of insanity.

“If I could speak to the rascal,
I’d be a match for him, and soon
make him know I would stand no
nonsense,” he went on to explain.
“But that’s where he has me on the
hip, as Shakspere says; he keeps
jabbering on, and I can’t answer
the fellow. I know what he’s driving
at, I know he’s robbing me;
but what aggravates me most is
that he thinks he’s fooling me.”

My mother poured all the oil she
could on these angry waters, and
in ten minutes I could see that she
and the doctor were sworn friends.

Sybil listened so far to the conversation
with an air of amused interest,
just as I was doing; then abruptly
turning from it, as if she had
had enough of the subject, “You
are a musician, I see,” she said—my
harp and piano stood open
ready for action. “I am perfectly
devoted to music! I will come up
and play duets with you, if you let
me?” I said I should be delighted.

“But I like talking ten thousand
times better than music,” she went
on. “Music is a way of expressing
one’s self with another instrument
than one’s tongue; but one tires of
it after a while. One never tires of
talking; <i>I</i> never do.”

I could readily believe this, but
assented as to a general proposition.

“Do you read a great deal?”
she continued. “I don’t. I find
life is too absorbing, too full; one
has no time left for reading. Have
you? Human beings are the books
I enjoy most. I am so <i>intensely</i> interested
in my fellow-creatures! I
like to study them, to turn them
inside out, to analyze their characters,
to exchange views with them.
I do so enjoy discussing life. Don’t
you?”

This time she did “pause for a
reply,” and I was able to make one.
It was not very satisfactory.

“No, really! You don’t care for
discussing life! Well, I <i>am</i> surprised
at that. Dangerous! What
a funny idea! But if it were, that
would only make it ten times more
interesting to me; there is such an
excitement in danger! If I had
been a man I should have been
passionately devoted to tiger-hunting.
Now, life is a kind of tiger-hunt,
when one comes to think of
it; one can always get some excitement
out of it—watching other
people at the hunt, I mean. Don’t
you think so? People take such
different views of life. Good gracious!
one would never get to the
end of one’s friends’ views, if one
began, even on one particular subject.
Take love and marriage, for
instance; what <i>can</i> be more intensely
interesting than to discuss marriage
with a person who holds
views <i>diametrically</i> opposite to one’s
own?”

She rattled on in this way for
half an hour: it was very amusing.
I felt very tame beside her, and I
fancied she must have found me insufferably
dull and unsympathetic.
I found out afterwards that I was
mistaken in this; her estimate had
been very flattering. On reflection
it need not have surprised me;
there is nothing a great talker likes
so much as a good listener.
.pn +1

We all parted most cordially,
with mutual congratulations on
the chance that had brought us
together.

“I feel as bold as a lion,” said the
doctor as he shook hands with my
mother. “I am ready to brave an
army of <i>concierges</i>.”

“Oh! keep the peace; keep
friends with him at any cost. If
you make him your enemy, he will
worry your life out,” was her parting
injunction.

“Well,” she said, when the door
had closed on our new acquaintances,
“what do you think of
them?”

“I think them perfectly odious!”
I replied.

“My dear Lilly!”

“Yes. They are just the kind
of people we are sure to get fond
of, to make a friendship with, and
then away they will fly, and we
shall never hear or see them for
the rest of our lives.”

“You are determined to make a
tragedy out of it, so I will not
contradict you,” said my mother.
“Meantime, I shall enjoy the pleasant
neighborhood, and trust to its
not ending so badly. They are
here for six months certain, and
if they like it, and the countess
likes to renew their lease, they
may remain for six months more.
They intend to make themselves
very comfortable, meantime, and
to receive a good deal.”

“Humph! They will be sending
us invitations to their entertainments,
I suppose,” I said.

“That is very likely.”

“They will have their share in
their thanks, as far as I am concerned,”
I said; and I sat down to
my harp again. “I have no fancy
to go and figure as a housemaid
amongst their magnificent American
toilettes.”

“I am vain enough to flatter myself
that my child would look like
a gentlewoman, whatever her surroundings
might be,” observed my
mother quietly, “and that she does
not depend on dress for her individuality.”

What else could I do but jump
up and kiss her for this speech,
and declare myself ready to go and
sport my white muslin and pink
ribbons in the midst of all the latest
wonders of Worth & Company?

It was not many days before I
had an opportunity of putting this
heroic resolve into execution.

You may laugh; but it was heroic.
I realized this distinctly,
even before the supreme crisis of
the eventful evening came. Sybil
herself came up with the card of
invitation.

“Mamma was putting it into an
envelope to send it by Pierre,”
she said; “but I said that was the
veriest nonsense, and that I would
take it myself. Of course you are
disengaged? You <i>must</i> be disengaged!”

“Unfortunately, we are,” I replied.

“Why, Lilly Wallace, what <i>do</i>
you mean!” screamed Sybil.

“Just this: that I am a trifle
proud, and just vain enough not to
care to look a guy wherever I go,
and that I am pretty sure to look
that at your house on the 22d.
You will all be dressed to kill, as
you say—rigged out in the very
newest fashions by the most expensive
dressmakers in Paris—and I
shall have to appear like a school-girl
in plain white muslin. I never
wear anything else; mamma can’t
afford it. I shall have a new one,
and she will give me a handsome
sash and fresh flowers; but that is
all. She will appear herself in
plain black velvet, without either
.pn +1
old point or diamonds. If you
think we will make too hideous a
blot on your splendor, say so honestly,
and we will spare you the
disgrace.”

“Lilly, you are the very oddest
girl I ever came across in the
whole course of my life!” protested
Sybil. “Why, how <i>can</i> you talk
so? You will look perfectly lovely
in your sheer white muslin. I only
wish we Americans were not such
fools as to spend all our money on
our backs as we do; I can tell you
most of us hate it and think it awfully
hard to have to do it. But
we can’t help it; we should get so
laughed at if we went to a ball in
white muslin that we should <i>die</i> of
shame.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant lookout
for me!” I remarked.

“Oh! it’s quite a different thing
with you,” Sybil declared, and
with a warmth I felt was sincere;
indeed, I felt she was sincere all
through. “You are English, and
we know perfectly well you have a
different standard in those things.”

“And my mother?” I said.
“What sort of effect is she likely to
produce in her plain black velvet?”

“She will look like a queen—that’s
all; you know she will,
Lilly.”

I did know it; I had known it as
long as I could remember. I had
been brought up by my mother in
a black velvet dress, and believed,
nay, knew, that she looked as beautiful
and queenlike in it as if its
soft and sombre simplicity had been
embroidered in gems and beflowered
by all the Worths in Christendom.

I confess, nevertheless—and I do
so with shame—that I felt mortified
at her having to present herself in
this splendid gathering of Transatlantic
rank and fashion in the attire
which had borne her triumphantly
through many a stately Parisian
crowd. I was really dazzled by the
splendor of the dresses when we
stood in the midst of them. There
was no distinguishing the young
from the old, the maid from the
matron; silks, satins, laces, jewels
glistened indiscriminately on all.
There was a great deal of beauty
amongst the women—there is sure to
be in an American assembly; but
the richness of their dresses surpassed
anything I ever beheld. In
a French <i>salon</i> you may expect to
meet a great deal of elegance—some
dresses that stand out from the
common level of taste and becomingness
by their more brilliant hues
and elaborate trimmings; but here
all were brilliant, all were elaborate,
all were magnificent. I
really did feel an anachronism as
I stood there in my innocent, fluttering
muslin, while these superb,
many-colored birds-of-paradise
floated and rustled all round
me, sweeping the dark carpet with
miles of silk, and satin, and velvet,
and lace of every hue in the rainbow.
It was like being shut up in
a kaleidoscope; the pattern shifted,
flashing into new forms before my
eyes at every turn, until I felt fairly
bewildered by the moving glory.
What kind of conversation could
go on under external conditions
like these? How were people,
women at any rate, to collect their
thoughts to converse on any possible
subject except the one that was
under their eyes, brought before
them in such victorious, fascinating
guise? If they were not talking of
dress, their own dress, their friend’s
dress, dress in general or in particular,
they were most assuredly
thinking of it. And small blame
to them. I know I, for one, could
think of nothing else.

Nothing could exceed the courtesy
.pn +1
of our hosts. They led up
guest after guest to introduce to
us; all the magnates were presented
to my mother, all the young
ladies to me. They were very gracious,
every one of them, but we
did not get on well after the first
exchange of commonplaces. How
could we? What interest could a
white-muslin creature like poor me
have in the eyes of these sumptuously-attired
young ladies? I said
simply nothing to them, I suggested
nothing; I was a blank. Sybil
never sat down for a moment. She
was untiring in her efforts to make
everybody happy and pleasant and
at home. She kept flitting about
from room to room, bringing young
gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing
that no one was overlooked,
that congenial elements were drawn
together, that antagonistic ones
were kept asunder. There probably
were some antagonistic ones,
though they were invisible beneath
the gay, harmonious surface—that
pale, stately-looking girl, for instance,
whom I had noticed sitting
apart beside a large console that
separated her from the gaudy group
standing close by. I knew she was
a great friend of Sybil’s, because I
had seen her photograph in a dainty
gilt frame in the place of honor
on her writing-table. I saw Sybil
making a dart to her side every
now and then, and interchanging a
few hurried words in a tone of
close confidence; and yet she took
no pains to bring her forward or
to introduce people to her. There
was something peculiar about the
girl’s air and countenance that drew
my attention and made me wish to
speak to her. I seized the first opportunity
to whisper this wish to
Sybil.

“The pale girl in the corner?
Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent
Gray. Yes, by and by. I
don’t think you would care much
to talk to her; I mean I don’t think
you and she would hit it off very
well,” said Sybil in a hesitating
way; and somehow it was borne
upon me that she thought exactly
the contrary; that we should hit it
off too well, and that she preferred,
for reasons of her own, not to bring
us together. I there and then resolved
that I would make Millicent
Gray’s acquaintance before I left
the room—or die.

Did Sybil see this in my face, I
wonder? She had a way of flashing
a look at you with her round
black eyes that suggested a power of
reading you through and through
which was sometimes uncomfortable.
I felt it so now, and, trying to
assume an air of supreme indifference,
I observed, looking in another
direction:

“Then never mind. I only fancied
talking to her because no one
else has been doing so; she looked
lonely.”

Sybil’s rose-colored skirts floated
away in the direction of Millicent
Gray, and for a moment I half-expected
she was going to bring her
up to me. I was mistaken; she
bent over her friend, and began
talking in animated tones, gesticulating
with her fan in an excited
manner. Millicent listened apparently
with more surprise than approval;
there was a faint expression
of sarcastic resentment on her
pale, thoughtful face, and an imperceptible
movement of her shoulders
seemed to shrug away some
remark of Sybil’s with smiling dissent;
as she did so, her eyes turned
towards me and our glances met.
There was a mute recognition in
them which we both felt. I blushed,
feeling rather guilty for watching
her so closely; she smiled, and,
.pn +1
in spite of myself, I obeyed a law
of nature and smiled too. The
rooms were now so full that it was
difficult to move about; there was
small chance of the crowd swaying
me across towards Millicent, and
she sat on, surveying the scene
from her nook with a face that was
more expressive of quiet observation
than enjoyment. She was
dressed in white silk, with waves
of tulle flowing over it, but without
further ornament—neither ribbons
nor flowers; she wore one large
crimson rose in her hair, a long
<i>trainée</i> of leaves dropping down
from it and entangling a rich curl
of her dark hair. The relative
simplicity of the dress singled her
out as a very remote cousin to my
white muslin, and I felt more than
ever convinced we should prove
sympathetic to each other. How
was I to make good my vow to
speak to her or die? The chances
were that I should die, for just at
this moment Sybil bore down on
me from the rear, and took me in
tow through the billows of silks
and lace into her own boudoir,
which was two rooms off from the
central <i>salon</i> where my pensive heroine
abided.

“Are you having a good time of
it, Lilly?” she inquired, darting
her bright black eyes through me,
when we came to a little breathing
space. “What do you think of our
American society? Are our women
as handsome as yours? Are
our young men as agreeable?”

“Four questions in one breath!”
I cried, pretending to gasp. “Let
me answer the first—the only one I
can meet on such short notice: I
am having a capital time of it.
You are the best hosts I ever
saw, all three of you. But, Sybil,
do introduce me to that girl in white
silk.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sybil. “You
must want some refreshment. I
don’t believe you’ve taken so
much as an ice; I’ve seen you let
the trays pass a dozen times untouched.
Come into the supper-room
and have something. Stay,”
and she bent close to me and went
on in a whisper: “I will make Mr.
Halsted take you in. You see that
young man with the fuchsia in his
buttonhole? He is perfectly charming.
I have had such a delightful
talk with him just now!”

“About what?”

“Good gracious! About everything.”

“You have been discussing life
with him?”

“Precisely.”

“And what has come of it? Has
he proposed, or is he only hovering
on the brink, poor wretch?”

“How absurd you are, Lilly, with
your English ideas!” cried Sybil, still
in a <i>sotto voce</i>, although the music
drowned everybody’s voice. “You
won’t understand that one may discuss
life with a young man without
meaning any harm!”

“Harm? To his heart, do you
mean?”

“Or to one’s own.”

“Have you got one, Sybil?” I
asked quite seriously.

“Yes, I have, and a <i>very</i> sensitive
one too, let me tell you,” she
said in her vehemently emphatic
way. “Mr. Halsted, will you take
my friend to have some refreshment?
Mr. Halsted—Miss Wallace.”

And off I went with this perfectly
charming young man.

The first person I met in the
supper-room was my mother, whom
the doctor had just taken in and
was plying with some delicious nectar
of an American drink.

“My dear, I was beginning to
.pn +1
wonder what had become of you,”
she said. “It is growing rather late,
is it not?”

The doctor protested, but we
made good the opportunity as soon
as his hospitable back was turned,
and disappeared from the brilliant
scene.

And Millicent Gray? I was of
course in honor bound to die, as I
had not spoken to her; but I
thought it better to live, and try
and make good my resolution in
some other way. Chance favored
me unexpectedly. A few days after
the magnificent reception on
the first floor I went down to discuss
life quietly with Sybil for half
an hour, when the servant said she
had been obliged to run out for a
few minutes to her aunt’s, next
door, but that she would be back
presently, and had begged I would
go in and wait for her.

I had not been many minutes in
the <i>salon</i> when the doctor came in.
He had been “down town” to
Galignani’s, and had gleaned all the
news that was abroad, what steamers
were signalled, which had come
in, which had sailed, and who had
come in by the last arrival. The
doctor was a terrible flirt. He sat
down on the sofa beside me, and
began to repeat verses from Tommy
Moore about my “bright eyes that
were his heart’s undoing,” and I
know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave
heard us laughing, and came
in to see what it was all about.

“Ah! my dear,” she said, “he
whispered those very same verses
to me five-and-twenty years ago.
Don’t believe him; he’s a gay deceiver.
Charles dear, did you ask
Mrs. Wallace what we were going
to do about this claim the <i>concierge</i>
is making of twenty francs a
month extra for bringing up our
letters?”

“No, I did not,” said the doctor.
“In fact, I had not time yet; but I
dare say Miss Lilly can tell us just
as well!”

“Oh! if it’s anything about the
<i>concierge</i> you had much better appeal
to mamma,” I said to Mrs. Segrave.
“She is at home now, and
if you go up you will find her
alone.”

“I see how it is: you want to
get me out of the way!” said Mrs.
Segrave. “You want to hear what
more Charles has to say about
your bright eyes. Well, well, I’ll
go; I’ll not be a spoil-sport.”

She was going to open the door
when Pierre opened it, and in walked—Millicent
Gray. After the usual
greetings Mrs. Segrave said, turning
to me:

“You know Sybil’s friend, Miss
Gray, of course? No! I was
sure you had met. Then let me introduce
you—”

As soon as we had got “well into
conversation,” the doctor proposed
that he and Mrs. Segrave should
leave us young ladies together, and
go up to consult my mother about
this new imposition of the <i>concierge</i>.

When Millicent and I found ourselves
alone there was an awkward
pause for a moment; we felt as
conscious as a pair of lovers thrown
together for the first time. At last
we looked at each other and began
to laugh.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” I
said.

“Not so much pleased as I am,”
she replied. “I have been entreating
Sybil to make me acquainted
with you, and she would not. We
came near quarrelling over you the
other evening.”

“So did she and I! What could
have been her motive?” I said.

“Did she not tell you?”

“No.”
.pn +1

“And you don’t guess?”

“No! Pray tell me, if it is not
a secret,” I said.

“Oh! no, it’s no secret,” replied
Millicent, laughing. “You are a
Catholic. She was afraid to let me
know you.”

“Lest I should contaminate
you!”

“Lest you should convert me.”

I was silent from sheer surprise.

“You see what a dangerous person
she thinks you!” said Millicent,
laughing.

“I don’t see why she should,” I
replied, rather nettled. “I never
tried to convert her.”

“Perhaps because you felt it was
a hopeless case,” said Millicent,
who could not apparently see the
thing in a serious light; for she was
laughing still, and looked altogether
highly amused.

“I don’t know whether I felt
about it one way or the other,” I
said. “I am utterly bewildered
that Sybil should have laid hold of
the idea of my being so dangerous in
that line; from the moment I discovered
what her notions on religion
were I avoided even touching
on the subject directly or indirectly,
and yet she looks upon me
as a lion or a fox going about and
seeking whom I may devour!”

“No, no; you must not think
that,” protested Millicent. “She
looks upon you as dangerous, but
in quite another sense from proselytizing.
She suspects me—very unjustly,
I assure you—of having what
she calls Roman Catholic proclivities;
and when I expressed a wish to
know you—she raves about you in
the most enthusiastic way—she
said nothing would induce her to
make us acquainted; that you were
just the kind of person to whisk me
into the Catholic Church before I
knew where I was.”

There was something at once so
absurd and so thoroughly characteristic
of Sybil in this remark that,
in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.

“I promise solemnly,” I said,
“that I will not whisk you in without
giving you due warning, and,
moreover, having your full and free
consent to the operation beforehand.”

“Thank you. That is generous,”
said Millicent; “and to prove my
sense of it I solemnly promise not
to whisk you into my church without
having your full and free consent
beforehand.”

“Yes, by the bye,” I said, “it
never seems to have occurred to Sybil
that the danger might be mutual;
that I ran a risk as well as you
by our becoming acquainted?”

Millicent was hesitating in her
answer when we heard a loud ring
at the door, and in an instant Sybil
burst into the room. She stood
for an instant looking at us, and
then cried out in her ringing tones:

“Well, is it all over with you?
Has she done it?”

“Done what?” I said. “Miss
Gray has not attempted to do anything
except to make herself exceedingly
agreeable.”

Sybil laughed merrily.

“I call that exceedingly smart—quite
worthy of a Yankee!”
she cried. “By the way, it puts
the thing in a new light. Milly,
turn on the guns and try and convert
<i>her</i>.” And she pointed to me
with her chinchilla muff. “That
<i>would</i> be a feather in one’s cap!
Good gracious!”

“Then why should you not try for
it yourself?” I inquired. “Sybil,
I am inclined to be very angry
with you for making me such a
reputation. You know perfectly
well I have never had a word of
.pn +1
controversy with you since we have
known each other; never done the
least thing to try and make a Catholic
of you. You know I have not!”

“I know nothing of the sort,”
protested Sybil. “I know this: that
you and your mother are the very
most dangerous pair of Catholics I
have ever met—just the kind of Catholics
to knock one’s prejudices on the
head with one blow.” And she banged
the table with her pretty little
muff. “You never preach, either of
you, or talk controversy, or do any
mortal thing to put one on one’s
guard; but you do every conceivable
thing to make one fall in love with
your religion: you are the very milk
of human kindness, you never speak
ill of any one, you are always ready
to help people, you spend your time
going after the poor, nursing the
sick, and heaven knows what besides;
for you are up at cock-crow,
and out by candlelight saying your
prayers, when we are fast asleep in
our beds. Milly Gray, now mark
my words”—and she faced round
and confronted Millicent with uplifted
muff, in a Sibylline attitude
of warning—“mark my words: this
is none of my doing, and whatever
comes of it is not to be laid at my
door.”

“Sybil, I promise that, whatever
catastrophe the future of this day
may have in store, it shall not be
visited on you,” said Millicent.
“You have warned me of my peril,
and, you know, he who is forewarned
is forearmed. Tell me, now,
what have you done with Mr. Halsted?”

“Done with him? What did
you want me to do with him?”

“Either kill him or cure him.”

“I should kill him, if I could,”
said Sybil. “I never knew so perverse
a man in the <i>whole course of
my life</i>.”

She dragged out the last words
with an emphasis that might have
led one to suppose the course of
her life embraced a period of
at least ninety-nine years.

“What is he perverse about?”
inquired her friend.

“He won’t change his politics,
he won’t go back to the States, and
he won’t marry the girl he ought
to marry.”

She enumerated these grievances
with a gusto of indignation that
made us scream with laughter.

“I thought his politics were on
the right side—that is, on your
side,” said Millicent when she had
recovered her gravity.

“That’s the wrong side,” said
Sybil; “<i>her</i> politics are strongly
Democratic, and there is not the
ghost of a chance for him, unless he
turns Democrat too.”

“But if he does not want a
chance?” I ventured to put in.

“But he ought; I want him to
want it. She’s the very sweetest
girl in the whole of the United
States; and her father is the dearest
old man, and would give her a
splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted
would marry her. And everybody
believed he would; only old Nick
put it into his head to come out to
Europe, and he has gone and fallen
in love with another girl!”

“Who won’t marry him?” suggested
Milly.

“<i>Cer</i>tainly not!” declared Sybil.

At this juncture Dr. and Mrs.
Segrave came in, bringing my mother
with them. She was dressed
for me to go out with her, so I had
to run off to equip myself, having
first cordially invited Millicent
Gray to come and see me as soon
as possible.

She came the next day, and on
a strange errand, considering the
warnings of Sybil.
.pn +1

“I am anxious to be of some use
to the poor,” she said, after we had
talked some little time, “and I
don’t know how to go about it here.
I suppose there are no Protestants
to visit, or at least they must be
very few; would there be any objection
to my visiting Catholics?”

“Not the slightest,” I replied,
“unless you intend to whisk them
into the Protestant Church before
they know where they are; in that
case I don’t think M. le Curé would
care to enlist your services.”

“I have no sinister designs of that
sort, I assure you,” said Millicent;
“and to prove it, I want you to
let me go with you on your rounds.
I will make myself useful in any way
you appoint, and I will do exactly
as you tell me—as far as I know
how, that is.”

I said, of course, that I should be
delighted to have her as a companion,
and that we should begin our
partnership to-morrow; but my mother
came in as we were settling
about the hour we were to meet,
and unexpectedly put a spoke in the
wheel.

“Does Mrs. Gray approve of this
arrangement, my dear?” she inquired.

“I have not mentioned it to her,”
replied Millicent, her American
ideas of independence evidently a
little shocked by the question; “but
she is sure to approve of it when I
do. Is there any reason why she
should not?”

“There may be. You are a Protestant,
and this scheme of visiting
the poor with my daughter must
bring you in contact with Catholics
of various classes—the poor, the Sisters
of Charity, perhaps incidentally
with M. le Curé and other priests.
Before you embark on these perils I
should prefer that your mother’s consent
was secured. We English mothers
have Old-World prejudices about
parental authority, you perceive,”
added mamma, smiling; “you will not
mind humoring mine in this case.”

Millicent declared her perfect
readiness to do so. She looked like
one who would gladly humor everybody’s
wishes. I was already in love
with her. The charm which attracted
me that night amidst the
gay crowd had not fled “like the
talisman’s glittering glory” on a
nearer approach. I was at a loss
to see where the point of mutual
attraction lay between her and
Sybil; but Sybil was one of those
creatures who spirited away your
sympathies before you had time to
challenge the thief or lay a protecting
hand upon your treasure.
She was a siren, who drew you to
her cave and did not devour you.
Millicent was a complete contrast
to her in appearance as well as in
character; her eyes were deep blue,
and her hair, which was very dark,
whitened her fair complexion to
the transparency of alabaster, and
gave a stronger individuality to her
delicate features than blond hair,
which seemed their natural birthright,
could have lent them. She
was very tall, and her small, beautifully-formed
hands and feet put the
seal on the character of singular refinement
which pervaded her whole
exterior.

My mother was greatly taken with
her. “You have committed yourself
more seriously in this case, it
strikes me,” she remarked when
Millicent had taken leave.

“They are settled in Paris permanently,”
I replied; “I asked her
that at once. I should not have
embarked on an intimacy with her,
if they had been only birds of passage.”

Mrs. Gray made no difficulty
about Millicent’s joining me in my
.pn +1
visits to the poor; she observed, indeed—very
naturally, I thought—that
“Mrs. Wallace ran just the same
risk in allowing her daughter to associate
with Millicent.” Millicent
returned next morning quite jubilant
with this message, and we set
out on our first walk together. We
agreed that we were not to improve
this or any future opportunity to
convert each other. Was I quite
sincere when I entered on this
agreement? Looking back on it, I
think I can honestly say I was. I
meant that I would not discuss religion
or say anything to prejudice
Millicent against her own; that I
would rigidly avoid controversy;
and in all this I kept my word.
But I did not disguise from myself
that I had a great longing to see her
a Catholic, and that I should do my
best in another way to bring about
this result. For this purpose I had
her name put down at Notre Dame
des Victoires for prayers. I asked
several of my friends to pray for the
same intention, and I made a point
of praying every day for it myself.
I took her to see Sœur Lucie, a Sister
of Charity I was very fond of,
and I interested her in the same
object. I counted a good deal, too,
on the impression which the faith
of the poor was likely to make on
her.

I was just then much occupied
with a poor woman named Mme.
Martin, who was dying, who had
been dying these five years of a
very painful malady. I think she
was the first person I took Millicent
to see. She lived in a room
on the sixth floor—that is, in the
attic—of a house where her mother
was <i>concierge</i>. She had been better
educated than the generality of her
class, having been brought up as a
teacher of singing. This pursuit
had subsequently thrown her into
the society of persons much above
her in position, and the contact had
contributed still more to educate
and refine her. She had consequently
acquired something of the
varnish of a lady, and, without being
really educated, she had gained
that increased capacity for suffering
which even imperfect education
gives. Her illness had thrown her
back into her original position and
surroundings, and these were perfect
misery to her. She could not
bear the society of the servants—her
constant one now, owing to that
horrible French system of stowing
away the servants of every flat in
the same house into pigeon-holes under
the roof, old and young, men
and women, innocent, honest girls
and vicious old veterans in dishonesty,
all crammed higgledy-piggledy in
a proximity full of dangers to both
soul and body. This population
of the pigeon-holes was insupportable
to Mme. Martin; she had nothing
in common with them nor they
with her. They pitied her—for the
French are always kind-hearted—but
they resented her evident superiority,
and often showed their pity in
a way that hurt more than it soothed.
She writhed under the compassion
of these coarse, vulgar-minded
men and women, whose
conversation turned chiefly on the
domestic concerns of their masters,
how they cheated them, the tricks
they practised on them.

They came to see, after a while,
that she did not care for their society,
and they ceased to inflict it
on her, and Mme. Martin came
gradually to be as isolated as if she
had been living in a desert. She
was glad of it in one way. We
most of us prefer solitude to unsympathetic
company; we had rather
be left alone than intruded on
by those loud voices and heavy
.pn +1
steps that jar so painfully on the
nervous atmosphere of a sick-room;
but there were times when her loneliness
weighed terribly on her, when
she longed for any hand that would
but raise her paralyzed limbs from
a posture that had grown agonizing
from prolonged immobility, that
would give her the drink that was
just beyond the reach of her arm.
Her mother could come to her but
very seldom; she dared not absent
herself during the busy portion of
the day from her lodge downstairs.
Sœur Lucie was very kind,
and came as often as she could; it
was she who had taken me to her
and begged me to look after her.
I was the better able to do so that
Mme. Martin lived only five minutes’
walk from our house. I
don’t think I ever came in contact
with a sufferer who edified me
more than this poor woman. It
was not that she was so wonderfully
pious, or heroic, or resigned;
she was all three by turns, but
none constantly. Perhaps it was
this very fluctuation that made one
realize so vividly the supernaturalness
of the struggle she was carrying
on. You saw the power of the
sacraments, the action of grace
working on her soul, almost as
visibly as that of medicine on the
body. She was a woman of very
strong passions, acute sensibilities,
and ardent imagination; you can
fancy what it was to such a nature
to be immured in a room about
twelve feet long by eight, with a
roof slanting to the floor at one
side, and a window in the slant,
incapable of moving in her bed
without help, dependent on charity
for even that bed and for the
bread she ate. For the first years
of her illness this misery was so
unendurable, she told me, that she
thought it would have driven her
mad, and the terror of this prospect
was the most unbearable thing
of all. She had not the consolations
of religion then. Her artist
life, with its alluring perils, its wild
companions, its passionate aspirations,
had led her away from the
realities of the faith and gathered
a mist before her eyes. But she
fell ill, and then the mist began to
clear away. The Sisters of Charity
found her out, and the old sacred
memories of childhood were
awakened; her First Communion,
with its sweet, pure joys, its lovely,
solemn pageant, the bright companionship
of kindred hearts starting
with the fervent promise to the
divine Guest whose first coming was
the grand event, the supreme crisis
of their little lives, the goal to
which, thus far, their lives had
tended—all this came back like a
well-remembered dream at the sight
of the gray habit and the white cornette.
It was the old, old story:
the prodigal had wandered into a
strange country, and had grown
homesick and turned back, and
the Father had met him half way
on the road. She had not fed upon
the husks of swine, poor Mme. Martin;
only “forgotten to eat her
bread,” and hunger had driven her
home. She spoke to me of her
conversion in terms of such deep
humility and compunction that I
might have fancied her the most
appalling sinner who had ever lived,
if Sœur Lucie had not told me the
exact history of it.

But it was not all sunshine and
smooth waters even after this blessed
welcome home. There were
dreadful battles to be fought yet.
She fought bravely, but not always
with a smiling face and a glad
heart. Oh! no. There were days,
of such terrific anguish, such utter,
black despair, that it used to seem
.pn +1
to me sometimes that her faith <i>must</i>
fail this time, that nothing short of
a miracle could save her now. And
nothing else did. What greater miracle
is there than the triumph of
God’s grace over our corrupt and
fallen nature, the victory of sacraments
over the devil that holds our
soul? It was a greater wonder to
me every time I witnessed it in
Mme. Martin. This presence of
an evil spirit in her—a real though
invisible presence of tremendous,
almost omnipotent power—was so
palpable that I used to feel something
like the kind of terror one
would feel near a person possessed.
I always felt perfectly helpless while
the crisis lasted, and would sit
there and listen dumbly while she
uttered her bitter, fierce words, not
raving in loud, wild accents, but
with a sort of hard, suppressed anger,
a deep-down rebellion against
the cruel, all-powerful will that was
torturing her. There was no use
arguing or preaching, or trying to
make her see the sinfulness and
the stupidity of it all; one could
do nothing but bear with it, praying
silently to God to come to her,
and lay his finger on the wounded
soul, and speak with his voice, and
bid the winds be still.

One thing struck me with peculiar
significance: no matter how
fiercely rebellious she was towards
God, she could always turn with a
softened glance towards his Blessed
Mother. There was an old print
of the <i>Mater Dolorosa</i> on the wall
over her bed, and it was the strangest
thing to see the poor sufferer
lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it
with a tender, compassionate, entreating
glance, while words of almost
savage petulance against the
Son were still hot on her lips.
Once I remember her bursting into
tears as she turned towards it in
one of these sudden appeals. The
fiend was exorcised for that day.
I sat beside her till she had cried
herself to sleep like a tired, naughty
child.

These terrible days were invariably
followed by periods of compunction,
humble self-reproach, and
love so fervent and consoling that
it used to seem to me they could
never pass away, that the darkness
could never return, that this time
the rescue was complete and irrevocable.
The humility with which
she would beg my pardon for the
scandal she had given me, the way
she would upbraid herself for her
base ingratitude to our Blessed
Lord, were more touching than I
can describe. She would look up
fondly towards the <i>Mater Dolorosa</i>
with such an expression of tenderness
on her haggard, sunken face,
and say, as if apostrophizing it:
“Ah! I knew she would gain the
victory. I knew she would not
desert me! <i>Pauvre mère! Elle a
tant souffert!</i>”

The first day that I took Millicent
Gray to see her she was in one of
these blessed, penitential moods.
It had lasted through several days—days
of fearful suffering, and nights
of sleepless weariness. She uttered
an exclamation of joyous welcome
when I appeared.

“<i>Que le bon Dieu est bon!</i> I knew
he would not keep me waiting
much longer. My little stock of
patience was just coming to an
end!” And she smiled good-humoredly.

“What is it you want?” I inquired.

“I was dying with thirst,” she
said, “and I managed to draw this
cup to me by hooking my finger in
the handle, but I was in such a
hurry to drink it that it slipped
from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!”
.pn +1
And, indeed, she was
trembling with cold; her hands
were like ice and her teeth chattered.
I hastened to lift her up on
her pillows and repair the accident,
Millicent helping very dexterously.
I had prepared Mme. Martin for
her visit, so merely introduced
her as a friend of mine, who would
be glad to come and see her sometimes,
if she allowed it.

When we had settled her in some
degree of comfort, Millicent and I
sat down and began to converse.
Mme. Martin was in too great pain
to join in the conversation, except
by throwing in a word now and then
to show she was following it, but
one could see she was interested in
what we were saying. There was
an unusual brightness and peace
about her, in the expression of her
face and the tone of her voice; I
rejoiced that Millicent should see
it, for I knew it could not fail to
impress her.

“Was last night as bad as the
preceding ones?” I said when we
were going away.

“Yes; it was very bad. I did
not get a moment’s rest till it was
daylight,” she said; and she smiled
quite serenely.

“My poor friend! How cruelly
tried you are!” I could not help
exclaiming. “May God give you
courage!”

“He does! he does!” she cried
fervently. “It is a miracle how
good he is to me—a miracle.”

“We must ask him for another
one, that your courage may be rewarded
by a cure,” said Millicent
kindly.

“Oh! no. Don’t ask for that! I
don’t want it!” said Mme. Martin
quickly, as if she were frightened
the miracle was going to be wrought
on the spot. “I don’t want to be
cured, only to be sustained, and to
go on suffering a long time—as long,
that is, as He likes—that I may
prove I am not ungrateful; that I
love him a little bit after all he has
done for me! All he has done for
me!” There was a look almost of
ecstasy on her features as she said
this, her face slightly upturned,
but her eyes closed as if she were
looking within her, into that sanctuary
of her soul where God was
present. I felt, rather than saw,
Millicent turn a sudden, startled
glance towards me.

“That is the most precious and
most beautiful of all miracles,” I
said presently, “that our hard
hearts should be softened by the
cross, and that we should come to
love it for His sake; is it not?”

“Yes,” she replied; “it is the
one I have most prayed for. It is
to her I owe it.” And she turned to
the <i>Mater Dolorosa</i>. “In my worst
moments I always felt for her; that
my cross was nothing compared to
hers—nothing! <i>Pauvre mère!</i>”

When we were out of earshot, on
the landing about half way down
the narrow stair, Millicent stopped,
and, looking round at me, said:
“Her brain has begun to be affected;
she is a little mad, poor creature,
is she not?”

“Yes,” I replied, “she is; she
has got what we call the madness
of the cross. Many of our saints
have died of it: <i>la folie de la croix</i>.”

Millicent stared at me for a moment
with an expression that suggested
some vague alarm as to my
own sanity, but she made no further
remark until we had got out
into the street.

“What did she mean by saying it
was the Virgin Mary that worked the
miracle for her?” she then asked.

“She meant that the Mother of
Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained
a great grace for her.”
.pn +1

“But God would have given
it to her, if she had asked him,
without going to any creature for
it, would he not?” answered Millicent.

“Perhaps; but he would be more
willing to grant it to a creature who
was sinless and his Mother, and who
had stood by the side of his cross,
than to a poor weak, rebellious creature
who had sinned a thousand
times and more. Does it not seem
likely?”

“Oh! putting it in that way,”
said Millicent dubiously. “But he
is God, our Saviour; he must love
us more than she does. He died for
us; the Virgin Mary did not die
for us?”

“Well, really, Millicent—almost,”
I said, and, stopping, I looked her
straight in the face. “Fancy a
mother that loved her son, her
only son, as Mary must have loved
him, standing by while he was being
executed—I don’t say scourged,
and beaten, and hammered with
nails to a gibbet, murdered piecemeal
with the rage of devils let
loose from hell, but simply hanged,
or even beheaded; would it not be
worse to her than any death that
ever a mother died? And then
fancy her blessing the men that
murdered him, praying for them,
adopting them! And you can say
the Mother of God did not die
for us?”

Millicent made no answer, but
walked on in silence. We said no
more until we got to my door, and
then I asked if she would not come
up and rest a while.

“No, I prefer to go home, thank
you,” she said, putting out her
hand. She held mine for a moment,
as if she were going to say
something; but she did not, and
we parted silently.

She seemed strangely moved.
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
I did not see Millicent until the
following Sunday, when she came
to ask me if I would go for a walk
in the afternoon.

Sybil happened to be there when
she came in.

“What hour do you go to church,
Milly—the morning or the afternoon?”
asked Sybil. I saw the
drift of the question: she suspected
Millicent had been to church
with us.

“I generally go in the morning;
mamma likes it best,” replied Millicent.
“She was not well this
morning, so we are going to late
service. And you?”

“Me? I don’t go to late or
early. I stay at home and think it
over,” said Sybil.

“Think what over?” I asked.
“The service?”

“Services in general, religion in
its cause and effect—life altogether,
in fact,” summed up Sybil. “Will
you two let me join you in your
walk this afternoon, or shall I be in
the way?” We both protested we
should be delighted to have her;
and at four o’clock we were assembled
down-stairs in her boudoir,
ready to start, when a loud ring
sounded at the door.

“Good gracious!” screamed Sybil;
and she dropped into a chair,
the picture of astonishment and
vexation. “I’ll bet any mortal thing
you like that that is Mr. Halsted!
Was there ever anything so provoking!
I so wanted to have a
walk with you!”

“Why need his coming prevent
you?” I said. “The doctor and Mrs.
Segrave are at home, are they not?”

“Why, Lilly, how can you talk
so!” she exclaimed. “What does
that matter to Mr. Halsted? He
comes to see me!”
.pn +1

“Then you throw us overboard?”
I said. “That’s complimentary.
What do you say, Millicent?”

Millicent laughed. She was not
sorry at heart, I could see, that we
were to be left to a <i>tête-à-tête</i>. Perhaps
Sybil saw it, too, for she said,
starting up suddenly:

“I won’t throw you overboard.
Let him call again. Let him come
with us, if he likes. Have you two
any objection?”

Millicent said she had none. I,
however, demurred.

“You will think it absurdly priggish,”
I said, “but you know I am
half-French—at least, I live amongst
the French, so I can’t afford to
knock against their <i>hautes convenances</i>;
and if I were seen walking
with a gentleman without my mother
or some married chaperon, it
would make quite a <i>scandale</i>.”

“How inconceivably ridiculous!”
cried Sybil, staring at me with
round, shining eyes. “What a grand
privilege it is to be a free-born
American woman! I wouldn’t be
a slave like you—no, not for the empire
of France, Lilly!”

Pierre came to the door to announce
Mr. Halsted’s arrival, and
we all sallied into the drawing-room.
Sybil burst out into regrets
at having to go out, and then,
pointing a finger of scorn at me,
“Only fancy!” she cried—“you’ll
hardly believe it, but it’s a fact—Miss
Wallace says she dare not
come out for a walk with you
without her mother, lest it should
make a scandal in the town! Did
you ever hear anything so pre<i>pos</i>terously
absurd, Mr. Halsted?” I
crimsoned to the roots of my hair,
and longed to choke Sybil on the
spot. Happily, gentlemen being the
same in all countries, Mr. Halsted
saw my embarrassment and turned
it off with easy good breeding.

“Miss Wallace has been brought
up in France,” he said. “It is quite
natural she should have adopted
the notions and manners of the
country; but it’s rather hard on
us poor fellows. We are cut off
from our most cherished prerogatives
here in this centre of civilization.
May I call this evening?
You promised to teach me the Polish
mazurka?”

Sybil hesitated. There was to be
a dinner-party that evening, so the
dancing lesson could hardly take
place, and I knew he wanted to
figure in the mazurka at a Polish
house the next night.

“I can’t this evening,” she said
musingly; then, as if moved by a
sudden inspiration, she flung down
her muff. “I see I must victimize
myself for my country’s sake, and
give up my walk to save you from
making an exhibition of yourself
to-morrow before the assembled
nations. You two go and take your
walk alone.”

Mr. Halsted entered a feeble
protest, which Sybil did not even
so much as notice, but proceeded
to take off her bonnet and prepare
for the dancing lesson.

We were not long on the road together
when Millicent opened the
subject of religion; Sybil’s idea of
“thinking it over” being the ostensible
pretext.

“I wonder you don’t talk to her
about it,” she said; “you might do
a good work in that direction, if
you tried.”

“By making a Catholic of Sybil?”

“By making a Christian of her.”

“Poor Sybil! Is she as bad as
that?” I said, laughing. “She is
more in your line than mine, at any
rate. She hates popery like fire;
I would as soon try to convert the
Great Mogul.”
.pn +1

“You are a great puzzle to me,
do you know,” said Millicent, looking
at me with a glance of searching
curiosity. “Catholics as a rule
are such ardent proselytizers, and
you seem to have no taste in that
direction at all.”

“Have you known a great many
Catholics before me?” I asked.

“You are the first I may say I
have ever known.”

“Then how can you answer for
what we are as a rule?”

“I have always understood it,”
she replied.

“You have understood, or rather
misunderstood, many things about
us,” I remarked. “Is Mr. Halsted
in love with Sybil, do you think?”

“Mr. Halsted is <i>nothing</i> of the
kind. Nice conversation for the
Sunday afternoon!” said a sharp,
bright voice, and Millicent and I
leaped half a mile asunder as Sybil
popped her scarlet feather in between
us.

“I made sure you would be discussing
theology,” she cried, “instead
of which I find you discussing
me!”

“And why are not you discussing
the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?”
demanded Millicent and I together.

“Because I thought better of it,”
was Sybil’s terse explanation, nor
could we extract any other from
her.

“What were you talking about
before you began about Mr. Halsted
and me?” she inquired, flashing
her lightning glances from one
to another.

“We were talking about you and
the Great Mogul,” I replied, “and I
was considering which of you I
should first set about converting.”

“You had better begin with
him,” said Sybil. “Have you done
for Milly already?”

“Not—quite—” I said.

“I should like to have it out with
you once for all, Lilly,” she said,
“and just hear from beginning to
end what your religious views are,
and how far exactly they differ
from mine.”

“You have views on religion,
then?” I said in a tone of surprise.

“Certainly I have, Lilly Wallace,”
retorted Sybil with indignant
emphasis, “and I should like very
much to compare them with yours.”

“That would be difficult,” I replied,
“for I have no views.”

“What!”

“Not the ghost of one,” I repeated.
“We Catholics never have;
we listen to the church and accept
all she teaches. There is not such
a thing amongst us as a view; we
would not know what to do with
one.”

“Good gracious! That reasonable
beings should let themselves
be so gul—so—that you should—in
fact, it’s beyond belief!”

“No, that’s just what it is not
beyond; it is our belief that binds
our reason and puts views out of
the question,” I said. “We have
our faith propounded to us by the
church, and the church is the infallible
witness of the truth; we
have not to make out a creed
for ourselves, as you Protestants
have.”

“Then why did God give us
brains, if we are not to make use of
them?” demanded Sybil. “I would
not hand over my conscience to
any man or any body of men living;
I would rather take my Bible
and make out the right and the
wrong of it myself.”

“Suppose you make it out all
wrong—for you admit there is a
right and a wrong to it—what
then?” I said.

“It does not much matter, so
long as our intention is good. God
.pn +1
Almighty does not expect us to be
infallible.”

“Certainly not!” I replied;
“that is precisely why he made his
church infallible, to save us from
our own fallibility and teach us
what to believe and what not to
believe. If I believe black and
you believe white, we can’t both of
us be right; one or other must be
in error, and God, who is Truth
itself, can’t approve equally truth
and error?”

“I tell you what it is, Milly,”
said Sybil, turning round sharply
on Millicent, who was walking on
the other side of her, “it is <i>very</i>
bad for you to be discussing theology
with Lilly Wallace in this way.
Mind what I tell you, no good will
come of it!”

“Why, I’ve not opened my lips!”
protested silent Milly. “It is you
who are discussing it; it was you
began it!”

“If I had not, you would,” retorted
Sybil; “you are perfectly
<i>crazed</i> on religious discussion. I see
how it is going to end!”

I burst out laughing. Millicent,
however, looked amazed.

“I will tell you what <i>I</i> see,” I
said: “that you had much better
have stayed at home and discussed
life with Mr. Halsted than come
out here to bully us. It would be
serving you right if I made a papist
of you on the spot.”

Sybil saw that Millicent was
vexed, and, adroitly dropping the
subject, burst out into vehement
denunciation of French conventionalities.
If it had been any
other country in the universe, Mr.
Halsted might have come out for a
walk with us, and we should have
had an excellent time of it; for he
was the very best company she
knew. We continued, nevertheless,
despite his absence, to enjoy a very
pleasant walk, and to steer clear of
burning subjects the rest of the
way. The incident, however, left
its mark on us all three, and from
that day forth there was an imperceptible
but a very decided change
in Millicent’s “views.” As to Sybil’s,
I never got a glimpse of them,
so it may not be rash judgment to
express a doubt whether she had
any.

I kept to my promise of avoiding
controversy with Millicent, and she,
seeing my reluctance to gratify her
curiosity on this point, gave up trying
to overcome it. We talked
very freely on religious customs
and institutions, but whenever she
demanded my reasons for believing
this or that I evaded controversy
by that inexorable Catholic answer
so aggravating to a Protestant—“The
church teaches it.”

The winter passed, and the spring,
and my mother and I were preparing
to leave Paris to spend the
month of June in London. One
of my greatest difficulties in going
away was how poor Mme. Martin
was to get on in my absence.
Millicent had come with me once a
week to visit her. She would continue
to do this when I was gone,
I had no doubt; but the poor soul
was in a state that required a visit
every day, and I hardly dare ask
or expect that Millicent would
break from her mother and her own
occupations regularly every day for
this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray
would allow it. I told her of my
trouble, and the next morning she
ran in looking quite radiant.

“Mamma says she will allow me
to go every morning from eleven to
twelve and sit with Mme. Martin
and do all she wants; is it not
good of her!” she exclaimed, embracing
me.

“It is!” I cried, “and very good
.pn +1
of you, dear Milly. You can’t
think what a relief it is to my
mind! I was miserable at the
thought of leaving her without
some one to take my place of a
morning; and she is so fond of you,
poor soul! She is so touched by
your charity—above all in a heretic!”
I added, laughing.

“Charity covereth a multitude
of sins,” said Millicent. “I suppose
the sin of heresy is included?”

It was quite true: Mme. Martin
was wonderfully taken with her.
She admired her grace, the quiet
distinction of her manner, the subdued
elegance of her dress—a
Frenchwoman has an eye for <i>la
toilette</i> so long as the breath of life
is in her—and most of all the gentle
kindness with which Millicent
performed the little services of the
sick-room. It was quite beyond
her comprehension that so much
sweetness and goodness should exist
in anybody who was not a Catholic;
it was most amusing to see
her <i>naïf</i> wonder at this phenomenon,
and her surprise that I did not
abolish it.

“But, mademoiselle, why do you
not <i>explain</i> to her how dreadful it
is not to be in the true church?”
she would urge again and again;
and to my answer, “I have tried,
but she cannot see it,” she would
return the same wondering exclamation,
“<i>Est-il-possible</i>!”

She evinced as much pleasure as
surprise when I told her that Millicent
was to come every day during
my absence, and read to her and
put things tidy in the little room.

“Now,” I said, “you must pay
back all this kindness by getting
the grace of the faith for her.”

“Oh! if I could but do it,” she
exclaimed heartily.

“You may do a great deal,” I
said; “your prayers ought to be
very powerful with our Blessed
Lord, because you are on the
cross.”

She shook her head.

“If I lay on it lovingly, as he
did,” she said; “but I don’t—not
always, at least. I wriggle, and
kick, and try to slip off it every
now and then.” And she heaved a
deep sigh.

“You are not a saint,” I said;
“of course you have your ups and
downs, but you would rather stay
on the cross for any length of time
than get off it, if you could, against
the will of God, would you not?”

“Oh! yes, that I would,” she
answered impulsively.

“Then you are all right,” I said.
“Never mind the wriggling and the
kicking; your heart is loyal to
God, and that’s what he looks to.
Set about asking for Mademoiselle
Gray’s conversion, and he will not
refuse it to you. Offer up all your
sufferings for it from this time forth,
and I feel perfectly certain our
Lord will grant it to you.”

“Well, I will try,” she said, in
an accent of simplicity and earnestness
that sounded already like a
guarantee of success; and then,
looking at her <i>Mater Dolorosa</i>, she
added suddenly: “I will ask <i>her</i> to
get it!”

I had brought some fresh flowers,
and was arranging them in a
pretty vase that Millicent had given
her, when my eye fell upon a new
book that lay beside it. It was
<i>Notre Dame de Lourdes</i>, which Sœur
Lucie had brought her the day before.

“I will get Mademoiselle Gray
to read me some of it every morning,”
said Mme. Martin; “they say
it is beautiful. Do you think she
will mind reading it?”

I thought not, and was delighted
with the suggestion.
.pn +1

“I have a beautiful life of St.
Francis de Sales which I will bring
you,” I said, “and you will ask her
to read it to you when this is finished.
He was a charming saint, and
had a great deal to do with converting
Protestants; ask him to help
you.”

We consulted what other books
it would be advisable to get, and what
snares were to be set in other ways
for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of
course, to be actively established in
the service, the orphans were to be
set to pray—nothing was to be left
undone, in fact, for the capture of
the unsuspecting soul. Of course
this was all very treacherous and
base, and we were no better than a
pair of designing Jesuits—so our
Protestant friends will say, if they
should happen to light on my little
story. I cannot help it if they
think so.

We left Paris, my mother and I,
and during the three months of our
absence Millicent devoted herself
like a real Sister of Charity to the
service of our poor friend. The
weather became intensely hot, but
she never let this deter her; she
never missed a day. She was inexhaustible
in her devices for amusing
and comforting the poor paralyzed
invalid: she made her bed, and
dusted her room, and kept it fragrant
with flowers; she brought her
little delicacies of every sort; she
read to her by the hour—for, though
it had been understood that she
was only to devote from eleven to
twelve to this visit of charity, she
managed generally to spend double
that time there. All this kindness
called out passionate love and gratitude
from Mme. Martin. She
longed with the most intense longing
to requite it by drawing down
a blessing upon Millicent; she told
me afterwards that the yearning to
obtain the faith for her grew to be
a kind of thirst that never left her
day or night. She offered her sufferings—and
they were manifold
and terrible—her weary, sleepless
nights, her long days of feverish
loneliness, every pain and trial of
soul and body, not once nor many
times a day, but constantly, for her
dear benefactress’ conversion, till
it became an <i>idée fixe</i> that was never
absent from her mind, and found
vent continually in interior aspirations
or ejaculatory prayers; waking
or sleeping, there it was, a part
of herself, something that never left
her. If she lay awake at night,
restless and throbbing with pain,
she comforted herself with the
thought that it was so much suffered
for this dear object; she fell
asleep praying for it, and woke up
to pray for it again.

We returned to Paris just as Mrs.
Gray and Millicent were getting
ready to start for some watering
place, from which they were to proceed
to the south and not return
until the spring. Their departure
was a real sorrow to me. I had
grown sincerely attached to Millicent,
and she to me. I had struggled
at first to keep my feelings within
the proper bounds, not to let myself
slip into bondage and so prepare
the day of reckoning that waits on
all human affections; but the chains
had coiled round me unawares, and
when it came to saying good-by I
found myself hopelessly a captive.
We parted with full hearts and promises
of mutual remembrance. Millicent
was afflicted with that common
vice, hatred to letter-writing,
which so many of our friends make
us suffer from, so we exchanged no
vows in this respect, I steadily refusing
to write unless my letters were
answered. Our separation was
therefore likely to be complete.
.pn +1

“You will pray for me, at all
events?” she whispered as we embraced.

“Yes,” I said, “but on condition
that you pray for me.”

Sybil went with me to the railway
station to see the Grays off.
She was sorry to lose Millicent,
but I could see at the same time
that she was glad to have her out
of the way.

“I never expected to see Milly
come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed
as we turned away, after
watching the train puff out of the
station. “I could have staked my
head on it that you would have
made a Romanist of her by this.”

“You would have lost your
head, then, and, such as it is, you
would be worse off without it,” I
answered crossly. “One really
would imagine, to hear you talk,
Sybil, that the faith was a disease
that people caught like measles or
the small-pox.”

“And so it is—that is—I don’t
mean exactly that—but it certainly
is contagious; everybody
says it is, and that there is nothing
so dangerous as living amongst
good Catholics. I was terrified out
of my life for Milly; I told her so
over and over again, and did my
very best to protect her. But I
must say you have behaved very
honorably, Lilly; I suppose there
is hardly a Roman Catholic you
know who would have behaved as
well.”

“You mean to be complimentary,
so I suppose I ought to say
'thank you,’” I replied, while I
could not but laugh at her impertinence.
“Just tell me one thing,
Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right
of private judgment, don’t you?”

“Do I? Why, I admit nothing
else!” screamed Sybil.

“Then if Protestants, in right of
their private judgment, choose to
believe in the Catholic Church,
what have you to say against it?”

“Only this: that in becoming
Catholics they don’t exercise their
private judgment, they renounce it,”
said Sybil.

“<i>After</i> they become Catholics;
but in the first instance? The
act of renunciation involves an exercise
of the judgment, does it
not?”

“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical,
I give in,” said Sybil; “I
hate and detest metaphysics!”

“Well, just answer me this much,”
I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics
are all certain to be damned?”

“Good gracious! I don’t believe
one of them will be damned. Not
the good ones, at any rate—not
such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil
with extraordinary vehemence.

“Then why, in the name of wonder,
should you have such a horror
of any one becoming a Catholic?”
I asked.

“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful
thing to ... change one’s religion,
and the Roman Catholic religion
is full of superstitions, of mistakes
of all sorts.... But look!
I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the
other side of the street, and he sees
us and is coming across!”

“In time to rescue you from
metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he
won’t stand and speak to us; do
you think he will?”

“I won’t let him; I’ll make him
walk on at once with us,” said
Sybil.

“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must
not do that; mamma would be
very angry if I were seen walking
with him alone.”

“What nonsense! You’re not
alone; <i>I</i>'m here,” said Sybil.

“You don’t count,” I said; “you
know you don’t.”
.pn +1

“Well, you talk of being complimentary,”
protested Sybil, “but
that beats all <i>I</i> ever said in the
way of polite compliments.”

“You must dismiss him at once,”
I said hurriedly, for he was close
on us now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a
cab and go home alone.”

Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious
of being a cause of terror
or contention, approached, smiling,
with his hat in the air. He rather
affected the extreme of French
courtesy in his demeanor towards
ladies; which was a mistake, for
his native American urbanity, frank
and free from grimace and palaver,
was much more formidable, if he
had but known it. Strange to say,
it had not occurred to me before
that he was here on invitation; but
this fact flashed on me suddenly as
I noticed Sybil’s embarrassment.
It was certainly hard on her to
have to turn him away after inviting
him to meet her. I saw but
one way to rescue her and myself.

“I am so glad you have come;
you will accompany Miss Segrave,”
I said. “I am rather tired, and
shall be thankful now to drive
home. Will you kindly call a cab?”

There was a little pretence of
protest, from Sybil, of offering that
we should both drive, but I overruled
this and had my own way.
I was glad to be alone. I wanted
to think about Millicent, to look
back over the short history of our
intercourse, to look forward to its
possible issue. I felt disappointed.
I had hoped to find her, if not a
Catholic, at least very near it, on
my return; I had built so much
on Mme. Martin’s prayers, on the
example of her patient piety, and
the living triumph of the faith
which she presented. Then I began
to reflect that after all I was
quite in the dark as to how far
these hopes had been disappointed.
I had had scarcely any opportunity
of judging. Millicent and I
had not been once entirely alone
since my return, and it was impossible
to enter on the subject in a
room where others were present.
By the time I reached home I had
cheered up, and began to take a
more hopeful view of things. God
works slowly, I said to myself;
what are three months to his eternal
patience? Mme. Martin was full
of hope, though, like myself, the
delay seemed long to her.

Her own day of trial was drawing
to a close. I found her very
much weaker, and altogether more
worn and exhausted than when I
left. Her soul, on the contrary,
seemed to have risen to a higher
and purer region, and to be breathing
the air from the heavenly hills;
her spirit of detachment, her love
of the cross, had reached those
heights where I could only follow
her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken
admiration. I had always
felt a poor creature by the side of
her, but I had felt justified in offering
her sometimes what little help I
could, reminding her of consolations
and truths that temptation or
overpowering physical pain had
momentarily obscured. From this
time forth I never dared to do so.
Indeed, the opportunities which she
herself had formerly furnished for
it never occurred. That folly of
the cross which had been a source
of mild scandal to Millicent on the
occasion of their first meeting had
come to be her normal state. She
had chewed the bitter wood until
it had become sweet. The winter
wore on and brought no change in
her condition, except the gradual,
almost imperceptible decay of
strength which foretold the approaching
close of the struggle.
.pn +1
She continually asked for news of
Millicent; I was able to tell her
that she was well and happy. There
were some American families at
Cannes who wrote now and then
to the Segraves, and generally reported
of mutual friends; but Millicent
herself perversely refrained
from writing to me. I half suspected
that there was a motive in
this. I said so to Mme. Martin,
and it consoled her greatly.

“Yes, it is very possible,” she
remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle
Gray wished to speak more
openly to me than she did; the life
of St. Francis of Sales evidently
made a great impression on her.
Sometimes, when she was reading
to me, she would stop and look up
as if she were going to ask a question,
but, after hesitating a moment,
she would go on without saying
anything.”

“You must pray harder than
ever,” I said; “there is nothing
else to be done.”

“When I am in purgatory, please
God, I will pray for her,” she replied.

“I hope you may go straight to
heaven without going through purgatory
at all,” I said; “you have
suffered so long and so patiently!”

But she shook her head, and answered,
with a look of austere humility
I shall never forget:

“What are my sufferings compared
to my sins—compared to the
holiness of God?”

“Do you long very much to see
heaven—to know what it is like?”
I said, after we had been silent a
while.

“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied.
“I only long to see God.”

“Do you realize at all what the
vision will be?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and her black eyes,
so deep-sunk in their sockets, were
lifted up with an expression of eager,
tender yearning that was indescribable.
“I realize nothing; but
when I try to do so, I feel the most
wonderful peace stealing over me—a
sense of safety, of rest, of happiness.
I can’t describe it; but it is
like a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise—<i>to
see God</i>! That is what
makes Paradise!”

She was speaking rather to herself
than to me, in a low voice,
scarcely above a murmur. I felt
that God was very near to her; the
low-roofed attic was filled with an
august, unseen Presence that touched
us with a thrilling solemnity.

Presently I said: “You will remember
me when you see God,
will you not? You will pray for
me by my name?”

“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered,
with a loving smile; “after
my mother, you are the first person
I shall name. I shall tell our Lord
how kind you have been to me for
his sake; I shall beg him to pay it
all back to you.”

“There is very little to pay,” I
said; “it has been a privilege and
a delight to me to come and see
you. But I will ask you to do
some commissions for me the first
thing when you get into heaven.”

I gave her the commissions.
There were three. Millicent Gray’s
conversion was the second on the
list. She promised me solemnly
that she would execute them, either
in heaven, if she was so happy as
to go there straight, or else in Purgatory,
if this were possible.

It was wonderful to see the calmness
with which she lay there discussing
the prospects of the life
beyond, the simplicity and childlike
fearlessness with which she watched
the approach of death, while at
the same time her soul was filled
with a sort of awful reverence at
.pn +1
the thought of appearing before
God. It was impossible to witness
it without having one’s faith
quickened.

Christmas came. The winter was
unusually severe, and the intense
cold, from which it was impossible
to protect her fully in her miserable
room close under the thin roof,
brought terrible aggravation to
Mme. Martin’s sufferings. It interfered,
too, with my daily visits;
when the snow came I was compelled
to limit them to one or two
a week. This was a privation to
both of us. I had grown not only
deeply interested in her, but sincerely
attached to her, and she, on
her side, had come to love me with
a love of sympathy as well as gratitude
that was very precious. It was
like being in the companionship of
a soul in purgatory; she seemed so
<i>loosened</i> from this life, so lifted up,
as if the nearness of God were all
but a visible reality to her. The
more the shadow of death closed
round her, the more fully the light
from the heavenly mount seemed
to shine upon her. My visit was
the solitary break in her long day—the
only little breeze of human
sympathy and comfort that came
to refresh her. I knew it was a
great trial to her to be deprived of
it; she had often said the sound of
my steps on the stairs was like a
drink to her when she was parched
with thirst; sometimes she greeted
me playfully with the salutation,
“<i>Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche</i>!”
But she had now grown so strong
in sacrifice that it was difficult to
trace the slightest symptom of regret
in her. She would reproach
me for coming out in the severe
weather, declaring that she would
rather never see me than have me
take cold; that it was wrong of me
to run such risks; and that there
was no necessity for it, because she
wanted for nothing, her mother
came up twice a day to look after
her, and so on.

One day she asked me if I had
any news of Millicent. I had heard
that very morning from Sybil that
she was figuring with great success
in some private theatricals at Mentone.
But I did not like to tell
Mme. Martin this; I feared it might
shock her, or at least jar painfully
on her present mood.

“She is very well,” I said. “You
know she is very bad at writing
letters; I only hear of her through
friends.”

“I was dreaming of her last
night,” she answered musingly.
“How I wish she might become a
Catholic before I die! It would
be such a consolation to me to hear
of it!”

“You will hear of it in the next
world, please God,” I said.

“You think souls know what
goes on on earth?” she inquired.

“Of course they do!” I said.
“How could there be joy in heaven
for the return of the sinner unless
they heard of it?”

“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure;
but I was thinking of purgatory.
Do you think they know there what
happens here below?”

“I see no reason for not believing
it,” I replied. “Many saints
and doctors have believed it; why
should not our guardian angels carry
messages from us to the angels
of holy souls, if not to themselves
direct, and tell them when we are
helping and praying for them, and
ask their prayers for us in return?
It is a belief that fits in perfectly
with the doctrine of the communion
of saints.”

“It is a most consoling idea,”
she said. “I shall be longing for a
message from your guardian angel
.pn +1
to tell me I have obtained all your
requests.”

“Pray hard, then, that you may
not have long to wait,” I said, kissing
her face, that was looking up at
me with a smile. I smoothed her
pillows once more, and fussed
about the bed and the room, with a
pretence of busily setting things to
rights, but in reality to hide an
emotion that I could neither explain
to myself nor master. I remember
turning back, as I was
closing the door, to have a last look
at her. She made a sign with her
head, and answered me with an affectionate
smile.

On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.

“She seems just the same, <i>ma
sœur</i>,” I said. “How long do you
think it will last like this?”

“Oh! not very long now,” she
replied. “This cold will soon
bring it to an end. She may be
carried off at any moment.”

My heart gave a great thump
against my side. I could not realize
it, and yet it had been borne in
upon me that this was the last visit
I should pay her. The longing to
kiss her once more, to say good-by
with the full consciousness that it
was to be for the last time, was so
strong that I could not resist it.
I turned back with Sœur Lucie,
and went up again to her room.
She did not seem surprised—at least,
she said nothing about my reappearance.
I waited a moment
while Sœur Lucie questioned her,
and then kissed her and said good-by.

“<i>Au revoir</i>,” she said, “<i>au revoir</i>.
I will not forget your commissions;
and mind you pray for me <i>always</i>.”

I was laid up with a violent attack
of neuralgia for several days
after this. One afternoon, about
four days after I had seen her, a
messenger came from Sœur Lucie
to say that Mme. Martin was dying;
she was to receive the Viaticum and
Extreme Unction in an hour, and
had expressed a wish that I might
be present. The doctor was in the
room when the message was delivered.
I entreated him to let me
get up and go, if it was possible.

“You will do as you wish,” he
replied, “but you will do it against
my emphatic prohibition. I won’t
answer for the consequences, if you
attempt it.”

Of course this settled the question.
Had I been rash enough to
try to disobey him, my mother was
there to prevent it. I was greatly
distressed. I had looked forward
for so long to being with her at the
last, to receiving her last kind word
of farewell, and helping her with
my love and my poor prayers
through the great passage. My mother
saw how pained I was, and
volunteered to go and take my
place, and tell Mme. Martin how
grieved I was at being prevented.
She just arrived as the room was
being made ready for the coming
of the priest. The dying woman
had insisted on being taken out of
bed and placed sitting up in a
chair, that she might receive our
Lord more befittingly on this his
last visit to her; this was done accordingly
with great difficulty and
immense suffering to herself. She
insisted, too, on being washed, and
dressed in her best clothes, and,
what struck me as still more characteristic
at such a moment, she
entreated her mother to put on her
Sunday clothes, and to wear a cap
which was only taken out on very
great occasions. When all was
ready, and the three assistants sat
praying in silence, Mme. Martin
signed to my mother that she wished
to speak to her. “Give my love
and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she
.pn +1
whispered, “and tell her I will not
forget her commissions.” Then,
after a short silence, she said, as
quickly as she could gasp out the
words: “He is coming! Make
haste! Light the candles!”

They did so, but waited still full
ten minutes before the tinkle of the
silver bell was heard on the stairs.
Sœur Lucie told me this incident
was not such a rare occurrence with
the dying; that frequently they announce
the approach of the Blessed
Sacrament when the priest is
yet a long way off, as if their
senses were quickened by some
spiritual faculty that is only awakened
in death. The solemn, magnificent
rite was performed, but it
was too late to think of Holy Communion.
The priest gave the last
absolution and began the prayers
for the dying. Before he had finished
them the long struggle was
over. Mme. Martin was at rest.

About five weeks after her death
I received a letter from Millicent,
informing me that she had become
a Catholic. “It has been all so
quickly done; I seem to have been
so completely taken up and lifted
into the church,” she said, “that I
cannot help thinking some powerful
supernatural agent has been at
work all along overruling my own
will. I had no more idea of becoming
a Catholic than I had of turning
Mohammedan—although all my
sympathies had been quite gained
over to the church by you and Mme.
Martin—when one evening I went
to act Racine’s <i>Athalie</i> at the house
of a friend here. When it was all
over, and the people were crowding
round me with compliments
and congratulations, a gentleman,
a Catholic priest, came up and spoke
to me; he thought I was a Catholic,
and began at once to discourse
on the grandeur of the Bible narrative
and Racine’s interpretation of
it. I undeceived him as soon as I
had the chance; he seemed sorry
and surprised, but went on talking
very pleasantly, and, when we were
saying good-evening, I said: 'My
mother will be happy to see you,
M. l’Abbé, if you would not object
to call upon a heretic!’ I cannot
to this day tell what moved me to say
this. The next moment I thought
I must have been out of my mind.
He replied good-humoredly that
he was not afraid of heretics, and
was very glad when they were
not afraid of him. My dear Lilly,
if the heretics only knew, they
would fly from that man as the
devil does from holy water! He
came to see us next day; it so happened
mamma was out, so I saw
him alone. I met him several times
again, and—well, dear, before the
month was out I was a Catholic.
When I look back on it, it seems to
me that I was in a dream, and that I
was led on and on without any conscious
will or action of my own, but
just let myself follow the lead of
some invisible attraction, some magnet
that drew me in spite of myself,
and here I am safe in St. Peter’s
net and happily landed in his bark.
Are people often converted in this
way? Tell me if the church has
invisible fishermen who go about
casting nets and catching wayward,
silly souls thus, or is it a special
dispensation of mercy invented for
me?”

“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin!
How quickly and well you have
executed my commission! Make
haste and fulfil the others now!”
I cried out to my dead friend
on reading Millicent’s letter. She
has kept me waiting for the other
two; but I have not a doubt they
will come in good time.

You can imagine Sybil’s feelings
.pn +1
on hearing of this event. I shall
certainly not attempt to depict
them. Yet, in the midst of her
genuine displeasure, there was a
high note of satisfaction—the exultation
of a prophet who had lived
to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am
sure this was a great comfort to
her. We did not quarrel, though
she let me plainly see she looked
upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer.
On the other hand, she
took a more merciful view of it:
It was to be, it was written; I was
the appointed, or the permitted, instrument
of Millicent’s destiny, and
if I had not come some one else
would; Millicent was doomed from
the beginning.

In the spring my fears were realized:
the doctor and Mrs. Segrave
and Sybil sailed away to New York.

A few days before they left Paris
Sybil burst into my room in high
excitement.

“Will you believe it!” she cried.
“Mr. Halsted has taken his place
in the <i>Tiger</i> and is going back
with us!”

“Well, and why not?” I said.
“You and he will have delightful
opportunities for discussing life
on deck every day.”

Soon after their arrival I had a
letter from her informing me that
they had discussed it to the issue I
had long since foreseen: she was to
be married to him in a month.
.sp 4
.h3 id=madonna
THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.
.sp 2
Among the most beautiful of
American lakes is one in the northern
part of New York State. The
old Indian name for it was Horicon,
or Holy Lake—called so, perhaps,
from the transparency of its water.
Its banks abound with historic
memories. They have been a battle-ground
for English and French,
and again in the war of Independence.
But what specially endears
it to Catholics is its consecration
by the Jesuit missionary Father
Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of
Corpus Christi, in the year 1646,
the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake
of the Blessed Sacrament.
Unhappily, the name it
bears at present is the one conferred
upon it by Sir William Johnson,
who, courtier-like, dubbed it
Lake George, after George I. of
England.

May its Catholic name soon be
restored! As an earnest whereof
there now stands on the right
shore—about a mile and a half
from the head—a building known
as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,”
from which, through the summer
months, a silvery bell rings out the
<i>Angelus</i> at morning, noon, and
evening. Strangers are informed
that this building is “the monastery”;
but a front view of it presents
one feature which dispenses
with all need of inquiry as to the
creed of its occupants: not the
cross upon the roof—for heresy
has stolen that; but an unmistakable
“encroachment of popery” in
the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.

Among the curious who have
ventured upon visiting “the monastery,”
a certain good woman was
one day discovered standing before
the house and looking up at the
statue. On being asked what she
.pn +1
thought of it she replied, in the
accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives
me a feeling as if something was
crawling all over me to see the
Virgin so big and the Saviour so
small! It’s the Saviour that ought
to be big.” Now, this sentence,
absurd as it sounds, contains, we
may say, an entire theology. To
one who has never been a Protestant
it is unintelligible, no doubt;
but to one who has, or has had, that
misfortune it expresses, though
poorly, an idea of which he is, or
has been, himself conscious. Our
friend was sufficiently familiar with
the Gospel story to know that the
figures before her represented the
Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus.
Her remark, too, evidenced her belief
in that story. She meant to
tell us, in her simple way, that we
made almost everything of the Virgin
and almost nothing of the Saviour.
Perhaps, had she been better
educated, she would have expressed
a preference for seeing the Saviour
alone, and not as a child but as a
man. Such, at least, would have
been the writer’s own sentiment,
years ago, when he was a Protestant.
Not but that we should have
felt more at ease had there been no
image there at all; for the genius
of Protestantism dislikes images:
it is essentially iconoclastic. But,
certainly, we would rather have
seen any image than a Madonna-and-Child.

Here are two points for investigation:
Why Protestantism is essentially
iconoclastic; and why it
is particularly uneasy and bitter in
the presence of a Madonna-and-Child.

The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or
Image-breakers, was Eastern, and
raged in the eighth and ninth centuries;
even reviving, for a time,
after its condemnation by Pope
Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical
Council. It sought to abolish
sacred images and pictures, on the
ground of their being idolatrous.
Originating with an ignorant soldier,
Leo the Isaurian, who had become
Emperor of Constantinople,
and “manifesting itself” (to borrow
the words of Döllinger) “as a blind
and senseless hatred of the imitative
arts,” we wonder that such a
fanaticism could gain footing at all.
But, in fact, it developed into a
persecuting heresy which “shed
more blood,” says the same writer,
“than any which had preceded it.”

Now, Protestantism has been said
to partake of all the previous heresies;
and we, for one, can testify to
the truth of the accusation; for, after
becoming a Catholic, we discovered,
in the course of study, that our
mind had entertained, at some time
or other—though not always culpably,
we trust—nearly every heresy
ever known. But that Protestantism
has especially distinguished
itself by its iconoclastic zeal will
be questioned by no one who is
acquainted with its history.

We say, then, that Protestantism,
as such, is <i>necessarily</i> iconoclastic.
And, first, from the negative attitude
which its very name implies—from
its principle of asserting the right
of private judgment to the rejection
of extrinsic authority. Man, having
a body as well as a soul, and
living in an order of the visible and
the palpable, naturally seeks to <i>image</i>
his ideas—to place them outside
of himself in a representative
form. And particularly does he
feel this need in matters of religious
belief. Whence we find the
use of symbolic representations in
all the ancient religions. The
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds
were peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most
so the Greek (the <i>word</i>
.pn +1
“symbol” is Greek). But a creed,
if it can be called a creed, which
consists of negations—which finds
its vitality in protesting against
authority—cannot consistently use
symbols; for, obviously, it has
nothing to symbolize. Protestantism,
therefore, instinctively dislikes
images, seeing in them the symbolic
representation of what is positive,
affirmative, dogmatic.

Again, Protestantism started with
another principle which gave it a
tradition of iconoclasm—the principle
of a false supernaturalism.
The supernatural was exaggerated,
to the destruction of the natural.
Our nature was declared to be totally
depraved, so that even free-will
was wanting to us. Consequently,
instead of being able to
co-operate with grace and acquire
merit, we had to be justified by
“faith only”; the righteousness of
Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown
over our depravity like a
cloak over a leprous body. Now,
of course, as an immediate result
of this doctrine, away went the
saints; for they were no better than
ordinary mortals—possessing no
merit of their own and nothing to
be venerated for. And with them
away went their images.

Furthermore, this exaggerated
supernaturalism involved elimination
of the visible and the material
from the economy of grace. For the
natural being evil, the visible and
the material were evil too, as a part
of the natural, and therefore incapable
of forming a system intermediary
and sacramental between the
soul and grace. Hence, away went
the idea of a visible church, and
away went sacraments and sacramentals.
Now, images—representations
of any kind—come under the
sacramental system, inasmuch as,
by raising our thoughts to their
originals, they help us to commune
with the unseen, and put us in mind
the more constantly to invoke that
mercy or intercession from or
through which graces flow to us.
Therefore, again, away went images
with the rest of the sacramental
system.

But, now, does not all this hostility
to the visible and the material
as elements of religion look very
much like a misunderstanding on
the subject of the Incarnation? If
Christ is God-Man, he is <i>God made
visible</i>—God with a human soul
and a <i>material</i> body. Surely, then,
to maintain that Christianity has
nothing to do with the visible or
the material is to betray an unfamiliarity
with the meaning of the
Incarnation.

This unfamiliarity will become
the more apparent when we shall
have considered an objection to
what has been said on the iconoclastic
tendencies of Protestantism.
We may not unreasonably be
reminded that Protestantism has
passed through various important
changes in the course of its career,
and especially within the last half-century;
that the doctrine of total
depravity has long gone out of fashion
and is practically extinct; and,
again, that Protestants do use symbols
now—such as the cross and the
triangle—while some of them encourage
painted windows, and even
images, in their churches. Very
true. And the change is not surprising—what
with unnaturalness of
doctrine on the one hand and conflict
of principle on the other. “<i>Naturam
expellas furca, tamen usque recurret</i>,”
says Horace—“You may
drive nature off with a pitchfork,
yet she will keep running back.”
Then, as to principles, logic, like
murder, “will out.” The doctrines
of the Reformation, though negations
.pn +1
of Catholic dogmas, took a
positive aspect for themselves; and
the right of private judgment, which
had made them, was only consistent
in destroying them. Within the
last half-century—and particularly
within the last quarter—the principle
of self-sufficiency has found its
extreme in the complete rejection
of the supernatural. Its votaries
who have not reached that terminus
are drifting thither, if unconsciously.
And hence a reaction, in favor of
what are called “orthodoxy” and
“churchmanship,” is perceptible
among all earnest Protestants who
retain belief in Christianity as something
more than philanthropy,
something with a divine meaning.
Not that they at all suspect (except
those in the front ranks of the
movement—the Ritualists, who
openly avow it) that they are going
back upon the Reformation. But
they are. And as they advance
they take in ideas which are less
and less compatible with genuine
Protestantism. One of these ideas
is symbolism, the representation of
doctrines by signs or images—as
the triangle signifies the Blessed
Trinity and the cross the Redemption.

Our argument, therefore, that
Protestantism, <i>as such</i>, is necessarily
iconoclastic or hostile to images,
holds good in spite of the fact that
modern Protestants are returning to
the use of symbols. This return
means that they have abandoned
the position taken by the Reformers,
and have set their faces—how little
so ever they think so—Romeward
and homeward.

Here, then, comes in a very appropriate
question. If Protestants
are gradually relinquishing their
old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays
they set up the cross to express
their faith in the Atonement,
and use the triangle as an affirmation
of their belief in the Trinity—where
is their symbol for the Incarnation?
Of course they acknowledge
the Incarnation. They bracket
it with the Trinity as a fundamental
doctrine of Christianity.
Then why do they not equally
symbolize it? Evidently, their not
even attempting to do so—their
having no symbol for it—is abundant
proof of what has been just
said, that, while they profess to receive
the doctrine, they are strangers
to its meaning. They understand
by it merely the divinity of
Christ, and beyond this keep it in
the background and give it no
practical bearing. The Atonement
is everything with them; the Incarnation
nothing. But Christianity
is <i>the religion of the Incarnation</i>.
For call it, if you will, the religion
of the cross, that term does not
designate it as a whole. The truth
expressed by the cross depends on
the truth of the Incarnation; and
so does every other Christian
dogma. Christianity, therefore, is
either the religion of the Incarnation
or it is nothing. <i>As that</i> it
must stand or fall. And if we
would express it as a whole, we
must symbolize the Incarnation.
Now, the crowning proof (were any
needed) that the Incarnation, rightly
understood, has no place in Protestant
theology lies in the fact that,
besides not attempting to symbolize
the doctrine themselves, all Protestants
agree in a common aversion
(not to say abomination) to the
only symbol possible, which is—the
Madonna-and-Child.

And why is the Madonna-and-Child
the only symbol of the Incarnation?
Because the Incarnation
means that God is man; but how
can we express the truth that God
is man, except by showing that he
.pn +1
has a Mother? In his divine nature
he has no mother; then, if he
has a mother, he is man. Whence
the creeds do not merely say that
Christ is the Son of God, or that
the Son of God was made man, but
affirm that he was “<i>born of the
Virgin Mary</i>”; “<i>Incarnate of (or
from) the Virgin Mary</i>”—thus setting
forth the same divine Person
as at once the Son of God and the
Son of Mary. That is, they show
us Incarnate God as a Child in his
Mother’s arms; they <i>symbolize</i> the
Incarnation (a creed is called a
“symbol”) by the Madonna-and-Child.

.tb

Thus far, then, we have seen that
the genius of Protestantism is hostile
to images in general, and to the
Madonna-and-Child in particular,
because it is out of joint (so to
speak) with the genius of the Incarnation.
We have here a very singular
spectacle: a vast body of
professing Christians, who hold,
with us, the doctrine of the Incarnation,
and have not formulated
any heresy about it in their “confessions
of faith” (we are not including
Unitarians among Christians;
for they have no more right
to the name than Mohammedans); a
body of Christians who say with us
that they “believe in Jesus Christ
... born of the Virgin Mary”;
who keep “merry” Christmas, too,
with us—Christmas, the feast of the
Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for
all this, instead of dwelling with
delight on a representation of the
Infant Saviour in the arms of his
Blessed Mother, invariably show
that they are not at home with it as
a religious symbol.

Can it be that they are insensible
to what is beautiful and touching?
No; their hearts are as human as
ours. Any other mother and child
by an artist of moderate skill could
scarcely fail to interest them.
Moreover, it is fashionable with
cultivated Protestants to admire
<i>this</i> Mother and Child where the
question is one of art, not of religion.
They display a very creditable
taste for the Madonnas of Raphael
and other great painters. Or
if the association of religion add a
charm, it is nothing more to them
than the glamour which invests a
symbol of pagan superstition. And
in saying this we speak from experience.
When, as a school-boy,
the writer became acquainted with
the mythologies of Greece and
Rome, he found them full of poetry,
and soon came to envy the religion
of those old pagans—a religion so
much in contrast with the aridity of
his own. So, too, when, a year or
two later, he first saw Catholic worship
(it was Benediction, of all
lovely rites), he remarked as he
came away: “That religion is full
of poetry.” “Yes,” was the answer—“of
pagan poetry.” And
then he was told how all the “corruptions”
of Rome had been introduced
from paganism; and, as an
instance, the Madonna was cited.
“They call her the Mother of God,”
said the informant (a clergyman of
the Church of England, who had
learnt his lesson well). “You remember
Cybele, the 'mother of the
gods’? Well, there’s their Madonna—the
Virgin Mary in place of the
goddess Cybele.” He was told this
and other things of like nature,
and so became imbued with the
idea that the Catholic religion was
a paganized Christianity. Still, for
this very reason (as we are free to
confess), it had a fascination for
us; and the greatest charm of all
was its supposed goddess-worship.

At sixteen, again, our attraction
to the Madonna was greatly increased
.pn +1
by some stanzas of Lord
Byron, in which that most wonderful
of poets, inspired by the
beauties of the Mediterranean twilight,
and with some famous painting
in his mind, thus apostrophizes
Our Lady:

.pm verse-start
“Ave Maria! Over land and sea,
That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!

“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer!
  Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! <i>May our spirits dare
  Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!</i>
Ave Maria! O that face so fair!
  Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove!
What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike,
<i>That</i> painting is no idol—’tis too like!

“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour,
  The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
  Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft!
As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
  And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:
While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air,
Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”
.pm verse-end

Perhaps, too, we were even more
impressed by a single stanza in another
canto of the same poem,
where, in his description of Norman
Abbey (his own Newstead),
he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child
which had been standing
amid the ruins:

.pm verse-start
  “But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d—
  The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round:
  Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d.
<i>She made the place beneath seem holy ground.</i>
  This may be superstition, weak or wild:
But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”
.pm verse-end

Lord Byron, it is true, was not a
Protestant, but a deist. But this
makes it all the more evident how
full of poetry the Catholic religion
is—and particularly in its worship
of the Madonna—when it could so
attract a mind that rejected Christianity
altogether. Other non-Christian
poets have proved the
same thing, and none more so than
our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow,
whom, when we first read
“Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,”
we supposed to be a Catholic.
But Protestant poets, too, and of
various persuasions, have evinced a
sympathy with particular features
of the Catholic religion as it appears
to those outside of it, and especially
with the Madonna. These see
an <i>ideal</i> in our Virgin-Mother.
And none has expressed this higher
view so well as Wordsworth in
his celebrated sonnet—to which,
perhaps, we are indebted for our
own first glimpse of her as an ideal.
It is one of his <i>Ecclesiastical Sonnets</i>,
and comes among a series in which,
as a true poet, he is forced to lament
the destructive work of the
so-called Reformation.

.pm verse-start
“Mother, whose virgin bosom was <i>uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied:</i>
Woman above all women glorified—
<i>Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!</i>
Purer than foam on central ocean tost:
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast!
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity—
Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”
.pm verse-end

Clearly, therefore, it is <i>not</i> an obtuseness
to the beautiful, or even
to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant
mind from our symbol of
the Incarnation. No; the key to
the puzzle is this: that the system
of Christianity known as Protestantism
cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child
a symbol <i>of itself</i>—has
nothing in it capable of being symbolized
by either Madonna or
Child.

.tb

The Incarnation, once more, is
God made visible. As such it must
needs create for itself a visible
kingdom on earth: a kingdom
over body as well as over soul—a
kingdom in the world of mind, and
.pn +1
equally into the world of sense and
matter. The kingdom thus created
will, of course, be in harmony with
that which created it—the Incarnation—and,
therefore, with the symbol
of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child;
and so will find in
the Madonna-and-Child the symbol
<i>of itself</i>—the mould upon which it
was cast.

Here, then, the reader will perceive
what we mean by calling the
Madonna-and-Child a <i>test</i>-symbol.
Whatever system of Christianity is
not at home with this symbol, or not
entirely in harmony with it, is thereby
convicted of being false, as not
the kingdom of the Incarnation.
So that, to demonstrate the true
Christianity, out of all existing systems
calling themselves Christian,
we have only to confront them with
the Madonna-and-Child.

Let us do this. And, first, we
will call up all the Protestant communions,
and particularly the two
most important and respectable—the
state church of England and
her daughter in America; excluding
on the one hand whatever sects
deny the divinity of Christ, and
on the other that party in the said
Episcopalian churches which is
working, more or less consciously,
to bring back “popery without the
pope.” Neither of these extremes
is genuine Protestantism.

All classes of genuine Protestants,
when confronted with the Madonna-and-Child,
acknowledge it, of course,
the representation of an historic
fact in which they believe—the birth
of Jesus Christ from the Virgin
Mary—but instinctively feel that it
<i>means a great deal more</i>. They
principally object to the Madonna,
as giving the Blessed Virgin too
much prominence. “We all know,”
they argue, “that she is the Mother
of our Saviour; but, beyond
this, what is she to <i>us</i>?” They are
not accustomed to speak of her, except
when they mention her in the
Creed; or even to think of her,
except when they pity or abuse
their “idolatrous” fellow-Christians.
At the same time neither do they
care to see the Child, particularly
in Mary’s arms or by her side.
“He did not remain a child all his
life,” they say. “It was not as a
child that he came out in public to
work miracles and preach the Gospel;
it was not as a child that he
suffered and died. Then what is
his childhood to <i>us</i>?” In a word,
our symbol of the Incarnation reminds
them of nothing with which
they are familiar.

The secret is, they are not within
the visible kingdom of the Incarnation;
they are outside the visible
church. Each sect will call itself
a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians
have something to show
for theirs, because, in its outward
form, it is a fair imitation of a real
hierarchy. But when they say in
the Creed, with us, “I believe in
the Holy Catholic Church,” they do
not mean at all what we mean.
To them the Catholic Church of
the Creed is the collective multitude
of omnigenous believers in
Christ, instead of signifying a visible
institution divinely endowed to
teach and govern, and standing to
them in the relation of a <i>mother</i>—carrying
them in her arms and
feeding them at her breast. If
they <i>did</i> mean <i>this</i> by the Catholic
Church, they would recognize at
once in the Madonna-and-Child a
symbol of that church with them in
her arms, and would, so far, feel at
home with the Madonna-and-Child.

Neither, again, have they the
Blessed Sacrament—that lovely
“second infancy” of Jesus—or
they would joyfully acknowledge in
.pn +1
the Madonna-and-Child an image
of the church with the Blessed
Sacrament in her keeping.

But especially would their attitude
towards Our Lady be different
from what it is now. Believing
in a visible church, they would not
insist, as now, on having nothing between
themselves and Christ, who,
by instituting the church, chose
to place an entire system between
himself and them. And, seeing
the type of this church in Mary,
they could not vituperate our doctrine
of the latter’s maternal mediation;
not only because of the
church’s mediation, but also because
Mary, as the type of mother
church, must needs be <i>Mother</i>
Mary.

Now, to the writer this is all the
more clear because it is the history
of his conversion. Having come—and,
thank God! not so late as it
might have been—to feel the necessity
of a visible church as a mother
and guide, at whose feet we could
sit child-like and learn from her
“the words of eternal life”—to
hear whom would be to hear Christ;
to go to whom, to go to Christ—we
gradually discovered that the
Church of England, in which we
had been reared, and to whose
ministry we were looking forward,
was no such mother and guide, nor
ever could be. We found that she
did very well as a state church, a
moral police, a “part of the civil
service”; but that her success in
being <i>fashionable</i> was owing—<i>not</i> to
any <i>divine</i> commission, <i>not</i> to her
speaking “as one having authority,”
<i>not</i> to her teaching one definite
body of doctrine—but, on the
contrary, to her being the creation
of Parliament; to her <i>disclaiming</i>
all authority to teach, except as a
fallible human witness; and to her
leaving the utmost latitude for every
variety and <i>contradiction</i> of opinion,
so that her clergy were equally at
liberty to hold or deny such vital
doctrines as baptismal regeneration,
the Real Presence, sacerdotal
absolution, and apostolical succession.
Added to these doctrines—which
we had come to believe from
joining first the moderate High-Church
party, and then the extreme,
or the Ritualists—was a
parallel attraction to the Blessed
Virgin, whom we had discovered
to be truly the Mother of God.
And the two ideas of a mother in
the church and a Mother in the
Blessed Virgin rose together and
grew together, till we found them
both realities in the kingdom of the
Incarnation.

.tb

And now we may let Protestantism
go. Its votaries are loud in
exhorting us to return with them
to the purity of primitive Christianity.
But when we take them
back with us over the centuries to
the very cradle of Christianity—to
the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and
enter that sanctuary on
the first Christmas morning, are
they or we more at home there, in
the presence of the Madonna-and-Child?
So far, then, from establishing
its clamorous pretensions to
be the only unalloyed Christianity,
Protestantism is ruled out of court
by our test-symbol, as neither the
kingdom of the Incarnation nor any
part of that kingdom, and therefore—virtually
and logically—not
Christianity at all.

The Catholic Church, however,
has not the field all to herself yet.
There is the Russo-Greek, including
some half-dozen independent
communions. Is not she in harmony
with our test-symbol?

While on the road to Rome we
were much attached to the Greek
.pn +1
Church. Most Anglicans of the
“High” school are—because they
know very little about her. (A case
where “distance lends enchantment”—and
a very hazy distance,
to boot.) There is one thing, though,
which Anglicans ought to know
about the Greek Church, and which
we did know: the fact that her
worship of the Blessed Virgin is
more “excessive” (to use their own
phrase) than that of the Roman
Church. We say we knew this,
and confess that, instead of being
repelled by it, we were the more
attracted. So far, therefore, the
writer was consistent, at least—unlike
other Anglicans, who protest
especially against our “Marian
system” (as they call it), and at the
same time babble and dream (for
dream it is) of union with the Greek
Church. What we were afraid of
in the Roman Church was not the
Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We
had been so thoroughly imbued
from boyhood with the notion that
the Pope was “Antichrist” and
the “Man of Sin,” that the influence
of this monstrous superstition
haunted us, in some shape, to
the very eve of our conversion.
We say in some shape. We had
come, since a Ritualist, to believe
that Antichrist was yet to appear,
and that the Pope could not possibly
be he. Nevertheless, we took it
for unquestionable that the Papacy
was a usurpation; had caused the
separation of the Greek Church
from the Latin; and was also to
blame, in a great degree, for England
being out of communion with
the other western churches. While
under instruction for reception into
the church we read Mr. Allies’
<i>See of Peter</i>; and our amazement
at the evidence for the Papacy was
only equalled by our indignation at
the unblushing impudence which
had assured us, and with such pretence
of patristic learning, that
there was not a single proof from
the first six centuries for the supremacy
of the Bishop of Rome.

Well, then, the Greek Church <i>is</i>
in harmony with our test-symbol
to a certain and considerable extent.
In the first place, she holds
the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation,
and by no means keeps it in
the background, but gives it due
prominence in her catechism and
liturgy. And since she teaches the
devotional use of representations,
particularly of pictures, her people
are no less familiar than we are
with the Madonna-and-Child as the
symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly,
although (as must be the case)
they have not the same tender <i>mother</i>
in their church that we have
in ours, still, all who are in good
faith being by intention Catholics,
they can speak, with us, of “our
mother the church.” And, again,
though they are made much less
familiar with the Blessed Sacrament
than we are, yet, having a true
priesthood (not a sham one like
the Anglican), a true altar, and a
true Mass, the Real Presence is
a living fact with them. So that
they <i>may</i> see in the Madonna-and-Child
the church and the Blessed
Sacrament as we do.

The Madonna-and-Child, however,
being, as we have said, the
mould upon which the church is
cast, makes a law which must not
be violated in any single particular.
If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox”
Greek Church be found
out of harmony with our test-symbol
in even one point, she is no
more the kingdom of the Incarnation
than if she were in harmony
with it at no point.

Now, she does fail to correspond
with it in one most important point:
.pn +1
viz., in her theory of the church
as a whole. She holds, like the
Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a
<i>divided</i> church. But the Madonna
can no more represent a divided
than an invisible church, and those
who say, with us, in the Nicene
Creed, “I believe <i>one</i> Catholic and
Apostolic Church,” yet maintain
that she need not be <i>visibly</i> “one,”
are more illogical than those who
use the words in the sense of an
invisible church. That a visible
church, of which <i>oneness</i> is a mark,
need not be <i>visibly one</i>!—could absurdity,
in the shape of theory, go
further?

Again, if this theory of the church
as a whole—that she is no longer
visibly one as her divine Author
made her—renders it impossible to
see the type of such a church in
the Madonna separately, what meaning
will it find in the Madonna-and-Child
together? It beholds in the
Madonna a unity which it denies;
and in the Child—either nothing at
all, or something which it consciously
rejects.

What makes a church, according
to the apostolic constitution? All
churches which have that constitution
agree that the essentials of a
church are a <i>bishop</i> with a clergy
and laity in his communion. The
bishop is its nucleus, and <i>makes</i>
the church in the sense in which
the head makes the body. A bishopless
church is a headless body.
We say this is what all Christians
agree upon who believe in apostolical
succession. So that even the
recent contemptible sect calling
themselves “Old Catholics” were
bound to procure a bishop for their
schism, albeit they set at defiance
both authority and logic.

A bishop, then, and the church
in his communion are the normal
or representative church. Now, we
see in this representative church the
form of the Madonna-and-Child.
To some this may seem fanciful. It
is not. Every priest is “another
Christ”—in the celebrated words
of St. Bernard; and the bishop is
the <i>complete</i> priest, as having the
power to confer the priesthood.
If, then, the Madonna typifies the
church, the Christ-child typifies the
priesthood, and, if the priesthood,
still more the episcopate. Again,
as Christ has in Mary not only a
Mother, but a Daughter and a
Spouse—for he is her Father by
creation (whence Chaucer and
Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy
Son!”) and her Spouse as the
Spouse of all elect souls, among
whom she is “as the lily among
thorns”—so, too, has the priest in
the church at once a mother, a
daughter, and a spouse; and therefore
still more does the bishop
stand in this threefold relation to
the church. And, once more, as
Christ is “the first-born among
many brethren,” his Mother being
ours also, so is the priest an elder
brother, ruling his brethren from the
arms of their common mother; and,
if the priest, much more the bishop.

There is nothing fanciful, then,
in our view of the Madonna-and-Child
as a symbol of the normal
or representative church. But what
does this mean, if not that the collective
church, consisting as it must
of a multitude of single churches,
has equally the form of the Madonna-and-Child—is
equally capable
of being symbolized thereby?
or, in other words, that all single
episcopates must be subordinated
to one universal episcopate? Now,
the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting
(at least in theory) the principle
of hierarchical subordination
from the bishop up to the patriarch,
stupidly contradicts her own assertion
.pn +1
of this principle, and destroys
the church as a whole, by rejecting
the supremacy of the Pope. She is,
therefore, in this all-important point,
as much out of harmony with our
test-symbol as the Anglican and
the other Protestant sects; and is
ruled out of court, in her turn, as
neither the kingdom of the incarnation
nor any part of that kingdom.

.tb

So at last we have only the Roman
Church to contrast with the
Madonna-and-Child. And small
need have we to show how harmoniously
at all points she corresponds
with our test-symbol. The Catholic
recognizes in the Madonna-and-Child
not only the Incarnation but
its kingdom. He sees there the
church with the Blessed Sacrament
in her hands; and, again, the church
our <i>mother</i> with her Christ-child at
her breast; and, lastly, this same
mother as our lady and queen, with
her eldest son the Pope ruling his
brethren from his throne on her
heart, the <i>Sancta Sedes</i>.

With regard to this last point we
think it strange that controversialists
have made so little use of the
Madonna-and-Child of the Apocalypse.[#]
We proposed to conclude
our subject with a proof of the Papacy
from this vision, but must reserve
it for a separate article.

.fn #
Chap. xii.
.fn-
.sp 4
.h3 id=college
COLLEGE EDUCATION.
.sp 2
The schools of the country have
held their days of exhibition or of
graduation, the young men are enjoying
their holidays, and the
teachers are preparing themselves
for a new year of work. It would
seem to be a favorable moment to
say a word about the question that
more or less occupies all who think
seriously of the future—education.
This word, so often used, conveys
different ideas, according to
the person who speaks. Its etymology
undoubtedly gives it a certain definite
meaning: <i>educo</i>, <i>erudiri</i> are two
words that signify the bringing forth
from a negative state to a positive
one—from ignorance and rudeness
to knowledge and culture. But
this general idea does not cover
the whole matter. We have to
consider the end to which this process
is directed in order to have
an adequate idea of what it should
be. Now, this end we shall have
clearly before us if we call to mind
the end for which man is here on
earth. Christians all acknowledge
and teach that man is here to know,
love, and serve God and save his
soul. These two, therefore—redemption
from ignorance and a
rude state, and the end for which
man is here—give us the right idea
of what education ought to be.
The appreciation of both will enable
us to avoid two fatal obstacles—presumption
and error. The proper
state of mind of any one beginning
a course of education is the recognition
of his want of knowledge.
There is nothing so hurtful as a
spirit of pride; for this blinds the
mind, makes one overweeningly
confident of his powers, attached
to his own opinions, and loath to
receive instruction. We have heard
in our day young people discussing
the question whether a man were
not able to work out the most difficult
.pn +1
problems of human science
of himself; whether he absolutely
stood in need of the guidance of
others; and whether there were
any branch of human knowledge or
achievement of past times <i>any one</i>
might not be able to attain to or
accomplish, provided he turned his
attention to it, and circumstances
were favorable. And when a young
man had succeeded in mastering a
certain amount of learning or science,
we have been witnesses of the
very remarkable phenomenon of
seeing him set himself up as one
whose opinion should cut short
every discussion, and form the law
of belief or action for those around
him. Any one having had any
experience of truly learned men,
who even may not have been models
of virtue, must have been
struck at the humility of mind they
give proof of. They, more than
others, appreciate how little they
know of what it is possible to
know; they see the vast field of
knowledge of which they individually
can but cultivate a part, and
common sense keeps them from
thinking themselves possessed even
of all that can be known of what
they are actually engaged in. They
agree in spirit with the celebrated
master of Plato, whose saying is
familiar to us: “I know only this:
that I know nothing.” The first
requisite, therefore, for sound education
is a humble state of mind, a
disposition to be taught and receive
the lessons with docility—a disposition
not only needful in a beginner,
but required even more the further
one advances into the domain of
knowledge. When one adds to the
original and relative ignorance of
us all the further fact of the ease
with which we go astray, fall into
error—a facility so great as to have
given rise to the adage in universal
use, “<i>Humanum est errare</i>”—it is impossible
a man of sense should not
recognize the necessity of keeping
down the spirit of pride and self-confidence,
and confess that, in not
having controlled himself in this respect,
he has given the most complete
proof of the adage in his own
case. We are therefore all in the
same condition, all in need of learning,
and stand in want of a teacher
to instruct us and lead us in the
path of truth. What is the truth we
are to seek after, who the teacher we
are to go to, results from the study
of the end to which education is
to be directed. We have seen that
the end of man is to know, love, and
serve God and save his soul, and
this tells us what education should
be. Anything that conflicts with
this end is to be rejected; whatever
aids us in attaining it is to be embraced;
and as all truth is in harmony
with that end, it follows that
education can embrace all sciences
that are truly such, while it must
eliminate all error; for error has a
logical effect of keeping us from the
attainment of that end, especially
where that error regards the higher
branches of speculative education.

Here, then, comes in the most important
element in the education of
man—religion; religion, that is, to
teach his head and train his heart.
If, as is most certainly the fact,
man was made for God and for immortal
life hereafter, education that
would exclude this element—religion—which
regulates the relations
of man with God, and teaches him
how he may gain that everlasting
state for which he has been created,
is wanting most deplorably in the
one thing needful. Such an education
fits a man only for matter;
is of the earth earthy. It has no
higher aim than the objects around
him; it is a guide that does not
.pn +1
bring into the presence of the King,
but takes one no further than the
domain over which the King’s power
is exercised. However much it
may delight the eye with grandeur
of scenery, proofs of power and of
wisdom, it has no right or ability
to introduce into a close communion
with the Sovereign, the source
of all it beholds. It is simply an
unworthy servant banished for ever
from the face of his Master. This
kind of education, which we shall
style secular, professedly excludes
all religious control of any kind
whatsoever, and it consequently
relies only on reason and scientific
examination. Now, reason has been
found wanting. In the brightest
examples of pagan times, familiar
to students of history, are to be
found not only actions nature itself
condemns, but principles laid down
by them subversive of natural society
and of all Christian virtue—pantheism
and immorality. And
we owe it to Christianity that we
have been rescued from the social
life in which such principles prevailed
and were in practice. Any one
nowadays who knows something of
men will bear witness to the fact
that both the one and the other—pantheism
and immorality—are on
the increase and show themselves
publicly in the speech of the men
and women of to-day. This can be
owing only to one cause—the divorce
of religion from education. And
because this is so, because secular
education does not lead us to God,
but takes us from him, a dividing
line must be drawn between religious
education and secular education;
an insuperable barrier exists
between them, which must and
ought to keep all that believe in
revelation on the side of a training
under the eye of religion. And if
this be the case with regard to all
who profess belief in Christ, how
much truer is it with reference to
those who have given their names
to the Catholic Church and look
to her infallible voice for their
guidance! In saying this we do
not wish to speak disparagingly of
the learning, the ability, or the zeal
of those engaged in the cause of
education who are not with us.
We respect all those who are striving
to increase the treasure of human
knowledge or dispense it to
their fellow-men. We join hands
with all who are earnest in their
study of true science, and rejoice
in their success. We have no right
to question their sincerity. But
between their efforts and success
in discovery, or in acquiring and
imparting learning, and the way in
which they educate, there is a difference
most vital and essential.
The one investigates the works of
the Creator, while the other leads
men practically, where it does not
absolutely tell them as much, to
ignore the Creator himself. Godless
science can only fill a man
with himself, while it offers no
guarantee for the preservation of
his morals and the attainment of
his last end.

On the other hand, religion goes
before the education which is allied
with her. With her torch of faith
she illumes the darkness of men’s
minds. She shows them how much
more beautiful is the Author of all
the beautiful things they contemplate
than are the objects themselves.
She makes them behold in
him the original essential beauty
of which the universe is only a
faint participation, and yearn for
the possession of that Beauty and
sovereign Good she tells them is
within their reach; and she shows
them how, under her direction, they
may not be carried away by transient
.pn +1
allurements, by what they
see around them, but attain to an
indissoluble union with that Beauty
and sovereign Good—with God
himself.

But it may be said religion has
nothing to do with natural science;
it cramps man’s mind, fetters his
intellect, stops his investigation.
It will do well enough in its
sphere, but its action is hurtful to
scientific pursuits.

Is this true? It is not true; and
we can refute the charge by principle
and by fact.

All that exists belongs to God.
All science, all truth comes from
him, the great First Cause, from
whom all things proceed, in whom
there can be no contradiction.
His works, therefore, cannot contradict
him nor contradict each other.
Natural truth and revealed truth
must, then, be in harmony, and we
do not fear a conflict between
them. The Catholic student of
science is as fearless an investigator
as is his rationalist <i>confrère</i>;
but the former will not rashly give
himself up to speculations the
other’s further experience will
oblige him to retract. The facts of
science will never be in opposition
to revelation, though the interpretation
of scientific men may be, to
their discomfiture later on. Even
if the teacher of revelation, the
church, should by any possibility,
as is asserted in the case of Galileo,
fail in a <i>disciplinary</i> decree with regard
to scientific research, such decrees
not being infallible utterances
of the Holy See, there remains
always the remedy of a reversal
when the incontestable proof of the
contrary, such as he did not bring
forward, shall be produced. So
spoke Cardinal Bellarmine, one of
Galileo’s judges. Though we may
safely say that those in charge of
the interests of the church do well
in being exceedingly careful how
they interfere with scientific investigation,
it nevertheless may become
necessary at times to curb
the license of those who undertake
to interpret the truths of revelation
according to their ideas or appreciation
of science. How many
scientific theories fall to pieces
every day! And is it not reasonable
that those who believe in a
revelation should not be left at the
mercy of every clever scientific
man who is pleased to have a tilt
against it? Let any scientific truth
be fully proved, and the Catholic
Church will be the first to applaud,
for it redounds to the glory of her
Head.

We need not, however, confine
ourselves to this negative way of
advocating the cause of revelation
as friendly to science, for there is
no dearth of positive proof of the
fact.

Revelation is positively of advantage
to the study of science. It is
clear that any one who keeps me,
when on a journey, from going out
of my way saves me an amount of
time and trouble. Instead of wandering
in the woods and bypaths, I
am enabled to keep the highway
and so reach sooner my destination.
This is one of the important
services revelation renders
science. It tells us: Don’t direct
your attention hither or thither;
for you will find out you are wrong,
after losing precious time and
making yourself a laughing-stock.
Don’t go in search of the “missing
link,” for you won’t find it. Don’t
divide the unity of the human race,
for it is one—of one man and one
woman. Don’t grovel with the
materialists; for man has a spirit,
and he is destined for a better life
hereafter. Such like warnings we
.pn +1
have from revelation, and, instead
of going astray with evolutionists
and so-called philosophers, we employ
our time and talents on points
that are serious and practical in
science and nature; and Heaven
knows there are plenty of these to
engage us. The result is useful
knowledge that does not undo but
builds up society and perfects
civilization. For this our grateful
thanks are due revelation.

Then, again, revelation opens up
to us new fields of thought. It gives
us an insight into what we could not
otherwise know. It is as if chance
discovered to us some principle of
art or science no one had before
suspected. Once presented, reason
can occupy itself on it, explore it
as far as possible, make deductions
and applications. How much human
ethics have gained in clearness
and usefulness by the light
of the command to love our neighbor,
and by the example of the
Redeemer of man! How much
speculative philosophy with regard
to personality, responsibility, good
and evil, and the future life! The
crude theories of pagan times
excite our compassion nowadays,
though we honor the ability of their
original propounders; yet these
same theories we see now broached
by those who have cast aside revelation,
but often with less depth
and less wisdom than the pagan in
whose mind not all the light of
natural religion was quenched.
No! revelation is the friend of
science; science divorced from
religion, the vaunted glory of to-day,
is the enemy of progress; retrograde
in all save the energetic
talent that is lost in its service.

A few examples will show what
revelation or the church has done
and is doing for the cause of education;
whether it has checked
the development of man or favored
it.

We will go to the “dark ages,”
in which those who oppose the
church as an educator are wont to
find their <i>cheval de bataille</i>, their
bugbear to frighten off those inclined
to trust her. We say nothing of
the unfairness of Protestants who
wilfully ignore the sad state of the
Roman world consequent on the
barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth,
and seventh centuries, and the struggles
with the Saracens, who penetrated
even into Italy—a condition of
things most inimical to the quiet requisite
for study; who pass over the
conquest of those barbarians and
their civilization by the church; who
pretend to know nothing of what
was done by the monks to preserve
learning in their monasteries, to
whom the preservation of the classic,
philosophic, and ascetic works of antiquity
and of the early church—the
Bible among them—is due. We
come to the thirteenth century.
There we see, burning with a light
that is celestial, a luminary not of
the church only but of human reason—St.
Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic
Doctor. There was hardly a branch
of intellectual pursuit of which he
was not a master. His works are
wonderful, and have always been a
precious and useful legacy in every
subsequent age. His great work,
the Sum of Theology, has remained
the text-book of theologians. In
fact, no theologian is master of
his subject who has not made St.
Thomas the object of his constant
study. Though at times somewhat
neglected, we may safely say that at
present there is an increasing appreciation
of his works. Certainly
this is true of his philosophical
treatise <i>Contra Gentiles</i>. There is
now a wide-spread movement in all
civilized nations to return to the
.pn +1
use of the metaphysical and ethical
teachings of St. Thomas, and it will
be the means of regenerating such
philosophical studies in this epoch
of individual self-assertion, of <i>ipse
dixits</i>, when every man of talent
who lists puts forth his own hazy
speculations as the truth, and strives
to force down his deductions as the
<i>ne plus ultra</i> of science. Domenico
Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined
scholastic theology to be reason
illumined by faith; we may, like
him, style scholastic philosophy reason
kept in its right path by the
torch of faith. In the works of St.
Thomas will be found the refutation
of the pantheism of Spinoza and the
present German school, of the materialism
of Hobbes and Büchner, of
the utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer,
and others of the followers of Puffendorf.
We shall find, too, in his writings
the ablest defence of revelation,
and the sound principles that will
enable us to put to flight the whole
host of mythical theorists of the age.
So much for theology, metaphysics,
and ethics.

If we wish to speak of the work of
the church in poetry, science, and literature,
we have a monument of what
she could do, even in the middle ages,
in Dante. We hardly know which to
admire most in this extraordinary
man—his native genius, his extraordinary
powers of imagination, the
beauty of his imagery, the remarkable
knowledge of theology and
philosophy he exhibits in his writings,
or the beauty of the language
he created. His culture was due
to the church; his inspiration was
drawn from revelation; and his
science he drank in at the great
schools established and carried on
by the church in Italy, in France,
and in England. So pre-eminent is
this writer, philosopher, and poet,
that even in the nineteenth century
our own poet whose works are read
and justly appreciated wherever the
English language is spoken—Henry
W. Longfellow—has deemed it well
worthy of his own genius to be his
translator. Yet Dante is the product
of the Catholic Church.

But the fashion to-day is to extol
physical science. Of a truth, physical
science does not hold, and
should not hold, the first place. If
man were only matter, it might and
should; but he has a soul, and the
spiritual and intellectual world is
his proper sphere. Scientific knowledge
is useful for the arts that
serve to make commerce prosper,
and should be sought after; but to
make commerce and what pertains
to it, and the material comforts of
man, the main object of his thoughts
and aims is a monstrous disorder.

However, even in this sphere of
physical science the church is not
afraid of her competitors. We
leave to one side old Friar Bacon
and other patriarchs of science, and
we come to our own day. The
church can point to Angelo Secchi,
one of the first of living astronomers
and physical scientists, and a
member of a society that counts
among its members men distinguished
in every branch of human knowledge—the
Society of Jesus. So
great is the pre-eminence of this
distinguished <i>savant</i> in his native
Italy that, since the city of Rome
has been in the hands of the present
rulers, they have left nothing undone
to gain him over to their side.
And it is a pleasure to us to pay
this public tribute to the noble fidelity
he has shown to his faith, his
church, and his society, giving as he
does a splendid example of the alliance
between the most advanced
physical science and the Catholic
Church.

As faithful adherents to revelation,
.pn +1
though not Catholics, we
may mention the late Prof. Faraday
and the no less distinguished
Dr. Carpenter, who show that revelation
and science do not war
against each other.

But we need not content ourselves
with showing that the church
is not hostile to human learning.
It is easy to bring forward facts
that put her before the world in her
true character as the real friend of
man, the guardian of his dignity,
the zealous protectress of the truth
of his intellect and of the freedom
of his will. <i>In medio stat virtus</i>—Virtue
avoids extremes. Our tendency
to go wrong is by doing too
much or too little, and we need
something to keep us from either
of these two extremes. It is here
the church comes in to fulfil this
friendly and much-needed office.

There was in the fourth and
fifth century an intellectual movement
that attributed more than its
due to human nature. The Pelagian
errors gave to man a power he does
not possess, and those errors are
very widely spread in this nineteenth
century. They ignore the
efficacy of grace, or the help the
will stands in need of to serve God.
Grace, according to their most favorable
view, was only a light for
the intellect. Here was an excess;
too much was claimed for human
nature. Such doctrine is contradicted
by Scripture and by the Fathers.
Our Lord tells us: “I am the vine,
and you are the branches; without
me you can do nothing.” And St.
Paul says: “We are not able to
think of anything [conducive to
salvation] of ourselves; but our
sufficiency is from God.” And St.
Augustine, against those who spoke
of some of the precepts as impossible,
writes: “God does not command
what is impossible; but commanding
[thereby] counsels us to
do what we can, to ask for aid to do
what is beyond our power, and aids
us that we may be able to do it.”
In this case we have the church
curbing human pride and keeping
the intellect and will within its true
limits.

In the sixteenth century there
was a movement, resulting from
pride and rebellion, that had its
own punishment in the degradation
to which it reduced man’s nature.
Luther’s dogmatic system had, and
has—for it lives in Protestantism—the
effect of so debasing human nature
as to deny light to the intellect
and power to the will to do
anything that was not sinful; for
he held that the will of man is essentially
changed, so that it depends
on who directs it, God or
the devil; and, besides, whatever it
does is sinful, though covered by
the merits of Jesus Christ, which,
like Esau’s garments, prevent the
knowledge or sight of the true
state of things and the imputation
of sin.

Here was a defect; human nature
was denied some of its powers.

The church fulminated this doctrine,
and taught formally that
man’s intellect and will, though
weakened by sin and passion, are
not essentially changed, and that all
man’s acts are not sinful. She recognized
something of his original
dignity in man. Hers is the spirit
of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent
words made the Christians and Romans
of his day remember their origin,
and the height to which they had
been raised by the Incarnation. He
exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy
dignity, and, having been made a
partaker of the divine nature, return
not by degenerate conversation
to thy former vileness.” She
bade man remember that his nature,
.pn +1
never essentially corrupt, had
been purified by the grace of God,
and that “in those that please God
there is nothing defiled.”

Luther’s teachings shed a sinister
influence far and wide that
tainted even Catholic universities
and affected writers who still professed
to be in union with the
church.

In the former University of Louvain
Jansenius went so far as to say
that some of the gospel precepts were
impossible, and that no grace was
given to fulfil them. The words that
were used by St. Augustine to refute
the Pelagians were turned against
Jansenius, and the voice of the
church was heard anew vindicating
man from the necessity of committing
sin. Later on came Baius, of
the same university, teaching also
a doctrine of universal depravity;
and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed
that negative infidelity—that is, idolatry
in good faith—is not a sin; that
consequently those who have not
grace or the illumination of faith
can do many good actions, though
such actions have not the merit of
those which are made available
through the merits of Christ. Thus
again did the church prove herself
the friend of human dignity.

Further on we meet those who,
suffering the infection of the air
caused by the doctrines of universal
depravity, deny to the intellect
the power of discovering the truth
by itself. The traditionalists wish
to trace everything to an original
revelation; man has nothing he has
not received from outside. Even
his knowledge of God comes from
tradition. And this doctrine the
church, through her supreme teacher,
discountenanced. She bade them
recall to mind the words of the
Book of Wisdom and of St. Paul,
where we are told that God can be
known from the contemplation of
this visible world.

We will crave indulgence if we
go so far as to venture the assertion
that the doctrines of Malebranche
and his school had their
origin in this same depreciation
of the powers of the human intellect.
It may be said that the
idea of intuition is a nobler one
than that of painful analysis and deduction;
that intuition—vision—is
the lot of the blessed, and therefore
a higher state. But this is a state
above nature, for the blessed; not
a natural state in our present condition.
Moreover, there are reasons
to make us believe that Malebranche
did not escape the infection
of the world of thought prevalent
in his day—the disesteem of
human nature; an infection not,
indeed, logically connected with the
system of Luther. It was, if we
may be permitted so to speak, a
psychological effect—a habit of
mind being induced, whereby one
was led so to think. This would
appear to be evidenced by his doctrine
of occasionalism, which made
God always acting because man
could not—a doctrine the authority
of the church obliged him to modify,
for he would thereby have made
God the author of sin. Though no
official condemnation of the theories
of Malebranche, regarding the
primary mode of knowing truth, has
ever been given by the church, or
is at all likely to be given, the deductions
of certain of his followers
have been condemned; and it is
well known that the weight of the
influence of the Holy See has been
cast in the scale of the psychological
theories of St. Thomas, whose
principle, clearly laid down, is:
“Operatio intellectus præexigit operationem
sensus”—“The operation
of the intellect prerequires
.pn +1
the operation of sense”—I. 2,
quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his
first part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he
writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie
est cognoscitivus quidditatis
rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a
sensu; cujus propria objecta sunt
accidentia exteriora. Et inde est,
quod ex his quæ exterius apparent
de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam
essentiam rei”—“Our intellect,
that properly takes cognizance of
what a thing is (its essence) as
its proper object, receives of the
senses, the proper objects of which
are external accidents. Hence it
is that from what appears externally
in a thing we come to know its
essence.” Of course sense is to be
taken in its widest meaning, so as
not to exclude the perception of
the modifications going on in our
internal being, which are the accidents
of our spiritual essence. Man,
therefore, has no natural revelation,
but he arrives at knowledge by the
essentially inherent powers of his
mind—perception, abstraction, generalization.
God sees by intuition
everything in himself—this is essential
in him; created intellects see
what is, or intellectual truth, the
archetype in God, reflected from
creation as from a mirror.

From these instances, then, it is
evident that the church has always
been the friend of human nature,
asserting for it the possession of
faculties denied it, protecting it
from error, and guiding it in the
search of truth. She is, therefore,
worthy of the gratitude of mankind
for what she has done in the cause
of education, as well as of the confidence
of men as an instructor of
youth in the future.

We come now to a more directly
practical part of our assumed task,
and shall consider it our duty to
speak plainly, and perhaps in a way
to be censured by some; but we
do it in what seems to us the interest
of our people and country.
The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D.,
while in this country some years
ago, addressing a society of young
men, told them that Americans
could not expect to take their position
among the civilized nations of
the world unless they studied, and
studied not superficially but well.
For our part, we thank him for this
word. It is time to put out of our
heads that we are the most cultivated,
civilized, well-informed people
of the world. We are not.
Alongside the generality of the educated
men of Europe the generality
of the educated men of America
do not appear to advantage.
Who and what is to blame for
this?

In the first place, we blame parents.
They ought to know better;
they have had experience of the
world. They are the natural guardians
of their offspring, and should
provide by their experience a remedy
for the inexperience of youth.
Yet they, and especially Catholic
parents, are those who put the
greatest obstacles in the way of
those engaged in teaching. They
want their boys hurried through
school; they can’t see the use of
Latin, much less of Greek. As for
philosophy, a man can make a fortune
without philosophy; as if a
fortune were the only thing worth
living for! If that were the case,
your California stage-driver who has
struck a “bonanza” is the type of
what a man should be intellectually.
Heaven save the mark! We
have had such men say to us: “I
assure you, sir, it is a very great
misfortune my education was neglected;
I have wealth and don’t
know how to enjoy it.” There are
numbers of unhappy wealthy Americans
.pn +1
travelling in Europe whose
children are looking forward to
brilliant futures, but who themselves
rush from one place to another, tortured
by the necessity of having to
come in contact with educated
people and learn daily their own
inferiority. We have met such people,
and, out of sheer pity for their
unhappy lot, have done what was
in our power to make them forget
for a while their troubles.

The fact is, no greater boon can
a wealthy parent bestow upon his
child than a thorough, careful education,
and every effort should be
made to secure such education.
And one of the first steps to be
taken is that parents second the
efforts of zealous educators in our
Catholic institutions. These institutions
have their defects, but those
defects can hardly be remedied
without the co-operation of parents.
What that co-operation should be
will be seen further on.

There are defects in our institutions
of education. This is our
next point. These defects are in
the manner of teaching and in what
is taught.

We acknowledge that there have
been great improvements in the
manner of teaching since we were
boys; but with all this the want
of uniformity, scarcely attainable in
this country, will always leave the
door open to defects in teaching.
As a rule, the mind of a boy is too
much taxed with speculative matter,
and his memory comparatively
neglected. The memory is one of
the first faculties to show itself active,
and it is also capable of wonderful
development. In the earlier
education of the child the exercise
of the memory should predominate;
as little strain as possible should
be put on the mind yet tender. As
the education progresses the exercise
of the memory should be kept
up; choice extracts from the best
poets and writers should alternate
with the useful storing in the mind
of facts and definitions. The preliminary
education should consist in
the learning of languages, which
are means of acquiring further
knowledge by intercourse and reading,
not by any means the sum total
of education. We wish our Catholic
parents would understand
this; for when a boy succeeds in
knowing a little French and German
they seem to think everything
done. These languages are only the
keys to the treasures locked up in
the writings of other nations. They
are principally to be acquired by
memory; and, in fact, this is the
way the most successful and generally
used method—that of Ollendorf—adopts.
There is no reason
why the boy should not be put at
a very early age to learning foreign
languages. There is, too, one
great advantage in this: that his
work at such languages will be
lighter and less absorbing when he
comes to be engaged in scientific
study. Again, care should be taken
not to put into the hands of a child
books of an abstruse or relatively
difficult character; for excessive caution
against straining the mind of
such a scholar can scarcely be taken.
A great deal of harm is sometimes
done from the too high standard
exacted by school-boards of
the various categories of boys. We
have never ceased to praise the judicious
interference of our father,
who, finding us with an analytical
arithmetic put into our hands at
seven years of age, took it away
and placed it on the highest shelf
of his closet.

When a boy is well under weigh in
the languages—we do not speak of
religious education, which we take
.pn +1
for granted—he may very properly
be introduced to the study of experimental
science and the more
difficult problems of analytical arithmetic
and mathematics. But
these branches should not be arranged
in such a way as to compete,
as it were, with that much-neglected
study, so lightly thought
of—mental philosophy. If one
visits our different Catholic institutions
of learning, and examines
their system, still more looks into
the practical working of it, he will
find that the year of philosophy,
much talked of, is employed in a
most perfunctory manner. We
would not be understood as attributing
any <i>culpa theologica</i> to the
instructors. We consider this state
of things owing first to parents, and
consequently to their children, and
in part to the want of appreciation
of the need of such philosophical
training on the part of the teachers;
though also, sometimes, to want of
competency in the teachers themselves,
whose previous education
has been on the old plan. We conceive
that too great attention and
zeal cannot be expended in the correction
of these defects. Corrected
they can be, and they must be,
if we wish to take and keep our
proper standing. We cannot have
a university for the present, and
therefore it is all important that
the one essential thing a university
can give—a higher mental training—should
be given to our young Catholic
men. They must receive
this in our colleges; they will not
have it elsewhere. Of the need of
it there can be no question. The
great number of able, educated Europeans
who, from political causes,
have had to leave their native
country and come to us, and
the large number of Americans
who nowadays study in European
universities, all of whom, in conversation
and through the press, retail
to us the wildest phases of infidel,
metaphysical, and social doctrine,
is a sufficient argument to decide
the matter, should any one hesitate.
The church, to be sure, is our infallible
guide, but there are many
questions she does not treat, or, if
she has treated them, her decisions
can be understood only by careful
study and explanation in the language
of philosophy. So far from
discouraging the study of philosophy,
of metaphysics, and of ethics—possibly
the more important of the two—she
encourages us to make a good
use of this handmaid of theology.
It is therefore a duty incumbent on
those in whose hands is placed the
education of our young men to pay
more attention than ever to this kind
of instruction. We know of efforts
in some instances that have been
made in this direction, but which
have failed. We are afraid they
were not very numerous. In some
instances a tincture of metaphysics
was deemed enough; ethics were
wholly neglected. How this could
be has always been a puzzle to us.
But it should not be any longer.
A careful course of metaphysics
that would embrace particularly
the refutation of pantheism and
materialism, besides establishing
thoroughly the existence of God
and the spirituality and immortality
of the soul; and an equally
careful course of ethics that would
refute the utilitarians and socialists
of the day, while making clear
the claims of authority, the nature
of law, the origin of right in the
eternal fitness of things as seen in
the divine Mind, and such kindred
questions, should be the object of
the most earnest solicitude of the
superiors of our Catholic colleges.
The young students should be
.pn +1
made to apply their knowledge
thus received either by short compositions
in addition to the repetition
of the lessons taught; or, far
better still, by academic exercises
in which one student defends in the
school-room before his teacher
and fellow-students a thesis or
proposition already explained, while
one or two others object against it
all they can think of or learn, and
this, too, in strict syllogistic form.
Exercises such as these would be
of the greatest advantage in training
the mind to the ready use of
logic, and to refuting the arguments
possible to be urged against sound
doctrine. Nothing better than this
would tend to take away the reproach
so often, and perhaps in some cases
most unjustly, made against our
educational institutions, of incompetency
for thorough education.
Did it depend on us to have the recasting
of the system of education,
we should be inclined to add on a
year of further study as a requisite
for graduation, and during the last
two years of a young man’s course
we would employ him entirely in
the study of metaphysics and
ethics, including the principles of
political economy, of the philosophy
of history—in which the great
questions of history, as far as possible,
might be reviewed—and in the
further polish of his literary English
training. The philosophy of
history is most important, for it is a
powerful teacher. History is not
to be studied as a bare narrative
of facts; the facts have a language
of their own which needs an interpreter.
The polish of literary
education is of great necessity, as it
is the one thing those educated in
the non-Catholic colleges may be
said to excel us in. We do not
dwell much on scientific education,
because that is really of secondary
importance, and it is impossible to
give boys more than an elementary
training in this branch, which may
serve as a ground-work for further
pursuit of it, if one is destined to
turn his attention in that direction.
To enable the superiors of our colleges
to carry out such a plan
would depend upon the parents of
young students having the fortitude
to oblige their sons to remain the
requisite time and make a diligent
use of their opportunities. Herein
lies their co-operation in the
great work of the future education
of the young Catholic men of
America; and our word for it, if
they follow this counsel, they will
never have cause to repent. They
will give us, too, far abler champions
of truth than our young men have
shown themselves to be in the past.
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3 id=dancing
THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH. | FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.
.sp 2
In the year of our Lord 690 a
vessel from the island of Britain
left upon the coast of Catwyk, in
Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons
who had abandoned their
newly-converted country to carry
the blessing of the Gospel to their
brethren of the Continent. Chief
among these young men, several of
whom were of noble birth, was
Willibrord, predestined from his
mother’s womb to be a glory to the
church and famous in the estimation
of men. The young strangers
separated, to work, each in his own
way, in the vineyard of the Father.
Willibrord began that very day the
long and heroic apostolate of fifty
years which ceased only with the
pulsations of his heart. If we except
his two journeys to Rome,
where the great servant of the Papacy
twice received the blessing
and encouragement of the Sovereign
Pontiff, he did not relax for a single
day his labors in the vast region
which stretches from the mouths
of the Elbe and the Rhine to the
banks of the Moselle. At his voice
nations sitting in darkness rose up
to behold the light, idols crumbled
before the amazed eyes of their worshippers,
churches arose from the
soil and gathered about their altars
multitudes of Christians, lay society
organized itself little by little
after the model of spiritual society.[#]

.fn #
<i>V.</i> Alcuin in <i>Vita Willibrordi</i> ap. Mabillon.
<i>Acta Sanctorum</i>, Ord. S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567,
Venetian edition.
.fn-

Tradition and history show us by
turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle
in Friesland as the master of
St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding
by more than a century the
famous St. Anscarius; in the island
of Helgoland, destroying the
idol of Fosite and braving King
Radbod’s wrath; in the Isle of
Walcheren, where he nearly fell a
victim to his heroism and apostolic
zeal; in Campine as the friend
of St. Lambert, another untiring
athlete of Christ; and, finally, in
Luxembourg, where even more than
elsewhere his name is glorified and
revered. For half a century he
stood with Lambert and Boniface
in the breach, the father of civilization
in Western Germany and
one of the most signal benefactors
of mankind.

The common people, though
they forget great poets and great
generals, preserve the memory of
saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium
and fifty-eight in Holland are
under his patronage, without counting
those in the valleys of the Moselle
and the Rhine, where his fame
is equally wide-spread. Sixty-three
leagues apart, a small section of St.
Willibrord’s vast itinerary, two villages
to-day preserve in their own
names the undying memory of his
works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile
moors of the German Ardennes,
and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile
plains of maritime Flanders.[#]
Drawn, as it were, from nothingness
by this great man, these two localities,
.pn +1
were other witnesses wanting,
would tell to later ages the glory of
their sublime founder. Answering
one to the other across the whole
extent of Belgium, they testify to
his vast labors and his devotion
to the Roman Church, which we
unworthily defend to-day against
the barbarism conquered by him
twelve centuries ago.

.fn #
Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz.
As to Kleemskerk (Clement’s Church), we know
that in Rome Willibrord received the name of
Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under
which he is venerated.
.fn-
.sp 2
.h4
I.
.sp 2
During his apostolic missions
through the forests of Luxembourg
Willibrord remarked one of the
most charming and romantic spots
in that fine country. It was at a
turn of the Sûre, which even to-day
flows on beneath the shade of
savage rocks and deep forests.
The valley, widening at this place,
must at that time have presented a
most imposing aspect, while it offered
every facility for a settlement
of human habitations. Indeed, the
dwellings were even then of ancient
date. The place bore a name recalling
incontestably its first Celtic
occupants: Epternacum. There,
too, the Romans had left traces of
their passage. A short league from
Echternach archæologists may still
read beneath the great shadowy
oaks and thick brushwood that
half hide it the following inscription
engraved on the base of a
monument:

.pm verse-start
DEÆ DIANÆ
Q. POSTVMIVS
POTENS. V. S.
.pm verse-end

The upper part of the monument
is gone, but enough remains to show
that it represented two persons—no
doubt the goddess and her worshipper,
with a hunting-dog crouched
at Diana’s feet. He who overthrew
the false gods of Helgoland
and Walcheren must have crushed
in holy ire this monument of the
paganism he had just destroyed.[#]
At all events, the image of Diana,
once proudly throned above the
valley at the edge of the wood, now
hides, degraded and mutilated, in
the dank gloom of brambles and
brushwood—an eloquent emblem
of St. Willibrord’s work in this
country. Echternach, where even
then two little Christian oratories
stood on the site of the two churches
of to-day, attracted the great
man’s attention and heart. He
built there a Benedictine monastery,
which was favored from its foundation
by the bounty of two royal
families, the Merovingians and
Carlovingians. Around this focus
of Christian life habitations gathered,
and, as always happened, the
monastery expanded and became a
town. Such was the origin of the
commune of Echternach, one of
the most flourishing in that happy
country of Luxembourg which
knows neither great cities nor
great miseries.

.fn #
This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a
scholar of the first rank—F. Alexander Wiltheim—in
his fine book, <i>Luxemburgum Romanum</i>.
.fn-

The monastery of Echternach
was always dearer to its founder
than his other foundations. There
he loved to pass his rare hours of
repose. There, on the 6th of November,
739, at the age of eighty-one
years, he reached the term of
his mortal career. His remains
were laid in the basilica of the
abbey among his monks and his
people. Even in the tomb he continued
to be the father of that country
and to exercise over men the
sovereign authority which his virtues
and labors had won. Death
has no hold upon the saints; when
we lower their bodies into the grave
we rear their images upon our altars.
St. Willibrord, more than any other
patron of the country, is one whose
.pn +1
sepulchre may be called glorious.
Few tombs have inspired a veneration
so extraordinary, attracted the
faithful in such crowds, excited acts
of faith so intense. No sooner was
he laid in his grave than multitudes
came to invoke the apostle of
Luxembourg, and frequent miracles
bore witness to his powerful protection.
A century had not elapsed
when this wonderful devotion was
spoken of by the greatest writer of
his time—Alcuin, the biographer of
our saint.[#] His festival was celebrated
by an immense concourse,
who filled the air with his praise.
“See, brethren,” says St. Alcuin.
“Behold the glory of serving God.
Our holy patron, for love of Christ,
left his native country and led the
life of a pilgrim. He trampled
under foot the riches of this world;
he loved, he clung to poverty. And
you know the glory he acquired
among men. But preferable far is
that which he possesses for all
eternity among the angels.”[#] And
the illustrious friend of Charlemagne,
speaking to his contemporaries
of facts of which he had been
an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters
on the wrists and ankles of devout
pilgrims which burst asunder
when they came to do penance for
their sins at the venerated tomb.[#]

.fn #
Ibi usque hodie divinâ operante misericordia
signa et sanitates ad sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias
fieri non cessant.—<i>Alcuin O.C.</i>, iii. p. 571.
.fn-

.fn #
Id. in <i>Mabillon</i>, iii. p. 575.
.fn-

.fn #
Id. ib. iii. p. 572.
.fn-

Two centuries afterward the voice
of Theofrid, St. Willibrord’s successor
and later biographer, echoes
the powerful voice of Alcuin and
tells of the ceaseless devotion
which brings crowds to Echternach
every year. He, too, bears witness
to the saint’s miracles—so numerous,
he says, that a yoke of oxen could
not drag the chariot that would
hold the votive offerings of wax
and metal. And among these wonders,
as in Alcuin’s day, were to be
seen broken chains and instruments
of torture worn by slaves, which
were shattered into splinters.[#] No
miracle is oftener recorded of our
saints than this one. I confess I
never read the record in the quaint
and simple narrative of our ancient
hagiographers without emotion.
Wherever they went the breakers
of idols were also breakers of fetters;
that word which called men
to the knowledge of the true God
called them also to the enjoyment
of true liberty. <i>Christus nos liberavit.</i>
Therefore the church has been
honored by the opposition of all the
tyrants who have wished to subjugate
nations. They have felt that
liberty could be easily destroyed, if
they could destroy her who is the
fertile mother and the fearless guardian
of freedom. But nothing can
avail against the church nor against
the liberty which is her offspring,
which her voice called into life,
which she has bathed in the blood
of her idol-breakers.

.fn #
<i>Theofridus vita S. Willibrordi</i>, c. 24 (sæc.
xii.) This life of St. Willibrord is still unpublished;
only a few fragments having appeared in <i>Mon.
Germ. Hist.</i>, t. xxiii. Script. The fact I mention
is taken from M. Krier’s pamphlet, <i>Die Springprocession</i>,
p. 33, from the MS. life.
.fn-

It was St. Willibrord’s destiny to
see crowned heads bow among the
crowds that pressed around his altars,
and the imperial purple of
Germany trailing in the dust before
his coarse robes of haircloth. In
the imposing procession of generations
marching towards the saint’s
tomb it is difficult to distinguish
the royal forms mingling with the
crowd of pilgrims, so petty seem to
him who gazes from the altar the
earthly grandeur which sets them
apart from other Christians.

Many a time in earlier days the
Carlovingians had come to pray
.pn +1
and humble themselves in the sanctuary
at Echternach. They came
with hands filled with gifts, and, by
one of those strange vicissitudes
which the finger of Providence
points out, it was one of their number
who, blind, outcast, and bereft,
came later to eat the bread of St.
Willibrord and seek refuge in the
shades of his monastery. History
hardly mentions the wretched Carloman,
rebel son of Charles the
Bald, whose eyes were put out by
his father’s orders, and who received
in charity from his uncle Louis the
Abbey of Echternach <i>ad subsidium
vitæ</i>.[#] The families who succeeded
the Carlovingians in Germany never
forgot the saint or the duty of paying
him homage. In the year 1000
the list of imperial pilgrimages was
opened by Otto III., the young and
brilliant prince who planned so many
great expeditions, and whom death
had already marked with his mysterious
seal. Lothaire of Saxony,
and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, came
in their turn to pray before the
saint’s relics, the one in 1131, the
other in 1145. Then, in 1512,
Maximilian joined in the procession,
and in memory of his visit gave to the
town the bell which bears his name
and still rings on feast days. Thus,
except the sacrilegious house of
Franconia, all the dynasties of the
German Empire seem to have been
represented at Echternach, and to
have paid court to this prince of
peace, greater and more respected
than they.

.fn #
M. G. xxiii. Script., <i>Catalogus abbatum
Epternacensium primus</i>.
.fn-

Echternach was always the capital
of St. Willibrord’s peaceful
realm. There was his tomb; there
rose convent and basilica, perpetual
heralds of his great deeds. The
convent was a city in itself, and
the basilica is a most precious relic
of eleventh-century architecture—a
veritable pearl which alone would
make the reputation of a town. I
will not be drawn into further details,
for fear of leaving my subject.[#]
It suffices to remember that this
wonderful monument, a victim of
revolutionary vandalism, had been
sold as national property, and was
falling into decay, when the piety
and patriotism of the people of
Echternach snatched it from certain
destruction. They formed, under
the name of <i>Willibrordus Verein</i>,
a society whose aim was to recover
the basilica and restore it to worship.
This society, founded in 1862
by a few citizens in a little town of
four thousand souls, now numbers
its members by hundreds. It has
already devoted more than one hundred
thousand francs to the basilica,
and will soon crown its work
by bringing back the shrine of the
saint, now preserved in the parish
church. All reverence to the intelligent
Christian people who guard
their honor so faithfully and understand
so well the interests of
their own glory! Inspired by the
three-fold love of religion, country,
and art, the Willibrordus Verein is
one of the finest institutions that I
know. It does honor to the whole
of Luxembourg, and will leave a lasting
memory. Of how many associations
of our day can as much be
said?

.fn #
On the basilica of Echternach read a good notice
by Prof. Namur inserted in t. xxii. of <i>Annals
of the Archæological Academy of Belgium</i>; and
another by M. Bock, in <i>Rheinlands Baudenkmale
des Mittelalters</i>.
.fn-

The entire town of Echternach
has retained that stamp of antiquity
so eagerly sought by artists, and so
much despised by our petty, material
generation. Surrounded by the
fantastic hills that form the valley,
whose strange summits look like
crumbling castles; still enclosed by
.pn +1
three-quarters of its ancient fortifications,
with here and there a ruined
tower, it strikes the beholder
with a surprise which only increases
as he penetrates to the interior of
the town. Passing through crooked
and narrow streets, where each
house has an architecture of its
own which is often very impressive,
he reaches the public square,
where stands the antique town-hall,
known by the more ancient
name of Dingsthal, an interesting
building which rests on Gothic arcades.
The parish church is equally
worthy of attention for its old
Romanic architecture and its beautiful
position upon the summit of
an eminence overlooking the town.

What especially tends to give to
Echternach its peculiar character
is the habits of its population, so in
harmony with the tranquil, cheerful
country and its mediæval monuments.
Here more than elsewhere
Catholic faith has impregnated the
life of the people. All their actions
reflect its powerful simplicity, its
generous hardihood, its customs of
ten or fifteen centuries back. The
poetry of the past, that exquisite
influence of ancient times which we
inhale with delight, is here an incense
ever ascending from this happy
valley. In this respect nothing
can equal the dancing procession
of Echternach, which takes place always
on Whit-Tuesday, in honor of
St. Willibrord, and attracts those
who come especially to invoke his
aid for nervous diseases. This procession
has taken place for more
than five hundred years. It can be
traced back to the fourteenth century,
and may be perhaps of even
earlier origin. The dance has been
explained in various ways: sometimes
as expressing the joy of a
Christian people coming to venerate
the relics of their patron saint;
sometimes as a symbolical representation
of nervous attacks, epilepsy,
and other maladies of the
kind, from which the country was
delivered by St. Willibrord’s intercession
in the fourteenth century.

It is this ceremony, whose original
and picturesque character is
quite unique in the Christian world,
which I am about to describe to
the reader.
.sp 2
.h4
II.
.sp 2
When Whit-Sunday comes an
amazing animation rouses the little
town from its habitual tranquillity,
and the excitement only increases
on the Monday. Hotels and private
houses are thronged with
guests; many travellers, unable to
get lodgings, camp out in the neighboring
villages or go back to <i>die
Kirch</i>, to return by railway the next
day. The streets are thronged with
dusty tourists: gentlemen of leisure
regarding everything with a patronizing
smile, peasants in rustic garb,
rich strangers arriving in spruce
equipages, and respectable jaunting-cars
with three rows of seats,
conveying the opulent farmers of
the neighborhood. Booths are
planted everywhere, blocking up
the streets and setting their backs
against every available corner.
Mountebanks and charlatans, who
come to levy their tithe on public
piety, stun with their piercing outcries
the busy folk running about
to look for lodgings. Religion preludes
the imposing solemnities of
the following morning. The faithful
flock to religious offices and
sermons. All day long they are at
prayer before the sarcophagus where
lies the body of the saint. There
you will see the most fervent; and
by their attitudes, the expression
of their faces, and the ardor of
their gaze, it is plain that they have
.pn +1
some great favor to implore and
hope not to go away unsatisfied.
Prostrate before the altar, these
rude laborers from the Eyfel and
the Ardennes, with their great horny
hands and tanned faces, opening
their whole hearts to God and absorbed
in prayer, are beautiful to
look upon. They seem to symbolize
the destiny of mankind, born
to labor, to suffer, and to pray. It
is pleasant to ponder and pray in
the stillness of that little Romanic
church, beside the greatest man of
the country.

.pm verse-start
It was an humble church with vaulted roof,
  The church we entered in,
Where for eight hundred years the sons of men
  Had wept and prayed ’gainst sin.
.pm verse-end

There, on the hill sacred for so
many ages, under the shade of the
lindens that screen the courtyard
of this modest edifice, in the presence
of the wide and peaceful
landscape, the heart feels at ease,
the mind is in repose. It is like a
haven of rest or like some enchanted
country. The hideous, infernal
tumult of the church’s enemies dies
away in this Catholic oasis. Man
and nature are in harmony; the serenity
that reigns in this lovely
country sinks into the most stormy
heart. Here Dante would have
found the peace he sought under
the vaulted roof of the monastery
at Monte Corvo.

Evening fell; the chants for
Benediction rang through the
church as I entered. Thousands
of voices, accompanied by the
grave and solemn tones of the organ,
were singing the beautiful
litany of St. Willibrord, which is
like the national air of Echternach,
and has a peculiar sweetness in a
language that admits of saying
<i>thou</i> to God and to the saints:

.pm verse-start
St. Willibrord, shining star of our country,
St. Willibrord, ornament of the Roman Church,
St. Willibrord, breaker of idols,        <i>Pray for us</i>.
.pm verse-end

I cannot describe the effect of
this chant, rising on so many voices
in accents of plaintive supplication,
penetrating the heart with its expression
of love and trust. These
people love St. Willibrord and treat
him with a sweet familiarity.
“Who and what was he that men
should come every year to kneel
before his relics and pay him honors
so exceptional? What had
he more than others, and by what
was he distinguished? By beauty,
genius, science, riches?” Such
was the idea of the sermon which
followed Benediction, and was
heard by that whole multitude in
breathless attention, some standing,
others kneeling on the flags—for all
the chairs had been taken away.
The sacred orator developed his
theme with remarkable skill, and,
after proving that St. Willibrord
had shone by none of these gifts,
he concluded that he had reached
this exceptional glory on earth and
in heaven because he had understood
and applied better than
others the divine command, “Love
God above all things, and thy
neighbor as thyself.”

O grandeur of Christianity! O
eternity of the church! A thousand
years ago Alcuin said the
same in his panegyric; the modern
preacher’s noble words were like
the lingering echo of the same
Christian voice sounding through
ages—of that voice which ever repeats
itself, and yet is always fresh,
for it is the voice of truth. Thus,
at the two extremities of this decade
of centuries, the friend of
Charlemagne and the young priest
of Luxembourg were the two ends
of a chain whose every link is
an extinct generation, and which
brings down to our own day the
unchangeable, immortal tradition.
One thousand years hence other
.pn +1
pilgrims will come to contemplate
these great lessons of time and
pray before the sacred tomb, treading
beneath their feet the ruins
of our civilization and modern society.

After Benediction I went to walk
on the heights above the town.
The night was clear and the moon
hung calmly serene in the heavens.
Every time I pass through
Echternach I climb these hills;
the place is full of calm and refreshment,
and I always feel happy
there. Looking down upon the
town, with its spires and ancient
roofs mirrored in the peaceful river,
I listened to the last sounds dying
away in the streets; for the town
went to rest as early that night as
on any other. Heaven and earth
seemed so quiet, so infinitely peaceful!
If at that hour propitious to
dreams you would evoke in spirit
the memory of the past, it would
rise like a gigantic phantom. One
glance cast into the domains of
fancy would show the wild valley
heaped with Druidic stones, crowned
with altars and Roman monuments,
and traversed by the swift,
silvery flood of the Sûre, which
seems to pierce like a dart the mysterious
depths of the ancient Ardennes.
On the summit of the
height appears a wonderful man,
who breaks the Gallic and Roman
idols, and with their fragments
builds Christian oratories; he levels
the forest and cultivates the
valley; builds dwellings around
the church, calls men, and they
come at his bidding; and this new
Orpheus, with no lyre but his voice,
leads in his train Barbarism, conquered,
charmed, converted.

The next day I breakfasted between
five and six o’clock in one of
the many pretty pleasure-gardens
of the town. The evening before
had been very warm; the day
dawned under the same auspices,
but perfectly clear. The people
of Echternach declare that it cannot
rain on the day of their procession,
or, at least, that the rain must
stop before they enter the church.
On all sides resounded clear and
full the voices of pilgrims coming
in procession from villages near by
and chanting the litany of St. Willibrord.
These aerial tones, coming
to us in the freshness of dawn
through blossoming trees, opened
the day very pleasantly. I went
out. Through every street there
poured a stream of country people,
preceded by crosses and banners.
Whole parishes came with their pastors;
they had left home at daybreak
and walked several leagues,
with prayers and chants rousing
the wondering birds, unused to hear
human voices praise the Creator in
advance of them. The nearest villages
came in procession; others,
who could not send a solemn train,
furnished a large number of pilgrims,
who marched in isolated
groups. Without counting the pilgrims
of the Luxembourg, Belgium,
France, and Russia are represented
every year. The number of devout
Christians whom each anniversary
brings to the sacred tomb varies
from 12,000 to 15,000, leaving out
those who come without having
made a vow, some from religious
feeling, others from mere curiosity.
About 20,000 strangers in all crowd
into the narrow precincts of the little
town every Whitsuntide. For
whole hours you see the flood of
humanity ascend and descend the
steps of the parish church; for all
the pilgrims on their arrival go first
to kneel at the saint’s shrine.
About eight o’clock the multitudes
pass over to the other bank of the
Sûre, where the procession is to begin.
.pn +1
The Sûre forms the boundary
between the territory of Luxembourg
and Prussia. Just there the
procession falls into line of march.
At the foot of the hills, beside a
little stone cross, they erect a temporary
pulpit, from which a priest
addresses the people before the
ceremony begins. Thousands had
collected to await the coming of
the clergy. Some walked about,
others sat along the edge of the
road or leaned against the parapet of
the bridge. The crowd, scattered in
picturesque confusion and disorder,
buzzed like a hive of bees. The
throng increased; along every road
came hosts of pilgrims ploughing
their way. From afar came vague,
indistinct sounds of singing, and
along the valley, through the narrow
road traced between the Sûre
and the hills, there advanced a long
column. Banners floated in the
sunshine and gleamed through the
trees; the procession undulated
and unrolled its length as it followed
the windings of the river. The
voices, as they drew nearer, became
distinct, and soon the head
of the procession appeared. They
were pilgrims from Prüm, in the
Eyfel, more than twelve leagues
from Echternach, coming to make
their annual devotions to St. Willibrord.
These good people had set
out on Sunday evening; they had
walked part of that night and of the
next day, praying and chanting.
On Monday evening they had disbanded,
scattering about through
fields and in barns a few leagues
from Echternach, and had resumed
their march early in the morning.
Tanned, heated, dusty, clad
in coarse raiment, they came on in
good order, forming an almost interminable
train. It seemed as if
the whole village had come. Their
accoutrements were rustic, fantastic
even; the men carried crosswise
over their backs an umbrella fastened
by a string which passed over
their breasts, crossing the strap of
a large leathern valise hanging on
the other side. The women had baskets
on their arms. These valises
and baskets held the provisions for
that journey of four or five days. It
is remarkable that this pilgrimage of
the people of Prüm is voluntary and
a popular movement; the clergy
take no part in its organization, and
seldom join it, the parishioners
making it their own affair. On this
occasion, indeed, a priest was with
them, but the order of march and
the devotions were directed by a
certain number of men placed at intervals
in the procession. They carried,
as the insignia of office, a red
staff surmounted by a little copper
cross. The priest, who closed the
procession, walked between two
young men clad in quaint and antique
garb, with hats turned up and
trimmed with flowers. One carried
the cross, the other a large votive
candle adorned with emblems, the
annual gift of their village to the
patron of Echternach. The procession
advanced in perfect order.
Indifferent to curious looks, turning
their eyes neither to the right nor
to the left towards the human
hedge that lined their path, they
passed on, saying their rosary aloud
and repeating after each <i>Ave</i> this
familiar salutation, full of simplicity
and grace: “St. Willibrord, we are
coming to thy tomb!” I loved to
see and hear them. Their fervor
in prayer and contempt of fatigue,
their rustic dress and primitive manners,
their indifference to all but
their one object, made these peasants
a people set apart, and their pilgrimage
a type of the pilgrimage of human
life as it ought to be made. I
watched the pious train until it entirely
.pn +1
disappeared on the other side
of the bridge; for, before returning
to the Prussian bank to take part
in the sacred dance, the people of
Prüm were going to kiss the shrine
and pray before the relics of the
saint.

At last, about nine o’clock, a numerous
band of clergy appeared,
and the ceremony opened with the
accustomed sermon. Fancy the
scene: the lovely morning and beautiful
country, the vast host of listeners
intent on the words of the priest.
For a frame there were the high
hills on one side, on the other the
silvery course of the Sûre, and below
the spires of the town.

Not less wonderful was it to hear
on Prussian ground a Catholic voice
calling upon thousands of the faithful
to pray for the Holy Father and
the persecuted church. And while
the priest was speaking there came
from all the heights belated pilgrims
hastening to the ceremony. They
were seen afar off, coming down the
steep paths bordered with flowering
hedges; and the bells rang out
full peals, and the word of God was
scattered among the multitude with
the song of birds.

When the sermon was ended, the
clergy, in white surplices, formed
in line of march and opened the
procession. Behind them came the
musicians, and afterwards the immense
throng of those who were to
join in the dance. At first there
was much crowding. Leaning
against the parapet of the bridge, I
had to ply my elbows lustily to prevent
the multitude from suffocating
me, and farther on, when the train
began to defile through the narrow
street which leads to the Sûre, the
pressure was quite frightful. There
were not ushers enough to preserve
order. A few firemen and policemen
had to be everywhere at once,
and were swallowed up in the billows
of the confused crowd. The
cause of the disorder was the impatience
of some people, who, instead
of waiting until the street should be
cleared for the beginning of the
dance, went forward to post themselves
higher up in the procession.
This choked the way in some places,
and there was terrible pushing.
Women screamed; several were
nearly suffocated. I saw some men,
who, as they awaited their turn with
philosophic patience, set their backs
against walls and rowed with their
arms against the human flood to
save themselves from wreck. A
hospitality, as unexpected as it was
welcome, rescued me from the tumult
to become a peaceful spectator
in a neighboring house instead
of an actor in the scene. “It is
sweet,” says Lucretius, “when the
sea is swollen and tossed by rough
winds, to look from the shore upon
the distress of others, not finding
pleasure in their troubles, but in our
own exemption from them.” I felt,
in selfish enjoyment, the spirit of
these lines, gazing at my ease from
an upper window upon the undulation
of several thousand heads floating
apparently upon a liquid expanse.
Actually, a needle thrown
from above would not have reached
the ground.

Order was soon restored. The
police got angry and used their fists
unsparingly to force back into their
places the intruders, who continued
to leave the ranks and insinuate
themselves in among the front rows
of the procession. All this went on
while the head of the <i>cortége</i> disappeared
at the turn of the street,
dancing to the traditional air played
by the musicians. It was a
quaint tune, rather quick in measure
and old-fashioned. It was hard to
say whether it expressed joyful excitement
.pn +1
or the emotions of grief;
for music, with its wonderful suppleness,
may sometimes speak to us of
our joys and sorrows, according to
the mood in which we listen. And
now this melody, centuries old, set
in motion a dancing multitude.
The sight was strange, striking, indescribable.
To an unaccustomed
spectator the first moment is of
stupefied amazement. His fancy
enters a new world; the movement
of all these heads bending and
rocking in a rhythmic measure produces
a fantastic effect that no
words can convey. I do not know
whether I can tell exactly what I
saw, or if my sketch will give even
a faint idea of a scene which defies
analysis and description.

Think of a stream of twelve thousand
persons in a street where only
eight can walk abreast; fancy all
these people, in rows of four, six, or
eight, advancing, held together by
handkerchiefs or staves to keep order
in the ranks and measure in the
dance; fancy them, I say, executing a
dance which consists of three steps
forward and two back, and which
moves the whole multitude from
end to end with one unceasing action
of ebb and flow. The interminable
train stretched over about
fifteen hundred metres from the
bridge of the Sûre to the parish
church. It took not less than four
hours to accomplish that quarter of
a league by dancing, and under the
direct rays of the sun, without a
moment’s rest. It is easy to imagine
that order and regularity were
sometimes disturbed, but what was
lost in symmetry was gained in
picturesque originality of detail.
There were almost as many different
styles of dancing as there were
various groups, everybody managing
his own affairs. The groups
just behind the musicians succeeded
best, being kept in step by the
music; and in general the people
of Echternach danced more harmoniously
and correctly than the
others. As the bands were few and
stationed quite far apart, the pilgrims
who could not hear them
hopped about in utter confusion,
while the rest had a certain harmony
of movement. These eccentricities
of choreographic movement
were worth seeing; here they glided
with light step, elegantly and
smoothly; there they jumped
about with heavy tread and immense
exertion. Watching carefully
those who seemed to have best
preserved the tradition, I thought
that the most pure and “classic”
rhythm consisted in five steps of a
dance, quite slow and without turning,
three forward and two back,
made by gliding rather than bounding.
The whole character was
grave, solemn, and suited to a religious
dance. A band from Echternach
opened the march and played
the tune for the first pilgrims.
The others danced to the strains of
a few isolated instruments. Each
<i>cortége</i> had its own musicians, and,
as each parish danced separately,
they had their local players. It is
needless to say that variety reigned
among the instruments—drums,
violins, flutes, clarionets, and hautboys—all
hard at work and producing
combinations hardly grateful to
musical ears. But the good fellows
did not pretend to be artists.
They worked for conscience’ sake;
they piped and they blew, they
beat and they scraped, with all the
accumulated force of lungs, fists,
and bows. St. Willibrord is not
fastidious; he takes the will for the
deed, and if there be here and there
some cockney scandalized by this
cacophony, so much the worse for
him. Ill though they play the
.pn +1
melody, it is a good work to make
the attempt, and the worthy pilgrims
accommodate themselves to circumstances.
Formerly no fiddler was
allowed to play in village fairs, if he
had not paid for the privilege at
the procession of Echternach that
same year. This custom, with
many others, is obsolete, but many
musicians remain faithful to tradition.

This year, while the procession
was crossing the town, there came
marching through a cross-street a
brilliant band of music preceded
by a banner; it was a philharmonic
society from Remich on the Moselle,
and was received with acclamation.
It joined the procession,
and its fine execution came as a
welcome reinforcement to the poor
musicians, who were nearly exhausted.

I could not take my eyes off the
wonderful scene, sometimes taking
in the whole picture at a glance,
sometimes pausing to examine details
in all their picturesque variety.
Most attractive of all was the sight
of the children of Echternach,
dancing at the head of the procession
just behind the village band;
they put such life into the affair,
and felt it such a festive occasion.
It was refreshing to watch the rosy-cheeked,
laughing rogues, usually in
their shirt-sleeves, bounding merrily
“for St. Willibrord.” Then
came the grown folk of Echternach,
then the various parishes,
each, as I said, forming a distinct
group with its own musicians. The
sexes were separated. Formerly
the pilgrims from Prüm and Waxweiler,
who came from the most distant
points, had the right of opening
the procession, while the inhabitants
of Echternach, through courtesy,
took the last place. Now there
is no fixed order; the parishes take
their places at hap-hazard, and
many people leave the ranks to
join the front rows at the risk of
throwing the whole procession into
confusion. I saw the good people
of Prüm, with their monumental
green and blue umbrellas capable
of sheltering whole households.
Now they were unstrung from their
proprietors’ backs, and, bound two
and two, served as a balustrade to
be grasped by three or four persons
to keep them even in the ranks
and regulate their step. Here and
there, amid the rhythmic movement
of these thousands of heads,
I descried some unhappy being
afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance,
shown by wild, spasmodic springs,
violent excitement, and the pitiful
rocking of all the limbs. They
were usually women, young girls
stricken with this terrible disorder.
I noticed one in particular whom
every one looked at with earnest
sympathy. She leaped in a wild,
feverish way, supported under the
arms by her mother, whom I knew
by the look of anxiety and sadness
imprinted on her face. The kind
people of the town stood ready at
their doors with refreshing beverages
for these poor creatures; but
they hardly stopped to drink before
continuing their dance under
the whip of the sun, as the great
Alighieri says, whose words came to
my mind more than once at sight
of these miseries. So drawn along
by this weird dance, the pilgrims
appeared and vanished, as wave
follows wave, and the monotonous
melody carried on ten thousand
people to the sound of its fantastic
cadences. Add one or two thousand
pilgrims who, not joining in
the dance, followed the procession,
saying their beads or reciting the
litany, and you have in all twelve
thousand Christians of both sexes
.pn +1
and of every age and rank, who,
through four whole hours, formed
St. Willibrord’s triumphal procession
and visited his sacred tomb.[#]

.fn #
According to the <i>Echternachter Anzeiger</i> of
June 5, the number of dancers was 10,600; of
other pilgrims 1,800. This does not include 188
musicians, 72 priests, 1,100 chanters, and various
corporations. There were, moreover, 14,000 or
15,000 spectators, making a total of about 30,000
people. Comparing these numbers with those of
former years, we shall see that the ancient ceremony
increases in importance and <i>éclat</i>. This conclusion
is correct, as M. Krier’s statistics show, <i>Die Springprocession</i>,
p. 148. Since the beginning of this
century the number of dancers had not before reached
10,000.
.fn-

All the energy of the vigorous
Luxembourg sinews is required to
bring to a successful close this long
and fatiguing pilgrimage, whose difficulties
increase as they near their
end; for I forgot to say that the
procession danced up the sixty-two
steps which lead to the parish
church. Not every one can go to
Corinth, says the proverb. The
same is true of Echternach, though
in a different sense, thank God!
But it would be a mistake to think
that the famous ceremony demands
anything excessive or superhuman.
The calm, grave character of the
dance, and the numerous pauses
which are made necessary by the
blocking of the way, suffice to husband
the pilgrim’s strength. Their
vow, though hard and laborious, is
not impossible or dangerous. The
proof of this is that many children
in the procession dance the whole
length of the way twice over.
No sooner do they reach the
church at the head of the procession
than they scamper back to
join the rear and begin the exercise
over again. Pilgrims who, on
arriving at Echternach, do not feel
equal to executing their vow, and
yet wish to contribute to the brilliancy
of the festival, give a few
sous to one of these children, and
the indefatigable little fellows acquit
themselves of their task with
imperturbable seriousness and
charming grace. But prodigious
people are again the people of
Pürm. They arrive at the town,
to use a familiar expression, with
twelve leagues in their heels; and
at once they set to work and dance
four long hours. Then, when their
devotions are ended, they take
barely time to eat their modest fare
out doors or at an inn table, and
go home singing and praying to
the high table-lands and extinct
volcanoes of their wild country.

One should be in the church
when the procession pours in by
traditional custom through the left
aisle, to pass round the altar in the
choir and go out through the right
aisle. The dance does not cease
an instant as they pass through the
sanctuary; the orchestra goes on
playing the quaint, archaic melody,
the dancers make the old Romano-vaulted
roof ring with the
clang of their measured steps. The
pilgrims do not think their vow fulfilled
until, after making the tour of
the church, they find themselves in
the courtyard before an old wooden
cross, where they break ranks.
Nothing can be more fantastic than
this irruption of dancing and music
in the house of God. The spectacle
in the church is beyond description;
you feel as if you were
dreaming, and your spirit floated in
the domain of the impossible. What
do the people mean? Have they
come to pillage and destroy? Is
this tumultuous throng the prey of
a sudden delirium, of a dancing
mania? Or, if it be worship, does
it not revive the solemn orgies of
ancient Greece, where certain deities
of Oriental origin were honored
by the leaps, the cries, and the
races of their idolaters? No; to
the first instant of amazement there
.pn +1
succeeds a more correct and complete
judgment. Beneath the external
agitation, beneath the noise
and movement, you see the religious
calm which fills these souls,
and the solemnity pervading the
expression of their inner feelings.
It is this contrast which gives to
the singular ceremony its character
of deep originality. No doubt we
have lost the sense of mysterious
symbolism in the sacred dance; we
no longer see its true motive or
significance; we only know or divine
that the devout thought which
first inspired it animates it at the
present day.

Among various ideas suggested
by this astonishing experience, there
was one that I could not get rid of,
and which returned to me on the
festival and its eve again and again.
While multitudes knelt before the
altar, kissed the shrine, touched it
with objects of devotion, and filled
the church with their prayers, you
would have said that the great man
must be there, present among the
faithful, speaking to them and listening
to them. What glory equals
that of the saints? What other son
of Adam enjoys such honors?
Those whom the Catholic Church
has crowned with eternal palms do
not reign only in heaven; the human
glory which they despised is
given to them abundantly, and
these little ones, who passed through
life obscure and despised, see themselves
suddenly surrounded with an
amazing glory with which Cæsar,
Homer, Archimedes, and Plato do
not shine. The world rings with
their name, and the least and most
ignorant of human beings know, love,
and revere them. They are not
only illustrious, they receive solemn
veneration, they share in a certain
way the honors of God himself.
Their names are uttered with
bended knee, nations flock to their
tombs, and they are gloriously enthroned
in Christian hearts. Beside
such a destiny is it worth while
to try to immortalize one’s name
and to flutter, as the poet says,
upon the lips of men? What is the
greatest name on earth, unless it be
encircled with the aureole of sanctity?
Ignored by the crowd, uttered
coldly by most of those who
know it, respected by a few, but
invoked by no one with clasped
hands and heart uplifted to him
who bore it. The name of the
least saint prostrates in the dust all
human generations through the long
succession of ages, and resounds
like a word of life on all lips. The
church alone is the dispenser of
glory, and even among secular
names the noblest and most lasting
are those of Catholic associations.
.sp 2
.h4
III.
.sp 2
The reader asks, no doubt, what
is the final impression produced by
the spectacle of the dancing procession,
and how we should estimate
this strange ceremony? I
will try to answer the double question
clearly. In the first place, one
must see the procession with one’s
own eyes to judge it fairly. The
public must beware of newspaper
reports, which are numerous and
usually wholly incorrect, not to
use a more uncivil term. There is
no name which certain papers have
not applied to the subject; for correspondents
of a farcical turn
amuse themselves every year at
the expense of a credulous public.
We may say, <i>en passant</i>, that no
class of beings can be more contemptible
than reporters hunting
for a sensation—travelling bagmen
of the press who are allured by
scandal as the vulture is by a
carcase. It is easy to fancy what
.pn +1
the ceremony at Echternach must
have become under their pen.
The very name of dancing procession
makes them scent a topic,
and, devoid of all religious feeling,
they describe first and judge afterwards
a spectacle they are incapable
of understanding. Their descriptions
are so unfaithful that you
doubt whether the good people
ever saw the procession, or whether
they did not write the account before
going to the ceremony. They
give caricatures of a mass of humanity
entangled in frightful confusion
and bounding with all their
strength to the sound of a gigantic
hubbub. The ranks get mingled;
the dancers crush each other and
spring about, regardless of the toes
of their neighbors, who scream for
mercy. With rubicund faces streaming
with perspiration, and with eyes
starting from the sockets, these
wretched fanatics would die rather
than pause. On all sides numbers
give up in despair and drop breathless
among their barbarous companions.
Sometimes they are
drawn out of the crowd by compassionate
persons and restored to
life, but no one in the procession
stops for anything, and the pitiless
Catholic <i>bamboula</i> goes on and on,
sowing devastation at every step.
I spare the reader further details
and give only the canvas of an embroidery
more or less varied according
to the imaginative powers
of the correspondent. In short,
despite the diversity of some details
easy to add, this fancy sketch
has appeared in nearly all the anti-religious
papers in Belgium, and
will end in being stereotyped. It
is needless to say that it is false
throughout. Among ten thousand
persons who were dancing I did
not see one give out. Also, contrary
to another assertion, the number
of epileptics and other invalids in
the procession is very small. I
saw in all five or six persons evidently
afflicted with nervous diseases.

After reading this high-toned description,
flavored with a few Voltairean
jests of the old type, it is
natural to pronounce the procession
of Echternach an absurdity.
The sarcasms of free-thinkers annually
assail the venerable ceremony,
but without injuring it. In
fact, it is irreverent enough in this
nineteenth century to increase in
importance. Eye-witnesses of the
strange spectacle always retain an
impressive memory of it. I confess
to having been rather prejudiced
against the grotesque scenes I expected
to see. At the end of a
quarter of an hour I was convinced of
the powerful religious character of
this great public act, and I remarked
that all the spectators shared my
feeling. Any one must have a singularly
empty mind and heart not to
be struck by the grandeur of the
scene. Those who always take a
petty view of things, because they
can take no other, may laugh at
the discordant music and the clumsy
dancing of some of the pilgrims.
For myself, when I see the same
belief, centuries old, translated by
thousands of men into bold, spontaneous
action, I cannot restrain
my admiration. Before the intrepidity
with which these men, trampling
under foot all human respect,
honor with consecrated rites their
patron saint, I feel moved and impressed.
Where is there such faith
left in Israel? “When I hear the
old tune,” said one of the most
honorable <i>bourgeois</i> of Echternach
to me, “and when I see the first
pilgrims arrive, I feel something
circulate between my flesh and skin
that makes me fairly shiver.” A
.pn +1
young student of the town said to
me very prettily: “I do not care
much for the dancing of the grown
people, but the sight of the dancing
children carries me back to
my own happy childhood, and my
eyes fill with tears.”

These feelings are unanimous.
You see once in a while in the
crowd a travelling clerk on his vacation
hazarding a timid and colorless
sarcasm which a generous public
passes over unnoticed. Beyond
dispute, the sight of the procession
exercises a moral and religious influence.
Like incredulity, faith
is contagious; timid spirits feel
strengthened in this region where
the breath of Catholic life circulates
so freely; sick hearts come out renewed
from the spectacle of thousands
of Christians revealing the
true remedy for human woe. The
people of Luxembourg, essentially
serious and meditative, understand
the aim of the ceremony; its
quaintness does not prevent them
from seeing it as it really is—a great
and solemn affirmation of faith, at
once an act of penance and a prayer,
to be preserved in the original
form out of respect to their ancestors
and veneration for the saint.
Whatever the origin of this ancient
custom,[#] it deserves to be preserved
not only because it fosters and develops
religion in the people, but
because it revives before our eyes,
in the most picturesque way, the
manners of our fathers, whose least
traces historians and archæologists
are jealous to discover. A Luxembourg
writer says well on this subject:
“We preserve with scrupulous
fidelity old monuments and
objects of antique art. Why not
do our best to preserve in its original
type this remarkable procession,
this monument graven in the
living hearts of our brethren?”[#]

.fn #
I have given the two current opinions on the
origin of the dancing procession. I share neither,
and hope my different explanation clear by weight
of proof.
.fn-

.fn #
Krier, <i>Dancing Procession</i>, p. 55. This author
wrote his work first briefly in French, then in
German with more details. The latter is a serious
and interesting work as regards the ceremony. It
is also an edifying appeal from a Christian priest to
his brethren.
.fn-

The intelligent town of Echternach
perfectly understands that it
is incumbent upon its honor to respond
to this wish. It has neglected
nothing in the cause, and at various
times has had to surmount great
obstacles. The administrative prohibitions
of Joseph II., the brutalities
of the French Revolution, the
petty opposition of the Dutch
government, have not discouraged
them; they have held faithfully to
their patriotic tradition, and have
no cause to repent it, for they find
in this devotion a source of great
prosperity. Their unalterable attachment
is the more remarkable
because even the clergy have often
been opposed to the procession.
In 1777 the Prince Elector of
Treves, Clement Wenceslaus—under
the reign of the Febronians, I
should add—actually forbade the
dance, and thus furnished excuse to
Joseph II. to forbid it also a little later.
To-day quite a number of the
clergy look unfavorably on these extraordinary
demonstrations of faith.
They think religion is compromised
by associating it with practices
which, without being bad in themselves,
may provoke the mockery
of the incredulous and alienate
them farther from the church. This
opinion, based, of course, on a sincere
devotion to religious interests,
appears to me an unconscious and
useless concession to the petty
spirit of the age, which is never
satisfied with half-measures. Anti-religious
fanaticism will not be
.pn +1
appeased by our throwing to it as
a sop a small portion of Catholic
treasure. What it wants is the
entire suppression of religion. To
yield any point whatever will only
serve to whet its appetite and augment
its pretensions.

Far from sharing these fears, I
think that in these days of struggle
it is important to oppose the faith
as a whole to unbelief as a whole,
and not yield an inch of ground,
unless we wish to lose all. From
the earliest days of Christianity
there have been people who took
scandal at faith which goes beyond
what is strictly necessary; among
Christ’s apostles there were those
who blamed Magdalen for anointing
the feet of her Master with
precious ointment. It is instructive
to remember that it was Judas
who showed himself most shocked
by what he called useless expense.
We may be sure that, as a general
rule, the enemies of the church detest
all her practices and would
like to see them every one abolished.
Give them the dance of Echternach
to-day; to-morrow they
will demand the suppression of the
procession itself, and soon after
they will wish to close the church
where the saint’s relics are venerated.
We know something of this
in Belgium. Because we submitted
to the proscription of jubilee
processions last year, we have had
to resign ourselves this year (1876)
to seeing God in the Eucharist confined
to the temple; and we shall
see worse things still, if we do not
guard against them in time. It
would, therefore, be mere folly to
sacrifice to interested claimants a
venerable custom, dear to whole
populations and full of poetry and
originality. “But why dance?”
you ask. “Cannot faith be shown
in some other way?” Of course it
can. Do not let us kneel down to
pray, or stand uncovered before
holy images, or make the sign of
the cross, or do a hundred other
things equally useless, strictly
speaking. Yet who would propose
to give them up? There is in the
heart of man a powerful, mysterious
tendency to express the inner feelings
of the soul by symbolical actions.
Thence come these many
ceremonies which have no sense in
themselves, and all owe their worth
to a hidden significance. The
dance of Echternach has no other
origin; it is the symbolical representation
of the sentiments of joyful
confidence which the people
feel in the holy patron of their
town. In every age joy has been
expressed by dancing, and among
those who blame the custom of
Echternach may there not be some
one who has danced for joy at hearing
good news? Many examples
could be cited since David danced
before the Ark of the Alliance
down to our own days, so readily
do these impetuous emotions of
the soul translate themselves into
movements of the body.

Still, the church, while introducing
into her ceremonies a rich and
varied symbolism, has never admitted
dancing; and this prudent reserve
is to be admired because
dancing, harmless in itself, is one
of those dangerous things which
can, according to time and place,
produce deplorable abuses. With
the same wise moderation she has
not absolutely forbidden it; and
where the practice has been introduced
naturally, and has become a
part of popular devotion, she has
tolerated it, as at Echternach, and
even encouraged it because she saw
in it clearly a religious element.
Nothing is more wonderful in the
church than this perfect wisdom,
.pn +1
this superior good sense, with which
she regulates great social and political
questions and decides the petty
details of individual life. Her attitude
towards this ancient ceremony
is as clear and correct as possible;
she mildly favors it in spite of its
strange forms, and refuses to blame
these unless they become an occasion
of scandal. From the moment
that the dance should lose its traditional
character of austere and
respectable devotion, and become a
pretext of pleasure and disorder, it
would be at once condemned by
the church and would fall into discredit.
Thank God! that day is
not near, and the procession of
Echternach will still outlive many a
kingdom and empire.

As a matter of course, it will be
discussed as long as it lasts, and
will always have adversaries and
partisans. Prose and poetry will
for ever dispute over human society,
and will seek to model it after two
opposite fashions. We live to-day
in a prosaic age. Prose triumphed
with the French Revolution and has
passed through western Europe
with a hammer, destroying, together
with works of art, all the flower
of Catholic institutions and habits.
They will revive, but slowly, and
this generation will not see their
complete restoration. Now, despoiled
of all which lent a charm
to existence, society languishes
in a desert of monotony. Rhythm,
so to speak, has disappeared
from our lives with that glorious
succession of festivals, customs,
memories, and hopes which surrounded
us from the cradle to the
grave. All that was Catholic poetry;
it enlivened the existence of
the poor laborer, and made of a
peasant, attached to the soil and
toiling for his master, a happier
man, more contented with himself,
than workmen in the cities who get
a good salary and enjoy their independence.
There is in the human
soul a sublime aspiration after beauty
and poetry which nothing can
destroy, and its wings grow strong
as they meet with resistance. Does
not the tedium which has devoured
the last generation betray a
sense of want and an aspiration
after Catholic life with its artistic
magnificence and poetic influences?
Humanity is tending in that direction,
and has already met the
enemy who would bar the way.
Thence comes the loud and terrible
struggle which tears the whole
earth, and of which we may, without
presumption, hope to see the close.

The procession of Echternach,
like the mysteries of Oberammergau
in Upper Bavaria, is a precious
relic of the old popular poetry of
Catholicity translated into the habits
of life. That is its true and
complete meaning. It is neither
more nor less; it is not an act of
worship nor a vulgar profanation.
It stands on that boundary line
where the church condescends to
popular feeling and makes the hard
road through life easier by her
help. It is the natural fruit of
popular devotion which sprang
from a religious feeling and has
been preserved with respectful piety.
It could not be imitated or
transplanted; like generous wine, it
would lose the flavor of the soil if
it were cultivated on strange land.
It is only possible there where all
is harmonious with it. One must
have a studied hostility towards
religious things to fail to see its
æsthetic character, even without
recognizing the sincerity and the
venerable tone of the old custom.
Some people fall into ecstasies over
Grecian theories and the beautiful
religious dances sculptured on the
.pn +1
metopes of the Parthenon. Others
devote their lives to the study of
the chorus in ancient tragedies
and its evolutions on the stage. I
do not say that the dance of Echternach,
as such, is comparable to
these choreographic works of art,
but why refuse to a Christian practice
in use among our fathers the
benevolent attention lavished on
pagan society? Has it not a double
claim to study in the fact that we
received it from our Catholic ancestors?
For five centuries, at
least, it has lived and flourished
among the populations of the Ardennes
and its surroundings. Every
year it draws from their homes
thousands of these sedentary peasants;
it furrows with the steps of
pilgrims the long, white, desert
roads of Luxembourg; it draws
together in fraternal relations men
far removed from each other, by the
same prayers and the same emotions;
it lifts towards heaven in
unalloyed joy their faces bowed
pitilessly earthward all the rest of
the year. It teaches them to know
beyond their own fireside and parish
the great Christian family of
which they are members, and leaves
in their memory for all the rest
of the summer and through the
long winter evenings ineffaceable
impressions of peaceful happiness.
That is poetry, it seems to me, and
of the best kind; more is the pity
for those who cannot feel it. As
the name of <i>pèlerinard</i> is not one
that frightens or mortifies me, I
will assert that the ancient procession
of Echternach inspired me
with unlimited admiration, that it
edified, moved, and consoled me,
and appeared to me a most charming
episode in the great, mournful
epic of human life.
.sp 4
.h3 id=presbyterians
THE PAN-PRESBYTERIANS.
.sp 2
After two years of careful preparation
the great Pan-Presbyterian
Council has assembled; has eaten
seven luncheons in public and at
the public expense, and a corresponding
number of breakfasts, dinners,
and suppers in private and
at private cost; and has dispersed;
its members talked much—but
these were their only deeds. The
labor of the Pan-Presbyterian mountain
brought forth not even a
mouse. Its promise was large; its
performance was ludicrously small—so
small that the leading journals
of England appear to have been
almost unaware of the existence
of the Pan-Presbyterians, while the
principal organ of opinion in the
Scotch city where the council was
held—“close to the grave of John
Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism”—gave
to the record of its
proceedings not so much space as
it often devotes to the report of a
local synod, and dismissed it at its
close with good-humored but contemptuous
ridicule. Here, however,
the ingenuous reader may inquire,
“Who are the Pan-Presbyterians,
and for what purpose were
they in council?” The question
would be a natural one, and he who
propounds it need not blush for
his ignorance. The people of Scotland
may be presumed to know all
that is worth knowing about Presbyterianism
in all its forms; but it
appears that in certain rural districts
of that very Presbyterian land
.pn +1
the impression prevailed that Pan-Presbyterian
was the title of a new
sect indigenous to America, and
recently smuggled into Scotland
like the Colorado beetle; while in
the more learned circles of Edinburgh
this bucolic delusion was derided
by erudite philologists, who
explained that “Pan-Presbyterianism
is a learned form of stating that
Presbyterianism is Everything, and
that a Pan-Presbyterian is a person
who holds that comprehensive yet
exclusive doctrine.” In point of
fact, however, the Pan-Presbyterians
were simply three hundred and
twenty-five gentlemen, most of them
with the handle of reverend to their
names, who claimed to be the delegated
representatives of the various
Presbyterian sects throughout the
world. From time to time some
of the almost innumerable Protestant
sects show that they are
ashamed of their sectarianism.
Those of them who recognize at all
the fact that Jesus Christ established
<i>one</i> church in the world are
uneasy when they remember that
they are members only of a sect
which has a human origin. This
feeling, if rightly nurtured and
obeyed, would lead those who entertain
it into the fold of the church;
but prejudice, pride, ignorance, and
self-interest too often stand in the
way, and lead to attempts to satisfy
the natural Christian yearning for
unity by projects for the amalgamation
of a few of the sects into
one body. Thus we have had a
Pan-Anglican Congress, a Bonn
Conference, and an Evangelical Alliance;
and now this Pan-Presbyterian
Council. Presbyterianism has a
history of about three hundred and
twenty-five years, and in this period
it has succeeded in dividing and
subdividing itself, until even its own
doctors do not know with exactness
how many different kinds of Presbyterians
there may be, or in what
manner the points of doctrine which
separate them should be formulated.
It was suggested at the council
that accurate information upon
this subject was desirable, and the
task of obtaining it was entrusted to
a committee, who hope they may be
able to report in three years’ time.
The project for the Pan-Presbyterian
Council was originated by an
eminent American Presbyterian
minister—President McCosh, of
Princeton (New Jersey) College;
and it took definite shape at a
meeting held in London in 1875,
when “the alliance of the reformed
churches throughout the world holding
to the Presbyterian system”
was organized. Before the council
could be summoned, however, careful
precautions had to be taken in
order to prevent the assemblage,
which was to meet for the promotion
of unity, from breaking up in
a row and resulting in the establishment
of one or more new schisms.
A charm of novelty was thus imparted
to the undertaking; every
one felt that a Presbyterian synod
which could hold its sessions without
a free fight would indeed be a
new spectacle. The harmony of
the council was to be assured beforehand
by forbidding it to exercise
any authority whatsoever. It
was especially prohibited from attempting
to “interfere with the existing
creed or constitution of any
church in the alliance, or with its
internal order or external relations.”
Thus the door was opened for the
admission of the representatives of
sects who are almost as wide apart
from each other in what they believe
and teach as they are from the
church. So long as they called
themselves Presbyterians, or “held
to the Presbyterian system of church
.pn +1
government,” it was enough. There
is a Presbyterian sect in Holland
whose pastors, at least, teach that
the Bible is not an inspired book,
and who deny the divinity of
Christ; there is a Presbyterian sect
in France which avows the boldest
rationalism; there are Presbyterian
sects in the United States who rejoice
with exceeding great joy in
the belief that there are millions
of infants not a span long frying
in hell; and there are others
who have recoiled so far from Calvinism
that they have fallen into
Universalism. In Scotland itself
bitter strife prevails between the
various Presbyterian sects on such
questions as the connection of the
state with the church, the binding
force of the “Standards,” and the
extent and nature of the Atonement;
and there is a large party
which is declaring that if a certain
reverend professor, who has written
to prove that parts of the Bible are
forgeries, myths, or fables, is disciplined
for that expression of opinion,
they will revolt and help him
to set up a sect of his own. But
the Pan-Presbyterians resolved to
concern themselves with none of
these things. Everything unpleasant
was to be avoided; unity
was to be talked about, but no attempt
to effect it by defining truth
or denouncing error was to be
made. Even with these restrictions
the promoters of the council
realized the danger of their experiment,
and at the last moment they
diminished its perils by enacting
that no one should speak twice on
the same subject, and that the discourses
should be limited from
twenty to ten minutes each. The
latter provision, which was stringently
enforced, more than once
saved the council from painful
scenes. We had occasion, when
writing in these pages six months
ago,[#] to show that in the Presbyterian
body in Scotland theoretical
infidelity had made such headway
and had obtained so firm a foothold
that to deny the inspiration of the
Bible, and to cast doubt upon the
authenticity of the miraculous
events recorded in its pages, was
regarded by a powerful section as
an evidence of profound scholarship
and of a fearless love for truth,
rather than as a proof that the advocates
of these opinions had ceased
to be worthy of the name and
position of Christian teachers. In
a word, the condition of the Presbyterian
sects throughout the world
was such that a general council of
its leading men was highly desirable,
provided that there remained
in the sects anything worth saving,
and they possessed in themselves
the power of saving it. For ourselves,
we believe that the mutilated
fragments of Christian truth
still retained by the majority of the
Presbyterian laity and by a considerable
number of the Presbyterian
ministers are well worth saving;
but we fear that the Presbyterians
themselves will not, or cannot, save
them. If these Pan-Presbyterians
were truly representative men, then,
we should say, it is all up with
Presbyterianism. The spirit which
conceived the council and which
governed its proceedings was the
spirit of cowardice, of temporary
expediency, of prophesying smooth
things, and, if we must speak with
entire plainness, the spirit of utter
and base unfaithfulness to God’s
revealed truth, even to that version
of his revealed truth which the
Presbyterians profess with their
lips, and which they have formulated
in their own creeds, confessions,
and catechisms. In the face
.pn +1
of the fact that on the Continent of
Europe their co-religionists are rapidly
becoming Unitarians, rationalists,
and infidels; that in Scotland
German rationalistic philosophy
has won its way into their
theological schools and poisoned
the very fountains of their ecclesiastical
learning, so that it has
now become notorious that a large
share of their ministers either do
not believe what they preach or
else preach that which is in irreconcilable
antagonism to the “Standards”;
and that in America the
Presbyterian bodies are drifting into
Socinianism on one hand, and back
into the hardest and most repulsive
form of Calvinism on the other—in
view of all these undeniable
facts, or rather with assumed and
predetermined blindness to them,
the chosen representatives of the
Presbyterian sects assemble, spend
seven days in talking with each
other, and separate without uttering
a word or performing an act
in affirmation or defence or vindication
of absolute and divine truth.
No! That was not in the programme;
it was only on condition
that nothing of the kind should be
attempted that the council was got
together at all; it was only because
this promise was observed that the
council managed to do its talking
and to disperse in peace. At one
of its meetings a curious scene
occurred. A woman—an earnest
Presbyterian of the old sort, a spiritual
descendant of Jennie Geddes—had
made her way into the council,
and had listened to the debate
for some time in silence; but her
emotions at last overcame her, and,
rising to her feet, she politely informed
the chairman that she hoped
God’s lightning would come
down and strike the assembly for
its unfaithfulness. This irate lady
was indiscreet; but she only expressed,
we suppose, the feelings
of many an honest Presbyterian.
The council, however, was wise in
its generation, and it must be confessed
that it acted upon strictly
Protestant principles. The essence
of Protestantism is a revolt against
supreme authority; it is the affirmation
of the idea that one man’s
opinion is as good as another’s, and
perhaps better. An attempt to provide
means for an organic unity of
the sects represented would have
ended in a free fight; the affirmation
of positive truths condemnatory
of the heresies which honey-*comb
the sects was impossible so
long as the bargain by which these
heresies were to be ignored was
carried out.

.fn #
See <sc>The Catholic World</sc> for April.
.fn-

The official programme of the
work of the council was thus conceived:

.pm letter-start
“To consider questions of general interest
to Presbyterians; to strengthen
and protect weak and persecuted churches;
to explain and extend the Presbyterian
system; and to discuss subjects of
church work—evangelization, training of
ministers, use of the press, colportage,
suppression of intemperance, observance
of the Sabbath, systematic beneficence,
and the suppression of Romanism and
infidelity.”
.pm letter-end

We must here record, with a
grateful heart, that “Romanism”
came off very lightly. We are not
certain that for this crowning mercy
we are not indebted to those
wily fellows, the Jesuits. For it
was observed that, whenever one of
the speakers began to adduce evidence
that the Pope was Antichrist,
the chairman suddenly discovered
“that time was up”; and it was
likewise remarked that more than
one soul-stirring revelation of the
diabolical seductions of the Scarlet
Woman was cut short by the announcement
.pn +1
that “the luncheon
hour had arrived, and that Bailie
McTavish would preside”—an
intimation which never failed to
empty the hall. Now, there are
Jesuits in Scotland—no less than a
score of them—and that they are
quite equal to the task of devising
means like these for their protection
cannot be doubted by any enlightened
Protestant mind. As for
the twin sister of Romanism—infidelity—that
escaped almost scot
free. The learned and pious delegates
fought shy of the subject; it
was felt to be a dangerous one.

The council began its sessions in
the Free Assembly Hall, Edinburgh,
on the 4th of July. It was
found to consist of 325 members, of
whom 238 were regularly-appointed
delegates, and 87 were honorary,
or associate, delegates. Thirty-one
of the delegates were from the
Continent of Europe; Scotland,
England, Wales, and Ireland sent
92 delegates; the colonies 30; and
the United States 85. The American
delegates had brought with
them 32 “associates”; and it was,
perhaps, in order to guard against
bulldozing on the part of the Americans
that the Scotch delegates appointed
on the spur of the moment
48 “associates” to sit with their
delegates and thus maintain a proper
balance of power. The precaution
was not unnecessary;
even after it had been adopted the
Americans did far more than their
share of the talking. The established
church of Scotland, in appointing
its delegates to the council,
had instructed them to take a
high and mighty attitude, and to
refrain from doing or saying anything
which would imply that they
had been sent there to treat on
terms of equality with the representatives
of the other sects. The
American delegation was respectable
for its ability, and the ultra-orthodox
element was dominant in it.
The two hostile camps into which
the handful of French Presbyterians
are divided were both represented;
and so were the two Presbyterian
sects of Holland. There
were enough Presbyterians in Belgium
to send one delegate, and no
more. The German Presbyterians
declined to be officially represented,
and the three German members
of the council came as volunteers.
Bohemia and Hungary had their
delegates; Switzerland sent some
gentlemen who were rather sat
upon; the modern inheritors of
the old Waldensian heretics were
the constituents of a delegate who
had little to say; and the remainder
of the thirty-one European
delegates were representatives of
“the missionary churches” in Italy,
Spain, and Greece. As nearly as
could be ascertained, there are
about fifty different Presbyterian
sects, and it was estimated that
more than half of these were represented
in the council. But the
delegates were not endowed with
any power to act, or even to speak
officially, in the name of their respective
constituents. Those of
the sects in Switzerland, Germany,
Bohemia, and Hungary which have
a connection with the state had
either refused to be represented at
all or had permitted their members
to attend only as individuals. This
complete absence of everything
like legislative or judicial power in
the council is a sufficient apology
for its failure to promulgate new
decrees or to define any dogma.
But had the Pan-Presbyterians
been of one mind and heart, they
might at least have lifted up their
united testimony, in some shape or
other, in defence of those cardinal
.pn +1
truths of Christianity which are
now assailed, all the world over, by
men in their own ranks. This
they did not venture to do, for the
reason that, had they tried to do it,
their congress would have ended
in a row.

The opening sermon of the council
was preached by Professor Flint,
who took for his text the prayer of
our Lord for the unity of his
church, and whose discourse was an
argument to the effect that when
the Founder of the church prayed
that his followers “all may be one,”
he intended that they should be all
divided. “A universal church,”
says Professor Flint, “was as grandiose
and diseased a dream as was
a universal empire”; and he warned
the council against striving after
organic unity even among the fifty
separate Presbyterian sects. The
adoption of the rules of order,
which provided that the meetings
“should be opened shortly with
prayer,” caused a member to complain
that it was very awkward to
use the word “shortly” in connection
with prayer; but the chairman
replied that while it was awkward
it was very necessary, else they
would have nothing but praying.
The first subject of discussion was
“Harmony of Reformed Confessions,”
which were divided into
three classes—ante-Calvinistic, Calvinistic,
and post-Calvinistic. These
originally were not intended to be
formulas, but only apologies—“vindications
of the Protestant faith
against Romish misrepresentation
and slander.” For a while these
confessions maintained their supremacy,
but now “they have lost
their authority in almost every
country except England, Scotland,
and the United States”; and each
church interprets the Scriptures to
suit itself, even upon such grave
questions as “reprobation and infant
salvation.” Should the council@
leave this matter in its present
indefinite state, or should it undertake
to formulate a new confession
to which all Presbyterians should
subscribe? A Swiss delegate ventured
the startling suggestion that
if such a confession were formulated
“the Divinity of Christ should
be the central stand-point in it”;
and another delegate produced the
draught of a new dogmatic constitution,
in thirty-one articles, which
had been obligingly formulated by
Professor Kraft, of Bonn, who had
patched it up from the various confessions
and had sent it to the
council with his compliments. Principal
Brown, of Aberdeen, remarked
that it would be extremely desirable
that this or some other
similar constitution should be adopted,
or something else done, chiefly
“in order to silence—no, it would
not do that—but to put to shame
the calumny of the Church of
Rome, which said that the Reformed
churches were divided into as
many distinct and conflicting religions
as there were sects of them.
The more intelligent Romanists
knew this was false” (then we cannot
be classed among the more intelligent
Romanists), “but it suited
them all the same to say it and repeat
it, because it had a certain
pithy and plausible sound. And
Presbyterians were there to testify
that it was false, and that in all that
was substantial and vital in Christianity
the Reformed churches were
practically one.” After this bold
declaration it would have been
naturally in order to take the step
necessary to prove it. But canny
Professor Brown hastened to add
that, on second thoughts, he was of
the opinion that the council had
better leave the matter alone and
.pn +1
not attempt any unity save that of
“sympathy.” Professor Candlish
lamented that “there was not now
that lively sense of the unity and
harmony of the Reformed confessions
that there once was.” In fact,
no one knew exactly what changes
the various churches had made in
the “Standards,” and he thought it
would be interesting, at least, to collect
information on that point, so
as to ascertain how many different
Presbyterian beliefs there were.
Dr. Lang, of Glasgow, warned the
council that it was treading on
dangerous ground. “There were
deeper issues involved than merely
touching the surface of their confessions:
there was the whole question
as to the authority and place
of the Bible, and behind that the
whole question of the supernatural.”
The widest differences of opinion
existed on these questions—every
one knew that—but as long as possible
let them be kept in the background.
By covering them up,
and avoiding “a restless and continual
nig-nagging at the matter,”
a sufficient degree of harmony could
be maintained, at least for the present.
A lay delegate, a lawyer,
said that if the council once ventured
to deal “with the very complicated,
delicate, and difficult question
of creeds,” there might be
found many who would propose to
solve the difficulty by dispensing
with all creeds. Dr. Begg at this
point boiled over, and read the
council a severe lecture, expressing
the disgust with which he had listened
to some of the statements
which had been made and apparently
accepted.

.pm letter-start
“Every age had its own theology!—(laughter
and applause)—he did not in
the least believe that. Theology had
been the same since the days of Eden.
The idea of having a new theology at
every stage was a blunder. (Laughter.)
They heard of discoveries being made;
but these discoveries were only resurrections
of old errors. (Laughter.) He
found a revolt against the divine authority
and the divine Word—and the rebels
were the discoverers of these new
theologies.”
.pm letter-end

The discussion was now growing
warm, but as it was announced that
“the hour for luncheon had arrived,
and that Mr. Stevenson, M.P.,
would preside,” the threatened
fight was averted, and the subject
was disposed of at a subsequent
meeting by the passage of the following
resolution:

.pm letter-start
“That this council appoint a committee
with instructions to prepare a report
to be laid before the next General Council,
showing, in point of fact—1. What
are the existing creeds and confessions
of the churches composing this alliance,
and what have been their previous
creeds and confessions, with any modifications
thereupon, and the dates and
occasions of the same from the Reformation
to the present day. 2. What are the
existing formulas of subscription, if any,
and what have been the previous formulas
of subscription used in those
churches in connection with their creeds
and confessions. 3. How far has individual
adherence to those creeds by subscription
or otherwise been required from
the ministers, elders, or other office-bearers
respectively, and also from the
private members of the same. And the
council authorize the committee to correspond
with members of the several
churches throughout the world who may
be able to give information; and they
enjoin the committee, in submitting their
report, not to accompany it either with
any comparative estimate of those creeds
or with any critical remarks upon their
respective value, expediency, or efficiency.”
.pm letter-end

There was an unhappy and heated
controversy concerning the appointment
of some of the members
of this committee, but this excitement
was unnecessary. The information
can all be obtained by
the purchase of a few books and
.pn +1
pamphlets; and as the committee
is forbidden to accompany its report
with “any critical remarks,”
the presence upon it of a few rationalists
or Universalists can do no
mischief.

The remainder of the time of the
council—and it sat thrice a day for
a week—was occupied with talk.
Nothing was done that was worthy
of the name of action. Extracts
from scores of religious essays were
read; hundreds of little religious
or semi-religious speeches were
made; and that was all. We do
not know what the Presbyterians
here and elsewhere expected; but
if they expected anything practical
they have been sadly disappointed.
Some of the little speeches were
comic—as, for example, that of “the
Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Louisville,
U. S.,” who seems to have pursued
antiquarian researches with startling
results, since he has ascertained
that Presbyterianism began with
Abraham; that Moses was a member
of the presbytery of Egypt; and
that Elisha and Ezechiel were the
moderators of the Presbyterian
synods of Samaria and Jerusalem.
Presbyterianism was the true form of
government in the Jewish Church,
and it was the general assembly of
the Presbyterian Church of Judea
that passed sentence of death on
Jesus of Nazareth. Nay, according
to this sprightly Kentucky divine,
heaven itself will be a Presbyterian
community, governed by
a presbytery of four-and-twenty
members. To listen to such excellent
fooling as this; to read the
essay laboriously prepared at home
in Peoria or Dundee, and carefully
rehearsed to admiring wife and
wondering bairns for months before
starting; to discuss, even in
ten-minute speeches, such thrilling
and novel themes as the uses
of elders, the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking,
the advantages of assemblies,
the wickedness of the Pope,
and the unquestionable mental,
moral, and religious superiority of
Presbyterians in general, and Pan-Presbyterians
especially, over all the
rest of mankind—all this, no doubt,
was pleasant enough to the participants;
but it was scarcely the entertainment
to which the outside
world had been invited. True, there
was voted, at the close of the council,
and after an unusually hearty
luncheon at which the brethren tarried
long, “an address to the queen,”
accompanied by what an Edinburgh
journal irreverently describes
as “unanimous votes of thanks to
the Deity, Mr. A. T. Niven, C.A.,
and the lord provost.” Probably
her majesty will never read the address,
as it is a long one and does
not call for a reply. But if she
should peruse it, she will scarcely
thank its authors for suggesting
that she, too, is a Pan-Presbyterian,
or that she changes her religion
every time she crosses the Tweed.
It appears something like an impertinence
in the Pan-Presbyterians
to write thus to the queen:

.pm letter-start
“We venture to indicate the deep interest
which we take in the circumstance
that, while residing in Scotland, your
majesty joins in the Presbyterian worship
and communion.”
.pm letter-end

The queen goes to a Presbyterian
church when in Scotland because
Presbyterianism is the religion of
the state in Scotland, of which she
is the head; and she goes to an
Episcopalian church when in England
because episcopacy is the religion
of the state in England. If
she were in India, and Mohammedanism
were the state religion there,
she would probably go to a mosque
with the same good grace that she
displays when sitting under the
.pn +1
parish minister near Balmoral.
The council also appointed a committee
to see whether money could
be raised for the publication of a
mass of old treatises and essays
upon Presbyterianism which no
private publisher has ever thought
of reprinting; and another committee
to “consider” what could
be reported to the next council—which,
by the way, is to be held at
Philadelphia in 1880, if the world
and Pan-Presbyterianism be then
in existence. That portion of the
programme which promised “the
suppression of infidelity” was not
carried out; a day was spent in
talking about the best methods of
getting the better of Spencer, Darwin,
Huxley, Bradlaugh, and the
like, but the matter ended with the
acceptance of the remark of Prof.
Cairns, that disputation with such
people is rather worse than useless,
since they are well skilled in argument,
and that the only thing to be
done with them is to pray for them.
As Americans we record with justifiable
pride the encomiums bestowed
upon the American delegates
by the great Dr. Phin, and
the still greater Dr. Begg. “Sound
Christian doctrine,” said the first,
“in this land has received a most
powerful impulse from the addresses
of the American brethren”; and
Dr. Begg “rejoiced because of the
firm tone which had characterized
the addresses of the American
speakers, as we require in Scotland
an ecclesiastical tonic to brace us
up to a firm maintenance of our
own Scriptural principles.” The
firm tone was not backed up by
firm action, nor by any action at
all; but, all the same, Dr. Begg is of
the opinion that if the orthodox
Presbyterians in Scotland could
talk as their American brethren do,
there would soon be an end to the
croaking of “the frogs of infidelity
that are coming into our churches
like the frogs that went into Pharao’s
bed-chamber.” But it may
prevent some disappointment in
the future to our American Presbyterian
friends if we convey to
them the warning uttered by the
Edinburgh <i>Scotsman</i> at the end of
the council—a journal whose opinion
on the affair is all the more
valuable from the fact that its editor
is a Presbyterian clergyman of
renown who has abandoned the pulpit
for the press:

.pm letter-start
“Meanwhile,” says the <i>Scotsman</i>,
“what with choking 'frogs’ and covering
up disputable subjects, the appearance
of a complete, if not a completely
beautiful, harmony was unquestionably
produced. But it is only right to warn
the Pan-Presbyterians that if they leave
us with the notion that, because all is
peaceful now, unity is established, they
are the victims of a delusion. They may
depart to their Swiss hamlets or their
Transatlantic cities with psalm-tunes
sounding peace within Jerusalem ringing
in their ears, and imagine that after
this most refreshing time the millennium
has come when Dr. Phin and Dr. Blaikie
will lie down together, and Dr. Marcus
Dods and Dr. Moody Stewart will kiss
each other. But, alas! shortly after they
have told their deeply-affected flocks at
home of the harmony which prevails in
Bible-loving Scotland, some morning
when Dr. Rufus Choate examines his
Chicago <i>Trumpet</i>, and Dr. Brunnelhanner
lays down his meerschaum to take up his
paper, they will find that all the old dissensions
have broken out again with
alarming violence; that ministers who
agreed on a platform of wood can agree
upon no other; that Dr. Blaikie has attacked
Establishments from love of their
members, and has Dr. Pirie’s head in
Chancery; that Dr. Phin has a new
scheme to 'dish’ the Dissenters; that
those who led the devotions are now
leading the fray; that those who were at
peace are not on speaking terms, or on
terms in speaking which are very bad
indeed; while those who lauded the
agreement between confessions cannot
agree amongst themselves as to what
.pn +1
these confessions mean to say. The
visit of the Pan-Presbyterians may, after
all, share the fate that generally overtakes
the other numerous excursionists
who appear among us about this season.
For the moment we may be struck by
their numbers and their banners with
their strange devices, and be moved to
the heart, or even deeper, by their bass-drum
and their instruments of brass; but
when they have gone, if any memory of
them remains, it is only of something
that was loud and singular, but what it
was or what it did there is nothing palpable
to show.”
.pm letter-end

The Pan-Presbyterians repeated
very often that, while they did not
expect, or even desire, to effect
“organic unity” between their various
sects—that unity being, in
their opinion, opposed to the will
of God—they were, all the same,
“one in spirit and in sympathy.”
But the hollowness of even this
pretence was manifested when an
attempt was made to induce them
to unite in what they call “partaking
of the Lord’s Supper.” Toward
the close of the council it was
announced that “Dr. Moody Stewart
and his session invited the members
of council to communion at
half-past twelve on Saturday.” Now,
from a Catholic, or “Romanist,”
point of view, it is rather surprising
that a convention of eminent
Christian ministers, assembled for
what they professed to regard as
the most important purposes, should
have already spent several days
without performing this supreme
act of Christian devotion. But
Pan-Presbyterian ways are not as
our ways. Nevertheless, one would
have supposed that, being thus invited
to do what they had neglected,
they would at least have received
the invitation kindly. On
the contrary, a most unhappy scene
followed. The Orthodox Pan-Presbyterians
were willing to talk with
their unorthodox colleagues; they
would eat luncheons with them,
make speeches and read papers to
them, and even listen to their
speeches and papers in return; but
when it came to “partaking of the
sacrament” with them, they would
not do it at any price. Dr. Phin
at once protested against the idea
that he, for one, could thus be
yoked unevenly with unbelievers.
“He happened to entertain certain
old-fashioned ideas with respect to
the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper”
which would prevent him
from joining in it unless he knew
his company. For instance, there
should be “the fencing of the tables”;
and this fencing would surely
shut out either the sheep or the
goats. The “fencing of the tables,”
it appears, is a curious custom prevalent
in Scotland, and may be
thus explained: an invitation to
“the communion” is given, and
then every one who wishes to receive
it is scared off either by terrific
denunciations of the awful
guilt incurred by those who partake
unworthily, or is compelled to pass
a severe competitive examination
as to the soundness of his faith
and his acceptance of the “Standards.”
Dr. Phin was, no doubt,
correct in supposing that the application
of these tests would produce
unpleasant results, and his conscience
would not permit him to
assist at a communion where they
were not applied. Dr. Begg took
the same view, and “regretted that
the invitation had been given.”
The chairman—who on this occasion
happened to be Dr. Ormiston,
of New York—sought to get over
the difficulty by suggesting that “it
would be understood that nobody
was committed except the gentlemen
who took part in it,” and he
added the remarkable declaration
that “as members of council not
.pn +1
one of them had any responsibility
to the weight of a hair.” A lay
member “protested against any administration
of free communion in
connection with the council”; and
Dr. Blaikie said the committee had
“taken every precaution that the
council should not be committed
in any way.” With this assurance
the subject “was allowed to drop,”
and when the time for the communion
arrived only one hundred and thirty
of the three hundred and twenty-five
Pan-Presbyterians presented
themselves to receive it—and among
these neither Dr. Phin nor Dr. Begg
was seen.

The Continental Pan-Presbyterians
made a pitiful show for themselves
during the council. Few of
them could speak English; and the
linguistic accomplishments of the
majority of their colleagues being
limited, they were compelled, when
they spoke at all, to express themselves
through an interpreter, which
is not generally an exhilarating process.
One of the French delegates
said there were forty Presbyterian
congregations in France without
pastors, and he suggested that a
collection might be made to aid in
hiring men to fill these vacancies;
but this hint was not taken. A
volunteer member from Berlin read
a sensible paper upon “missions,”
in which he ridiculed the present
system of Protestant missions, and
said that their only fruits were the
inculcation of hypocrisy and of
pauperism among the so-called converts.
On this same subject, by
the way, one of the members put
forth the novel idea that the conversion
of one Jew was worth more
than the salvation of a hundred
pagans. Dr. Hoedemaker, of Amsterdam,
said that the Presbyterians
there had long been poisoned
with the virus of rationalism, and
that forty years ago “there were
very few who preached the living
Christ in his church”; but now, he
hoped, there was some improvement.
M. Decoppet, of the French
Presbyterian body, complained that
the sect could make no progress
there, “because they were not allowed
by the law to give a tract on
the street or to deliver public lectures”;
but still he was confident
that “France would soon become a
Protestant nation”—by the aid of
M. Gambetta and the Reds, we
presume. The representative of
the Waldensian heretics apologized
for the bad character of some of its
ministers, but said that as fast as
the false shepherds were detected
they were expelled from the fold.

Politeness, perhaps, would command
us to express our acknowledgments
of certain courteous,
sensible, and truthful things which
were said about the church—as, for
example, that “she was the mother
of infidelity” and the fountain and
origin of all civil, moral, and religious
evil. But, on the whole, we
think our readers will have had
enough of the Pan-Presbyterians.
Dr. Begg, at the last meeting of the
council, said that “they saw the
shadow of the great eclipse of Romanism
again cast over the country.”
We take this to be the Beggonian
method of expressing the
fact that the few Christians who remain
in Scotland are on the way
to return to the church of their
forefathers—the church which civilized
and Christianized Scotland,
and which had the unhappiness to
nurture in her bosom the apostate
priest who was the father of Scotch
Presbyterianism. Dr. Begg is not
an infallible prophet, but such
events as the Pan-Presbyterian
council are calculated to hasten the
event which he predicts. For the
.pn +1
council has shown that the Presbyterian
Church throughout the world,
as represented by its chosen men,
is undermined by infidelity, and
that its existence, in their opinion,
depends upon concealing this fact
and pretending that no one has the
right to proclaim it.
.sp 4
.h3 id=horace
TRANSLATION FROM HORACE. | ODE 14, BOOK 2.
.sp 2
<i>Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume!</i>

.pm verse-start
  Alas! my Posthumus, our years
Glide silently away; no tears,
No loving orisons, repair
The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair,
That drop forgotten to the tomb:
Pluto’s inexorable doom
Mocks at thy daily sacrifice;
Around his dreary kingdom lies
That fatal stream whose arms enfold
The Giant race accursed of old;
All, all alike must cross its wave,
The king, the noble, and the slave.
In vain we shun the fields of war,
And breakers dashed on Adria’s shore;
Vainly we flee, in terror blind,
The plague that walketh on the wind;
The sluggish river of the Dead,
Cocytus, must be visited;
And Danaüs’ detested brood,
Foul with their fifty husbands’ blood;
And Sisyphus, with ghastly smile
Pointing to his eternal toil.
All must be left: thy gentle wife,
Thy home, the joys of rural life;
And when thy fleeting days are gone,
Th’ ill-omened cypresses alone
Of all those fondly-cherished trees
Shall grace thy funeral obsequies,
Cling to thy loved remains, and wave
Their mournful shadows o’er thy grave.
A lavish but a nobler heir
Thy hoarded Cæcuban shall share,
And on the tessellated floor
The purple nectar madly pour,
Nectar more worthy of the halls
Where Pontiffs hold their festivals.

<sc>S. E. de V.</sc>
.pm verse-end
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h3
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Public Libraries in the United States
of America</sc>; their History, Condition,
and Management. Special Report.
Department of the Interior, Bureau of
Education. 1876.
.pm letter-end

In 1874 the Commissioner of the
Bureau of Education in the Department
of the Interior at Washington began the
preparation of a complete Report on the
Public Libraries in the United States;
on the 31st of August, 1876, the report
was submitted; it was printed, and it
makes a volume of 1,187 pages. A careful
study of the contents of this unique
work compels us to express, in the
first place, our most cordial appreciation
of the great labor which has been
expended upon it, and of the value of the
information which it contains. The size
of the volume, we fear, has deterred many
into whose hands it has fallen from more
than glancing over its pages; we confess
for ourselves that we shrank, for a while,
from the task of reading it. But we have
been amply repaid for our toil, which
soon became a pleasure; and we may
say here that we have seen in foreign
periodicals and journals a number of
highly eulogistic and discriminating reviews
of the report. We propose to
make our readers share in the satisfaction
we have derived from our study of this
work; but our space will permit us only
to give a condensed summary of a portion
of its contents.

No less than 132 pages of the report
are taken up with a table giving the
statistics of all the “public libraries” in
the United States and Territories numbering
300 volumes or more, excepting
common or district school libraries. The
table is as complete as it could be made
from the returns received in 1875-76; but
it is incomplete, because many of the libraries
named in it do not report the date
of their foundation, their average annual
increase in books, their financial condition,
or their yearly expenditures.
But with all these defects the table is
extremely valuable. It shows, to begin
with, that the total number of these
libraries is 3,647, having as their total
number of volumes 12,276,964. We
pause here for a moment to say that the
report also shows that in the district-school
libraries, not included in the table,
there are 1,365,407 volumes, and that in
all the libraries there are about 1,500,000
pamphlets not classed as “volumes.”
The census of 1870 showed that there
were 107,673 private libraries, containing
25,571,503 volumes, exclusive of those
which may be in the State of Connecticut,
from which State no returns on this subject
were received. Here, then, we have
a total of 39,213,874 volumes of books in
the public, private, and school libraries
of the country—a mass of printed matter
large enough, estimating each volume to
weigh a pound, to fill nine merchant vessels
of 2,000 tons burden each. Let us
also in this place give the following list
of the number of volumes in several noted
libraries in other countries, with the
remark that, as the statistics of these libraries
differ widely according to different
authorities, we have in each case
taken the highest number given, and
that this number relates only to books,
and not to manuscripts or pamphlets,
fugitive publications, etc.:

.ta l:40 r:11
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris |           2,000,000
Mazarin Library, Paris         |            160,000
Royal Library, Madrid           |           200,000
Convent Library of the Escorial, Madrid |   130,000
Vatican Library, Rome                  |  1,000,000
Magliabecchíana Library, Florence       |   200,000
Laurentian Library, Florence             |  120,000
Museo Borbonico, Naples                   | 200,000
University Library, Bologna        |        200,000
Brera Library, Milan                |       200,000
Ambrosian Library, Milan             |      140,000
University Library, Turin             |     150,000
Royal Library, Berlin                  |     700,000
Royal Library, Dresden           |          500,000
University Library, Breslau       |         350,000
University Library, Göttingen  |            400,000
Ducal Library, Wolfenbüttel  |              300,000
University Library, Freiburg      |         250,000
Royal Library, Stuttgart           |        450,000
Royal Library, Munich               |       900,000
Royal Library, Copenhagen          |        550,000
Bodleian Library, Oxford            |       700,000
Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh      |        300,000
University Library, Edinburgh       |       130,000
Imperial Library, St. Petersburg     |    1,100,000
City Library, Augsburg                |     150,000
University Library, Cambridge       |       400,000
City Library, Frankfort              |      150,000
.pn +1
Ducal Library, Gotha |                      240,000
City Library, Hamburg |                     300,000
City Library, Leipsic  |                    170,000
University Library, Leipsic |               350,000
British Museum, London       |            1,020,000
.ta-

In these 33 libraries in the Old World
there are 14,110,000 volumes, exclusive
of manuscripts, or 1,833,176 more volumes
than we have in all of our 3,647
public libraries. We say nothing of the
comparative value of the collections, for
of course there is no comparison between
a collection which has been accumulating
for a thousand years and one
which was made yesterday. But we have
no reason to be ashamed of our American
public libraries; on the contrary, as
the report which we are reviewing abundantly
shows, we have every reason to
be proud of them. We take from this
report the following table:

.ta l:40 r:12
Whole number of public libraries |                          3,647
Whole number of volumes           |                    12,276,964
Average number of volumes                      |            3,366
Yearly additions (1,510 reporting)              |         434,339
Yearly use of books (742 reporting)              |      8,879,809
Amt of permanent fund (1,722 reporting)           |    $6,105,581
Yearly income (830 reporting)                      |   $1,398,756
Yearly expenditures for publications (769 reporting) |   $562,407
Yearly expenditures for salaries, etc. (643 reporting) | $682,166
.ta-

The 3,647 libraries are distributed
among the various States and Territories
as follows; and here we make our only
complaint against the report—to wit, that
its laborious and faithful editors have
not furnished the footings, which we have
been compelled to make for ourselves:

Alabama, 31 libraries; Alaska, 1
(the post library at Sitka, and now removed
since the garrison has been withdrawn);
Arizona, 3 (two of them being
military libraries); Arkansas, 6; California,
87; Colorado, 8; Connecticut,
125; Dakota, 4 (two being military libraries);
Delaware, 18; District of Columbia,
57 (31 of them belonging to the federal
government); Florida, 6; Georgia,
44; Idaho, 1; Illinois, 177; Indiana, 133;
Indian Territory, 4 (two of them military
libraries); Iowa, 80; Kansas, 19; Kentucky,
72; Louisiana, 31; Maine, 85; Maryland,
77; Massachusetts, 453; Michigan,
89; Minnesota, 39; Mississippi, 23; Missouri,
87; Montana, 2; Nebraska, 14; Nevada,
6; New Hampshire, 86; New Jersey,
91; New Mexico, 4 (one of them a military
library, and two of the others belonging
to Catholic academies); New York, 617;
North Carolina, 37; Ohio, 223; Oregon,
14; Pennsylvania, 367; Rhode Island,
56; South Carolina, 26; Tennessee, 71;
Texas, 42; Utah, 5; Vermont, 65; Virginia,
63; Washington Territory, 2 (one
of them a Catholic library); West Virginia,
23; Wisconsin, 73; and Wyoming
Territory, 3.

These figures are suggestive in various
ways, and many interesting and valuable
inferences might be drawn from them.
But a careful analysis of the other portions
of the table would also be necessary
in order to avoid mistakes; and the
wholly unknown quantity in the problem—the
comparative value of different
collections—would imperil the accuracy
of any deductions which might be made
from the statistics in this table. For instance,
the 31 libraries in Alabama contain
60,615 volumes—nearly 5,000 less
than are in the New York Society Library
alone. A library is a library, for the
purposes of this report, if it contain 300
or more volumes, just as a book is a
book although there may be nothing in
it. Who is to say whether some of the
smaller collections in the South are not
really more valuable than the larger and
newer libraries in the North? We fear
it is not so; but there is no test by which
to decide the question. If we leave this
point, and turn our attention to the statistics
relating to the principal libraries,
we shall come upon more satisfactory
ground.

The thirty-eighth chapter of the report,
filling 273 pages, is devoted to a review
of the public libraries of ten principal
cities—Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn,
Charleston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New
York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San
Francisco. In these ten cities there are
471 public libraries with 3,447,628 volumes,
viz.:

.ta l:25 r:25 r:15
<th><i>Name of City.</i> | <i>No. of Libraries</i> |  <i>Volumes.</i>
Charleston |            6 |       26,600
Chicago |              23   |    141,910
San Francisco |        30    |   164,228
Brooklyn       |       21   |    165,112
St. Louis       |      31    |   170,875
Cincinnati       |     30     |  197,890
Baltimore         |    38  |     230,342
Philadelphia       |  102   |    707,627
Boston            |    68    |   734,741
New York           |  122     |  906,203
    |                 —-  |   ————-
    Total |           471 |    3,445,528
.ta-

To this list we add, in order that the
South may have justice done to her:
.pn +1

.ta l:25 r:25 r:15
<th><i>Name of City.</i> | <i>No. of Libraries</i> |  <i>Volumes.</i>
New Orleans |          15 |     94,080
Louisville   |          6  |    65,897
Richmond      |        17   |   63,526
.ta-

A library containing 10,000 volumes
or more, if well selected, may be said to
be a respectable collection. Now, there
are no less than 266 libraries of this
class in the United Slates, and they contain
a total of 6,984,882 volumes—an
average of 26,259 volumes in each.
These 266 libraries, it will be seen,
account for more than one half of the
total number of volumes in all the public
libraries, and they reduce the average
number of volumes in the remaining
3,381 libraries to 1,565. But even a
library with 1,500 good books is not to
be despised.

The largest library in the United
States is that of the National Congress
at Washington, which has 300,000 volumes;
and then follow:

.ta l:25 r:15
Social Law Library, Boston |            299,869
Harvard University          |           227,650
Mercantile, New York         |          160,613
Astor, New York               |         152,446
Mercantile, Philadelphia       |        125,668
House of Representatives, Washington |  125,000
Yale College                         |  114,200
Athenæum, Boston                      | 105,000
.ta-

These are the only libraries which
have 100,000 volumes and more. Those
which have 50,000 and less than 100,000
volumes are the

.ta l:25 l:15
State Library at Albany |                95,000
New York Society, New York |             65,000
Antiquarian Society, Worcester |         60,497
Peabody Institute, Baltimore    |        57,458
Apprentices’, New York           |       53,000
Dartmouth College                 |      52,550
Mercantile, Brooklyn               |     50,257
State University, Baton Rouge       |    50,000
.ta-

There are 10 libraries having more
than 40,000 and less than 50,000 volumes;
23, with more than 30,000 and less
than 40,000; 49, with more than 20,000
and less than 30,000; 52, with more than
15,000 and less than 20,000; 100, with
more than 10,000 and less than 15,000;
264, with more than 5,000 and less than
10,000; 156, with more than 4,000 and
less than 5,000; 236, with more than
3,000 and less than 4,000; 362, with more
than 2,000 and less than 3,000; 762, with
more than 1,000 and less than 2,000;
and 925, with more than 500 and less
than 1,000.

Of the whole number of 3,647 public
libraries mentioned in this report, we
find 221 which we recognize as those of
Catholic institutions. There are no
doubt others in the list, but there is no
mark by which they can be certainly
recognized. Of these 221 distinctively
Catholic libraries the following are the
chief:

.ta l:16 l:25 r:9 r:12
<th><i>Place.</i> | <i>Name.</i> | <i>Origin.</i> | <i>Vols.</i>
San Francisco,|  St. Ignatius’ College, |    1855 |    11,000
Santa Clara,  |  Santa Clara College,    |   1851 |    10,000
Georgetown,    | Georgetown College,     |   1791 |    32,268
Washington, |    Gonzaga College,        |   1858 |    10,000
New Orleans, |   Libraire de la famille,  |  1872 |    15,000
Baltimore,    |  Archiepiscopal,        |    ....   |  10,000
Baltimore,     | Loyola College,  |          1853 |    21,500
Baltimore, |     St. Mary’s Seminary,    |   1791 |    15,000
Hagerstown, |    St. James’ College,      |  1842 |    11,000
Worcester,   |   College of the Holy Cross |  1843 |    12,000
St. Louis, |     College of the Christian Brothers, |      1860 |    22,000
Brooklyn, |      St. Francis’ College, |     .... |    13,970
Fordham, |       St. John’s College, |       1840 |    15,000
New York, |      St. Francis Xavier’s College, |                1847 |    21,000
Cincinnati, |    Mount St. Mary’s, |         1849 |    15,100
Cincinnati, |    St. Xavier’s College, |     1840 |    17,000
Latrobe, Penn., | St. Vincent’s College, |    1846 |    13,000
.ta-

In these 17 Catholic libraries there are
264,838 volumes. It is a very respectable
number, and, when the probable quality
of the books contained in these collections
is taken into account, the value of
such comparatively small libraries will
be seen to be great. The number of
volumes in the other 204 Catholic libraries,
as we have ascertained by a laborious
examination of the tables, is 448,688,
so that the total number of volumes in
the distinctively Catholic libraries is
713,526. It is a large number of books;
but one might complain that it was not
larger. We are not sure that these complaints
would be well founded. As
Catholics we establish our own libraries,
but as citizens we aid in the labor and
share the cost of forming the general libraries,
and we have our part in the advantages
which they afford. It will always
be our duty, of course, to exert our
influence in preserving these collections
of books from the contamination of the
works of authors whose aim is to undermine
morals and to destroy faith; and
to introduce to their shelves the writings
of the best and most able defenders and
advocates of truth and religion. But
this duty being well performed, we are
free to aid in the work of building up
our general libraries and in enjoying the
.pn +1
pure intellectual delights which they
may afford.

Thirty-eight pages of the report before
us are devoted to a chapter upon Theological
Libraries. A table is given of 44
of the principal theological libraries in
the United States; they contain 528,024
volumes. Eight of them belong to Catholic
theological seminaries and contain
71,600 volumes. The two largest
of the theological libraries are those of
the Union Theological Seminary of New
York, and the Andover Theological
Seminary, each of which contains 34,000
volumes. The report states that, with a
few exceptions, the public theological
libraries in this country are the libraries
of theological seminaries. The exceptions
are the General Theological Library
in Boston, established in 1860, and now
containing 12,000 volumes; and the library
of the Congregational Association
in the same city, which contains 22,000
volumes and 80,000 pamphlets. None
of the theological libraries are 100 years
old. The eldest of all of them is the
library of St. Mary’s Theological Seminary
of St. Sulpice in Baltimore, founded
in 1791 by the Sulpician Fathers. It
now contains 15,000 volumes. The report
devotes considerable space to a dissertation
upon “Catholic Libraries,” and
its remarks upon this head are conceived
in a kindly and enlightened spirit.
“All learning,” writes the reporter, “is
welcome to the shelves of Catholic libraries,
and nothing is excluded from them
that should not equally be excluded from
any reputable collection of books. Nor
will anti-Catholic works be found wanting
to them, at least such as possess any
force or originality. The history of the
church being so interwoven with that of
the world since the days of Augustus
Cæsar, there is no period which is not
redolent of her action, and consequently
no history which does not have to treat
of her, either approvingly or the reverse.
In regard to general literature, she preserved
... all that has come down to
us from classic sources, and therefore
works of this character can be no strangers
to shelves of Catholic libraries. Still
less can the Sacred Scriptures be, which
Catholic hands collected, authenticated,
and handed down for the use of the men
of our time. Nor will the sciences be
overlooked by ecclesiastics in forming
their libraries; for in past ages it was the
care of their brethren, with such limited
facilities as were at their command and
in days inauspicious for scientific investigation,
to cultivate them.” No new
truths these; but they are well expressed,
and it is worth something to have
them set forth in a volume prepared by
federal authority and published with
federal approval. The report goes on to
speak of the general characteristics of
Catholic theological libraries. They
contain, it says, abundant versions of the
Sacred Scriptures in all languages, with
copious commentaries and expositions;
and the writer adds that the professors
of our Catholic theological institutions
“are generally graduates of the best theological
schools in Europe.” He thus
proceeds:

“Next in authoritative rank come the
Fathers and Doctors of the church, from
those who received instruction from the
apostles themselves and committed their
doctrine to writing, down to almost our
own day; for St. Alphonsus Liguori, the
latest on whom the Holy See has conferred
the title of Doctor of the Universal
Church, died only in the latter part
of the last century, and his authority is
that which is principally followed in the
treatment of moral questions. Works
also by later writers, principally on dogmatic
subjects, are constantly appearing.
The study of dogma embracing an investigation
into all revealed truths, and
therefore essential to those who are to
instruct others authoritatively, involves
a reference to many learned books in
which proofs and illustrations are elaborated
to the last degree of exactness,
side by side with every possible difficulty
or objection that can be brought to bear
against each doctrine treated of. Some
works are occupied with the discussion
of but a single point; others take in a
wide range, and some voluminous authors
have published an entire course
of dogma....” “The study of moral,
the other great branch of Catholic theology,
embraces a scrutiny into every
question of morals that needs to be investigated
by those who have the direction
of consciences, or whose duty it is,
in the tribunal of penance, to adjudicate
upon matters affecting the rights of
others. As solutions in these cases are
sometimes attended with considerable
difficulty, and a grave responsibility is
attached to the delivery of an opinion,
authorities for reference must be ample
and exhaustive. Such authorities will
.pn +1
be found in the theological libraries, and
are relied upon in proportion to their
world-wide repute, as representing the
opinions of prudent, learned, and experienced
men.”

The report goes on to speak of the
reasons why every complete Catholic
library must have copies of the published
acts of the general councils of the
church, and of national and provincial
councils, as well as of the decisions and
solutions of the various congregations at
Rome, and other documents emanating
from the Holy See. The supply of
“works on ritual,” and those necessary
for a thorough course of rational philosophy,
must be ample, and there must
be works on mathematics, physics, astronomy,
meteorology, chemistry, and other
sciences. We again quote:

“The attention given in these schools to
sacred eloquence—for practice in which
students are required to prepare and deliver
sermons in presence of the community—calls
for the best models of sacred oratory,
besides works on rhetoric and elocution.
As models of composition, arrangement,
and intrinsic solidity, the sermons
of the ancient fathers share equal attention
with those of the great French orators of
the last century, and no library for the use
of ecclesiastics will be without a copious
supply of the works of those and others
of the best pulpit orators in the church.
Catholic libraries in general—and not
those alone which are attached to theological
schools—will be found amply supplied
with controversial works written
by Catholic authors. These are needed,
however, not so much for the use of the
owners as for that of non-Catholic inquirers
who wish to be enlightened in regard
to some controverted point, or who
desire to learn the evidences upon which
the Catholic Church bases her claims to
the credence of mankind. Catechetical
works, of which there are a great number,
answer this purpose still better when the
polemic spirit has been allayed, and it is
impossible to conceive of a Catholic library,
large or small, without an abundance
of both these classes of books. The
controversial works discuss every objection
which can be alleged against the
church or the practice of members of it,
and are necessarily very numerous. Every
age has left behind it these testimonies
to the controversies that agitated it, and
the present age is no less prolific than
its predecessors, though the grounds of
dispute are shifting now rather from
dogma to historical questions and matters
of science, indicating the lessening hold
which doctrine has on the non-Catholic
mind.”

And again:

“Ecclesiastical history, of course, forms
an important element in Catholic libraries;
but this history not only includes
the exhaustive tomes of writers who take
in the whole history of the church, but
of others who illustrate a particular age,
country, event, or transaction. Works
concerning the history of the church in
the United States, or in particular States,
form a growing collection. The current
of contemporary Catholic history is well
shown forth through the monthly and
weekly publications which appear in
many countries and languages. The
Catholic quarterlies, however, and some
of the monthly publications, are devoted
chiefly to literary or scientific criticism.
The Catholic weeklies in this country
are now so numerous that their preservation
in libraries is seldom attended to.
If this apology is needed for the absence
from such libraries of publications that
will form an important reference hereafter
for others besides Catholics, it ought
to be coupled with the suggestion proper
to be made in a work which will be
placed in the hands of persons of all religions:
<i>that a general Catholic library
ought to be established at some central point
where every Catholic publication, at least
among those issued in this country, may
have a place. Materials for history would
gather in such a collection that might not
readily be found combined in any other.</i>

“Having thus touched upon the more
important characteristics of Catholic libraries,
it would be well, perhaps, to observe
that while the leading ones in this
country are attached to seminaries, colleges,
or religious houses, there are many
private collections of considerable value,
especially those in episcopal residences,
or belonging to gentlemen of the clergy
or laity who, together with literary tastes,
possess the means to gratify them. Catholic
libraries are also beginning to be
formed in cities and towns, chiefly under
the auspices of associations that seek to
provide a safe and pleasant resort for
young men in the evenings. In these
libraries will be found the lighter Catholic
literature, to which no reference
has so far been made in this paper—travels,
sketches, poems, tales, etc., a few
.pn +1
of which are by American and some
Irish authors, but the majority by English
writers, chiefly converts, or translated
from the French, German, Flemish,
and other Continental languages. Finally,
it would be well to observe that
Catholic libraries are accessible for reference,
if not for study, to all inquirers.
In most cases non-Catholic visitors
would doubtless be welcomed to them
with great cordiality. <i>Those who have
these libraries in keeping rather invite than
repel scrutiny into whatever is distinctively
Catholic in their collections.</i>”

We regret that the limits of our space
forbid us to dwell further upon the contents
of this really fascinating volume.
To use such an adjective in speaking of
a “Blue-Book,” or an official report,
may seem extravagant, but in this case
it is not so. Its chapters upon the growth
of libraries in the United States; college
libraries; law, medical, and scientific
libraries; libraries in prisons and reformatories;
libraries of the general and
State governments; libraries of historical
societies; and upon “catalogues and
cataloguing,” are crammed with useful
and important information; and whatever
may have been the sins of omission
or commission that may be laid at the
door of the “Department of the Interior
at Washington,” we are willing to bear
witness that its Bureau of Education, in
the preparation and publication of this
report, has done much to atone for them.
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
<sc>Elements of Geometry.</sc> By G. M.
Searle, C.S.P. With an Appendix containing
Problems and Additional Propositions.
New York: John Wiley &
Sons. 1877.
.pm letter-end

The object of this work is to place
geometry on a more perfectly logical
basis than it has been usually considered
worth while to adopt in text-books.
Geometers at the present day generally
agree as to the unsatisfactory nature of
the axioms usually adopted, some being
superfluous, and others, especially the
famous one about parallels, not being
clearly self-evident.

The reduction in the number of axioms
has of course introduced some complexity
into the reasoning in this book, and
the difficulty about parallels is not completely
removed; nor does the author
pretend completely to remove it. Some
new views, however, are presented which
may be worthy of consideration.
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<sc>Elements of Ecclesiastical Law.</sc>
Adapted especially to the Discipline
of the Church in the United States.
By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D., formerly
Professor of Canon Law, author of
“Notes,” etc., etc. New York, Cincinnati,
St. Louis, and Einsiedeln:
Benziger Brothers, Printers to the
Holy Apostolic See. 1877.
.pm letter-end

This work of Dr. Smith’s cannot fail
to be a welcome addition to any theological
library. There are a great many
works on canon law, it is true, but very
few which give much information on the
discipline of the church here, which is
what priests in this country and those
who are preparing for the priesthood
principally need to understand.

The present volume goes far to supply
this deficiency, and the author promises
to supplement it soon by another, for
which we shall look with interest. He
has made a good choice in writing in
English; there seems to be no need
of choosing Latin for a book on this
subject, and intended for this nation
chiefly.
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<l>Footnotes</l>
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Transcriber’s Notes:

Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.

Typographical errors were silently corrected.

Spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant
form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.

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Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (<i>italics</i>).
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